Murder of Carol Stuart
LocationBoston, Massachusetts, U.S.
DateOctober 23, 1989
Attack type
Murder by gunshot
VictimCarol Ann Stuart
PerpetratorCharles Michael Stuart

Carol Ann Stuart (née DiMaiti; born March 26, 1959) was murdered on October 23, 1989, by her husband, Charles Michael "Chuck" Stuart Jr. (December 18, 1959 – January 4, 1990), who said a black man had carjacked their car in Boston and shot both his pregnant wife and himself. His statement to police set off a months-long manhunt by the Boston Police Department for a black assailant that lasted until Charles' brother, Matthew, confessed that Carol was killed by Charles to collect her life insurance payout. Soon afterwards Charles committed suicide.[1]

The shooting occurred in Boston's predominantly black Mission Hill neighborhood. It generated intense and sustained media attention both nationally and in Boston as an example of black on white crime.[2] Police arrested William "Willie" Bennett, a 39-year-old black man from Roxbury, on unrelated charges but soon the investigation centered on Bennett and the media spoke of him as though his guilt was certain.[3]

Murders

Cover of the Boston Herald newspaper on October 24, 1989, with an article on the murder of Carol Stuart that includes a photograph of Carol and Charles Stuart's severe gunshot wounds
Cover of The Boston Herald on October 24, 1989, reporting the shooting as an attempted robbery of the couple

In 1989, Charles Stuart was the general manager at Edward F. Kakas & Sons, an upscale fur clothing shop on fashionable Newbury Street in Boston, Massachusetts. His wife, Carol, a tax attorney,[4] was pregnant with their first child.[5] On October 23, the couple attended childbirth classes at Brigham and Women's Hospital and then drove through Roxbury.[5] Stuart later told police that a young adult African-American gunman with a raspy voice and wearing a striped tracksuit forced his way into their car at a stoplight, ordered them to drive to nearby Mission Hill, robbed them, and shot Charles in the stomach and Carol in the head. Stuart said he managed to drive away and call the emergency number 9-1-1 on his car phone.[1]

While on the phone with 9-1-1, Charles never mentioned that his wife was pregnant and never spoke to Carol directly during the call. Although he was able to drive away from the crime scene, he claimed he could not see street signs and did not know where he was. Gary McLaughlin, a state police dispatcher, found their car by telling responding police cars to shut off their sirens and then having them turn them back on, one by one, until dispatchers could hear the closest siren through Charles' phone.[6][7]

On the night of the murder, the CBS reality television series Rescue 911 was riding with Boston Emergency Medical Services personnel. The crew took dramatic footage of the couple being extricated from the car and wheeled to the ambulance.[8] Other footage included Stuart straining to speak with ambulance workers, and graphic scenes of his rushed entry to the hospital's emergency room.[9]

Carol died at 2:50 a.m. on October 24 at Brigham & Women's Hospital. Before she died, doctors delivered her baby by caesarean section. Baptized in the intensive care unit, the baby was named Christopher William. Carol's funeral took place on October 28 at St. James Church in her hometown of Medford, Massachusetts.[10] During the funeral, Brian Parsons, a friend of Charles's, read a note that Charles had written in the hospital to his wife: ''Good night sweet wife, my love. God has called you to his side,'' it began. The note asked the public to forgive the murderer.[1][11] [12] Christopher was nine weeks premature and had suffered trauma and oxygen deprivation due to the shooting; he died 17 days later.[13] Both deaths were ruled homicides.[14] A private funeral service was held for Christopher on November 20, 1989. Both Carol and Christopher were buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden, Massachusetts, under Carol's maiden name, DiMaiti.[15]

Investigation

Boston Police detectives Robert Ahearn and Robert Tinlin immediately suspected Stuart because he seemed too calm when recounting the murder. They were overruled by their superiors, who pursued Stuart's description of the assailant. The case was assigned to lead detective Peter O’Malley.[1]

During the manhunt, the city's police indiscriminately used controversial[16] stop and frisk tactics on young black men, which heightened racial tensions.[17][18] Suffolk County District Attorney Newman Flanagan called for reinstating the death penalty, which had been abolished in Massachusetts in 1984, a proposal that received support in the state legislature.[1]

