All right. I'll just start the tape and check.

This episode contains some offensive language and descriptions of violence. It may not be appropriate for all listeners.

One, two, three, four, five, and then I'm going to put a stop on it. All right, I'm just starting the tape to chat just now, and we're going to talk. All right. You know my name is Peter O'Meilly. Yes. I'm a detective in the harmist nightclub. Yes. This is Miller Thomas. He's a detective and he's my partner. You know his name? Yes. We have been talking to you for some time, so you're familiar with the both of us? Yes. 9:29 PM, and today is November third, it's a Friday. You're at the homicide unit, which is Old district Sixth in.

South Boston. It's been almost two weeks of panic since the killing of Carol Stewart. Two weeks of questionable searches to two weeks of national attention on this heinous act of violence. The pressure is immense, and police are chasing the most promising lead yet.

All right, listen. I would say the cordionate. Derek Jackson, D-R-E-K-J-K-S-O-N-E. Where do you live, Cabage? 185 Cabage Street, Boston. How old are you? 17. Are you out of school? Yes. I'm a killer of the tech. How did you happen to come here tonight?

By free will. Detective Peter O'Malley is known as a closer. He solves cases. He's almost a cliché of an old school detective. White Irish, thick Boston accent, a bit of a punch.

You come in here because we asked you to, because we have received information that you were told by somebody about the steward shooting that happened over a mission project. Is that right?

Yes. Derek Jackson isn't the only teenager being interrogated that night. An 18-year-old named Eric Whitney was in another room. Detective O'Malley is walking back and forth between the two friends.

That Tuesday, we were sitting down to smoke weed, grass. You were a pretty joy. You were a presence when someone spoke about the Stuart murder. Is that true?

Yes. O'malley is working one of the biggest murder cases in Boston history. He's getting squeezed. His boss and the mayor, they want the killer caught. O'malley chain smokes through his interviews. You can practically smell his breath through the tape.

Let's get close so that we won't miss a word. You tell the story.

He's getting frustrated. The truth just doesn't come easy. But the teenagers he's talking to, well, all they want is to go home, a world away from this homicide office in Southie. They're Black and Southie is hostile territory.

Does that mean you're nervous, does your hands are sweating? I think I'm scared. You're scared? Do I look like I'm going to beat you up? No. What are you scared of? I'm scared of death.

The police have spent the last 12 days searching for the skinny black man in the tracksuit, the guy who reportedly shot Chuck Stewart and killed Chuck's wife, Carol. In fact, police have already arrested one guy, a homeless man with a drug problem who happened to have a tracksuit soaking in his sink. He spent 10 days in jail, and then police quietly let him go. Now, there's a new tip about a different skinny black man who's been out there bragging about what he did. And this story has been swirling around Mission Hill. It all started with a bunch of teenagers smoking weed in somebody's bedroom, talking trash and passing a bomb. And now it's gotten all the way to O'Malley.

The first thing I said to myself, Oh, my God. Did Eric kill this lady? Or does he have something to do with this?

That's exactly what he said. You're fucking lying. Tell us what happened. And I kept telling him I don't know because I.

Didn't know. I said what they wanted me to say. Do I regret it?

Yes.

You see, murder cases are made in the interrogation room, and here O'Malley is earning his paycheck. But the detective is at the end of this long game of telephone. He's trying to figure out what happened during the smoke session to make sense of the story these teenagers are sharing, which has gotten twisted with each telling. So this is going to be a complicated episode. It's all about this rumor that came out of a teenage smoke session. You're going to hear several people telling different versions of this story. You'll hear where it started, where it went, and how these teenagers ended up here in Southeast, sucking in Peter O'Malley's cigarette smoke. This is all going to make sense soon, or maybe not. So sit tight.

I'mspeak-aport. Speak-aport. I'm Adrian Walker, and this is Murder in Boston: The Untold Story of the Charles and Carol Stewart shooting. Episode four, The Suspect.

The story goes. Derek Jackson told Eric Whitney.

Somebody asked us.

Something about a run. I think it was Derek, Eric, and Man, a Reverend, I call him Man.

And.

Eric was in that room.

With Willy. You first told your mother, Mr. And he told you. We're a Reverend, you know Reverend?

Eric and Derek.

Eric was in a room with Willy and Derek Jackson.

Hes that Willy and Derek told you that Willy.

