Boston Mayor Wu Apologizing To 2 Black Men Wrongly Linked To 1989 Stuart Murder

Topline Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said Tuesday afternoon she plans to apologize to two Black men who were wrongly framed for the 1989 killing of Carol Stuart, a murder that gripped Boston and divided the city’s police department from its Black community. Charles Stuart and his wife, Carol, who he admitted to shooting in 1989. Key Facts In an advisory issued Tuesday night announcing the formal apology, Wu called the shooting a “dark time in the City’s history” that “exacerbated distrust between Boston’s Black community and the Boston Police Department.

” The apology follows a – investigation into the murder of both Stuart and her son, who she was pregnant with when she was shot (the son was delivered after the shooting but died three weeks later, while Carol Stuart died just hours after delivering her late son). The shooting inflamed racial tensions in the city—which had been reeling from a public school only 15 years earlier, when white families protested a decision to desegregate public schools—after Charles Stuart ambiguously blamed his wife’s death on a Black man he claimed shot her. The apology will address two Black men—Alan Swanson and Willie Bennett—who were named as suspects in the shooting, though they were not formally charged in the murder.

Wu said in a statement that Charles Stuart “orchestrated” his wife’s murder, while his accusation it was carried out by a Black man “resulted in the racist harassment of Black men, in particular those living in the Mission Hill neighborhood. ” Key Background Carol Stuart was fatally shot on the night of Oct. 23, 1989, while sitting in the passenger seat of the couple’s Toyota Cressida in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood, an area of the city marked by highrise medical facilities, multiple universities and increasingly multi-story homes.

Her husband called 911 at 8:43 p. m. that night, saying he and his wife were carjacked by a Black assailant, who fired shots at Carol and Charles, with Carol shot in the head.

Carol was transported to a nearby hospital, where she gave birth to a baby son via cesarean section. She died hours later, and her son died of respiratory issues weeks later. The murder created an uproar in the city, with then-Mayor Ray Flynn delivering an address calling for “every available detective” to work on the case.

In the wake of the shooting, a 15-year-old Joey Bennett allegedly said his uncle, Bennett, was responsible for the shooting, though he later denied accusing his uncle, the Globe . In November 1989, Boston police arrested Bennett and Swanson, naming them suspects in the murder. Swanson was released three weeks later.

In January 1990, Charles Stuart’s brother told police that Charles was involved in the murder. Hours later, Charles Stuart killed himself, jumping off Boston’s Tobin Bridge. Crucial Quote “Acknowledging this painful moment and apologizing for the City’s wrongdoing is an effort to aid in the healing of those still living with this trauma and our city as a whole,” Wu wrote in her advisory Tuesday night.

Further Reading (Forbes).