[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
[beeping]
- Can I help you?
- How you doing?
This is Sergeant Grabowski
at GHQ in Boston.
I've got somebody
that's, uh, just been sh*t.
Uh, two people
that have just been sh*t.
I've got him on the phone.
Hold on a minute, please.
- Mm-hmm.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
- October 23, 1989.
♪ ♪
A 911 call comes in
to state police dispatch.
The first thing
the caller says is,
"My wife's been sh*t.
I've been sh*t."
- They had been in
a birthing class
at Brigham and Women's
Hospital.
[sirens wailing]
[beeping]
- October 1989,
I was a deputy superintendent
shift commander at Boston EMS.
Evidently,
the person that was sh*t
called the emergency number
on a cellular phone,
saying that he was sh*t
and his wife was sh*t as well.
There's a man sh*t,
and his wife is sh*t.
They didn't know
where they were.
- And during the call,
he's getting weaker and weaker.
[line clicks]
[dial tone]
- At some point,
about 10 minutes
into the call,
he actually stops talking,
but the phone is open.
- And that's where
the dispatchers,
one of them heard a siren.
- So then they started having
cruisers in the field
turn the sirens on,
turn the sirens off.
[siren wailing]
- By turning the sirens
on and off
of the different cruisers,
they're able to hear one
clearly and realize
they're close to the car.
- Bravo 2-1, your siren's on.
[siren wailing]
- Start to narrow it down
pretty quickly,
take a left on St. Alphonsus,
and--
and there was the car.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[indistinct
police radio chatter]
[indistinct chatter, shouting]
♪ ♪
- Step back, step back,
step back, step back.
♪ ♪
- I stayed with Chuck
and started
taking care of him.
He kept saying over and over,
"Don't take care of me.
Take care of my wife.
Take care of my wife."
[siren wailing]
[tense music]
♪ ♪
He had a pretty significant
g*nsh*t wound.
- One guy? Two guys?
- First thing he would say was,
"Black man."
- He described him as
a Black male, about 5'10",
raspy voice,
and said that he had fled
into the Mission Hill
housing project.
- This one's going to City.
The other one went
to, uh, Brigham, okay?
- They rushed them over
to the hospital.
[siren wailing]
Carol Stuart would live
for about six hours.
There was surgery
to remove her baby.
Charles Stuart was
in bad shape.
He was critically injured,
but he was alive.
[indistinct chatter]
[solemn music]
- That hurt, buddy?
Your belly hurts?
That hurts when I press?
- [groans]
- That's it. Don't go up.
- [muffled] Where's my wife?
- She went to another hospital.
We can't keep an update,
'cause we're taking care
of you, okay?
- Okay.
- All right.
- Are you putting in
a chest tube?
- No.
- Is there someone
you want us to call for you?
- He eventually would be
well enough
to begin talking
to police again
and provide more information.
- We go live now
to the department's
chief of detectives.
What do we know
about the suspect?
[dramatic music]
- The police and the mayor
just, uh, briefed us
moments ago.
This is what we do know
at this hour.
Police are looking
for a 30-year-old male,
a Black suspect,
in connection with
a double sh**ting.
Doctors managed
to save their baby,
performing an emergency
cesarean section.
The baby is also in
critical condition tonight.
Deputy Joseph Dunford,
the chief of detectives...
- Once at the hospital,
you started to realize
that this was gonna be
a much bigger incident.
- The assailant sh*t the woman
in the back of the head.
- It started to get
bigger and bigger,
and certainly by
the next morning, it was--
I mean, it was on
the front page of the "Herald."
And it became a national story
rather quickly.
♪ ♪
- The k*lling of 30-year-old
Carol Stuart,
seven months pregnant,
sparked cries of outrage
in Boston
and around the country.
- This was on every
news channel imaginable
because of where it happened
and what happened.
♪ ♪
When crimes happen
in certain parts of Boston,
we all fit the description,
so we knew
what was about to happen.
We knew the hell that was
about to descend upon us.
[siren wailing]
- It was open season
on Black people.
That's what it was.
It was open season.
♪ ♪
- The Stuart case,
it'll always be there.
It'll always be a focal point
of the bad side of Boston.
- I have had enough!
This community has had enough!
- People involved
in this case,
they are eager to unburden
themselves of their thoughts,
what it meant at the time,
what it still means now.
It's as if we've been waiting
for this case to be
just uncorked.
♪ ♪
What is it that happened
back then,
and what is the impact
that it still has on us now?
♪ ♪
- Boston is a unique place.
