On the night of October 23, 1989, Charles and Carol Stuart were returning home from a childbirth class and drove through the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. According to Charles Stuart, they were stopped at a red light when a black teenager forced the driver’s door open and robbed the couple, then shot Charles and Carol before running off. Charles managed to call 911 from his car phone, but by the time emergency responders arrived, Carol was in a very bad state and would die a few hours later at a nearby hospital.The murder of Carol Stuart captured the attention of residents in and around Boston, and the story remained on the front pages in the weeks that followed. On one hand, it was a tragic story of a young couple on the verge of starting a family who were robbed of a future. On the other hand, it shined a bright spotlight on the city’s long-simmer racial tensions and the unequal treatment and application of law enforcement with regard to race. And those tensions would be significantly exacerbated when the truth about Carol Stuart’s murder was finally discovered.Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesBrelis, Matthew. 1989. "Stuart suspect held on charges." Boston Globe, November 12: 1.Canellos, Peter. 1989. "Roxbury probe is criticized." Boston Globe, November 1: 29.Canellos, Peter, and Irene Sege. 1989. "Couple shot after leaving hospital; baby delivered." Boston Globe, October 24.Cullen, Kevin. 1989. "Stuart suspect linked to Brookline case." Boston Globe, November 13: 1.Hayes, Constance L. 1990. "Illusion and tragedy coexist after a couple dies." New York Times, January 7.Howe, Peter, and Jerry Thomas. 1989. "Reading woman dies after shooting in car." Boston Globe, October 25.Howe, Peter, Kevin Cullen, and Anthony Flint. 1990. "Police focus on brother, woman." Boston Globe, January 8: 1.Jacobs, Sally. 1989. "Stuart is said to pick out suspect." Boston Globe, December 29: 1.—. 1989. "Stuart reportedly reacted physically to suspect's picture." Boston Globe, November 23: 93.Jacobs, Sally, and Diego Ribadeneira. 1989. "No wallet, so killer opened fire." Boston Globe, October 26: 1.Koh, Elizabeth. 2023. "Stuart shooting timeline." Boston Globe, December 1.Kong, Dolores, and Sally Jacobs. 1989. "Infant of shooting victims dies of respiratory failure." Boston Globe, November 10: 1.Murphy, Sean. 1989. "Man questioned in shooting still held." Boston Globe, November 7: 17.New York Times. 1991. "U.S. won't indict Boston policemen." New York Times, July 5: D7.Rollins, Rachel. 2019. "30 years after Stuart case, Boston still healing." Commonwealth Beacon, November 9.Sharkey, Joe. 2015. Deadly Greed: The Riveting True Story of the Stuart Murder Case. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.Walker, Adrian, Evan Allen, Elizabeth Koh, Andrew Ryan, Kristin Nelson, and Brendan McCarthy. 2023. "The untold story of the Charles and Carol Stuart shooting." Boston Globe, December 1.Stay in the know - wondery.fm/morbid-wondery.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of this episode?
Hey weirdos, I'm Alina. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. Hey, what's up? Hello. I think there is lawnmowers happening outside and there's not a lot we can do. I think you should run out there, run in front of them and say, hey, stop it. I can pull the happening and just lay in front of it. That's not what I said at all. I told you to tell them to stop.
You're like, don't do that. Happening. No, don't happening. Please don't happening. I'm not doing this show alone. No, I will not happening. Hey, hey, hey, she's not happening. It's true.
She's not. She's not. She's tired. She's not happening.
No, this is our last recording before we get to take a little breakie. Yeah. You won't know that we're taking a breakie.
You won't know we're taking a breakie.
Because we breakied ourselves to get all these recordings in.
Yeah, you gotta bulk record to get a breakie. Yep. In these streets. In these streets. So we don't know when this comes out, but there's really nothing pertinent that will affect that. Yeah, I think it comes out like mid-May. You can pre-order the paperback version of The Butcher Game. There you go. Looking for that paperback out there? I see you. I see you. You've been waiting for that paperback.
Beach season is coming. She's bringing paperback. That's my favorite part of the song. It's beach season almost and vacation season and you need a paperback to put in your beach bag.
It's a beach read for sure. My kind of beach read.
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Chapter 2: What was Carol Stuart's early life and background?
Oh, no.