Told him. They're sitting in the apartment and Willy.

Comes in. He's a M.

Derek II. Eric and Derek, I referred to as.

Nitten Witten.

I didn't even know that Eric knew Willy.

Pete and repeat. This is the.

One, remember? My uncle came in.

My uncle is the one that did the robbery.

And showed them a gun.

And shows them a gun.

What are you telling me now? That was not essential.

And there's three bullets missing.

Okay, you heard a lot of names right there, but let's start with Eric.

My name is Eric Whitney, W-H-I-T-N-E-Y.

Eric's the reason police know about the smoke session.

He was a bagger for stop and I was a cashier on Westland Avenue, and that smile. I was doing my thing, and I turned around and I was just, Oh, my God. His smile. I was sold by the smile. I am Angela Brittle, and I am the former girlfriend of Eric Whitney.

Angela was 17 when she met Eric.

Oh, girl. Oh, girl. Girl, girl, girl. He was five-five. He weighed about 140, 45 pounds. He was very slim. He had a long torso and he was built like DMX. He had the muscles. He could wear the wife beater. He had a flat stomach and he had six-pack. Okay. And he was like a chocolate brown. He had long eyelashes like a girl. Waves for days. You could just drown on them, girl. Oh, my goodness. And he cleaned his sneakers every day with a toothbrush and soap every single day. And he cleaned his face with ivory snow.

Angela was living with her mom, and her home life was pretty chaotic. Eric was exciting and a little dangerous.

He picked me up in a freaking stolen car, and I was in that stolen car, went to Mission Hill Projects for the first time. Man, listen, I went into the projects. Like, Mission Hill, you didn't go into Mission Hill projects. I'm from Dorchester. I will fight. I was what you call a hood rat, like high top of Dypth of tight jeans, carefree curl, pony tail, lollipop in the head. That was me. But, Mission Hill? Oh, no. The projects?

They started dating. Eric was a funny mix of earnestness and swagger. He was sweet with Angela and cool with his friends. Beneath his tough guy act, Angela saw vulnerability.

He was a typical street. That's what he said. He's like his Daddy. He pimps, hoes, and stem cat and black doors. I'm like, one of them cats. But a little did anyone know he was a whole handful of virgin. Yeah, yeah. I was his first. I'm sure none of his guys knew that he was king virgin. I would have never known. Fine as he was with that beautiful smile.

That was Eric playing the big man. Underneath it all was an insecure kid looking for love.

He was always searching for that attention or affection from his mother, and sometimes she failed him in that area.

This is the thing you need to know about Eric to understand why police wound up focusing on these teenagers. Because when he heard the rumor about who killed Carol Stewart, the first person that Eric told wasn't a cop. It was his mom. He was trying to impress her. Eric's mom happened to be friends with a Boston cop. So she told her cop friend, her cop friend told homicide, and then homicide detectives were all over Eric. But Eric wouldn't talk. He didn't want anything to do with the because he had warrants out for his arrest. So the cops tried a different tactic. Angela's uncle was a police officer. His name is Wilber Briddle.

I'm sitting.

At my desk.

One day.

I'm a duty supervisor, One day, a homicide detective went into B-2, looking for Wilbert.

He comes in.

He got a cigar, he looks at me and he goes, and he tells me like, We're trying to get a hold of your niece's boyfriend.

Because he.

Told his mother-.

So Wilber went looking for Eric.

That was the morning that Uncle Wilbert came to the house. He knocked at the door and the house was asleep. I think it was late morning or early afternoon, and they said, Uncle Wilber. Eric was such a criminal. He was such a criminal-minded guy. Eric was out. As soon as he heard it was my Uncle Wilber, he was out. He left out the back door and was gone to Carbon Square.

Wilber told Angela that Eric wasn't in trouble.

He just said, Angela, the police, my superiors, want you to come and bring in Eric. They want to talk to Eric, and they want you to come in with him so that he'll come and know that he's not going to be arrested. I didn't know what it was about.

So later that day, Angela convinced Eric to go to homicide with Wilber.

We go down to homicide, and.

We get into.

Homicide, and they have.

Warrants that Eric has.

Against someone. They have taped up.

Against the wall, say, Those warrants are for you, but you need to cooperate with us, so we're going to activate them.

The homicide office is packed with cops. Everybody wants to hear this interview, but it's clear the guy running the show is Peter O'Malley.

