FormerlyIndifferent
NES Member
Tomorrow, Oct. 23rd 2014, will be the 25th anniversary of the date that Carol DiMaiti was shot and killed by her husband Charles Stuart as they left a child birth class at a Boston hospital. I remember it on the news that night, like it was last week. I can't believe it's been 25 years.
For those of you who weren't around then or are too young to remember, her husband shot her in the head (7 months pregnant), and he then shot HIMSELF in the stomach, to make it look like "someone else did it". His younger brother met them by prearrangement, and took and disposed of the gun and her possessions so that it looked like a robbery.
He (the husband) called 9-1-1 on his cell phone and reported that he was somewhere in Roxbury (he claimed he did not know where) and that "a black man had gotten in their car and robbed and shot them".
Police/fire/EMT found them some time later (that's a story in itself; see the "Rescue 911" episode that details how they did it), and removed them to the hospital. Carol died a few hours later. Just before that, her baby Christopher was delivered by C-section but died 17 days later due to the trauma that mom had happen to her, and loss of oxygen. Husband was in the hospital for weeks, but recovered. He ID'd a black man as the assailant who, it turns out, had nothing to do with it, and may very well have gone to jail for a crime he did not commit. There was a huge shit storm of racial profiling when the police were out to find the "black man" who did it. There never WAS a black man. It was all a concoction.
Three months later, January 1990, the younger brother went to the police and told them the truth. It was not a robbery. The husband did it. And the motive was apparently, life insurance money. When the husband was outed by his brother and knew the police were coming, he jumped off the Tobin Bridge to his death. The headline in the Globe, front page, top of fold if I recall right, was a shocker: STUART DIES IN JUMP OFF TOBIN BRIDGE AFTER POLICE ARE TOLD HE KILLED HIS WIFE.
Holy shit. And I think that's what the entire nation thought when that headline came out. No-one saw that one coming. Well, maybe some did, but most of us did not.
I write all this because I am a nostalgic guy. In the 1970s, my father was one of Carol DiMaiti's teachers at Medford high school. He said she was smart, and very nice. He was of course very sad when she died, and was distraught when the truth came out in January 1990.
When I was a little kid, we visited her family in Medford. They had a dog that had had puppies and were giving them away. I was probably 4 years old, & she was in high school. We went, took a puppy, and for some reason or another, we didn't keep him and brought him back for someone else to have. But I remember being in her back yard and seeing her....just a kid herself but "all grown up" in my eyes.....and the puppies.
Just getting a little nostalgic and yes still sad, 25 years later. Thanks for listening.
For those of you who weren't around then or are too young to remember, her husband shot her in the head (7 months pregnant), and he then shot HIMSELF in the stomach, to make it look like "someone else did it". His younger brother met them by prearrangement, and took and disposed of the gun and her possessions so that it looked like a robbery.
He (the husband) called 9-1-1 on his cell phone and reported that he was somewhere in Roxbury (he claimed he did not know where) and that "a black man had gotten in their car and robbed and shot them".
Police/fire/EMT found them some time later (that's a story in itself; see the "Rescue 911" episode that details how they did it), and removed them to the hospital. Carol died a few hours later. Just before that, her baby Christopher was delivered by C-section but died 17 days later due to the trauma that mom had happen to her, and loss of oxygen. Husband was in the hospital for weeks, but recovered. He ID'd a black man as the assailant who, it turns out, had nothing to do with it, and may very well have gone to jail for a crime he did not commit. There was a huge shit storm of racial profiling when the police were out to find the "black man" who did it. There never WAS a black man. It was all a concoction.
Three months later, January 1990, the younger brother went to the police and told them the truth. It was not a robbery. The husband did it. And the motive was apparently, life insurance money. When the husband was outed by his brother and knew the police were coming, he jumped off the Tobin Bridge to his death. The headline in the Globe, front page, top of fold if I recall right, was a shocker: STUART DIES IN JUMP OFF TOBIN BRIDGE AFTER POLICE ARE TOLD HE KILLED HIS WIFE.
Holy shit. And I think that's what the entire nation thought when that headline came out. No-one saw that one coming. Well, maybe some did, but most of us did not.
I write all this because I am a nostalgic guy. In the 1970s, my father was one of Carol DiMaiti's teachers at Medford high school. He said she was smart, and very nice. He was of course very sad when she died, and was distraught when the truth came out in January 1990.
When I was a little kid, we visited her family in Medford. They had a dog that had had puppies and were giving them away. I was probably 4 years old, & she was in high school. We went, took a puppy, and for some reason or another, we didn't keep him and brought him back for someone else to have. But I remember being in her back yard and seeing her....just a kid herself but "all grown up" in my eyes.....and the puppies.
Just getting a little nostalgic and yes still sad, 25 years later. Thanks for listening.