We're constantly
coming to terms
with our own paradoxes
in this city.
We are really well-known
for our liberal,
progressive politics.
[soft music]
We're a highly educated
people.
♪ ♪
Our universities are
the best in the world.
♪ ♪
And yet, Boston is also
a place that has
a really checkered history
on race relations,
and it's been
a long battle here.
♪ ♪
- It's a clannish place.
The shamrocks around this
are not an illusion.
It's not just
for the Boston Celtics.
This is an Irish town.
This is theirs.
And when you think about
the history of this city,
especially if you go way back,
there has always
been a split,
that the WASPs controlled
the money,
and the Irish controlled
the politics.
And the Black people were
somewhere in the corner,
trying to get
someone's attention
or not get b*at up
at the same time.
♪ ♪
The biggest juxtaposition
for me as a Bostonian
has been, you had heard
this legend of Boston
as a birthplace of democracy.
Sumner and Phillips and all
of the great abolitionists,
and Frederick Douglass
and the 54th Regiment,
all those statues are real,
because that's our history.
But then we also have
another history as well,
that people will just call this
the most r*cist city
in America.
- In Massachusetts,
a white man
named Charles Stuart
has been sh*t by a Black man.
- They were sh*t
by a Black man
who forced his way
into their car.
- A Black man had forced
his way into their car,
forced them to drive
to a Black neighborhood,
robbed them, and sh*t them.
Afterwards, Stuart called
police on his car phone.
- When I think about
the Stuart case,
you have to put it in
the proper context
of where we were
during that time period.
The modern history of Boston
really begins with busing.
♪ ♪
[projector whirring]
[clicks]
♪ ♪
[tense music]
- Boston's not a city.
It's a collection
of neighborhoods.
I got here,
and people said things like,
"Don't go to South Boston.
Don't go to Charlestown."
♪ ♪
Where I had grown up and lived
my whole life before that,
in Miami,
there was nothing like that.
There weren't neighborhoods
you weren't supposed
to go into.
♪ ♪
If you grew up in
a certain neighborhood--
Roxbury, Mission Hill,
part of Dorchester, Mattapan--
that's where you stayed.
I mean,
you might go to Southie
once in a while for a reason,
but it was kind of like
it wasn't even
part of the same city.
♪ ♪
I'd meet people from Dorchester
who'd never been
to the South End.
To somebody from Miami,
that was nuts.
It's, like,
What are you talking about?
♪ ♪
- Most cities are
naturally segregated.
Boston takes it to an extreme,
especially in the 1990s
and before.
- I won't drive up,
um, Morton Street.
I won't go through
Blue Hill Ave,
not because I've had any
bad experiences, just that--
why give myself an opportunity
to get put in that situation?
- It's the running story with
white folks in Massachusetts.
You can't spend too much time
in Roxbury, lower Roxbury,
Dorchester, what have you,
because you're gonna be
att*cked and all this
other stuff.
Whereas our experience was
when we left those regions,
that's what happened to us.
♪ ♪
- When I moved to Boston,
my wife was white.
We were strongly advised
to avoid South Boston,
advised not to spend
much time in Charlestown.
Walking the streets
of various neighborhoods,
we were pretty much
guaranteed to hear,
uh, racial epithets
thrown at us.
- Charlestown?
I went there before,
a long time ago.
It was beautiful.
I will never go there no more.
- I assume a person
in Charlestown
might feel unsafe going
to Roxbury, and vice versa.
Nobody in the city is free
to go anyplace they want to go.
- The schools in Black
neighborhoods were disastrous.
They were terrible.
And there was just simply
more opportunity
in the white communities.
Parents knew that
there had to be
more desegregation and more
integration in the schools.
- A group
of Black parents sued,
and a federal judge
named W. Arthur Garrity
ordered the desegregation
of the Boston Public Schools.
- At the end of my block
was the old NAACP building.
That got firebombed
after the busing ruling came.
Like, the first idea was
that somebody threw a firebomb
at the NAACP office
on Mass Ave.
Like, there's a picture of it.
- The Garrity busing ruling
was 1974.
My uncles and my parents
used to say all the time,
"We never knew how much
they hated us until then.
"We always thought
we got along.
"We thought this was
a good place.
Had no idea how deeply
they hated us until '74."
- I'm ordering you to disperse
in the name
of the Commonwealth.
If you're not gonna disperse,
you're gonna be arrested.
[crowd chanting] Here we go!
- Why am I very prejudiced?
Well, I wouldn't be
if busing didn't start.