I'm going to stop it.

All.

Right, I just started the tape. Check this now or.

We're going to talk. O'malley is a Korean war vet and a long-time detective. He is an imposing figure. People call him the Colonel.

The student murder happened on October 23rd. It was a Monday evening.

These recordings of O'Malley's interviews haven't been heard widely before. We helped locate them in the basement of a retired judge.

Yes, sir. I want you to check. Where are you?

Eric describes the smoke session that happened the day after the murder at his buddy's house. Usually, a bunch of teenagers get high, drink 40s, and play Nintendo. On this day, they're talking about the biggest story in Boston.

It was during the out, and we were smoking bomb, as we were saying, bomb, B-O-N-G, which is myerwap. Yes. Okay.

Some of the tape is hard to hear. It's old and worn cassette tape. And the homicide unit was right next to the airport, so you can hear the planes flying overhead.

Wheel low.

But if you listen closely, you can hear the story detectives were after. Eric wasn't even at the house that day, but one of the guys who was there started running his mouth.

What did he tell you? He told me that he knew he was coming to jail.

Eric's friend who was in the smoke session said he knew who did it, and the friend even referenced the tractor. That's where the.

Black and D, they're the Black with the rest of rights.

Eric's pal who was telling him all of this is Derek, who goes by D, and Derek had details about the shooter.

Derek.

Said.

That he said, He was in the car. He got out the car, got into the stoke, came in his car. So give me the money you need to water. So he came to the washroom. He took that. He got out. He saw the stoke man reach for or whatever. He died of his father.

Eric says Derek told him the suspect got into the steward's car, robbed them, and then ran when he thought Chuck was a police officer. Five-0. How does Eric know all this?

Well… Two heads told Derrick and then D and the tongue told me. I didn'ttell her. When you try to be, I told my mother. Like I.

Said, it was a game of telephone.

It was eight or nine officers in this small room, and me and Eric sitting in there, and multiple officers asked him questions at the same time. It was the first time I ever saw Eric scared.

Angela was in the interrogation room with Eric for a long time, while the cops walked him through his statement over and over.

We were facing each other in the chairs and my back was to the door. The door opened and Eric looked like a ghost. He was scared and the guy goes, You know who I am? If I'm not mistaken, I think he said, You know who the fuck I am? And Eric shook his head, I'm scared. Yeah. And he's like, Who am I? And he said, Dunn.

Billy Dunn, the legend.

I'm like, Well, who scared Eric? I turned around and I was like, Oh, shit. I was scared. It was this big, massive force of white man. He was big. He was a scary man. I was like, Shit. Can I leave the room? So Billy.

Is there in the room that night.

I sat in on the frequent flyers up at mission's interviews, only because I was the interpreter. I was only a patrolman. I was the lowest rung on the ladder. So I was the gofer.

Billy's fingerprints are all over this part of the story. They brought him in because he knew Mission Hill, and he knew the kids who were spreading this rumor, Eric and Derek.

Eric and Derek, I referred to as Nitten-witt. Pete and repeat. Two kids that I don't know if they were just stupid or just their luck really sucked because they didn't do much and didn't get caught. And then you'd tell you about it. So they were regular kids other than they do a robbery here and there.

Lead Detective O'Malley thought Billy could coax the truth from the teenagers.

O'malley said the only lie detectivetest, supposedly he pointed at me, but the only lie detective test we have is Billy Dunn. That was the statement.

Billy was O'Malley's boots on the ground in Mission Hill. When the police heard about the story, going through the neighborhood, they sent Billy out to find Derek.

We'd like to talk to this guy. Don't make him come in. If he wants to come in, go get him. And that's what we did.

In fact, the cops went to Derek's school. Ruth Goff was a social worker there.

The Friday that they came to the school, they called and said they were coming. They wanted us to verify that he was there, but they did not want us to tell him that they were coming. I have red flags about the police calling up, asking about people's children. If it's not your mother or your father, why are you calling me?

Who are you?

My instincts about white cops back then and black children was, Who are you and why are you calling me?

Billy and another cop show up at the school to try to talk to Derek, but Ruth isn't having it.

