Murder in Boston (10 page)

This is significant because if it happened when the news reports said it did, it was the same day that Dereck Jackson appeared before the grand jury and told his fake story about Bennett. Not until the next day would he (allegedly) go back before the group to tell them he had been lying.

During this whole period, skepticism was building in newsrooms around the city that there was something fishy about Chuck’s version of what had happened the night of October 23. When events took a dramatic turn several weeks later, a veritable corps of reporters would come forward saying they had been suspicious of Chuck’s, story from the beginning but had not been able to convince police to follow through on leads they were uncovering.

For their part, the police said they were following standard investigative procedures, and there was nothing in the early days to indicate that Chuck’s story was anything but truthful. Indeed, the single most substantiating factor was the severity of Chuck’s wound. In a similar well-known case, that of Army Captain Jeffrey McDonald, a Green Beret convicted of killing his wife and children, some investigators had been suspicious of McDonald’s claim that he and his family had been attacked by a pack of hippies because, while the wife and children suffered multiple vicious wounds, McDonald had only scratches. This certainly was not true in Chuck’s case.

Also, police said, they were hearing many of the same rumors as those passed on to them by reporters, but they had been no more successful in tracking them down than the journalists. In one case in particular a detective said he had heard a report that Chuck had approached one of his high school buddies several months before the October 23 shooting and asked him if he would kill his wife for him. When the detective called the man and confronted him with the report, the man denied the conversation ever took place.

Reporters said they were having the same difficulties. Not only were they not able to substantiate any of the rumors they had heard, but their job in checking them out was made difficult by the fact that Chuck was a hero. There was so much sympathy for Chuck in the early weeks that any attempt to dig up information that would discredit him was met with hostility.

Another significant factor was the emotional aspect of the story, created in large part by the media: the publication and broadcasting of the conversation between Chuck and Gary McLaughlin, for example, as well as the continuing drama of Chuck’s hospitalization, Christopher’s fight for life, and the infant’s eventual death. And then there was the arrest of the suspect himself. If Bennett had been a more sympathetic figure, the story might have taken a different turn much earlier than it did. But although there was considerable concern for Chuck, it was very difficult to drum up much sympathy for a man who had shot a policeman, cold-bloodedly threatened to shoot another, and then was going to try to shoot his way out of being captured. As a hero, the public was not quite ready to accept a man with at least sixty arrests on his sheet.

But no matter how many journalists said later that they had deep misgivings about Chuck’s claims, there was not a single story, column, editorial, or newscast that indicated even the slightest amount of doubt.

Chapter 8

December 1989

At Boston City Hospital Chuck gained strength rapidly, but it was obvious that the injury had taken its toll. While he once appeared bulky, some might say beefy, he now looked gaunt. The expensive clothes he had selected with care hung on him as though they had been fitted for an older brother. His cheeks were sunken, and his jaw jutted more prominently than ever. But his eyes had regained their old flash, and he could be as imperious as he had been when he was reporting every day as general manager of the city’s most prestigious furriers: a colonel who is used to having his commands obeyed.

A steady stream of visitors trooped through his room, mainly his family members and co-workers, and he often sent them off on personal errands. Among the items he asked his brothers to fetch for him were a stack of papers from his safe at home, a pile of files that included insurance policies he had on himself and Carol. What became of those papers would later fuel a spirited debate. Although many people, including investigators, were convinced that Chuck had several policies on Carol’s life, they were not able to find the documents themselves, leading to speculation that he secreted at some distant location some of the records his family members innocently delivered to him.

When Chuck was not entertaining visitors in person, he was usually glued to the telephone chatting with friends. One of his frequent callers was a former co-worker he had undoubtedly taken an interest in. Her name was Debbie Allen, and she was a student at Babson College working on an MBA. Allen is the mystery woman in the Stuart saga. A tall, slim woman with a figure skater’s taut body and thick blond hair falling below her shoulders, Allen and Chuck may or may not have been romantically involved. They met when Allen, then a student at Brown University, was working summers at Kakas & Sons. Although she would later emphatically deny that she had a romantic relationship with Chuck, there was enough evidence to cause doubt.

Once, when Chuck said he was interested in seeing the chichi prep school she had attended, Allen took him on a tour and introduced him to several of her former teachers. When Allen said she could not afford to call him regularly in the hospital, as Chuck had requested, he gave her his telephone credit card to use. She called virtually daily, and some of their calls lasted for as long as thirty-five minutes. He reportedly bought a $250 gold brooch which he intended to give to Allen, although she claimed the most expensive gift she ever received from him was a pair of sneakers. Apparently they were seen in social situations more than once, but Allen insisted the relationship was platonic.

One argument against the existence of a romantic relationship between Chuck and Allen was that it was doubtful such a liaison could have existed without Carol’s knowledge. And if Carol had known about it, she would have talked about it. Yet none of her friends ever indicated that Carol had mentioned any serious problems in her marriage, much less the presence of another woman.

These revelations proved how little the public knew about Chuck Stuart. The headline writers crowned him an all-American youth, a glowing example of kid from a blue-collar background making it on his own, only to have his dream shattered by a nightmarish figure striking in the night. It was a convenient story; a gripping one. It just wasn’t true. The true saga of Chuck and Carol is much more complicated than news reports had so far indicated. But by December some of the media induced gift wrapping was beginning to be peeled away; the story of the Camelot Couple was about to unravel.

Chuck was released from BCH on December 5. For the first time in six weeks he was back on the streets again. Maybe because it was too painful to return to the slate blue split-level home he and Carol had shared, or maybe because he was trying to keep up his image as a devoted son, he went not to Reading, but to Revere, to his parents’ little red house nestled at the end of a quiet, dead-end street. By then, however, the media was not pursuing Chuck as heavily; his time in the spotlight had about run its course. There didn’t seem to be much else to say. Besides, Chuck had not exhibited any desire to talk to reporters, and journalists had other stories to chase.

