Before we begin, this episode contains some offensive language and descriptions of violence. It may not be appropriate for all listeners. We've talked to people who said, Why are you bringing this back up again? This is in the past. But what would you say if somebody said, Look, this is ancient history. This is 33 years ago. Man, look, this is history here. This is history. I mean, the black man got blamed for something he didn't do. That's what's eating me out. It hurts. It hurts. Vita Bennett is Willy Bennett's sister. For people to say it's over with, it's over with. It's never going to be over with Vita Bennett. It's never going to be over. It's never going to be over. They can say that because it didn't happen to them. This is where it started. I'm never going to forget. Happened right across the street and where I'm at now. I'm never going to get no rest. In the summer of 2022, my colleague, Gavin Allen, and I knocked on Vita's door. At first, she only cracked it open and stood there looking at us skeptically through the screen. But then she recognized me from TV, where I occasionally do my newspaper columnist thing.

I said, That guy looks familiar. And then he's knocking on my door. He's knocking on my door. I looked at you all yesterday. I just seen me on TV. I've seen you. So she opened the door and let us in. We all sat around the table in her kitchen, surrounded by all these photographs of her family. That's my mom. That's my brother Bruce and my brother Willy together. That was a good day. That was a good day. I look at my brother. I look at my mom. I wish they were still here. Fita is lovely. She's in her 60s, has graying hair, and a restless sadness about her. But she's also got this dual sense of humor that can take you by surprise. I've got braids in my hair. I got a blue shirt with some shorts and my slipper on. That's the way the steward, Casey, left me looking bummy. She lives in Mission Hill. Back in '89, Fita was living in a different apartment not far from here with her mom and brother, Willy. My brother didn't do that. Why pick on us? She was there the night the cops stormed into her family's apartment.

The Bennett apartment is in disarray after Boston detective searched their home early Saturday morning for 39-year-old William Bennett. About 2:30 in the morning, they knocked down the door, tore the place apart, and dragged 15-year-old Joey Bennett out in his boxers. Fetus tried to forget it, but her body remembers. All these years later. I'm scared I'm going to sleep. No, no. What's going on? I'm trying to be up from 2:00, same time, 2:30, I'll be up at 2:00. I don't want to go to sleep till day like taking a snooze, wake back up. I sleep for like two or three hours, I'm back up. There's no sleep at all. I look all tired. I don't care. What do you dream about? I dream about the stupid things. That's just things saying, It's something like my door open. It's just very scary. If I go to sleep, I might hit a knock again. Vita says the cops pushed her down the stairs during the raid. She swears that tumble is somehow connected to a tumor in her brain. It's never gone away. It's never gone out of my head. So it's right next to the tumor. It's right next to the tumor.

Vita's mother was the matriarch of the sprawling Bennett family. If the Bennett were holding it together at all, it was because of Pauline. After the Stewart case, after Willy was arrested, Pauline just never recovered. She just kept talking about the Stewart case, Stewart case, Stewart case. Though it happened in 1989. What I went through was just too much. Here's Pauline, talking to a reporter in early 1990. What can I say? Are you bitter? Yes, I'm bitter. For what they did to my house and everything. What did they do to your house? They tore it up. This case haunted Pauline until her death in 1996. My mother had a massive heart attack. The last day she said to me, a steward case, a steward case. The next day, she's gone. She just kept talking about it. She said, Do you want me to just put my son through all this hell. She just couldn't take it. Her heart was just every day was something with her. Her heart was just tumbling. You never got an apology? Never got compensated, never have a conversation with nobody. Is there anything the city could do? What would make you feel whole?

It's too late for that. I'm just going to do me and just keep on suffering like I'm suffering. We're not going to gain nothing. We're not going to win nothing. We spoke with Vita in the summer of 2022 for over an hour and a half. Does it make you feel better to talk about it a little bit? Yes, it does. It really does. Tell me what? Because somebody's listening to me. Somebody's listening. Finally, somebody's listening. When Evan and I left Vita's home, we made plans to meet up with her and her sister again the following day. Vita said a whole bunch of her family would want to talk to me and the Globe team. I got a lot of friends. My niece, she a lot of shit. Vita's nephew, Joey Tootbeneck, wasn't having this, and he let us know. This is Joe Bennett, man. Why don't you have a conversation with me next time before you try to have a conversation with my family? I let you all paying my family for this story. This is exclusive. You all not getting this story. So to go behind my back and try to talk to my family is wrong.

