Deadly Greed: The Riveting True Story of the Stuart Murder Case That Rocked Boston and Shocked the Nation

This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of the murders of Carol DiMaiti Stuart and her unborn child. Carol and her husband, Charles were driving home from a birthing class at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Bosston on Oct. 23, 1989, when she was fatally shot. Charles Stuart, at first, fit the image as an heroic husband, fighting against his own injuries to contact police and summon help for his pregnant and seriously wounded wife.The police, press and communities across the nation believed Stuart's tale of a black man who'd climbed into their car, tried to rob the Reading, MA couple, and shot Carol Stuart. Carol was rushed back to Brigham and Women's Hospital, where she died from the bullet wounds to her head. Her prematurely born son, Christopher died 17 days later. Young black men in the Mission Hill District were summarily rounded up for questioning, and racial tensions in Boston were enflamed by Stuart's accusations, and the police handling of the investigation. While the accused Willie Bennett was innocent of the Stuart murders, and the allegations against him by Stuart were false, Bennett's prior crimimal record of violent assault with firearms, made him a prime target not only in the eyes of the police, but also in his community.Meanwhile, Stuart began collecting insurance money from scams he'd been running for months. Even his own family started suspecting his involvement in Carol's shooting. The investigative work by Boston Globe reporter Michele Caruso, and by the authors, outlines how this case fell apart after Matthew, Charles' brother and partner in the scam, came forward to tell authorities what he knew. Charles Stuart sought refuge in suicide, when it became clear he was a prime suspect in the crime. His body was retrieved from the Charles River in early January, 1990, under a cloud of suspicion. William Bennett was cleared of any involvement, and the DiMaiti family established a scholarship for residents of the Mission Hill District, in an effort to heal the wounds caused by their late son-in-law's hoax. This is a riveting true account of a monumentally selfish man (Stuart) and the lengths he went to secure his "dream"--even at the expense of his wife and son. It's also a cautionary tale NOT to believe everything you hear, even when the tales carry the weight of truth. Today many questions remain about the Stuart shooting; what was the extent of Matthew's involvement in the shooting; why were people so willing to believe Stuart's story of a black man robbing them; and how could Stuart have fooled even his own family about his involvement in his wife and son's murder?