When busing started, you know,
I never even seen
a colored before.
I never even knew
what they were.
But as soon as
I got to know 'em,
they, uh--I didn't like 'em
off the bat.
- Let us go
to our neighborhoods
where our kids are safe.
We want our kids safe.
We want our children safe.
- The '70s were a very
tumultuous time in Boston.
The anger of the hundreds,
if not thousands,
of whites from South Boston
was because of the impact
on a nice lifestyle.
You wanted your kids
to go to neighborhood schools
because you had gone
to neighborhood schools.
Unfortunately,
whites resented this idea
of taking away our lifestyle
and forcing this population
of Black and brown people
upon us,
of forcing our kids to go
into these neighborhoods
that, uh, were so crime-ridden
and so deteriorated.
- What Black parents
were asking for
was equity in terms
of access to schools.
They actually weren't asking
to go to school
with white kids.
They just wanted a sh*t
and an opportunity,
and not to have crap buildings
and crap facilities.
[crowd chanting indistinctly]
- We have nothing to gain
by keeping them here.
Send them back to Roxbury.
[crowd yelling indistinctly]
- But the crowd
just kept shouting,
"Bus them back to Africa."
- In Charlestown,
whites b*rned an effigy
of a Black student.
Police had to break them up.
- Remember, right, when I was
in the fifth grade,
right, I was doing
all kinds, you know,
like, eighth grade work, right?
I know when I went
to Roxbury, right,
I was doing the same work,
third and fourth grade work.
And I mean, the n*gg*r*s
are just sitting there,
and they didn't know
what they were doing.
And I knew what I was doing.
And I asked the teacher,
why did he do this?
And he goes, well, he goes,
"Half these people are slow
in this class."
And I just walked out, and I
never went to school again.
And I've been out of school
for almost four years now.
- Some of us--
- And I feel it's
because of the Black people,
because of all this busing.
- Mm-hmm.
- All of it, I bet you--
- I grew up in Mission Hill.
So we were bused to Brighton,
which was primarily white.
I remember white people
throwing rocks at Black kids,
and they were told
to go back home.
"You're not allowed here."
- If you rode a bus
and you had to be on a detour
and you go through
another part of town,
the bus driver would tell you,
"Uh, we're cutting through
Southie now."
And we had a bus monitor,
which was an adult,
and she would say something
like, "Get down!"
So we'd get down on the bus
as we're riding through,
because again,
you can see who's in the bus
as it's going
through the street.
So once they noticed there were
brown kids on the bus,
people start throwing sh*t
at the bus.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- All this to go to school.
All of this resistance
just to go to school.
The message was sent
very clearly that
you belong
in your part of town,
and the rest of this
is not yours.
♪ ♪
- You learned to adjust.
You had to fight your way.
As a child growing up,
you had to fight.
Uh, even in Mission Hill,
where I grew up.
♪ ♪
I remember as a nine-year-old
going to Cub Scouts,
and every Wednesday,
I would get spit on
by white dudes, right?
I, um, would walk down
Tremont Street
right in front
of Mission Church.
I can remember it vividly.
♪ ♪
And these white guys,
they would wait for me
every Wednesday, it seemed,
'cause I had to walk by them.
And I got used to it,
where I would walk
and brace myself.
I never told my mom about this,
'cause I was embarrassed.
And I would go
into the Cub Scouts,
and I wouldn't tell anyone,
and I'd just go
in the bathroom
and wipe myself off.
To be in the position,
every Wednesday,
smelling of liquor and spit--
I can still smell it.
[crowd shouting indistinctly]
[poignant music]
♪ ♪
- Boston deserved
the reputation that it had,
given the reaction to busing
and the fracture that
that created.
Boston deserved
the reputation that it had
when Ted Landsmark was att*cked
in front
of the Boston City Hall.
♪ ♪
- I was on my way
to an affirmative action
meeting in City Hall,
and I realized that
I was about to walk
into the front
of this demonstration
of high school kids against
what they considered to be
forced busing.
♪ ♪
A couple of the guys
yelled out,
"There's a..."
N-word.
"Get him."
And then they circled back
to jump on me from behind.
And the flag-bearer
then swung
the American flag at me...
♪ ♪
Knocking off my glasses
and kicking me
in the brief moment that
I was knocked down.
And then they ran off
to continue
their demonstration,
and I was left standing alone
on City Hall Plaza,
uh, bleeding from a nosebleed
and kind of dazed,
wondering what had
just happened to me.
