On October 23, 1989, affluent businessman Charles Stuart made a frantic 911 call from his car to report that he and his seven-months-pregnant wife, Carol, a lawyer, had been robbed and shot by a black male in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston. By the time police arrived, Carol was dead, and the baby was soon lost as well. The attack incited a furor during a time of heightened racial tension in the community.
Even more appalling, while the injuries were real, Stuart’s story was a hoax: He was the true killer. But the tragedy would continue with the arrest of Willie Bennett, a young man Stuart identified in a line-up. Stuart’s deception would only be exposed after a shocking revelation from his brother and, finally, his suicide, when he jumped into the freezing waters of the Mystic River.
As the story unraveled, police would put together the disturbing pieces of a puzzle that included Stuart’s distress over his wife’s pregnancy, his romantic interest in a coworker, and life insurance fraud. In an account that “builds and grips like a novel” (Kirkus Reviews), New York Times journalist Joe Sharkey delivers “a picture of a man consumed by naked ambition, unwilling to let anyone or anything get in his way” (Library Journal).
Revised and updated, this ebook also includes photos and a new epilogue by the author.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 17, 2017 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781504041744
- File size: 23676 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781504041744
- File size: 25061 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Publisher's Weekly
June 3, 1991
In this reprise for readers not yet sated with the newsmaking case, Sharkey overdramatizes the already sensational 1989 Boston killing in which Charles Stuart fatally shot his pregnant wife Carol, accused a black man, one Willie Bennett, of the crime, thereby causing racial furor, then later jumped to his death from a bridge. In a book that offers no fresh insights--none of the family members or other principals seem to have been interviewed--the character and motivations of those touched by the tragedy remain without definition. Finesse is not Sharkey's metier, as witness his recreation of the murderer's supposed thoughts: he ``felt the cold hand of desperation on his broad shoulder.'' And one wonders if it doesn't dehumanize Carol Stuart's life to state, as the author ( Death Sentence ) grandiloquently would have it, that the case is a metaphor for an era. Photos not seen by PW . First serial to Penthouse.
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Formats
- Kindle Book
- OverDrive Read
- EPUB ebook
Languages
- English
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