The Disturbing Tale of Carol Stuart & Charles Stuart
On the evening of October 23, 1989, Charles Stuart committed one of the most heinous crimes imaginable when he shot to death his thirty-year-old wife, Carol Stuart, who was seven months pregnant, while the couple sat in their car in the Mission Hill district of Boston, Massachusetts.1 The thirty-year-old Stuart then shot himself in the abdomen and used his car phone to call 911, deceitfully reporting that he and his wife had just been the victims of a carjacking. The perpetrator was described as a "raspy-voiced" African American man wearing a jogging suit. The false accusation by Stuart, who, along with his wife, was white, caused a countrywide manhunt for the purported suspect, dividing the nation, mostly along racial lines.
Once the frightening truth was exposed, law enforcement closed in on the actual killer, Charles Stuart, who had a number of reasons for wanting his wife dead—including his apparent involvement with another woman, worries about starting a family, and an insurance payment. However, before he could be arrested and held accountable for his shocking actions, Stuart committed suicide by jumping off the Tobin Bridge and into the Mystic River in Massachusetts.
Christopher, his son, who was born two months premature shortly after the death of Stuart's wife, had died earlier from complications related to the shooting of Carol Stuart. Charles Stuart's brother, Matthew Stuart, was convicted of helping him to cover up the crime and sentenced to prison.
The case was yet another tragic example, such as with child killer Susan Smith, of how playing the race card manipulatively could easily ignite already underlying racial tensions in society, while leading the authorities awry as a cunning killer sought but failed to commit the perfect crime of murder.
* * *
Charles "Chuck" Stuart, Jr., was born on December 18, 1959 in Boston, Massachusetts. His father was an insurance salesman and made money on the side as a bartender. The Stuarts resided in a Cape Cod style red home and Charles Stuart, along with his brothers, went to a Roman Catholic elementary school.
As a teenager, Stuart participated in sports—baseball and basketball, but not football as he had claimed—and was considered average at best, according to his former coaches.
In 1977, upon graduating from vocational school, Stuart worked as a cook at an Italian restaurant called the Driftwood, in Revere, a city some five miles outside of downtown Boston. He met attractive Boston College student Carol DiMaiti there, where she had a job as a waitress. Carol was also born in Boston, on March 26, 1959.
According to former coworker Rosemarie Bartolo, Stuart "was very popular with the women, and [Carol] fell madly in love with him."2 However, Carol's father did not like him, Bartolo claimed, noting that at the time Carol had been dating a college student who was Italian-American, as was she.
Stuart soon became disinterested in cooking, and in 1981 he applied for and got a job at Edward F. Kakas & Sons' furs on Newbury Street. One of the co-owners, Ted Kakas, recalled of Stuart in an interview with the Boston Globe, ''He was just an all-around terrific guy. I think I can say he was loved by all of our employees.''3 The furrier would later close on the day of Carol Stuart's funeral so Stuarts' coworkers could attend.
In 1985, Charles Stuart and Carol DiMaiti were married and moved into a house in the upscale town of Reading, Massachusetts in Middlesex County. By most accounts, the couple seemed to be a good match. According to Mali Sheikhi, Carol's hairdresser, she "was so happy and sweet and I was always telling her, you never seem to have any problems.''4
But apparently looks could be deceiving. A neighbor of the Stuarts would later recall Carol griping about Stuart going out alone and not returning until late.5 It would eventually be discovered that he was developing feelings for someone other than his wife.
* * *
On that fateful night of October 23, 1989, Charles Stuart was making $100,000 a year as the general manager for Edward F. Kakas & Sons' furs on Newbury Street. It was a big jump from the $4.00 an hour he was bringing in as a short-order cook a decade earlier. His wife, Carol DiMaiti Stuart, was a tax attorney and seven months pregnant with the young couple's first child.
As one article put it, Stuart's current life was a "long journey from his hometown of Revere, a blue-collar community best known for its dog track and neighborhood bars, to the affluent environs of Newbury Street, with its fashionable boutiques and crowded restaurants in Boston's Back Bay."6
Add to that a lawyer for a wife, a phone in his car, and "a slate-blue house in a comfortable suburb with a swimming pool and Jacuzzi," and it appeared as though Stuart had everything he could want.7 But apparently it was not enough, as some who knew him suggested that he had become "consumed by his own rapid financial success."8
This led him down a dangerous and deadly path of no return.
