The Central Park Five: The Central Park Jogger Case (Part I)

The Central Park jogger case was a criminal case in the United States based on the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old white woman who was jogging in the park, and attacks on eight other people, in areas ranging from the North Woods to the Reservoir of Manhattan's Central Park, on the night of April 19, 1989. Three of the victims were black or Latino.  Meili was so badly injured that she was in a coma for 12 days. The New York Times in 1990 described the attack on her as "one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980s".

Attacks in Central Park that night were allegedly committed by a loose group of 30–32 teenagers and police attempted to apprehend suspects after crimes began to be reported between 9 and 10 p.m. The brutally beaten Meili was not found until 1:30 a.m., after which the police hunt greatly intensified. They took into custody 14 or more other suspects over the next few days and arrested a total of ten suspects who were ultimately tried for the attacks. Among them were four African American and two Hispanic American teenagers who were indicted on May 10 on charges of assault, robbery, riot, rape, sexual abuse, and attempted murder of Meili and an unrelated man, John Loughlin. The prosecutor planned to try the defendants in two groups and then scheduled the sixth defendant to be tried last. The latter pleaded guilty in January 1991 on lesser charges and received a reduced sentence.

Prosecution of the five remaining defendants in the rape and assault case was based primarily on confessions which they had made after police interrogations. None had counsel during this questioning. Within weeks, they each withdrew these confessions, pleaded not guilty, and refused plea deals on the rape and assault charges. None of the suspects' DNA matched the DNA collected from the crime scene: two semen samples that both belonged to one unidentified man. No substantive physical evidence connected any of the five teenagers to the rape scene, but each was convicted in 1990 of related assault and other charges. Subsequently, known as the Central Park Five, they received sentences ranging from 5 to 15 years. Four of the defendants appealed their convictions, but these were affirmed by appellate courts. The four juvenile defendants served 6–7 years each; the 16-year-old was tried and sentenced as an adult and served 13 years in an adult prison. The five other defendants, indicted for assaults of other victims, pleaded guilty to reduced charges and received less severe sentences.

In 2001, Matias Reyes, a convicted murderer and serial rapist serving life in prison, confessed to officials that he had raped the female jogger. His DNA matched that found at the scene, and he provided other confirmatory evidence. He said he committed the rape alone.  Reyes could not be prosecuted for raping Meili, because the statute of limitations had passed. In 2002 Robert Morgenthau, District Attorney for New York County, had his office conduct an investigation and recommended to the state court that the convictions of the five men on all charges be vacated. The court vacated their convictions in 2002, and the state withdrew all charges against the men.

In 2003, the five men sued the City of New York for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress. The city refused to settle the suits for a decade because its lawyers believed that the city could win a court case. After a change in administration, the city settled in 2014 with the five plaintiffs for $41 million. The five men also filed suit against the State of New York for additional damages; this case was settled in 2016 for a total of $3.9 million.

Attacks

At 9 p.m. on April 19, 1989, a group of estimated 30–32 teenagers who lived in East Harlem entered Manhattan's Central Park at an entrance in Harlem, near Central Park North.  Some of the group committed several attacks, assaults and robberies against persons walking, biking, or jogging in the northernmost part of the park and near the reservoir, and victims began to report the incidents to the police.  Within the North Woods, between 105th and 102nd streets, they were reported as attacking several bicyclists, hurling rocks at a cab, and attacking a pedestrian, whom they robbed of his food and beer, and left unconscious. The teenagers roamed south along the park's East Drive and the 97th Street transverse, between 9 and 10 p.m.

At least some of the group traveled further south to the area around the reservoir, where four men jogging were attacked by several youths. Among the victims was John Loughlin, a 40-year-old schoolteacher, who was severely beaten and robbed between 9:40 and 9:50.  He was hit in the head with a pipe and stick, knocking him briefly unconscious.  At a pre-trial hearing in October 1989, a police officer testified that when Loughlin was found, he was bleeding so badly that he "looked like he was dunked in a bucket of blood".

It was not until 1:30 a.m. that night that a female jogger was found in the North Woods area of the park. She had been pulled to the north some 300 feet off the path known as the 102nd Street Crossing; the path of her feet dragged through the grass was marked so clearly that it could be photographed. It was 18" wide. There was no evidence in the grass of footprints of multiple perpetrators. She was brutally beaten, suffering major blood loss and skull fractures; she was later revealed to have been raped.

