City on a hill True story Charles Stuart – The new showtime series takes place after the murder of Carol Stuart



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Matt Damon and Ben Affleck return to Boston on Sunday with the start of Showtime City on a hill, a new series that counts the couple among its executive producers. The series takes place in the early 90s in Boston, when it was rife with a wave of crime and featured Kevin Bacon as Jackie Rohr, a racist, rude and deeply corrupt investigator of the FBI. In the series, Rohr associates with a young black prosecutor (Straight Outta Compton 's Aldis Hodge) to find a gang of armored car thieves.

The two main characters are fictional, but to define the scene, City on a hill starts with a title card. "In October 1989, a white man – Charles" Chuck "Stuart – killed his wife, was injured, and then claimed that the killer was black," he wrote. "During the investigation, the Boston police resorted to intimidation and coercion, eventually charging a black man, but Stuart's brother then revealed the truth, prompting Stuart to to commit suicide … and all hell is unleashed. "

The history of City on a hill is taking place as a result of this real-life crime, in a Boston city plagued by tension as a result of a murderer racial hoax. This is the story of the murder that rocked a city.

Who was Charles Stuart?

Stuart was born in the working class of Revere, Massachusetts, in 1959. Even though he was an adult, he told his friends that he first attended Brown University Thanks to a football scholarship and transferred to Salem State College after an injury, he never submitted a job application to Brown and only attended Salem State a few months before leaving school. While working as a cook in a hometown restaurant, he met the woman he would marry: Carol DiMaiti, a student at Boston College, who worked at the same restaurant as a waitress.

They married in 1985 and in October 1989, Carol was seven months pregnant with the couple's first child. Stuart had left her cooking career and was working as a manager with a furrier, earning more than $ 100,000 in 1988. Carol was a lawyer and together, the attractive young couple seemed to be the image of upward mobility.

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Charles and Carol Stuart were married in 1985. The couple's shooting was to become one of the most infamous crimes in Boston's history.

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What was the crime?

On October 23, 1989, the Stuarts attended a Lamaze class Brigham & Women's Hospital Boston. Shortly after leaving the hospital that night, Charles called the police to tell him that he and his wife had been assaulted in their car while driving through the Mission Hill neighborhood of the city. Carol was shot in the head and was taken to the hospital where her baby, Christopher, was born two months earlier. Carol died that night, while Charles, who had been shot in the stomach, was quickly operated on and eventually survived. 17 days after the shooting, Christopher died of respiratory failure.

Charles Stuart told the police that the attacker was a black man of about thirty years who had jumped into the backseat of their car while they were idling at the red light . According to Stuart, the man had initially tried to steal the two men before accusing him of being a police offer and slaughtering them.

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Police and bystanders surrounding the Stuart car after the shooting. The images of Charles and Carol Stuart's crime scene featured prominently in the coverage of local news, shocking the Bostonians.

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How did Boston react?

The story of a wealthy white couple attacked by a black man horrified the city, exploiting the racist fears of decades of black urban crime. Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, Chief of Police Francis Roache, Cardinal Bernard Law and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis attended his funeral. "I demand that the Boston Police Service continue to show extreme firmness in suppressing people who use firearms to kill innocent people," he said. said Mayor Flynn of the case. "It's intolerable." The Stuarts' attack also led lawmakers to ask the state to reinstate the death penalty.

More than 100 additional police were dispatched to the area where the Stuarts were shot, targeting black men in their investigation. Mission Hill community leaders estimated the neighborhood had 150 stops a day within five days of the shooting. "I was arrested three times a night while walking from here to my apartment," said a local man. The Washington Post in 1990. "We were all suspects."

The investigators ended up targeting a man. Willie Bennett corresponds roughly to the description given by Stuart and has a history of violence including two shootings. Stuart identified Bennett as the perpetrator, and the authorities arrested her and prepared to charge her with the crime.

"I know I did not do it," Bennett said. The local CBS branch in Boston in 2017. "They know I did not do it, it's just that I had a reputation in the projects and everything that happened in Mission, they thought it was me."

How did Stuart's story unfold?

On January 3, 1990, before Bennett could be charged, Matthew, the younger brother of Charles Stuart, 23, told the authorities: Charles had murdered Carol, apparently hoping to reap a Insurance policy of $ 180,000 on his life. He shot himself to get rid of the investigators.

Matthew testified that he participated in what he knew to be a trial for Carol's murder, that he organized a robbery of Stuart's house and that he even drove around Mission Hill with Charles the night before the murder. . He claimed to believe that his brother was trying to organize a robbery to commit insurance fraud, but after the crime he threw a bag containing a gun and valuables from Carol in a river at the request of Charles.

Hours after Matthew's confession, Charles committed suicide after jumping off the Tobin Bridge. Following his death, it was revealed that Stuart may have had an affair with a colleague, aged 22, and that he would have asked a friend to help him kill his wife the month before the murder. According to the friend, Stuart feared losing his wife's income as a lawyer if she did not return to work after giving birth. Matthew would be charged with insurance fraud and obstruction of justice, and would serve a five-year prison sentence for his role in the crime.

"It was a story that exceeded all the usual limits, and the only reason was the problem of racial paranoia," said one of the leaders of Boston's black community. told The New York Times in 1990. "Blacks, in particular, need to examine it and ask what hope we have for justice in a country that has lied to its lie and made it and its family a symbol of national mourning."

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The authorities removed Charles Stuart's body from the Mystic River in January 1990. Just a few hours before his death, Stuart's brother told the authorities that Charles had killed his wife and shot himself in the skin.

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