* * *
That Monday night, the Stuarts were driving home through Boston's Roxbury district after attending a birthing class at Brigham and Women's Hospital, when they were purportedly the victims of a violent carjacking. The perpetrator, described by Charles Stuart as a raspy-toned black man wearing a red-striped black jogging suit, was said to have forced his way into the couple's car while at a stoplight on Huntington Avenue. The carjacker supposedly sought money and made them drive to the nearby neighborhood of Mission Hill. It was there that the alleged gunman then shot Charles Stuart once in the stomach and his wife, Carol, once in the head, before fleeing on foot. A wounded Charles then claimed to have driven off and used his car phone to call 911.
Boston broadcast journalist Delores Handy recalled, "On Oct[ober] 23, 1989, the story was all over the nightly news.... The images were gripping. Carol DiMaiti Stuart slumped over in the front seat of her car, her husband in the driver's seat."9
According to Handy, "At that time of night, Huntington Avenue was a fairly busy street—why had no one seen this man with a gun forcing his way into the car?"10
In spite of this early skepticism, others were more prone to give a perceived grieving husband the benefit of the doubt as a town sat on edge with a possible killer on the loose.
* * *
As Carol Stuart lay critically wounded in the hospital, her baby boy was delivered by Cesarean section two months prematurely and named Christopher. Shortly thereafter, at about three a.m. Carol passed away from her injuries. Her son, who was baptized in the neonatal intensive care unit at Brigham and Women's, died seventeen days later after suffering trauma and oxygen deprivation due to Carol's shooting.
On Saturday, October 28, 1989, while Charles Stuart remained hospitalized recovering from his injuries, funeral services were held for his wife Carol. Hundreds of mourners flocked to the church to pay their last respects, including then Governor Michael Dukakis, Boston's Mayor Raymond Flynn, the Police Commissioner Francis Roache, and Cardinal Bernard F. Law.
A message from Charles Stuart was read out loud: "Good night sweet wife, my love. God has called you to his hands. Not to take you away from me, but to bring you away from the cruelty and the violence that fills this world."11
On November 20, 1989, a private funeral service was held for Christopher Stuart.
The brazen and senseless shooting that destroyed a family left the city on edge and touched nerves nationwide as race relations were strained and racial stereotypes floated to the surface.
* * *
As the investigation ensued into the murder mystery, law enforcement authorities considered early on the possibility that the injuries suffered by Charles Stuart may have been self-inflicted and, consequently, that he may have been responsible for the death of his wife and son. This angle was rejected, more or less, with the general consensus being that the severity of Stuart's wound was such that it seemed highly improbable that he would have shot himself and tried to make it look like someone else had done it. This therefore let him off the hook for the time being as a plausible family murderer.
The police concentrated their efforts instead on trying to locate the alleged African American carjacker described by Charles as the assailant. Mayor Flynn even went on television promising to "'get the animals responsible'," Handy remembered. "Police stepped up their 'Stop and Frisk' program. Mothers in the Mission Hill neighborhood complained of their sons being targeted; stopped on the street and forced to drop their pants as police searched for a suspect."12
Thousands of possible suspects were questioned by law enforcement. They zeroed in particularly on the predominantly black housing projects of Mission Hill, where officers from the Boston Police Department "systematically stopped and searched just about every young black man they could find."13 As a result, many there rightfully accused the police of "indiscriminately harassing black men."14
Though African Americans believed they were being unfairly singled out with no concrete evidence to back up Charles Stuart's story, his account resonated with many "suburban whites, reinforc[ing] perceptions that the inner city had become a savage and dangerous place."15 Whereas for African-Americans "and others who live in neighborhoods where crime is an everyday occurrence often ignored by the public and media, the unprecedented manhunt for the killer of an affluent [white female] lawyer only added to long-festering bitterness in a metropolitan area that has long been troubled by racial divisiveness."16
The police brought in Willie Bennett, a thirty-nine-year-old African American with a criminal record, on suspicion of being the perpetrator in this deadly apparent robbery gone wrong. Bennett immediately claimed he was being set up, but few outside his family and neighborhood believed him.
On December 28, 1989, when Charles Stuart picked Bennett out of a police lineup as the man who carjacked and shot him and his wife, it became more or less a foregone conclusion by many that Willie Bennett was guilty of this heinous crime.
