Central Park Jogger
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The young, fit female ties up her running shoes to go run. Trisha runs, letting her mind drift, as all runners do. She enjoys the endorphins. She enjoys the crisp air. She enjoys life. The park is silent, except for the drumbeat of her strides. Without any warning, Trisha's head snaps forward. She's attacked.

She's unconscious and collapsing to the ground in the middle of New York City's Central Park. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 81, The Central Park Jogger. ♪♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist.

Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

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In the spring of 1989, New Yorkers woke up to news so shocking and brutal, it almost seemed unreal, even for New York standards. When murder and violent crime were at an all-time high, this particular story seemed to hit differently. In the early morning hours of April 20th, 1989, the body of 28-year-old female jogger was found brutally beaten and raped in New York City's Central Park.

Her body was discovered in a wooden ravine off a popular jogging trail. She'd been beaten so severely that she remained in a coma for over 12 days. Her skull had been fractured in two places, and she was on the brink of death. When she finally woke up in a hospital bed, she had zero memory about what happened to her nearly two weeks earlier, or who was responsible.

The woman's identity remained a mystery for several days. She quickly became known as the Central Park Jogger. The only thing people knew was that a 20-something white female jogger had been brutally raped and left to die in Central Park. It's common in sexual assault cases for the media not to mention the victim's name.

But somehow, within days of the attack, two local TV stations got their hands on her name and illegally published the Central Park jogger's real name, Trisha Miley. Before becoming the Central Park jogger, Trisha Miley was born Patricia Ellen Miley on June 24, 1960 in New Jersey. Trisha grew up as the youngest of three children to parents John Miley and Jean Miley.

Growing up, she was just your typical all-American girl, but with one special gift, her intelligence. She graduated from high school with straight A's. She attended college at the all-girl university, Wesley College, where she graduated in the top fifth of her class. And then she went on to receive her master's degree from Yale University in 1986.

And not only did she get her master's degree, but she also earned an MA and an MBA in finance from Yale's School of Management. After Yale, Tricia moved to the Upper East Side of Manhattan and worked as an investment banker. To say that Tricia had a bright future ahead of her would be a massive understatement. To talk about this case, we need to back it up.

We need to back it up to several hours before hearing anything about the Central Park jogger or what happened to her. Several hours before her discovery, the New York police received a half dozen phone calls about a large group of teenagers causing trouble in Central Park. Callers reported that a group of about 20 or so teenagers were just hanging around Central Park and that some of them were causing serious trouble.

The teens were doing things like harassing homeless people, running cyclists off the main road, and there were even reports that night that some of the teenagers were physically hurting innocent people. Now, these types of phone calls aren't entirely out of the ordinary. It was completely common for teenagers to hang out around Central Park, and sometimes being teenagers, they caused a little trouble.

But there was something about these phone calls that seemed, well, seemed a little more aggressive than usual. Around 9.30 p.m., the police were dispatched to the park to try and find this group of teenagers and basically stop their behavior. Throughout the night, the police stopped and questioned a total of 20 teenagers who were in Central Park that night and believed to be responsible for the crimes that they were doing and what were being reported.

After questioning this group of teenagers, the police took 14-year-old Raymond Santana, 14-year-old Kevin Richardson, and three other teenagers into custody at around 10.15 p.m. Within the hour, the police also arrested 14-year-old Stephen Lopez. The teenagers were arrested for their connections to the earlier phone calls.

While the police are searching Central Park for other teenagers who may have been a part of this group and causing problems at night, that's when the police find the Central Park jogger at approximately 1.30 a.m. She's found in a wooden ravine not too far where they stopped and questioned the group of 20 teenagers.

So right away, the NYPD suspect that the same group of teenagers harassing homeless people and running cyclists off the road are also the same people responsible for raping and beating this jogger. It was just too much of a coincidence that all of these reports about rowdy and unruly teenagers happen at the same exact time, the same exact place that a sexual assault victim is found.

The discovery of the Central Park jogger victim only intensified the police's search for other teenagers who hung around this group. A couple of hours later, three more teenagers were arrested inside of the park. That was 15-year-old Antron McCray, 15-year-old Yusuf Salam, and 16-year-old Corey Wise.

At first, 16-year-old Corey Wise wasn't considered a suspect because no one questioned that night had named him as being involved in the group. He was only brought in for questioning to support his friend Yusuf Salam. Had he known what he was about to get into, he would have never agreed to go with his friend to the police station.

The five teenagers, Antron, Yusuf, Corey, Raymond, and Kevin, were all brought in for questioning. The police questioned them without their parents for several hours between the late hours of April 20th and the early morning hours of April 21st.

It wasn't until then that the boys were allowed to call their parents and let them know what was happening, and that they could come down to the police station. After a couple of the boys' parents showed up, that's when the police began videotaping their interviews with the teenagers. But at this point, the teens weren't just being questioned about the attacks on homeless people.

