00:00:06
Hey weirdos, I'm Alina. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. Hey, what's up? Hello. I think there is lawnmowers happening
00:00:28
outside and there's not we can do. I think you should run out there, run in front of them and say, "Hey,
00:00:34
Yeah. stop it." I can pull a The Happening and just lay in front of it. I That's not what I said at all. I told
00:00:41
you to tell them to stop. You're like choking the happening. No, don't happening.
00:00:46
Please don't happening. I'm not doing this show alone, so No, I will not happening.
00:00:52
Hey, hey, hey, she's not happening. It's true. She's not. She's tired. She's not happening.
00:00:58
No, this is our last recording before we get to take a little breaky. Yeah. You won't know that we're taking
00:01:03
know we're taking a breaky. Because we breaky it ourselves. To to get all these recordings in.
00:01:10
Yeah. You got to You got to bulk record to get a breaky. Yep. So In these streets.
00:01:15
In these streets. So, we don't know when this comes out, but there's really nothing pertinent that will affect that.
00:01:20
Yeah, I think it comes out like mid-May, so can pre-order the paperback version of
00:01:24
The Butcher Game. There you go. Looking for that paperback out there? I see you. I see you. You've been
00:01:30
waiting for that paperback. The paperback. is coming up. The paperback. The paperback. She's bringing paperback.
00:01:36
Oh, yeah. I like how you had to go "Yeah." It's my favorite part of the song. Um
00:01:44
It's beach season almost and vacation season and you need a paperback Yeah, that's in your beach bag.
00:01:50
It's a beach read. For sure. What kind of beach read? Yeah. I like it. So, go get it. You can get it at the
00:01:55
butchergame.com. It'll lead you to the places you can get it. Let's go. The Barnes & Nobles,
00:02:02
the all the places. Freakin freakin party. Freakin party with your paperback. Freakin party kid. Well, actually that
00:02:08
kind of transitions into what we're going to be talking about today. We got a Boston hometown case.
00:02:13
Oh my god, it's Boston. Yes, this is not one to be proud of, I'm sure. I was actually just going to say this is
00:02:19
a very devastating case. It's awful, but it's probably a case that I think if you're from Boston or
00:02:25
like anywhere around there, you're probably familiar with. Okay. Or if you're a fan of Law & Order, I
00:02:31
think they I remember seeing an episode that was very very similar to this. Oh, okay. So, today we're going to be
00:02:37
talking about the murder of Carol Stuart who seemed like a really [ __ ] cool person.
00:02:42
Oh, no. And it bumps me out. So, let's start at the beginning now. Carol Ann DiMaiti was
00:02:46
born March 26, 1959 in Medford. Medford kid. Medford Massachusetts. She was the second of two children born to Giusto
00:02:55
and Evelyn DiMaiti. Hmm. She grew up in a multi-family home, which is, you know, all homes around
00:03:01
here pretty much. Yeah. Her aunt Rosemary actually lived on the second floor of the house and there was
00:03:06
a lot of extended family like in their neighborhood, around their neighborhood. So, she and her brother always had a
00:03:12
really warm, loving support network all around. that. Yeah. So, at the time Medford was a
00:03:17
heavily Italian working class suburb of Boston, which meant that religion and the church were pretty central to the
00:03:23
lives of a lot of residents at the time. Carol went to Saint James school, which
00:03:27
was a Catholic school at that time run by nuns. She was a really really good student. She was well liked by her her
00:03:34
teachers, her classmates, friends of course. Pretty much everybody agreed that she could be whatever she wanted to
00:03:40
be when she was done with school. Damn. She was at the very top of her class and
00:03:45
all the classes that she was taking were AP or honors. Damn. insane. Yeah. don't know how people do
00:03:51
that. Not easy. No. And on top of all that, she also would uh volunteer and she worked in the
00:03:57
administrative office before school every morning. Wow. So, she woke up early and went to school
00:04:02
before she even had to. Oh, so she's really doing the damn thing. The school's headmaster, Sal Tedaro,
00:04:07
said, "She'd come into the office in the morning and it was like a ray of light coming in."
00:04:11
Aw. I know. But according to author Joe Sharkey, who wrote the book Deadly Greed about this
00:04:17
case, what teenage Carol wanted most of all was to be, quote, "married to a good
00:04:21
husband living in the suburbs with a couple terrific kids happily ever after." Aw.
00:04:26
Which is really cute and so relatable. Yeah. This goal, I'm sure for a lot of reasons, is what people are remembered
00:04:32
most about Carol. Her childhood friend, Robert, said, "Overall, her purpose in life was to
00:04:37
raise a good family. She got along with jocks, burnouts, wimps, geeks, headmasters, everyone. She was a very
00:04:42
pleasant person, painless to speak to, able to bridge the gap and and circle in all different groups."
00:04:48
Aw. She sounds really cool. Sounds like an all-around awesome person ever around.
00:04:52
Yeah, just like didn't give a [ __ ] who you were, just wanted to shoot like wanted to chat with you.
00:04:56
Like, let's go. And would would help you out. Now, when Carol was 15, her father found
00:05:00
her a part-time job at Driftwood, a restau- a restaurant on the main street of Revere Beach.
00:05:05
Revere, Ken. Revere's just a little ways away from Medford. Giusto Gemmati also worked at the
00:05:11
restaurant as a part-time bartender at night. So, it was a pretty good opportunity for his daughter to get some
00:05:16
work experience while he could also keep an eye on her. Ah, I see. It was pretty perfect.
00:05:21
Yeah, it really is. And a few years later, when Carol turned 18 and now she could serve drinks, she
00:05:25
moved up to work as a server. She was really great cuz again, she's a people person. People loved her.
00:05:31
And her coworkers loved her as well. Coworker Christine Baratta said, "When I met Carol, I met a big sister. She
00:05:36
taught me how to drive, she taught me how to wear makeup, taught me about clothes and hair. In a way, she really
00:05:41
helped me grow up." Aw. I know. That's really sweet. By the time she graduated high school in
00:05:46
1978, Carol had saved nearly $10,000 Damn. job. Holy [ __ ] And she planned to put that towards
00:05:54
school. She'd already been accepted to Boston University. And by the way, that would be a little more than $49,000.
00:06:01
going to say, and by today's standards, that's even more. $49,000 by today's standards.
00:06:06
Wow. Yeah. That's incredible. It's insane. At first, Evelyn and Justo questioned if college was really the
00:06:13
best choice for their daughter. But Carol was able to be, you know, successful and kind of
00:06:18
like, "Listen. I can make it happen." Yeah, she very much wanted to. She argued that BU was a Jesuit school, so
00:06:25
she could still be involved in the religious activities that they wanted her to, you know, be involved in.
00:06:29
Yeah. And to help ease their minds even more, she agreed that she would live at home
00:06:33
for the first 3 years and commute into the city for classes, even though she really wanted to live on campus and kind
00:06:40
of experience that freedom. Yeah. She just knew it was unlikely that she was going to win that battle.
00:06:44
Makes sense. So, when she first started BU, Carol had hoped to become a teacher, since she
00:06:49
always loved being around children. But by sophomore year, her sophomore year in
00:06:53
college, there were widespread layoffs and pretty poor funding for education in this area. So, that made the prospect of
00:07:00
becoming a teacher a bit less attractive. It wasn't going to, you know, really make her a lot of money or
00:07:05
anything like that. That makes sense. So, Carol changed her mind and she decided
00:07:12
to pursue a law degree instead. teaching. Yeah. But her objective was similar. Whatever
00:07:17
her career was going to be, she wanted it to help people. Aw. Make a difference in their lives.
00:07:21
that. Yeah. So, in 1978, she started seeing her first serious boyfriend, Chuck Stewart, one of the cooks from
00:07:29
Driftwood. Okay. A um a restaurant romance. We we love to see it. Sometimes. When they met in the summer of 1978, she
00:07:38
was still seeing her high school boyfriend, uh but she and she, you know, she wasn't really on the lookout for
00:07:43
somebody new, but as soon as she met Chuck, she was immediately interested. He was also a local. He was born and
00:07:51
raised in Revere, just a few miles outside of Boston. And, uh, also like Carol, he came from a pretty decent
00:07:57
Catholic home surrounded by adoring, doting family members, you know. You know, all sweet Bostonians, their
00:08:04
families run deep. It's true. I've heard it we really do. According to those who knew him best, Chuck was,
00:08:10
quote, ruggedly handsome, athletic, but not the kind of student that Carol became.