So don't do that. I get it. We knew when we started out on this story, we were digging into something that would cause people pain. And we've tried to balance our jobs as fact finders and journalists with being humane and thoughtful. Two innocent people, Carol and her infant son, Christopher Stewart, lost their lives. The Benets lives were totally upended, too. The cops ransacked their homes. The media turned them into a spectacle. And then when it was all over, the world just dropped them and moved on. Even though the story has been told over and over again, the Benets haven't really been part of that narrative. Now, Willy is 73. He lives in public housing for the elderly and disabled, and he's made it clear that he's done talking about the Stewart case, so you won't hear from him in this podcast. So then, what now? I couldn't take it. It was too much, and there was a lot of abuse that we went through at that time. I said they tore up Mission Hill. They said it was a black man. She said, Girl, wake up. It never went away from me. It was always a part of our narrative.

For those of us from Mission Hill, are we still talking about it? I'm still talking about it to you today, and I feel like it was yesterday. How does the story end? And is it too late for justice? In this episode, we're going to examine exactly that. What does closure look like for the Benet, for the police, for Mission Hill, and for the city? I'm a speaker part. I'm a speaker part. I'm a speaker part. I'm a speaker part. I'm a speaker. I'm Adrian Walker, and this is the final episode of Murder in Boston, the untold story of the Charles and Carol Stewart shooting. Episode 9, is this how it is? Retired Boston cop, Billy Dunn, doesn't frat over Willy Bennett's fate. He doesn't regret anything. I think everything was done right. My biggest regret out of the whole Stewart case. Other than a woman and a baby get killed. I don't care about Chuck Stewart. He can jump twice, for all I can, is the fact that they wouldn't let us finish. Billy says the police were told to stand down once Chuck jumped, so the investigation was left unresolved. Thirty-four years later, we tried to resolve it.

You've heard everything we've dug up. And despite all this, Billy is unmoved. He still thinks Willy was involved in the shooting. Dunn believes Willy and Chuck were somehow in cahoots. I think Willy had something to do with it. I think they knew each other. I could be wrong. Willy could be the innocent guy in the world. My minder will never know. The people will never know who pulled the trigger. But you decide. You get the information. You tell me who you think or who you would have thought did it. Let the people that are listening to this give them all the facts and let them decide. We took Billy up on that challenge. So I guess you decide. To be fair, Billy's not alone in his beliefs on this. Peter O'Malley, the lead detective on the case, for decades he kept saying Willy was the shooter. O'malley is dead, but here he is in a 2008 documentary. I don't think he could have shot himself, so I don't think he would have shot his wife. I think he got himself in a Coke habit with Willy and hold him some money. I think Willy went off on him.

There's one phrase you haven't heard much of in this podcast, the term wrongful conviction. Nobody was charged in the murders of Carol and Christopher Stewart. But wrongful conviction is precisely where Willy Bennett's case was headed, at least until Matthew Stewart had his come to Jesus moment. So why is it important that a few retired cops and attorneys believed these conspiracy theories about a 34-year-old murder case? Well, because in 1989, they weren't retirees. They were the folks involved in this investigation, and they had the power to influence it. Remember, the stakes were high. The DA himself said the death penalty should be reconstituted in this case. So it's possible that today, those people are trying to save face. After all, it wasn't police work that saved Willy, it was luck. But don't expect the Boston Police Department to apologize. Many cops see no need. Stewart said a black man shot him, okay? Now, I ask you, where were they supposed to go? Is it the Myopia Hunt Club, Pride's Crossing, Beverly Farms? They did what any normal routine police investigator would do, sweep the area. Billy Dunn is essentially the only Boston police representative who would sit down with us.

