SECRETS OF CENTRAL PARK 5 CASE FILE
Files tell of mayhem on night of jogger attack
One of the New York’s deepest wounds was reopened Thursday night when a trove of documents detailing the infamous Central Park Five case was released, renewing the debate over how far the city should have gone in settling with the young defendants ultimately cleared of raping a jogger.
Recordings, notes, pictures and memos — some never before released to the public — are all part of the official records being made available on the Daily News website, and on a site hosted by the city’s Law Department.
There, court buffs can see the coerced confessions from 1989, when the attack occurred, that ultimately landed five teenagers in jail, where most of them languished for more than a decade before they were exonerated.
The defendants — Korey Wise, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Yusef Salaam — all had their convictions overturned in 2002 after a prison inmate, Matias Reyes, said he was the one who raped 28year-old jogger Trisha Meili, and DNA evidence backed his confession.
The Central Park Five, as they were called in headlines, were awarded a $41 million settlement from the city in 2014, but not without protests from detractors, including future President Donald Trump, who had bought ads in four of the city’s newspapers in the aftermath of the incident calling for the death penalty.
All five suspects were convicted, each spending between seven and 13 years in prison.
Critics argued that the defendants were part of a group of marauders who menaced people in the park – wilding was the term widely used – robbing, beating and harassing joggers, walkers and people sitting on benches.
“These documents and videos will certainly challenge the prevailing narrative that completely omitted more than 50% of the evidence in this case,” said former prosecutor Linda Fairstein. “These young men were arrested as a result of a meticulous police investigation, and there’s no doubt that they were, as charged, rioting and attacking people in the park.”
But supporters have argued that even if they were involved in criminal activity outside the sexual assault, they more than paid the price with the time they spent in jail for a rape they did not commit.
“This case was litigated for years,” said lawyer Jonathan Moore, whose firm represented all but one of the defendants in the civil case. “There was clearly evidence that there were kids in the park who were doing some adolescent stuff. But there’s absolutely no evidence that they had anything to do with Trisha Meili. Linda Fairstein knows that, and the fact that she still holds onto it is unbelievable, actually.”
The city has agreed to release 200,000 pages of documents, 95 depositions and other records as part of its settlement. Thursday’s release was just the first wave of records related to the case — and consisted only of materials from the original investigation.
Officials said more notes and materials will be released in the coming days. The trove of information includes 911 calls made from the park on April 19, 1989.
“We just got a call of a group of 30 to 40 male blacks in Central Park approximately at 100th St. … disorderly and harassing people,” a police officer says.
“They are attacking joggers by the reservoir by 96th St.,” one caller later says.
“There’s a large roving band,” a 911 operator explains at one point.
Among those applauding the release was the jogger herself, who said she is still
trying to find the truth, 30 years later.
“For my own peace of mind, I wanted to find the truth of what happened and who was involved, and so that’s why I’m eager to see the release of these documents,” Meili told Daily News before the document drop. “It’s information and the details I’ve never had access to.”
Meili, after her remarkable recovery from the brutal assault, hopes to learn more about not just that night but the case in its entirety.