Murder in Boston (20 page)

Flynn left the session two hours later without responding officially to either demand. “I’ve said on a number of occasions that I regret the way the case was handled,” he told reporters, “and I would like to see somebody apologize to the entire city of Boston.” He admitted, however, that he was cold to the review board proposal.

Chapter 17

From the time the Stuart case took its dramatic turn with Chuck’s death and Matthew’s story to the District Attorney, the Boston media, particularly the newspapers, tried to balance news stories with analysis, interpretation, and comment. Sometimes they were successful; sometimes they were not. The
Herald
seemed particularly prone to folding editorial material into its news reports. And the analysis that was presented was not always enlightening or pertinent; witness the blatant determination to label Chuck a sociopath when such a conclusion should be a critical psychological finding based upon more solid evidence than had been presented thus far. Sometimes, too, it was difficult for all but the careful reader to tell what was analysis and what was news, particularly since neither paper made an attempt to differentiate with readily visible labels. The front page of the
Globe
on January 9 was a prime example. Under a single headline streaming across the top of page one—
PROBERS SAY DISCLOSURES WOULD HAVE MADE DIFFERENCE
—were two stories, one news and one, presumably, analysis.

The news story, in the top right hand spot, carried the subhead “Gun Not Reported Missing Until After Suicide” and was a wrap-up detailing most of the appropriate events of the past twenty-four hours, highlighting the fact that Jay Kakas did not report the company’s pistol missing until after Chuck’s death.

The other story, by staffer Peter J. Howe, carried the subhead “Many Kept Clues about Stuart to Themselves.” Although it was a faithful chronicle of a growing list of people who knew or had good reason to suspect that Chuck was more deeply involved in his wife’s shooting than had been revealed before Matthew went to the investigators, it also weaved in enough comment to prevent it from being classified as news. But there was no attempt by
Globe
editors to signal this distinction. While the story made some interesting points, some of them were open to argument. At one point, Howe wrote:

After Stuart’s suicide, two neighbors in Reading told reporters about loud fights they remember the couple having or said Carol Stuart complained repeatedly that her husband went out alone on Friday nights and stayed out late.

Disregarding the assertion, the assumed given, that Chuck’s death was a suicide, the text strongly implies that 1) this behavior was a valuable clue to Chuck’s murderous intent, and 2) if police had possessed this information the previous autumn, it might have pointed them toward Chuck immediately and the Willie Bennett episode would never have happened. Admittedly this information shows that Chuck and Carol did not have the perfect marriage, but the “perfect marriage” was an illusion carefully created by the media, including the
Globe
, to begin with. The fact that the marriage was imperfect is hardly surprising. What is more surprising is that no one challenged the media concept sooner. But if the marriage was not totally trouble free, that still did not indicate that Chuck was planning to kill his wife.
Every
couple argues, sometimes heatedly. It is not rare for the differences to be so great that the marriage falls apart. But hundreds of thousands of marriages a year break up without either spouse resorting to murder. Besides that, the fact that they argued occasionally and that Carol might not have liked her husband spending Friday nights with the guys showed that they were human, that their marriage probably was like every other marriage, with its ups and downs, celebrations and conflicts. What investigators may well have concluded from this information about family fights is that despite occasional tiffs the Stuarts still had a solid marriage.

Howe again:

Some friends knew that Charles Stuart had a strong interest for several months before the shooting in a Millis woman, then 21 years old, who had worked for two summers at the fur store where Stuart was a manager. Police sources said they had a romantic relationship that began in July, and they said they believe the woman, Deborah J. Allen, was the intended recipient of a $250 gold brooch he bought the day before her birthday last week.

The implication here is that Chuck and Allen were romantically involved and that the police knew it, and may have known it since the first time they questioned Allen in October. Although that may one day prove to be the case, it was not known with certainty at the time. And even if it were, that in itself did not constitute a surefire motive for murder. Neither did the possibility that Chuck was probably attracted physically to a very comely young woman with whom he had been thrown into daily contact. All over the country, every day, businessmen develop sexual attractions for their secretaries (and vice versa), salespeople for their clients, co-workers for each other. But most of those attractions remain in the fantasy realm, and many marriages continue to hold together despite these real or imagined lapses. And even the ones that do break up generally end more peacefully than with murder.

For inflammatory comments, however, it was hard to beat the
Globe
’s Mike Barnicle. The difference between Barnicle’s articles and the other apparent analysis pieces was that the former were clearly understood to be opinion. It was when Barnicle was a co-byliner on the news stories that things began to get fuzzy. Since there were virtually no named sources in the stories, and since most assertions were unsubstantiated, it was difficult to tell when his opinion was masquerading as fact, when he was using police locker room scuttle butt camouflaged as knowledge. But when he was writing under his single byline, with his name in white capital letters inside a black box, he could say what he felt—and he felt a lot. To call him outspoken would be an understatement. On January 7 he wrote about Chuck Stuart:

It is a measure of the depth of one man’s icy, calculating, maniacal cruelty that, hours before the infant expired, Chuck Stuart asked to be wheeled alongside the child’s incubator to say goodbye.

And a couple of paragraphs later:

…this man, a cunning demon capable of fooling nearly everyone around him and almost all those charged with investigating his wife’s murder, hurled himself off the bridge into the water below.

