Murder in Boston (3 page)

“I’ll start the car,” the man said weakly. “He took the keys, but I have a spare set.” He groaned loudly. “Oh, man.” Then he spoke again: “I’m starting the car.”

“Okay,” McLaughlin said, adding almost offhandedly, “What’s your name, sir?”

“Stuart,” the man moaned. “Chuck Stuart.” The effort of giving his name seemed to be immense. He stuttered painfully, “Ahhh, man.”

“Bear with me, Chuck,” McLaughlin said as encouragingly as he could. “I’m going to get someone to you. Hang in with me, now.”

While McLaughlin and Chuck were talking, Boston police cars were crisscrossing the area, trying to locate a single stopped car among thousands.

In the meantime, Chuck had started to move. “I’m at a place,” he mumbled into the phone. “But I can’t read it.”

“Just try to read it, Chuck,” McLaughlin urged. “Just calm down. Just stay with me. I’m going to get help to you. Help is on the way.”

“I’m coming up to an intersection, but there’s no—”

“What color is your car, buddy?” McLaughlin interrupted.

“Blue,”

“Blue Toyota Cressida?” McLaughlin said, wanting to be sure.

“Yeah,” Chuck confirmed.

“Okay, Chuck, help is on the way. Bear with me. Is your wife breathing?”

There was a slight pause. “She’s still gurgling,” Chuck replied. Another pause. “There’s a busy street up ahead, but I can’t see where I am.”

“Hang in with me, Chuck,” McLaughlin urged again. “Just try to give me any indication of where you might be. Can you see a building?”

“I’m driving with my lights off,” Chuck replied. “I can’t reach forward. It’s too painful.”

“Just tell me what the street is, Chuck.”

“Ahhh, man!” Chuck screamed. “I’m pulling over.” Then, almost in a whisper, “Tremont Street.”

“You’re at Tremont?” McLaughlin asked excitedly.

Chuck apparently did not register the question. “Oh, man,” he groaned. “I’m going to pass out, and my wife has stopped gurgling. She’s stopped breathing. I’m going to try to drive straight to the hospital.”

“Can you drive?” McLaughlin asked insistently.

“I’m trying.”

“Chuck,” McLaughlin said authoritatively, “pull over to the side of the street and talk to any passerby so I have an indication of where you are.”

“I can’t move,” Chuck replied, his voice rising. “Oh, God.”

“Chuck,” McLaughlin said tensely, “can you see anyone on the street?”

“My car died,” Chuck replied. “Oh, man.”

“Chuck,” McLaughlin said urgently. “Chuck. Can you see anything?…Chuck?…Chuck?” Then, faintly through the phone, he heard a familiar sound in the background. “Do you hear a siren?”

“Yes,” Chuck said softly. “I can hear a siren.”

Grabowski and Moran had already focused on the siren. Speaking though Boston PD, they asked the patrol car drivers, one at a time, to turn on their sirens as they wound through the neighborhood’s dark, narrow, twisting streets. Everyone in the bunker could hear the sirens over the three-way connection. By having the drivers activate their sirens in sequence, they could tell which patrol cars were closer to the Stuart vehicle and which ones were moving away. It was, in essence, a deadly serious game of blindman’s buff. Going strictly by sound, Grabowski and Moran directed the police cars ever nearer to the scene.

“Can you hear me, Chuck?” McLaughlin urged. “Chuck, pick up the phone. I can hear you breathing there, Chuck. Come on, buddy.”

“I hear the police,” Chuck said, relief evident in his voice. “Right here,” he said. “There’s Boston police.”

In the background McLaughlin could hear a third voice. “We’ve located him,” it said.

Then he heard Chuck one more time. “Get my wife out,” he heard him say.

It took about fifteen minutes from the time McLaughlin answered the phone for rescuers to find Chuck and Carol. At 8:50
P
.
M
., a patrol car driven by Officer Wayne Rock braked to a halt beside a blue Toyota, which was pulled to the side of the road on St. Alphonsus Street near Horadan Way, a broad alley that plunged darkly into a dismal housing project. Rock flung open his door and dashed to the Toyota. He took one quick look and gasped, his eyes focused on Carol Stuart’s bulging stomach. Turning to his partner, he sobbed, “Oh, Jesus Christ, she’s pregnant.” It was a sight he would not quickly forget. The vision of a hugely pregnant woman with a bullet in her head would haunt him for a long time.