The city of Boston breathed a collective sigh that the nightmare was behind them.
It was not.
* * *
On January 3, 1990, the seemingly airtight case against Willie Bennett took a dramatic turn when Charles Stuart's twenty-three-year-old brother, Matthew Stuart, identified Stuart as the actual shooter and admitted to helping him cover up the murder. According to Matthew, he had "driven to meet Stuart that night to help him commit what he'd been told was to be an insurance fraud."17 When he arrived, Matthew claimed that "Carol had been shot, and that his brother had shot himself to make it appear as a carjacking."18
According to John Perenyi, Matthew Stuart's attorney, his client had prearranged meeting his brother close to the hospital, even going through a "practice run" with Stuart days earlier. Matthew had "picked up a silver snub-nose .38-caliber revolver as well as Carol Stuart's jewelry and handbag," as allegedly a "jewelry insurance scam."19
Matthew admitted to taking "the gun and a bag of valuables, including the couple's wedding rings, and [throwing] them off the Pines River Bridge in Revere," a city in Suffolk County, about five miles from Boston. Authorities recovered the items.20
In a New York Times article, it was reported that a family conspiracy to commit murder went beyond Charles and Matthew Stuart, with another brother, Michael Stuart, allegedly being asked by Stuart weeks before the murder to help him kill his wife, according to the brother's lawyer.21 The twenty-seven-year-old Michael, a firefighter, supposedly turned down the request.
The article indicated that other family members of Charles Stuart, including "three brothers and two sisters, as well as their spouses and friends, either participated in part of the crime, wittingly or unwittingly, or learned about it at various points without telling the police."22
The bombshell revelation hit the DiMaiti family hard. According to an interview given by Carol Stuart's brother, Carl DiMaiti, to WLVI-TV in Boston shortly after the news broke on the siblings' connection to the crime, ''Can you believe that they came over to our house to comfort my parents? It is just mind-boggling that they could sit with us, or allow us to visit Chuck, to cry over him and pray for his recovery, knowing that Chuck was responsible for what happened to Carol.''23
* * *
Equipped with this startling new information, the police dug further into Charles Stuart's background looking for possible motives for the murder, which began to surface. The police discovered that he was unhappy that Carol was pregnant and would not get an abortion. Stuart feared that his wife might want to be a stay at home mother. This would cause them to lose her significant part of their joint income, which in turn, could affect the affluent lifestyle he had grown accustomed to.
Stuart apparently had even bigger plans that required capital. According to neighbors, he had high hopes of opening up a restaurant and had taken a course earlier in the year at the Boston Center for Adult Education called ''Buying and Operating a Restaurant Successfully."24 This grand idea was in jeopardy with Carol Stuart possibly bowing out of the work force for the foreseeable future.
Stuart was also reportedly engrossed with a fellow employee of Kakas & Sons, Deborah Allen. He took the attractive twenty-two-year-old graduate of Brown University out for some meals and gave her gifts. Prior to the shooting, Allen was said to have showed Stuart around the prep school she attended.
While Stuart was in Boston City Hospital recovering from his injuries sustained in the shooting, Allen allegedly phoned him often. Her attorney, Thomas Dwyer, contended in a statement on her behalf that Stuart asked that she call, using his telephone credit card to charge the calls. Allen claimed that when Stuart sought to have a more romantic relationship upon his discharge from the hospital, she ended things between them.25
It was reported that shortly after his release in December, Charles Stuart began purchasing women's jewelry, including a "$999 pair of diamond solitaire earrings [and] a $250 14-karat gold brooch."26
Though the police suspected that Stuart may have bought the jewelry as a gift for Deborah Allen in hopes of perhaps starting a relationship, she denied having been given any of the jewelry.
* * *
As with many cases of uxoricide, or when a wife is murdered by her husband, the killer typically has a financial motive. That appeared to be a key factor in the murder of Carol Stuart, as authorities learned that Charles Stuart was the beneficiary of several insurance policies taken out on his wife totaling a few hundred thousand dollars.27 Moreover, the couple's joint estate was valued at more than half a million dollars, including the posh home they owned in Reading.
After processing their new evidence and revelations, Suffolk County District Attorney Newman Flanagan revealed to the stunned residents of Boston and the nation itself, who had been riveted to the case, that the "entire drama had been an elaborate ruse on the part of Stuart."28
With Willie Bennett suddenly exonerated, to the surprise of many and delight of others, the arrest of Charles Stuart was ordered for the murders of Carol and Christopher Stuart.