Is he under arrest? No, he's not under arrest. Well, okay, so why are you here? We just want him to go for a ride. I'm looking at Derek. Derek is looking at me shaking his head. I said, in the police car? He said, Yeah. I said, Who ever heard of anybody going for a ride with the police and they ain't under arrest? Whoever heard of that? No, he don't want to go for a ride. He's a black male. We live in Boston. White police officers. I just had a basic distrust. That was my job not to let him be taken advantage of. White kids don't get in trouble because they always got a lawyer. Youknow, we get in trouble because we don't have sense enough. We always want to talk and be friendly. You can't be friendly with the police.

For Ruth, loses the battle. Billy Dunn leaves the school without Derek, but picks him up later that night and sits him down across from Detective O'Malley.

That Tuesday, do you remember where you went? Yes. Where was that? I went to Tootop. Toot? Toot. T-o-o-t? Correct. I've shown you a Boston police charter, which number is 341-227. And you say that that is the man you know as Toot? Yes. Young man. And his real name on our record is Joey Bennett.

Joey Bennett. We're coming back to him. For now, all you need to know is that the pot smoking happened in Joey, aka Toots, bedroom in Mission Hill, the day after the murder.

We were sitting down to invite us over his house to smoke weed, grass.

And we sat down. I sat.

Down on the couch, and at this time, as we were walking to the house, and up the stairs, this guy had appeared and he had went before me. And we all went upstairs. And the guy that I didn't know as Wayne Bennett at that time had went to the bathroom and we all went into truth room and we closed the door and I sat down. Clude turned on the Nintendo game. He turned on the.

Radio very loud.

While you were in there, did somebody tell you something about the shooting the night before? Yes. Who was that? Two. What did he tell you? He said that his uncle had committed this crime and shot the steward, Fenn. Did he say how he knew? He said his uncle told him. He didn't tell you anything else about it. That was it. He just told me. And when he told me, he laughed.

Willy Bennett. Willy's name was well-known to just about every detective and cop in Boston. He had a legendary status in the toughest corners of Mission Hill. Willy Freaken-Bennett. I was a wild one. Yeah, I was wild. I didn't give.

A damn.

I had a.

Reputation in the project.

Willy.

Bennett.

He's probably third.

Grade, but.

He's sumo con.

Laudie on the street.

Nobody would ever argue that.

Willy Bennett was an angel in the community. Long-time career criminal, no education, a street thug. And he had a record, a long record. Did you say he's a bad person.

Or a good?

Yes, no doubt. One of the baddest, evil.

The stories people tell about Willy's exploits, they may sound mythic, but they're basically true. And around the time of the Stewart shooting, Willy had recently gotten out of prison for a shootout with the cops.

Willy shot at an MDC policeman.

Willy robbed a paraplegic and took his legs. Willy is a.

Tough man. So yeah, Willy had a reputation. He shows up in a lot of places.

In this town, there was a knock at the door, and it was Mr. Bennett.

Derek tells the cops that Willy has been there in two-years-old at his house the whole time the boys were smoking pot and playing video games.

He came in and he said that he did this crime. He said how he did it. He got in the car. He told him to don't look behind in the rear view mirror. He took their money or whatever.

And.

The guy made a motion. And Mr. Viness said, You're five-year-old, and he shot him.

Derek says that Willy even showed the teenagers the old silver gun he used. They passed it around and two put the gun under his bed. Willy told them he did it all for money.

He said all these things without you asking him any questions.

Why.

Was he telling you this? He just came on and did it.

I know what it… This is a true story. You can't make this shit up. Oh, but they did make it up. Sorry about that. I'm not making this shit up. They made it up. This is a true story.

This is Toot, or Joey Bennett, as he likes to be called today.

Supposedly, all this came about that Toot and his uncle was kekeke and laughing and saying that, Willy said he killed them and passed Toot the gun and all this, and none of that never happened.

Joey's memory of the exchange is very different from what Eric and Derrick told O'Malley back in 1989. Yeah, they smoked some pot and played some video games, but the whole thing about his uncle's confession and Joey's bragging, Joey says that's bullshit.

My version is that I never told Derek that. Eric Whitney was never in my house. My uncle never killed these people or this lady or shot Chuck. My uncle never was even in the house when we was there.

Joey does remember that Willy's name came up. You're not going to believe this, but Joey says it all started with a Boston Globe article. Yeah, I know. In Joey's room, he had a framed globe story from 1981 about his Uncle Willy, and the headline reads, You're not going to take me alive. But they did.