00:08:15
Oof. Yeah. When they started dating, Chuck told Carol that he was attending Brown
00:08:19
University on a football scholarship, but that he had to drop out after being sidelined with an injury.
00:08:25
Hmm. Um, like a lot of claims that Chuck would make over the years, this was a lie.
00:08:30
Oh. Yeah, one of many that he told in order to make himself seem more impressive
00:08:34
than he really was. Oh, no. In reality, he had never been a good student, uh, definitely not a good
00:08:40
enough student to go to Brown University. And even if he had been accepted to Brown, they didn't offer
00:08:46
football scholarships. Oh, no, Chuck. Yeah, so he was there was lots of layers that didn't work out with that lie.
00:08:53
You got caught. Yeah. The truth was he attended the local VoTech school and had gone to
00:08:59
Salem State University for one semester before dropping out within that first semester.
00:09:04
And it's like man, I don't I don't know a lot about this case right now, but I'm like that's it's
00:09:08
fine that's fine. Yeah. Just be honest, man. It's okay. Like the people who like you are going to like
00:09:13
you for who you are. And college is college. Not everybody gets accepted to college or
00:09:18
People shouldn't be like liking you based on where you went to school. And Salem State is also a great school
00:09:23
in a [ __ ] fantastic location, if we do say so ourselves. But he he wanted to be more than what he
00:09:31
saw that as. That makes sense. So, Carol and Chuck, like I said, they shared a lot of things in common, but
00:09:36
there were also some stark differences in the ways that they'd grown up. Both were from solidly middle-class
00:09:41
families, but Chuck's family had struggled financially at times, and he was always a little ashamed of that.
00:09:48
Mhm. By the time he reached high school, they were living in a modest two-story home
00:09:52
two blocks from the school that he and his brothers went to, but they had previously lived in public housing, and
00:09:57
that was something Chuck was really embarrassed about. Okay. And with four boys living in the family,
00:10:02
the house was kind of always in a state of disarray cuz boys are pretty messy typically. One of Chuck's friends said
00:10:08
that the way Chuck described it was too many kids, too much yelling and fighting, the place was always a
00:10:12
[ __ ] Oh. So, he just he didn't like the way he grew up. Yeah. Which, you know, that's
00:10:19
It is what it is. their own. Yeah. I'm sure his parents did their best. Yeah. According to some who knew him, Chuck's
00:10:24
attitude towards his upbringing and shame surrounding his family really made a lot of sense, and it just pointed to
00:10:30
his arrogant and usually snobby personality. Ah. One former friend said, "He always let
00:10:35
you know that he thought he was better than you." Oof. Which, like, that's not a great friend
00:10:39
to have. Because he was the oldest and the firstborn, he was, quote, "lavished with
00:10:43
attention" before it was gradually withdrawn as the Stewart house became crowded with children.
00:10:49
Oh, that and that's tough when you're when you're a kid. That's tough. As an adult, you get the [ __ ] over it.
00:10:54
That's the thing. But as a kid, it's tough when you have all the attention, I'm sure. I was the
00:10:59
youngest, so I don't relate to this at all. Like, I was the one sucking up all the attention, so sorry, siblings.
00:11:06
I mean, but then I came around when you were 10. That's true. So. Uh but it it that can I'm sure that's
00:11:11
tough when you get all the attention as a kid and then it's kind of has to be divvied up. Yeah, I'm sure. You know?
00:11:18
I wouldn't know. You're like me. I don't know. I'm like an only child, but also not, so
00:11:24
I'm like a I'm in a weird place in my family. Yeah, you do have a strange a strange
00:11:29
place. my my only child, but then with you guys, you were all like siblings to me
00:11:33
cuz I like grew up in that household. like the youngest of that. I feel like the youngest of that, the
00:11:37
only of my mom, and then the oldest on my dad's side. So I kind of have like all the boxes ticked.
00:11:42
You really do. It's weird. So yeah, I don't know a lot about that. But as far as someone concerned, the
00:11:47
lack of his parents' constant adoration and attention left Chuck with a sense of
00:11:51
frustration and a kind of like a a mild bitterness that he would carry with him the rest of his life.
00:11:58
Yeah, you got to drop that. Which is crazy. You got to you got to drop that sometimes.
00:12:02
Yeah. And there was also the matter of where he grew up. Unlike Medford, which is easily accessible from Boston and,
00:12:07
you know, points north, Revere was a little bit isolated for a lot of its history.
00:12:12
Mhm. In the summer, the railroad brought tons and tons of tourists to the beach, to
00:12:15
the boardwalk area, but otherwise the city was difficult to get to and mostly operated independently from the cities
00:12:23
from surrounding cities and towns. Okay. Yeah. By the 1970s, the beach also wasn't
00:12:28
really a popular place for tourists to go, and the area was just kind of in a general decline that got worse
00:12:34
throughout the years. For somebody like Chuck who always wanted to be seen as this very successful guy, his hometown
00:12:40
became a source of shame, which is stupid. Yeah, it's like, come on. Plenty of people come from plenty of
00:12:45
places that aren't fantastic. And it's like, you didn't you didn't build the city. And also like, it's
00:12:50
okay. Like no one's blaming you for it. Revere's fine. Yeah, it's fine. But as soon as he was able to, he got
00:12:54
himself out of Revere cuz he thought it was awful. Only to return for short visits with friends and family.
00:13:01
Now, when they got together, to a lot of people around them, Chuck and Carol's relationship seemed a matter of
00:13:05
convenience more than anything else. Mhm. Carol's high school boyfriend had gone
00:13:09
off to college and long distance wasn't working out for them. But Chuck, on the other hand, was right there at the
00:13:15
restaurant. He seemed to he seemed very determined to catch Carol's eye and do whatever he could to get her to go out
00:13:21
with him. Huh. Christine Baratta said, "He wanted her. That was it. He went after her."
00:13:26
Woah. Yeah, which sometimes that can be a really cute start to a love story. Yeah.
00:13:33
And other times it's not here. a red flag. Yeah. Carol's decision to date Chuck was
00:13:38
actually a major point of contention between her and her dad. Really? Yeah, her dad obviously believed that
00:13:44
his daughter deserved the best of everything. Of course. And as far as he could tell, Chuck
00:13:49
Stewart wasn't really the best. I mean, that that's tough. That is tough. That's tough as as a parent, tough as
00:13:56
the kid. Yeah, it's tough for everybody. It's It's definitely tough for Chuck. That's
00:13:59
tough. see both sides of that. Yeah. But regardless of how her father and others felt about Chuck, Carol was
00:14:04
determined to make her own decisions. And she decided she wanted to give this relationship with Chuck a chance.
00:14:10
Which is her right. Chuck a chance. Chuck a chance. You know, give Chuck a chance.
00:14:13
To her friends and her coworkers, especially the female ones, Carol's decision made sense.
00:14:18
Chuck wasn't really brimming with personality and charm, but he was good-looking. He was well-mannered, and
00:14:24
most importantly, in the beginning, he adored Carol. And it seemed that the more Carol's father protested and
00:14:30
complained, the more attentive and adoring Chuck became. Oh. Almost like he was trying to win that
00:14:36
top spot in Carol's life. That stresses me out in every way that you can conceivably stress me out.
00:14:42
Ridiculous. It just won't happen. We won't allow it. Oof. But that's the thing, sometimes as a
00:14:49
parent, I think you can go too hard. Well, that's and you And you you send them right in the other
00:14:54
direction. do you know that line? And How do you know what line is the line that tips it that way?
00:15:01
Well, and it can be that's so hard. I think the scary thing, too, is that it can be one line for your kid.
00:15:07
It Well, one line for your kid, but another line for the partner. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
00:15:11
like you might push them in a different direction, too. Oh, man. Which is scary.
