RESponse

I showed them the top of the entrance, the direction she came by. I showed them where she made the turn. I showed them where I picked up the tree branch and down the road, where I struck her over the head with the tree branch and where I dragged her in.

She just kept moaning, you know, saying stop, and grabbing her head-- you know, because she was in pain and all that, you know. She was bleeding.

I can't explain to you what happened after I left there, that park that night. But I can guarantee you that there was no way these kids saw this woman come in or have an idea of where she was coming from. I'm the one that did this.

Ready?

Yeah.

Approximately 1:30 this morning, two males walking through Central Park, north of the 102nd Street jogging path, found a female. She was still alive-- and in fact still is alive. The female was clad only in a bra. She was lying exposed in the area, appeared to have been exposed for a couple of hours. Her body temperature was down very low. Around her mouth is an article of clothing that was wrapped around her face, and the same article was used to bind her wrists to her face.

She had been struck around the head repeatedly, mud on her body. She appears to have been dragged through the woods north into the shrub area. She was taken to Metropolitan Hospital, where she is classified as in serious condition.

I look back at the jogger case and wish I had been more skeptical as a journalist. A lot of people didn't do their jobs-- reporters, police, prosecutors, defense lawyers. This was a proxy war being fought, and these young men were the proxies for all kinds of other agendas. And the truth and the reality and justice were not part of it.

You give us 22 minutes--

--to fight back--

--bulls are galloping--

Do you have a passport, Mr. Gotti?

Given the alarming spread of AIDS, New--

Fight back against--

If you don't like it, you're fired.

A savage racial attack--

--in the middle class neighborhood of Howard Beach--

A mob of whites attacked three black men.

The mayor of New York called it a racial lynching.

Off with the camera, man.

New York, under-policed city with crime out of control.

The criminal justice system isn't working.

They call him the Subway Vigilante.

Goetz bent over one of his wounded victims and said, you don't look too bad, here's another.

If I had more bullets, I would have shot them all again and again.

It's about time someone stood up for himself.

25-year-old Michael Stewart--

16-year-old Yusef Hawkins--

Where 67-year-old Eleanor Bumpers lived, until police came to evict her and ended up killing her.

New York's now the capital of racial violence.

I am.

I am.

Somebody!

Somebody!

You want to use the gun, we'll use the gun.

None of us is safe. Even if you lock yourself behind doors--

There's now a new level of random violence in the city.

It's intolerable, and this city will rise up in its wrath against those who perpetrate monstrosities.

Harlem, 1989. My neighborhood is a small neighborhood. When I was younger, all the kids would say it was the suburbs of Harlem. It was, like, three different projects around my neighborhood.

Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam-- I didn't know them, but I'd seen them around my neighborhood.

I lived in the Bronx at one time. And the Bronx is more a quiet life, you know. Even though it was the projects, it was very secluded. Everybody knew each other.

When I moved to Harlem, Harlem was very fast-paced. Everything moved fast. The cars moved fast, the people, the lingo. It was a big culture shock.

I was the only child. And me and my mother, we was close. But my father was my best friend. I thought he was like a superhero. He coached all my Little League teams. He was a great teacher.

I played shortstop. I played pitcher. In Little League, you get to play every-- outfield, catcher. But my favorite position was shortstop.

My dad was from Puerto Rico. My mother's a mix of Puerto Rican and black. So my dad is like light-skinned Puerto Ricans. And my mother's side was more dark-skinned. So we had the best of both worlds.

I used to ride skateboards. I used to play things like hide and go seek and used to run around with a lot of the people from the neighborhood.

As a kid, I knew Yusef, and I must say, he was a good kid. Him and his family had just moved into the Schomburg Complex.

Korey and Yusef, we grew up in the same building. So of course, I had seen them around, and our parents knew each other from just day to day.

It was my mother, my sister, and my brother. And my mother was a single parent, teaching at Parsons University. She encouraged all of us to do good work, good quality work, whatever we did.

When I was a kid, I had a little hearing problem. I just found myself just ignoring it to the point where it affected my life.

I grew up with a big family. A lot of women in my family-- my mother plus four sisters.

He's the baby, and he was treated as such. You know, mama's only boy out of five children and the baby. So he was just our heart's joy, everybody's.

At that time, I was just getting into music, watching videos. MTV Raps was kinda big, so we watched that. We would record the videos, and we would watch them over and over over, all day. You know, my dad would come in the house and say, you're still watching that video from when I left? That's how far my range was. I think that I was at that point of coming into who I was, but I never really got there.

New York in the late 1980s was a completely schizophrenic, divided city. There was enormous wealth gushing into the city out of the rise of the financial industries, which had surged, beginning around 1980. So the city that had been in a big collapse for several decades had turned around.

But there was a whole side to the city in which drug gangsters and crack and a kind of hard, permanently locked underclass was in place. And there was enormous suffering. It was as if there was a social moat that divided these two New Yorks.

The city, when I came in, was on the edge of bankruptcy, and people thought we would not recover.

We were a city coming out of a series of crises, enormous economic crises-- a school system that was in collapse, political institutions that seemed to be failing the people and not meeting their needs, old, fashionable, beautiful, noble neighborhoods falling apart.

And of course, overriding was crime.

Several things happened to me that I just considered a normal part of living in New York City-- a couple of muggings and near muggings. And I didn't even report any of these things. I just kind of figured, it's the way it is.

People had it worked out in their heads that their block was safe. The streets they walked to get to the subway to go to work, they were OK. Their subway line, they got on the same spot on the train every day. That was OK. They had figured out a safe path through this garden of terrors.

And then in about '84, crack came to New York City. And that increased crime, no question about it.

When the crack wars happened, all of a sudden teenagers have lots of cash and guns. And all hell breaks loose in Bedford- Stuyvesant. All hell breaks loose in Harlem. All hell breaks loose in Brownsville, East New York. We were supposed to be afraid. It would have been irrational not to be afraid.

But the people who suffered most with the rise of criminality, gang wars, drug wars, were actually the people we blamed. Most of the homicides were young, poor, working class, black and brown kids. And the dominant social message was, no one cared if you lived or died.

As far as I'm concerned, in the late '80s in New York City, the black community was under assault. The most endangered species in America-- that was a popular phrase-- was the young black man.

It was a nice night. We was just hanging out outside, playing basketball, where I lived at in Schomburg.

It was a holiday coming up. We didn't have school. A couple of friends wanted to go hang out.

I told him, you know, too much trouble in the corner. Go to the park. I sent them to the park that night. So I feel guilt too.

I was coming from a restaurant on the corner of 110th Street.

We walked over to 110th Street.

Almost in front of the entrance to Schomburg Plaza.

Coming from 110th and Madison, there was a group of people.

I see this mob turning the corner.

Good kids and bad kids. Kids just out to have some fun.

Some of them I didn't know by face. Some of them went to my school. Some of them lived in my neighborhood.

Yusef came my way.

I see Korey. I said, hey, come and hang out. We're about to hang out in the park.

A close friend of mine, he stayed back. We was all playing basketball. And he was like, don't go. Stay here.

They said, no, we was going into the park.

We walk in, a few of the guys are horseplaying with each other, jumping on each other's back, beating each other up-- just horseplaying.

We start going towards the main road, and people started throwing rocks at the cars.

A couple, they were on a tandem bike. And some kids were harassing them or saying something to them.

They looked like they were trying to pull them off, and the bicyclists held their balance, and they just kept going.

A homeless person starts walking across the street. And the guys surround him.

He had some food. Some of the guys out of the group took his food, beat him up.

They were beating this guy up really badly. And at some point in time, someone poured out a beer bottle and then smashed him in the head with it.

You know, it was kinda believable to see that and to see this guy getting jumped on by all these teenagers.

I remember the police coming, and everybody split up.

They shined the light, and the group kind of dispersed. Everybody ran.

That's when it was time for me to go home. I left the park when everybody scattered.

We was going to leave, but somebody said, well, let's go find the rest of the guys and we'll break out. We'll go home. And that's what we did.

We crossed down onto the 96th Street traverse and climbed up the rocks to the other side.