And it bums me out. So let's start at the beginning, though. Carol Ann Damati was born March 26, 1959, in Medford. Medford, kid. Medford, Massachusetts. She was the second of two children born to Justo and Evelyn Damati. She grew up in a multifamily home, which is, you know, all homes around here pretty much. Yeah. Yeah.
Her aunt Rosemary actually lived on the second floor of the house, and there was a lot of extended family in their neighborhood, around their neighborhood. So she and her brother always had a really warm, loving support network all around. I love that. Yeah.
So at the time, Medford was a heavily Italian working class suburb of Boston, which meant that religion and the church were pretty central to the lives of a lot of residents at the time. Yeah.
carol went to st james school which was a catholic school at that time run by nuns she was a really really good student she was well liked by her her teachers her classmates friends of course pretty much everybody agreed that she could be whatever she wanted to be when she was done with school damn she was at the very top of her class and all the classes that she was taking were ap or honors damn which is insane yeah i don't know how people do that not easy no and
And on top of all that, she also would volunteer and she worked in the administrative office before school every morning. Wow. So she woke up early and went to school before she even had to. Oh, so she's really doing the damn thing. The school's headmaster, Sal Todaro, said she'd come into the office in the morning and it was like a ray of light coming in.
Aww.
I know. But according to author Joe Sharkey, who wrote the book Deadly Greed about this case, what teenage Carol wanted most of all was to be, quote, married to a good husband, living in the suburbs with a couple terrific kids happily ever after. Which is really cute and so relatable.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How did Carol and Chuck Stewart meet and develop their relationship?
Because he was the oldest and the firstborn, he was, quote, lavished with attention before it was gradually withdrawn as the Stewart house became crowded with children. Oh, and that's tough. That is tough.
When you're a kid. Yeah.
That's tough.
As an adult, you get the fuck over it. That's the thing. But as a kid, it's tough when you have all the attention, I'm sure. Yeah. I was the youngest, so I don't relate to this at all. Like, I was the one sucking up all the attention, so sorry, siblings. I mean, but then I came around when you were 10. That's true.
So... But I'm sure that's tough when you get all the attention as a kid and then it kind of has to be... Divvied up? Yeah, I'm sure. I wouldn't know.
You're like, me?
I don't know.
I'm like an only child, but also not. So I'm in a weird place in my family.
Yeah, you do have a strange place.
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Chapter 4: What were the key dynamics and issues in Carol and Chuck's marriage?
Which, like, that could be tough to see.
Yeah.
And then there was the matter of him constantly keeping tabs on her. He wasn't what any of her friends would say was overly jealous, but he, quote, always wanted to know exactly where his wife was. Hmm. Which, like... Yeah. You can see that as nefarious. I think it was probably in the way he went about it. Yeah.
Because it could also just be protective. Absolutely it can. And I think it can easily look nefarious with the power of hindsight.
Yes.
I think that's where it gets a little easier to look at things as like, huh. That seemingly innocuous thing was a little weird.
Yeah, looking back. Yeah. And also in tandem with other things. That's the thing. By the late 80s, when Carol started commuting from Reading to her job in the city, Chuck bought her a cell phone so that she could keep in touch with him during the commute.
Another one of Carol's friends, Mark Brady, remembered, she always had this damn car phone, and as soon as we got in the car, she'd pick it up and report in. Which like that, if I was with a friend who constantly was like, oh, I have to let my husband know where I am. I have to call Chuck and report where I am. I'd be like, are you okay? I'd be like, is everything cool? Yeah.
And it sounds like her friends were like, is that, is everything okay? Yeah, like they're just like, is something going on here? Yeah. So by 1987, Chuck also insisted that Carol find a new job closer to home. You don't get to tell me where I work. 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, would this make more sense? Nope.
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Chapter 5: How did Chuck Stewart's behavior and secrets affect their relationship?
But as she pulled onto Mass Ave., they hit a really serious traffic jam that would have had them tied up for a while. The traffic put Chuck in a really bad mood, but they did make it on time, and they went to the class as planned. The class ended a few minutes early, actually, and Carol, who had a lot of questions, was eager to talk to the instructor, but Chuck was like, no, we have to go.
We have to go. Let's get out of here. Wouldn't let her ask any of her questions.
Oh, come on.
Later, when they were interviewed by police, one of the other attendees at the class said Chuck was, quote, really out of it and couldn't wait to get out of the class. That's sad.
