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The Central Park Five: The Untold Story Behind One of New York City's Most Infamous Crimes
A spellbinding account of the real facts of the Central Park jogger case that powerfully reexamines one of New York City's most notorious crimes and its aftermath. • A must-read after watching Ava DuVernay's When They See Us
On April 20th, 1989, two passersby discovered the body of the "Central Park jogger" crumpled in a ravine. She'd been raped and severely beaten. Within days five black and Latino teenagers were apprehended, all five confessing to the crime. The staggering torrent of media coverage that ensued, coupled with fierce public outcry, exposed the deep-seated race and class divisions in New York City at the time. The minors were tried and convicted as adults despite no evidence linking them to the victim. Over a decade later, when DNA tests connected serial rapist Matias Reyes to the crime, the government, law enforcement, social institutions and media of New York were exposed as having undermined the individuals they were designed to protect.
Here, Sarah Burns recounts this historic case for the first time since the young men's convictions were overturned, telling, at last, the full story of one of New York’s most legendary crimes.
On April 20th, 1989, two passersby discovered the body of the "Central Park jogger" crumpled in a ravine. She'd been raped and severely beaten. Within days five black and Latino teenagers were apprehended, all five confessing to the crime. The staggering torrent of media coverage that ensued, coupled with fierce public outcry, exposed the deep-seated race and class divisions in New York City at the time. The minors were tried and convicted as adults despite no evidence linking them to the victim. Over a decade later, when DNA tests connected serial rapist Matias Reyes to the crime, the government, law enforcement, social institutions and media of New York were exposed as having undermined the individuals they were designed to protect.
Here, Sarah Burns recounts this historic case for the first time since the young men's convictions were overturned, telling, at last, the full story of one of New York’s most legendary crimes.
240 pages, Paperback
First published May 17, 2011
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October 27, 2020
In April 1989, a white woman was brutally raped and severely beaten while jogging in Central Park. Five teenagers were quickly apprehended - four Black and one Hispanic. All five confessed, were tried and convicted even though there was no evidence linking them to the victim. Over a decade later, DNA tests linked serial rapist Matias Reyes to the crime, finally exposing the deep-seated race and class divisions in NYC that led to these young boys being accused back in 1989.
Having watched When They See Us on Netflix (which is excellent, by the way - if you haven’t seen it, please check it out) and listened to numerous podcasts on the case, I already knew what I was getting into when I picked up this book. And yet my anger and overwhelming empathy and sadness for these boys was as heightened as ever. They were failed on so many levels - they were failed by law enforcement, by the media, by the judicial system.
My phone is full of notes that I made while reading. I don’t have the space to cover all of them, but something that really stuck with me was how the media treated these boys. From the very beginning they were guilty, with racist terminology being used in newspapers, referring to them as “savages.” Even all those years later when DNA evidence led to their convictions being overturned, this was hardly covered in the media. A lot of people actually thought they just got off on a technicality. Their defence teams, on the whole, also did a horrendous job of defending them.
Sarah Burns does a wonderful job. She has worked closely with the young men in order to uncover the truth, and you can tell this book is impeccably researched. My only minor issue is that I felt it was a little short - I’d have liked to have spent more time with each of The Exonerated Five (as they are now known) and learnt a little more about how they have adjusted to life post-prison.
Having watched When They See Us on Netflix (which is excellent, by the way - if you haven’t seen it, please check it out) and listened to numerous podcasts on the case, I already knew what I was getting into when I picked up this book. And yet my anger and overwhelming empathy and sadness for these boys was as heightened as ever. They were failed on so many levels - they were failed by law enforcement, by the media, by the judicial system.
My phone is full of notes that I made while reading. I don’t have the space to cover all of them, but something that really stuck with me was how the media treated these boys. From the very beginning they were guilty, with racist terminology being used in newspapers, referring to them as “savages.” Even all those years later when DNA evidence led to their convictions being overturned, this was hardly covered in the media. A lot of people actually thought they just got off on a technicality. Their defence teams, on the whole, also did a horrendous job of defending them.
Sarah Burns does a wonderful job. She has worked closely with the young men in order to uncover the truth, and you can tell this book is impeccably researched. My only minor issue is that I felt it was a little short - I’d have liked to have spent more time with each of The Exonerated Five (as they are now known) and learnt a little more about how they have adjusted to life post-prison.
June 5, 2011
OK, I have to admit that I was a tad disappointed with this book initially, finding the first two chapters or so interesting in terms of details but not particularly movingly conveyed. In short, at first, the writing didn't move me though I was impressed with the author's earnestness and commitment to getting the complex and complicated story right. Luckily, I kept reading ... and, I'm happy to report, my experience changed completely and positively.
In fact, so good this book became that I can say that it stands out in my recent experience as I can't remember another book - many of which I still consider better than this one - that led me to finish it within 26 hours. Basically, this book is so engaging that I read it in a day. Here's why:
First, the subject matter is compelling. The (true/back)story of this famous trial is simply fascinating ... and horrifying because it recounts one of the larger miscarriages of justice in recent times. That it's a well-told story both increases the enjoyment of the read and one's horror at the knowledge acquired.
Next, the book is well-written. It's not particularly lyrical or inspiring in style, but it's thoroughly researched, comprehensively reported and nicely balanced in approach (though with just enough of an attitude to let you know that the author does indeed have a [factually- and logically-based] view). One cannot help but appreciate the author's earnestness and desire to get the story right.
Also, the observations and conclusions in the book are as compelling as they are damning. In its distinctively factual and comprehensive way, the book makes clear how the factors of race and class were integral to this rush to and travesty of justice. It's also clear that the author has a dinstinct perpsective on all of this, but not to the point where it seems to impinge on her analysis. Basically, she examines the entirety of the facts attendant to the case and then draws reasonable and insightful conclusions. And, in the process, she both informs her readers and contributes to the righting of a tragic wrong.
In summary, I strongly recommend this book. It is an engaging, informative and cautionary tale, a well-told story that serves as a necessary a reminder for us to have courage in crisis lest similar travesties be perpetrated. And despite the harrowing process, it is ultimately a story of the triumph of hope and justice, although the former seems a fantastic proposition for most of the story and the latter is long delayed....
In fact, so good this book became that I can say that it stands out in my recent experience as I can't remember another book - many of which I still consider better than this one - that led me to finish it within 26 hours. Basically, this book is so engaging that I read it in a day. Here's why:
First, the subject matter is compelling. The (true/back)story of this famous trial is simply fascinating ... and horrifying because it recounts one of the larger miscarriages of justice in recent times. That it's a well-told story both increases the enjoyment of the read and one's horror at the knowledge acquired.
Next, the book is well-written. It's not particularly lyrical or inspiring in style, but it's thoroughly researched, comprehensively reported and nicely balanced in approach (though with just enough of an attitude to let you know that the author does indeed have a [factually- and logically-based] view). One cannot help but appreciate the author's earnestness and desire to get the story right.
Also, the observations and conclusions in the book are as compelling as they are damning. In its distinctively factual and comprehensive way, the book makes clear how the factors of race and class were integral to this rush to and travesty of justice. It's also clear that the author has a dinstinct perpsective on all of this, but not to the point where it seems to impinge on her analysis. Basically, she examines the entirety of the facts attendant to the case and then draws reasonable and insightful conclusions. And, in the process, she both informs her readers and contributes to the righting of a tragic wrong.
