The first entry of HBO's three-part Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Reckoning documentary is now available to stream on Max - here are all of the players involved with the 1989 murder series.
Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Reckoning is Max's newest true-crime documentary directed and produced by Jason Hehir, coming to the streaming network in three parts through December 2023.
The first of these three parts debuted on December 4, diving deep into the details of a brutal murder in Boston, Massachusetts from 1989 that came amid highly-publicized racial tension that existed in the city for decades.
Every Interviewee & Victim Who Appears in HBO's Murder in Boston
Carol Stuart
The biggest victim of the crime committed in Murder in Boston is young Carol Stuart, who was shot in the head and suffered multiple other injuries before she passed away on October 23, 1989.
Devastatingly, she was also seven months into a pregnancy with her first child, although doctors were fortunately able to save the infant thanks to an emergency C-section surgery before Carol passed away.
Chuck Stuart
Also injured in the incident was Carol Stuart's husband, Stuart, who suffered multiple gunshot wounds before police and 911 operators found him and his dying wife.
He was taken to the hospital and was forced to recover there during Carol's funeral, and he described their assailant to the police, noting that it was a six-foot-tall Black man in a black running suit.
Barbara Williamson
Barbara Williamson is one of the final people interviewed in the first episode of Murder in Boston, being one of Carol Stuart's best friends before her passing.
She recalled her friend's funeral being a standing-room-only affair, making it clear she is still grieving the loss and is in shock over the event.
Williamson described Carol as one of the brightest people she had ever known. Having worked together in the law industry for years as their friendship grew, Barbara noted Carol was over the moon about having her first child.
Jack Harper
Jack Harper served as one of Boston's most recognizable TV reporters from 1984 until his retirement in 2016, opening the documentary as the first commentator.
He explained how the first comments Chuck made to the police were that the suspect was a "Black man, 5'10", [with a] raspy voice," and that he fled into the Mission Hill housing projects, an underdeveloped Boston neighborhood.
Harper recalled Carol living for about six hours after first being shot while Chuck and their baby lived, describing his memories of living through the murder in 1989.
Richard Serino
Richard Serino worked as the deputy superintendent shift commander at Boston Emergency Medical Services from 1973 to 2009.
Serino shared details about how the police found Chuck and Carol through their 911 call, with Boston's finest using their patrol cars' sirens as something like a sonar detector to locate the couple after they were shot.
Serino was even with Chuck as he tried to recover from his injuries, although Chuck told him to focus on his wife.
Dart Adams
Dart Adams is an author, journalist, and art historian from Boston whose work has been published with NPR, the Boston Globe, and Boston Globe Magazine.
Explaining how this crime was on every news channel due to the shooting taking place in the projects, he made it clear the Black community would all be in danger due to the description of the shooter.
He even saw an NAACP building on his block firebombed during the court-mandated busing incidents of the 1970s and '80s, which only pushed racial violence and tensions further toward the brink.
Ron Hill
Ron Hill is a Mission Hill resident who was bused to the area from Brighton during his youth, having to fight through racial issues every day growing up in the area.
He looked back to being nine years old and going to meetings for Cub Scouts once a week and getting spit on every day by white men, which shaped his entire view of what happened with Carol Stuart's murder.
Brian McGrory
Brian McGrogy held an important position as the Executive Editor of the Boston Globe newspaper from 2012 to 2022.
While he praised Boston as a unique place for its progressive politics and excellent educational atmosphere, he also pointed out the city's checkered history with race relations, which is still an issue even to this day.
Howard Bryant
Howard Bryant works as an author and journalist, with his pieces being published mostly for ESPN.
Calling Boston an Irish town, he explained that the shamrocks in the city aren't just there for the Boston Celtics, with Irish culture and pride being embedded in the culture of the entire city.
He looked back to the murder as a turning point for race relations across the Massachusetts metropolis, bluntly calling Boston the most racist city in America.
Adrian Walker
Adrian Walker is a longtime reporter for the Boston Globe who moved to the city after spending years living in Miami, Florida.
Upon moving to Boston, he was warned about where to go and where not to go across the city, being told that Boston is more of a collection of neighborhoods than a city and that there were places less safe than others.
Professor Ted Landsmark
Professor Ted Landsmark lived in Boston with his wife before Carol Stuart's murder, experiencing the racism that persisted throughout the city firsthand.
While working as a lawyer in 1976, he was confronted by a group of white people holding a demonstration outside of City Hall before he was beaten and physically assaulted, leaving him bleeding and standing in front of the building alone.
He was also married to a white woman and advised on where to go and not go, recognizing that he was guaranteed to hear racial slurs and epithets across town when he was out.
William Bratton
William Bratton held a high position as Boston's Police Commissioner from 1993 to 1994, working in the same job for various stints in both New York and Los Angeles.
He shared his own experience seeing the racism that persisted throughout his city, explaining how many white people had problems with the Black and Brown communities being integrated and even going to other neighborhoods outside of their own.
Tito Jackson
Tito Jackson worked as a Boston City Councilor from 2011 to 2017, also spending several years as a politician and activist.
Jackson took a moment in this documentary to explain how Black people simply wanted opportunities to thrive and a chance to make better lives for themselves.
Judge Nancy Gertner
The honorable Nancy Gertner is a current judge and a retired attorney with years of experience in Boston.
She didn't hold back her feelings in saying that the city deserved the reputation it received, especially after Ted Landsmark was attacked at City Hall.
Neil Sullivan
Neil Sullivan worked as the Chief Boston Mayoral Advisor for a decade from 1982 until 1992, living in the city amid major racial tensions and the attack on the Stuarts.
He reflected on Ted Landsmark's beating along with the consistent racial violence and drug problems that persisted throughout the city after that event.
While he gave praise to state representative Ray Flynn for his work in desegregation, he also looked to the initiation of stop-and-frisk practices by police, which put the Black community into some seriously dangerous predicaments.
Ray Flynn
As discussed by Sullivan, Ray Flynn was a fairly popular state representative who connected to people, using his experience as a great local basketball player to help ease tensions between white and Black people in Boston.
He even came into office promising that he would bring people together across the city, hoping to make Boston a better place to live for everybody.
George Kakas
Only seen in archival footage is Chuck Stuart's boss, George Kakas, who owned a fur store in the Back Bay area of Boston.
In the documentary, he described Chuck as a caring man who loved his family and treated his co-workers incredibly kindly, lamenting the sick person who attacked Chuck and his late wife.
Joey Bennett
Joey Bennett grew up in the Mission Hill community, looking back on how fun it was to ride dirt bikes and have block parties with his family and friends.
While he loved the atmosphere of the community growing up and felt it was the safest place to live, he saw the influence of drugs and violence on Mission Hills in the late '80s.
Dereck Jackson
Dereck Jackson was another former resident of the Mission Hill projects, speaking in his interview on how the area was like a tight-knit family even though the rest of the world didn't see it the same way.
He had some negative experiences with high-profile cops working on the case, expressly saying in his interview that he had big problems with dangerous police officers.
Detective Bill Dunn
Detective Bill Dunn worked with the Boston Police Department from 1980 until 2016, and he worked closely on the investigation into Carol Stuart's murder.
He commented on how cops were eventually allowed to employ stop-and-frisk tactics, which were oftentimes used against Black people.
Dunn plainly stated that he loved helping good people and loved being bad to bad people, although the aforementioned Jackson also saw that video from Dunn's interview, pointing Dunn out as one of the bad cops in the city.
The first part of HBO's Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Reckoning is now streaming on Max. Part 2 will be released on Monday, December 11, and Part 3 will debut on Monday, December 18.