Somebody was like, Yo, who's that? I was like, Oh, that's my Uncle Willy. What's that? Oh, that's when he shot at the police and they finally caught up to his ass and he said, dang, I'll take him out alive, and he got shot in the hand and he walked out alive.

Joey remembers they did talk a bit about Willy's criminal hijinks, but it was a short conversation, and Joey didn't think much of it.

Nothing else is being said of it. Nothing. No conversation whatsoever. We're smoking a blunt. Next thing I know is a whole other story told.

Joey's decision to have some pals over to smoke pot and play video games, he regrets it to this day.

That decision was the decision that altered, not even altered, fucked up our lives.

Look, this story of the Stuart shooting in Mission Hill, it's been told a lot of times before this podcast. There's no denying it's a gripping true crime tale. But there's this whole world of people that have never spoken because what they have to say doesn't fit neatly into the plot of a thriller with easy good guys and bad guys. Joey, he's complicated. He's never really talked about the Stuart killing before. It took me more than a year to get him to sit down.

Protect the family. Protect the family. Protect the family. Protect the family. You know that, Adrian. Yes, I do. This interview didn't come easy.

I've done this 37 years, and this is the longest I've ever chased anybody.

Congratulations.

So.

You're going to hear a lot of my interview with Joey. You'll also hear significant tape of Joey from an interview he did for a documentary series funded and distributed by HBO and the Mac Streaming Service. We contributed to it. This podcast is also funded in part by HBO and distributed by them as well. We need to be transparent here. The production company that made the HbO series entered into a financial agreement with Joey Bennett. Hbo says it is part of a standard archive licensing agreement for the use of family photos and audio materials and that the arrangement is in line with industry practices. That agreement includes a confidentiality clause. It's different in our world. According to Globe Guidelines, journalists can't pay for materials like this. We'll spend more time in a later episode talking about the legacy of this case, what's owed to those involved, and who gets to profit off their stories. But for now, let's get back to it.

This story has to be told from our family because it's our time. It's time for the world to hear what really happened.

The Bennetts are one of the OG families in the Mission Maine Housing Project. Joey grew up there in the '80s.

Used to play marbles, ride dirtbikes, playing the Fire hydrants out in the middle of the streets. We used to block off the streets. We used to earn money by cleaning people's cars. Also, we were just playing with them as a kid. That was our swimming pool, so to say. The block parties in the neighborhood where it was just all family, all friends. We would always out, have a good time sometimes. Just growing up was a beautiful thing in my neighborhood.

But Joey knows a lot of people saw his neighborhood differently.

Gettled poor, ran down, poverty-stricken, bad people, all that.

Remember, this is the late '80s, just a couple of years after crack took hold in Boston, and most certainly in Mission Hill.

That's when the violence really started. People were robbing each other because some people had to get what they had to get and money wasn't plentiful in the project, so you had to figure out how to get money. It was hard.

I.

Grew up. I had to take care of my brother, my mom, sometimes. My dad wasn't around and I had to grow up and take care of me and my little brother. So at a young age, I started selling drugs out of my mother's house at like 12 years old, 1986.

Think about that. A 12-year-old selling crack out of his mother's house.

It was just survival and taking care of my little brother. Then I couldn't stash it in the house. One day I went to school and I left it in my sleeve. When I went up to the gym to play basketball, there was an officer there that came upstairs and I seen him with my coat. He was like, Is this your coat? I'm like, Yeah, that's my coat. He looked out to drugs like these are drugs. I was like, Those ain't my drugs. I wind that was my first experience with going to jail over selling drugs.

Eventually, Social Services removed Joey and his brother from his mother's custody, and they go live with their grandmother.

That was one of the best things that happened to me because my grandmother was always a loving lady. But to live with her and to get that love that my mother wasn't giving me, it was so rewarding.

But his grandmother's love wasn't enough to put him back on the right path. He's angry. He starts carrying guns at 13, gets shot at 14. He's running with grown men, stealing cars from Logan Airport before he's old enough to drive, but he's just a kid.

I was just scrony. I was about 120 pounds, about 5'7, but my heart was across my chest, so I was bigger than my stature.

This is when everyone starts to use his childhood nickname, Toot.