In summary, I strongly recommend this book. It is an engaging, informative and cautionary tale, a well-told story that serves as a necessary a reminder for us to have courage in crisis lest similar travesties be perpetrated. And despite the harrowing process, it is ultimately a story of the triumph of hope and justice, although the former seems a fantastic proposition for most of the story and the latter is long delayed....
April 23, 2013
I watched this documentary a few months ago and just finally got around to reading the book. Sarah Burns goes into great detail into what actually took place in 1989. While I don't believe these kids were angels by any stretch of the imagination, I do believe it is absolutely disgusting how NYPD could coerce these minors into confessing to a crime they did not commit. I can see how you could jump to conclusions seeing as how these kids were running around rampant in the park that night but when you have DNA evidence that does not match any of the suspects as well as just arresting another man who committed the exact same crimes around the park numerous times before I mean come on. I also don't understand how as a parent you would not have an attorney present before talking to detectives let alone allowing your children to confess to a crime they did not commit just because they wanted to go home. The District Attorney was no better trying to make a name for herself with such a high profile case. It's stories like this that make people lose faith in our judicial system everyday. To those detectives as well as the D.A. I say shame on you!
September 28, 2011
After reading some of the primary criticisms leveled at Burns' book--namely, its "flat," uninspired, faux-Didionesque language and its refusal to see the crimes the boys labeled as "the central park five" were still guilty of even as they were cleared of the more serious rape and attempted murder charges as real and terrible crimes--I went into reading it with a certain amount of skepticism.
However, upon reading the book in its entirety in one day-long sitting, I'm ready to say that the naysayers were wrong again. Firstly, the writing is neither "flat" or consciously Didion-thieving. It is clear and she describes the particulars of the case and its central players without drama or unnecessary forays into description. Frankly, as someone who wanted to come to my own decisions regarding the nuances of innocence or guilt assigned to the boys, I appreciated her fair relaying of the facts of the case.
Further, although Burns makes no pretense of the fact that she sees the trial and conviction of five young kids for crimes they clearly could not have committed as the worst miscarriage of justice (because it was!), I don't think she makes light of the other crimes the boys may have in part been guilty of that night. The boys who were guilty of spear-heading the attacks of others in the park that night were convicted and punished for their crimes--fairly. They were convicted of rioting and criminal mischief and for several, assault. They were tried as juveniles and served fair sentences in juvenile facilities. Their experiences in the criminal justice system while not entirely without bias since they were mostly poor, children of color were as fair as they probably could have been.
Those boys who did lead the assaults on innocent people in the park that night admitted to their crime and were punished. However, the five boys who were eventually convicted of the rape and attempted murder of the Central Park jogger when first taken into custody for "wilding" admitted to no crime. They admitted to being part of the group of thirty boys who went to the park that night. They admitted to witnessing the crimes of other boys. They also admitted to breaking away from the larger group to return home. Honestly, we probably will never what the actual parts "the central park five" took in the other attacks since within hours of their arrest for their part in the "wilding" they were already convicted in the minds of the police and the district attorney's office of the rape of the jogger and that took precedence.
However, upon reading the book in its entirety in one day-long sitting, I'm ready to say that the naysayers were wrong again. Firstly, the writing is neither "flat" or consciously Didion-thieving. It is clear and she describes the particulars of the case and its central players without drama or unnecessary forays into description. Frankly, as someone who wanted to come to my own decisions regarding the nuances of innocence or guilt assigned to the boys, I appreciated her fair relaying of the facts of the case.
Further, although Burns makes no pretense of the fact that she sees the trial and conviction of five young kids for crimes they clearly could not have committed as the worst miscarriage of justice (because it was!), I don't think she makes light of the other crimes the boys may have in part been guilty of that night. The boys who were guilty of spear-heading the attacks of others in the park that night were convicted and punished for their crimes--fairly. They were convicted of rioting and criminal mischief and for several, assault. They were tried as juveniles and served fair sentences in juvenile facilities. Their experiences in the criminal justice system while not entirely without bias since they were mostly poor, children of color were as fair as they probably could have been.
Those boys who did lead the assaults on innocent people in the park that night admitted to their crime and were punished. However, the five boys who were eventually convicted of the rape and attempted murder of the Central Park jogger when first taken into custody for "wilding" admitted to no crime. They admitted to being part of the group of thirty boys who went to the park that night. They admitted to witnessing the crimes of other boys. They also admitted to breaking away from the larger group to return home. Honestly, we probably will never what the actual parts "the central park five" took in the other attacks since within hours of their arrest for their part in the "wilding" they were already convicted in the minds of the police and the district attorney's office of the rape of the jogger and that took precedence.
July 7, 2011
Sarah Burns’ new book about the Central Park Jogger case has the advantage of hindsight. We now know that the five boys, ages 14 to 16, who were prosecuted for beating and raping a young woman who was jogging in Central Park on an April night in 1989 are almost undoubtedly not guilty of that crime.
This does not mean that they are innocent. They may not have committed that crime but they were among a pack of 30 to 40 young men who rampaged in the park that night, attacking joggers and bicyclist and putting two men in the hospital. They explained it as “just having fun.”
The police immediately focused on a few of the boys who were already in police custody for the “wilding” when the jogger was found and after more than 24 hours of questioning in some cases, four of the boys wrote and signed and then videotaped confessions to having beaten and raped the jogger. The fifth made a confession but did not sign it. All had their parents or other family representatives with them when they made the videos. It looked like the police had their culprits.
The evidence was conflicting, with the statements describing things that did not happen and failing to describe things that did. But in the face of signed and videotaped confessions the boys were convicted. Some years later, just after the statute of limitations on rape had expired, another man, Matias Reyes, confessed to the crime and said he did it alone. Testing showed his DNA on the jogger’s clothing; no DNA from the convicted boys had been found.
All of this was described exceptionally well in the book, Unequal Verdicts, by Timothy Sullivan, which was written before the new evidence cleared the boys. That book centered on the judicial process, concentrating on the judge, lawyers, and jury and mentions all of the errors of time and place and other basic discrepancies of the attack that were obvious in the boys’ confessions.
Burns’ new book, secure in the knowledge that the courts have vacated the boys’ conviction chose to focus on the boys themselves – now men – and their families. She clearly believes that there was no real case against them, given all the errors in their stories, and she attributes their conviction in large part to racism.
There is a case to be made that racism was involved in the media frenzy that surrounded the case. As Burns points out, the rape of a black woman would have been extremely unlikely to have captured the country’s imagination the way the jogger’s attack did. She considers the language to describe the rapist racist in nature: beasts, barbarians, wolfpack, wilding. “The boys – and their alleged actions – were variously called ‘bestial,’ ‘savage,’ ‘brutal,’ ‘bloodthirsty,’ ‘evil,’ and ‘mutant.’ Several columnists and people writing letters to the editor emphasized that they were worse than animals.” The terms are not necessarily racist but knowing the purported attackers were black could perhaps make them seem so.