00:15:16
I hate it. Yeah. Well, one friend said Carol liked that he was different from other guys. That
00:15:22
uh called all the time. He'd send her little gifts, little tokens. He was very good at expressing love. With Chuck, it
00:15:27
was always flowers here, flowers there. Okay. Which is nice. Yeah, I mean, that's nice.
00:15:32
can also be love bombing. It's really hard to be a woman because You don't know.
00:15:36
You just never know. Yeah, you really don't. Yeah. As Carol worked her way through
00:15:40
undergrad, her relationship with Chuck intensified and got a lot more serious than really anybody had expected. By the
00:15:46
time Carol graduated uh from BU in June of 1981, she and Chuck were talking about getting married. But Carol
00:15:53
insisted that she wanted to wait until she was done with law school, which she was going to be starting at Suffolk in
00:15:58
the fall. Good for her. I know. She did the damn thing. Chuck was disappointed with Carol's
00:16:04
decision to wait. He really wanted to get married when she finished at BU, but ultimately he was like, I I can't force
00:16:10
you to marry me, so we'll follow through with that plan. Yeah. In the meantime, he decided finally to
00:16:15
start taking his own future more seriously, and he started looking for a better job.
00:16:20
Until that point, he actually had dreams of opening his own restaurant, but with
00:16:25
Carol starting law school, he had to accept that that dream of restaurant ownership was
00:16:30
a bit unrealistic in the short term. Restaurants, from what I've heard, are it's a tough business. Incredibly tough
00:16:37
to like when you're like buying one and owning it. Yeah. Yeah, I can't imagine that.
00:16:42
It can go really well, but the statistics are that it doesn't. And when it goes not well, even if it's
00:16:48
just going kind of well, you are bleeding money. And you have to pour a lot into it. Like
00:16:55
that's not just like, oh, I'm going to have a restaurant and hire people to work there. It's like it becomes your
00:16:59
life. absolutely does. So, he realized for probably a lot of those reasons that it just wasn't the
00:17:05
time to to go down that path. Yeah. So, instead he made his way to downtown Boston where he found work as a manager
00:17:11
in training at Edward F. Kakas & Sons, a furrier on Newbury Street in Back Bay, very flouncy area.
00:17:20
excuse you. I know. A furrier. A furrier. Which I don't love. Don't wear fur. No.
00:17:24
When he applied for the job, Chuck had no management experience and no experience with high-end clothing,
00:17:30
either. But the owner just took a liking to him and soon Chuck found himself on the path to a pretty promising career.
00:17:36
I'm always amazed at the the amount of stories we hear that have that And they never had experience
00:17:47
Like but but it was just something about them that the the person like the boss was like, I just hired him. I just liked
00:17:53
him. liked him. You're like, what the [ __ ] is that? Like what is that about someone?
00:17:57
I think in cases like this I think like where it's somebody who has a sinister vibe like hidden within
00:18:04
them, they study other people. Yeah, I could see that. like know how to charm people.
00:18:11
Yeah, you're right. I mean? absolutely part of it. And I think in good people it's just a
00:18:15
cool quality that they have. Yeah, and bad people it's a scary one. Yeah. Yeah. Well, true to Carol's plan, she and
00:18:22
Chuck did indeed get married on October 13th, 1985, the year of your birth, at a large ceremony at St. James Church,
00:18:29
the same church where her parents got married, so that was special. Yeah. By the time they married, Chuck had
00:18:34
moved up at the at Kakas and Sons and was making around $50,000 a year, which would be about
00:18:40
$148,000 today. So, For you it would be damn good. Yeah. And they were able to move out of
00:18:47
Medford and buy a house in a more upscale area called Reading. It's about 25 miles from Boston. It's a really nice
00:18:53
area. From the outside, Carol and Chuck's marriage seemed like an ideal match. The more like the older they got
00:18:58
and the more time they spent together. He was a leading salesman and manager. She was on track to becoming a
00:19:04
successful tax lawyer. They had two labs. They had a pool. They were really going for it.
00:19:10
Yeah, like they were very all-American, you know, like that that couple that everybody aspires to be. The picture of
00:19:16
the suburban success. But behind the scenes, Carol was already having doubts. She was frustrated that despite her
00:19:24
years of training and all the work she'd put into her getting her education, she
00:19:28
was entering the workforce making a lot less than her husband who had no training and virtually no education to
00:19:35
speak of. That can be frustrating. She's like I worked really hard. And I'm not making a lot less money.
00:19:44
And she's probably in a lot of debt, too. And he just was charming and got this job. That's that is frustrating.
00:19:56
Yeah, and obviously you want to be happy for your partner, but there were other things at play here.
00:20:00
Joe Sharkey wrote, "It was the first time anyone had heard Carol disparage Chuck's education." And to make matters
00:20:06
worse, Chuck always had a way of working his salary into conversations when they
00:20:11
went out with friends. Yeah, that's gross. We don't love that. We don't do that. That's not appropriate
00:20:19
dinner table talk. So Carol might not have seen it or maybe just didn't want to, but there were also
00:20:26
other things about Chuck's personality that her friends and family were starting to find concerning.
00:20:31
Her friend Robert said, "There was just something not quite right about Chuck. It wasn't natural. It's hard to put your
00:20:36
finger on it. He seemed smooth enough, a little much with the blown back hair, but nicely tied together anyway, but not
00:20:43
natural, you know?" I'm kind of obsessed with that. A little much with the blown back hair.
00:20:50
I like that He's like, "I'm just telling you something wasn't right." So so [ __ ] that guy's hair.
00:21:01
I guess he was all right. Look kind of stupid with the [ __ ] hair, but like What's going on?
00:21:06
Yeah. But others found his Chuck seemingly like insatiable materialism to be a little off-putting.
00:21:12
I can understand that. that. At the time people felt it should have been Carol who was, you know,
00:21:18
interested in shopping and her appearance. And they thought it was weird that it was Chuck who cared a lot
00:21:22
more about those things. And even weirder, stranger, that he made no secret of dismissing Carol's wants in
00:21:30
favor for his own. Ooh. Yeah. It wasn't just that he seemed wildly materialistic. To some it just
00:21:36
seemed like another way for Chuck to be the dominant one in their relationship and
00:21:40
Yeah. kind of like hold his success over Carol's head. That makes sense. Yeah. The more Carol's friends got to
00:21:46
know Chuck, the more they found that something in their relationship was just disturbing.
00:21:50
Mhm. But like Carol's friend Robert, they couldn't really put their finger on exactly what it was. Cuz it wasn't that
00:21:57
Chuck was abusive in any recognizable way. Carol doted on her husband endlessly though and he didn't seem to
00:22:03
reciprocate. Which like that could be tough to see. Yeah. And then there was the matter of him
00:22:09
constantly keeping tabs on her. He wasn't what any of her friends would say was overly jealous, but he quote always
00:22:16
wanted to know exactly where his wife was. Mhm. Which like Yeah. You can see that as nefarious. I think
00:22:24
it was probably in the way he went about it. Cuz it could also just be protective.
00:22:28
Absolutely can and it's I think it it can easily look nefarious in with the power of hindsight.
00:22:34
Yeah. I think that's that's where it gets a little easier to look at things and it's
00:22:37
like, "Huh. That seemingly innocuous thing was a little weird." Yeah, looking back. And also in tandem
00:22:43
with other things. That's the thing. By the late '80s when Carol started commuting from Reading to her job in the
00:22:48
city, Chuck bought her a cell phone so that she could keep in touch with him during the commute. Another one of
00:22:53
Carol's friends, Mark Brady, remembered, "She always had this damn car phone and
00:22:56
as soon as we got in the car she'd pick it up and report in." Mhm. Which like that if I if I was with a
00:23:02
friend who constantly was like, oh I have to let my husband know where I am. I have to call Chuck and and report
00:23:07
where I am. are you okay? I'd be like, is everything cool? Yeah. And that it sounds like her friends were
00:23:12
like, is that is everything okay? just like, is something going on here? Yeah, so by 1987, Chuck also insisted
00:23:19
that Carol find a new job closer to home. You don't get to tell me where I work.
