Murder in Boston (4 page)

Newspaper editors do not get many local stories with such potential for drama during their careers, either, and the Boston newspapers moved from the beginning to make the best of the situation. Remarkably, so did public officials. According to the
Globe
, Mayor Raymond Flynn and his hand-picked top cop, Police Commissioner Francis “Mickey” Roache, went immediately to both hospitals to meet with members of Carol’s and Chuck’s families. Flynn, a dynamic politician with undisguised aspirations to be governor, was notified at home when the incident occurred, and when he showed up to commiserate with the families, he was still clad in a sweatsuit. Sweatsuits seemed to be
the
item for leisure wear in Boston, favored by representatives of all classes.

At a hastily called news conference at a police substation in Roxbury, Flynn promised that he and Roache, a veteran cop with a reputation for competency despite the fact that he had his present job because he was a boyhood friend of the mayor’s, would do all they could to apprehend the Stuarts’ attacker. “I demand that the Boston Police Department continue to be extremely aggressive in cracking down on people who are using guns and killing innocent people,” Flynn said in a prepared statement. “It [the crime situation] is intolerable. We will use every lawful tool to support our police officers in cracking down on gun-wielding criminals.”

At this point it is unknown how much of a description of the attacker Chuck had provided to police and how much Flynn knew about what Chuck had said. Given the fact that Chuck was wheeled directly into surgery and was almost certainly still under anesthesia when Flynn met with reporters, neither the officials nor the police had much more to go on than what Chuck had told McLaughlin or perhaps had mumbled to the paramedics en route to BCH. But Flynn did not make his remarks regarding the attack on Chuck and Carol because it was an isolated incident. Although no one would point out until much later that crime in Mission Hill was actually
down
18 percent in 1989, the public—and probably official—perception was that the neighborhood was a hotbed of criminal activity. In truth this perception was not totally undeserved, not only for Mission Hill, but for Boston as a whole. Carol’s murder was number seventy-eight in the city so far that year. At another spot in Mission Hill, not far from where Chuck said he and his wife were shot, a young mother of five had been killed during the summer by a gunshot to the back of her head. It was another apparently random crime, and despite several months of investigation, no one had yet been charged with the murder.

But Mission Hill was not the only neighborhood in Boston with a crime problem. For months police had been fighting drugs and related crimes in other areas. Figuring that drastic circumstances required drastic countermeasures, Boston police instituted a “stop and search” program under which suspicious persons—mainly black youths—could be halted as they transited the city and ordered to prove they were not carrying drugs or firearms. The policy, which had better than lukewarm support among a number of black leaders, would soon be extended to Mission Hill. In the meantime, though, the media was only warming up.

October 25, 1989

The saga of Chuck and Carol built steam rapidly. Because of the time break, the incident received comparatively little press on the first day after it occurred. But by the second day news reports were flying in all directions. Besides being one hell of a story, there were two things that catapulted it from a local-interest item to one that would grip readers and viewers around the world. First, there was the dramatic conversation between Chuck and McLaughlin. By the second day state police had decided to release a copy of the tape of the phone call. As a result, excerpts were blared in broadcast news reports and transcripts were printed in most major newspapers. Second, equally dramatic film had been taken when police and paramedics arrived at the scene. By chance, a camera crew from the television program
Rescue 911
had been riding with a Boston paramedic team on the night of October 23. That team was the one that responded to Chuck’s plea for help. When the paramedics arrived to try to save Chuck’s and Carol’s lives, their efforts were performed under the glare of TV lights. Snippets of the film were aired on the CBS national news on the night of October 24, and from there the story took on a life of its own.

By October 25 the Boston newspapers had jumped on the story with alacrity. It was the lead story in both the
Globe
and the competing newspaper, the
Boston Herald
, a mildly sensationalist tabloid owned by Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch, who also owns
San Antonio Express-News
and used to own
The New York Post
. In the Wednesday morning
Globe
, the Stuart incident held the top page one spot, and the spin the editors gave it would set the tone of media coverage around the world for the next several months.

READING WOMAN DIES AFTER SHOOTING IN CAR
, ran the main headline, which filled the top quarter of the page. Under that there was a 1987 photo of a happy Chuck and Carol, a current photograph of police officers searching an overgrown lot for the gun used in the shooting, and two stories. One of the stories, a featurish semitearjerker by staff writer Sally Jacobs, who later would write more narrowly focused profiles, carried the soap-operaish subhead “The Shattering of a Shining Life.” The other, a more straightforward factual piece, was headlined simply:
HUSBAND
,
BABY TERMED CRITICAL
. The message in both stories was not subtle: media coverage would take the tack that Chuck and Carol were a perfect suburban couple who stumbled into an urban jungle and fell victim to a drug-crazed or drug-hungry black man. Both stories also reflected the barely subdued hysteria that would grip the city in the wake of the incident.

The news piece in one paragraph quoted Police Superintendent Joseph V. Saia, Jr., as saying that there were no leads, but the next paragraph told about how two dozen police officers “raced” to Roxbury to check out a report of two men being seen with a handgun. In that neighborhood, if one were to believe the media, being seen walking the street with a pistol was only one degree more serious than strolling with a bag of groceries.

For the first time, the stories also gave details of Chuck’s version of the shootings, and a staff graphic artist whipped out a map showing the pertinent locations on Chuck’s and Carol’s travels as hostages. They also followed the rough outline established in the previous day’s story: that the shooting of Chuck and Carol was not only a crime story, but a political one as well. A third angle, which would not be fully developed until much later, would be the racial implications inherent in the shooting and the investigation.