We was by a reservoir. I remember a man running by and some kids that were throwing rocks at him. And he kept running. Another person came running by. And when he got in the middle, they kind of came out and they jumped on him. We was watching from a distance. I didn't take part in that.

And I'm like, wow, this guy just picked him up and threw him into the game. Then he just starts punching him and beating him.

And then somebody yelled, police.

Commotion. Some kids, like, running that way, and some kids going the other way. Trying to find our way outside, out of the park.

I think it was between 9 o'clock and 10 o'clock. I was leaving the park around that time. I had a curfew.

I remember walking with this small group to the 1, 2, and the 3 train on Broadway. The only crime I committed that night was I hopped the turnstile.

On Central Park West, a car pulled up in front of me. And two officers jumped out. And one grabbed me. And when I turned back, the crowd scattered, and everybody ran.

The police were chasing me, and I had nowhere else to go because there was a wall. And if you jump over the wall, you go back into the park.

They handcuffed us and put in the car. And then his partner ran, and he jumped over the wall into the park, and he took off.

Somebody told me to freeze or I will shoot. My fear even went up more, so I just kept running. One of the cops, he tackled me. All my clothes was just all dirty and muddy. And he had a helmet, and he swung it across my face. And he handcuffed me, and I said, um--

I think he said, like, what's going on? And he said, he was like, you know, didn't I tell you not to run? Like, you little animal, or something. So, I basically said, I didn't do nothing.

We sat in the police cars for a while. They rounded up a few people, and we proceeded to the precinct.

They brung us in. They took shots, photos of us, and then they put us in the room.

14. Never got arrested. Never had handcuffs on me. Scared to death. I can recall one cop looking at me, and he says, what's that on your face? And I said, one of your fellow workers hit me. And he said, one of my fellow workers? Where at? Come point him out to me-- you know, like I was lying.

We asked him what's going to go on next, and the guys are saying, we'll give you a ticket for family court, and you'll be right out of here in no time soon.

We were sitting there for a long time.

It took a while, but they began to call parents.

My mother received a call from the precinct. And they told her to come pick Kevin up from-- it was the Center Park precinct. And he had been picked up for-- I believe it was unlawful assembly.

Three policemen knock at my door and say, oh, you didn't know your son was in the police station? I said, no. And they tell me, come on. Let's go. I had to get dressed. And then my mother was there. And she got scared. And she said, I'm going with you. So she went with me.

I started seeing a lot of the parents. We were feeling a little better, thinking that we were going to be OK.

The jogger was discovered about 1:30 in the morning by passersby. She was in the underbrush in the northern reaches of the park, and she was taken to Metropolitan Hospital.

Her skull was fractured. She lost a good deal of her body fluids. She was virtually dead. The kids were about to be released when a detective who realized the gravity of the injuries of the victim called the precinct and said, hold onto those guys. And it was from that moment forward that everything plowed towards them.

The next time I heard from my mother, she woke me up and she says, I'm still here at the precinct. And I says, well, why are you still there? And she said, well, they're saying they're waiting for paperwork.

I was wondering what's wrong. And I told them if I could see my son, because I saw him next door in the room with all the kids. And they said, no. You've got to wait till morning. So I tell my mother, stay with him, and let me go to work. They're probably going to release him in the morning anyway. I don't see nothing wrong. And I went to work.

Initially, the case was going to be handled by the Central Park precinct. But she was thought to be near death, and homicide cases are handled typically by these homicide squads. And Manhattan North was a prestigious bunch of detectives with a great deal of pride in their work and swagger in their step.

Two prosecutors, Linda Fairstein and Elizabeth Lederer, they were part of the investigation. And they were operating not only as prosecutors but investigators.

I was getting ready for work, and I heard the news. And instantly your mind goes into the calculus. An unidentified white woman found raped in Northern Central Park-- oh.

I think virtually every ethnic and racial group in New York has these moments where your heart just sort of stops and your stomach turns, and you think to yourself, oh, please don't let it be us.

Police have five teenagers in custody right now.

First we was all together. Then they started to put us in different rooms separately. Different cops are coming back and forth, and one cop's saying, well, we just heard that a woman was raped and beaten in the park.

Now he says, what happened to the lady? And I'm saying, what lady? And he says, what do you mean what lady? The lady who got raped in the park.

I said, yeah, I was in the park, and I was-- yeah, I was all around. But that I don't know about.

What do you mean you don't know? you didn't see? And I said no. We never came across no lady.

So now we're going back through the statement from the top again. What did you do? Who were you with? Who did you come with? And same answers again.

They're getting a little angry, because I guess they're not getting words out of anybody.

The detectives are trying to piece together a narrative of what happened, and they're trying to make it fit what they know happened. A woman ended up at the bottom of a ravine in the park, almost dead. And a bunch of other people got hassled or hurt in some way by these kids. So they're trying to make this story climb some sort of ladder of facts.

All hell is breaking loose in Central Park that night. And there are gangs of kids running around making mischief. It's not so hard to understand why these kids were brought in, why they were interrogated so aggressively, why police believed they had amongst them the culprit or culprits. Now they just have to get the proof of it.

Another detective came into the room. He called my grandma. And he said, listen, can I talk to you outside for a minute? And when he took her outside, that's when it started. He looks at me. He's like, oh, this is the scumbag right here that did it.

I remember one guy specifically tell me, you want to spend 25 to life on Rikers Island? You want to go to jail for rape? Because they don't like guys that rape women, and things like that. And I'm saying, I'm telling the guy, I don't know what you're talking about.

Now the other officer comes in. He had about red hair, short guy. And he was like, oh, so this is the prick right here? And Arroyo says, yeah, this is the guy here. He doesn't want to tell us what happened. And now I'm sitting there, like, ah, what's going on? And now Arroyo starts to yell at me, and then this guy pulls up a chair next to me. He starts to yell right in my ear. So I have Arroyo here yelling at me, blowing smoke in my face with the cigarette, and then I have this guy on my side, and he's yelling at me.

And he's like, you know you fucking did it. You fucking stuck your dick in her, right? Didn't you? And I'm like, what are you talking about? I didn't stick nothing in nobody.

And I start to cry a little bit. And then Hartigan jumps in. And I was grateful. You know, at that point I was grateful, because Hartigan stopped them from trying to hurt me.

Then the other guy came back in, screaming and yelling, violating my personal space, so close to spitting on me. And then my mother, she came to the door. And she said, I need to see my son. I need to see my son.

I looked out, and I had seen one detective take her by the shoulder, bring her back to her chair. And while he's talking to her, they closed the door, and they're questioning me. They knew that my mother was a weak person, was disabled. And they used that. You know, they used that.

The officers, they actually met me outside. They're like, oh, your mother, you know, she's not well. And since you're of age, you can see and replace her, and we'll send her on home in a squad car, and we'll make sure she's OK. And they said, she was cooperating with this process, so we're sure that you're going to cooperate as well so that-- they constantly kept saying, so that your brother could go home, so that your brother could go home. And that's all I wanted. I just wanted to get him back home.

There's a loud knock at the door. There was three or four detectives. I thought they was there because of the assaults on the people in Central Park. My father, he let them come in. These men, they look giants compared to father. They asked me to put some sneakers on. He told my father he was going to take me down to the precinct.

My father called my mother, and my mother met us at the precinct. They was asking me questions about a female jogger in Central Park. And i was like, there was only one woman, and she was with a man on a bike, but they rode off. And they was like, you sure? I was like, yeah.

What about the lady that got raped? And I'm like, what lady that got raped? And they just kept asking me about this lady that got raped, and I kept telling them, there was only one lady.

Then they asked my mother to leave the room. I'm looking at my father. He's like, are you telling the truth? I went, yeah, Dad. I'm telling the truth. I swear I'm telling the truth. I always told my father the truth. I don't know nothing about no jogger. I know some people got beaten up. I had nothing to do with that.

Then they asked me to tell my story again, this time yelling at me, all up in my face, pointing at me, poking me in my chest. It just kept going on and on and on.

We stopped a few times because I was crying. And I had no protection. My father didn't do anything. I was scared.

Hours have passed.

Time kept going by.

They kept asking questions.