He doesn't pay much mind to the fact that police almost put away an innocent man. He doesn't lay awake at night thinking about the Benets. They don't mean nothing to me. I mean, I don't wish them dead. I don't care about Willy. Even Joey, I don't wish them dead. They're human beings. They're people. Do I wish them some heartache and heartburn for stuff that they might have do or might going to do? Yeah. I hope they get heartburn. But I really don't wish any ill on them. Hbo Filmmakers played the tape of Billy's interview for Joey Bennett to hear. It eats at me because the assumption the cops did the wrong thing, that bothers me. Oh, you're focusing on this poor black guy, and it was a lie all this time. Yes. Other than it wasn't a lie all this time in my life. We never get the chance to finish the investigation. We never get the chance to say it wasn't Willy about it. You're motherfucking right. You never got the chance because Charles cracked, his brother cracked. And if he didn't crack, you all would have had the chance to hang my fucking uncle.

Facts. Chuck Stewart would have went all the way through if his brother Matthew didn't fold. My uncle would have died in prison. The shame that came from his role in this whole thing? Well, Joey still hasn't gotten past it. They always ate at me. Because every time I got arrested, the newspaper started with the nephew of Willy Bennett, the nephew of Willy Bennett of the child steward case, or the nephew who implicated Willy Bennett in the child steward story. That shit ate at me since I was a kid. I'm 49. That shit ate at me to the point where I always said that when it's our turn, they're going to know who did this because I didn't start this shit. I didn't inflict this on my family. It's not like everything changed for the benefits when Chuck jumped. Willy didn't walk free. He went to prison for 12 years for robbing a video store in a nearby town. Willy has always said he didn't rob the store, and some people think he's telling the truth just like he told the truth about not shooting Carol Stewart. In the year since he got out of prison, and Willy has said little publicly about his experience.

He hates the media almost as much as he hates the cops. After everything we told you about the media's failures, well, I can understand that. Still, I tried to get him to talk, and once I was successful. It was 2011, just after Matthew Stewart died. I went to the Bennett family's apartment in Mission Hill, and his sister put Willy on the phone with me. I thought I was going to get an interview. But all he said was, I really don't care. It hurts to talk about it. What good does it do me? One of the only clips we have of Willy's actual voice is from a rare TV interview in 2017. I've been through a whole lot. I've been in prison half my life. I'm not doing no more silly shit than I used to do. I can't forget it, regardless of how much time I did. I can't forget it. He told the reporter that he was done talking about Chuck Stewart. I ain't got nothing to say about that, man. He did what he did, and that's it. Now he's gone. I'll see him in hell if there's a hell. My uncle wasn't a monster.

My uncle was innocent. He was innocent from when they arrested him. He was innocent from when they locked him up. He was innocent from when he went to jail. He was innocent. Joey is just thankful that his uncle got some free years out of prison. He's not going to die in prison, so that's what he wanted. Willy's legacy is all tangled up with the Stewart case, and every generation of benefits since Willy has had to grapple with that. And it trickled down to me. I had to be tough. I had to carry this name properly. There was no gangs from mission Hill in the '80s. We started a gang in the '90s. That's when mission Hill had a gang. That's when I became two from mission Hill, but I became the next wooly. When the Stewart shooting happened, 15-year-old Joey was already selling crack and stealing cars. He'd even recovered from a gunshot wound. But after the Stuart case, any hope he had of turning it around vanished. It made me bitter. It made me angry. It made me want to inflict harm on people. It made me a different kid. Joey's gone on to spend most of his adult life in prison.

In 1998, he went away for murder, one that he has always claimed he didn't commit. Sound familiar? So get this. In 2019, after Joey had served 22 years, a judge threw out his conviction and ordered a new trial. I wrote a column about Joey's case. In it, I said that holding a new trial would be a travesty. The prosecution always had a weak case. It was based on one eyewitness who later recanted. I argued then and believe now that Joey should be home for good. But I don't make the rules, and Joey may be on borrowed time. The state has scheduled a new trial for May of 2024. The police hate the Benets, and they was quick to lock our asses up. But in the end, we stood strong and we're out here, me and my uncle. But this story goes beyond Willy and Joey. This case has traumatized every family member. Willy's niece, Charita Bennett, was seven years old and living with her grandma when the cops came looking for Willy. It took a long time to recover from that. From that night… Sherita remembers looking out the window when the cops marched down the hill with their shields.

