The Infamous Wrongful Convictions Of The Central Park Five
William LaForce Jr./NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesYusef Salaam being led away by a detective after his arrest in April 1989.
While jogging through Central Park on April 19, 1989, a woman named Trisha Meili was raped and brutally beaten to near death. Doctors were all but certain she was going to die. Knowing it would blow up into a media frenzy, the NYPD were working quickly to find whoever was responsible.
They had already detained two 14-year-olds, Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, for “unlawful assembly” in Central Park earlier in the night, and on April 20th, hours after Meili was found, they arrested 15-year-olds Yusef Salaam and Antron McCray, as well as 16-year-old Korey Wise, charging them with assault, robbery, rape, riot, sexual abuse, and attempted murder. The press dubbed them the Central Park Five, and even though they had no clue who Trisha Meili was, they were all sentenced to five to 15 years in prison.
During their interrogations, police reportedly told them they could face life in prison if they didn’t confess. These interrogations lasted between 14 and 30 hours. Afterward, the teens would all say their confessions were coerced.
Meanwhile, 12 days after the attack, Trisha Meili was alive and recovering from a coma. For the next five weeks, she dipped in and out of, as she described it, “delirium,” but she managed to recover from her nearly deadly wounds. It seemed as if everything had been taken care of, but, of course, there was a catch — the Central Park Five had not committed the crime.
Wikimedia CommonsYusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, David McMahon, Ken Burns, and Stephanie Jenkins, pictured with the Peabody Award for The Central Park Five documentary about their wrongful conviction. May 2014.
In reality, the culprit was a serial rapist named Matias Reyes, who had attempted to rape another woman just two days before Trisha Meili’s rape, also in Central Park. In that instance, Reyes was forced to run away because a passerby had seen him, but when he saw Trisha Meili jogging through Central Park that night, nobody was there to stop him.
After the media buzz around the Central Park Five started, Reyes laid low for a little while — but not that long. In June of that year, Reyes broke into the apartment of Lourdes Gonzalez, a 24-year-old mother of three, raped her, and stabbed her in her stomach. She was pregnant at the time, and her three children were forced to listen to everything happening to their mother through the door. She died on her way to the elevator after calling 911.
Reyes tried to attack another woman in her apartment, but she escaped and made it down to the lobby. Two people in the building managed to catch Reyes and hold him down while waiting for police to arrive.
While booked for the attempted rape, Reyes also confessed to Gonzalez’s murder, and he was sentenced to 33.5 years to life in prison for those crimes on November 7, 1991. Shockingly, while in prison, he met Korey Wise, but he kept his mouth shut about Meili for more than a decade. Then, in a surprising twist of conscience, Reyes told investigators the truth: He raped and assaulted Trisha Meili that night, not the Central Park Five.
The statute of limitations had passed, so Reyes was never charged with the crime, but thanks to his confession and the DNA evidence that was uncovered, the Central Park Five were exonerated of the crime on December 19, 2002. They had already served their sentences, but at least they had their records expunged. The Central Park Five also successfully sued the city of New York and received a $41 million settlement.