No food, no drink.

I didn't eat. I didn't get no sleep.

And I didn't know when it was going to end.

Confrontation followed by denial, followed by, you're a liar, I want to hear the truth, can go on for hours. And the goal there is to break the suspect down into a state of despair, into a state of helplessness, so that the suspect gets worn down and is looking for a way out.

They pulled my father aside. Then my father came back in the room. It was like he just changed. He just changed. He was like, listen. He was like, tell these people what they want to hear so you can go home. If he just would have stood his ground, I would have told the truth or stuck to the truth.

Hartigan sat down, and he said, look, Ray. I know you didn't do anything wrong. But the other guys right now, they're in other precincts, and they're saying that you did it.

And they're telling me, well, you're not saying nothing. But these guys put your name in it.

And I'm like, I didn't do anything. And he's like, well, this is why I'm here to help you, because I know you didn't do anything. You're a good kid. This isn't you.

He pulls out this picture of Kevin Richardson, and he goes, you know this kid? And I'm like, no, I don't know him. And he goes, you see the scratch under his eye? That came from the woman. We know he did it. He's going down.

At this point, I'm like, you know, I don't know these guys that's there, so I'm just gonna make up something and include these guys' names.

OK. If you're going to do it to me, then I'm going to do it to you.

They was coaching me, and I was writing it down.

He just fed it to me. Well, what did he do? What did Antron McCray do? He gave me the names. I put them in. I couldn't tell you who they were, who they looked like. If he would have game me 100 names, I would have put 100 people at the crime scene.

And I was like, how could they lie? So I was like, I'm going to get them back.

At that point, I told myself, I just-- I just want to go home.

I thought I had the upper hand because here I was that had a detective who was saying, I'm going to make sure you go home.

I was thinking that I was never going to go home. I gave these people what they wanted to hear. So I lied. I lied

I said, well, this is where it happened at the reservoir. I'm placing the scene of the crime at the reservoir. And he just-- he doesn't really say, but he gives me this look, like, what are you talking about?

He asked me what she was wearing. I didn't know. I wasn't there. So I remember one of the men joggers that got assaulted. He had blue shorts and a white shirt. That's what I said she had on.

And then he said, it's got to be more believable. You know, Ray, people don't fully believe it if you just saw it. He said, where were you? And I said, I saw it from a distance. I was watching.

He said, no, you've got to be in it. Like, you have to be there.

As the time just went on, my father wasn't doing nothing. So I was just like, whatever, yeah. I had something to do with it, just to get out of there.

"Then we saw this lady jogger. She had on gray shorts with black biking pants and a white tank top."

"I observed the male, black Kevin, with scratch on face, was struggling with a female."

"The tall, thin black guy hit her in the ribs with a pipe."

"I moved back and everybody started feeling on her."

"Antron came and started ripping her clothes off."

"The Puerto Rican kid with the black hoodie jumped on her."

"I tried to grab her. I got scratched on my face."

"Antron pulled her pants off, and she was screaming."

"Antron had sex with her."

"Then Kevin got on her."

"That's when she was yelling stop and help."

"I was the one that didn't rape her."

"Kevin pulled down his pants and had sex with her. When she was on the floor I grabbed her tits." A 14-year-old boy doesn't talk like this, you know?

At that time, being naive, I figured, I'm not implicating myself.

I was crying at that time. He said, don't worry. You did good. Everything's going to be OK.

When I first went there, they said I was going to be a witness. And then everything just flipped. They had me raping a woman, beating her. And they read the statement to my mother. And she looked at me. And I said, Ma, I didn't do it. She was like, OK. I knew you didn't do it.

I walked in the room, and I could see that he was terrified. I could see him shivering. I said, Kevin, I can't believe you saw this woman get raped. And he looked at me. He said, Angie, I didn't see a rape.

And I said, Kevin, why did you say that then? He said, because they told me to say it so I could go home. But it was like an orchestra. They orchestrated this whole thing, and I felt so dumb for not realizing it till it was too late.

When I came back, they disappeared my son. He wasn't there no more. I said, where's my son? He said, they took him to another police station.

My father did make a return, but when he came, it was too late.

And waited, like, four, five hours. And then he came in handcuffed, and a lot of policemen were with him.

My dad's sitting there, so I go through the same story. But now I add the woman in it. Now, my dad, this is the first time he hears this. So he looks at me. He goes, what? That happened? And now I get quiet because now here's my dad. I can't lie to him. And I'm like-- I want to say, Dad, don't say nothing. It's taken care of.

In those days, there were probably six murders a day. In the newsrooms, people didn't always pay attention to whatever grisly event of the day had happened. This one was different.

Last night, a woman jogger was found unconscious and partially clothed in Central Park about 200 feet north of the 102nd Street cross drive. What we believe happened is the following. The victim was jogging across the 102nd Street cross drive when she was attacked by a dozen young males. She was dragged down the bushes near what is called The Loch, where she was beaten and sexually assaulted. Five youths were arrested at 96th Street and the West bridle path. We believe these youths and others were responsible for two or three other incidents that occurred in the park last night, assaults on joggers and pedestrians, and we are currently looking for others we believe to be involved.

When I came home, I remember saying to myself, man, there's a whole bunch of unmarked police cars out here. I wonder what happened. I bumped into Korey at some point, and Korey says he heard that they were looking for us.

So him and I went upstairs. They had the detectives at his door.

And they said, oh, this is one of the guys we were looking for. Checked my name off. And they asked Korey who he was.

He looked at the list. Said, no, your name ain't on here. So they said, uh, you could come downtown with your buddy. You'll be right back.

We went to the precinct. And I came home seven years later. He came home 13 years later.

They said, something happened out in the park, because you were out in the park that night, right? I said, yeah, I was in the park, but I don't know what you're talking about.

Kevin is saying, this happened. Antron is saying this happened. And they were stopping me during my retelling of the events and saying, is this where you got the woman? Is that where? The tone was very, very scary. I felt like these guys are really angry. And you know what? They might take us to the back of the precinct and kill us. A lot of time had gone by. I don't even know what time it was.

Detective Hartigan said, Korey, you look like you're real tired, man. Very tired, exhausted, and you want to go home. But you're not going to go home until you say a story.

They had made up a story saying something like, well, we have your prints on your pants? I'm thinking, how did they take my prints and put it on her pants?

Detective Nugent, a young officer with a whole lot of energy, came in, put his face to my face, put his hand in my face, grabbed my face, shook my face. I want a story from you. I just gave a written statement just to satisfy them, just to get them out of my face with it, and trying to be on my way out of their building. And afterwards, he had me sign on it. So I signed on it, yeah.

These boys were in custody and under varying degrees of interrogation for a range of 14 to 30 hours. And when you are stressed, when you are tired, when you are a juvenile and not fully mature and developed, you're thinking, right now, I just want this to stop.

OK. My name is Elizabeth Lederer. I'm an assistant district attorney in New York County. I'd like to ask you some questions about a series of things that happened in Central Park on the night of April 19th of 1989. Before I do that, I'd like to advise you of your rights with respect to statements you may make now. OK?

You have the right to remain silent and to refuse to answer any questions. Do you understand?

Yes, I do.

Anything that you say can be used against you in court. Do you understand?

Yes, I do.

You have the right to consult a lawyer now before any questioning and have a lawyer present during any questioning. Do you understand? Could you please answer out loud?

Yes.

If you have no lawyer or cannot afford a lawyer, a lawyer will be provided for you now, free of charge, before any questioning. Do you understand?

Thank you. Yes.

Now that I've advised you of your rights, are you willing to tell me the truth about what happened in Central Park on the night of April 19th of 1989?

Yes.

OK. Present in this room is Detective Nugent, who you have already met, I believe.

Detective Nugent told me to go in here, you're going to give this story, which you have said to me and the rest of my coworkers. You're going to go in and give this story. I'm going to be in the room. And I'm going to make sure you do it.

This is Detective McCabe and Detective Hildebrant. I think you've already met them. Also present are, I believe, your parents. Could you each please state your full name?

My name is Linda McCray.

Bobby McCray.

And ma'am, what is your relation?

I'm his mother.