Sometimes I just wish I don't remember that night, but I remember that night from the back of my head. I think that's probably the only thing I remember from being six and seven. I don't remember anything else but that. It's shaped her life. Sherita has tried to push past negative impressions of the Bennett name. You always have to prove you're not what they think you are. They're not putting the same label that they're putting on everyone else. So every day it just feels like you just got to go outside to prove a point, to prove you're not this bad person. You're not out here doing what they think everyone else is doing. Because I'm a Bennett, I'm not a bad person or I'm not out here doing crazy things. Every day is just feeling like you have to prove to them who you are, what we are. This brings us back to the question that Joey raised in that voicemail message. I told you all, unless you all paying my family for this story, this is exclusive. You all not getting this story. I'm going to call Jason to tell them the same thing. What is the Bennett's story worth?

To them, to us, to you? We took on this project because we felt like it had never been properly told. We thought that Black voices, not just the Bennetts, but the people of Mission Hill had been left out. This case was an important part of Boston's history then and now, and it's been left incomplete. How could we make this podcast without the benefits? Of course, we knocked on Vita's door that day, and Vita was on board with our mission. She was angry that her story had never been heard, and she wanted us to help her tell it. She wanted to be seen and understood. She didn't ask for money, and we didn't offer it because that's a line we can't cross. We don't pay sources because exchanging money creates a conflict of interest. We don't want to incentivize people in any way that might affect the story they tell. We want the truth or the closest version possible of someone's truth. These are common journalistic standards. The practices can be different in the film world. Murder in Boston is a coproduction with HBO and filmmaker Jason Haier, who wanted to hear the Bennett story too.

Joey said no to appearing on camera. A hard no on behalf of the whole family. Vida and everybody else stopped answering our calls because Joey said so. Protect the family. Protect the family. Protect the family. Protect the family. Protect the family. Protect the family. Sharing their stories with reporters is an act of faith. How could we possibly expect Joey to have that? Well, he wasn't convinced by my direct appeals that there was value in letting the world hear his side of things. He saw value elsewhere, thought his story was worth money. The Benets tried for years to force the city to compensate them for what they went through. They filed suit in federal and state court. In the end, the city settled the case without admitting blame, and Willy's mother, Pauline, got a check for $12,500, an amount the family considered an insult. She bought some new clothes from a discount catalog and died just a few months later. They said the payout didn't even cover her funeral. In Joey's mind, the world still owes them. Who am I to argue? Some people have their theories. I'm not the best person, but here it is.

I'm trying to do something different and change the narrative starting with this documentary. 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. In this case, Jason Haier's production company, Little Room Productions, reached a licensing agreement with Joey. 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. This is a world my globe colleagues and I don't inhabit. We can talk about the ideals of truth and justice, but our sources can't use that to pay the rent. All told, this is an ethical dilemma that sits at the very heart of journalism today. I don't have all the answers. In this podcast, we use audio of Jason's interview with Joey. It's a great interview. It's good tape. All we can do is be transparent. We're dead. This is station near Parker. I think this would have been facing that way. I just remembered that it was really pretty desolate. There are hardly any lights, but we can see it.

In the summer of 2022, the Globe team and I went back to where Carol DeMadey-Stuart was murdered. Everything else in Mission Hill, it looks totally different than that. Back then, it was a dead-end corner with a half-demolished bar. On this day, construction workers were buzzing around building condos. We can hop in whatever else is. You could also go up the street a little bit and ask some people. Can you hear me? Sorry about that. I'm just curious. My colleague, Evan, flagged one of them down and told me what we were up to. It's a very famous case from 1989, but the murder probably happened right here, and we were just curious if you... Just what you know about it. I'm curious what you know about it. I know that it was like... It wasn't... How can I say? I was told that it's not what we think it was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it actually a terrible racial hoax. It was a-Yeah, the husband said that some black guy did it, and it wasn't true. I don't know if he did it or what. Wait, the wife got killed? Yeah, the wife got killed in the car.