00:23:24
I'm sorry, excuse me? Yeah, no. No. I don't like that. No. That's a discussion that you can have as a couple of like,
00:23:31
would this make more sense Nope. for us as a couple? As a husband, you don't get to tell your
00:23:37
wife where she works. a no for me. No, as a partner, you don't. Mhm. So, she did though. She took a job as a
00:23:42
tax lawyer for I think it's Kaner's Publishing in Newton. Okay. Um the house turned out to be an
00:23:48
improvement over her last job, but to Chuck's disappointment, not long after she started there, they insisted that
00:23:54
all of their tax staff needed additional education, so they enrolled Carol in night classes at the U.
00:24:00
Oh. Yeah, he didn't love that. I'm sure he didn't. Carol though had always loved education,
00:24:06
and she was really loving these new classes, which in turn kind of seemed to inspire this like new self-confidence in
00:24:13
her that her friends and family hadn't seen before. She was doing well in her classes, but friends also were noticing
00:24:19
that she was standing up to Chuck more often, even over like trivial matters. Interesting.
00:24:24
On one occasion when he and his friends came home drunk from a hockey game, she demanded that his friends leave
00:24:29
immediately. She was like, I'm not having this in my house, get out of here. Yeah.
00:24:34
Which was very unlike her, and it was it was super late at night, like Yeah, you you stand up.
00:24:39
Yeah. Chuck protested, but Carol eventually won the argument and the other men left.
00:24:44
Good. A few days later, she confessed to a friend that she was being unreasonable,
00:24:48
but she was also proud of herself for standing up to him. Yeah, sometimes you you assert yourself
00:24:53
in a way that you're like, ah probably wasn't the situation, but I did yeah, I think especially when you're not
00:24:59
used to asserting yourself and you finally find the nerve to, it might not it might not be the right time, but you
00:25:05
did it. Mhm. So, as the '80s came to a close, Chuck and Carol's relationship had grown more
00:25:11
and more tense. And at the same time, Chuck seemed to be spending a lot more money, like on things like clothing and
00:25:19
jewelry than he ever had. Mhm. While Carol bought all her clothes at, you know, mid-tier stores like Filene's
00:25:25
Basement, TBT. Ooh, Filene's Basement, I remember that. And uh she shopped at Marshalls. Chuck
00:25:32
bought all of his custom suits from Brooks Brothers, Brooks Brothers, and other similarly expensive stores.
00:25:39
Damn. Brooks Brothers is like on Newbury Street. It's like that caliber. a for sure.
00:25:44
So, Carol didn't really complain about it, but there were times when she became exasperated while venting to her friends
00:25:50
about how much he paid for things. And she was like, "I don't understand why he needs $1,200 sweaters."
00:25:56
I mean, valid. Most times though, she just shrugged it off and said something about how he knew
00:26:00
clothes better than she did. What she didn't know though was that his spending habits were racking up very
00:26:08
serious credit card debt. Oh, no. And delinquent payments were also beginning to pile up.
00:26:14
Uh It turned out that Chuck's spending and mounting debt weren't the only secret he
00:26:18
was keeping from his wife either. I'm sure we all saw this one coming. Yep. In the summer of 1989, he took a liking
00:26:25
to the new summer employee at Kakkis. Oh, no. A college student No. named Debbie Allen.
00:26:33
Like Carol, Debbie had been a dedicated student who was doing really well in school and had taken the job at the
00:26:39
furrier for the summer with plans to go back to Brown University to finish her senior year in the fall.
00:26:45
She had a boyfriend at the time and didn't express interest in Chuck, but he seemed determined to, quote-unquote
00:26:52
obtain her. Oh, stop it. Just like he had all those other things in life that he thought were out of his
00:26:59
reach. I hate it. He is like he's compulsive. Yeah. With like He acquires things.
00:27:05
And people. And he looks at people as things that he acquires. Yeah, and he just can't help himself.
00:27:10
Yeah. Now, shittily enough, his interest in Debbie emerged not long after Carol started talking to her husband more
00:27:16
seriously about starting a family together. So, here's Carol being like, I you know, like let's let's
00:27:24
get the spending under control. Let's like come home a little more. Let's not go out with our drunk friends all the
00:27:29
time. And let's Yeah. have a baby. Like we're at the right age. like behavior. Yeah, they've been married a few years.
00:27:35
Yeah. They're doing well in their careers. And she wants to have a family. And he's
00:27:39
like, "Yeah, I think I want to have an affair with the new summer employee at at work, though."
00:27:44
Cool. That's good. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And he knew that she wanted kids. Carol had never been shy about her
00:27:50
desire for a family. Remember in the at the top of this episode, it was like the
00:27:54
one thing anyone could tell you about her. But Chuck, whenever he talked about having kids with his friends, he didn't
00:28:00
try to even hide his disdain for the idea. He did not want kids. Oh my god. That spring, he apparently told a
00:28:07
friend, "I knew it was coming just as soon as things started falling into place."
00:28:13
I'm sorry, what? Like what? I'm sorry, what, sir? Yeah. And the more and more she quote-unquote
00:28:18
pushed to have kids, the more Chuck complained about her secretly, suggesting that not only did he not want
00:28:24
to have kids, but he also wasn't even really interested in being married to Carol anymore.
00:28:29
Oh, thing go away. Then divorce. Yeah, thing go away. Given all his complaints about Carol and
00:28:35
his not wanting to have children, most of his friends and family were uh a little more than surprised when in
00:28:41
early 1989, Carol announced that she was pregnant. Which also it's like, my guy,
00:28:47
if you don't want kids you got to be up front about that. You got to be up front and it's like you
00:28:52
know how kids are made. Mhm. So it's like why like you got to you got to talk about it, you got to
00:28:57
take a precaution. Yeah. You guys are in a position where you can. Yep. So like what are you doing?
00:29:02
What are you doing? So approaching his 30th birthday, Chuck had these big dreams for himself. He'd been moving up
00:29:07
at the store and now he was even planning to uh and saving to open his own restaurant. He is going down that
00:29:13
road. Okay. His vision for the future was fun, excitement, excess. Carol on the other
00:29:19
hand had her own dreams of settling down in the suburbs, having a family, living
00:29:24
a quiet life. Yeah. They are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum. When she became pregnant in the winter
00:29:31
of 1989, it seemed like that's where they were headed, that quiet suburban life.
00:29:36
At first, Chuck had even tried to convince his wife to get an abortion arguing that he was on the cusp of
00:29:41
reaching his goals and a baby just didn't fit into those plans. But Carol was like absolutely not.
00:29:47
Because again You should have discussed this beforehand. You should have discussed this before
00:29:52
you even got married. Yeah. Like absolutely. Meaning you should have been up front
00:29:55
with her saying I don't think I want kids. That's not what I want. I don't I don't think that's part of my
00:30:01
plan. Right. That needs to be part of the discussion. But then he wouldn't have been able to
00:30:04
obtain her. So I'm sure who knows what those discussions were, but I have an inkling that he was probably like, "Oh
00:30:10
yeah, totally. I want kids. You want kids? I want to least just like fluffing around it,
00:30:13
yeah. Yeah. Eventually he gave up trying to convince Carol and as far as anybody could tell
00:30:18
just became compliant if not an exactly supportive husband and father-to-be. On the evening of October 23rd, 1989,
00:30:26
Carol picked uh Chuck up on Newbury Street and they drove to Brigham and Women's Hospital to go to a childbirth
00:30:32
in class. Oh. But as she pulled onto Mass Ave, they hit a really serious traffic jam that
00:30:38
would have had them tied up for a while. The traffic put uh put Chuck in a really
00:30:42
bad mood, but they did make it on time and they went to the class as planned. The class ended a few minutes early
00:30:48
actually and Carol who had a lot of questions was eager to talk to the instructor, but Chuck was like no, we
00:30:54
have to go. We have to go. Let's get out of here. Wouldn't let her ask any of her
00:30:58
questions. on. Later when they were interviewed by police, one of the other attendees at
00:31:02
the class said Chuck was quote really out of it and couldn't wait to get out of the class.
00:31:08
That's sad. Now, the way home from the hospital should have been considerably easier
00:31:12
because they didn't have to go back through the city, but Chuck had a habit of going home the same way that they
00:31:17
came in. So, they headed back into the city. Which like doesn't make a lot of sense.