And his father.

OK. I want to warn you of your rights with respect to anything you say in this case.

Why would a parent not say at that moment, we want to consult with an attorney? The reason is, because of the setting and because of the way they're being treated by the police and because of being overwhelmed by the situation, it doesn't even register in their minds.

--just want to state, it is now 20 minutes to 5:00 in the morning on the morning of April 21st of 1989. There is another gentleman here in the room. Who is that man?

My father.

And sir, could you please just state your name and address?

Paul L. Richardson.

My father was a quiet, stern man. So I felt ashamed that I was even there, doing that. And I shouldn't feel that way, because I was innocent.

Also present right now are Detective Arroyo and Detective Sheehan.

I was under the impression that I was going to be a witness, help out, or just give them a story, and that was it.

Sir, could you please give your name?

My name is Raymond Santana.

I didn't think about consequences. I didn't think about anything. The only thing that I thought about was, he was going to make sure I go home. That was it.

I'm going to ask you a few questions about--

Here I am doing a videotape, and I'm already deep in this. So I'm thinking, now, I've got to sell it to make sure that people know that I wasn't involved.

Were you trying to touch her?

Not really.

Didn't you tell the police earlier today that you had tried to grab her, and that's when you got scratched?

No, not like, feeling her-- feeling her up.

OK, not like that.

Trying to stop it.

But you tried, you--

To grab, like, grab the arms or something.

You tried to grab her arm?

I was trying to stop it.

Did you see Antron have intercourse with her?

Yes.

Was he laying on top of her? Or was he kneeling? Or was he--

Laying on top of her.

OK. And how long was he on top of her?

For a short while. Then Raymond went.

We was headed to the West Side. That's when I had seen Kevin.

That's where you saw Kevin? Was anybody with Kevin?

Yeah, a lady.

Who was with Kevin?

Some lady.

A lady?

Mm-hmm.

How was she dressed?

I couldn't tell. It was too dark.

What was he doing with her?

Struggling with her.

What were the others doing while Kevin was struggling with her with the wrists?

Antron was going for her clothes. And Lopez was holding her arms.

What was Kevin doing while Steve Lopez was holding her hands and hitting her with the brick?

He was having sex with her.

Where were you standing?

I was on the side of Kevin.

Were you watching?

No. I was grabbing the lady's titties.

Who else had sex with her besides Kevin Richardson?

I didn't see anybody else who had sex with her. Just him.

Did somebody have sex with her?

Yeah.

Did a lot of people have sex with her?

Yeah.

First it was the black guy. Then it was the Puerto Rican guy with the black hood. Then you got on top of her?

What's in that picture?

It's her.

Is that the woman that you saw?

Yes.

Is that sort of the way she looked when you saw her?

Yes. Yes, ma'am.

Did you see anybody hit her with anything but their hands?

I seen--

And I'm telling you, Korey, I don't want you think that you have to say that. But I want to know what you saw that explains how she got so badly hurt.

I did see Kevin pick up a hand rock, a small hand rock, and hit her across the face with it.

How big was the rock?

It was a hand-- about that big. Like, it was nice. It was big. It was a good-shaped rock. Hit her across like that.

Are you just saying that because I am asking you?

No. No. No.

Why didn't you say it before?

Huh?

Why didn't you say it before?

Because I remember, I was-- me taking a quick glance in the dark. I remember him picking up a rock from out the-- out the dirt.

Why did you tell them something that wasn't true, that you hadn't seen?

I guess- I would strongly guess, just to save my own life, to get out of-- get out of there as quickly as possible, because I had been there too long as it was. And you know, being a kid, I never experienced that in my life.

How old were you?

16. 16, and I felt like I was about 12.

Did you tell us the truth voluntarily?

Yes, ma'am.

Because you wanted to?

Yes, ma'am.

Did anyone force you?

No, ma'am.

Did anyone threaten you?

No.

Thank you very much. It is now 20 minutes to 4:00, and the interview is concluded.

Hey. Sit down. We've got to get you to sign something, eh?

Huh?

They put us in the cell with the rest of the guys. Now there's all these guys in here I don't even know. You know, who are you? And everybody's asking each other, what did you say? What did you say? And everybody's basically saying, well, I told them I was with my boy, and we left. I didn't see nothing. Nobody's saying what they actually said. Everybody had that sense of, don't let it out the bag, because if I let it out, then I'm not going to go home.

In New York City this morning, a jogger is fighting for her life after a brutal attack in Central Park.

Viciously battered and unconscious, wearing only a jogging bra, her hands tied over her mouth.

The suspects are 14 and 15 year olds who blazed a nighttime trail of terror.

Assaulting an elderly man, attacking a male runner, hitting another person with a lead pipe. At one time, the group was running in a pack of more than 25 youths.

The victim is now in critical condition at Metropolitan Hospital.

Two skull fractures, a significant loss of blood, and advanced hypothermia.

If she lives, it's likely she'll suffer from brain damage.

Eight suspects were arraigned this weekend, aged 14 to 17.

Some of the young men told police they were just out wilding.

Wilding is a word you won't find in Webster's.

Wilding-- New York City police say that's new teenage slang for rampaging and wolf packs, attacking people just for fun.

The district attorney's office says the teenagers have confessed. The spokesman said some of those confessions are on videotape.

A woman jogging and Central Park. Central Park was holy. If it had happened anyplace else other than Central Park, it would've been terrible, but it would not have been as terrible. It was for everybody, not just me, the crime of the century.

During this whole process, we were inside the precinct, had no clue what was going on outside.

Can you stop and talk to us for a couple of seconds and tell us what's going to happen now?

He said, oh, yeah, the news got a little bit ahold of the story, so there might be some reporters outside. Just don't pay any attention. Just keep walking.

Today we are announcing the arrests of four males, all between 14 and 15 years of age, in connection with the April 19th attempted murder, rape, and assault of a female in Central Park.

They got them! That was the feelings. Thank God for Ben Ward and the NYPD. They got them!

Set against the backdrop of New York City and a crime that just about has everybody flipping out, you can only imagine the pressure that NYPD was under to have this crime solved and solved quickly.

Jack Maple, one of the architects of the 1990s New York City police revolution, once told me that he remembered seeing detectives involved in the Central Park jogger case in Elaine's within a day or so of the crime, celebrating the arrests. There was a sense that this had been a home run from a law enforcement standpoint.

When they chained us up to go to another precinct, pictures snapping.

Me and Yusef did the walk together, and we just kept our head down. When we saw the lights, we still didn't-- we still didn't understand.

I'm walking, and I'm scared. But I had my held up high. And all I'm thinking to myself, OK, the truth is going to come out.

After they got out of the interrogation room, they backed off. Each one of them denied having done it. Consistently, again and again and again, they said, no, we didn't do it.

For the first time since the April 19th rampage through Central Park, Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau spoke out publicly on the attacks to officially announce indictments involving six of the eight suspects charged with the most serious crimes.

Each is charged in this attack with attempted murder, rape in the first degree, sodomy in the first degree, sexual abuse in the first degree, two counts of assault in the first degree, and riot in the first degree.

There's no way that I as a woman could not feel horrible for her and feel scared for myself and every other woman walking the street. And I was on the edge of my seat hoping that she would get better, but there was no indication that she would recover consciousness.

For me, the one piece of information that just got me was her friends coming in to identify her and her being just beaten beyond recognition. And the only way that her friends could identify her was by a ring that she wore.

The 28-year-old victim lies in a coma. A teacher called her Golden Girl, an investment banker with a blue chip background, whose savage beating and gang rape has provoked outrage in a city famous for indifference. Suspects in the crime were arraigned this weekend, aged 14 to 17.

Rape in the first degree, sodomy in the first degree, sexual abuse in the first degree--

We was at arraignment, and I remember them reading charges off. Robbery in the first, attempted murder in the first, rape in the first. And the lawyer was like, don't say anything. Just keep your head down.

--that he had her by the legs, and then he raped her after defendant Santana did.

But it wasn't until we got into that jail and you felt the impact.

Spofford Juvenile Detention had kids that committed serious crimes-- murder, rape.