After her discovery, the police increased the intensity of their effort to identify suspects in this attack and took more teenagers into custody. The jogger was not identified for about 24 hours, and it took days for the police to retrace her movements of that night. By the time of the trial of the first three suspects in June 1990, The New York Times characterized the attack on the jogger as "one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980s".

Assault on Trisha Meili

Trisha Meili was going for a regular run in Central Park shortly before 9 p.m.  While jogging in the park, she was knocked down, dragged nearly 300 feet (91 m) off the roadway, and violently assaulted.  She was raped and beaten almost to death.  About four hours later at 1:30 am, she was found naked, gagged, and tied, and covered in mud and blood, in a shallow ravine in a wooded area of the park about 300 feet north of the path called the 102nd Street Crossing.  The first policeman who saw her said: "She was beaten as badly as anybody, I've ever seen beaten. She looked like she was tortured."

Meili was comatose for 12 days. She suffered severe hypothermia, severe brain damage, severe hemorrhagic shock, loss of 75–80 percent of her blood, and internal bleeding.  Her skull had been fractured so badly that her left eye was dislodged from its socket, which in turn was fractured in 21 places, and she suffered as well from facial fractures.

The initial medical prognosis was that Meili would die of her injuries.  She was given last rites.  Because of this, the police treated the attack as a probable homicide. Alternatively, doctors thought that she might remain in a permanent coma due to her injuries. She came out of her coma after 12 days. She was then treated for seven weeks in Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem. When Meili first emerged from her coma, she was unable to talk, read, or walk.  In early June, Meili was transferred to Gaylord Hospital, a long-term acute care center in Wallingford, Connecticut, where she spent six months in rehabilitation.  She did not walk until mid-July 1989.  She returned to work eight months after the attack.  She largely recovered, with some lingering disabilities related to balance and loss of vision. As a result of the severe trauma, she had no memory of the attack or any events up to an hour before the assault, nor of the six weeks following the attack.

At a time of concern about crime in general in the city, which was suffering high rates of assaults, rapes, and homicides, these attacks provoked great outrage, particularly the brutal rape of the female jogger. It took place in the public park that is "mythologized as the city's verdant, democratic refuge".  It was used by many different groups and individuals and was central to New York's idea of itself as a city. Issues of race, class, and gender were inflamed by the media, which emphasized the police theory of a gang attack of the female jogger. New York Governor Mario Cuomo told the New York Post: "This is the ultimate shriek of alarm."

Trisha Meili

Patricia Ellen Meili was born on June 24, 1960, in Paramus, New Jersey, and raised in Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh.  She is the daughter and youngest of three children of John Meili, a Westinghouse senior manager, and his wife Jean, a school board member.  She attended Upper St. Clair High School, graduating in 1978.

Meili was a Phi Beta Kappa economics major at Wellesley College, where she received a B.A. in 1982.  The chairman of Wellesley's economics department said: "She was brilliant, probably one of the top four or five students of the decade."  In 1986, she earned an M.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. in finance from the Yale School of Management.  She worked from the summer of 1986 until the attack as an associate and then a vice president in the corporate finance department and energy group of Salomon Brothers, an investment bank.

Meili lived on East 83rd Street between York and East End Avenues in the Yorkville section of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. At the time of the attack, she was 28 years old.

In most media accounts of the incident at that time, Meili was simply referred to as the "Central Park Jogger"; however, two local TV stations violated the media policy of not publicly identifying the victims of sex crimes and released her name in the days immediately following the attack. Two newspapers aimed at the African-American community—The City Sun and the Amsterdam News—and the black-owned talk radio station WLIB continued to do so as the case progressed.  Their editors said this was in response to the media having publicized the names and personal information about the five suspects, who were all minors before they were arraigned. The Open Line hosts on WRKS were credited with helping continue to cover the case until the convicted youths were cleared in 2002 of the crime.

Other victims and chronology

As identified by the Morgenthau report and The New York Times in a 2002 review of the case, these were:

Michael Vigna, a competitive bike rider hassled about 9:05 p.m. by the group, one of whom tried to punch him.

Antonio Diaz, a 52-year-old man walking in the park near 105th Street was knocked to the ground by teenagers about 9:15 p.m., who stole his bag of food and a bottle of beer. He was left unconscious but soon found by a policeman.

Gerald Malone and Patricia Dean, riding on a tandem bike was attacked on East Drive south of 102nd Street about 9:15 p.m. by boys who tried to stop them and grab Dean; the couple called police after reaching a call box.

