‘It doesn’t fix anything’
Willie Bennett’s family accepts Wu’s apology, but says more is needed
Willie Bennett’s family sat together on stage at Roxbury Community College dressed in Adidas tracksuits a day after it received an apology 34 years in the making.
A description of a 5-foot10 Black man wearing a black tracksuit with white or red stripes who spoke with a gravelly voice ultimately led to their brother, father and uncle’s wrongful arrest in the Oct. 23, 1989 shooting murder of a pregnant Carol Stuart.
The description provided to authorities that October night came from Stuart’s husband, Charles “Chuck” Stuart, who, in fact, orchestrated the murder but blamed it on a random Black man, an accusation inflaming the city’s racial tensions.
Mayor Michelle Wu last week formally apologized on behalf of the city to Bennett and Alan Swanson, the two Black men wrongfully arrested and accused in the case.
Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox, who said that he “was born and raised here so I certainly understand the history involved,” also apologized on behalf of the Police Department for the “hurt and pain and suffering” caused by the department’s handling of this case.
Willie Bennett did not attend the event his family hosted Thursday in Roxbury because “he don’t want to be here. He don’t want to talk to anybody because all he is going to get is an apology,” said his niece Star Bennett.
After years of suffering from the wrongful arrest and accusation, relatives say they are looking to get the truth out there about the case and the impact it has had on their family. It’s their way of “changing the narrative,” said Willie’s nephew, Joey Bennett.
“We’ve never had this conversation as a family,” he said. “This is the first time we have talked about it as a family. This is not something that we prepared for or anything.”
“Thirty-four years of pain, like put that into numbers, you can’t put that into numbers,” Joey added.
During her apology Wednesday, Wu said “a false, racist claim accusing a Black man” for Carol Stuart’s death “unleashed” terror on the Mission Hill community.
Mission Hill, one of Boston’s traditionally majority-Black neighborhoods, was swarmed with Boston Police following the killing. A participant in the HBO documentary on the case, “Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage & Reckoning,” described it as “open season” on the city’s Black population.
The first wrongfully arrested member of the community was Alan Swanson, who had a black tracksuit soaking in the sink, which the police took as evidence. While he was actually only accused of an unrelated unarmed robbery, police leaked to the media that they considered him their guy in the Stuart murder.
A group of teenagers later established the rumor that Willie Bennett, another member of the Mission Hill community, had done the shooting.
Star Bennett said she remembers the night her uncle was arrested, when she was just 6 years old at the time, “like it was yesterday.” She had been home with her sister and mother when police raided their home. At the same time, police also raided the three other homes that family members had been living in, Joey Bennett said.
“Even people in Boston who had the last name Bennett Nelson, they went into their homes, as well,” Star Bennett recounted. “To say we are angry, we are bitter, we are upset, an apology 34 years later, we will accept it … but it doesn’t fix anything.”
Chris Nelson was 15 when his father Willie was arrested. He said his father raised him the best he could but that his father missed out on “many, many things.”
“There’s no amount of money y’all can pay or anyone can give us to give back the lessons and the time that we didn’t get whether it be fishing, walks in the park or him teaching my little sisters how to ride a bike,” Nelson said.
“But I am glad that he finally got some kind of recognition,” he added of his father.
It has been reported in various outlets, including by the Herald, that the mayor at the time of the incident, Ray Flynn, had offered a private apology to the Bennett family.
But this is the first such public apology offered by the city.
Joey Bennett said it may only be a matter of time until he and his family receive another apology.
He was charged, convicted and incarcerated for 22 years after being accused of a second-degree murder at a city nightclub in 1997.
He got out in 2019 on bail and is fighting the case with the hopes of being exonerated.
Joey Bennett said, “They’re going to have to apologize again when they say ‘We’re dismissing this case against you right now’ that I’m walking around on bail for. I’m going to get another apology, y’all, and then cut the check.”