Charles Stuart was unhappy in his marriage when he allegedly murdered his pregnant wife, Carol, in October 1989. Then, he claimed that a Black man was responsible for the crime.
HBOOn October 23, 1989 Charles Stuart murdered his wife on their way home from a childbirth class.
On Oct. 23, 1989 Charles Stuart shot and killed his pregnant wife Carol in their car. But that wasn’t the story Stuart told the police.
After murdering his wife, Charles called 9-1-1 and claimed that a Black man had broken into their vehicle and shot both of them. The media swiftly sensationalized the story, resulting in a relentless manhunt targeting Boston’s Black population.
But many people close to Charles Stuart suspected the truth. And it didn’t take long for it to come out.
The Murder Of Carol Stuart In 1989
On the night of Oct. 23, 1989, Charles Stuart, the general manager at an upscale fur store, and his wife Carol, a lawyer, were headed home from a childbirth class at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Carol was seven months pregnant, and the couple was preparing to welcome their first child. But only one of them would come home that night.
HBOCarol and Charles Stuart were expecting their first child when Charles murdered her.
According to the story that Charles told the police, he and his wife had just left the hospital when a Black man in a tracksuit attacked their vehicle as they sat at a red light. Charles claimed that the man tried to rob them, and then shot them both — Carol in the head, and Charles in the abdomen.
“My wife’s been shot. I’ve been shot,” Charles Stuart cried in his 911 call , according to reporting from Time in January 1990. “Oh, man. It hurts. And my wife has stopped gurgling. She’s stopped breathing.”
Though the dispatcher tried to get Charles Stuart to provide his location, Charles obfuscated. The police found him by following the sound of sirens over the phone, but by then it was too late for Carol and her unborn baby.
Carol Stuart died the next morning at 2:50 a.m. Her child, though delivered via a caesarean section, suffered from trauma and oxygen deprivation and was nine week premature. He died just 17 days later.
In the aftermath of her death, Charles Stuart wrote his wife a farewell letter which read: “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… We must know that [God’s] will was done. In our souls, we must forgive the sinner, because He would.”
Meanwhile, the Boston police began to search for Carol Stuart’s killer.
The Boston Police Search For A Black Suspect
The murder of Carol Stuart shocked and horrified Boston — and the entire nation. The city’s mayor, Raymond Flynn, promised that the city would be aggressive in hunting down the man who killed her and her baby.
“I demand that the Boston Police Department continue to be extremely aggressive in cracking down on people who are using guns to kill innocent people,” Flynn stated on Oct. 24, 1989, the day after the “carjacking.” “It’s intolerable. We will use every lawful tool to support our police officers in cracking down on gun-wielding criminals.”
Wikimedia CommonsCharles Stuart told the police a Black man had carjacked the vehicle, shooting him and his wife.
One hundred extra police officers were called in to scour Mission Hill, the predominantly Black neighborhood where the shooting had taken place. As Boston lawmakers debated reinstating the death penalty, the police used aggressive stop-and-frisking techniques and even strip searches on Black residents they deemed suspicious. Meanwhile, the Boston Globe confidently reported that the gunman lived or operated around the Mission Hill housing project, and that he had committed several similar crimes already.
But as the investigation continued, many close to Charles Stuart began to feel uneasy. According to reporting fromThe New York Times in January 1990, one of Charles’ friends remembered him bitterly complaining about his wife in September 1989, expressing concern that Carol would not return to her lucrative job as a lawyer after her baby was born. Then, to the friend’s shock, Charles Stuart suggested they team up to kill her.
Indeed, an estimated 33 people likely knew the truth before the police did — that Charles Stuart, not an anonymous Black man, had murdered Carol. But it wasn’t until the police made an arrest that December that the truth finally came out.
At that point, the police arrested Willie Bennett, a Black man and an ex-convict, whose nephew had allegedly made a joke about Bennett being the killer. Charles Stuart reportedly had a “strong physical reaction” when he saw Bennett in a police lineup, but the police had also placed Bennett alongside a group of clean-cut, Boston cops.
After Bennett’s arrest, seemingly driven by guilt, one of Charles Stuart’s brothers reached out to the police.
Charles Stuart’s Lies Catch Up To Him
In January 1989, Charles Stuart’s brother, Matthew, told investigators that he had been involved in Carol Stuart’s murder — but he hadn’t known it was a murder. Instead, Matthew thought that he was participating in a jewelry insurance scam.
On the night of the murder, Matthew claimed that he had met his brother near Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Charles gave him a Gucci bag with Carol’s jewelry and a gun, which Matthew threw into a nearby river.
Matthew told the police he had no idea his brother was going to kill his wife. However, the lawyer for another of Charles’ brothers, Michael, stated that Charles had asked Michael for his help killing Carol weeks before her murder.
With investigators moving closer to the truth, Charles Stuart died by suicide. Early in the morning on January 4, he drove to the Tobin Bridge over the Mystic River — and jumped.
Chensiyuan/Wikimedia CommonsBoston’s Tobin Bridge, where Charles Stuart died by suicide.
The state was never given the chance to convict Charles Stuart for murdering his wife. However, Matthew Stuart was found guilty of obstruction of justice and insurance fraud. He died of a drug overdose in 2011.
The Fallout Of A Sensationalized – And Damaging – Murder Case
The story of Carol Stuart’s murder became a media sensation thanks to both local and national coverage of the murder and subsequent manhunt.
The media seemed to believe Stuart’s claims wholeheartedly. In fact, when Bennett was taken in by the police, some news outlets reported it as fact that he had committed the murder even though he had not gone to trial.
According to a retrospective by the Harvard Gazette, the way in which the story was covered inflamed racial tensions, and led to unfair — and often brutal — police profiling in Black neighborhoods.
Indeed, shortly after Stuart’s suicide, Mayor Flynn apologized to the Bennett family on behalf of the city.
More recently in December 2023, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu apologized not only for Bennett’s wrongful arrest, but for the treatment of Black people throughout the city by police during the investigation.
YouTubeBoston Mayor Michelle Wu apologized for the Charles Stuart case in 2023.
But Carol Stuart’s family was determined to make something good out of a terrible tragedy. In the aftermath of her death, they set up a memorial fund to provide scholarships to recent high school graduates in the Mission Hill area. Bennett’s daughter was later awarded a scholarship from the fund.
It couldn’t bring Carol back, but at least it was a way to find a sliver of good out of something awful.
“All she ever wanted,” her father said, “was to be a good daughter, wife, and mother, and be happy in her life.”
After reading about Charles Stuart and the murder of Carol Stuart, go inside the sad story of Phil Hartman, the comedian who was murdered by his wife. Or, discover the gruesome story of John List, the man who murdered his entire family — and got away with it for 18 years.