The remaining victims were attacked by members of the large group while jogging near the reservoir:

David Lewis, banker, attacked and robbed about 9:25–9:40

Robert Garner, attacked about 9:30 p.m.

David Good, attacked about 9:47 p.m.

John Loughlin, the 40-year-old teacher, severely beaten and kicked about 9:40–9:50 p.m. near the reservoir and left unconscious. He was also robbed of a Walkman and other items.

Three of the victims were black or Hispanic, like most of the suspects, complicating any narrative to attribute attacks solely to racial factors.

Arrests and investigation

Arrests of youths

The police were dispatched at 9:30 pm and responded with scooters and unmarked cars. Through the night, they apprehended about 20 teenagers. They took custody of Raymond Santana, 14; and Kevin Richardson, 14; along with three other teenagers at approximately 10:15 pm on Central Park West and 102nd Street.  Steven Lopez, 14, was arrested with this group within an hour of the several attacks that were first reported to the police.  He was also interrogated.

The severely beaten Meili was not found until 1:30 a.m. on April 20. Her discovery increased the urgency of police efforts to apprehend suspects. Antron McCray, 15; Yusef Salaam, 15; and Korey Wise (then known as Kharey Wise), 16, were brought in for questioning later that day (April 20), after having been identified by other youths in the large group as participants in or present at some of the attacks on other victims.  Korey Wise said he had not been involved, and accompanied Salaam because they were friends.  These were the six suspects indicted for the attack on the female jogger (later identified as Meili).

The police arrested additional suspects over 48 hours after the night of April 19 and interrogated numerous others. Among these was Clarence Thomas, 14, who was arrested on April 21, 1989, on charges related to the rape of the female jogger. After further investigation, he was never indicted, and all charges were dismissed against him on October 31, 1989.  Also arrested in this period on charges of attacks against other persons in the park, and later indicted, was Jermaine Robinson, 15; Antonio Montalvo, 18; and Orlando Escobar, 16.

The five juveniles who later became known as the Central Park Five were interrogated for at least seven hours each before the detectives attempted to record their statements as videotaped confessions.  The videotaped confessions were not started until April 21. Santana, McCray, and Richardson made video statements in the presence of parents.  Wise made several statements unaccompanied by any parent, guardian or counsel.  Lopez was interviewed on videotape in the presence of his parents on April 21, 1989, beginning at 3:30 a.m. He named others of the group by first names in the group attacks on other persons but denied any knowledge of the female jogger.  None of the six had defense attorneys during the interrogations or videotape process.

When taken into custody, Salaam told the police he was 16 years old and showed them identification to that effect. If a suspect had reached 16 years of age, his parents or guardians no longer had a right to accompany him during police questioning, or to refuse to permit him to answer any questions.  After Salaam's mother arrived at the station, she insisted that she wanted a lawyer for her son, and the police stopped the questioning. He neither made a videotape nor signed the earlier written statement, but the court ruled to accept it as evidence before his trial.

Salaam allegedly made verbal admissions to the police. He confessed to being present at the rape only after the detective falsely told him that fingerprints had been found on the victim's clothing and if his matched, he would be charged with rape.  He said years later, "I would hear them beating up Korey Wise in the next room", and "they would come and look at me and say: 'You realize you're next.' The fear made me feel really like I was not going to be able to make it out."

April 21 press conference and media coverage

On April 21, senior police investigators held a press conference to announce having apprehended about 20 suspects in the attacks of a total of nine people in Central Park two nights before and began to offer their theory of the attack and rape of the female jogger. Her name was withheld as a victim of a sex crime. The police said up to 12 youths were believed to have attacked the jogger.

The main suspects were a sub-group within the loose gang of 30 to 32 teenagers who had assaulted strangers in the park as part of an activity that the police said the teenagers referred to as "wilding". New York City senior detectives said the term was used by the suspects when describing their actions to police. The police described the attacks as "random" and "motiveless", saying they had "terrorized" people in the park. This account of the term "wilding" was soon disputed by investigative reporter Barry Michael Cooper, who said that it originated in a police detective's misunderstanding of the suspects' use of the phrase "doing the wild thing", lyrics from rapper Tone Loc's hit song "Wild Thing".  There was massive media coverage of the conference, with the rape and beating of the female jogger especially recounted in dramatic, inflammatory language.