This counselor came down. He sat there with us. And he said, you know-- you know how serious y'all case is? And we was like, what are you talking about? And he said, y'all-- y'all are all over the paper, y'all on every news station. Everybody's talking about y'all. He said, it's so serious, the whole jail want to get you.

Because he was 16, they sent Korey to Rikers Island.

Rikers Island would make Spofford look like a country club, especially when you're in there for a rape charge.

To be a child, to be 16 years old and to be in an adult facility, I can't imagine that.

Rikers Island at the age of 16, being forced to grow up very fast.

In the first few days after the incident, the narrative that came out was that these young men were guilty. And it was almost unquestioned.

When parents or grandmothers of some of these alleged perpetrators-- we always have to say alleged because that's the requirement-- when those grandmothers say, but he's a good boy, he never did anything, don't you believe it.

There was so much hate, we couldn't watch TV.

There's something wrong with the parenting and the families and the home life of our city.

It's an outrage. The violence in this city, the quality of life in this city, is getting worse and worse.

This is the ultimate shriek of alarm. This is the ultimate siren that says, none of us is safe.

The story has enraged many New Yorkers, startled others, and started a renewed talk of an under-policed city with crime out of control.

Mayor Koch said, this will be a test of the system.

People want to see how the criminal justice system works, or if it works.

The brutal attack on the young investment banker is fueling a new battle for the death penalty, even though as the proposed law now stands, it would only apply to those 18 or older.

I'm for the death penalty. If someone were to hurt my family or a loved one, as they did this woman, I would probably want them dead.

You better believe that I hate the people that took this girl and raped her brutally. You better believe it.

Trump put his money where his mouth is by taking out this full page ad in four New York City newspapers. Bring back the death penalty.

Trump's ads underscore a fierce debate going on right now in New York. According to a recent Gallup poll, a full 76% of all New York City residents favor executing some convicted criminals.

They were children. They were children. Bringing up the death penalty in the context of the case in which you are discussing children was outrageous to me.

I think that if she had been a young woman who had been found in an alley in Bedford-Stuyvesant, if she had been found in Harlem, if she had been found in any of the darker enclaves in this city or in this state, Donald Trump wouldn't have spoken. He wouldn't have even whispered a word.

Interracial rapes are covered differently. And there was another major rape in the city at the time-- and this is the woman who was raped in Brooklyn and thrown off a rooftop-- that got little to no coverage, because the assailants and the victim were in the same racial group.

If there's a white woman and the accusation is that she's been done in by blacks, that by itself takes you back to Emmett Till, who did nothing but whistle at a woman and ended up in a shallow Mississippi grave.

If this had happened in 1901, they would have been lynched, perhaps castrated, and their bodies burned. And that would have been the end of it.

But this was New York City, 1989. It was not Jim Crow South. And yet the same words are being used with the same damaging results.

They seized on the fears of the people. Wilding-- the bestial characterization of the black man, these young hoodlums, these thugs.

Once we were on the path to identifying these young men as the culprits, it's hard to get off that path. And race-powered politics make it extremely difficult. It requires extraordinary courage.

A lot of people in the black community went along with the confessions. Many of us were frightened by our own children. Many of us had been pushed around, raped, burglarized, pocketbook snatched, harassed on the subway, often by young black men. People just said, oh, how terrible. How terrible. Everyone turned against them, except a few.

The good news is she continues to improve neurologically from her attack. For the first time, she called her father Dad. She did simple arithmetic. Her brain is working, still abnormally. She thought the year was 1952, but her brain is working.

She's getting better, and so far she looks good.

The medical case of the 28-year-old jogger continues to improve. She's undergoing physical and psychological therapy at a Connecticut hospital.

The young woman attacked has apparently made a remarkable recovery, although she reportedly cannot recall any details about the attack.

When I was bailed out, I thought the case was over. I thought the truth came out. I didn't know nothing about bail, until I got home. My mother explained, no, it's bail. We paid for you to get out, and we still gotta go on with this. I wasn't able to go to school, so I got a tutor. I didn't go outside a lot. I stayed in the house, played video games, and just studied.

The police controlled the story from the beginning. They created this story and the theory, and all the pieces fell into place.

The authorities release a chronology to the press of what this wilding was all about.

Together, about 8:50 PM--

The newspapers love chronologies. We call them tick-tocks. We like to say, here's how this night of terror unfolded in the park.

At 8:55, they attacked an older male.

The timeline says, the kids did these attacks, at this place with the homeless guy, at this place with the taxi driver, over there with the bicycle rider, and then with people running around the reservoir. They did various acts of malice or mischief with these folks.

Now, those people reported these things either simultaneously or right after to the place. So there is a clear-cut time. And what they do is they append to the end of this sequence of crimes the attack on the jogger.

Then something happens, her movements that night start to become defined. And all of a sudden, we find out when she left her house, what route she normally took around the park, and with not necessarily absolute certainty but with a good degree of certainty, you can figure out that Trisha Meili should have been in the park around the place where she was attacked at around 20 after 9:00. We know for certain that at that time, those kids were beating up, hassling other people on the reservoir, south of that spot in the park. They weren't at that part of the park at the time she would have been there.

And if you watch the videotaped confessions, it turns out they actually don't know where the crime took place. They don't know when it took place. And they don't know how it took place. They just know that it happened.

The problem is, once you form a strong belief that somebody is guilty of a crime, the contradictory details are just that. They're details, but they don't fundamentally change our belief in their guilt. But when the DNA results come back and none of their DNA is present, that should have stopped the investigation in its tracks, and they should have at least paused and moved in another direction.

Harlan Levy was a DNA prosecutor at the time. And he recalls how Elizabeth Lederer said, please, come to my office. And he could sense urgency in her voice. And she said, look, I feel like I've been kicked in the stomach. There's no DNA match whatsoever to any of these boys.

It is improbable given the nature of this crime and the scene that these boys would not have left a single trace of themselves on the scene or the scene a single trace on them. The improbability of that is striking. But the decision was, we can still prosecute this case. And the argument we will make to the jury is just because we didn't get all of them doesn't mean we didn't get some of them.

They now created a scenario by which there is a sixth perpetrator-- a sixth perpetrator who mysteriously doesn't appear in any of the confessions. But even if they were correct, that sixth perpetrator's absence in their confessions makes the confessions factually incorrect. That should have been the dilemma.

The trail in the grass at the very spot where she was taken down is 18 inches wide-- that wide. You can't tell me that five kids-- or 10 or whatever the number is that were supposedly involved in this wilding-- dragged this woman off the road and left an 18-inch wide trail. That trail was a photograph of the beginning of this attack. And in that picture, there are not five kids. There are only two people-- the victim and her assailant.

I asked her to get undressed. When she was coming towards me, I picked up the knife. And I shoved the knife, and I caught her hair. And she was saying, ah, you stabbed me. And I don't even know where it was. I kept on stabbing her, and I don't know in what places I got her. I see her on the floor shaking and nervous. So I run out the door.

Matias Reyes was a young man living essentially by himself in his late teenage years. He would steal Walkmans, he would steal watches, he would steal jewelry. Then he started sexually assaulting women, attacking women all around that neighborhood.

On April 17, 1989, just two days before the jogger was attacked, he attacked a woman on the northern part of Central Park. But the woman noticed that he had fresh stitches on his chin, and she told the police about this. And a young detective went to the hospitals in the area and found out that there had been a guy named Matias Reyes who had these stitches on his chin. That was ignored.

He was the East Side Rapist that we'd been covering in the Daily News. And one of the police officers who was working on the jogger case and also working on one of the rapes that Reyes has been accused of has the DNA markers in both files.

Detective Mike Sheehan, he knew, because he was working with Linda Fairstein and Elizabeth Lederer and all the other detectives. He knew that there was no DNA match to these young Central Park Five.

The only real evidence the prosecutors have is the evidence the defendants gave them-- hours of graphic videotaped confessions.

What is particularly disturbing about this case and about so many other cases like it is that once that confession is taken and once that confession is in the air, it corrupts everything else. And confessions will trump DNA, confessions will change witness's testimony, confessions are irresistibly persuasive, and almost the effects can't be reversed.