♪ ♪
[indistinct chatter]
We must avoid being exploited
and having this
act of v*olence exploited
to distract attention
from the complex
and extremely urgent problem
of the life of this city
and the lives
of Black and white people,
and all-colored peoples
in this city.
- What happened
in the years after
the desegregation controversy
was persistent racial v*olence.
[tense music]
A Black man actually
got att*cked
on the State House steps.
It was witnessed
by several people.
A state rep, Ray Flynn,
came flying down the stairs
and physically broke up
the altercation.
♪ ♪
Who was this guy?
- Hi, Vickie. How are you?
- How are you?
- Hi, Bill. How are you, Bill?
- How are you?
- Good, good.
- If Norman Rockwell wanted
to do a portrait
to capture a kid
in South Boston,
he should have had
Ray Flynn sit for him.
He was an Irish kid.
He was tough.
He was a great
basketball player.
He played at
South Boston High,
then went on
to Providence College.
- The Friars have one of
the greatest outside sh**t
in college ball in a young man
from Boston, Massachusetts,
Ray Flynn.
[cheers and applause]
That's Ray there, number 15.
Swish.
- I think that his experience
with African-American kids
in basketball changed him.
He was the guy
who had seen beyond
just being
in that neighborhood
and had reached out
and accepted
some of the things he saw.
- The city's in the midst
of the fight
to decide who will lead
Boston after Kevin White,
four-term mayor.
♪ ♪
Our people start rallying
behind Ray Flynn.
This guy might be the guy.
[laughs] 1983.
We're gonna run
against the establishment.
We're gonna bring
Black and white people together
around economic issues,
and we're gonna put
this history
of racial conflict behind us.
[cheers and applause]
- Tonight,
Boston made history,
a united city
where the voice
of every neighborhood
in this city
has been heard.
- In the midst of
a city divided by race,
Flynn then comes
into office saying,
"We're gonna bring white people
and Black people together
to fight the power."
- This is a time
to break down the walls
of misunderstanding and bigotry
and build up a new foundation
of racial harmony.
- Boston was in need
of someone to heal the city.
Ray Flynn was considered
one of the good ones.
He was considered one
of the progressive,
one of the reformers,
one of the ones
who was trying to change
the perception of the city.
Black people didn't look
at Ray Flynn in that city
as hostile to them.
And he had a lot to answer for,
because Ray Flynn was
on the other side of it
during busing.
Go look at the pictures.
There's Ray Flynn sitting
there with Louise Day Hicks
and the rest of them
in the anti-busing brigade.
And now by the '80s,
he's the reformer.
He's the one trying
to heal the city.
[applause]
- We went from 600 incidents
of racial v*olence a year
to a--a few dozen.
It went from being
the most important issue
when Ray Flynn took office
to one that was largely
in the rearview mirror.
Not racism.
Racial v*olence.
Retaliatory v*olence
based strictly on race.
♪ ♪
Our theory of action was,
if you change behavior
effectively,
eventually,
the attitudes will fade.
♪ ♪
- Particularly after
Ray Flynn became the mayor,
things softened.
He was largely responsible
for getting people
to realize that there is
room here for everyone
to get along together.
And that is what
I think we were feeling
in the early '80s.
- Mayor Raymond Flynn.
Give him a big hand.
- I believe that
there was a time
that things were getting
a little bit better.
He tried to work
on race relations.
Because Ray was a good
basketball player,
he could come to our gym,
play ball
with the young people.
I had a good
working relationship
with, uh, Ray Flynn
until the Stuart case happened.
- When did you find out about
what happened last night?
- Uh, I was called
approximately at 11:00,
and from 11:00 on,
I drove into
the Boston City Hospital
and, uh, tried
to comfort the Stuart--
Stuarts as much as--
as anyone can
under those type
of circumstances.
- Um, if you had to describe
the couple
and you had to describe Chuck,
certainly to someone who--
who doesn't know him,
what would you say?
- Caring.
Caring about--about
other people, his family.
Uh, obviously,
his close immediate family,
but also every single other
employee that we have here,
he has their best interests
in heart.
- What can you tell me
about the Stuart family?
What kind of neighbors
were they?
- They were very quiet.
They kept to themselves.
And they were really,
you know, nice people.
They always walked by
and said hello,
and my son used to play with--
when we first moved
to the neighborhood,
they--we were here 14 years,
and they used to play
football and baseball.
And all the younger kids
looked up to him, you know?
- The atmosphere was fear
on the part of a lot of people,
concern on the part
of everyone.
People wanted answers,
and they wanted them now.