She does not make much of the reverse racism of the black “Supporters” who were in the court room every day of the trials and who yelled filthy language and death threats at the prosecutors, accused the jogger of being in the park looking for sex with a black man, and contended (with no evidence) that her boyfriend was responsible. Al Sharpton was deeply involved in the protest. He brought with him Tawana Brawley, a black woman who had falsely accused some white men of raping her, and compared her to the jogger. With C Vernon Maddox and Alton Maddox, the other major black “leaders” who were involved in the Brawley hoax, Sharpton made the most of the case for the sake of the publicity, but he did nothing to see that the boys had competent defense lawyers. Even knowing as we now do that the boys were not guilty of the rape, the behavior of the “Supporters” was inexcusable. They did the boys no good and probably did them harm.
Sarah Burns is working on a documentary based on this book with her father, Ken Burns.
2011 No 98 Coming soon: I Am the Central Park Jogger
This does not mean that they are innocent. They may not have committed that crime but they were among a pack of 30 to 40 young men who rampaged in the park that night, attacking joggers and bicyclist and putting two men in the hospital. They explained it as “just having fun.”
The police immediately focused on a few of the boys who were already in police custody for the “wilding” when the jogger was found and after more than 24 hours of questioning in some cases, four of the boys wrote and signed and then videotaped confessions to having beaten and raped the jogger. The fifth made a confession but did not sign it. All had their parents or other family representatives with them when they made the videos. It looked like the police had their culprits.
The evidence was conflicting, with the statements describing things that did not happen and failing to describe things that did. But in the face of signed and videotaped confessions the boys were convicted. Some years later, just after the statute of limitations on rape had expired, another man, Matias Reyes, confessed to the crime and said he did it alone. Testing showed his DNA on the jogger’s clothing; no DNA from the convicted boys had been found.
All of this was described exceptionally well in the book, Unequal Verdicts, by Timothy Sullivan, which was written before the new evidence cleared the boys. That book centered on the judicial process, concentrating on the judge, lawyers, and jury and mentions all of the errors of time and place and other basic discrepancies of the attack that were obvious in the boys’ confessions.
Burns’ new book, secure in the knowledge that the courts have vacated the boys’ conviction chose to focus on the boys themselves – now men – and their families. She clearly believes that there was no real case against them, given all the errors in their stories, and she attributes their conviction in large part to racism.
There is a case to be made that racism was involved in the media frenzy that surrounded the case. As Burns points out, the rape of a black woman would have been extremely unlikely to have captured the country’s imagination the way the jogger’s attack did. She considers the language to describe the rapist racist in nature: beasts, barbarians, wolfpack, wilding. “The boys – and their alleged actions – were variously called ‘bestial,’ ‘savage,’ ‘brutal,’ ‘bloodthirsty,’ ‘evil,’ and ‘mutant.’ Several columnists and people writing letters to the editor emphasized that they were worse than animals.” The terms are not necessarily racist but knowing the purported attackers were black could perhaps make them seem so.
She does not make much of the reverse racism of the black “Supporters” who were in the court room every day of the trials and who yelled filthy language and death threats at the prosecutors, accused the jogger of being in the park looking for sex with a black man, and contended (with no evidence) that her boyfriend was responsible. Al Sharpton was deeply involved in the protest. He brought with him Tawana Brawley, a black woman who had falsely accused some white men of raping her, and compared her to the jogger. With C Vernon Maddox and Alton Maddox, the other major black “leaders” who were involved in the Brawley hoax, Sharpton made the most of the case for the sake of the publicity, but he did nothing to see that the boys had competent defense lawyers. Even knowing as we now do that the boys were not guilty of the rape, the behavior of the “Supporters” was inexcusable. They did the boys no good and probably did them harm.
Sarah Burns is working on a documentary based on this book with her father, Ken Burns.
2011 No 98 Coming soon: I Am the Central Park Jogger
July 28, 2019
The movie said a lot, but this book said even more. Factors like—what was happening in New York at that time to influence the outcome, people having political agendas and ulterior motives, use of misinformation and using it to sway public opinion, lying on the witness stand and manipulating the jury by using inappropriate questioning tactics. The evidence clearly did not support, nor suggest, that these young men were ever guilty of anything. This book left me speechless, angry and aware that this could easily happen again if we don’t educate ourselves and work towards a more fair and equal justice system.
June 28, 2019
A must read after watching When They See Us. A must read in general actually. White people are the worst!!
November 27, 2020
Meh. I didn't enjoy this. It was dry, hard to engaged with, and just underwhelming. I didn't know much about this event before reading this book so I was really looking forward to learning about it. I couldn't keep the names straight and things seemed to jump around all while not really going anywhere. I'm glad I read it to learn about this time in history, but overall it was just meh.
April 1, 2018
This is a solid book. It’s pretty straightforward and tells the story of The Central Park Five and their abuse at the hands of NYC justice system. I knew the story so it wasn’t eye opening but still pissed me off.
May 5, 2021
I read this book after watching When They See Us and the accompanying interviews that Oprah does with the 5 men, the actors, and the director. When They See Us moved me so much that I wanted to learn more. In this book, I do learn more on some points and yet in some other ways it misses some of the mark met by WTSU and the interviews. Even though I now had faces to put to everyone in the book, the book lacked emotion. I am guessing this is intentional, more of a journalistic, researched approach, and I can't fault that aspect. The racsim and prejudice that these boys and their families faced is incredible, as is the ineptitude of their attorneys. Maddening!
January 28, 2013
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.
October 3, 2020
The central park five book was one of the most infuriating, but eye-opening books that I have ever read.
The book starts out by describing the night of the violent attack. I felt so awful for the victim of such a horrific crime. It broke my heart. To hear how much damage had been done to her physically, sexually and psychologically was heartbreaking. I could not imagine how terrified she must have been. It is terrible that anyone could do such a thing to another human being. When reading about the boys shenanigans I did find myself annoyed with them. Harassing bikers and other park members was childish and annoying but it was hard for me to believe these young kids would do such a horrific crime. Seeing how quickly they were arrested and written off as savages as if they were no better than a wild animal was disgusting. It goes to show how unjustly and cruelly persons of colour were treated in the 80s and 90s. It was so apparent how they were the oppressed minorities. I wonder if they were all white how drastically different their outcomes would be.
When they were in jail, some even with the actual attacker I was livid. For the true rapist to sit there for so long knowing others were in jail with him that were innocent, ugh that got to me. Seeing these poor men's lives be forever changed and having that time that they can never get back was crushing. Although it took so long, im glad they were eventually exonerated.
This accurately represents what is still going on in our society today. Many people of colour are written off as "violent", "angry", "savage", "gangster" or "terrorist." It is despicable how much hate is in some peoples heart. Whether it is blatant acts of violence towards people of colour or smaller microaggressions that happen daily, it is unfair. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be born a person of colour in today's or previous society. I think this book is still so relevant today and so many people should read it. I thought the book was a little wordy in the first half, very content heavy. But, I thought over-all it was written and paced well. I was satisfied by how it was wrapped up at the end. I haven't seen the Netflix series yet but I plan to watch it. I just need to find the courage to. I have a feeling I'll be wanting to scream at the TV. I gave this book a 4.5/5 stars. So glad I gave it a read.