Screening for jurors began today in a case that shocked New York and jolted the nation.

Prosecutors are expected to call 50 witnesses, possibly including the victim herself.

Though she has no memory of the attack, prosecutors expect her to testify. Her mere appearance will pack an emotional punch for the prosecution's case.

In the back of my mind, I knew we wasn't going to beat this case. It was in the paper too much. Too many people were against us. Everybody washed their hands from us, and I felt like people accepted whatever happened to us. It was like, whatever happens to those kids, forget them.

My father, as the trial came, he left me and my mother, disappeared. I couldn't understand, and I just hated him after that. Me and my mother started going to court by ourselves.

Demonstrators, you know, people just shouting, you know, rapist, you animal, you don't deserve to be alive. It just felt like the whole world hated us.

The amazing thing to me in meeting Antron was that he was the exact opposite of the way he was portrayed in the news. He is a timid, calm, nonaggressive individual, not anything as he was portrayed.

In her opening argument, the prosecutor made it clear their own words would be the main evidence against the first three defendants.

Where were you standing?

I was on the side of Kevin.

Were you watching?

No, I was grabbing the lady's titties.

It was very hard not to believe those confessions.

What was Antron doing to her clothes?

He was trying to pull them off.

It seemed genuine. These confessions seemed genuine. It didn't seem like they were rehearsed or made up or anything.

I think that Raymond lied. It'll come out that Raymond lied. He was lying when he was being asked questions by the district attorney. And I think that will come out very graphically in my cross examination tomorrow.

Yusef Salaam didn't make taped statements, but police say he verbally admitted beating the female jogger with a lead pipe while others climbed on top of her.

Bobby Burns, he was a friend of my mom's. He was originally a divorce lawyer. I thought he was a nice guy. But at one point in time, I remember looking over at him, and I thought he was sleeping.

Mentally, you know, physically, it was draining, not knowing what's going on, seeing these people get on the stand. Nobody actually saying, you did it.

--communicate that there is another perspective.

No more Scottsboro boys! No more Scottsboro boys!

There has been no evidence in any form that could show me for one moment anything related to his being anything other than innocent.

Yusef is innocent.

No justice.

No peace.

No justice.

No peace.

No justice.

No peace.

No justice.

There have been charges of racism, that authorities aggressively pursued the case because the victim is white and the suspects black and Hispanic.

Meantime, a group of people came to demonstrate for the female jogger and against a regular cadre of protesters who have suggested that the jogger's boyfriend raped her.

Where's the jogger's boyfriend? Where's the jogger's boyfriend?

All people should be outraged about this, not any particular race. We need to remember that this was a human being and that people need to support that.

Yesterday, Mayor David Dinkins also condemned the regular protesters who even jeered at the injured jogger the day she testified.

She walked with an unsteady gait, clutched the railing as she stepped into the witness stand. Her scars were evident, but she spoke clearly, in a strong, sweet voice.

She was a miracle now at this point. She couldn't contribute anything to the actual case because thankfully she couldn't remember. But the fact of her being on the stand galvanized the public around her and against these young boys.

I was just sitting there, just looking like, man, I really hope this lady can remember. You know, I'm like, why can't she remember? It's messed up what happened to her, but I didn't do it.

With the prosecution resting its case in the final hour today, the defense begins its case tomorrow, starting with the parents of Antron McCray.

My strategy was obviously to try to convince the jury that these statements were not accurate, were the product of coercion, should be inadmissible, and were not credible. But when they testified in court, the police officers said, all we did is ask them what happened. That seemed to me to be incredible. They also denied that they ever made any promises whatsoever. They denied even knowing Antron was a suspect.

Even though he had asked him to tell the truth no matter what and to bring the clothes he was wearing and all kinds of stuff that made it perfectly obviously that he was a suspect, he said he didn't think of him as a suspect. That was just nonsense. Some of the detectives were obviously lying through their teeth.

The lawyers in the case had another defense, which is they had alibis. They were not where the jogger was when she was attacked. Why? They were beating up other people. That alibi defense was not offered.

The only evidence against Yusef was that the testimony of McKenna, the detective, and Burns absolutely undercut Yusef in the most terrifying way. He put into evidence the notes of McKenna, which hadn't been put into evidence before. And that was the only evidence against Yusef.

There was one part during the trial I think Peter Rivera, my lawyer, he woke up. And they was talking about the statements, of how the statements were coerced by the police. I remember him reading something, and I heard him whisper it. He didn't say it loud, but he sat next to me. And he said, they didn't do it.

And I heard him say that. And I said, all right, well, maybe now he's going to fight. But it was too late.

No blood on the kids. Nobody could identify them. It was just a question of believing the confessions or not. And it was very hard to imagine why anybody would make up something that not only incriminates them but is full of details that sound like actually happened.

They got to one point where they pulled me, Yusef, and Antron in the conference room. And the lawyer says, you know, we're going to lose this case. What we're planning to do is see if we can get you a plea deal.

And I remember telling them, you know, you guys can cop out. But if I did something, I would cop out. I would want the least amount of time for what I did. But if I didn't do anything, you can give me the rest of my life in prison. I didn't know what that meant back then, but I just knew that there would be no way that I would cop out for something that I didn't do.

They said, well, it has to be all three of you guys, or it's nobody. So you know, we looked at each other. We were like, well, I guess it's nobody.

They're coming out. Let's roll.

The crimes and the colors in this case have been the focus of attention here for more than a year. It will now be up to a jury to decide the guilt or innocence of the defendants. John McKenzie, ABC News, New York.

It is day 10 of deliberations, and the jogger jury appears to be going back to what they were thinking about on day one. Were those damaging videotaped confessions coerced by cops, overeager to solve the case?

Each day that the jury remained out, I started to get a little more optimistic.

People were shocked. What's taking them so long? They confessed to it.

I was going nuts, quite frankly. I mean, everyone was blaming the fact that we were there so long on me. And I had to fight with my fellow jurors to consider the discrepancies between the three statements, but it didn't matter to them. If they confessed, they confessed, and that was that.

Everyone's hurling implications at me and telling me what a rat I am. And I just went along with it at the end, because frankly, I was wiped out. I found some cockamamie excuse to vote guilty just to get out of there.

When the verdict came out, they brung us out. The courtroom was packed. And as they started to read, everything kind of got numb.

I remember standing there and just-- they found me guilty. That's when I just-- the world just collapsed.

My whole insides dropped. Just, like, this is crazy. Are you kidding me? I couldn't believe it at all.

I couldn't hear nothing after that. I just sat down. I looked back at my mother. She was crying. You know, that was it.

After the jury foreman, a law school graduate--

One of my friends had a radio. And then I heard it.

Guilty, guilty, guilty on rape, robbery, riot, and assault.

Tears came out of my eye, and I was mad.

16-year-old McCray clenched his jaw and brushed away tears. 15-year-old Santana looked wide eyed ahead, while Salaam stared at the jurors, then back at the courtroom. Pure anguish.

Antron leaned over to me and said, thank you very much for all of your efforts. That's not something that you see from clients in general, and certainly not something you would expect to see from a young man. And I truly appreciated it.

I just looked at him. I was like, thank you for helping me. He did his best. He did this best, you know, in my eyes.

They took me out first. They asked for my belt. They asked for my laces. And then Yusef and Antron came out, like, a little bit after me. And then we cried. We cried inside the bullpen. We didn't-- it was like, you didn't want to show them that, you know, because you didn't want them to see defeat. So we did it when we went in the back.

No!

The defendants' families left the courtroom quickly in tears. They left without their teenage sons.

All right. Thank you!

Law and order in the nation's largest city seemed to get a boost tonight as the first three youths to be tried in the central park jogger case were found guilty of gang rape and brutal assault and robbery.

You're pleased with the verdict?

I am.

How much of a help have your detectives been to you during this case?

They've been the best. They're terrific.

Were you concerned about the lack of genetic evidence? A lot of people made a big deal about that, that none of the semen from the defendants matched that that was found in the jogger.

I think because there's another trial, it's better not to discuss the evidence.

How do you feel about the prospect of another trial?

I think I could use a vacation before it starts.