- Charles and Carol Stuart
moved to this house
on a dead-end street
in Reading three years ago.
Nearly all the neighbors
here know them
and describe the couple
as compassionate
and thoughtful neighbors.
But some of those residents
now admit
they're scared to go
to Boston.
- Realize these areas,
and take precautions
and avoid it.
They have to somehow,
uh, make sure
they've got adequate security.
- There's obviously
a sick individual out there,
or an individual that is,
uh, in--
somewhere involved with dr*gs,
or a combination of both.
- Are you afraid
to go into Boston?
- Well, by myself, yeah.
- Really? Why?
- Well, because there are,
like, crazy people out there.
- In addition
to shock and sadness,
residents here are expressing
another emotion--
fear.
- Yes, it is
rather frightening.
You're almost afraid
to go anywhere,
'cause you don't know if
you'll be in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
- I think most
suburban people have
no clue as to what goes on.
- I think he should--
the person who's done this
should be, uh, put to--
give him the chair
or give him the gas chamber,
no parole.
- I think people coming
from suburbs,
like in that area,
are more separate,
'cause they're not used to
dealing with the city.
[tense music]
- White folks in Massachusetts
regard every place
where Black folks
or Latino folks reside
as the ghetto.
That is something that, like,
even as a kid stuck out to me.
It was like,
why are white folks
always so scared coming here?
[indistinct chatter]
- Mission Hill was,
um--it was fun.
Growing up for me, it was fun.
Like, I played marbles.
I rode bikes, rode dirt bikes.
We used to have
the fire hydrants open.
There's, you know,
block parties late at night.
- The world seen it as bad,
but people that lived there,
it was life.
It was beautiful to us.
Everybody in the projects
was like a family.
Everybody knew each other--
knows each other
to this very day.
Everybody.
Um, so it was just like
a big family growing up.
- Just a whole atmosphere of--
especially in the summertime,
of just families
just out there,
because you grew up together,
so you hung out together,
and they partied.
And you know, as a kid,
I used to watch
all of that stuff go on,
and I used to enjoy it
at a young age.
I thought that was
the safest place to be.
My childhood, it didn't
get worse until 1987.
I seen the transition
to cr*ck and all that.
And I think that's when
the v*olence really started.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- New York and particularly
the Bronx had been
in turmoil
due to the cr*ck epidemic...
♪ ♪
And we thought
we were effectively
keeping it out of Boston.
♪ ♪
By the time we get to 1988,
we suddenly realized what was
happening underneath our view.
[banging]
[indistinct yelling]
♪ ♪
[glass shattering]
A guy by the name
of Darryl Whiting
had moved to Boston.
A g*ng by the name
of the New York Boys
had come up.
They had started
producing cr*ck
by paying off
public housing tenants
in the Orchard Park
development.
♪ ♪
From August '88
throughout '89,
there is just
constant v*olence.
♪ ♪
- It affected our household.
It took a hold to my mom,
which brought me
to my grandmother's house.
♪ ♪
For me, that was, like,
one of the first eye-openers
to what dr*gs can do
to families.
- All of us agree that
the gravest domestic thr*at
facing our nation today
is dr*gs.
- Once cr*ck appeared
on the streets of Boston,
there was an increase in crime.
- cr*ck.
Who's responsible?
- Mission Hill, at that time,
it was real bad.
- This--this is cr*ck cocaine.
[indistinct
police radio chatter]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Annunciation Road,
right near where
the Stuart case happened,
they used to call it
Assassination Road.
So there was
a great deal of crime
in the Mission Hill community.
- 11-year-old Tiffany Moore
was sitting on a mailbox
on Humboldt Avenue,
chatting with neighbors.
Suddenly, sh*ts rang out
from a passing car,
and Tiffany was dead.
- And while illegal drug use
is found in every community,
nowhere is it worse than
our public housing projects.
- g*ng v*olence seems
to be on the rise,
and it's got
many Boston residents
afraid to even come outside.
- What's the cause
of the crime, probably?
- I think it must be
about 50% dr*gs,
there's a lot of nuts
running around out there,
anyway.
- So is the answer really
just getting tougher
or trying to do something
about the drug problem?
- I think it's both.
And I think, um--
uh, we really have to let
the police do their thing.
[horn blaring]
[indistinct chatter]
- What are we gonna do,
you know?
We're out there
showing up at the scene.
We're seeing kids
sh*t and k*lled.
It's in the news.
The public is outraged.
Something's gotta happen.