* * *
With the authorities in hot pursuit, Charles Stuart managed to elude them temporarily as he checked into a Braintree Sheraton motel, where he asked for a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call. That early morning of January 4, 1990, shortly after Charles Stuart allegedly confessed to his attorney about the horrible crime, and before an arrest could be made, Stuart took his own life by jumping off the Tobin Bridge in Chelsea, Massachusetts and into the Mystic River's icy waters some 145 feet below. His new Nissan Maxima, with the hazard lights on and hood up, was found abandoned on the bridge. On the car's front seat were his driver's license and a note that indicated he was distraught over the allegations about him that had come to light.
Charles Stuart's body was recovered from Boston Harbor the following day.
Authorities discovered that the revolver used to commit the crime had been taken from an unlocked cabinet at Stuart's employer, Edward F. Kakas & Sons, after he had apparently been unable to get hold of a gun elsewhere.
Investigators would also conclude that Stuart had talked about wanting to murder his wife previously to others, inside and outside his family; such was his twisted desire to end her life and that of the child she was carrying.29
According to Harvard University psychiatrist Robert Coles, Charles Stuart represented an "extreme example of a psychopath, an antisocial personality with little sense of remorse, a propensity to lie and often an ability to deceive others into believing his fantasies."30 Coles added, ''In most psychopaths there is cruelty and callousness, but Stuart outdoes that."31
In committing suicide, Stuart took to his grave the senseless impetuses within that led him to murder and deprived his young wife and child of a future, which had seemed so bright before tragedy struck.
* * *
In September 1991, Matthew Stuart was indicted by a grand jury on charges of "conspiracy to obstruct justice and compounding a felony," along with insurance fraud, for participating with his brother Charles in the cover up of Carol Stuart's murder.32
In November 1992, Matthew pleaded guilty to fraud, possession of a firearm, and additional charges, and was sentenced to three to five years behind bars.33 After being released on probation in 1997, he was arrested again for trafficking in cocaine and returned to prison for violating probation. The charges were eventually dropped for insufficient evidence.
On September 3, 2011, Matthew Stuart, now forty-five, was found dead at a Cambridge homeless shelter, the apparent victim of a drug overdose.34
His death brought mixed feelings for the family of Willie Bennett, the initial suspect in the murder of Carol Stuart. In an interview with the Boston Globe, a still somewhat embittered Diane Bennett, Willie Bennett's sister, said of Matthew Stuart, "I'm sorry for him. He got my brother off the hook and I appreciate that. But at the same time, that was after helping his brother kill his wife and his baby. My brother didn't do it, but got blamed. Twenty-one years later, I feel we've never gotten the recognition we deserve."35
Though Willie Bennett was very nearly railroaded with a carefully orchestrated murder by Charles Stuart, who used the race card to tap into stereotypes and hysteria, the plot failed at the end of the day when the truth came out. It happened too late to save Carol Stuart and her baby boy, but not Willie Bennett.
* * *
In October 1992, Carol DiMaiti Stuart's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Edward F. Kakas & Sons, former employer of Charles Stuart, charging that the Back Bay furrier "carelessly stored a revolver allegedly used by Charles Stuart to kill his pregnant wife and unborn son."36 In December 1996, the case was dismissed by a Superior Court.37
On January 25, 1990, the Carol DiMaiti Stuart Foundation was established by Carol Stuart's family, providing scholarships to residents of Mission Hill. Nearly $1.4 million was awarded to 230 students by the foundation over a twenty year span.38 According to Marvin Gellar, the attorney for the DiMaitis, "Carol 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 compassion."39
* * *
The dynamics of uxoricide, infanticide, racism, family cover up, and a rush to judgment in the shocking murder of Carol Stuart and her newborn child by Charles Stuart, inspired a number of television projects on the crime.
In the 1990 movie on CBS, Good Night Sweet Wife: A Murder in Boston, Ken Olin played Charles Stuart and Annabella Price was in the role of Carol Stuart;40 while the Law & Order franchise did episodes, "Happily Ever After" and the "Tangled" that were apparently based on the Carol Stuart murder.41 The case also was profiled in the A&E documentary series, City Confidential, in the episode, "Boston: Betrayal in Beantown."42