They were being asked about the sexual assault and the Central Park jogger. Shortly after 2.30 in the morning, three of the boys made videotaped statements to the police with their parents present. These three were Santana, McCray, and Richardson. Lopez was also interviewed on videotape with his parents starting around 3.30 a.m.,

The only one of the boys who did not have their parents present at any point that morning was Corey Wise. Now, it's worth mentioning here that at no point during these police interviews did any of the teenagers have counsel or an attorney present.

After over seven hours of police questioning, four out of the five teenagers confessed on videotape about their involvement in the rape. They all admitted that one, they either touched or two, restrained Tricia while one or more of them sexually assaulted her. After only a handful of hours from discovering the Central Park jogger,

The NYPD already have five suspects in custody. It was going to be an open and shut case. The police are called about rowdy and violent teenagers in Central Park. Police locate teenagers. There's a sexual assault victim found just a couple feet away. Teenagers are arrested. Teenagers confess to everything.

All five teenagers, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, Yusuf Salam, and Corey Wise, were all arrested and charged. Bam. Case closed. Well, not exactly. This episode of Forensic Tales is sponsored by Scary Time. Introducing the Scary Time podcast.

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On April 21st, the same day that the boys were arrested, New York senior police investigators held a press conference about the case in which they announced that over 20 teenagers were apprehended. The police also announced that they believed that up to nine teenagers may be responsible for the attack, but wouldn't confirm the exact number of suspects.

This press conference was the first time that anyone heard about this group of teenagers terrorizing innocent people in Central Park and that they were also responsible for the rape. Immediately following this press conference, the police were bombarded with requests to release the names of the teenagers arrested. Everyone wanted to know who these boys were.

Now, normally in cases involving minors, especially those under the age of 15 or 16, the police aren't going to release the names because of their age. Just like when we protect the names of minor victims, we do the same for criminal suspects who are also this young. But there was something about this case that was different than any other case. Now, the first name to be leaked in the media was Corey Wise's name.

The Philadelphia Daily News published his name just a few days after the attack on April 25th. After that, all five names were released and they became known as the Central Park Five. The media didn't stop with just the names.

After everyone knew who these boys were, more and more information started to come out. Their addresses, their photographs, where they went to school. The media released everything about the Central Park Five to the public. They didn't care that they were only 14, 15, 16 years old. And they didn't care that these minors were being accused of rape.

So as soon as the media released this information, it opened up the floodgate doors. All five families started receiving death threats. Random people were showing up at their front doors, calling their phones, demanding justice for the Central Park jogger. Practically overnight, these boys and their poor families became the most hated people not only in New York, but across the entire country.

But it wasn't just the names and addresses of the teenagers that made frontline news. It was also about race. Within days, the media started reporting that the teenagers were minorities and that five Black and Hispanic teenagers sexually assaulted a white woman, which, of course, creates the perfect recipe for a media tsunami.

The teenagers were depicted as symbols of violence. They were called animals. They were called savages. They were no longer just rowdy and unruly teenagers. New Yorkers and beyond were completely outraged that a group of minority teenagers attacked and viciously raped this 28-year-old successful all-American white woman. This

This case quickly became to symbolize the racial and socioeconomic tensions experienced throughout New York at the time. Now, around the Central Park jogger case, there was a murder reported in New York every five hours, every single day.

Murders were happening right and left. And rapes? Rapes were happening nearly twice as often. And robberies? Robberies were happening every five to six minutes in the city. Crime, especially violent crime, was just a part of everyday life. But there was something about this particular case that stood out, that was different from

The media quickly made it all about race. Black and brown suspects, white victim. Just two weeks after the attack, the case caught the attention of then real estate developer and New York property mogul Donald Trump. And of course, years later, former U.S. President Donald Trump.

On May 1st, 1989, Donald Trump heard about the jogger case and he spent over $85,000 of his own money to purchase four full page ads in New York newspapers. The article was titled, Bring Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police.

It seemed like Donald Trump was convinced that the teenagers were guilty and that he wanted to see the death penalty for these types of crimes.

In the article, he also talked about how we shouldn't spend time or money trying to figure out why people commit violent crimes. Instead, we should be looking for ways to punish them. Trump even said that criminals of, quote, every age should be afraid, which many considered to be a specific reference to the teenagers.

So this type of article seemed to really feed into the atmosphere of high crime rates, as well as poor race relations that New York was experiencing at the time. After Donald Trump's article was published, the Central Park Five came out and started changing their stories.

They were no longer saying that they did it. They were now saying that they didn't do it, that they were completely innocent and they wanted to recant their taped confessions. And through their attorneys, the teenagers claimed that the NYPD coerced their confessions. They also argued that the police violated their constitutional rights by questioning them as minors without either their parents or attorney present.

And some of the teens even said that the police refused to give them water or let them take bathroom breaks if they wouldn't speak with them. While the boys recanted their confessions, DNA evidence and semen collected from the Central Park jogger's body test results came back. The test results, well, they were pretty shocking.

