A few days ago, I watching a Law & Order episode that brought me back to one of the most horrific memories of my life, the death of Carol DiMaiti Stuart, a tax attorney that worked for Reed at 255.

 

The date was October 23rd 1989.

 

I remember days before that being over at 255 Washington checking around the building and talking to my friends there. was walking through the Reed section and I saw Sarah Tynan talking to Carol with a big smile and big belly and I remember saying to her as I walked by, "It would be long now?" And she said with a big smile on her face, " No, not much longer, J.R. " Little did I know a few days later she would be gone.

 

It seemed for a time as if the legacy of Carol DiMaiti Stuart could only be one of incalculable pain—both to the family bereaved by her murder and to the city riven by her husband's unconscionable lie. The horror dated to the night of Oct. 23, 1989, when police found the pregnant Carol and her husband, Charles, in their blood-spattered car in Mission Hill.

 

Carol died about 3am on the 24th and baby Christopher (delivered by emergency cesarean soon afterward)died about six weeks later do to lack of oxygen from the trauma of the shooting.

 

Charles' acount of an attack by a black gunman sent police swarming through racially and ethnically mixed Mission Hill and brought the city's latent racial tensions to flash point. Then Charles's story began to fall apart. On January 4, 1990 just hours after police decided to pick him up for questioning, he apparently committed suicide by leaping from a Boston bridge. His brother, Matthew, had gone to the police with evidence that implicated Charles.

 

The DiMaiti family—Carol's parents, Giusto and Evelyn, and her brother, Carl—were left with only their memories of the 30-year-old daughter and sister. In their unhappiness, they might have overlooked the anger and bitterness festering in Mission Hill after the police roundups, but they didn't. Hoping in some small way to set right the insult upon the neighborhood, the DiMaiti’s decided to establish a scholarship foundation and to devote the proceeds to the residents of Mission Hill.

 

In that, the gesture has been superbly successful. When the family first appealed for contributions in January 1990, they expected a few thousand dollars. Instead, nearly 10,000 letters poured in from all over the country. Many contained sizable checks; some, just a few tattered dollar bills. When the DiMaiti’s added it all up, they discovered that strangers had given almost $500,000 in Carol's memory.

 

Now, over 24 years have passed, I think back to to that smiling face and big belly telling me "No, not much longer J.R".I apprehensive about recounting this story about Carol, but her memory her life should be remembered and cherished by all who knew her.

 

God Bless You,

 

Carol and Christopher