Seconds later an ambulance roared up, and the fight began to save Carol’s and Chuck’s lives. Attendants turned first to Carol, who was slumped in the passenger seat, her chin on her chest and her head tilted inward, toward the center of the car. Gently they extricated her, laid her carefully on a gurney, and rolled her to the ambulance for the short trip back to Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

9:12
P
.
M
.

Surgeons at Brigham and Women’s took one look at Carol as she was wheeled into the emergency room and rushed her straight into surgery. Her wound was about as bad as it could be. The bullet had entered the left side of the back of her head, and there was extensive brain damage. She was barely alive. One of the first decisions doctors made was to remove Carol’s child by cesarean section. The baby was a boy, as Carol had hoped. He weighed only three pounds, and doctors feared his death was imminent. Soon after he was taken from Carol, a priest was called and a brief Catholic baptismal ceremony was held in the intensive care unit. The baby was christened Christopher, which was the name Chuck and Carol had decided upon.

Carol, meanwhile, was kept alive by technology. But it was a futile battle. A few hours later, at three
A
.
M
. on Tuesday, October 24, some six and a half hours after she was shot, Carol died without ever regaining consciousness. Whether there was a decision by family members and physicians to discontinue life support or whether she died in spite of the surgeons’ best efforts is not known. Physicians at Brigham and Women’s never described Carol’s wound in detail, and authorities did not release an autopsy report.

Chuck was wheeled into a separate ambulance, and instead of Brigham and Women’s, he was rushed to Boston City Hospital. En route, a paramedic skillfully ran his hands over Chuck’s chest and abdomen. “Just one wound,” he told a colleague. “An entry in the side, but no exit.” The slug, a chunk of lead a little larger than a pencil eraser, was still in Chuck’s gut. During the ride, Chuck faded in and out of consciousness, but even when he was awake he was mainly silent. When he did talk it was to ask about the seriousness of his wound and to inquire, perceptively enough, if he would have to wear a colostomy bag. The paramedics who made the journey with him would later reflect upon his behavior and would, in retrospect, claim they found it peculiar that he never asked about his wife.

At BCH Chuck also was taken straight into surgery. As in Carol’s case, officials at BCH never gave more than a superficial description of Chuck’s wounds, saying only that he suffered damage to his liver, urological tract, stomach, and intestines. Some major blood vessels were said to be damaged or severed. But even without the details there was no doubt that doctors considered Chuck’s injuries to be extremely serious; Chuck came very close to death himself. A few days after the initial operation he had to undergo surgery again. All told, he spent five weeks in intensive care and he lost fifty pounds. At no time, said the doctor who performed the surgery, did anyone suspect that the wound was self-inflicted.

Chuck’s injuries were psychological as well as physical. When he awoke hours later he had to be told that his wife was dead. Their baby, a boy, had survived, he was told, although he was fighting for his life. Having absorbed that news, Chuck had to accept one more blow. Peeking beneath the sheets, he discovered that his worst fear had come true: firmly attached to his abdomen with stubborn adhesive was a small plastic bag. His intestines were so badly ripped by the bullet that the colon had had to be sealed off temporarily and left to repair on its own, a surgical procedure called a colostomy. Chuck would have to wear bags for two or three months, changing them at least once a day.

Chapter 3

October 24, 1989

According to firearms experts, a .38-caliber slug fired into a human body is not likely, under normal circumstances, to go completely through the person. Although the slug leaves the barrel traveling at about 850 feet per second, human tissue is dense enough to slow it down quickly. This was especially true in the Stuart shooting because authorities later determined that the ammunition in the pistol that fired the shots was ten years old, and by then the gunpowder had started to lose a lot of its power. The fact that neither of the bullets went through the bodies was not something that drew investigators’ attention. They were far more interested in what Chuck had to say than they were in ballistics. And Chuck had plenty to say. As soon as he was conscious enough to talk, he gave detectives an account of what happened that shocked police, politicians, and much of the public.

He and Carol had no sooner left the hospital, he said, than they had to stop for a traffic light at Brigham Circle. While waiting for the light to change, a black man armed with a “silver” pistol forced his way into their Toyota and announced he intended to rob them.

