Murder in Boston (16 page)

Apparently seeking to bring reason back to a situation that appeared to be steamrolling out of control, a group of more moderate blacks suggested that a special legislative committee be formed to investigate how the city’s institutions reacted and how the police response could have been more effective and less intrusive. It was a breath of fresh air in a climate that tended toward the frantic.

Flynn, seemingly anxious to mend fences, especially with a probable race for governor on his mind, visited Willie Bennett’s family the night Chuck’s body was hauled from the Mystic River. But it only made the Bennetts and many of the black activists angrier. “The mayor came and spent one hot second in my mother’s home,” said Willie Bennett’s brother, Ronald. “Then he flew out the door. My mother offered him a chair to sit in, but he didn’t want to sit down. He acted like my mother’s house wasn’t good enough for him.”

While the fight raged, Flynn tried to keep a low profile. In fact, it may have been too low. On January 15, eleven days after Chuck’s body was recovered, Flynn was one of the speakers at a memorial breakfast honoring the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Addressing the crowd of about 2,500 people, Flynn focused on a community investment plan involving a bankers association and the minority community. He did not mention the Stuart case. The fact that he did not angered many blacks anew. “It seems his advisers are telling him, ‘If you act like it doesn’t exist, it’s going to go away.’ But it’s not going to go away,” NAACP director Elisa said indignantly. Dukakis was another speaker at the gathering, and he did not address the Stuart case, either, but his failure to do so did not incur the wrath that Flynn’s omission did.

The racism aspect of the story, however, was only one of several that was developing simultaneously. Events were popping so fast that the news media were having trouble keeping up with them. The result was the dissemination of reports covering subjects that ranged from the mundane to the exotic. Some of the news reports complemented each other, dovetailing one into the other to bring a specific incident into sharper focus. Some of them were diverse, coming straight out of left field. Some of them apparently were right. Some of them were obviously wrong. The main thing they had in common was that in virtually every one of them, specifics of the investigation were attributed to unidentified sources. It was an example of massive media coverage being directed by rumor; film was shown, recordings were broadcast, thousands of words were printed, but almost every substantive investigatory issue was handled without confirmation—there was simply no way of nailing it down. This made it possible for the
Globe
and the
Herald
to publish stories that were categorically denied, stories that may never have been published in the first place if Boston authorities had been willing to address the issues in an on-the-record basis. The result was confusion. If the media can be accused of stooping to disseminate rumor, then officials also can be accused of neglecting their responsibilities in separating fact from fiction.

Crucial to an interpretation of what had happened and why is an acknowledgment that a judgment cannot be based solely on the accuracy of news reports. Some of the material that was printed and broadcast was spot on, but much was woefully incomplete. Time and again many of the important questions never got answered, and although the secondary questions were answered correctly, they meant little without the answer to a primary question to bring it all into focus. In short, more issues were raised than resolved.

Some of those answers may come in time. Some may never Come. In the days immediately following Chuck’s death there were pitiably few verities. There was no question that Chuck was dead. There was no question that his brother Matthew was involved in the aftermath of the October 23 shooting. There was no question that a plot of some kind existed. Who the plotters were, what the plot was, how it was carried out, what the plotters’ roles were, and what were the ultimate objectives—all were questions without answers. Despite the outrage of the black community, Flanagan has now backed off his early claim that Willie Bennett was no longer a suspect.

There were big gaps in the narrative. And while the public waited for someone to fill them in, the media was forced to scavenge voraciously, writing articles and filing stand-uppers that were based mainly on speculation. These were safe stories, because in such cases any one reporter’s story was as good as anyone else’s.

On the day after Chuck’s body was recovered and for a long time to come, only one thing would remain certain: that his death and Matthew’s visit to the authorities had not closed the Stuart file. In the days ahead the file just got thicker; the situation got more bizarre by the hour.

Chapter 14

Throughout metro Boston, it seemed, the reaction to these new developments was universal: shock and disbelief. The public, unaware that Matthew was going to speak to the authorities, still thought of Chuck as a brave survivor, a heroic victim of inner-city crime. The initial shock, however, quickly gave way to widespread anger. People who had followed developments in the case avidly through the media, who had shed tears when they heard Chuck’s eulogy for his dead wife, who had shed more tears when the infant Christopher died, who suffered when news of Chuck’s second operation was disseminated, felt frustrated and cheated. One Boston psychologist, who had no direct connection to the case, said that when his clients came to see him about their own problems, they were much more interested in spending their expensive and valuable time talking about how outraged they were by Chuck’s apparent deception.

The people of Boston, it appeared, felt they had a stake in Chuck’s future, and when it looked as though everything he said had been a lie, they were left with terrible feelings of resentment and pain. They were looking for someone to tell them not just what had happened, but why. They hungered for an explanation of how such a clean-cut family man like Chuck—and he had certainly been portrayed in that fashion by the media up till then—could have done what the media was
now
saying he did. For the Boston media, the explanation was simple: Chuck was an archfiend, the worst kind of monster, and the kind that was hardest to detect. He was, as the media were later to classify him, a sociopath, one of the tribe whose infamous members included John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey McDonald.

The
Herald
was the first to promote this new and interesting angle. Chuck’s body had no sooner been pulled from the water than reporter Susan Brink rang Jack Levin, a sociologist at Northeastern University who has attained a considerable amount of fame from books and appearances on talk shows. She asked for an instant psychological diagnosis. Most experts, when called by a reporter begging for a quote, feel obligated to say
something
. Levin, not surprisingly, complied. Chuck, he said, referring to the call to state police, “playacted that dramatic sequence of events over the telephone.” From that moment on, Levin asserted, Chuck had one goal in mind: fool the police and the public.