When I used to have to go to school, I used to have my tape cassette walkman where I used to steal my tape Cassette from strawberry records, and I used to listen to my music and it used to be N-W-A. Fuck the police coming straight from the underground. Young mish and got it back because I'm brown. Fuck the police. Angry music. Then with an attitude, Fuck the police. Yes, music like that. That was the music that was being played in the neighborhood.

In his rage and alienation, Joey looked to his uncle, Willy Bennett.

My uncle was more like a ghetto celebrity. He was what some people would refer to as a badass, and he protected our family.

Joey followed his every move.

I just watched as a kid, just watched. I'm a sponge for things like that. I learned just watching. Even when he didn't know I was watching, I was watching. I had my mind made up. I wanted to be like my uncle, so I just started gang-banging. I wanted the reputation that my uncle had.

Willy had girlfriends and kids in several cities, and he was a fly dresser: linen suits, suede jackets, trench coats, and a serious shoe game. Everybody called him Wild Bill.

Wild Bill. He was wild.

Who gave him that?

The streets. He was wild. My uncle loved people. He just hated cops. He just hated cops.

The feeling was mutual. Here's Billy Dunn, talking about the first time you met Willy, not long after Willy got out of prison, sometime in the '80s.

We're going through the projects one night and we know Willy was out. And we see a guy standing in a dark doorway and we didn't recognize him, but he looked familiar. I pull up, What's your name? You know my name. I know your name. I said, What's my name? He said, Dunn. I said, Very good. Now, what's your name? Willy. I said, Willy Bennett? He said, Yeah. So I said, Jeez, I heard a lot about you. And he said, I heard a lot about you. And if you get in my way, I'll kill you. I said, If you get in my way, I'll kill you. I think I'll kill you first because you just gave me the heads up. So I don't trust you ever. And I said, Get out of here. So he left. He walked away. He had a hoodie up. And that's the first time I met him.

So when the cops heard that Willy was walking around Mission Hill, telling everybody who would listen that he shot the Stewart, it made sense. In fact, Eric and Derek weren't the first people to tell police that they should look at Willy for the killing. They just had the most specific story. But Willy's name shows up, along with dozens of others, on police tip sheets collected from hotline calls from the public in the days after the killing. We found those tip sheets. One read, word on the street is, Bennett did it. Willy's name is on everybody's lips.

So then other people started talking. There was a Lady, Mary Smith, who said that the night of the shooting, she's seen Willy Bennett run through Block City wearing a running suit. Then there was another girl, Tony Jackson said that Willy told her that the bullet was meant for the man and not the woman. There was a young kid. I don't know what he told them, but supposedly he's saying something. So there was all kinds of things coming in, but it was the people around Willy that said he did it.

But it's not going to be that clean. Even though a lot of people are talking about Willy, the best evidence the cops have comes from Eric and Derek. But a day after those two give their statements in that smoky interview room, they come back to police. They want to take the statements all back. They want to recant.

Can you tell the machine where you came into the light to me last night? When my dad said he was going to come back, my bootie gave me 20 years of life where I flipped out. I was scared. I can't.

Not say anything. Here's Eric back at homicide saying the story he told about Willy was not true. Willy never said he was the killer.

What are you telling me now? That was never said to you. That was never said to me. And you told your mother that? I told my mother that. But where did you get that story? I made that story up. You made.

That story up? O'malley's pissed. You can hear his voice go up several octaves. It could be because the tape is old and stretched. Nonetheless, it's clear the intensity picks up.

You were lying to me in a homicide investigation? Well, tell them to me the answer. Were you lying to me last night? Yes. Why were you lying to me in a murder investigation? Tell them to clean that. I told you that. I was trying to get my booty off me. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You tell them to the machine very slowly why you lied to me. And you know this is a murder investigation of the woman that got shot. It was made very, very clear to you. Now you tell that machine why you lied to me in this homicide case. The reason why I lied to you, because you becauseyou know?

You all had got my girl. His girl, Angela Brittle.

She told me the same thing. You told me when I first came up here, and I knew I had them two.

Warrants out. Eric knew he had out for his arrest.

I wanted to get it. I wanted to smooth by it, get my warrant and stuff done.

I mean, took him out. He didn't want to get arrested. He wanted the cops to drop the warrants.

I tried to play by it. When he was asking the questions, I was adding on to try to make it look good for me.

So when they asked him questions, he said what he thought they wanted to hear.

And I could get out of this building the same.