Are you going to give it to her?

I'm going to give it to her.

They offer me a plea. And I said, I will never plea to anything, because I was innocent and that we were going to fight this all the way through. It was just really a circus. At this time, I was 16 now. So it was already two years of going through that.

I'm just going from Rikers Island, back and forth, going through this court thing, like it's a job. Her only argument on me is my confession tape.

Did you hold her legs down?

I hold her legs down for, what, five seconds.

So I'm looking at this, like, that's me? Is that me? She using me against me.

16-year-old Kevin Richardson has been quiet through most of the trial, but his mother has not.

He was set up. He was set up.

Richardson's attorney says he won't claim his client's taped confession was coerced. Instead he'll argue Richardson was with the gang but never took part in any of the crimes. Wise's attorney said he'll try to show the confessions were coerced.

By putting him under continuous pressure for one hour and 24 minutes, after he had been interrogated for over 24 hours, that amounts to pressure.

I was asked from my lawyer, Colin Moore, do I want to testify? And the DA, she came up there, tearing me apart. I had wanted to get up and say, woman, you don't know me. You're talking like you know me. You don't know me.

The reporters were running, and people were running. And we were like, what's going on? And somebody said, the verdict is in.

The first thing I heard was guilty, and anything else is just, like, fading out.

The judge said, how do you find? Guilty-- assault, riot, and sexual abuse. So that was that.

I remember being handcuffed right on the spot. And that's when I felt completely alone. Because, you know, before I had my family at least supporting me. But at that point, once the gates closed and I was in the cell, I just thought-- I thought my life was pretty much over.

Get the-- out of my face.

Outside the courthouse, supporters of the two teenagers erupted with violent emotion. Inside, 16-year-old Kevin Richardson cried loudly. His mother screamed, we love you, and collapsed, later to be taken to a hospital. 18-year-old Korey Wise shouted, racism, as he was led from court. The prosecutor was taken from court under heavy guard, as an angry crowd swirled around her.

You lying bitch! You lied!

This was the second trial in the jogger case. Last summer, three teenagers were convicted of rape and assault and are now serving their juvenile terms.

This is the test Mayor Koch had laid out. He was out of office now, but people felt the system had passed.

I went to a maximum security for juveniles. Me and Yusef Salaam, we wound up being in the same place. I remember saying that we just have to stay strong together and try to get through this together, because what we have is each other right at this point.

In the beginning, it was very hard, because they perceived me as this was a rapist, and he committed one of the most famous crimes in New York's state history.

You could be the most peaceful person, but then you come to the point where you have to defend yourself to avoid possibly being beaten or worse, killed. So I had to adjust to that environment and basically had to grow up really fast.

It's real hectic in there, you know, people dying over cigarettes. It was real crazy.

Why me? Cursed God out a couple to times. You know, my faith was gone. I lost that. Just, my faith was gone, and I didn't know what to do.

My father came once in a while. He apologized to me, but I didn't accept it. My mother came a lot. I mean, there was sometimes I had to tell her to stay home, because the weather would be so messed up. She'd still come.

When I heard that my dad had passed, it was hurting. It was hurting, and I would think, surely think, he just drunk himself to death. What do they call that? Cirrhosis of the liver. But no one shared that with me or gave me the chance to come down. So I just learned it, and that was that. That was that.

But as time passed, I started to make changes. I was able to get my GED. I was able to get a degree. I got an associate's.

I jumped on the opportunity to go to college. It was a real graduation, the dean and everybody.

I was able to get a college degree before they took education out of prison.

They stopped the program, so I didn't get a degree. After that, I just started doing trades and stuff like that. Like, I worked in a tailor shop. That was the highest paying job in prison. So I think it was, like, $0.30 an hour.

Good afternoon. 47 degrees.

In New York, Republican Rudolph Giuliani defeated incumbent David Dinkins.

Mayor Dinkins' handling of the Black on Jewish Crown Heights rioting hurt him.

Giuliani promises tougher approaches to homelessness and crime.

Squeegee operators and excessive noise and aggressive panhandlers.

Crime has plunged 33% from the same month a year ago.

Since 1990, homicides have fallen dramatically in New York.

New York City is no longer a crime capital.

I came up to parole, and my hearing lasted a couple of minutes. I walked in. You know, I said who I was. They looked at the time that I'd been there and realized that I haven't gotten into no trouble the whole time. They just wanted to know one thing. They said, did you do the crime? I said no. They told me, have a good day.

Got my stuff, my personal stuff. I had my money in my account, and they took me to the bus stop. I called my mother every stop we made, let her know where I was at. And I'm just looking around, wow, free.

Got home, forgot the building I lived in, because all the buildings look alike. I'm in the wrong building. My mother and my father ran downstairs.

The day he was actually released, he said, they're sending me home on a bus. We're like, no, we're coming to get you.

And of course my family's crying, which made me start to cry. And everybody jumped up. We jumped for joy, you know. And we got in the car, and we sped off and never looked back. And we drove. It was about three hours from the city, and so we went straight, not even stopping. Beautiful.

When I was released, the best feeling in the world. You know, I said, wow. I got a fresh start. I tried to pick up, put my life back together.

Yeah, he came home. And I was happy he was home and all that.

But you know, I brung a lot of stuff with me that I didn't even know exists. I loved to stay inside my room, because my room was like the size of the cell. I would go in the shower and wash with my boxers, wash my boxers in the shower. I had this aggression. You know, if I'm in a room with too many people, I can talk to you, but I won't give you eye-to-eye contact, because I'm too busy watching the room.

When I got home, my father, he was living with my mother, because they were back together. But I didn't really talk to him. We lived in the same house, but I didn't even talk to him. I noticed he was getting sick, because he lost a lot of weight. He was real sick. I didn't even care.

My mother was trying to get us to talk. I was just like, you don't remember what he did to us? He left you. My mother got that call, and she was like, your father just passed away. I still was like, all right. But seeing him laying there just hit me. You know, he used to be my best friend.

I was a sex offender, labeled as that. And I had to register every month. I applied for the post office at one point. And I was about to get the job. But I'm an honest person. And so they asked me, had I ever been incarcerated? I put yes. And they didn't hire me.

I just wanted to get out of New York. I had a cousin that lived in Maryland. I kind of liked Maryland. So I went out there job hunting for the whole day and on the spot got a sanitation job.

Months went by where I had no money, and there was nothing I could do. I can't get a job. I was becoming a burden. Here I am, my father's house, I'm eating the food, because I'm a bigger guy, and I'm not contributing. I said, I can't function. That was my breaking point.

And so I said, you know what? I'm just-- I'm going to get in the drug game. And I started to sell drugs.

All of the jogger defendants have gone home, except one, Korey Wise. He was the eldest of the group convicted, and he had the longest sentence. And he had stopped going to the parole board-- didn't even bother going anymore to deny his guilt. One day in late 2001, Matias Reyes meets him at the Auburn Prison.

This is the first time they had seen each other since 1989, when both of them were at Rikers Island. And at that time, they had a little incident in the TV room. And it almost escalated to blows.

He said, I would like to apologize to you. We had a fight Rikers Island about a TV, and so forth. I said, Matias, it ain't about nothing, man. We're here. It's not going to free neither one of us. Don't worry about it.

Reyes doesn't say anything to him, but he starts talking to people in the prison. Hey, I met somebody who's doing time for a crime that he didn't have anything to do with, that I did myself. They send up an investigator, and he takes his statement. They send it down to the Manhattan DA's office, which has no idea that this case from 13 years earlier, which has long been stored and forgotten by everybody except the people involved, is suddenly going to come back to life.

I showed them the top of the entrance, the direction she came by. I showed them where I picked up the tree branch and down the road where I dragged her in. I'm the one that did this.

When I saw Korey Wise in Auburn, I saw in his eyes, you know, the suffering that he's been going through. To know that a man has suffered 13 years of his life in jail for something that he has not done, to know that all these kids got arrested for something that they didn't do, you want to know something, I've done everything possible that I can come forward and admit the truth. I'm to the point where if people don't do something, or if they don't do what's right, then hey, there's nothing else I can do.