Without ever actually labeling Chuck a sociopath (which for all practical purposes is synonymous with the older, less acceptable term
psychopath
), Levin strongly implied that he was one. Others, in later days, would not be so delicate. They would speak openly of “that sociopath who killed his wife and himself,” with no way to prove any of the three statements. Presumably basing his comments about Chuck on what he had learned through the media, Levin launched into an explanation to keep the
Herald
’s reading public happy. “Sociopaths,” he said, “don’t have the capacity for remorse, for empathy. They’re very manipulative, very concerned about how they present themselves. They may engage in shady business practices, or tell lies, but they don’t stand out in the crowd. If they feel abandoned, that their spouse has let them down in a very profound way, they may feel it’s fine to get revenge or get out of a bad situation by killing.”

What Levin said, or was quoted as saying, was absolutely correct, but it was correct only as far as it went. A determination of sociopathy should be made only after a qualified examiner has had a chance to study the subject, either in person or through the reports of qualified observers. Newspaper reports of the October shooting could hardly be classified as documents upon which to base a psychological diagnosis.

The symptoms of sociopathy, which is classified as an antisocial personality disorder rather than what forensic psychiatrists and psychologists like to call “a disease of the mind,” are laid out in easily understandable language in the mental health worker’s bible, the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
, Third Edition, more commonly referred to as the
DSM III
. According to the manual, the signs of sociopathy almost always begin before the age of fifteen and usually include lying, stealing, fighting, truancy, and resisting authority. So far as is known, Chuck exhibited none of these signs. In adolescence a person suffering from this disorder also exhibits early and aggressive sexual behavior, drinks to excess, and commonly uses drugs. Again, there is no evidence that has been made public that Chuck did these things. As an adult a sociopath usually has trouble on the job, is unable to hold a job for very long, and is unable to conform to social norms. Chuck had a long history of steady, responsible employment at Kakas & Sons.

“Despite the stereotype of a normal mental status in this disorder,”
DSM III
explains, “frequently there are signs of personal distress, including complaints of tension, inability to tolerate boredom, depression, and the conviction that others are hostile toward them.” It continues: “Almost invariably there is markedly impaired capacity to sustain lasting, close, warm, and responsible relationships with family, friends, or sexual partners.” It is possible, the manual concedes, that some sociopaths are able to achieve political and economic success, “but these people virtually never present the full picture of the disorder, lacking in particular the early onset in childhood that usually interferes with educational achievement and prohibits most public careers.” True enough, Chuck’s education was minimal, but it appears
not
to have been because he was suffering from mental or social problems. If he did not pursue his education as avidly as others, it seems to be because he had no interest. None of his five siblings, as far as is known, graduated from college either.

As predisposing factors toward this personality disorder,
DSM III
lists an absence of parental discipline, extreme poverty, removal from the home, and growing up without parental figures. This apparently does not apply to Chuck.

Finally, in a checklist to aid mental health workers in their diagnoses,
DSM III
lists nine major manifestations for sociopathy and recommends that four of them be present before diagnosing the disorder: “1. Inability to sustain consistent work behavior…; 2. Lack of ability to function as a responsible parent…; 3. Failure to accept social norms with respect to lawful behavior [as examples it lists repeated thefts, engaging in illegal occupations such as pimping, fencing, selling drugs]…; 4. Inability to maintain enduring attachment to a sexual partner as indicated by two or more divorces…desertion of spouse, promiscuity [which it defines as having ten or more sexual partners within a year]; 5. Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults…including spouse or child beating; 6. Failure to honor financial obligations…; 7. Failure to plan ahead; 8. Disregard for the truth as indicated by repeated lying…; and 9. Recklessness, as indicated by driving while intoxicated or recurrent speeding.”

Ten days later the
Globe
published its first psychological profile. It did not imply as strongly as the
Herald
had done that Chuck was a sociopath, but it went to considerable lengths to explain what a personality disorder was and how it could be recognized. The reporter on the story, Alison Bass, seemed instead to be referring to Chuck as a narcissist, which is a first cousin to a sociopath. Or, as summarized by Dr. Charles Ford, one of the
Globe
sources and a psychiatrist at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, “Sociopaths are narcissistic people without any conscience.”

A narcissist, according to the
DSM III
, suffers from, among other things, “a grandiose sense of self-importance or uniqueness.” A narcissist may tend to realistically overestimate his or her abilities and achievements and may submit to fantasies in which he or she achieves unlimited wealth, power, brilliance, or ideal love. “Individuals with this disorder are constantly seeking admiration and attention, and are more concerned with appearances than with substance,” the manual says. According to the
DSM III
, narcissists may also suffer from the antisocial personality disorder—that is, they may be sociopathic as well. That is what the
Globe
apparently was getting at when its story segued from narcissists to sociopaths.

As with sociopathy, the
DSM III
lists criteria for diagnosing narcissists. It lists five major manifestations, three besides the exaggerated sense of self-importance and the tendency to fantasize about success. Other things to watch for are exhibitionism, cool indifference or marked feelings of rage, and two of four characteristics it lists for interpersonal relationships. These four are an expectation of special favors from others, taking advantage of others for their own desires, relationships that fluctuate between idealization and devaluation of others, and a lack of empathy.