In late October, the Boston Police arrested Alan "Albie" Swanson and his girlfriend on a breaking and entering charge unrelated to the murders.[19] Swanson became a suspect in the Stuart case after officers found newspaper clippings about the murder and a black running suit soaking in his bathroom. Ultimately, the police concluded he had been too intoxicated to have committed the crime.[1]

In mid-November, the police arrested William "Willie" Bennett in Burlington on a motor vehicle violation.[19] Their suspicions of Bennett's involvement in the murders increased after finding a bullet in his mother's home that matched the caliber of the gun used in the murders. Two days later, on November 13, Bennett was charged with the robbery of a video store several weeks earlier.[1] Stuart, who was released from the hospital on December 5, identified Bennett as his attacker in a police lineup on December 28, 1989.[20]

Confession

By early winter, the identity of the person who had actually killed Carol Stuart and her unborn child had become an open secret.[21] An analysis by the Boston Globe found that at least 33 people knew or suspected the truth by the end of 1989.[1] Shortly after the new year, a group of Stuart siblings decided to meet with Charles' lawyer, Jack Dawley, so that Matthew Stuart, Charles' youngest brother, could tell him what he was about to tell the police: the carjacking story was a hoax. On the evening of January 3, 1990, Matthew told the Boston police's homicide unit what he knew.[22][23]

Matthew said that in mid-October, Charles had asked for his help with an insurance fraud scam where Matthew would "steal" Carol's jewelry from the Stuarts' house, and Charles would then file an insurance claim. When that plan went awry, Matthew said Charles asked him to help with a new plan: They would rendezvous in Mission Hill on October 23, and Charles would throw a bag through the window of Matthew's car. Charles promised to pay Matthew $10,000 to get rid of the bag.[24][25] Matthew said he saw something slumped next to Charles in the passenger side seat of Charles's car but could not make out what it was.

After Charles threw Matthew the bag, which turned out to be Carol's Gucci purse, Matthew said he hid the purse temporarily in the Stuart family home before asking his best friend, John "Jack" McMahon, to help him throw a .38 revolver and Carol's purse, containing her engagement ring and wallet, off the Dizzy Bridge in their hometown of Revere, Massachusetts. Most of the items were later recovered by police.[23]

Matthew claimed, and would continue to insist, that he did not know Charles intended to kill his pregnant wife and that he did not know Carol had been murdered until he saw it reported on the television news the following day.[21]

Missed leads

Matthew was not the only Stuart brother who was approached by Charles Stuart in the fall of 1989. Two months before the murder, Charles asked another brother, Michael Stuart, and a high school friend, David MacLean, to help him kill his wife, but both claimed that they did not fully understand what Charles was proposing until after the murders.[1] David MacLean's brother, Michael "Dennis" MacLean, and his friend, John Carlson, approached Sergeant Dan Grabowski on October 28, 1989, with information about Charles' role in Carol's murder. Grabowski did not pursue the lead. They also shared their suspicions with one of John's relatives, a police officer. That officer passed the tip along to Boston Police detective Robert Ahearn, who earlier had doubted Charles Stuart's story, but Ahearn made only a desultory effort to follow up.[1]

Suicide

The same evening that Matthew Stuart met with police, Charles met with his lawyer, Dawley, who dropped him as a client and told him he needed a criminal lawyer. After spending the night in a Braintree motel, Charles abandoned his car on the Tobin Bridge in Chelsea around 7 a.m. on January 4, 1990, and jumped 135 feet into the Mystic River. He left a suicide note in the car that read in part, "Whatever this new accusation is, it has beaten me."[26] His body was recovered from the river later that day.[1]

Prosecution of accomplices

Shortly after the suicide, a grand jury investigating the murder of Carol Stuart was reconvened.[27][7][28] Three witnesses testified that they saw someone resembling Matthew in the back seat of Charles's car on the night of the murders. Doctors involved in Charles’ care after the shooting said it was unlikely that his gunshot wound was self-inflicted; ballistic evidence suggested the same. However, for its 2023 series on the murders, the Boston Globe asked an independent forensic consultant, Lewis Gordon, whether Charles could have shot himself. “We just don’t have enough information to reach a conclusion one way or the other,” Gordon said.[29]