Now, the way home from the hospital should have been considerably easier because they didn't have to go back through the city, but Chuck had a habit of going home the same way that they came in, so they headed back into the city, which doesn't make a lot of sense. When you're leaving and you don't have to go through the city again, you aren't going to choose to. No.
But this route took them through Roxbury, which at the time was a pretty dangerous neighborhood. Carol was always nervous driving through this particular area. So Chuck's decision to do so would have probably been cause for alarm, but she trusted him. And he was in the driver's seat, so she wasn't going to argue.
And he'd already been in a bad mood, so she was probably just like, okay, sounds good.
Yeah, I'm sure.
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Chapter 6: What were Carol Stuart's feelings about starting a family?
At a certain point in their trip, Chuck brought the car to a stop at a red light on Huntington Ave, where he claimed they were approached by a young black man who forced his way into the back seat and pressed a gun to Chuck's head.
You know this case. I very much know this case. It took me a minute. I absolutely know this case now. Yep. Yep. Oh, fuck. I hate this guy.
Yeah. Later, Chuck would say the man forced him to drive the car to the Mission Hill area of Roxbury and told him to stop in what Chuck described as a quote-unquote abandoned area across from one of the multi-story public housing projects.
Things got more intense, Chuck said, when the man saw the cell phone in the console between the driver and the passenger seat and thought Chuck was possibly a police officer. He said the man told him, I think you're 5-0. Chuck protested, but he said the man only grew more suspicious because Chuck said he didn't have a wallet when the man asked.
And it was at that point that he said the man shot Carol point blank in the head and shot Chuck once in the stomach and then left.
Hmm.
The call came in the Massachusetts State Police dispatch a little before 9 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 driving home from the hospital when they were carjacked, but that the carjacker shot them and fled, and now he had no idea where they were.
And then he asked the dispatcher, who was frantically trying to figure out their location, should I drive or should I try to drive or should I stay right here?
It's like, why would you try to drive? No, you've been shot. Like, what are you talking? And also, I love that he's like, yeah, I don't know where they are, but I do know they were black. Yeah, that's for sure. Yep, definitely.
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Chapter 7: What happened on the night of October 23, 1989?
I think now it's just the norm, but back then it was like, holy shit, this is happening all the time. Yeah. City Councilor Bruce Bowling told a reporter, people felt as long as all this violence was in the greater Roxbury neighborhood, it's not going to affect us. Now we see it's not confined to a single race or ethnicity.
It was definitely true that violent crimes were touching the lives of both white and black residents. But when it came to the response from law enforcement in this case, in the Stewart case, it seemed to a lot of people that the Stewart case was given much more priority than black victims of crime. Of course.
In Roxbury, the mother of 15-year-old LaRusha Harris criticized Boston police for their inability to make progress on the attempted murder of her daughter while they wasted no time flooding the streets to find Carol Stewart's killer. Yeah, of course. Neighbor Jacqueline Sims told a reporter, "'That's a feeling a lot of Black people have. I do too.
It seems like since the Stewart thing happened, everybody's coming down on the Black area.'" See, look what he caused. Look what he did. Obviously, details and intricacies of murder cases are always very complicated, but it does seem like this murder, the Stewart murder, got far more attention from the press and the police than other incidents of violent crime that occurred in the exact same area.
Yeah. At the exact same time. By their own admission, investigators had no leads and no witnesses, but the morning after the shooting, dozens of Boston police officers were flooded around Mission Hill looking for this man who had killed Carol. Based on the evidence that they did have, they knew the shooter had used a .38 caliber handgun, but there was really little else to go on aside from that.
In a statement to reporters, one investigator said there's no question the perpetrator thought they were police officers. Investigators were convinced that the shooter lived in the Mission Hill neighborhood and believed that he had committed similar crimes in the past. One investigator said somebody in Mission Hill is going to give this guy up.
If not to do the right thing, then just because it will get rid of the heat. Because everybody was upset that there was a huge police presence in this area. Yeah, of course. You know. Meanwhile, the debate over what many saw as unequal protection was growing louder and louder.
Mayor Flynn dismissed the accusations, of course, that the Stewart case was getting more attention because the victims were white. He said, there will be the same aggressive and fair and consistent enforcement of all our laws, regardless of where it takes place. Whatever area or color or ethnicity, it will be handled the same aggressive and fair way by the Boston Police Department.
But in the days that followed, other leaders at City Hall started speaking out with different opinions. David Skondris, a white city councilor who represented the Mission Hill District, said, That's sad.
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