Day I came in. And then he could go home. The longer the interrogation goes, the more O'Malley presses.

That mean you're nervous? Does your hands are sweating? I think I'm scared. You're scared? Do I look like I'm going to beat you up? No. What are you scared of? Wrong death.

We don't know what Eric Whitney would say if anybody asked him about this case today. He was stabbed to death in 1999. But Derek Jackson is around.

I.

Said what they wanted me to say.

Derek says that Joey did tell him Willy killed the Stewart, but he never heard it from Willy himself. He just passed Joey's story onto Eric.

I ran my mouth.

And told Eric. Eric told his mother.

And the lie just kept going until the police got it. And then when the police got it, this is what happened.

He told us why he and Eric told the police the story.

They had me down there in this room like you see on TV, in this room dark with a bunch of white dudes who don't like me. I'm in Saudi. You have to understand what Saudi was in the '80s. Nine, I'm in the '80s.

For a kid like this.

Coming from Roxbury.

And you got a bunch of old white cops sitting around with Fat Billy Dunne there, right here in my face.

And Peter O'Malley was asking the questions.

Is the one who came in. How did you happen to come here tonight? By free will. We've been in touch with you by telephone when you asked you to come in here? Yes. And you did? Yes.

When Derek hears that old tape of himself, today he hears.

A scared kid.

I heard it in my voice.

The pause and the thought about it.

Derek tried to recant the same night as Eric, but the cops didn't believe their second version. They were locked in on wild bill, and the teens had already given them what seemed like enough ammo to make a case against Willy. Remember, all of this began with Eric Whitney. It was set in motion when he told his mom about a rumor he heard, and then his girlfriend, Angela, convinced him to go to the police. Angela remembers feeling a deep sense of foreboding about everything they'd said in motion.

What did we just get into? You know, what's going to happen now? What's going to get set off now? Because this is a pregnant woman. This is a white woman. This is not going to roll over easy. Thank God I don't live in Mission Hill.

Good evening. I'm Mark Weyland.

Welcome to this.

News-seven.

Late update. Topping news-seven tonight, Boston police remain typed-lipped about what could be a major break in the investigation into the shootings of Chuck and Carol Stewart. Police make their move on Willy, Search Warren in hand. They raid three different homes where he's laid his head. The raid on his mother's house in Mission Hill is captured by TV news cameras..

Thank you very much.

The media gather across the street from homicide and follow the police to Mission Hill in a caravan with cameras rolling.

As I lift up the shade, I can just see a line of men with big shields in their hands just marching down the hill.

That's Sherita Bennett, Willy's niece. That night, she was seven years old, watching TV with her grandma.

I looked at her and said, Ma, I said, There's some people coming down the hill. They're police. But before she tried to get to the window, that's when we heard the banging. So there was a door that you had to get in before you could actually get to the house door. So we can just hear them just banging and banging and banging on that.

The cops take a sledgehammer to the door. They're looking for Willy, but they'll take what they can get, whether that's evidence, interviews with family members, whatever. And guess who's leading the charge? Billy Dunn.

I was there. Tell me what happened. I knocked on the door. I knocked on the door and announced police, and then I stepped back and they hit the door. People didn't open the door.

You didn't just see that slush ham in his hand? I'm not fucking crazy. He had to hit that shit down. I remember him hitting that shit down. He had that shit in his hand. He was going to bust him right in the fucking head with it. So they hit that door. And when they hit that door, that's when all hell broke loose. You see what I said? They had the shields and the black mask and the hoodies.

So somehow, some way, they managed to get in.

The Benets run for the door.

And as we're coming down, they're already in, coming up the stairs, pulling us down the stairs. And when we finally got down the stairs, they told us to sit on the couch. So as we're downstairs, they all just rush upstairs. At this point, we can hear the guns clicking from the guns they had. So we could just hear the guns click, click, click, and they're just yelling, Freeze, freeze. And at this point, they're just ramshacking the whole house.

Photos show the Bennett's stuff strewn everywhere. And to make that mess, the cops find something. The detectives tore a hole in the wall and collected a 38 caliber bullet that was lodged deep in the plaster. The same type of bullet that killed Carol Stewart. They also grabbed a bag of white powder in a jewelry box.

They said they found powder cocaine in my bedroom. I just told you I saw crack. I didn't have no powder cocaine. I saw crack. But it was all a ploy for them to get me out of that house and down to that police station.

