The Central Park Five: The Untold Story Behind One of New York City's Most Infamous Crimes

Although what you get in this book is just the facts, it is a gripping and riveting read. I thought it would be somewhat dry reading but I could not put this book down. It would be the middle of the night and I just couldn't stop reading. I was not yet a teenager when the events that comprise this novel happened. Most Americans have heard of the Central Park Jogger--an affluent white woman who was brutally raped and beaten nearly to death in Central Park in 1989. In fact, I had read her book which came out several years ago although her book dealt mostly with her recovery and the effect of the attack on her life. She does not remember the attack. In The Central Park Five, Sarah Burns chronicles how five teenagers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time were successfully prosecuted and imprisoned for the rape of this woman when ALL OF THE EVIDENCE pointed to it being someone else. Although they all confessed under intense coercion, even the details in their confessions are completely inconsistent. It is horrifying and appalling that so many people could just swallow the story that these boys committed the crime in spite of all the evidence showing otherwise. But that is the narrative that the public was presented with and that is the narrative that the public accepted. Burns spends some time setting the scene for us of an uber racist 1980s in New York--and in America--that was just ripe for something like this. The Central Park 5 had been in the park that night with a much larger group of boys who did assault and accost several people in the park. But the rape happened nowhere near where these boys were walking and later, a serial rapist confessed to the crime and his DNA was a match. What's truly horrifying is the realization that if the police had not forced the case through with the Central Park 5 as their prime suspects, that serial rapist might have been caught and he might not have gone on to attack several other women--and even kill one of them. This book really shows how powerful the whole "see-what-you-want-to-see" way of thinking can be. This book is a huge eye-opener. The depth and breadth of the miscarriage of justice that happened after the rape of the Central Park Jogger is simply staggering. You'll be incredulous--beyond incredulous. Days later, I am still reeling. My heart and prayers go out to the 5 men wrongly convicted. I'm even more appalled that the City of New York has been fighting a civil lawsuit brought by these men for a decade now. After what the police and prosecutors did to those boys, they should be throwing money at them. Burns did an amazing job with this book--telling this important story with elegance and compassion. This is powerful stuff and I think everyone should read it.

Through myriad interviews and legal documents, author Sarah Burns reconstructs the amazing case of the Central Park Jogger, a white investment banker whose brutal victimization galvanized the United States and the world back in 1989. As Burns shows, the physical evidence pointed all along to Matias Reyes, the "East Side Slasher" who was terrorizing women in that vicinity at the time. But with tunnel vision police ignored the obvious and coerced a series of confused confessions out of a group of African American and Latino boys who had been causing trouble in the park that night.Because he was not identified, even though he was right under the eyes of the police the entire time, Reyes was able to continue his vicious rape spree and even to murder one woman before he was ultimately apprehended. Even then, it didn't occur to police to compare his DNA with that found on Trisha Meili, the jogger. The match was not made until more than a decade later, when Reyes voluntarily confessed and supplied detailed information about the crime.Burns convincingly describes how racial hysteria overwhelmed all reason. With Donald Trump taking out full-page ads calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty, and media pundits stoking public furor about black-skinned "animals" and "savages" running amok, no one questioned whether police had the right suspects: "Race not only inspired the extreme reactions to the crime; it also made it easier for so many to believe that these five teenaged boys had committed the crime in the first place, and no one was suggesting that they might, in fact, be innocent."(Actually, a couple of intrepid columnists from New York Newsday, Jim Dwyer and Carol Agus, were expressing public doubts during the trial about the strength of the evidence connecting the youths to the crime, but their voices were not enough to turn the tide of public opinion.)This is a quick read, and a fascinating story. Highly recommended.

This book recounts the steps that led to a horrible injustice done to five teen aged boys who are referred to as the Central Park 5, who were convicted of raping the Central Park Jogger in 1989, and whose convictions were vacated completely after they served their full sentences. I lived in NY at that time, and the book is a fair recounting of the frenzy around the case as well as the details that led to overturning their convictions. The book and film are the work primarily of Sarah Burns, daughter of documentarian Ken Burns, and show the background research and production values of a Burns project. It's an easy and effective read, and highlights the ineffectiveness of the justice system when it is deliberately perverted by those in control of the process. I used the book and DVD in a class on how racial conflict is presented in the mass media focusing on the racial elements of the story, and found it very effective and balanced. Greater coverage of how the minority media covered the ongoing story would have strengthened the project, since the few references that are included indicate the coverage was very different, and especially since the five teenagers were all members of minority communities. Chapter titles would also have been handy. The whole mess is sad and frustrating and infuriating, and the interviews with the now-grown men reflect the pain and injustice of lives that cannot really be recovered. These kids were put into prison for years when they were not guilty and simply wanted to play baseball, create some art, and go to the prom. The impact of the film and book have been significant; for the first time in about ten years, the NY City government is starting to negotiate with them on compensation for unlawful imprisonment.