00:31:22
No. When you're leaving and you don't have to go through the city again, you aren't
00:31:26
going to choose to. No. But this route took them through Roxbury which at the time was a pretty dangerous
00:31:31
neighborhood. Yeah. Carol was always nervous driving through this particular area. So, Chuck's
00:31:36
decision to do so would have probably been cause for alarm, but she trusted him.
00:31:42
Yeah, of course. He was in the driver's seat so she wasn't going to argue. Yeah.
00:31:45
And he'd already been in a bad mood so she was probably just like okay, like sounds good.
00:31:50
At a certain point in their trip, Chuck brought the car to a stop at a red light
00:31:54
on Huntington Ave where he claimed they were approached by a young black man who
00:31:59
forced his way into the backseat and pressed a gun to Chuck's head. You know this case.
00:32:03
I very much know this case. It took me a minute. I absolutely know this case now.
00:32:08
Yep. Yep. Oh, [ __ ] I hate this guy. Yeah. Later Chuck would say the man forced him
00:32:14
to drive the car to the Mission Hill area of Roxbury and told him to stop in what Chuck described as a quote unquote
00:32:20
abandoned area across from one of the multi-story public housing projects. Things got more intense Chuck said when
00:32:27
the man saw the cell phone in the console between the driver and the passenger seat and thought Chuck was
00:32:32
possibly a police officer. He said the man told him, I think you're 5-0. Chuck protested, but he said the man
00:32:39
only grew more suspicious because um Chuck said he didn't have a wallet when the man asked. And it was at that point
00:32:46
that he said the man shot Carol point-blank in the head and shot Chuck once in the stomach and then left.
00:32:54
Mhm. The call came into Massachusetts State Police dispatch a little before 9:00
00:32:58
p.m. with Chuck yelling into the phone, "My wife's been shot. I've been shot." He told the dispatcher that they'd been
00:33:04
driving home from the hospital when they were carjacked, but that the carjacker shot them and fled, and now he had no
00:33:10
idea where they were. And then he asked the dispatcher, who was frantically trying to figure out
00:33:15
their location, "Should I drive or should I should I try to drive or should I stay right here?"
00:33:21
It's like, why would you try to drive? No, you've been shot. Like, what are you talking And also, I
00:33:25
love that he's like, "Yeah, I don't know where they are, but I do know they were
00:33:28
black." Yeah. That's for sure. Yep, definitely. Yep. The dispatcher insisted that Chuck uh
00:33:34
definitely not drive, uh but he started the car anyway and drove a few feet before bringing it to a stop again and
00:33:41
saying, "Oh man, I'm going to pass out. It hurts and my wife has stopped gurgling. She stopped breathing. I'm
00:33:45
blacking out." Oh my god. Without a more specific location, the dispatcher just ordered a flood of
00:33:51
police cruisers to the Mission Hill neighborhood to start looking for Chuck and Carol. And in the meantime, the
00:33:57
dispatcher Gary McLaughlin did his best to keep Chuck alert and responsive while
00:34:02
also listening on the call for the sounds of sirens so that he could keep guiding the police towards Stewart's car
00:34:08
towards the Stewart's car. Later, McLaughlin said, "It was a unique call. You don't get many of these in
00:34:14
your career. There was a definite urgency in the man's voice. We didn't have a lot of time to find out where he
00:34:19
was." So, it took them 10 minutes to find the car on Saint Alphonsus Street parked
00:34:25
underneath a burnt-out streetlight with the driver's side window rolled down. Huh.
00:34:30
Which is like, why would you you like why did you move the car to begin with and why did you move it under a dark
00:34:36
street lamp? Like, what are you doing? But to the paramedics, the scene did look a lot like domestic violence scenes
00:34:42
that they'd encountered a lot of times in the past. And as they moved Carol removed Carol from the passenger seat,
00:34:48
that was when they realized she was pregnant. Oh. By the time she was loaded into the
00:34:52
ambulance, she had lost a lot of blood and suffered a tremendous injury to her head. And it seemed very unlikely to
00:34:59
anybody that she would make it. That's so sad. It is really sad. Chuck, incredibly, had
00:35:04
fared actually far better in the attack. Crazy. But he still suffered a traumatic
00:35:08
gunshot injury to his stomach and was bleeding quite heavily. So Carol was sent back to Brigham and
00:35:13
Women's where doctors did manage to deliver her baby prematurely. Wow. Which is incredible.
00:35:18
Brigham and Women's? Incredible. the most incredible hospitals. But unfortunately, they were unable to
00:35:25
save Carol and she died a little after midnight. Oh, that's so sad. Yeah. Chuck, meanwhile, was taken to Boston
00:35:31
City Hospital where he was listed as being in critical condition. Coincidentally, the entire remarkable
00:35:37
rescue was caught on tape by the crew of Rescue 911. Holy [ __ ] Bring me right back.
00:35:44
Yeah. I can literally oh I I can smell me sitting in a chair I can smell the chair
00:35:50
I can I'm there. I [ __ ] loved Rescue 911. Well, they were riding along with Boston
00:35:56
paramedics that night and they caught this entire thing. Holy [ __ ] Yeah. I didn't know that part of it.
00:36:02
Isn't that crazy? Wow. So as soon as he was stable, Chuck Stuart gave a statement to the police
00:36:07
where he described the shooter as a young black man with a raspy voice dressed in a tracksuit.
00:36:13
He's like, let me give you so much detail. It was just also in short a pretty [ __ ] racist stereotype of the kind of
00:36:19
person 100%. who at least in the minds of a lot of white suburbanites at the time would
00:36:23
commit this kind of crime. Yeah. Like, that's the most racist description ever. Yeah, he might as well have just been
00:36:28
like, "Hey, I'm a huge racist." Yeah. But here's the description. Thumbs up. Yeah.
00:36:34
That night, Boston Mayor Ray Flynn issued a statement from the Roxbury Police Precinct regarding the Stuart
00:36:39
shooting saying, "I demand the Boston Police Department continue to be extremely aggressive in cracking down on
00:36:44
people who are using guns and killing innocent people. It's intolerable. We will use every lawful tool to support
00:36:50
our police officers in cracking down on gun-wielding criminals." Especially this white guy who just did it and is
00:36:57
now lying about it. Carol's murder had come during a time when Boston was experiencing a
00:37:05
particularly troubling wave of gun violence. I think now it's just the norm, but back then it was like, "Holy
00:37:09
[ __ ] this is happening all the time." Just a few days earlier, 12-year-old Darlene Moore had been shot and killed
00:37:16
in what was described as a gang-related shooting. And that same night, 29-year-old James Moody was gunned down
00:37:22
in Dorchester. City Councilor Bruce Bowling told a reporter, "People felt as long as all
00:37:27
this violence was in the greater Roxbury neighborhood, it's not going to affect us. Now we see it's not confined to a
00:37:33
single race or ethnicity." It was definitely true that violent crimes were touching the lives of both
00:37:38
white and black residents, but when it came to the response from law enforcement in this case, in the Stuart
00:37:44
case, it seemed to a lot of people that the Stuart case was given much more priority than black victims of crime.
00:37:51
In Roxbury, the mother of 15-year-old LaRusha Harris criticized Boston police for their inability to make progress on
00:37:59
the attempted murder of her daughter while they wasted no time flooding the streets to find Carol Stuart's killer.
00:38:04
course. Neighbor Jacqueline Sims told a reporter, "That's a feeling a lot of black people have. I do, too. It seems
00:38:11
like the since the Stuart thing happened, everybody's coming down on the black area."
00:38:15
And see, look what he caused. Look what he did. Obviously, details and intricacies of
00:38:20
murder cases are always very complicated, but it does seem like this murder, the Stuart murder, got far more
00:38:26
attention from the press and the police than other incidents of violent crime that occurred in the exact same area.
