The city of Boston on Wednesday will face a reckoning with some of its controversial past.
Mayor Michelle Wu intends to make a formal apology to two men wrongfully arrested decades ago during the Charles Stuart murder case, which returned to the spotlight after a recent docuseries and investigation by the Boston Globe.
It’s an apology that comes 34 years since the shooting death of Carol Stuart by her husband Charles, who was also shot and hospitalized.
Charles lied to investigators saying the gunman was a Black man who carjacked their Toyota in Boston’s Mission Hill, when in fact, it was a shooting orchestrated by Charles and covered up by his brother Matthew.
But before the truth came to light, police arrested Alan Swanson and Willie Bennett, two Black men, initially accused of the 1989 shooting.
Now, Wu is taking this opportunity, during the popularity of this docuseries, to make a formal apology.
“I think the apology goes a long way. The healing may have 34 years of healing, but the hurt, and the memory is something that you would never, ever, ever be able to just say, ‘Thank you very much,'” said Darnell L. Williams, former CEO of Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts.
Swanson, along with the family of Bennett, will be at Wednesday’s press conference.