In September 1991, Matthew Stuart was indicted on six charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of justice, unlawful possession of a firearm, compounding a felony,[30] and insurance fraud.[21] Matthew pleaded guilty to obstruction and fraud charges in November 1992. He was sentenced to three to five years in prison.[31]

In a separate case, Jack McMahon was also indicted on multiple charges. In November 1992, he pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact of murder, unlawful possession of a firearm, conspiracy to impede and obstruct justice, and concealing stolen property. McMahon was sentenced to one to three years.[32]

Released on parole in 1997, Matthew was almost immediately arrested for cocaine trafficking in Revere. Those charges were later dropped for lack of evidence.[33] On September 3, 2011, Matthew was found dead of an apparent drug overdose in Heading Home, a homeless shelter in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[34]

Possible motives

Over the course of a decade, Charles Stuart had risen from a short-order cook to a fur salon manager who made more than $100,000 a year. After his death, police and the media speculated that he may have been consumed by ambition and greed. He had spoken to several friends about needing money to open his own restaurant and he took a course on "Buying and Operating a Restaurant Successfully." He complained to his friend David MacLean that his wife refused to get an abortion and that he was worried she would not resume her career after the baby was born.[17] There was also speculation that Charles was having an affair with a 22-year-old colleague, Deborah Allen, who visited him in the hospital and kept a journal for him chronicling "the things he was missing."[1]

In a New York Times article, Harvard psychologist Robert Coles described Stuart as "an extreme example of a psychopath, an antisocial personality with little sense of remorse, a propensity to lie and often an ability to deceive others into believing his fantasies." In most psychopaths, said Coles, "there is cruelty and callousness, but Stuart [outdid] that."[17]

In January 1990, Mike Barnicle of The Boston Globe wrote that Prudential Financial had issued a check for $482,000 as the life insurance payout for Carol's policy, but The New York Times later reported there was no such policy. Charles did receive $82,000 from a life insurance policy through Carol's law firm and had applied to collect $100,000 from a second life insurance policy with The Travelers Companies.[10] After he was released from the hospital, Charles began spending money on a new Nissan Maxima car and women's jewelry, including diamond solitaire earrings and a gold brooch. "It struck me as funny, because why would he be shopping?" said the salesman who sold him the brooch. "He didn't express any grief at all."[17]

Lawsuit

Bennett was never charged in the murders of Carol Stuart and her unborn son Christopher. The case was dropped when Matthew Stuart revealed that his elder brother had killed his wife for the insurance money.[35] In October 1990, a jury found Bennett guilty of an armed robbery of a Brookline video store and three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon.[36] He was sentenced to 12 to 25 years in prison and released in 2002.[37]

After a lengthy lawsuit, Bennett's family was awarded $12,500 in damages, according to the Boston Globe.[1][35] As of 2023, Bennett was reportedly living alone in Boston and suffering from dementia.[1]

City apology

On January 5, 1990, the day after Charles Stuart committed suicide, District Attorney Newman Flanagan said Willie Bennett was no longer a suspect in the murder investigation. That night, Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn stopped by the Bennetts’ home in Mission Hill to apologize on behalf of the city.[19]

A second apology on behalf of the city was announced in December 2023, when Boston Mayor Michelle Wu apologized for the investigation's impact on Boston's African-American community, especially in Mission Hill. Her apology was also directly addressed to Bennett and Swanson. "What was done to you," Wu said, "was unjust, unfair, racist and wrong." Swanson attended Wu's press conference. Bennett, by then suffering from dementia, did not attend, but members of his family did.[38]

Memorial fund

In Carol DiMaiti's memory, her family established the Carol DiMaiti Stuart Foundation to provide scholarships to Mission Hill residents and Malden High School graduates.[39] The foundation helped students who showed leadership ability and had significant financial need, and provided recipients with mentors and summer internships. One of the beneficiaries was the daughter of William Bennett, the man falsely accused of Carol's murder. By early 2006, the foundation had awarded $1.2 million to 220 students.[40] The DiMaitis' attorney, Marvin Geller, explained to the press: "Carol would not want to be remembered as the victim of a sensational murder, but rather as a woman who left behind a legacy of healing and compassion."[39]

CBS broadcast a TV movie Goodnight Sweet Wife: A Murder in Boston in 1990, based on the events prior to the murder, the police and media investigations and its aftermath.