00:38:32
Yeah. At the the exact same time. By their own admission, investigators had no leads and no witnesses, but the
00:38:39
morning after the shooting, dozens of Boston police officers like were flooded around Mission Hill
00:38:45
looking for this man who had killed Carol. Based on the evidence that they did have, they knew the shooter had used a
00:38:51
.38 caliber handgun, but there was really little else to go on aside from that. In a statement to reporters, one
00:38:58
investigator said, "There's no question the perpetrator thought they were police
00:39:01
officers." Investigators were convinced that the shooter lived in the Mission Hill
00:39:05
neighborhood and believed that he had committed similar crimes in the past. One investigator said, "Somebody in
00:39:11
Mission Hill's going to give this guy up. If not to do the right thing, then just because it will get rid of the
00:39:16
heat." Yeah. Because everybody was upset that there was a huge police presence in this area.
00:39:20
Yeah, of course. Meanwhile, the debate over what many saw as unequal protection was growing louder
00:39:26
and louder. Mayor Flynn dismissed the accusations, of course, that the Stuart case was getting more attention because
00:39:32
the victims were white. He said, "There will be the same aggressive and fair and
00:39:35
consistent enforcement of all our laws, regardless of where it takes place. Whatever area or color or ethnicity, it
00:39:42
will be handled the same aggressive and fair way by the Boston Police Department."
00:39:46
But, in the days that followed, other leaders at City Hall started speaking out with different opinions. David
00:39:52
Scondras, a white city councilor who represented the Mission Hill district, said, "You can't help but wonder if what
00:39:58
you're watching is a class situation. That it's all right for the poor to put up with an enormous amount of shootings
00:40:03
and killings, but presumably, if you're white, upper income, and suburban, maybe
00:40:07
that changes things. That's sad." Mhm. It is sad. It is. That's one way of describing it.
00:40:13
Yeah. Within a few days, a spokesperson for the Boston Police Department report reported, "The list of suspects has been
00:40:18
narrowed down to a chosen few." By that point, Chuck Stuart's story had changed somewhat, which prompted
00:40:25
investigators to adjust their search. Initially, when he described the shooting, Chuck made it sound like the
00:40:31
person had shot them because he thought they were police officers, but then he indicated that the shooter
00:40:36
only said something about there being 5-0. So, he was like it like they were like, "Hmm."
00:40:41
Right. And he said that the shooter said this after Chuck said he didn't have a wallet. Based on the revised statement,
00:40:48
investigators now thought the man maybe never saw the car phone and quote, "Was probably going to steal the car, but
00:40:54
panicked when he when his demand for the wallet could not be met." Okay. So, interesting.
00:41:00
Interesante. Yeah. Despite their insistence that the case was progressing well, within a few
00:41:05
days the decreased police activity in Mission Hill had become pretty noticeable, and so had the lack of new
00:41:11
information coming from the Boston Police Department spokespeople. Finally, on October 28th, police
00:41:16
arrested their main suspect in the case, 29-year-old Alan Swanson, who had been in custody for days actually already
00:41:24
after being arrested on an unrelated robbery charge. By the time he was arrested for the Stuart shooting,
00:41:30
Swanson had already been cleared of the other charge, so he he hadn't even done that.
00:41:34
Yeah. Which led many to question why he was still being held. According to Swanson's
00:41:39
attorney, Leslie Harris, the Boston Police Department was using Swanson as a quote, "Convenient scapegoat to appease
00:41:45
the public that the police were making progress in the Stuart shooting case, which they weren't."
00:41:51
Which they weren't making progress is what I mean. They very much were using him as a scapegoat.
00:41:55
For sure. Leslie Harris and others were right to question the legality of holding Alan
00:41:59
Swanson for a crime when they had literally not a single shred of evidence against him.
00:42:04
That's wild. And just a few days after his arrest, he was cleared of any involvement after
00:42:09
investigators became convinced he didn't know anything about the murder. So, they
00:42:13
just That's [ __ ] up. terrorized that poor guy. Yeah, they just terrorized him. He was
00:42:16
arrested uh for something he didn't do anyways and then was held for another thing he didn't do.
00:42:21
thing that he didn't do and they had no evidence of him doing it at all. Yeah. I'd call that uh racist.
00:42:26
Yeah, I would too. Yeah. So, the arrest and release of Alan Swanson uh made police look pretty bad.
00:42:32
Yeah. But, any anger over his arrest was quickly overshadowed on November 9th when news broke that Chuck and Carol's
00:42:39
baby, who they had named Christopher, died of complications from his premature birth.
00:42:45
Oh, that's so sad. sad. Christopher's death put even more pressure on investigators to find the
00:42:50
killer and at the same time raised questions as to whether his death would be added to the charges when the killer
00:42:57
was caught. Yeah. That's two murders. Yep. They did happen in Lacey Peterson. Yes, yeah.
00:43:03
Uh speaking on behalf of the district attorney's office, chief homicide investigator Francis O'Meara told
00:43:08
reporters, "If and when the DA determines it's a homicide and if and when somebody is arrested, they will be
00:43:13
charged with two complaints of homicide." Damn. Which I think is fair. Yeah. I think absolutely.
00:43:19
Cuz that baby was alive. Yep. Like they delivered that child, which is remarkable.
00:43:25
Truly remarkable to me. And really like just horrifying to think about. Yeah. Um but it's like that baby was born and
00:43:35
is alive Yeah. and died because of what happened. of the murder of their mother.
00:43:42
Yeah. Like that is directly linked. That's killing two people. Yeah. Easy. It's just one of them just
00:43:48
happened to live longer, you know? Exactly. when you shoot somebody and like they're
00:43:52
in a coma but then they die, you know? It's still murder. Yep. So, it turned out the public wouldn't
00:43:57
have to wait very long for news of yet another arrest. Just 2 days later, police arrested 39-year-old Willie
00:44:03
Bennett during a traffic stop. And he was soon charged with the murders. Jesus. A traffic stop escalated
00:44:11
to murder. Wow. Got it. At the time of the shooting, he was a resident of a housing project near the
00:44:16
crime scene, and he resembled the wildly vague description of the shooter, and he
00:44:21
was also known to police. In 1982, he was convicted of assaulting an officer when he pointed a gun at a Boston police
00:44:28
officer and removed the man's gun from his belt, which he then used to shoot out one of the tires on the police
00:44:33
cruiser. Damn. When police got to his apartment, they found him crouched on the floor of his living room clutching a
00:44:38
revolver, and he reportedly told police, "You're not going to take me alive." One
00:44:43
of the arresting officers shot him in the hand, which forced him to drop the gun, and at that point he was taken into
00:44:48
custody. Okay. So, that's the story of his life. Wild ride. Yes. According to the report at the time
00:44:53
of his arrest, Bennett admitted his involvement in the shooting of the Stewarts during conversations with
00:44:58
police. Huh. And witnesses reported seeing him wearing a similar outfit to that uh to
00:45:04
the one that Chuck described, which was a tracksuit. Yeah. A just a general tracksuit.
00:45:10
I'm like, which is a um we're in Aren't we in the uh '80s here? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh
00:45:15
But it actually of people are running around in a tracksuit. A lot of people were, but I'm not sure
00:45:19
about Willie Bennett. Hm. That said, Bennett's relatives denied that he owned any clothing matching the
00:45:25
description of the shooter, and investigators weren't able to find anything that resembled it during their
00:45:30
search of his apartment. Wow. So, what did he do with it? Exactly. Despite the now lack of evidence, which
00:45:38
is coming up again, police were convinced of Bennett's guilt, and in his statement to the press, Assistant
00:45:44
District Attorney Louis uh Sabadini described Bennett as a quote mad dog running amok with a horrendous 21-year
00:45:51
record of violent crimes. Get it together. All right. Like cuz the thing is here, you're like you'd
00:45:59
it would look better like you would understand like police you know, you want the police to go hard at this. A
00:46:05
woman was shot A pregnant woman was shot in the face and her baby has now died. Yeah.
00:46:09
It's like of course you want them to find who did this, but it's like but it's like we want you to find who did
00:46:14
it. And and there's no one looking at the guy in the car. Right. Like that wasn't even a thought.
00:46:19
When is nobody looking at the guy in the car who only got shot in the stomach? That's the
00:46:25
thing. I'm like why would she be shot in the face and he wouldn't? Right. Why Why are they potentially leaving
00:46:32
someone alive? Exactly. If they're going to carjack you and their plan is to kill both of you and
00:46:37
they shoot one of you in the head and the other in the stomach it doesn't make a lot of sense.