Safely out of the media gaze, Chuck picked up his life with virtually uninterrupted anonymity. While no one was looking over his shoulder, one of the first things he did was go into Boston to sign the papers so he could collect on an $82,000 insurance policy that had been taken out on Carol’s life through her employer.

As far as the Stuart case went, media interest had shifted from Chuck to Willie Bennett, who was still looking strong as the gunman. The question of the day was, Would Bennett be indicted for the murders of Carol and Christopher? Crucial to an indictment was his identification by Chuck as the assailant. Up to that time Chuck had not seen Bennett in person, and his last publicly known contact with an identification process was the group of photos he had been shown two weeks earlier, on November 21.

Almost a month previously, after the grand jury had begun hearing testimony in the Stuart case, the group had ordered Bennett to appear in a lineup before Chuck. It would be a crucial confrontation: either Chuck could positively identify Bennett as the assailant, or he could clear him of suspicion.

Not unexpectedly, Bennett’s lawyer objected to the lineup and filed a formal request to prohibit it from taking place. But Superior Court Judge Constance Sweeney listened to arguments and rejected Bennett’s plea: the lineup would take place, she said.

Bennett’s lawyer appealed, but he was no more successful with that attempt than he had been in the lower court. On December 28 Supreme Judicial Court Judge Neil Lynch announced that he too felt the lineup was proper. A few hours later Chuck was hustled to downtown Boston for the critical event. Fresh from a bleak Christmas, a rail-thin Chuck, who had celebrated his thirtieth birthday ten days earlier, stood silently in a cheerless identification room in police headquarters while eight men, including Bennett, were paraded before him. None of the men spoke. After studying each member of the group, Chuck pointed at Bennett. “He looks most like the guy,” he whispered.

Although Chuck left the headquarters building without talking to reporters, the
Globe
quoted an unidentified source as saying that Chuck’s identification was “positive…absolutely crystal clear.”

Whether that was indeed the case has not been revealed, but Bennett still was not indicted for the murders. Instead he was charged the next day with a second robbery. It was another lock on his cell door, but it wasn’t the
big one
.

Unknown to the media and the public, major developments were occurring behind the scenes, developments that would soon send the Stuart case back to front pages and primetime newscasts around the world.

Apparently Michael was not the only person Matthew confided in about Chuck’s alleged role in the shooting. He must have been talking it over as well with his girlfriend, Janet Monteforte.

Monteforte, in turn, went to her parents. Concerned that their daughter could somehow be tied in to what obviously was an extremely sordid situation, the Montefortes paid a Christmas Eve visit to their lawyer, John Perenyi, seeking advice. What Perenyi told them has not been disclosed, but judging from events that transpired in the following few days, he probably urged them to get together with the Stuarts to discuss a plan of action.

How much Chuck knew about this is uncertain. But since he was involved directly, it is unlikely that he was not at least aware of what was going on. In any case, Michael must have sensed that the lid was about to blow off; he must have realized that it would be futile to try to keep the secret much longer. He called a family meeting for January 1 to discuss the potentially volatile situation. It must have been a particularly upsetting period for him. Despite his careful silence, it seemed that Chuck was about to be revealed, under the best possible scenario, as a conspirator in the deaths of his wife and infant son. Apparently what concerned Michael and others in the family who knew about Chuck’s alleged involvement was damage control, not the morality of their not having come forward with their knowledge sooner. The situation was beyond containment; the issue was how to deal with it so the least amount of harm would accrue. It was, in every sense, a most cynical and dispiriting view.

Chapter 9

January 1, 1990

Monday

New Year greetings must have rung hollow indeed in parts of Revere on the first day of 1990. It is doubtful that the good Catholic, sports-crazed Stuarts even watched with much enthusiasm as Notre Dame whipped up on Colorado in the Orange Bowl. They had much weightier things to deal with.

Where and when they met, and exactly who was there, has not been disclosed. Probably they met at Michael’s house. In attendance, virtually for sure, were Michael, Mark, Matthew, Shelly, and Janet Monteforte, Matthew’s girlfriend. Neysa, for reasons not disclosed, was not there. Neither, probably, was Chuck. It may have been the first time that Shelly and Mark were aware of Chuck’s involvement, although unnamed Police Department sources have suggested otherwise.

From what developed later, it appears that Matthew expressed an inability to continue to keep suppressed what he knew about events in Mission Hill on the night of October 23 and the period immediately before that. Friends of Matthew’s have said that when he came back from California in mid-December, he was a changed person. A boisterous, devil-may-care Irishman before he left, a chip off his old dad’s block, he was sullen, nervous, and depressed when he returned. According to a friend, he was drinking more than usual and was prone to cry in his beer. Although most could not account for the change at the time, they were soon to learn the reason.

Matthew’s decision, of course, may have been prompted by more than an attack of conscience. If he was tormented by the moral dilemma brought on by his knowledge, he would not have waited seventy-two days to decide to speak up. Later there would be speculation that his decision had been prompted by the fact that he could not stand by while his brother fingered Willie Bennett, who, while not exactly an innocent man, was at least apparently innocent of shooting Chuck and Carol, although even that has not yet been determined for certain, according to District Attorney Flanagan. Nevertheless it is improbable that Matthew, a true son of an Irish linen-white, blue-collar suburb, would have been overwhelmed with guilt about what was going to happen to a cop-hating black ex-con from the inner city. What seems more probable is that Monteforte told him that if he didn’t do something, she would. Faced with an ultimatum like that, the lawyer Perenyi, who at some point took Matthew on as a client as well, may have advised him that he would fare better by going to the authorities himself.