“Turn left here and then drive straight ahead,” he said in a raspy, singsong voice, slipping into the backseat. Then he added: “And don’t look in the rearview mirror.”

Chuck wheeled left onto Tremont Street and drove for several blocks, toward the Roxbury Crossing subway station, a major stop on the Orange Line. Just before they got to the T station, the gunman ordered Chuck to turn right, into a dark, lonely block conspicuous by its abundance of vacant lots. A few hundred yards farther on was the sprawling Bromley-Heath housing project, a crime-ridden neighborhood regarded by most white residents of Boston as a no-man’s-land.

“Pull over,” the gunman growled, gesturing to a deserted corner. When Chuck stopped the car, the gunman demanded first the car keys and then their money and jewelry. They were terrified, Chuck told police, and hastened to comply. As Chuck yanked the keys out of the ignition and handed them to the man, Carol passed over her blue-and-tan Gucci handbag, which contained her wallet stuffed with about $100 in cash; her dinner ring, which was made up of a marquise ruby surrounded by small diamonds; and her engagement ring, a raised 1.5-carat solitaire on a yellow gold band. When the gunman turned to Chuck, he handed over his gold Seiko LaSalle quartz watch with its gold band.

At that point, Chuck said, things suddenly went to hell. When the gunman demanded Chuck’s wallet as well and Chuck said he didn’t carry one, the man looked incredulous. He glanced down at the car phone, and a look of rage swept over his face. Apparently, investigators theorized, the man figured Chuck didn’t want to hand him his wallet because it contained a policeman’s badge, a suspicion that was substantiated in part by the presence of the car phone. “You’re five-oh!” he screamed, using the street slang term for police. With that, he opened fire.

Within the next few seconds, Chuck said, the gunman shot Carol in the head and fired at Chuck’s head but missed because Chuck ducked at the last moment. Angry, the man leaned over the seat and pumped a bullet into Chuck’s side, then tried to shoot him again, but the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Without another word, the man flung open the back door, leaped out of the car, and ran off into the darkness, taking his booty with him.

In great pain, Chuck said, he dug an extra set of car keys out of his pocket since Carol’s had been in the ignition, started the car, and drove away seeking help. It was then, he said, that he called the state police and got dispatcher Gary McLaughlin.

Despite the gunman’s admonition not to look at him, Chuck was able to give police a remarkably detailed description of the assailant. He was a brown-skinned, brown-eyed man between twenty-eight and thirty-four years old, five feet ten inches tall, and thin, weighing only 150 to 160 pounds, Chuck said. He also had high cheekbones, a bony jaw that was covered with a patchy beard, a “medium Nubian” nose, and he wore his hair in a short afro. His most distinguishing physical characteristic, Chuck said, was his voice. As for clothing, the man was wearing a dark shirt covered by a black sweatsuit. The sweatsuit jacket had two or three red stripes on the sleeve. He also had on a black baseball-style hat and black driving gloves with the knuckles cut out. He was right-handed, Chuck added, and he seemed especially nervous.

Considering the short time the man was in the car and the fact that he was not directly in Chuck’s line of sight, the description was incredibly detailed. But at the time no one thought it strange, least of all, apparently, the police.

Since the incident occurred rather late in the evening, the story broke too late to make much of a splash in the next morning’s papers. Despite the late break, however, the
Boston Globe
carried a brief piece on its front page on October 24. Headlined
COUPLE SHOT AFTER LEAVING HOSPITAL
;
BABY DELIVERED
, the two-column piece by
Globe
staffers Peter S. Canellos and Irene Serge gave the bare bones of what had happened even though some of the initial facts were garbled. It gave Carol’s age, for example, as thirty-three instead of thirty, and it said she was between five and seven months pregnant. But most of the other details were right on target. What was remarkable about the story, which after a few paragraphs below the fold on page one was continued well to the back of the paper, on page 79, was how it zeroed in immediately on the dramatic exchange over the car phone and the political implications. Reporters Canellos and Serge managed to get several quotes from dispatcher McLaughlin, who told them how unusual it was to receive such a call and how fortuitous it was that Chuck and Carol had a cellular phone in their car. “It was a unique call,” the
Globe
quoted McLaughlin as saying. “You don’t get many of these in your career.”