The cops didn't find Willy there, but they grabbed 15-year-old Joey and took him to the homicide office in Salfie. They asked Joey about the smoke session in his bedroom, the rumor that started all of this. They wanted him to confirm what Eric and Derrick told him about his uncle.

But I wouldn't crack. I would not say what they wanted me to say, and they could not understand how a 15-year-old boy was not afraid of the Boston police, homicide, detective. After threatening me with beating me up, whether sending me to wall to wall for lying with my uncle, charging me with accessory. After the fact, I'm going to wall pole with my uncle. We're going to grow old. He's going to die, I'm going to get old. All that type of stuff was said to me at 15 years old.

He wouldn't tell police what they wanted to hear.

Like I said, the difference between me, Derrick, and Eric was I was raised by a gangster, so I don't crack under pressure.

Willy wasn't in Mission Hill that night. Cops picked him up at his girlfriend's place in the suburbs, and they booked him into jail on an old traffic charge.

The Bennett apartment is in disarray after Boston detectives and the chief.

Assistant district attorney for.

Homicide searched.

Their home early Saturday.

Morning for 39-year-old William Bennett.

Privately a source close to.

The investigation says the Roxbury man is a suspect in the Stewart murder case. Burlington police arrested Bennett for a defaulted.

Boston traffic warrant at his girlfriend's Burlington home yesterday morning.

Bennett's mother insists her son is not.

Guilty of.

Any crime. What happened.

Here last.

Night, Miss.

What happened? They tore my house all apart. What? And they tore my money. How do you.

Feel when.

You see that newspaper.

Story this morning saying your son is the number one suspect in the Stewart case? How do I feel? But I said I know he didn't do it.

Willy wasn't charged with the murder, at least not immediately. Prosecutors were able to keep him jailed on other unrelated charges while they continued to build their murder case. After reading Bennett's long.

And violent criminal record.

Which includes shooting at a police officer, the prosecutor wanted bail set at half a.

Million.

Dollars. I was always.

Running.

Around with guns, a.

Record of.

Violence, always shooting people. It's just a mad drug.

Running.

A muck, and.

Society has to.

Be.

Protected here.

Some people urged caution. Leslie Harris, the public defender who represented the first suspect in the case? Well, he was highly critical of Willy's arrest. What they've done is to give the public, through the media, some type of bone that you on. They show that they are doing something. And at the expense of possibly another innocent person. But the police are confident. They've got those statements from Derek and Eric. They've got a bullet from a wall that they sent for testing. They got Willy, a skinny black man with a hell of a record, in jail. All they need is a positive ID. That happens about seven weeks later, on December 28th. Chuck Stewart walks into a little room in police headquarters with a big one-way mirror. On the other side of the mirror, Willy Bennett.

My leg.

Was shaking. My heart was pounded.

I.

Called all my attorney, Jack Dahllin.

To tell.

Him.

That the.

Individual that I had identified, I was 99 % sure and no word on my words that that was a man.

The tape is a little tough on the ears, but in it, Chuck says he's 99 % sure that person number three in the lineup is the skinny black man who was in his car that night, the man who murdered his wife and child. Chuck points to Willy. That's on the next episode of Murder in Boston. I'm a speaker part. Murder in Boston, the untold story of the Charles and Carol's dirt shooting is presented by The Boston Globe and HBO Documentary Films. This podcast was reported and written by globe journalist Evan Allen, Elizabeth Coe, Andrew Ryan, and me, your host, Associate Editor Adrian Walker. The project was led and also cowritten by Assistant Managing Editor Brendan McCarthy and the globe's head of audio, Kristen Nelson. Nelson served as senior producer. Melissa Rosales is the Associate Producer. Our theme music is to speak upon by Boston's own, Edo G. Reza Dia is our sound designer. Voice-over direction by Athena Corkanas. Research from Jeremiah Manion, fact-checking by Matt Mahoney. The globe's executive editor is Nancy Barnes. Thanks to former Globes, Brian McGroory, and Scott Allen, and to Boston Globe Media CEO, Linda Henry. Additional interviews and audio, courtesy of Jason Hayer and Little Room Films.

Special thanks to Michael Bruckstat and Allison Cohen on the HBO podcast team. The HBO documentary series, Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Reckoning is available to stream on Maps.