A team of Globe reporters spent two years re-investigating the 1989 Charles Stuart case with the goal of revealing the untold story of Mission Hill, the Stuart shooting, and the people who were affected.
When our ‘Nightmare in Mission Hill’ series was released earlier this month, we asked readers to tell us what they remember about the shooting and its aftermath in hopes of better understanding the collective memory of Boston during this time.
Over the last few weeks, we received hundreds of responses from people of all ages and backgrounds, including dozens of emails and a half-dozen voicemails.
Below is a collection of some of the most compelling memories that were submitted:
“I am a speech-language pathologist worked in-patient at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital at the time, on the pediatric unit. I attended a training on working with premature infants and part of the training took place in the neonatal unit where the Stuart baby was being treated. He was in a section that was closed off but you could see the curtains around his incubator, and it was so surreal. Years later, my husband and I were in Hawaii, taking a guided tour of the Hana Highway which brings you along steep drops as you go up and down the mountains. Our driver asked if anyone was from Boston, and then told a story from years ago. She had a couple on her van, and the husband kept making jokes about pushing his wife off a cliff, even pretending he was going to physically push her, and he took it so far she finally told him to stop or she would leave him on the side of the road. Later on she happened to be watching an episode of Rescue 911 and recognized Charles Stuart as the husband. She called the show to report what had happened.”-Kristi P., Hanover, MA
“I met Carol DiMaiti in the summer of 1985 when we sat next to each other for the two-day bar exam to become attorneys. She was so excited to tell me all about her plans for her wedding in the fall. She was so sweet with a beautiful smile and I remember thinking that the good ones are always taken. Thereafter, for the next couple of years we kept in touch from time to time. I last saw her at Quincy District Court and she gave me her business card. She was her usual upbeat self and told me how great everything in her life was going. I remember just staring at her business card in disbelief after I heard the tragic news.”-Francis D. Jr., West Roxbury, MA
“My one particular memory was probably in late November or early December of 1989. I was living in Washington, D.C., at the time, and I was talking to my father, who was a lawyer who had many cases at the Boston Municipal Court at the time. I remember he told me that the word around the court was that everybody believed that Charles Stuart had killed his wife. I was incredulous, but I now wonder how much people in the Suffolk DA’s office knew at the time.”-Ethan C., Newton, MA
“I was a visiting nurse working for the Boston VNA in Mission Hill during that time. I remember the following day the neighborhood was crawling with police. In particular I remember seeing the police pull an older black man out of his wheelchair, slam him back against a cruiser and frisk him. It was shocking to see the brutality. I remember hearing the news recording of Charles the night of the murder, and it felt off to me, but it was something you didn’t want to say out loud.”-Janet L., Falmouth, MA
“At the time of the Charles Stuart case, I was working at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School in the Grove Hall section of Dorchester. The student population at that time was about 75% Black. On the morning after the suicide and the hoax was revealed, a student asked me, “Why did [you people] try to pin this on a brother?” I found it difficult to answer. I’m sure many other white Bostonians faced similar questions at that time.”-Dan K., Boston, MA
“I am a union ironworker. We were putting a two-story addition atop the old Government Center Garage. We had to block off the road under the garage and work all night to erect the support steel. I got to know the Herald delivery driver who used to fill the boxes with the daily newspaper. He’d always give me a copy so we could read it on break. I’ll never forget that gruesome headline. I took it to two of my co-workers and one of them said, ‘the husband did it.’ I got kind of pissed that he could make such a joke. I argued that the husband was shot too. ‘He shot himself,’ my buddy responded. To this day he still reminds me, ‘I told ya!’ I was naive. When my wife told me Chuck had jumped to his death, I was still defending him, thinking he couldn’t live without his wife.”-Jay H., South Boston, MA
“As a former Assistant District Attorney in Essex County, I tried many criminal trials mostly in Lawrence and Lynn. We always suspected the spouse or the significant other in serious crimes like this. At the time of the Stuart case I was working as a criminal defense attorney and my suspicions remained the same. When I first saw Chuck on TV, I immediately formed the opinion that he committed the murder. He appeared to be smug and his face portrayed to me that he was hiding something. I immediately conveyed my strong feelings to my wife but she thought I was crazy. Every time I saw Chuck, I had the same haunting feeling that he did it. Unfortunately he did.”-Peter C., Rye, NH
“I met Carol Dimasi several times. My company supplies Reed Elsevier, her company, with tax information. She was one of the warmest and nicest people I ever met. When the news broke about Carol Stuart, I did not know who that was initially. When I heard she was a tax attorney working for Reed Elsevier, I checked my records and realized it was her. I fell to the ground and wept.”-Neal F., Stoughton, MA
“As a relatively young black man at the time, I was certainly aware of the frenzy that had gripped the city. At the same time, though, I didn’t fit the description of the suspect wanted in the case, so I wasn’t especially concerned about being targeted. I probably should have been, at least according to a black Boston Police Officer. One afternoon, while the manhunt was underway, I was driving south on Columbus Avenue and approached traffic lights at the corner of Dimmock Street. As I reached the lights, they were turning yellow and I proceeded through the intersection. No sooner had I done so, when flashing blue lights of a police cruiser pulled up behind me. I immediately pulled over and stopped my car. I rolled down my window and before I could say a word, one of two black officers asked me, ‘sir, do you realize that you just went through a red light?’ I hesitated a moment before I calmly replied, ‘Officer, you know good and well that I did not go through a red light.’ Before replying, he took a couple of moments to look up the street and then down the street. He then said to me, ‘go ahead, but be careful, it’s not safe out here.’ As I proceeded down Columbus Avenue, it took me a few moments to realize that he was warning me to be careful about doing anything that might attract the attention of his fellow white police officers. It was a warning I certainly took seriously.”-Jerry B., North Weymouth, MA
“I was Senior Vice President of Brigham and Women’s Hospital at the time of this event. My office literally looked out on Brigham Circle where the shooting occurred (though I did not witness it). The media group reported to me, and leadership of the hospital looked to me and my team to manage the fallout of the story and its potentially devastating impact on the reputation of a hospital that specialized in the care of pregnant women. The implicit message of this awful event to prospective patients? It wasn’t safe to get your care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.”- David B., Cambridge, MA
“Shock. That’s all I remember. I asked over and over why they ended up in Mission Hill, after they had been doing lamaze classes at that hospital prior. I looked at footage of Stuart’s eyes shifting left to right during the response from PD and EMS. Right there, I knew something was not right. Then for him to profile a black man was even more angering once the truth came out. My heart broke for Carol and her baby. How her husband betrayed her so heinously.”-Catherine O., Kissimmee, FL
“This case jolted me into adulthood. I was in my 20′s, living in Boston in an apartment with a friend, and remained glued to updates. I truly believed Charles Stuart’s story without question. After the story unfolded, I learned to be more discerning, learned to question, be a bit more cynical, not rush to judgment. It changed everything for me.”-Beth C.
