Book-It 'o13! Book #6
The Fifty Books Challenge, year four! (Years one, two, three, and four just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding by Sarah Burns
Details: Copyright 2011, Random House Inc
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "A riveting, in-depth account of one of New York City’s most notorious crimes.
On April 20, 1989, the body of a woman is discovered in Central Park, her skull so badly smashed that nearly 80 percent of her blood has spilled onto the ground. Within days, five black and Latino teenagers confess to her rape and beating. In a city where urban crime is at a high and violence is frequent, the ensuing media frenzy and hysterical public reaction is extraordinary. The young men are tried as adults and convicted of rape, despite the fact that the teens quickly recant their inconsistent and inaccurate confessions and that no DNA tests or eyewitness accounts tie any of them to the victim. They serve their complete sentences before another man, serial rapist Matias Reyes, confesses to the crime and is connected to it by DNA testing.
Intertwining the stories of these five young men, the police officers, the district attorneys, the victim, and Matias Reyes, Sarah Burns unravels the forces that made both the crime and its prosecution possible. Most dramatically, she gives us a portrait of a city already beset by violence and deepening rifts between races and classes, whose law enforcement, government, social institutions, and media were undermining the very rights of the individuals they were designed to safeguard and protect."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This was another book suggested to me after finishing Damien Echol's memoir.
How I Liked It: As a enthusiast, if that's the term I want, in the study of true crime and forensics, it's generally pretty rare that I don't have at least some knowledge of a famous American case (and sometimes, if it's really famous, a non-American case). This was one of the few that, for its cultural impact, I knew almost nothing about.
This has all the potential to be an awful book. It's about a well-known (if not by me), highly sensationalized crime, and the true story behind it. The fact that it's not an awful book but intensely compelling and thought-provoking feels like a miracle.
The author sets a vivid scene of New York City in the 1980s, of Bernard Geotz and Eleanor Bumpurs, of Howard Beach, crack, AIDS, and a rising crime rate; a New York where it "was a place people wished they could leave, and in which today's relative wealth and safety seemed like an inconceivable pipe dream." (pg 8) It's here that she places rising racial tensions and (purposely) mistaken identity, an event that seems almost the culmination of the decade that preceded it.
The author proves what I've often found to be true: every book tells a story, no matter if the book is labeled as fiction or not. In the case of this book, the story is a stark page-turner, which flashes back and forth between not only the accused and the victim but also the real offender, a serial rapist and murderer who eventually confessed to the crime (and the sole match to the DNA found on the victim). She manages to perform not only these transitions, but provide a history (not just of New York's racial tensions but of Central Park itself, of the United States' history in describing the crimes of Black men in animalistic terms) and all in a clear narrative.
The book loses some steam when it gets to the trials, perhaps due to the fact the author can't pitch at the multi-faceted pace she did for the book until that point. But she more or less recovers and offers up the aftermath, including the confession of the real perpetrator.
An accusation frequently leveled at this book is that it's "biased" in favor of the falsely accused men (boys at the time). Just a note that the real perpetrator "officially" confessed in early 2002 and was matched to DNA evidence at the scene in May of that same year, offered details that could only be known/given by the perpetrator (one example, the victim had an odd cross-shaped cut on her cheek the source of which was never identified, until Reyes described punching her repeatedly while wearing a crucifix ring), and provided information that tied him to other, similar crimes around the time of the Central Park incident that same year (2002). This book was published in 2011, long after science has proven (although not to the court system, which has yet to pay any compensation to the falsely convicted nor their families, and the city's executive assistant corporation counsel for public safety derided the accompanying film as having "crossed the line from journalism to advocacy.") the accused were innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted. To document this case as anything other than a false conviction of the alleged perpetrators would be inaccurate.
This book is a must-read for those familiar with the case, those unfamiliar with the case, those interested in New York's history, the history of race in America, and/or those fascinated by a thrilling crime story, whether fictional or tragically real.
Notable: In a dramatically (and appropriately) chilling finish, the author takes the story (and accompanying racism and mob mentality) from the crime and grime-streaked 1980s into the present, describing a violent incident in April 2010 in Times Square, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg termed a "wilding". Newspapers almost followed in line in evoking the Central Park Jogger case and "wrote of the fear that in the current economic downturn, the city might revert back to 'the bad old days.'"
Despite the landslide election of the first Black president and other milestones made in the two decades since the Central Park Jogger case, the author leaves us with a haunting prospect.
“Though most of the articles did not specify the race or ethnicity of the "gang members" arrested by the police, the mayor's use of the word "wilding" and its reprinting in many newspapers tell us everything we need to know about their skin color and about how little progress we've made since 1989. The Central Park Jogger case and the fear of crime from the 1980s still haunts the memories of many New Yorkers, and the use of animal terms to describe disorderly minority teenagers continues without reflection or remorse.” (pg 212)
Title: The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding by Sarah Burns
Details: Copyright 2011, Random House Inc
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "A riveting, in-depth account of one of New York City’s most notorious crimes.