It was like in a car, correct? Yeah. Yeah, it was in a car. And they said that mission has something to do with it, mission. This was years ago, bro. This was years. I think I was born like two years after that. Rashar Young said his older brother told him about the whole thing. He was like, Get used to it. I remember one time this black dude got arrested because a white guy lied and said… I was like, Where that happen then? He was like, Mission Hill. I was like, Dang, that's crazy. That's scary. I mean, you're a little kid. They're scaring you. It was just like, Damn, that's terrible how a white man can lie on a black guy. It still, to this day, it could still happen to us. It was just like, Wow! We can be lied on like that so quick. That's what really scared me. I've been lied on too, but I definitely know what it's like just because of my complexion and just who I am. Rishad's dad is Black. His mom is White, and he says he's always felt torn between the two. But the outside world isn't confused at all.

His blackness is what people see. He says it's also what police see. I get anxiety around the police because they could do whatever they want. It's their word against stars. When they got that badge on, it's their world. You're living in their world. For however many minutes you were there in their presence, it's their world. It's no longer your world. You're not in the free world no more when the police are around. Here we are, so many years later, in the same spot, in the same neighborhood, hearing the same fears of young black men, it makes me wonder why, after all the soul searching and the aftermath of the Stewart case, has so little changed? There were lots of recommendations about how to fix problems with police, but many of them never came to fruition, perhaps because genuine accountability remains elusive. All of the investigations and panels and commissions and reports said the Boston police messed up. The most disturbing findings are those of public strip searches. There is no excuse for forcing young men to lower their trousers or for police officer to search inside their underwear on public streets and hallways. That practice must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

Even though these reports describe police conduct that certainly sounded illegal, no one was ever criminally charged. A lot of folks didn't understand this, myself included. So I sat down with two really important people to this case and to Boston's political and law enforcement circles. When this all went down, Wayne Budd was the US attorney in Massachusetts. Ralph Martin was his top deputy. Once the dust settled, they launched a federal investigation of the police department's conduct in the case. Here's Wayne. We heard from a number of people, community leaders and the like, and I decided that we need to investigate this. And I asked Ralph to take the lead in the investigation. I want to talk to you about the report you issued. Your report laid out many aspects of police misconduct. They included chorusing and intimidating witnesses, attempting to plant control substances in the home of one witness, using intimidating language in the interviews with other witnesses, many of whom I know were teenagers or young adults. Isn't all of that illegal? Could very well be. Could very well be. So why was it- You have to- Go ahead, Ralph. Ralph Martin. You know where I'm going with this.

Yeah, but let me just try and lay out the complications as well as the frustrations. When you go through all of the statements that we collected from the various witnesses about what the Boston police did, threatened, harassed- Ralph's explanation of why the feds couldn't bring charges is full of technicalities. We would have had to prove that the Boston police believed that someone other than Willy Bennett did the shooting. But Ralph and Wayne found that the cops truly believed Willy did it. So basically, Boston cops weren't great detectives, but- In order to prove one element of the conspiracy, we would have had to prove that they knew that was false. You couldn't prove the conspiracy? Yeah, we could not. Ralph and Wayne also struggled to prove that the behavior of the cops, while horrible, was racially motivated. We did come up with evidence to show that they were a violation, particularly of state laws, but not enough to prove a violation of the Federal Civil Rights Law. That was it. That was it. There was no physical harm done of any consequence. There may have been some routing, but there wasn't to the level of a violent beating.

And it all just got lost in this jurisdictional morass. Ralph and Wayne expected Boston police to get down to it. But when Commissioner Mickey Roach's department investigated itself, they determined that they had done a great job. No officer or detective was ever disciplined, save for Detective O'Malley, who got a five-day suspension for swearing. Yep, swearing. He appealed the decision to the Civil Service Commission, which eventually sided with O'Malley and cleared him altogether. He was disciplined in a, I would say, almost unnoticeable and certainly not responsible way. For Wayne and Ralph, this felt like a failure. They're both Black. They saw what the police did and the toll it took on the community. But they determined that they couldn't fix it with the tools they had. When they told the public that they couldn't charge anybody, people were furious. The reaction from the community was particularly stinging because nobody's doing anything about what these cops did in our community. You're the US attorney, Wayne Butt, and you're, quote, our last hope in getting justice from this. That's right. They did what they could then, and they kept trying to address these issues well after. In 1992, Ralph was appointed Boston's first black district attorney.