The book starts out by describing the night of the violent attack. I felt so awful for the victim of such a horrific crime. It broke my heart. To hear how much damage had been done to her physically, sexually and psychologically was heartbreaking. I could not imagine how terrified she must have been. It is terrible that anyone could do such a thing to another human being. When reading about the boys shenanigans I did find myself annoyed with them. Harassing bikers and other park members was childish and annoying but it was hard for me to believe these young kids would do such a horrific crime. Seeing how quickly they were arrested and written off as savages as if they were no better than a wild animal was disgusting. It goes to show how unjustly and cruelly persons of colour were treated in the 80s and 90s. It was so apparent how they were the oppressed minorities. I wonder if they were all white how drastically different their outcomes would be.
When they were in jail, some even with the actual attacker I was livid. For the true rapist to sit there for so long knowing others were in jail with him that were innocent, ugh that got to me. Seeing these poor men's lives be forever changed and having that time that they can never get back was crushing. Although it took so long, im glad they were eventually exonerated.
This accurately represents what is still going on in our society today. Many people of colour are written off as "violent", "angry", "savage", "gangster" or "terrorist." It is despicable how much hate is in some peoples heart. Whether it is blatant acts of violence towards people of colour or smaller microaggressions that happen daily, it is unfair. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be born a person of colour in today's or previous society. I think this book is still so relevant today and so many people should read it. I thought the book was a little wordy in the first half, very content heavy. But, I thought over-all it was written and paced well. I was satisfied by how it was wrapped up at the end. I haven't seen the Netflix series yet but I plan to watch it. I just need to find the courage to. I have a feeling I'll be wanting to scream at the TV. I gave this book a 4.5/5 stars. So glad I gave it a read.
July 28, 2020
After watching the Netflix series 'When They See Us' last year, I was really moved and upset about the story of the The Central Park Five. Once I'd finished the series, I wanted to find out more and invested in this book. However, due to work commitments etc. I never got round to reading it. But with everything going on in the world right now and with the Black Lives Matter campaigns, I thought now was as good as time as any.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 (More 4.5/5)
This book tells the heartbreaking story of how five teenagers were wrongfully convicted of raping a woman in Central Park in 1989 and how they eventually became exonerated. Sarah Burns clearly details what life was like in New York in the 80's/90's for black people and other ethnic minorities and how this case evolved over the months/years.
I read this book and was fuelled with so much anger, emotion and empathy. I could not believe that people made the most harrowing assumptions and allegations about these five boys and believed that they were 'savages', just because of their race and their social economic status. This book quite clearly depicts the corruption in the judicial system in America during that time and the power of the media influencing it's readers with racist stories. However, reading the book, it is quite clear that it seems not a lot has changed since then and people are still treat unequal as a result of their race.
I enjoyed reading the book, despite the underlying tragic story. It really brought the case to life and provided all of the facts from around that time. It was almost presented like a report, backing up theories with examples from other sources. Not only did it relive the horrific details of the case, but Sarah Burns also referred to other crimes that were committed during that time and unpicked them to show how corrupt the media and law was at the time.
Although this book was written before the Netflix series, I would've liked to have read more about each of the exonerated five and their lives both in and out of prison. The book briefly mentions them throughout and gives little snippets away but it mainly focuses on the case itself and everyone involved. Either way, I'd highly recommend you to read it. It is a real eye opener into society back then and how it is now.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 (More 4.5/5)
This book tells the heartbreaking story of how five teenagers were wrongfully convicted of raping a woman in Central Park in 1989 and how they eventually became exonerated. Sarah Burns clearly details what life was like in New York in the 80's/90's for black people and other ethnic minorities and how this case evolved over the months/years.
I read this book and was fuelled with so much anger, emotion and empathy. I could not believe that people made the most harrowing assumptions and allegations about these five boys and believed that they were 'savages', just because of their race and their social economic status. This book quite clearly depicts the corruption in the judicial system in America during that time and the power of the media influencing it's readers with racist stories. However, reading the book, it is quite clear that it seems not a lot has changed since then and people are still treat unequal as a result of their race.
I enjoyed reading the book, despite the underlying tragic story. It really brought the case to life and provided all of the facts from around that time. It was almost presented like a report, backing up theories with examples from other sources. Not only did it relive the horrific details of the case, but Sarah Burns also referred to other crimes that were committed during that time and unpicked them to show how corrupt the media and law was at the time.
Although this book was written before the Netflix series, I would've liked to have read more about each of the exonerated five and their lives both in and out of prison. The book briefly mentions them throughout and gives little snippets away but it mainly focuses on the case itself and everyone involved. Either way, I'd highly recommend you to read it. It is a real eye opener into society back then and how it is now.
July 9, 2020
In 2oth century, Central Park was seen as a dangerous place to go because of the media. But Central Park was a safer place than anywhere else in the city. Unfortunately, four teenage boys were in the wrong place at the wrong time that night of April 19th, 1989. To top it all off, they were black and the assaulted jogger, Trisha Meili, was white.
That night, Kevin, Raymond, Antron, Yusef and Korey just wanted to go home and this is what the investigators made them believe. In the end, these minors were tried and convicted as adults without any solid evidences of the crime they confessed to. Were they involved in this crime? Just get this book 😉 and see how it turned out.
But get prepared. It is definitely not for the faint-hearted. It may make you cry. It will make your blood boil. You will fell outraged. It will open your eyes. You won’t forget about those boys known as the ‘Central Park Five’ hence the title of this true crime book.
I was so shocked and moved by this book that I couldn’t wait to watch the show. And let me tell you, the show is as riveting as the book. I definitely recommend the show called ‘When they see us’.
(well-deserved 5 stars) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Everyone should read ‘The Central Park Five’. Just get this book!
That night, Kevin, Raymond, Antron, Yusef and Korey just wanted to go home and this is what the investigators made them believe. In the end, these minors were tried and convicted as adults without any solid evidences of the crime they confessed to. Were they involved in this crime? Just get this book 😉 and see how it turned out.
But get prepared. It is definitely not for the faint-hearted. It may make you cry. It will make your blood boil. You will fell outraged. It will open your eyes. You won’t forget about those boys known as the ‘Central Park Five’ hence the title of this true crime book.
I was so shocked and moved by this book that I couldn’t wait to watch the show. And let me tell you, the show is as riveting as the book. I definitely recommend the show called ‘When they see us’.
(well-deserved 5 stars) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Everyone should read ‘The Central Park Five’. Just get this book!
November 27, 2019
This book was the basis for Sarah Burns’ documentary on the case and it’s well worth reading along with viewing the doc. Gripping without being sensational; advocates without being preachy; informative without being overwhelming—this is a fantastic recounting of the tragedy of the “Central Park jogger” of 1989—her vicious attack had police rounding up young teenagers who were out misbehaving in the park that night. We get to know the accused youths, the context of their lives, and the travesty of their interactions with police which led to forced/false confessions. We also find out about their hapless defense attorneys, the venal media frenzy surrounding the case, and the iron-clad case for their exoneration. Despite the overwhelming contrary evidence, the NYPD insist they did nothing wrong, some even continue to claim they were guilty. Reading this intensified my anger at the toxic criminal justice system. By contrast, just last week, one of the five, Yusef Salaam, spoke at Princeton.