“I lived in Boston from 1984-2004 and the only time I felt nervous in Boston over that span was after this killing. I worked at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority in Charlestown. When word came on January 4th that Charles Stuart was the murderer and had killed himself, I remember my colleague in the next cube, a black man, started clapping. It had never occurred to me that it was anyone but a black man who had killed Carol Stuart. He was understandably very bitter about the way police ran roughshod over black people in the Mission Hill area in search of a killer, seemingly failing to remember (as had I) that it is so often the husband who is the perpetrator in these types of crime. This was not the first time that I was oblivious to how it was for my colleague to live and work in Boston. We once had an office lunch at the Warren Tavern in Charlestown. We walked there from the Navy Yard and Tom was very nervous during the walk. Having read Common Ground I should have better understood why he was so uneasy making that walk.”-David M., Madison, WI
“It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that’s still the first thing that pops in my head when I drive over, or someone mentions, the Tobin Bridge. I was only 8 but it seemed as if my family who were quiet about the issue wouldn’t stop talking about it once that happened.”-Jim W., Stoneham, MA
“My family were all shocked and saddened when we heard the news. We followed all of it as it unfolded. It was one of the horrible things that became a mark in your life, like the Challenger disaster or 9/11. At the point when the police were searching for the gun used, I was 26 walking with my 3 year old son across the bridge on Revere Street. I saw the police in the distance in the marsh, near Dizzy bridge. It was so upsetting, I’ll never forget it.”-Theresa M., Milford, NH
“Our wedding was planned for October 28, 1989 in the late afternoon at Trinity Church in Copley Square with a reception to follow at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline. The route from Copley Square to Brookline was directly through Mission Hill. In the days leading up to the wedding, we were still believing a random man had jumped into the car of suburban people. I remember my mother being very concerned about it and my father worrying that his hand-drawn map included in the invitation was not clear enough to keep people from making wrong turns!”-Nancy S., Jaffrey, NH
“I was 10 days into dating my now wife when we were walking down by the aquarium late one afternoon. It was the day they found Chuck Stuart’s body in the Mystic River, and the coroner’s van with flashing blue lights went by us. We knew immediately that Stuart’s body was in there. It was haunting.”-Adam C., Wellesley, MA
“I was a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at the time, and our particular library for our department was the location of the prenatal classes attended by the Stuarts. I was terrified to leave work alone at night and walk to my car in the garage across the street. I also recall that the nurses caring for the newborn at the hospital felt so bad for Charles Stuart and sent him a fruit basket while he was recovering from his wound.”-Barabara H., Estero, FL
“At the time, nobody talked with me about the racist aspects of what he had done in accusing a Black man...”
“I was 9 years old at the time, and the case is one of my earliest vivid memories of breaking news. When it first happened, I felt so deeply sad for Charles Stuart. I talked about it a lot and my mom encouraged me to write him a letter. I don’t recall the full content of what I wrote but I know I expressed sympathy about him having lost his wife and how scary the whole thing must have been for him. I think we had a PO Box or something other place to send the letter and I believe we actually mailed it off. When I learned that he had lied, I was extremely shocked and confused. At the time, nobody talked with me about the racist aspects of what he had done in accusing a Black man, and that didn’t become clear to me for years. Even now I have a lot of curiosity about the details and I’m glad this work has been done so adult me can better understand.”-Jamie C., Tucson, AZ
“It was incredibly shocking. One of my best friends worked with Carol so it was very personal for her. I lived in the suburbs and was the same age as the couple. I had just given birth to twins. I followed the coverage closely. I was ignorant as were so many ignorant of the impacts on the Roxbury community. Reading this today makes me angry that what happened then could easily happen again. We have not learned any lessons.”-Joanne R., Wareham, MA
Read the entire Globe series “Nightmare in Mission Hill,” or listen to “Murder in Boston,” the podcast.
Jenna Reyes can be reached at jenna.reyes@globe.com. Follow her @jennaelaney and Instagram @jennaelaney.