The 1991 song "Wildside" by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch refers to the case.[41][42]

In Chapter 9 of his Spenser novel "Small Vices", published in 1997, Robert B. Parker alludes to the Stuart case. A state policeman sarcastically observes that given the information of Charles Stuart, are the police "supposed to start shaking people down at Brae Burn Country Club?" Spencer, equally sarcastic, says he would have suspected at once that he had "murdered his wife and wounded himself badly to cover it up."

American poet Cornelius Eady ends his 2001 poem "COMPOSITE" with a summary of this case.[43]

The documentary TV series City Confidential covers the Stuart murder in its December 2000 episode titled "Boston: Betrayal in Beantown".[44]

The 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine references the case as contributing to racial fears that drive gun ownership in the United States.[45]

Puerto Rican poet Martín Espada alludes to the case in his 2018 poem "Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge."[46]

The 2023 HBO documentary series Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Reckoning, directed by Jason Hehir and co-produced by The Boston Globe, presents the results of a two-year re-investigation and retrospective of the case.[47]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Walker, Adrian; Allen, Evan; Koh, Elizabeth; Ryan, Andrew; Nelson, Kristin; McCarthy, Brendan (December 1, 2023). "Nightmare in Mission Hill". The Boston Globe. Retrieved December 1, 2023.
  2. ↑ Jones, Alex S. (January 14, 1990). "Bias and Recklessness Are Charged In Boston Reporting of Stuart Slaying". New York Times. Retrieved December 8, 2023.
  3. ↑ Hamilton, Jack (December 4, 2023). "Murder in Boston Delivers a Long-Overdue Reckoning". Slate. The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Retrieved December 5, 2023.
  4. ↑ Naughton, Jim (January 8, 1990). "THE MURDER THAT RAVAGED BOSTON". Washington Post. Retrieved December 8, 2023.
  5. 1 2 Englade, Ken (1990). Murder in Boston. New York: Saint Martin's. pp. 2–5. ISBN 0-312-92396-1.
  6. ↑ "THE CHARLES STUART CASE: CHAPTER 1". Boston Globe. December 1, 2023. Retrieved December 28, 2023.
  7. 1 2 Daly, Christopher B. (January 13, 1990). "GRAND JURY REASSESSING BOSTON MURDER HOAX". Washington Post. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
  8. ↑ Englade, pp. 245–249.
  9. ↑ Rescue 911: Episode 120 "Boston" Part 2 of 3, retrieved July 24, 2023
  10. 1 2 Englade, p. 61.
  11. ↑ Butterfield, Fox (January 15, 1990). "A BOSTON TRAGEDY: THE STUART CASE - A SPECIAL CASE; Motive Remains a Mystery In Deaths That Haunt a City". New York Times. Retrieved December 8, 2023.
  12. ↑ Englade, p. 19.
  13. ↑ Englade, p. 73.
  14. ↑ Hays, Constance L. (November 11, 1989). "Baby's Death Makes Boston Case Double Homicide". The New York Times. Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  15. ↑ Englade, p. 83.
  16. ↑ Shannon, James M. (December 18, 1990). "REPORT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION ON BOSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT PRACTICES". Massachusetts State Library Archives. State of Massachusetts. Retrieved December 8, 2023.
  17. 1 2 3 4 Butterfield, Fox; Hays, Constance L. (January 15, 1990). "Motive Remains a Mystery In Deaths That Haunt a City". The New York Times. Section A, Page 1. Retrieved December 4, 2023.
  18. ↑ Bernard, Diane (January 4, 2020). "'They were treated like animals': The murder and hoax that made Boston's black community a target 30 years ago". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 11, 2020.
  19. 1 2 3 Elizabeth, Koh (December 1, 2023). "Stuart shooting timeline". Boston Globe. Retrieved January 3, 2024.
  20. ↑ Flowers, R. Barri (March 21, 2013). The Dynamics of Murder: Kill or Be Killed. CRC Press. ISBN 9781466588752.