Police leadership had decided
stop and frisk was the answer.
[siren wailing]
- That was the beginning
of our losing control
of the police--
losing, even more importantly,
our ability
to direct police work.
[indistinct chatter]
Now, suddenly,
the police feel that
they can be out there
as the solution,
frisking young Black men
regardless of cause
or suspicion.
♪ ♪
- You're the most powerful
people there is.
You can deprive somebody
of their freedom.
Nobody else can do that.
Judges can't do that.
We can stop you
from walking down the street
and deprive you
of your freedom.
That's a lot of power.
- We had a bunch of cops
running around
in Mission Hill--
Fat and Skinny,
Blonde Sean, Hightower.
All no good.
No good, especially
Fat and Skinny.
♪ ♪
- I'm a retired
Boston police officer.
I retired as a detective
and worked in the Boston Police
from 1980 to 2016.
I was assigned
to Area B2 in Roxbury
with one of my partners.
We ended up working in
Mission Hill, in the projects.
Who wanted to be
in the projects?
Nobody.
♪ ♪
- They started out
in a little patrol car,
but then they wind up
giving them a Bronco.
♪ ♪
And when he got in that truck,
that was all she wrote.
He was in control
of that neighborhood.
He was making sure that
you knew he was the boss.
- I--I liked helping the good,
and I loved being bad
to the bad.
Some people deserve
to go to jail.
You're the most powerful
people there is.
You can deprive somebody
of their freedom.
- Yep.
- That's a lot of power.
- Yep. That's what they did.
- Just do what the police
tell you to do.
And not that we're--
we're bullies.
Just...
- [scoffs]
- It makes it easier
on everybody.
You don't get k*lled.
I don't get hurt.
- Right.
- You don't get k*lled.
I don't get hurt.
Just follow the rules.
Put your hands
behind your back.
It's not--it's not
a hard concept.
- He was a--a tyrant.
Beyond a bully.
I can handle a bully.
But a cop,
a white cop...
that's known
for setting people up,
you know,
putting his hands on people,
that's a--that's a dangerous--
that's a dangerous cop.
[tense music]
- This city has,
on a nightly basis,
been dealing with blood
in the streets.
White working-class people
are horrified
by these kids getting k*lled
by one another,
but it's not "them."
♪ ♪
And that's the thing
we feared the most,
something happening where
white people would be saying,
"Oh, my God,
now they're k*lling us."
♪ ♪
So now we get
to October of 1989.
♪ ♪
[beeping]
♪ ♪
- October 23, 1989.
It was a Monday night.
♪ ♪
I was home watching the kids
play Nintendo.
♪ ♪
And uh, Captain Walsh,
David Walsh, called my house,
and he said,
"Drop what you're doing.
"Get in here right away.
There's been a m*rder
at Mission Projects."
I said, "Okay, I'm on my way."
♪ ♪
I go up in the projects,
and I learned that
a husband and wife,
who was pregnant, were sh*t.
- The officer that took
the description
in the ambulance was told that
a Black male jumped
in their car,
told them to drive
into the projects,
uh, where he robbed
and sh*t them.
Did they say, "Oh, my God,
this has never happened,
I can't believe it"?
No.
It was just--
it was a robbery that went bad.
♪ ♪
[siren chirping]
- Mayor Flynn calls
from the car,
and he said,
"Neil, it happened."
♪ ♪
The thing we feared the most--
a Black man had k*lled
a white woman.
Now folks would be able to say,
"See? I told you.
They're going to k*ll white
people, not just each other."
- I knew that
the mayor would have to make
a show of enforcement,
that he was going to do
everything possible to catch
the person who did this,
and I'm going to call out
every available detective.
I said, "Don't say that."
- Police officers have got
the most difficult job
in society today.
They're out there trying
to fight a w*r
and win a w*r on dr*gs.
And I've asked
the commissioner to put
every single available
detective in the city of Boston
on this case to find out
who the people are--
or person--
who is responsible for this,
uh, cowardly,
senseless, uh, tragedy.
[dramatic music]
- The police and the mayor
just, uh,
briefed us moments ago.
This is what we do know
at this hour.
Police are looking
for a 30-year-old male,
a Black suspect, in connection
with a double sh**ting.
- From Boston tonight,
we have a nightmarish story
of random crime
and violent death.
- A pregnant woman
and her husband,
the victims
of random v*olence tonight.
♪ ♪
- The first reaction is,
oh, sh*t,
because now they're
going to come looking
for the person who did it.
This is going to end badly
for everybody.
[somber music]
- Good evening.