Ralph deserved the job, no doubt. But it was also perceived as an attempt to break up the white Irish stronghold in that office, and partly in response to the Stewart case. Wayne went on to become US Associate Attorney General in 1992. He oversaw the federal prosecution of the Los Angeles police officers who beat Rodney King. But police brutality persists. On May 25th, 2020, George Floyd was killed by former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on Floyd's neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds. The murder of George Floyd sparked the largest call racial justice in this country since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. In Minneapolis tonight, tensions are high as four police officers have been fired after a man was pinned to the ground and died. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. In the fall of 2020, with America up in arms over racism and police abuse, the Boston Police Department was again under the microscope. The globe, including some of the same reporters behind this podcast, had exposed all sorts of corruption and misconduct within the police department. Amid all this, the city turned to Wayne Budd.

Wayne shared a commission that came up with a slate of Boston police reforms. Some of them resembled recommendations that came out of a commission formed in the wake of the Stewart case. And then in 2021, Boston took another big step. City Councilor Michelle Wu, who makes history becoming the next mayor. Just minutes ago, Woos stepped onto that stage. We are ready to meet this moment. We are ready to become a Boston for everyone. We're ready to be a Boston that doesn't push people out, but welcomes all who call our city home. Voters elected Michelle Woos, Mayor. It was the first time voters picked someone who wasn't a white guy. In short order, Wu made a statement with her choice for police commissioner. Mayor Michelle Wu, swore in Michael Cox, less than 90 minutes ago. This is an incredible opportunity, and with all great opportunities comes great responsibility. And I look forward to making sure I live up to that responsibility. Michael Cox has a heck of a backstory. At the time of the Stewart shooting, he was a brand new cop, one of the few black cops working drugs in a monochromatic department. One night while Cox was working undercover, fellow Boston cops mistook him for a drug dealer and beat the crap out of him.

It took him years to heal. They told me I was pretty unrecognizable. I was left out there, and I couldn't understand why a person would or people would do that. Rather than quitting or suing the city, Cox stayed on the force and rose through the ranks. His appointment as commissioner was widely viewed as the best hope of ushering in a new era for the BPD. The department that tore through Mission Hill is now led by a respected Black officer who personally suffered the worst of that old police culture. I get it in every level. I've been both a victim. I'm a person of color. I know what I've seen what it's like in apartments when they fail in this way. Cox declined to sit down for an interview for this podcast. The fingerprints of Charles Stewart may not be so visible today, at least on the surface. The teachable moments persist in the homes of Black and Brown families. Older brothers pass on tips to boys who will one day become construction workers and help build condos where a man named Charles Stewart once called 911 to say he and his wife were shot. Today, that old Boston is no more.

The city is changing fast. Author Howard Bryant called me many years ago when he set out to write a book about sports and race in Boston. Back then, he pressed me about the Charles Stewart case. Turns out he had been thinking about it as long as I have. By the end of that Stewart case, in some ways, it was the end of that dynasty. It was the end of the old Boston as we knew it. Now we have the shiny skyscraper Boston, the real estate Boston, the nobody can afford to live here Boston. The racism of this city in so many ways has been defeated by the money. I'm not sure that's a compliment because I miss the ethnicity of this city. I don't really need more yoga mats, but this is what happens. And when you look at what took place, what would take place in the city after the early 1990s, it's a different place. But I do miss the fact that when I go into Dorchester, my old neighborhood, there's tons of white people there. And I'm like, What happened to our community? And the reason why I think that isn't because I don't want white people in those communities, is that you know what's going to happen next.