  21. 1 2 3 Butterfield, Fox (September 27, 1991). "Charles Stuart's Brother Indicted In Murder Case". The New York Times. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  22. ↑ "Transcript of Matthew Stuart interview with authorities". The Boston Globe. January 3, 1990. Retrieved December 11, 2023.
  23. 1 2 Bill Hewitt; Dirk Mathison; S. Avery Brown; Gayle Verner; Stephen Sawicki; Sue Carswell (January 22, 2009). "A Cold Killer's Chilling Charade". People.
  24. ↑ "Twisted Dream Charles Stuart's Desire for Restaurant Led Him to Kill". Sun Sentinel. January 11, 1990. Retrieved January 5, 2024.
  25. ↑ https://thecinemaholic.com/matt-stuart/
  26. ↑ "Report: Suicide note contained no confession". Nashua Telegraph. Associated Press. February 1, 1993. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  27. ↑ https://apps.bostonglobe.com/metro/investigations/2023/12/charles-stuart/documents/
  28. ↑ Butterfield, Fox (February 4, 1990). "New Doubt as Jury Takes Up Stuart Case". New York Times. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
  29. ↑ "THE CHARLES STUART CASE: CHAPTER 8". Boston Globe. December 1, 2023. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
  30. ↑ https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-09-27-mn-2919-story.html
  31. ↑ Butterfield, Fox (November 3, 1992). "Guilty Plea in Fraud That Led to Boston Slaying". The New York Times. Retrieved February 3, 2012.
  32. ↑ "Accessory to Stuart murder case pleads guilty". United Press International. November 10, 1992. Retrieved December 7, 2023.
  33. ↑ Guilfoil, John (September 7, 2011). "Shelter to investigate Stuart death". Boston Globe. Archived from the original on January 18, 2013. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  34. ↑ Guilfoil, John M.; Irons, Meghan (September 4, 2011). "Stuart Found Dead in Shelter". The Boston Globe. Retrieved February 3, 2012.
  35. 1 2 "Black Man Falsely Accused in Boston Murder Sues Police". Los Angeles Times. October 18, 1995. Retrieved December 8, 2023.
  36. ↑ "Commonwealth vs. William Bennett". Justia US Law. Mass Supreme Court. Retrieved January 3, 2024.
  37. ↑ Mitchell, Ronald. "The Black press and the Stuart case". The Bay State Banner. Retrieved December 7, 2023.
  38. ↑ Multiple sources:
  39. 1 2 Englade, pp. 231–233.
  40. ↑ Negri, Gloria (January 21, 2006). "Evelyn DiMaiti, reached out to help many after loss; at 74". Newspapers.com for The Boston Globe. p. 27. Retrieved December 10, 2023.
  41. ↑ Washburn, Jim (March 12, 1992). "RAPPIN' WITH MARKY : 'The Fame Can Be a Headache at Times, You Know'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 3, 2022. "Wildside" is a chopped and channeled replay of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wildside," with a recitation recounting drug deaths, gang violence, and the racism-tinged Carol Stuart murder case.
  42. ↑ "Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch - Wildside". YouTube.
  43. ↑ Rivera, Miguel. "The Decentering of White Experience in Cornelius Eady's Brutal Imagination". Medium. medium.com. Retrieved December 6, 2023.
  44. ↑ "City Confidential : S2 E18 : Boston: Betrayal in Beantown". AECrimeCentral.com. A&E Networks. Retrieved December 22, 2021.
  45. ↑ Fuchs, Cynthia (October 31, 2002). "'Bowling for Columbine' and America's Fear Culture". PopMatters. Retrieved December 4, 2023.
  46. ↑ Espada, Martín. "Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge". Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved December 6, 2023.
  47. ↑ Pelt, Veronica; Rosenthal, Erica (November 6, 2023). "HBO Original Three-Part Documentary Series Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage & Reckoning Debuts December 4". Warner Bros. Discovery. Retrieved November 23, 2023.

Further reading

  • Sharkey, Joe (1991). Deadly Greed: The Riveting True Story of the Stuart Murder Case That Rocked Boston and Shocked the Nation. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-13-584178-X.
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