By the fourth paragraph of the main story, the
Globe
had notified its readers that Chuck and Carol’s attack superseded the basics and jumped to the larger issue of crime throughout the city. The fifth paragraph quoted Mayor Flynn, who by then had called for the assignment of “all available detectives” to the case. Presumably, although it was not articulated by reporters Peter J. Howe and Jerry Thomas whose bylines were on the piece, Flynn’s call would be made to his old friend Mickey Roache, who could hardly refuse since he served at Flynn’s pleasure.

The next paragraph quoted City Councilor Bruce C. Bolling, a black man who later sided with police opponents, as saying that the Stuart family was “a symbol” of inner-city violence. And the next paragraph, still before the story delved into the details of the incident, quoted Republican party leaders who planned to use the Stuart shooting as a vehicle to push for reinstatement of the death penalty in the state.

The GOP demand was too much even for Flynn, who was quoted in a small boxed story at the bottom of page sixteen as angrily accusing the Republicans of trying to use the incident for “political gain.” Needless to say, Flynn is a Democrat.

Both stories were continued—“jumped,” in newspaper lingo—in the middle of the paper, where they took up an entire page.

Although it was buried deep in the main story, the issues, perhaps inseparable, of race and class made a tentative early appearance. City Councilor David Scondras, a white man whose district includes Mission Hill, raised the issue almost immediately. Scondras, who also is gay and an outspoken advocate of homosexual rights, cautioned reporters to keep an eye on the race/class angle in their coverage. “You can’t help but wonder,” he was quoted in the
Globe
as saying, “if what you’re watching is a class situation, that it’s all right for the poor to put up with an enormous amount of shootings and killings, but, presumably, if you’re white, upper-income, and suburban, maybe that changes things.”

The possibility that the Stuart case was getting more police attention than other crimes was hinted at even more strongly in a Flynn news conference. A reporter asked Flynn if he saw any irony in the fact that virtually the whole police department was being mobilized to track a black man who had assaulted a white couple while similar efforts had not been made to find assailants of blacks. Nonplussed, Flynn replied: “There will be the same aggressive and fair and consistent enforcement of all our laws, regardless of where it takes place…Whatever area or color or ethnicity, it will be handled in the same aggressive and fair way by the Boston Police Department.” The words would later come back to haunt the mayor.

A former college basketball star and, in middle age, an enthusiastic marathon runner, Flynn enjoyed a good reputation, for a white politician, among the city’s blacks. Although he had vigorously opposed a busing program that accompanied a school desegregation plan a dozen years previously, Flynn had, as mayor, won over many blacks by his promises to make his administration a more multiracial one than was customary among Boston’s elected leaders. He had dramatically increased the number of minorities both in his office and other City Hall departments; he had set aside a disproportionate amount of funds to create lower-priced housing in Roxbury; and he’d pushed Boston banks to make more home mortgage loans available to minorities. In his 1987 bid for reelection, he won in a walk, capturing twenty of twenty-two city wards. The only two he lost were in South Boston, which was his home turf. He lost those because he had been forced by federal pressure to desegregate public housing there. Some of his biggest margins that year were won in black precincts.

But by 1989 he had some problems. Minority spokesmen were critical of him because they did not like his choice of executive director of the Fair Housing Commission, and his requested referendum for an appointed school board was rejected in black neighborhoods. Some also were critical of his obvious pro-law enforcement stance.

So far under his administration, the police department budget had grown by 64 percent, which was well ahead of most other departments. He had also increased the number of police officers by 14 percent, from 1,753 officers to more than 2,000. And he put himself on the front lines. He went on patrol with police in Roxbury; he was prone to show up at hospitals to visit crime victims (the Stuart shooting was not the first time he had dashed out to console a casualty); and, in one memorable confrontation, he stood up to an armed man and his pit bulls.

It was ironic that Flynn, an Irishman, was being called upon to defend himself on charges of discrimination, however tentative they might so far be; not so many years ago the Irish, not the blacks, had been the targets of bigots. But gradually the Irish had moved into positions of power, and now they had a virtual lock on the top political jobs. Witness the Kennedys, former House Speaker Tip O’Neill, and District Attorney Newman Flanagan, to mention but a few. But Flynn is not a run-of-the-mill Irish politician. Although a Democrat, he has never been considered a member of the old party. In Massachusetts there are three main factions among Democrats: the liberal wing, exemplified by Governor Michael Dukakis (as a Greek, another minority member); the old-line group, of which District Attorney Flanagan is an example; and the maverick faction, which Flynn represents.

Politics is pervasive in Massachusetts, perhaps more than in many other states, so the fact that the story was developing along both criminal and political lines was not surprising. In fact, it would have been shocking if it progressed in any other fashion.

The other, not-so-subtle slant given to the story by the
Globe
was the way Carol and Chuck, and their relationship, were described in almost embarrassing superlatives. Eventually Sally Jacobs and the
Globe
would all but canonize Carol. By then, though, it was determined that Chuck had feet of clay, and a lengthy profile on him was far from favorable. At the beginning, however, there was no hint that they were anything but an ideal couple.

“For Carol and Chuck Stuart,” said the
Globe
in its page one story, “death came at a time rich with potential.” It told in melodramatic terms how the infant Christopher had been baptized, commenting that “the ceremony marked the brutal end not just of the couple’s dream of family, but of a relationship that by all accounts was so loving it warmed even those at its edge.”

Both Carol and Chuck were described in the most glowing terms, substantiated by quotes from coworkers and friends. Kimberley Jaworski, who, along with her husband, worked at Kakas & Sons with Chuck and was friends to both (Chuck, indeed, had been best man at the Jaworskis’ wedding and Carol a bridesmaid), was reported as saying that “everyone loved them.” Carol was such a devoted daughter, Jaworski added, that she called her mother every night, even when she was on her honeymoon.