Boston mayor issues apology to Black men wrongfully arrested for a 1989 murder

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu issued an apology Wednesday to the families of Alan Swanson and Willie Bennett, two Black men wrongfully arrested in connection with the 1989 murder of Carol Stuart.

“I am so sorry for what you endured,” Wu said at a news conference. “As a result, our Black residents suffered, as a result Alan Swanson suffered, Willie Bennett suffered, and their families continue to suffer. What was done to you was unfair, unjust, racist and wrong.”

In 1989, Boston police officers received a 911 call from Charles “Chuck” Stuart, informing police that he and his wife, Carol, who was pregnant at the time, had been shot during an attempted carjacking. Officers raced through the city to locate the couple and found them wounded in their car – Carol had been shot in the head; her husband had also been shot, according to the Boston Globe.

Carol Stuart was taken to a hospital where her baby was delivered through cesarean section. Stuart later died from her injuries. The child survived for 17 days, according to multiple news reports from the time.

As he recovered, Chuck Stuart told police they were attacked by a Black man. The identification sparked an aggressive police “stop and frisk” campaign throughout Boston’s Black neighborhoods, ratcheting up animus in a city already rife with racial tension.

Swanson and Bennett were ultimately arrested for Stuart’s murder.

But a recent investigation by the Boston Globe revealed that at the time, many officers already knew Stuart’s initial description of his attacker was a lie.

“The most striking thing to me was that we discovered 33 people had known Charles Stuart committed the murder at the time he committed suicide. Nobody had an inkling the number of people who knew was anything like that,” Adrian Walker, an associate editor and columnist at the Boston Globe, told CNN.

Stuart’s brother later confessed to police that Chuck had planned the murder in an insurance fraud scheme and blamed the attack on a Black man.

Walker worked with a team of journalists to re-examine the Stuart murder in an investigative series and podcast produced in association with HBO called “Murder in Boston: The untold story of the Charles and Carol Stuart shooting.”

HBO also released a new docu-series based on the Globe’s reporting that examines the history of racism in the city and how the search for Stuart’s killer led to racial profiling called, “Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage & Reckoning.”

Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, also owns HBO.

Walker told CNN the response to the series has been “really heartening.”

“I hope we will have the conversation about police, policing and race that we didn’t really have in 1990,” he said. “Also a discussion about racial bias and what this sort of event says about us as a city.”

On Tuesday, Wu said officials at all levels chose to believe a lie which led to a “systemic campaign targeting Black men.”

Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox also apologized for “the poor investigation, overzealous behavior and more likely, unconstitutional behavior.”

Wu presented an official letter of apology to the families of the Swanson and Bennett that attended the press conference.

Joey Bennett accepted Wu’s apology on behalf of his uncle.

“This moment is not just a personal triumph to our family,” he said, adding that in accepting the apology, “the world can be informed of what transpired 34 years ago and begin the process of healing our trauma.”

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