Local News

Boston pays $150K to two men wrongfully tied to Carol Stuart murder

After a pregnant woman was shot in 1989, two Black men, Willie Bennett and Alan Swanson, were arrested amid a major manhunt.

Mayor Michelle Wu and Alan Swanson arrive for a press conference and public apology to Swanson and Willie Bennett at City Hall in Boston on Dec. 20, 2023. Craig F. Walker / The Boston Globe

By Ross Cristantiello

September 23, 2025

2 minutes to read

The city of Boston recently paid a total of $150,000 to two men who were wrongfully accused of killing a pregnant woman, Carol Stuart, in 1989.

The payments come more than a year-and-a-half after Mayor Michelle Wu issued formal apologies to the two men, Willie Bennett and Alan Swanson. Bennett received a payment of $100,000, and Swanson received $50,000, according to City Hall officials. They did not provide any more details about the settlement.

During an emotional press conference officials convened in 2023 to issue the apologies, Wu decried how a “systemic campaign” targeted Black men based on a “false, racist claim” in the case of Carol Stuart.

The Stuart case, which was chronicled in a lengthy investigation by The Boston Globe before Wu’s apologies, shone a light on the racial prejudices that shaped policing and media bias in Boston.

On the evening of Oct. 23, 1989, Charles Stuart shot his wife in their car after a birthing class. When police interviewed him, he blamed the crime on an unidentified Black man in a tracksuit. The subsequent investigation was marked by nonstop media coverage, a massive manhunt, and controversial stop-and-frisk tactics.

Two Black men, Bennett and Swanson, were each arrested under suspicion that they were tied to the murder. Although neither was formally charged with crimes related to the case, they were publicly identified as suspects and suffered in numerous ways.

Ultimately, the fact that Charles Stuart killed his wife became known to his family and friends, and he was likely set to face criminal charges. He killed himself by jumping off the Tobin Bridge on Jan. 4, 1990.

Bennett’s family and Swanson attended the ceremony in 2023.

“Your presence here is a gift, in the truest sense of the word, in that it has been given to the city, but not earned,” Wu told them at the time. “We are here today to acknowledge the tremendous pain that the city of Boston inflicted on Black residents throughout our neighborhoods 34 years ago.”

Swanson chose not to speak at that event, and Bennett simply said that he wanted to be compensated when he was asked to participate, according to family members who spoke to the public.

“William Bennett said it best: ‘Pay me,’” Judge Leslie Harris, who represented Swanson in court after his arrest, said. “We owe them an opportunity to move forward, we owe them an opportunity for the next generation not to have to suffer what they suffered, not to have to be ashamed of the Bennett name.”