June 28, 2020
In the time of the Black Lives Matter movement, this book about the 1989 case against the so-called Central Park Five is tragically relevant.
Because of racist prejudice, five boys are convicted for the horrible attack on a female jogger.
The book is interesting and very sober. It tells the story clearly and without too much fuzz.
I read it after having watched When They See Us on Netflix about the case and it was good to get a bit deeper in the story.
Luckily, all five men are free today. Unluckily, they are scarred for life.
Hopefully this is the time where we will understand the value of human life and that it’s value is not dependent on the color of your skin.
Because of racist prejudice, five boys are convicted for the horrible attack on a female jogger.
The book is interesting and very sober. It tells the story clearly and without too much fuzz.
I read it after having watched When They See Us on Netflix about the case and it was good to get a bit deeper in the story.
Luckily, all five men are free today. Unluckily, they are scarred for life.
Hopefully this is the time where we will understand the value of human life and that it’s value is not dependent on the color of your skin.
June 27, 2019
The story of four black and one Latino schoolboys from Harlem who were wrongly convicted thirty years ago for an horrific attack and rape of a white middle-class female jogger in Central Park. Coerced and contradictory confessions extracted by a police/judicial system that practiced institutional racism; and a tabloid media that competed with itself to file racially prejudicial and erroneous articles; meant there was only ever going to be one verdict: Guilty. The truth will out as they say. It did eventually. But at what cost to those innocent boys and their families?
November 5, 2019
The only reason this isn’t a 5 is that I wanted a little more political commentary - I didn’t get much from this that I don’t already know, but this would be perfect for anyone who’s not already familiar with the case and it’s racial implications / or someone who wants a quick read for a case study about racism and the media in seeking justice. Still such a good read!
February 20, 2020
Chronicle of the Central Park Five case. It’s so disturbing, it brings into question the entire American legal system. This is the case the legal system to change laws to make it possible to charge 13 and 14 year olds as adults. All based on a lie.
January 26, 2013
http://philadelphiareviewofbooks.com/...
Around 10:20 on the evening of March 20, 2010, Anna Taylor, a 27-year-old waitress from Frenchtown, NJ, walked with her boyfriend west on South Street in Philadelphia toward the Tritone Bar. A black teenager passing them punched Anna in the face, knocking out a front tooth and its root and splitting her lip so it hung from her face. Later, the doctor at Hahnemann University Hospital used so many stitches to repair her lip that Taylor and her mother could not count them. Another teen hit Taylor’s boyfriend in the head a few times, but the group moved on before he sustained any injuries. The two boys were part of a flash mob, a spontaneous gathering of thousands of teens organized with social networks and text messages. The March 20 event was the fourth in a string of such gatherings starting in 2009 and continuing into 2011. The local and national media reported the gatherings extensively, in horrific terms.
“They had smiles on their faces as they scared people at random,” Assistant District Attorney Angel Flores told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “They thought that assaulting others was a form of enjoyment.”
Christine Flowers, in her column for the Philadelphia Daily News, wrote, “While there is no specific evidence that the little thugs roaming our streets are looking for white people to harass, the fact that the vast majority of the offenders are black and the vast majority (if not the totality) of the victims are white should give pause.” She quoted her “friend Jeffrey” in the same column as writing, “When your first motivation is to beat someone white, and taking their cell phone or shoulder bag is an afterthought, that is strong evidence these weren’t socio-economic crimes. These young savages weren’t out to steal, they were looking to create mayhem and ethnic intimidation.”
If Flowers took the time to read her paper’s sister publication, the Inquirer, she would have known that, according to the DA’s office, the flash mobbers “were not on the hunt for particular victims…although they trampled and punched people along the way – white, black, whomever – and damaged property.” Hate crime myth debunked.
The truth is scarier. Marques Carson, 17, a student at Mastery Charter School in South Philadelphia told the Inquirer, “I think it’s happening because these kids out there have nothing to do. It’s happening out of boredom. They want to hang out and have fun, by any means necessary.” The gatherings turn violent, Carson said, because of groupthink. “When you’re by yourself, you’re one person. When you’re with your friends you become another person. The peer pressure is on. . . . Too many kids are followers, not leaders.”
The boys that assaulted Anna Taylor and her boyfriend on March 20 were summoned to the scene by a text message.
Come to South Street. South Street is poppin.
Of course the public outrage ignores the rich, and much less widely reported, tradition of white mob violence in Philadelphia. “This is a city that breaks windows to express happiness when the Phillies win,” said University of Pennsylvania anthropologist, Philippe Bourgois. When your rioters wear expensive baseball jerseys, and sport white skin, the white folks on gentrified South Street don’t shake in their boots. But ask Woodbridge Police Officer Neal Auricchio if the danger is any different. In January 2012, Auricchio was beaten in front of Geno’s Steaks at South 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue for wearing a Rangers jersey after the Winter Classic at the Wells Fargo Center. Earlier this year a large group of mostly white Temple University undergraduates destroyed property and harassed pedestrians in the poor black neighborhood surrounding Temple’s North Philadelphia campus. The gathering was spontaneous, unrelated to a sporting event or protest. Media reports of this incident were muted compared with reports of the flash mobs involving black teenagers in Center City.
Still, the recent string of flash mobs recall a bit of the city’s zeitgeist from the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, groups of black youths destroying property and assaulting random people on the street were referred to as “wolf packs” and their actions were described as “wilding.”
In 1998, then-councilman Michael Nutter said, in response to sexual assaults at that’s years Greek Picnic, a gathering of black fraternities, “What would we be saying if males from the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nations attacked, stripped, assaulted and violated black women? It’s not about what the white man did. It’s not about slavery or oppression. It’s about nothing. It’s about being ignorant and disrespectful.” As mayor, Nutter has taken the same tough approach in his public reaction to the flash mobs. But maybe Mayor Nutter is missing something. Maybe he’s not listening to kids like Marques Carson when they say violence happens because kids have nothing to do. The recession caused by the collapse of the financial sector in 2007 will, ironically, most hurt those furthest away from the gilded wood-paneled halls of Wall Street. Schools, libraries and recreation centers are closing in the poorest sections of the city. Many of the children of North and West Philadelphia’s ghettos – if they have nothing better to do, if they have no family support, no quality education, no prospects for the future – will commit crimes. No amount of Nutter’s forceful rhetoric of responsibility and self-determination will change that.
Then again, Nutter’s tough law-and-order policy seems quaint compared to the vitriol on the philly.com comment boards in reaction to the flash mobs.
“I’m getting a gun.”
“I actually hope I cross paths with a flash mob. I’m just going to start swinging at anyone I can hit, male or female.”
“These flash mob folks make it really hard not to be racist.”
“Well, if you are a CCW (concealed carry weapon) holder, this is a good reason to start packing with extended-capacity ammo magazines.”
And most disturbingly – “Paging Mr. Goetz, Mr. Bernie Goetz.”
In December of 1984, Goetz shot four black men on a New York City subway car. Goetz said the men demanded money from him and were making hand gestures indicating they had weapons. The men insisted they were panhandling. Having shot all four men, he looked at one, Darrell Cabey, and said, “You don’t look too bad, here’s another,” and shot Cabey again, severing his spinal cord and permanently paralyzing him.