Because when white people move in, they take it all. Type, Mission Hill, into an online apartment search. Today you'll see studios listed for 3,200 bucks a month, complete with fitness centers and electric vehicle charging stations. Yes, there are still a few bars with Shamrocks in their signage, but you're just as likely to find a place that serves a mean oatmeal milk machiato near where the Mission Hill Public Housing complex stands. What Boston has lost in its character of its neighborhoods in a lot of ways was in service of progress. Some of that's really sad. You'll find this nostalgia for the past from a lot of people. Even retired Officer Billy Dunn hates what his old stomping ground has become. Though he lives in the city just a few miles to the south, the former Red Sox Bullpin cop won't even visit Boston these days. Nothing in there for me. The city is gone. The city ain't there no more. Look what's happening. My heart is with every crop that works the street. The city is gone. To Billy, the city is crime-ridden and dangerous. The result, he believes, of progressive politics run amok. And perhaps most troubling to Billy, it's a place where the police are no longer beloved, respected, or supported.

There's nothing in that city for me. Everybody think about that city right now is wrong. Everything they're doing is wrong because they don't care about the people or certain people. It's just defund the police. That's not going to solve all their problems, but it's certainly adding to them. And you don't care about your citizens. City of Boston is not there anymore. Not the city I worked for, not the city I grew up in. I forbid my grandkids to go in there. It is what it is. Hi, folks. We're going to go way in the back. Way in the back. Tell him to come on. Hello, Kaneek. Hello, Marise. All the way in the back. Leave that… Don't touch the door. It locks. If anything good came in the aftermath of the terrible murders of Carol and Christopher Stewart, it might be this. Hey, everybody, around the table, let's go. Let's get these chairs out the way. A mile or so from where the crime occurred three decades ago, a group of Black and Latino high school students are meeting with their mentor on a cold winter's night. Hey, you all, you can't talk back there.

George, Chipp Greenwich Jr, is the founder of a nonprofit dedicated to building up tomorrow's leaders. The way I play it back is I've been involved in a lot of community-based programs to help the next generation to become productive citizens and help other people. Chipp knows Mission Hill. His dads lived there since the '80s. When Chipp was 18, on the cusp of adulthood, he watched as the city convulsed over the shooting near his dad's home. I was a teenager learning the world, learning myself in the world, knowing that myself as a 6, 5, 200-plus black male body walking the streets. When the police tore through Mission Hill, Chipp's father kept him from visiting the neighborhood. It was hurtful that I couldn't come home, but I knew that he wanted to keep me safe. There was another family worlds away from Chipp's that would have done anything to keep their families safe too. Carroll's family's response to the crime would alter the course of Chipp's life. There has been so much said and written about this terrible tragedy in our lives that we don't want to add to that today. Carol's parents wanted something to remember her by.

They wanted her legacy to be about something other than her husband's terrible crime. A few weeks after Chuck's death, Carol's family addressed the media, their first public comments since the debacle. Her father, Justo, alongside her mother, Evelyn, and brother, Carl, said Carol's goal in life was to be happy and a good person to others. Her mother and I were filled with pride for the way she lived her life. She brought joy and comfort not only to us, but to all she knew. Carol was a loving, caring person who always thought of the other person first. She loved to help those less fortunate than herself and was constantly trying to improve their place in this world. And then the DeMade's family lawyer made an announcement. The DeMadey family believes that Carol would not have wanted her death to be remembered as a cause of such divisiveness. Carol was a caring daughter, filled with a love of life and compassion for others. She would not want to be remembered as the victim of a sensational murder, but rather as a woman who left behind a legacy of healing and of compassion. Therefore, on behalf of the DeMadee family, I would like to announce that we are filing today papers to establish a nonprofit corporation to be called the Carol DeMadee Stewart Foundation, Incorporated.