00:46:41
in the head. And even from a logistics standpoint, how did they got in the car or were they
00:46:46
standing outside of the car? He doesn't even really say. And that's the thing. It's like I
00:46:50
you can understand the like need to catch whoever did this because shooting a pregnant woman is a wild heinous
00:46:58
crime. Yep. But like they're just they're leaning right into the the racist thing here and
00:47:05
it's like that's and and it's a bummer. It is a bummer. Cuz it's like you really were doing
00:47:11
bad police work. I think it was a though have done really good police work. I love Boston more than anything about
00:47:17
being from here, but I think it was a very bad time for Of course. Yeah, like I mean hey, you
00:47:22
got to be able to admit when when you know There was a lot of your town and admit its faults.
00:47:27
Yeah, there was a lot of racism running deep. Yeah. Absolutely. You know. But because they lacked sufficient
00:47:34
evidence to charge Willie Bennett with the murders, authorities took their case to a grand jury in mid-November. Which
00:47:40
I'm like why would you take it to a grand jury if you don't have any evidence? That's weird. But in the
00:47:44
meantime they were still able to hold him on an unrelated robbery charge from a few weeks before the Stewart shooting.
00:47:49
They're just grasping at straws here. Yeah. A week later Chuck Stuart had recovered
00:47:54
enough to speak with the police officers a second time. Yay. This was when he was shown pictures of
00:48:00
potential suspects and asked whether he recognized any of the men in the photos.
00:48:04
According to a spokesperson for the BPD, Chuck had a strong physical reaction when shown photos of Bennett, but he
00:48:12
wasn't able to make a conclusive identification at the time. Okay. I know how this ends now. That's why I'm
00:48:19
being very flippant about this. Yeah, exactly. I think everybody else, too. Yeah.
00:48:23
What constitutes a strong physical Well, that's what I want to know. I want to know what kind of shenanigans
00:48:28
Yeah. What's happening there? And I don't know. There's a There's a lot of questions I have that I think I'll keep
00:48:33
to myself. Well, while Chuck's reaction seemed like a step in the right direction for the police, otherwise the
00:48:38
investigation was running into trouble. By the end of November, police still had
00:48:42
yet to find any evidence linking Willie Bennett to these murders. Awesome. His family and friends were becoming
00:48:49
increasingly vocal in their belief that, like Alan Swanson before him, Willie was
00:48:54
being scapegoated. Yeah. Just to appease the public and, you know, make the police look good.
00:48:59
Yeah. By his own admission, Chuck Stuart said he never got a good look at the man who
00:49:04
shot his wife, but he was convinced that he could identify the person if he saw them in a lineup.
00:49:09
Makes That makes sense. For me, those two things feel like they are They're very conflicting ideas.
00:49:14
They're very conflicting here. I I don't understand how that works. Yeah, the thing is like I didn't get a
00:49:19
good look at the guy, but like if you put a lineup, I I could probably I could definitely say.
00:49:23
But if you tell me who you want to put behind bars, I can totally point at them.
00:49:27
Like I can absolutely do that. That's good. Cool. That's awesome. And he said he could do
00:49:31
this based largely on the fact that the shooter had a very distinct voice. Mhm. "Wow."
00:49:39
Okay. Wow. Okay. You're doubling down there. Like them. In late December, after Chuck was
00:49:45
released from the hospital, a judge ordered Willie Bennett to appear in said lineup, and Chuck told investigators
00:49:50
that Willie, quote, "Looked most like the man who shot him and his wife." Cool. Not definitely was, but he looks
00:49:57
the most like him. Looks the most like him, I'd say. One source went a step further telling a
00:50:02
reporter that quote, "Stewart made additional comments during the lineup that convinced investigators it was
00:50:06
absolutely crystal clear. That's the guy." Okay. Okay, media. Sure. Later, it would come out that one of the
00:50:15
main reasons for Willie Bennett's arrest was that his nephew, a 15-year-old at the time, was bragging to his friends
00:50:22
that his uncle was the shooter in the case. However, the nephew would go on to deny
00:50:27
that. So, who knows? Okay. But, the rumor was then apparently spread to others around the
00:50:31
neighborhood, which was eventually how it made its way to a Boston police officer, and that became the impetus for
00:50:37
Willie Bennett's arrest. Okay. In all reality though, the case against him was weak based on hearsay probably
00:50:43
from a group of teenagers and only supported by a violent criminal history. Yeah.
00:50:49
But, across the river in Revere, another story was coming together and it told a
00:50:53
very different version of what happened to Carol Stuart that night in Mission Hill.
00:50:58
From the moment Carol and Chuck's friends heard about the shooting, a lot of them flashed back to the various
00:51:03
comments that they had all made in the past. Ooh. Remember, they didn't think something
00:51:08
was right about Chuck. Yeah. For Chuck's friends, it was comments about Debbie Allen and how much he
00:51:13
wished something bad would happen to his wife. He literally said that to his friends.
00:51:19
Wow. He really liked Debbie and it was just too bad that nothing bad was happening
00:51:23
to Carol to make that work. Man, just divorce your wife. It's really like I know it sucks to go
00:51:31
through. I'm sure a divorce is suck. Of course they do. But, I don't even think It is far superior to murdering someone.
00:51:38
Far superior. yeah. I don't even think it's the fact that like divorces suck and it's a lot
00:51:43
to get through. I think for Chuck, he didn't want to be seen as somebody who had a divorce in their past.
00:51:49
Yeah. That's absolutely it. He could gain sympathy from a wife who was shot and killed while pregnant.
00:51:55
Yep. But for Carol's friends, it was how unbelievable it was that Carol would have found herself in that neighborhood
00:52:01
given her profound fear for quote urban violence. She had a a big fear of shootings.
00:52:06
Okay. There were also other holes in Chuck's story and the fact that he changed his
00:52:11
description of the shooter. After all, if things happened as he had described them, why was there no
00:52:16
evidence to support everything he said happened? Yeah. And in hindsight, there would be other
00:52:22
oddities, too, like the dispatcher who remembered Chuck's final question before the line disconnected. "Have you gotten
00:52:28
any calls from the press yet?" Wow. Okay. What? What? What? What? I'm going to spell this out for you
00:52:42
guys. He shot his wife, obviously. the end of this is he did it, my friends. you all saw that coming.
00:52:47
Yeah. "Have you got any calls from the press yet?" while he's sitting next to calls from the press
00:52:52
that he just shot in the head with a baby in her stomach. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's wild.
00:52:59
Okay. That is wild. And just like, I'm like, how are you that [ __ ] dumb to even say that?
00:53:06
That's the thing. And why in hindsight was that weird? I'm glad that he's an idiot, so
00:53:12
Same. Of course, nobody wanted to believe that any part of the story was a lie. They had both been shot and even
00:53:17
though Chuck didn't die, he did suffer serious injuries and lost his wife and his baby, everyone thought. It also
00:53:23
seemed too unbelievable to be true and the official story seemed more plausible to everybody.
00:53:28
Yeah. But everyone from the coroner to members of the press had unanswered questions
00:53:33
and eventually that feeling of having missed something would make a lot more sense.
00:53:37
Ah. Whether people wanted to believe the official story of the carjacking or not,
00:53:42
the case against Willie Bennett was clearly unraveling, going nowhere, and there were no alternative suspects.
00:53:48
Then, on January 2nd, 1990, Chuck's brother Matthew walked into a Revere Police Department with a very strange,
00:53:56
tragic story to tell. Oh, yes. According to Matthew, Chuck had approached him a few weeks before the
00:54:01
shooting with a proposition. He had a plan to steal Carol's jewelry from their house to commit insurance fraud.
00:54:08
When that strategy didn't go as planned, Chuck concocted a new scheme, and he said all he needed Matthew to do was to
00:54:14
meet him in Mission Hill at a specified time to receive a bag and get rid of it in a place where it would never be
00:54:21
found. This is horrifying. Thinking his brother was still trying to pull off the insurance scam, Matthew
00:54:27
agreed to help assuming the bag would contain jewelry or some other valuables like that. Still wrong, but not quite as
00:54:34
deep. Yeah. Matthew confessed that he met Chuck in Mission Hill that very night, where he
00:54:39
received what was eventually identified as Carol's purse. Inside, he found a .38 caliber handgun
00:54:46
and his and some jewelry. He admitted to keeping Carol's wedding ring for himself.
