Episode 35: The Harlem Six

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On April 20, 1989, shortly after 1 am the barely clinging to life Trish Meili (ma-lee), a young white woman, was discovered in New York City’s Manhattan Central Park. Trish would survive her severe injuries, waking from a coma with no memory of the violent and horrific assault leaving her with no memory of her attacker. Two days after Trish’s assault, five teenagers, four being Latino and one being black, ranging in ages from 14 to 16 and were from Harlem would implicate themselves in Trish’s rape and assault after hours of psychological pressure and aggressive interrogation at the hands of veteran homicide detectives. During this time New York City was plagued with high crime and race tensions.  The police announced to the media who had a keen appetite for astonishing crime stories that the young teens had been part of a gang of teenagers who were out "wilding," assaulting joggers and bicyclists in Central Park on the evening of Trish’s heinous assault. With the media’s sensational coverage of the teens, dubbed as the Central Park Five, it fed the hysteria of the city’s already fearful citizens and was met with a public outcry for justice. Despite no physical evidence tying them to the crime or any eyewitness accounts that connected them to Trish, along with inconsistent and inaccurate confessions after an interrogation that the five teens say was coerced, the teens were quickly arrested and tried as adults under New York State laws at the time and would be found guilty of the assault and rape of Trish Meili (ma-lee). More than a decade after the attack, convicted serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to Trish’s rape and assault, claiming he was the only assailant involved. New DNA evidence along with Reyes’s confession proved that Reyes was the true assailant and had acted alone.  In 2002, after serving sentences that ranged from six to 13 years for what then-New York City Mayor Ed Koch called “the crime of the century,” the charges against the five teens were vacated. The then teens now men eventually received a 41-million-dollar settlement in 2014. So, did the frenzy of the media’s coverage of the case, along with the high racial tensions and crimes in New City help in aiding the wrongful conviction of these five teens?
References:
The Central Park Five: Boys Wrongly Convicted By A Racist System (allthatsinteresting.com)


Everything to Know About the Central Park 5 Case (people.com)


Central Park Five: Here's where they are now | CNN


Central Park Five: The true story behind When They See Us - BBC News


Central Park Five: Crime, Coverage & Settlement (history.com)


Youths Rape and Beat Central Park Jogger - The New York Times (nytimes.com)


Timeline - The Central Park Five Jogger Attackers (cent

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