We know the infamous incident in the late 1980s when Charles Stuart shot his pregnant wife in Boston and himself and then falsely claimed that they were attacked by a black man. Eventually Willie Bennett (who had already been arrested for a video store robbery) was identified by Charles Stuart as the culprit. And we know the rest…Stuart’s brother Matthew eventually comes clean and fingers his brother, and Charles eventually jumps off the bridge. Justifiable outrage follows and the African American community is justifiably angry with the white community who fell for this ploy so easily. Case closed…not quite. I have heard since then that Willie Bennett had since been arrested on another murder charge. Is this true? Also, what was Willie Bennett previously convicted of? Is it correct that he had previously been involved in a shootout with police? NOTE: In no way here am I attempting to excuse the truly heinous crimes of Charles Stuart, including the framing of Willie Bennett. However, I am reluctant to accept the notion that Bennett was some type of saint that got unjustly accused of something. That is, he was most certainly NOT GUILTY of the murder of Mrs. Stuart, but he was supposedly guilty of other felonies. Unfortunately a Google search turns up very little. So what is the truth here? Does anybody know?
I haven’t heard anything recently, but I had assumed that Bennet had some sort of criminal record or the police wouldn’t have located him in the first place.
I can’t find anything in which anyone called Willie Bennett “some kind of saint” or anything similar. Bennett apparently had previously committed crimes. The police decided to look for a black male with a criminal history who more or less fitted Charles Stuart’s description. They found one in Bennett, and Stuart identified him in a line-up. I can’t find any news story in a quick search that says that Bennett has been arrested since then. You’d think that if he had been accused of any crime since then it would be a big news story.
In 1990 he was convicted of holding up a video store. Previously he had been convicted of shooting and robbing a double amputee taxi driver in 1981 , and shooting a police officer in 1973. He was first arrested at age 14 for robbing parking meters, which probably is not a felony. He was arrested 60 times and arraigned 38 times.
Source?
Here is an AP story from 1990 on him
He was sentenced to 12-25 for the video store robbery, I can’t find anything after that.
Hm. Whatever he’s been up to since, he is apparently not in prison at the moment.
From my point of view the interesting thing is the way he was picked out of a lineup. Supposedly the lineup consists people known to be innocent and the suspect, all of whom superficially resembe each other. How was Stuart able to pick out the suspect, considering he had never seen any of them? Was he tipped off, or was it a lucky random selection?
I don’t think he picked out Stuart as his patsy before the fact. He probably just picked the one who looked like the most plausible killer.
And your point is…? What’s the difference how many crimes he was guilty of? Did he commit the Stuart crime?
If he was arrested 60 times, he probably got away with at least one crime he actually committed. I don’t know what that signifies to the OP, though.
I am not sure I get it either. Rodney King of LAPD beating fame was a habitual criminal who recently died through his own stupidity. He was never a saint either. I understand the media tries to portray it that way sometimes but I think most people know that one set of demonstrable facts doesn’t have anything to do with the other.
The justice system is supposed to find out whether or not you are guilty of the specific crime at hand, not blame you for everything they can pin on you unless there are facts to support it.
I don’t know about you but I have gotten away with lots of crimes (no murders yet but the night is young). I think everyone probably has. That isn’t what the U.S. Justice system is supposed to guess about.
@needscoffee and shagnasty: Since you both seem to have missed my point, Shagnasty you yourself actually brought it up when you said that the the media “sometimes” tries to portray people such as Willie Bennett as saints. Okay maybe the word “saints” is a bit much, but I think you know what I’m getting at. The fact that Bennett was NOT GUILTY of the crime that involved the Stuarts does NOT make him a good citizen NOR does it mean that he was NOT guilty of the other felonies of shooting the amputee, the cop, and robbing the video store. HOWEVER, the mainstream media (and YES it does lean left) often tends to whitewash over those facts and make it appear that Bennett is this “innocent victim” of a horrible racist society. While there may be examples to show that society has racist tendencies, it becomes tiresome for me to hear how certain minority members have been falsely victimized when the facts are that while said victims may not be guilty of one particular crime, many of them are hardly fine upstanding law-abiding citizens who up that point led a life of exemplary citizenship and being good neighbors to the community. The whitewashing of facts by the media (or anyone else, for that matter) does nothing to promote unity and understanding within society.
Show me where the media considers Bennet a saint. He was an innocent victim in one case. I’ve never heard him decribed as a saint or anything that whitewashed other crimes he committed.
Provide a link to a news story in which he is portrayed as a saint or anything close to it.
So you’re saying it’s not a big deal that he was tried for a murder he didn’t commit because he was a criminal anyway? I mean, the police apparently ignored evidence that Stuart’s wounds were self-inflicted and went off on a hunt for the oft-blamed scary not-white guy. If the only evidence is the word of a man who may well have shot himself, it’s a tad disturbing that they got that far with the case, and possibly the only thing that saved him was the conscience of Stuart’s brother.
And this is GQ - you’re going to need to provide the evidence that the media claimed Bennett was a saintly man.
Yes, and that’s the important part. How did he derive the information that Stuart was the “real suspect” and not one of the ringers in the police lineup? Did some cop give him the “Cough Cough Number 5Cough” signal.
There would probably have been more than one legitimate suspect in the lineup. Given what I know about Boston, though, I wouldn’t put it past them to have run a “suggestive” lineup, natch.
That’s the last thing you do in a lineup, put multiple suspects in it. This ain’t The Usual Suspects. From the National Institute of Justice:
At its most basic level, a police lineup involves placing a suspect among people not suspected of committing the crime (fillers) and asking the eyewitness if he or she can identify the perpetrator. This can be done using a live lineup of people or, as more commonly done in U.S. police departments, a lineup of photographs.
The really interesting thing about this tragic case was Charles Stuart himself…after his suicide (which some say was “assisted”), all sorts of unsavory stuff about him came out. He had claimed to have been an honor student in HS, and had attended Brown University on a football scholarship-this was all false. He was a manager for a famous Boston fur store (Kakas)…after his demise, there was evidence of stock missing, accounts falsified, etc. Also, Stuart knew Bennett, and there is evidence that Bennett was Stuart’s accomplice in some unsolved thefts from the Kakas store.
The “investigation” of Carol Stuart’s murder by the BPD turned into a major embarrassment for the department-Police Commissioner Mickey Roach basically presided over a witch hunt, and obvious clues pointing to Charles were ignored. Mayor Ray Flynn (who was a personal friend of Roach) came out looking like a fool also.