To hear this, after all the trials and tribulations that I've done been through, the scuffle, the jumping on, the stabbing, the whole unneeded package, it felt so good.

Morgenthau's office begins an exhaustive reexamination of the case. And they pulled out the old files. And they found the unknown semen from the rape kit. And they matched Reyes. Then they began to interview Reyes.

Reyes steps in 13 years later and immediately gives off details that turn out to be verified and accurate that the police didn't know.

He described her as having black running tights on and a white T-shirt. That's what Miss Meili was wearing.

He tells them about the Walkman. Turns out she did run with a Walkman. Nobody knew it, because it wasn't found at the scene.

He describes how he took off her sneakers. When the police came on the scene and they found her, her sneakers were-- one sneaker was in one location, another sneaker was in another location.

He talked about taking her keys and trying to get her address and then tossing the keys. Well, that explained the dilemma about where her key was, because her door was locked.

These are details that even the most assiduous student of the case would have had a hard time coming up with as some kind of fake story. There was no question that Reyes knew what had happened.

And his DNA was present on the scene. And the way in which he committed this crime was perfectly consistent with the way he committed other crimes. It stands to reason that Reyes was giving an accurate statement.

I worked the third shift. It was from 8:00 to 6:30 in the morning. I got home, got out of the shower, was about to watch Sportscenter. And my cousin called. She was like, Tron, Tron, turn on CNN. And I'm like, why? What's going on?

She said, the truth came out. The truth came out. Like, the truth came out? What are you talking about? Your case! Somebody that did it, he told the truth. He confessed. He did it. And I'm like, are you serious? Are you serious? And I started crying.

New DNA evidence conclusively connects Reyes to the victim.

My son called me on a Saturday. And I said, I want you to sit down. I got news for you. And he said, what news you got for me? Get a chair. Sit down. I'm gonna tell you.

He says, oh, you know, they found the guy that did it. And I said, what? And he says, yeah, they found the guy that committed your case. And I said-- I gotta curse. I said, get the fuck out of here.

He said, no, for real. They found the guy. You're gonna be coming home soon. And I'm like, yeah, OK. Whatever. He's the only one that had the hope. And I'm like, you know what, I'll talk to you later.

It started raining outside. And I'm looking out the window. And I'm like, damn. Did they really find this dude? And I'm thinking about this. Then I start crying.

Why are we here?

The Central Park Five.

Why are we here?

The Central Park Five.

In the snow.

There was a motion by the defense to overturn the convictions on the grounds of newly discovered evidence. And Morgenthau not only said that the new evidence likely would have led to a different verdict. He said to me, and he said to others, if we knew then what we know now, we wouldn't have indicted these guys.

My faith in Robert Morgenthau is such that I don't quarrel with his decision.

This is step one. The response from the district attorney's office has been to concede or agree or consent to our application that the verdicts be set aside. The judge has to make a formal ruling in that regard. We expect for that ruling to be made forthwith.

I want to share with you a statement from District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's office. The office said, "A comparison of the statements reveals troubling discrepancies. The accounts given by the five defendants differed from one another on the specific details of virtually every major aspect of the crime-- who initiated the attack, who knocked the victim down, who dressed her, who struck her, who held her, who raped her, what weapons were used in the course of the assault, and when in the sequence of events the attack took place. And some of what they said was simply contrary to established fact." now, this is a damn shame.

I have an application at this time on behalf of all of the defendants, Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Raymon Santana, and Antron McCray, that all the indictments against each one of them in their entirety be dismissed.

The motion is granted. Everyone have a very Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.

Thank you!

The judge handling the review of the Central Park jogger case has just ruled in the last hour that those convictions against the five young men must be set aside. It is a stunning reversal in one of the most controversial crime cases in the city's history.

That was the best Christmas ever, ever-- first Christmas-- excuse me. Best Christmas gift ever. Me and my mother, we just hugged each other in my apartment for what seemed like forever. It was a beautiful thing. It still is.

I would always see these photos of my mother walking around with a "Yusef is innocent" shirt. And then, when they dropped all the charges, she had her coat open and the Yusef is innocent shirt on, and this huge smile on her face, like, not only did I told you so, but I'm so happy today.

Now, four of the five are out. They've served long prison terms. But Raymond Santana remains behind bars on an unrelated conviction. But the length of time that he's serving on a drug charge was based upon the fact he was a predicate felon. His conviction in the Central Park jogger case. So lawyers close to the case representing the five are telling me that they expect to challenge that and try to get Raymond Santana home to his parents before Christmas.

It was a celebration. All the guys jumped around. They, waah! They were all cheering. You're going home. It's over. You're going home.

The correctional officer said, well, you know, it's a lot of people out there. You want to go through the back? I'll get a car for you. You know, you can go out the back way. And I said, well, I'm a free man. I'm going out the front. Open that door, and let's go.

Amid a crush of cameras, Raymond Santana left jail a free man, much to his father's joy.

I always believed he was innocent from the beginning.

They took me back to that perp walk that they do. And then now, this time, it was a free man walk. And it was definitely great to walk through that, you know, and hold my head up high. I said, I told you. We were innocent.

This is a miracle. And let me tell you, when I was in that yard, I was saying, I need to pray for him a lot. They say if your prayer don't come out, it did for me. I pray a lot for that kid. And look, that was the happiest day of my life.

I felt ashamed, actually, for New York. And I also felt extremely angry, because their innocence never got the attention that their guilt did. The furor around prosecuting them still drowns out the good news of their innocence. These were five kids who we tormented, we falsely accused, we pilloried in the press, we attacked, we invented phrases for the imagined crimes that we were accusing them of, and then we put them in jail. We falsely convicted them. And when the evidence turned out that they were innocent and they were released, we gave a modest nod to fairness, and we walked away from our crime.

It was a more interesting story when it was all about a white woman that was raped by five black boys.

The coverage in 2002 was worse than what had happened in 1989. More resistant to fact, more obstinate about being wrong.

The police department commissioned a panel led by a very distinguished lawyer named Mike Armstrong to review what had happened in the jogger case. And the police department found that the police department had done nothing wrong, even though it had led the right man get away and apparently had put the wrong people in prison. This was institutional protectionism that was going on.

Linda Fairstein made a huge name for herself in part because of this case. It was extremely important to her profession and her reputation. So she's got a lot to lose by saying, I got everything wrong, and I railroaded these kids into jail.

Whatever you do in life, you make mistakes. And you either face your mistakes, or you don't. I don't think the press faced its mistakes. I don't think the police department faced the truth of what had happened, because the truth of what had happened is almost unbearable. By prosecuting the wrong people for the Central Park jogger case, Matias Reyes continued to hurt, maim, and kill. And they could have had him, but they got stuck with a mistake. And they're still invested in that mistake.

Patricia Meili-- my brother, all the boys, all of our families, all of us are victims. Nobody wants to look at the damage, the terror that they put my family through. Nobody wants to take responsibility.

I want us to remember what happened that day and be horrified by ourselves. Because it really is a mirror on our society. And rather than tying it up in a bow and thinking that there is something that we can take away from it and will be better people, I think what we really need to realize is that we're not very good people. And we're often not.

I'm always behind. Those years that it took for me, I lost a lot. And even now, at the age of 36 where I should be fully in a career, have a house, a car, maybe married, I don't have any of that. So I don't know how to regain that stuff anymore. So I'm just here.

I lost my youth. I lost seven years of my life. I lost that sense of being youthful and missing the average things of going to school and going to the prom and just living like an average 14, 15-year-old kid.

You can forgive, but you won't forget. You won't forget what you done lost. No money could bring that time back. No money could bring the life that was missing with the time that was taken away, bring back. Nothing.

It hasn't become easier to live as an adult. It's become harder. It's always more difficult to do something if you have this huge gap of your life taken away from you. And it's not like just because they said, OK, we are vacating the convictions that that vacated the whole prison term. That whole prison term happened. It was a reality. We really went through that.

I still struggle every day. But I made it, you know. I came home, didn't get in trouble, worked ever since I came home, paid taxes, take care of my kids. I'm doing the best I can, so-- I told them I was going to make it. I told them. The truth came out. Truth came out.

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