On January 10 Barnicle’s column was in the spot that newspaper editors call the second lead—that is, in the upper left hand corner of page one. On that day Barnicle thought he had a great scoop. He had discovered, he felt, that Chuck planned Carol’s murder so he could open his own restaurant. Plus, on the day that Chuck died he was due to collect on a $480,000 life insurance policy from the Prudential Insurance Company. In Barnicle’s words:

Last night…[a] man sat at a desk downtown and stared in amazement at a piece of paper that finally provided a motive for this crime that has damaged so many people and destroyed so many lives. The man sat in his chair and looked out the window as the lights of the distant buildings began to shine like small stars in an evening when everyone talked only about the cruelty of this murder.

“He killed her so he could get money to open up a restaurant,” the man was saying. “Turns out it’s that simple and that pathetic…”

On the other side of the front page, in the lead news spot, was a story that said much the same as Barnicle’s column. The story carried dual bylines: Kevin Cullen and Mike Barnicle. The first two paragraphs of the news story read:

A police diver yesterday recovered the gun investigators believe Charles M. Stuart used to kill his pregnant wife so he could collect life insurance benefits that authorities now suspect were meant to finance a new career as a restaurateur.

Sources say a check made out to Stuart for $480,000—the proceeds of a life insurance policy for his wife, Carol—had already been processed by the Prudential Insurance Co. last Thursday when Stuart killed himself.

In neither case is the benefactor of this information identified. In Barnicle’s column it is “a man” slumped “at a desk downtown.” In the news story coauthored by Barnicle, the information is attributed to “sources.” Many journalists would have trouble with this duality of Barnicle’s. Ostensibly the man is paid to pronounce his opinion, not cover news. Imagine
The New York Times
running a front-page story with William Safire listed as a coauthor or Andy Rooney doing a stand-upper for the nightly news. To make matters worse, the information appears to be dead wrong. A Prudential spokesman denied that the company had a policy issued in the name of Carol Stuart. Neither had it written a check to Charles Stuart, not on the day he died or any other day.

Nevertheless, the
Globe
continued to stand by its story even in the face of the Prudential denial. Clearly either the
Globe
was extremely confident of Barnicle’s sources or it did not want to admit it had made a mistake. It is possible that the Prudential spokesman was incorrect and a check had been issued. It is also possible that Prudential did not want to confess that it had written a substantial check to an apparent murderer. But that would be foolish as well as unethical. If there was a policy on Carol’s life, the money would still be paid to the beneficiary. If the beneficiary was dead, the money would go to the beneficiary’s estate and would show up in court records when the estate was probated. If Prudential
were
trying to cover up, which would be the least likely scenario, it would only be able to keep the secret for so long.

There was a possibility, too, that Barnicle’s sources had the amount right but the company wrong. In that case, however, it would have been to the
Globe
’s (and Barnicle’s) advantage to clear up the misunderstanding as soon as possible.

There is a possibility, in fact, that the whole issue of insurance was hyped beyond belief. Despite leaks from police “sources” that Chuck had large amounts of insurance on his wife, some stories said up to $1 million, there has been no corroboration: As far as is known publicly, there were only three policies on Carol’s life: one for $82,000 through her employer, one for $100,000 through the Travelers Life Insurance Company, and another for $100,000 through American Express. The
Herald
reported on February 2 that it had learned there was still a third $100,000 policy on Carol, but the report was not confirmed by any other source.

Discounting the group policy and the unlikely report in the
Herald
, if Chuck had only $200,000 insurance on Carol (just slightly more than the amount needed to cover the mortgage on their home), she probably was underinsured rather than overinsured. Life insurance agents generally recommend that an individual’s policies total four to five times the amount of actual earnings. Carol made $40,000 a year, but she was only thirty and relatively fresh out of law school, her career was still in its infancy. It is not unreasonable to assume that, even if she did not become a star, she would in a few years easily double or triple what she was making at the time she was killed.

Chuck was insured for an almost identical amount. Documents made public later showed that he had two $100,000 policies and a $14,000 policy with the company for which his father once worked. Apparently that was an old policy, and the two larger policies were taken out later. His father was believed to be the beneficiary on the small policy and Carol on the two larger ones. Again, as with Carol, the two larger policies would barely cover the mortgage on their home if he were to die and leave her struggling to keep up monthly house payments.

Still a mystery is a comment Carol is supposed to have made to at least one of her friends that she and Chuck were chronically “insurance poor.” Without knowing more details about the kinds of policies, it is difficult to gauge what their annual cost was. However, the $100,000 policy Chuck had on Carol through American Express, for example, was most likely for term insurance, and given Carol’s age, it is doubtful that the premium was more than $250 to $300 a year.

Here we have another example of how investigators and prosecutors seemingly have worked—successfully—to obscure the details. Despite investigators’ claims that there is no central data bank for policies, it is inconceivable that, in this age of computers, such a registry does not exist. Assuming that such a file is a reality, it should be a simple matter for authorities to gain access and discover precisely how much insurance money is involved. If that is the case, prosecutors and police have not made the information public.

Knowing how much insurance money is involved is crucial to understanding the dynamics of the situation. Remove insurance as a possible motive and the case against Chuck as his wife’s killer suffers a substantial blow. If no considerable amount of money is involved, that also damages the restaurant-as-motive theory, and the case against Chuck grows increasingly wobbly.

The fact that Chuck would want to open a restaurant should come as no surprise; at the Voke he majored in culinary arts, and his first jobs were as a cook. On weekends, when Chuck and Carol entertained, Chuck invariably was the chef. In his January 10 column, Barnicle made an issue out of the fact that investigators found a number of restaurant trade magazines in the Reading house, along with literature on how to start a business. But as a motive for murder?