The images are admittedly compelling and dramatic, so maybe it’s understandable that journalists do not go out of their way to encourage moderate reactions. But sometimes the victims of these crimes can be the most sensible about the public’s responsibility.
Just after 9:00 one Friday night in late July of 2011, a group of about two dozen twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys and girls beat Jeremy Schenkel, a 22-year-old building engineer, to the ground near the corner of 15th and Sansom Streets. The teens broke Schenkel’s glasses and tried, unsuccessfully, to steal his briefcase. Schenkel was uninjured but the group went on that same night to the kick in the teeth of another person and beat a 54-year-old homeless man bloody and unconscious.
Remarkably, Schenkel, expressed sympathy for his attackers, saying, “The fact that eleven and twelve year old kids are participating in this kind of activity is sadder than anything else.” The mother of Anna Taylor, the waitress attacked in March of 2010, expressed a similar sentiment, “Our biggest concern is what direction Philadelphia’s children are getting. What is the world heading toward? My daughter will heal. She will repair in every way. But what will happen to these kids?”
The terms may have changed from the 80s and 90s to today. “Wolf packs” became “flash mobs” and kids started using technology to better organize their mischief. However, the response of the media, and therefore much of the public, to these urban crimes – and there’s no denying they are serious crimes – has remained much the same.
In her book The Central Park Five: The Chronicle of a City Wilding, Sarah Burns, daughter of the lauded PBS documentarian Rick Burns, tells the story of five teenage boys who, in 1989, became embroiled in a media and law enforcement firestorm surrounding the rape and brutal beating of a female jogger in Central Park. All five of the boys were African-American or Latino and four of them were under sixteen years of age. The jogger, a twenty-something white executive at a financial firm, was assaulted so ferociously that she nearly bled to death in a wooded area of the park near the 102nd Cross Street Drive where she had been running. She recovered, but never regained any memory of the night of her attack. The five boys, who entered the park with a larger group on the night of the rape, participated in random acts of “wilding” – as it became known – scaring passersby on bicycles, beating a bum and mugging male joggers who ran along the Reservoir path, far south of where the female jogger was found. The boys who became known as the Central Park Five – Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, and Raymond Santana, Jr. – were arrested when the male joggers reported the larger group’s activities to the Central Park Precinct. While they remained in detention, waiting for parents and guardians to show up for police interviews, the female jogger was found. Burns deftly combines studies of contemporaneous media reports, police documents and her own interviews to tell the dramatic story of how these five boys were essentially lynched by the justice system and the media and wrongly convicted for a heinous crime they did not commit.
The dystopia of late-80s New York City seems unreal, in retrospect. Burns’s conjuring of the zeitgeist is compelling, reminding us of the true inspiration for the sensationalist films of John Carpenter or vigilante video games like Renegade where the object was to beat up as many punks in the subway as possible (and the punks just kept coming and coming and coming). The Warriors and Escape from New York, we might forget, were stylized expressions of real fear and outrage engendered by, among other things, the media’s portrayal of “wilding” as a serious problem for public safety in the city.
McCray, Richardson, Wise, Salaam and Santana all confessed to being present at the rape of the jogger but, as Burns shows, the confusion produced by police in getting those confessions, particularly on the part of District Attorney Elizabeth Lederer, amounted to more than coercion and was, at times, blatant manipulation. The interrogators took advantage of the fact that none of the boys requested legal advocates be present at their interviews. They broke the law by telling the boys and their parents and guardians that they would be released from custody if they confessed. Many of the boys’ family members were intimidated by police and were removed from the interrogation rooms when the cops wanted to get rough with the suspects. Santana’s grandmother, who was present at his interrogation, was not fluent in English. A lazy press, and a prosecutor and detectives hungry for a quick conviction, ignored these issues as the case played out in the year following the rape.
However, Burns, like the media covering the Central Park Five case in 1989 and the early-90s, and the media covering the flash mobs in Philadelphia today, fails to ask the most important question concerning these groups of boys. There is no question they committed crimes that were much less serious than the rape, but still deplorable. They beat a helpless homeless man and left him bleeding in a patch of bushes beside East Drive and attacked four random joggers at the Reservoir. While Burns’s brief history of lynching and stereotypes about black men helps us understand the horrible tradition the mainstream media and public were acting in, in response to the rape, she never attempts to help us understand why the boys committed the serious crimes they did commit in the first place. The line between the public’s unfair perception of these boys and the crimes they committed might not be so far, though.
“What’s the matter, white boy, you scared?” and “All the white people are scared,” the youths who participated in the South Street flash mob were reported as saying. Whether the youths actually said these things or not – the attribution of all quotes in local media come from scared white people, after all – the sentiment might be revealing. These boys, and less often girls, could be acting out for a number of reasons, not least of which is the way the world views them. The Trayvon Martin case is not only important in informing our thoughts on gun control and real racial tensions, but also in the dangerousness of our own presuppositions concerning race, youth and violence. George Zimmerman is not so different from Bernhard Goetz, and the inaction of the media and the justice system remains the same as it was in 1989.
From the beginning of the trial of the Central Park Five, the boys were sacrificed by their distracted and incompetent defense attorneys, and Elizabeth Lederer, her fellow prosecutors, and Judge Galligan, all of whom were too stubborn and single-minded to see how the jogger’s case fit in with a string of unsolved rapes and assaults in Central Park and the Upper East Side. The jogger’s rape fit the MO of Mattias Reyes a psychopathic serial rapist known as the East Side Slasher. Reyes was brought to justice while the Five were still on trial, but the cases were never linked until Reyes confessed to the rape of the jogger years later. Still, the tabloid press, and to a lesser extent the mainstream press, resisted Reyes’s confession. They also resisted any evidence that might exonerate the Five while clinging foolhardily to the coerced confessions. But none of these observations could be made in the trial of the Central Park Five. The rhetoric surrounding the racial divide in the city in the late-80s and early-90s was so vitriolic that any expression of the racial aspects of the case hurt the defendants in the court of white opinion and justice. But justice is not only robbed from young black men in these types of cases. The old creed that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty does not hold for most interrogators. The complicity of the detectives in mischaracterizing the interrogations that elicited the boys’ confessions reveals a pervasive police corruption that might be rooted in a desire to put criminals behind bars, but which handicaps justice for everyone, especially the wrongfully accused.
“On June 20, Stephen Lyde pleaded guilty to assault in a random attack on a cyclist in Center City. In what was meant to send a message to those marauding youth bands who amuse themselves by attacking strangers in the street, Lyde was sentenced to five to 20 years,” the Philadelphia Daily News reported in the summer of 2011. Five teenage boys were robbed of their youths in New York for a high profile crime they did not commit; another young man in Philadelphia is sacrificing his for a random act of violence. How many other similar cases go unreported because the victims are not white? And when will we temper our public reaction with compassion and positive, restorative action?
