B girl hoax comes exactly 19 years after 10/23/89 killing blamed on black male: Charles Stuart

anyone remember this story? I do. The hoaxter even identified a black man in a lineup. The black community was turned upside down in search of a black perp.
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Charles "Chuck" Stuart (December 18, 1959–January 4, 1990) was a Boston man who murdered his pregnant wife and inflamed racial tension by blaming a non-existent black suspect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stuart_(murderer)

Events leading to murder
On October 23, 1989, Charles Stuart, manager of Kakas Furs, and his pregnant wife Carol (born Carol DiMaiti, March 26, 1959), a lawyer, got into their car after attending childbirth classes at Brigham and Women's Hospital. According to Stuart's subsequent statement, a black gunman with a raspy voice forced his way into their car at a stoplight, ordered them to drive to Mission Hill, robbed them, then opened fire, shooting Charles in the stomach and Carol in the head. Stuart then drove away to escape, calling 911 on his car phone. A CBS film crew for Rescue 911 happened to be riding along with Boston Emergency Medical Services personnel and was able to capture the scene as police and EMTs assisted Stuart.


Fatal childbirth
Carol Stuart died that night, after her son, Christopher, was delivered two months early by caesarean section. The infant suffered seizures due to oxygen deprivation and died 17 days later after his father authorized discontinuing life support. Boston police searched for suspects matching Stuart's description of the assailant. Police suspected one Willie Bennett and, on December 28, Stuart picked him out of a lineup. Though investigating officers did ask doctors whether Stuart's wounds could have been self-inflicted, they were told that this was very unlikely given the severity of the injuries.


Charles Stuart identified
The case against Bennett abruptly collapsed when Stuart's brother, Matthew, identified Charles Stuart as the killer. Matthew admitted that he had driven to meet Stuart that night to help him commit what he'd been told was to be an insurance fraud; that he had seen that Carol had been shot, and that his brother — who had apparently shot himself to support his false story — was clearly in pain. Matthew took the gun and a bag of valuables that his brother handed him and threw them away; they were recovered in Revere off the Marsh Road, in a creek. Police later learned that Stuart had been interested in (but not actually involved with) an intern at the fur salon and was also having financial difficulties. An article in The Boston Globe alleged that a $480,000 check was issued to Charles Stuart in payment for a life insurance policy on his wife, but this was later found to be false, as no such check was ever found. On January 4, 1990, Stuart jumped from the Tobin Bridge to his death. He left no suicide note.

Susan Smith, anyone?

These racist pieces of crap make me want to hurl.

living in MA, it is one that is very hard to forget

but I didn't realize the timing... 20 years.... unreal

NT

The police harassed every black male in Boston for weeks.

Smith initially reported to police, on October 25, 1994, that she had been carjacked by a black man who drove away with her sons still in the car. Smith made tearful pleas on television for the rescue and return of her children. A Usenet chain letter circulated in the following days, asking Internet users to be on the lookout for the vehicle. However, nine days later, following an intensive, heavily publicized investigation and a nationwide search, Smith eventually confessed to letting her 1990 Mazda Protegé roll into nearby John D. Long Lake ( 34°46′26″N 81°30′52″W / 34.77389, -81.51444), drowning her children inside. Many people across the United States and around the world, to whom she and her two "missing" sons had been the subject of an outpouring of sympathy, felt strongly betrayed. Their reaction to the betrayal was further aggravated by the fact that she had attempted to cast blame, falsely, upon a black man, making the case racially sensitive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Smith

wow... was the internet around then? I guess Usenet was but not the 'world wide web' as we called it 10 years ago

and waited for the bus right where it allegedly happened. I wondered why there were so many cop cars around--usually it was a dark and desperate wait at nearly midnight for the bus home.

We knew within 2 days the story was bogus because people in that particular part of town didn't need that kind of trouble and would have coughed a suspect up quickly had the story been a true one.

The only good things to come out of that mess were the immense skepticism of people in the city about another black bogeyman story and that the hospital finally paid somebody to sit in the security guard station near that bus stop before and after shift change.

The wait for the bus wasn't quite as lonely after that.

and that story brought out the worst in some people, including many of my collegues.