On April 20, 1989, the body of a woman is discovered in Central Park, her skull so badly smashed that nearly 80 percent of her blood has spilled onto the ground. Within days, five black and Latino teenagers confess to her rape and beating. In a city where urban crime is at a high and violence is frequent, the ensuing media frenzy and hysterical public reaction is extraordinary. The young men are tried as adults and convicted of rape, despite the fact that the teens quickly recant their inconsistent and inaccurate confessions and that no DNA tests or eyewitness accounts tie any of them to the victim. They serve their complete sentences before another man, serial rapist Matias Reyes, confesses to the crime and is connected to it by DNA testing.
Intertwining the stories of these five young men, the police officers, the district attorneys, the victim, and Matias Reyes, Sarah Burns unravels the forces that made both the crime and its prosecution possible. Most dramatically, she gives us a portrait of a city already beset by violence and deepening rifts between races and classes, whose law enforcement, government, social institutions, and media were undermining the very rights of the individuals they were designed to safeguard and protect."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This was another book suggested to me after finishing Damien Echol's memoir.
How I Liked It: As a enthusiast, if that's the term I want, in the study of true crime and forensics, it's generally pretty rare that I don't have at least some knowledge of a famous American case (and sometimes, if it's really famous, a non-American case). This was one of the few that, for its cultural impact, I knew almost nothing about.
This has all the potential to be an awful book. It's about a well-known (if not by me), highly sensationalized crime, and the true story behind it. The fact that it's not an awful book but intensely compelling and thought-provoking feels like a miracle.
The author sets a vivid scene of New York City in the 1980s, of Bernard Geotz and Eleanor Bumpurs, of Howard Beach, crack, AIDS, and a rising crime rate; a New York where it "was a place people wished they could leave, and in which today's relative wealth and safety seemed like an inconceivable pipe dream." (pg 8) It's here that she places rising racial tensions and (purposely) mistaken identity, an event that seems almost the culmination of the decade that preceded it.
The author proves what I've often found to be true: every book tells a story, no matter if the book is labeled as fiction or not. In the case of this book, the story is a stark page-turner, which flashes back and forth between not only the accused and the victim but also the real offender, a serial rapist and murderer who eventually confessed to the crime (and the sole match to the DNA found on the victim). She manages to perform not only these transitions, but provide a history (not just of New York's racial tensions but of Central Park itself, of the United States' history in describing the crimes of Black men in animalistic terms) and all in a clear narrative.
The book loses some steam when it gets to the trials, perhaps due to the fact the author can't pitch at the multi-faceted pace she did for the book until that point. But she more or less recovers and offers up the aftermath, including the confession of the real perpetrator.
An accusation frequently leveled at this book is that it's "biased" in favor of the falsely accused men (boys at the time). Just a note that the real perpetrator "officially" confessed in early 2002 and was matched to DNA evidence at the scene in May of that same year, offered details that could only be known/given by the perpetrator (one example, the victim had an odd cross-shaped cut on her cheek the source of which was never identified, until Reyes described punching her repeatedly while wearing a crucifix ring), and provided information that tied him to other, similar crimes around the time of the Central Park incident that same year (2002). This book was published in 2011, long after science has proven (although not to the court system, which has yet to pay any compensation to the falsely convicted nor their families, and the city's executive assistant corporation counsel for public safety derided the accompanying film as having "crossed the line from journalism to advocacy.") the accused were innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted. To document this case as anything other than a false conviction of the alleged perpetrators would be inaccurate.
This book is a must-read for those familiar with the case, those unfamiliar with the case, those interested in New York's history, the history of race in America, and/or those fascinated by a thrilling crime story, whether fictional or tragically real.
Notable: In a dramatically (and appropriately) chilling finish, the author takes the story (and accompanying racism and mob mentality) from the crime and grime-streaked 1980s into the present, describing a violent incident in April 2010 in Times Square, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg termed a "wilding". Newspapers almost followed in line in evoking the Central Park Jogger case and "wrote of the fear that in the current economic downturn, the city might revert back to 'the bad old days.'"
Despite the landslide election of the first Black president and other milestones made in the two decades since the Central Park Jogger case, the author leaves us with a haunting prospect.
“Though most of the articles did not specify the race or ethnicity of the "gang members" arrested by the police, the mayor's use of the word "wilding" and its reprinting in many newspapers tell us everything we need to know about their skin color and about how little progress we've made since 1989. The Central Park Jogger case and the fear of crime from the 1980s still haunts the memories of many New Yorkers, and the use of animal terms to describe disorderly minority teenagers continues without reflection or remorse.” (pg 212)