Around 10:20 on the evening of March 20, 2010, Anna Taylor, a 27-year-old waitress from Frenchtown, NJ, walked with her boyfriend west on South Street in Philadelphia toward the Tritone Bar. A black teenager passing them punched Anna in the face, knocking out a front tooth and its root and splitting her lip so it hung from her face. Later, the doctor at Hahnemann University Hospital used so many stitches to repair her lip that Taylor and her mother could not count them. Another teen hit Taylor’s boyfriend in the head a few times, but the group moved on before he sustained any injuries. The two boys were part of a flash mob, a spontaneous gathering of thousands of teens organized with social networks and text messages. The March 20 event was the fourth in a string of such gatherings starting in 2009 and continuing into 2011. The local and national media reported the gatherings extensively, in horrific terms.
“They had smiles on their faces as they scared people at random,” Assistant District Attorney Angel Flores told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “They thought that assaulting others was a form of enjoyment.”
Christine Flowers, in her column for the Philadelphia Daily News, wrote, “While there is no specific evidence that the little thugs roaming our streets are looking for white people to harass, the fact that the vast majority of the offenders are black and the vast majority (if not the totality) of the victims are white should give pause.” She quoted her “friend Jeffrey” in the same column as writing, “When your first motivation is to beat someone white, and taking their cell phone or shoulder bag is an afterthought, that is strong evidence these weren’t socio-economic crimes. These young savages weren’t out to steal, they were looking to create mayhem and ethnic intimidation.”
If Flowers took the time to read her paper’s sister publication, the Inquirer, she would have known that, according to the DA’s office, the flash mobbers “were not on the hunt for particular victims…although they trampled and punched people along the way – white, black, whomever – and damaged property.” Hate crime myth debunked.
The truth is scarier. Marques Carson, 17, a student at Mastery Charter School in South Philadelphia told the Inquirer, “I think it’s happening because these kids out there have nothing to do. It’s happening out of boredom. They want to hang out and have fun, by any means necessary.” The gatherings turn violent, Carson said, because of groupthink. “When you’re by yourself, you’re one person. When you’re with your friends you become another person. The peer pressure is on. . . . Too many kids are followers, not leaders.”
The boys that assaulted Anna Taylor and her boyfriend on March 20 were summoned to the scene by a text message.
Come to South Street. South Street is poppin.
Of course the public outrage ignores the rich, and much less widely reported, tradition of white mob violence in Philadelphia. “This is a city that breaks windows to express happiness when the Phillies win,” said University of Pennsylvania anthropologist, Philippe Bourgois. When your rioters wear expensive baseball jerseys, and sport white skin, the white folks on gentrified South Street don’t shake in their boots. But ask Woodbridge Police Officer Neal Auricchio if the danger is any different. In January 2012, Auricchio was beaten in front of Geno’s Steaks at South 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue for wearing a Rangers jersey after the Winter Classic at the Wells Fargo Center. Earlier this year a large group of mostly white Temple University undergraduates destroyed property and harassed pedestrians in the poor black neighborhood surrounding Temple’s North Philadelphia campus. The gathering was spontaneous, unrelated to a sporting event or protest. Media reports of this incident were muted compared with reports of the flash mobs involving black teenagers in Center City.
Still, the recent string of flash mobs recall a bit of the city’s zeitgeist from the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, groups of black youths destroying property and assaulting random people on the street were referred to as “wolf packs” and their actions were described as “wilding.”
In 1998, then-councilman Michael Nutter said, in response to sexual assaults at that’s years Greek Picnic, a gathering of black fraternities, “What would we be saying if males from the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nations attacked, stripped, assaulted and violated black women? It’s not about what the white man did. It’s not about slavery or oppression. It’s about nothing. It’s about being ignorant and disrespectful.” As mayor, Nutter has taken the same tough approach in his public reaction to the flash mobs. But maybe Mayor Nutter is missing something. Maybe he’s not listening to kids like Marques Carson when they say violence happens because kids have nothing to do. The recession caused by the collapse of the financial sector in 2007 will, ironically, most hurt those furthest away from the gilded wood-paneled halls of Wall Street. Schools, libraries and recreation centers are closing in the poorest sections of the city. Many of the children of North and West Philadelphia’s ghettos – if they have nothing better to do, if they have no family support, no quality education, no prospects for the future – will commit crimes. No amount of Nutter’s forceful rhetoric of responsibility and self-determination will change that.
Then again, Nutter’s tough law-and-order policy seems quaint compared to the vitriol on the philly.com comment boards in reaction to the flash mobs.
“I’m getting a gun.”
“I actually hope I cross paths with a flash mob. I’m just going to start swinging at anyone I can hit, male or female.”
“These flash mob folks make it really hard not to be racist.”
“Well, if you are a CCW (concealed carry weapon) holder, this is a good reason to start packing with extended-capacity ammo magazines.”
And most disturbingly – “Paging Mr. Goetz, Mr. Bernie Goetz.”
In December of 1984, Goetz shot four black men on a New York City subway car. Goetz said the men demanded money from him and were making hand gestures indicating they had weapons. The men insisted they were panhandling. Having shot all four men, he looked at one, Darrell Cabey, and said, “You don’t look too bad, here’s another,” and shot Cabey again, severing his spinal cord and permanently paralyzing him.
The images are admittedly compelling and dramatic, so maybe it’s understandable that journalists do not go out of their way to encourage moderate reactions. But sometimes the victims of these crimes can be the most sensible about the public’s responsibility.
Just after 9:00 one Friday night in late July of 2011, a group of about two dozen twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys and girls beat Jeremy Schenkel, a 22-year-old building engineer, to the ground near the corner of 15th and Sansom Streets. The teens broke Schenkel’s glasses and tried, unsuccessfully, to steal his briefcase. Schenkel was uninjured but the group went on that same night to the kick in the teeth of another person and beat a 54-year-old homeless man bloody and unconscious.
Remarkably, Schenkel, expressed sympathy for his attackers, saying, “The fact that eleven and twelve year old kids are participating in this kind of activity is sadder than anything else.” The mother of Anna Taylor, the waitress attacked in March of 2010, expressed a similar sentiment, “Our biggest concern is what direction Philadelphia’s children are getting. What is the world heading toward? My daughter will heal. She will repair in every way. But what will happen to these kids?”
The terms may have changed from the 80s and 90s to today. “Wolf packs” became “flash mobs” and kids started using technology to better organize their mischief. However, the response of the media, and therefore much of the public, to these urban crimes – and there’s no denying they are serious crimes – has remained much the same.
In her book The Central Park Five: The Chronicle of a City Wilding, Sarah Burns, daughter of the lauded PBS documentarian Rick Burns, tells the story of five teenage boys who, in 1989, became embroiled in a media and law enforcement firestorm surrounding the rape and brutal beating of a female jogger in Central Park. All five of the boys were African-American or Latino and four of them were under sixteen years of age. The jogger, a twenty-something white executive at a financial firm, was assaulted so ferociously that she nearly bled to death in a wooded area of the park near the 102nd Cross Street Drive where she had been running. She recovered, but never regained any memory of the night of her attack. The five boys, who entered the park with a larger group on the night of the rape, participated in random acts of “wilding” – as it became known – scaring passersby on bicycles, beating a bum and mugging male joggers who ran along the Reservoir path, far south of where the female jogger was found. The boys who became known as the Central Park Five – Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, and Raymond Santana, Jr. – were arrested when the male joggers reported the larger group’s activities to the Central Park Precinct. While they remained in detention, waiting for parents and guardians to show up for police interviews, the female jogger was found. Burns deftly combines studies of contemporaneous media reports, police documents and her own interviews to tell the dramatic story of how these five boys were essentially lynched by the justice system and the media and wrongly convicted for a heinous crime they did not commit.