00:54:51
She's like, "Wow." What? Man. And he said the rest he took to his friend John McMahon, and the two men
00:54:58
brought the items to a railroad bridge in Revere and tossed them into the water.
00:55:03
The gun, it turned out, had been stolen from the Caucus and Sons safe a few days
00:55:08
before the murders occurred. So, he stole the gun from work. Holy [ __ ] Matthew Stuart insisted that and he also
00:55:15
has always maintained that he knew nothing about Chuck's plan to kill Carol, and if he had, he never would
00:55:21
have gone through with any of it. Okay. But now it made sense why that case against Willie Bennett never made sense.
00:55:27
Yep. It was because the real killer was staring everyone in the [ __ ] face for months, and no one wanted to be the one
00:55:33
to suggest what had already crossed everybody's minds. Wow. Unfortunately, Carol's real real killer,
00:55:39
her husband Chuck, would never be brought to justice though. Nope. The day after Matthew Stewart went to
00:55:46
the police with his story, Chuck drove his car to the highest point of the Tobin Bridge,
00:55:51
got out and threw himself to his death a little after 7:00 a.m. I have thought about this so many times
00:55:58
going over the Tobin. Because if you live near here and you go like anywhere, you're you've gone over the
00:56:03
You're going over the Tobin. times in your life. The fact that he threw himself off the
00:56:08
Tobin. Spooky as hell. It is. It really is. A few hours after he was seen jumping
00:56:14
from the bridge, divers found Chuck's body in the Charles River, which is not a place you want to die.
00:56:18
You do not want to die in the Charles. On the passenger seat of the car though, investigators found a note that read,
00:56:23
"To my family and friends, I love you very much. Thank you for standing beside me. My life has been nothing but a
00:56:29
battle for the last 4 months. Whatever this new accusation is, it has beaten me. I've been sapped of my strength."
00:56:36
That's it. Okay. That's all it said. Yeah. It made no mention of having murdered
00:56:41
Carol or her death at all. But authorities believed that he had killed himself rather than face
00:56:46
consequences of having murdered his wife and unborn son. Jesus. Because Chuck gave no explanation for
00:56:53
his suicide and never really confessed to murdering Carol, the official motive remains a mystery, but there's obviously
00:57:00
reason to believe that he wanted to kill Carol so he could collect on a $500,000
00:57:05
insurance payout. My god. And that money would have allowed him to pay down his debts and open up the
00:57:10
restaurant that he dreamed of and once single, he could pursue a relationship with other women
00:57:15
Wow. and gain the sympathy that he had lost a wife so violently. Wow. A few days later, investigators dragged
00:57:22
the river where Matthew claimed to have discarded the gun and Carol's purse, which was located and determined to be a
00:57:28
match for that gun that was stolen. Wow. And a match uh for the gun that was obviously used in the murder.
00:57:34
Yeah. That night investigators held a press conference to announce that they believed Chuck Stuart was the killer and
00:57:39
that the case would soon be closed. Holy [ __ ] The following year, Matthew Stuart and
00:57:44
Jack McMahon were indicted on charges including conspiracy to commit murder, unlawful possession of a firearm, and
00:57:50
compounding a felony. And at the same time, Willie Bennett was finally cleared on murder charges, but
00:57:56
he was still found guilty on armed robbery charges stemming from that unrelated case.
00:58:01
Later that year, Matthew and Jack pleaded guilty to the charges related to their involvement in the case.
00:58:07
In the years since the murder of Carol and Christopher Stuart has become one of the most defining criminal cases in
00:58:13
Boston's more recent history. Yeah. There were, of course, obviously the original victims, Carol and Christopher
00:58:19
Stuart, but the fallout from the case and the way that it was handled by investigators was felt by so many
00:58:25
residents, some who had never even heard of Carol. And people who hadn't done anything
00:58:30
wrong. Yeah. After the announcement of Chuck's death, considerable public outcry led the US
00:58:36
Attorney's Office to open an investigation into the mishandling of this case. Oh, damn.
00:58:41
And claims of racial bias against the Boston Police Department as well. After a 15-month investigation, US Attorney
00:58:48
Wayne Budd announced they have uh they had found quote some evidence of serious misconduct, but not enough to
00:58:54
justifiably pursue charges against any of the officers involved. Wow. So, he was like, "Yeah, we did find some
00:59:01
evidence of serious misconduct, but we're not going to do anything about it." though.
00:59:05
He said, "I will not prosecute unless I think a a person can be found guilty by an unbiased jury."
00:59:11
Damn. Okay. Okay. At a press conference in 2019, years and years and years later, Suffolk County
00:59:18
District Attorney Rachael Rollins spoke out about the ways that the Stuart case tore the city apart and left lasting
00:59:24
wounds that would remain unhealed. She said, "Today we remember the survivors. Those survivors include several families
00:59:30
and the entire Mission Hill community. The brutal murder of Carol and Christopher Damato precipitated a chain
00:59:36
of events that created deep trauma beyond one family. The people of Mission Hill, especially black men, were treated
00:59:42
like criminals rather than members of a community that like all of us are innocent until proven guilty and who the
00:59:48
police are allegedly duty-bound to protect and serve." Yeah. Which is like gives you chills
00:59:54
Yeah, you like hell yeah. She and other city letter leaders as well as residents of all the
00:59:59
neighborhoods looked forward to a day when justice and protection would be applied equally, which as she pointed
01:00:04
out can only be achieved by confronting the wrongs of the past and holding ourselves to higher moral standards.
01:00:10
Hell yeah. Which I think is a great way to end that. Absolutely. You know, ha hold yourself to a higher
01:00:16
moral standard. Yes, absolutely as we all should. Don't be a racist. Don't be a racist.
01:00:22
Don't be a racist. And don't be a murderer. Don't be a murderer. Don't be a [ __ ] [ __ ]
01:00:27
If you don't want to be with somebody then don't be with them. Don't be with them.
01:00:30
It's that simple but let them go live their life. You don't need to like Ugh, it's just so yucky.
01:00:36
It really is. It's so yucky when somebody's like, "You know what? Instead of just like making
01:00:41
things a little uncomfortable for a while and ending this relationship kill this person.
01:00:46
remove this person's ability to have any further life experiences. know how anybody kills anybody but
01:00:52
specifically killing a pregnant woman Yeah. is like another level of just depravity.
01:00:59
Truly. Like and for him to do that to his own child is sick. It's unthinkable. It is unthinkable.
01:01:09
It's so messed up. But that is a very famous case from Boston. So if you're around here
01:01:15
that point I said, "Oh, I know exactly what this is." As soon as he parked that car
01:01:18
For some reason that the name didn't stick in my head but yeah, that definitely brought it.
01:01:23
Yeah, then I didn't recognize the name at first either and then I was like, "Oh."
01:01:28
So, yeah. Yeah. Terrible, terrible case. Really terrible. It's just really awful.
01:01:33
It is. And I just really I feel so bad for Carol. I do, too. Carol had a lot to offer.
01:01:39
She had a lot to offer and she a lot to give. good friend. She was a hard worker.
01:01:44
Smart as hell. She seemed like she was going to be a great mom. And that's all she wanted was a family.
01:01:49
That's the thing. When you want it that badly, you're going to do a great job at it.
01:01:53
Yeah, I agree. And she was never given that chance and that really sucks. I know.
01:01:58
Poor Christopher. I hope that her and Christopher are like somewhere together. You know.
01:02:02
In another life. With a better dog. just be be good people. Be good people to your fellow people. Especially right
01:02:08
now. My god. people to your fellow people. Yeah. Let's stop being dicks to each other.
01:02:14
people to to everybody. Yeah. To to real to people in life, to people on the internet, to all the things. Just
01:02:21
don't don't be dicks. Yeah. That's a great takeaway. It is. Just don't be dicks.
01:02:26
You know. And if you take nothing else away, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you
01:02:30
keep it weird. But not as weird as that [ __ ] cuz he's a freak. Cuz [ __ ] that guy.
01:02:37
Hate him. Mhm.