Normal police procedures stipulated that the names of criminal suspects under the age of 16 were to be withheld from the media and the public. But this policy was ignored when the names of the arrested juveniles were released to the press before any of them had been formally arraigned or indicted.  For example, the name of Kharey Wise (he later adopted the use of Korey as his first name) was published in an April 25, 1989 article in the Philadelphia Daily News about the attack on the female jogger.

By that time, more information had been published about the primary suspects in the rape, who did not seem to satisfy typical profiles of perpetrators. Common factors had been ruled out. Reporters had found that some came from stable, financially secure families; police had ruled out drugs or major robbery and most had no criminal records. On April 26, 1989, The New York Times published a cautionary editorial against the use of labels and questioning why such "well-adjusted youngsters" could have committed such a "savage" crime.

After the major media's decisions to print the names, photos, and addresses of the juvenile suspects, they and their families received serious threats. Other residents living at the Schomburg Plaza, where four suspects lived, were also threatened. Because of this, editors of The City Sun and the Amsterdam News chose to use Meili's name in their continuing coverage of the events.

Reverend Calvin O. Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, who came to support the five suspects, said to The New York Times, "The first thing you do in the United States of America when a white woman is raped is round up a bunch of black youths, and I think that's what happened here."

On May 1, 1989, Donald Trump, then a real estate magnate, called for the return of the death penalty in full-page advertisements published in all four of the city's major newspapers. Trump said he wanted the "criminals of every age" who were accused of beating and raping a jogger in Central Park 12 days earlier "to be afraid".  The advertisement, which cost an estimated US$85,000 (equivalent to $175,000 in 2019), said, in part,

 "Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer ... Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. ... How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!"

According to defendant Yusef Salaam, quoted in a February 2016 article in The Guardian, Trump "was the fire starter" in 1989, as "common citizens were being manipulated and swayed into believing that we were guilty."  Salaam said his family received death threats after papers ran Trump's full-page ad urging the death penalty.

Indictments

May 4, 1989

Michael Briscoe, 17, was initially arrested for the rape of the female jogger, but his indictment was for riot and assault related to the attack of David Lewis, one of the four male joggers near the reservoir. In a plea deal arranged in June 1990, he pleaded guilty to assault and was immediately sentenced to a year in prison, with credit for time served.

Jermaine Robinson, 15, was indicted on multiple counts of robbery and assault in the attacks on Lewis and John Loughlin, another jogger near the reservoir. In a plea deal, he pleaded guilty on October 5, 1989, to the robbery of Loughlin and, was sentenced to a year in a juvenile facility.

May 10, 1989

Six youths were indicted with attempted murder and other charges in the attack on and rape of the female jogger, and additional charges related to the attack of David Lewis, the attack and robbery of John Loughlin, and riot:

Steve Lopez, 14,

Antron McCray, 15,

Kevin Richardson, 14,

Yusef Salaam, 15,

Raymond Santana, 14, and

Korey Wise, 16.

Each of the youths pleaded "Not guilty." The families of Lopez, Richardson, and Salaam was able to make the $25,000 bail imposed by the court. The two other youths under 16 were returned to a juvenile facility to be held there until trial.  Classified as an adult at 16, Korey Wise was separated from the others from the first and held in an adult jail at Rikers Island until trial.

Four of the six youths who were indicted for the rape lived at the Schomburg Plaza, 1309 Fifth Avenue, at the northeast corner of Central Park near 110th Street; two lived further north of there. The ones at Schomburg included friends Salaam and Wise, who lived in the northwest tower, and Kevin Richardson and Steve Lopez who lived elsewhere in the complex. They had seen each other in the neighborhood.  The Schomburg was a large, mixed-income complex with two 35-story towers and an associated multi-story rectangular building. Designed for families, the complex was built in 1974 and was partially subsidized by the city and federal government; it had 600 households, in apartments ranging in size from studios to five bedrooms.

January 10, 1990

Orlando Escobar, 16, was indicted for three counts of robbery, two counts of assault, and one count of riot-related to the attack on John Loughlin. In a plea deal, he pleaded guilty on March 14, 1991, to attempted robbery in 2nd degree, and was sentenced to 6 months incarceration and 4½ years’ probation.

Antonio Montalvo, 18, was charged with two counts of robbery and one of assault, related to the attack on Antonio Diaz. In a plea deal, he pleaded guilty on January 29, 1991, to a robbery in 2nd degree, and was sentenced to 1 year.