On December 20, 2023, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu formally apologized to Black men wrongfully targeted and arrested in connection with Carol Stuart's murder.
On December 20, 2023, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu issued a formal, public apology on behalf of the city to the Black men who had been wrongfully targeted, harassed, and arrested by police in the aftermath of Carol Stuart's 1989 murder. Among those specifically named were Alan Swanson and Willie Bennett, both of whom had been wrongly implicated as suspects based on Charles Stuart's fabricated account of a Black assailant.
This apology marked what is widely regarded as the first formal municipal acknowledgment of the specific harm done to these men and the broader Black community of Mission Hill, who endured aggressive stop-and-search tactics, home invasions, and public suspicion for a crime none of them committed. It represented a significant moment of institutional accountability, more than three decades after the events took place.
The apology came amid renewed public and journalistic scrutiny of the case, spurred in part by The Boston Globe's own reexamination of its historical coverage. Mayor Wu's statement was seen as an important, if overdue, step toward reconciling the city's history of racially biased policing with its present-day commitments to racial justice. The event underscored how Carol Stuart's murder — and the racist hoax that followed — continued to reverberate in Boston's civic life, prompting genuine institutional reflection and redress for the wrongfully accused nearly 35 years after the crime that started it all.