The dystopia of late-80s New York City seems unreal, in retrospect. Burns’s conjuring of the zeitgeist is compelling, reminding us of the true inspiration for the sensationalist films of John Carpenter or vigilante video games like Renegade where the object was to beat up as many punks in the subway as possible (and the punks just kept coming and coming and coming). The Warriors and Escape from New York, we might forget, were stylized expressions of real fear and outrage engendered by, among other things, the media’s portrayal of “wilding” as a serious problem for public safety in the city.
McCray, Richardson, Wise, Salaam and Santana all confessed to being present at the rape of the jogger but, as Burns shows, the confusion produced by police in getting those confessions, particularly on the part of District Attorney Elizabeth Lederer, amounted to more than coercion and was, at times, blatant manipulation. The interrogators took advantage of the fact that none of the boys requested legal advocates be present at their interviews. They broke the law by telling the boys and their parents and guardians that they would be released from custody if they confessed. Many of the boys’ family members were intimidated by police and were removed from the interrogation rooms when the cops wanted to get rough with the suspects. Santana’s grandmother, who was present at his interrogation, was not fluent in English. A lazy press, and a prosecutor and detectives hungry for a quick conviction, ignored these issues as the case played out in the year following the rape.
However, Burns, like the media covering the Central Park Five case in 1989 and the early-90s, and the media covering the flash mobs in Philadelphia today, fails to ask the most important question concerning these groups of boys. There is no question they committed crimes that were much less serious than the rape, but still deplorable. They beat a helpless homeless man and left him bleeding in a patch of bushes beside East Drive and attacked four random joggers at the Reservoir. While Burns’s brief history of lynching and stereotypes about black men helps us understand the horrible tradition the mainstream media and public were acting in, in response to the rape, she never attempts to help us understand why the boys committed the serious crimes they did commit in the first place. The line between the public’s unfair perception of these boys and the crimes they committed might not be so far, though.
“What’s the matter, white boy, you scared?” and “All the white people are scared,” the youths who participated in the South Street flash mob were reported as saying. Whether the youths actually said these things or not – the attribution of all quotes in local media come from scared white people, after all – the sentiment might be revealing. These boys, and less often girls, could be acting out for a number of reasons, not least of which is the way the world views them. The Trayvon Martin case is not only important in informing our thoughts on gun control and real racial tensions, but also in the dangerousness of our own presuppositions concerning race, youth and violence. George Zimmerman is not so different from Bernhard Goetz, and the inaction of the media and the justice system remains the same as it was in 1989.
From the beginning of the trial of the Central Park Five, the boys were sacrificed by their distracted and incompetent defense attorneys, and Elizabeth Lederer, her fellow prosecutors, and Judge Galligan, all of whom were too stubborn and single-minded to see how the jogger’s case fit in with a string of unsolved rapes and assaults in Central Park and the Upper East Side. The jogger’s rape fit the MO of Mattias Reyes a psychopathic serial rapist known as the East Side Slasher. Reyes was brought to justice while the Five were still on trial, but the cases were never linked until Reyes confessed to the rape of the jogger years later. Still, the tabloid press, and to a lesser extent the mainstream press, resisted Reyes’s confession. They also resisted any evidence that might exonerate the Five while clinging foolhardily to the coerced confessions. But none of these observations could be made in the trial of the Central Park Five. The rhetoric surrounding the racial divide in the city in the late-80s and early-90s was so vitriolic that any expression of the racial aspects of the case hurt the defendants in the court of white opinion and justice. But justice is not only robbed from young black men in these types of cases. The old creed that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty does not hold for most interrogators. The complicity of the detectives in mischaracterizing the interrogations that elicited the boys’ confessions reveals a pervasive police corruption that might be rooted in a desire to put criminals behind bars, but which handicaps justice for everyone, especially the wrongfully accused.
“On June 20, Stephen Lyde pleaded guilty to assault in a random attack on a cyclist in Center City. In what was meant to send a message to those marauding youth bands who amuse themselves by attacking strangers in the street, Lyde was sentenced to five to 20 years,” the Philadelphia Daily News reported in the summer of 2011. Five teenage boys were robbed of their youths in New York for a high profile crime they did not commit; another young man in Philadelphia is sacrificing his for a random act of violence. How many other similar cases go unreported because the victims are not white? And when will we temper our public reaction with compassion and positive, restorative action?
September 13, 2022
a lot of information. some i was already aware of and some that i was not which was super frustrating to learn! ever since i first found out about it, the central park five case is one that has always been on my mind for some reason. not because it has to do with me at all, but i think because the entire case itself is just sooo fucking disappointing as a whole, and it deserves any kind of attention and awareness it can get so that things like this never happen again (even though things like this have unfortunately DEFINITELY happened since 1989). i’ve consumed so much media surrounding this case in the last few years, including both of Yusef’s books, Ava Duvernay’s ‘When they see us’ and the Ken Burns documentary. this one has been on my list for a while. justice for the central park five always!!
August 1, 2020
So this is a true crime book about one of New York City’s most notorious crimes. In 1989, a woman was brutally attacked in Central Park and found nearly dead. The police ended up pressuring five teens of color to give confessions, despite having no real evidence that they did it and them not being guilty of this crime. This story deeply explores this case and discusses the factors of race and class involved. It’s well written and it offers a lot of insight; reading it in 2020 was an eye opening experience relating to racial injustices. This is definitely an angering but important case to read about! 4/5⭐️
November 29, 2020
In this book Burns tells what happened in the case of the Central Park Jogger, specifically how five teenagers were convicted of rape and assault even though they were innocent. She also integrates an evaluation of the media's role in the case. While this was important for me to learn about, the book simply did not hold my attention. This was partly due to structural problems, repetitive portions, and a lack of depth at times. Additionally, I'd like to have seen more thought and explanation given to solutions rather than just hashing through the past: What can we learn from this? How can we avoid this in the future?
July 30, 2019
Police with incredulous tunnel vision, incompetent lawyers, inappropriate interrogations, aggressive prosecutors, inflammatory tabloid press in the context of a racially charged, near bankrupt city that was waiting to believe this happened. The Netflix mini series, the Ophra interviews and this book - make a great companion set to really understand the stories of the Exonerated Five. Be prepared to shout and cry.
July 4, 2020
I wanted to read this book after watching Netflix’s four part series, When They See Us. This is an excellent look at the Central Park Five case told in great detail with no sugarcoating. Highly recommend.
August 14, 2019
Hard to call this a “good” book. Thorough job of reporting a horrific incident. One would hope our society has improved and learned from this back in 1989 to now.
April 3, 2022
It was mid. A lot of repetition. Built up hype for nothing!
October 21, 2025
Really interesting details in this about the Central Park five that you wouldn’t know. I appreciated the pacing as well
December 21, 2025
Perfectly captures the struggles of race and crime in the court of public opinion, and how the criminal justice system failed these five men.
May 30, 2021
Would have liked the epilogue to be longer: hear more about what they are up to now.
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