Here's what's happening
tonight.
Boston police continue
an intense manhunt,
rounding up anyone
who might have information
about the abduction
and sh**ting
of a Reading couple in Roxbury.
- A 33-year-old
pregnant woman d*ed
from a g*nsh*t wound
to the head
after doctors delivered
her baby by cesarean section.
Her husband tonight remains
in critical condition.
Eyewitness newsman
John Dougherty joins us
live now at Boston
Police Area B Station
with the latest on the search
for a cold-blooded k*ller.
[siren wailing]
- The immediate response
of the mayor's office
and the Boston PD was
to accept the story
unquestioningly,
and we've gotta go find
the guy who did this.
- Dozens of police officers,
Boston police detectives,
they are all here
and all looking
for the k*ller of Carol Stuart.
- I've never seen that many
police officers in my life,
running across the roof.
Man.
I knew it wasn't just a regular
Mission Hill person got sh*t,
'cause people get sh*t
in Mission Hill,
and they don't come like that.
- Go, go, go!
- They scoured the Mission
Hill and Roxbury areas,
the suspect described
as a Black male,
about 6 feet tall.
- I instructed
the police commissioner
of the city of Boston
and the police department
to be as aggressive
as they ever have been before.
- The measures that were taken
were to conduct
these door-to-door searches
through the Mission Main
housing development.
[knocking]
- A great deal of the tips
that we've been getting
have been coming down here
into the Mission Hill projects.
- It was terrifying.
It was like
wild, wild West, man.
Because it was a Black man
and a pregnant white woman
in Mission Hill,
oh, we definitely gotta
get this guy.
[tense music]
That was the attitude.
Like cowboys.
♪ ♪
- The Stuart family are
the latest victims
in the frightening plague
of dr*gs
and g*ns in our society.
None of us is safe
from this v*olence.
- What had started to slip away
from us with stop and frisk
now was lost completely.
We had no control
over police activity.
- I'm walking home from school.
Police start harassing me.
They asked me about
if I knew anybody in a g*ng,
if I was affiliated with one,
if I'd ever been locked up,
anything like that.
And I'm like, "No, I'm 14."
- I had to go back
to the Tobin Community Center,
where I was director.
Children were coming
into the center.
They were crying.
They were afraid to go home.
I'll never forget these guys
being strip-searched.
- I live in Roxbury,
and I was walking home,
and they just rolled up on me
and threw me against the wall
and started searching me.
- And they stopped him
and searched him,
make him do things
you would never do in public.
- Police pulled up
from behind them
and stopped them,
searched only four of them,
but made one kid
drop his pants.
- Do you think
they're doing this because
it was a white person
that was sh*t?
- Yeah, they're getting kind
of carried away, you know?
I know a couple people
who got sh*t before, and hey.
- Yeah.
- They didn't go about it.
It wasn't even on the news.
- Five-day hunt.
- This wasn't about policing.
It was exacting harm
and retribution
on those folks who did this.
And they looked at us,
essentially, as a tribe.
- I ain't got no clue--
nothing, man.
I ain't did nothing--
- And I think the duality
is Carol Stuart.
[solemn music]
I can't, you know,
imagine what this must--
must have meant
for her family, who--
they were simply trying
to find out
who m*rder*d their daughter.
♪ ♪
[bell ringing]
- There were
funeral services today
for Carol Stuart,
attended by Boston's mayor,
police commissioner,
and members of her family,
except for her husband,
Charles,
who is still hospitalized,
wounded by the gunman
who k*lled his pregnant wife.
[somber music]
- The funeral was jammed.
It was standing room only.
We were still in shock,
deeply grieving,
totally confused.
♪ ♪
Carol was, without question,
one of the sunniest people
I've ever known.
Carol came to work
for Arthur Young.
She had just graduated
from law school.
I got to know her
the very first day.
♪ ♪
She was very good at tax law.
We worked ridiculous hours,
and her dad,
who made pizza for a living,
would bring us pizza
at 9:00 at night
and say,
"You work too many hours!
You work too long!"
And he'd come in
with all these boxes--
boxes of pizza.
So it was pretty easy
to see her--
her generosity of spirit.
♪ ♪
- It's--it's sick.
It's sick.
She had so much,
um, to live for.
Um, and her husband,
I remember when
they first got engaged.
It was just, uh,
a lot to live for, you know?
- When she came to work
for Arthur Young,
she was engaged
to Chuck Stuart,
and the wedding was
not long after
she came to work
at Arthur Young.