The purpose of this foundation will be to memorialize Carol's name by granting college scholarships to residents in the Mission Hill area of Boston, and to promote better race relationships throughout the city and the greater Boston. Over the next month, the Carol De Mayte Stewart Foundation garnered more than $270,000 in donations. The letters and support poured in from across the country. Vice President, Dan Quales, in $150, as did Massachusetts congressman, Barney Frank. Governor Michael Dukakis donated $50, along with a lunch invite. In due time, the foundation put that money to use. One of its first scholarship recipients was a young man named Chip. I think Carol's mom realized it was a major tragedy, but she wanted something good to come out of it. And she realized it was a lot of money that was raised. When there was a final session where they brought all the scholars together, they gave us all big hugs and called us all their kids. The smile on her face was amazing. She really was proud to make sure that a generation was going to be able to get support and resources that have been so hurt by this act. Of the many victims in this case, no one suffered more personal or devastating losses than the DeMadee family.

Yet it was the DeMadees, not City Hall, certainly not the BPD, who sought to build bridges. Of all the players in this drama, Carroll's shattered family were the ones who epitomized Grace. I was very proud to be one of the first recipients, but also very proud that I've done, like many of the scholars have done, is to come back and give back and help other young people be able to live their dream. I think that was the live-on. I think the work that I do for years in the Roxbury neighborhood is pushing on that dream of Carol and of Chris, the Maddy Stewart. That's what I do. The scholarship helped chip pay for tuition at Morehouse College. These days, he's finishing a PhD at Georgia State University. He's a busy guy. He's also a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. And get this, in early 2023, Boston mayor, Michelle Wu, appointed him to Boston's Reparations Task Force, where he and others examined the wrongs that the city has done to black residents. I think the push was that we would always give back to the neighborhood of Mission Hill and in Roxbury. That's what I've done always.

Ship was busy doing that work, mentoring teens of color, when we caught up with him that night last winter. We even got some today that are actually back at the back right now that will be working on a session about their college essays. How's everyone doing? Good. How's everyone doing today? Good. Very good girl. Welcome, welcome. The kids here tonight, they grew up in the neighborhood and attend area high schools. Newton South. Excel High School. Smoetown High School. Excel High School. Mckinney Park High School. Conquered Carlyle High School. And the students are wondering what these strangers with microphones are doing in their class. This is the Boston Globe right here. They're doing a special investigation piece on something that happened maybe 30 years ago when I was 19, 18 years old on the Charles Stewart De Mati murder. Anyone ever heard of Charles Stewart before? No, nobody. Charles Stewart. Anyone heard of Charles Stewart before? No. Anyone heard of Carol Stewart before? No. Okay. The students look perplexed. Several, Mumble. No, not at all? All right. Okay, well, we're going to get our session started. I hope you guys will be really good, and we're going to be able to work together to get you guys thinking about college careers and community service.

Let's get this happening. Let me hear you all. Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! For 34 years, Chuck Stewart and all the trauma he sowed has served as a mark against the city, a slice of history that's been impossible to move past. It's not as though racial divisions have disappeared, but it's not the same city that fell for Chuck's hoax. Take this moment. Chip Greenwich is helping a group of Black and Latino teens write their college essays. These teens haven't forgotten the nightmare in Mission Hill. They don't even know this part of history, but that means they don't have to live with it either. And so they are free to put pens to paper and set off to chart a new future for Boston. I'm a speaker part. I'm a speaker part. I'm a speaker part. Murder in Boston: The Untold Story of the Charles and Carol Stewart shooting is presented by The Boston Globe and HBO documentary films. This podcast was recorded 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 co-written 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 Speak Upon It by Boston's own, Ed-O-G. Reza Daya is our sound designer. Voice-over direction by Athena Carkanas. Research from Jeremiah Manion, backchecking by Matt Mahoney. The globe's executive editor is Nancy Barnes. Thanks to former Globes, Brian McRory, and Scott Allen, and to Boston Globe Media CEO, Linda Henry. Legal Review by Katie Lazarus and John Albano and Dan Crockmahlnik. There are tons of other people who helped make this happen. They include globe editors, Jason Tui, Jennifer Peter, Heather Cyrus, Janay Osterhelp, and Mark Marl. The globe's new media department is Dan Crockmahlnik and Aaron Napoleon. Additional interviews and audio, courtesy of Jason Hayer and Little Room Films. Special thanks to Michael Klockstat and on the HBO podcast. The HBO documentary series, Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Recony, is available to stream on Maps.