♪ ♪
She and Chuck met
at a restaurant.
She was a waitress,
and he was a grill cook.
She would pass him
the slip of paper
with the orders on it,
and he would pass her
love notes.
In their first year
of marriage,
she would come into the office,
and she'd say,
"Ugh! You know, Chuck!"
We didn't--you know,
and she'd tell this story
about how he would--
he'd done something that--
that just drove her crazy.
And then not 20 minutes later,
a--a large vase
of 12 or 24 roses
would come down the hall
to be delivered to Carol.
He took her to New York
for the weekends
to--you know,
for restaurants and plays,
and he bought her
gorgeous jewelry.
♪ ♪
She was very excited
about having her first child.
- [sobbing]
♪ ♪
- I remember it being
beyond sad.
♪ ♪
Chuck Stuart
couldn't be there.
And I remember someone
reading the letter
that he wrote for Carol.
- The following is a message
from Chuck to his wife, Carol.
♪ ♪
"Good night, sweet wife,
my love.
"God has called you
to His hands,
"not to take you away from me,
"all the happiness
and gladness you brought,
"but to bring you away
from the cruelty and v*olence
"that fills this world.
"He says that for us
to truly believe,
"we must know that
His will was done
"and that there was some right
in this meanest of acts.
In our souls,
we must forgive this sinner."
♪ ♪
"You have brought joy
and kindness
"to every life you've touched.
"Now you sleep away from me.
"I will never again
know the feeling
"of your hand in mine,
but I will always feel you.
"I miss you, and I love you.
Your husband, Chuck."
- I remember, like, crying.
♪ ♪
Like, this is--this poor guy.
This is--this is beyond belief,
what's happened to him.
♪ ♪
- Boston police remain
tight-lipped
about what could be
a major break
in the investigation
into the sh**t
of Chuck and Carol Stuart.
- Boston police remain
closed-mouthed
about the material seized
from the apartment
at number eight,
Cornelia Court
on Saturday night.
The search warrant shows
police recovered
what may be
a key piece of evidence
in the Stuart m*rder case.
- My partner and myself
are riding around.
Someone flags us down and says,
"There's a couple squatting
in this apartment.
They could be involved."
I said, "Okay."
Using our charm,
we ended up convincing them
to open the door.
We go in.
It's a guy and a girl.
And the girl's
whispering to me,
"He did a robbery in Cambridge,
and there's a g*n in here."
Uh, his name was Alan Swanson.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
I go in the bathroom,
and there's a--
a running suit,
black running suit,
soaking in the sink.
- And on the--
behind the toilet,
there's a bunch
of newspaper articles
about the Stuart case.
♪ ♪
- The description,
the guy had on, uh,
an Adidas tracksuit--typical.
Adidas tracksuit was
the outfit
of Black kids in Boston
in the late '80s, early '90s.
Everything was Adidas.
It was so open-ended.
It was so generic,
the description...
♪ ♪
That it could have been
anybody.
- Are the people
that sh*t you,
are they in the area
right there?
- The suspect described
as a Black male,
about 6 feet tall.
- Police are looking
for a Black suspect.
- Obviously,
when a crime is committed,
you're gonna go try
to solve it.
But the way this went down
was a racial overreaction.
- He said they were sh*t
by a Black man.
- It wasn't as though
we weren't thinking, okay,
why is this such a given
that somebody Black did this?
♪ ♪
Everybody knows
the prime suspect
is usually the partner.
- Sure, if the man's
bleeding to death,
you would have
some sympathy for that.
♪ ♪
But you would also ask,
if I'm going to rob somebody,
why would I sh**t
the pregnant woman
fatally in the head
and sh**t him in the side?
♪ ♪
If you were gonna k*ll
someone,
it would be
the immediate thr*at,
which to me would be the man.
All of these things are
absolutely
worth interrogating on day one.
- But it didn't happen
in a vacuum in the city.
This was building.
You go back between 1974,
the Garrity decision,
and you go all the way
through to 1990.
[indistinct yelling]
♪ ♪
You've got racial animus
in the city
that is just waiting
to explode.
When you start connecting
all of these dots,
it creates
a really ugly puzzle.
You had plenty
of Black people thinking,
"Hold on. Wait a minute.
This doesn't quite fit."
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
[bright tone]
01x01 - Roots
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TV doc follows the m*rder of Carol Stuart, and the investigation that followed, igniting racial tensions and targeting.
TV doc follows the m*rder of Carol Stuart, and the investigation that followed, igniting racial tensions and targeting.