I think everyone was expecting that the DNA and semen sample would match at least one of the five boys under arrest. The samples may even be a mixture of more than one boy if they took turns assaulting her like they said they did. But when the forensic tests came back on the samples, they didn't match any of the boys, not a single one of them.

The test meant that the DNA and semen belonged to someone else. After the test came back, many wondered if the DA would drop the charges against the Central Park Five or at the very least investigate other possible suspects. But that's not what happened.

The New York police and prosecutors didn't seem to care that the DNA in Seaman didn't match any of the boys. That's because they already had their taped confessions. Who cares if the DNA didn't match? There's not much more powerful evidence than a suspect's own confession, right? Now, there are so many details about this case that remind me of the episode we did on Christopher Tapp.

Christopher Tapp was someone who was arrested for rape and murder after confessing to the entire crime. The problem was, was that the DNA obtained during the victim's rape kit didn't match Tapp's DNA.

Ultimately, the system exonerated Tapp once authorities identified the correct suspect, whose DNA did match the DNA from the crime scene. But Christopher Tapp ended up spending years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit, and even though he had confessed to it.

So in the Central Park 5 case, when the authorities learned that the forensic evidence obtained from the victim didn't match any of the boys, this should have raised some serious red flags. It just doesn't make sense that if the boys sexually assaulted the jogger like they said they did, that their DNA wouldn't match.

But at this point in the investigation, it seemed like detectives as well as the public had already made up their minds that these five boys were guilty. No one seemed to care that there was forensic evidence suggesting otherwise. Why would the boys confess to a crime they didn't commit, right?

What's even more disturbing to me about this part of the story is that besides the forensic evidence not matching, there were so many inconsistencies in the boys' confessions. It would be discovered later on that many of the facts they provided about that night were, well, just flat out wrong. They were wrong about when, where, and even how the attack happened.

15-year-old Antron McRae told the police that the jogger was wearing blue shorts, when in fact she was wearing tights when her body was found. McRae also said that she was jogging around the park's reservoir, which doesn't make much sense because the reservoir he was referring to is more than a mile and a half from where her body was ultimately discovered.

But just like with the forensic evidence, the police and prosecutors still believed that they had their suspects, even if their stories about that night didn't make much sense, and ultimately they decided to move forward with the prosecution. In August 1999, 14 months after the attack, the first three suspects went to trial, McCray, Salam, and Santana.

The trial was described in the media as watching a baseball team game between the New York Yankees and your local high school baseball team. Of course, the Yankees referred to the state and the local high school team was the defense.

The case was a slam-dunk case for the state. The prosecution built their entire case around the teenager's own statements to the police. The jury watched tape after tape of the boys' confessions, and as they watched, they were nodding their heads. They were completely disgusted. In one of the tapes the prosecution played, the jury listened as New York prosecutor Elizabeth Lettier questioned Raymond Santana.

Lettier asked what happened to her when she was on the ground and her, of course, referring to the jogger. And Santana replied, quote, Lopez came and he was holding her by her arms. He pinned her arms with his knees and then he covered her mouth with his hand. And then he sees her start screaming. So he started smacking her, end quote.

The state even called the victim herself to the stand to testify, although she remembered nothing about the attack. But this was still really powerful testimony for the state because when she got up there on the stand in front of this jury, the jury was able to see firsthand what this attack did to her. They learned about her injuries that left her with impaired speech and

The jury also saw the scar across her head. It was, at the end of the day, really, really powerful testimony because after seeing this victim, the jury can't help but want to see justice served in the case. They look at this woman and they want someone behind bars for what they did to her. So after 10 days of deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict that

a verdict that I think everyone pretty much expected by this point in the case. McCray, Santana, and Salam were all 16 years old at the time. They were all found guilty. They were convicted of rape, assault, and battery. Because of their age, being teenagers, 16 years old, the judge in the case sentenced them to their maximum sentence of 5 to 10 years in a youth prison.

Now, the only charge the boys were acquitted of that they were initially charged with was the one count of attempted murder. So they were, in fact, acquitted of the most serious charge, but still received five to 10 years in youth prison for the rape charge. These sentences of these three boys meant that the state could send these teenagers, these kids to prison until they were 26 years old.

They wouldn't be able to finish high school. They would be taken away from their family, taken away from their friends, and basically grow into adults while in the criminal justice system. Now, the second criminal trial was for Raymond Richardson and Corey Wise, which began in October of 1990.

Just like the first trial, the state followed a very similar strategy. They played the tape confessions to the jury. Throughout the course of the trial, Corey Wise's defense attorney would constantly point out several inconsistencies in his client's story. He pointed out when Wise was first asked by the police who assaulted the jogger first.

His first story was that he said it was Raymond who at first started attacking the jogger. When he was asked the same question again for the second time, he then said it was Steve. So his attorney was trying to persuade the jury to believe that these confessions were false and that the boys didn't have the correct facts about what actually happened and what actually matches the evidence.

So if they don't have the correct facts, then this means that they couldn't have done it. But it wasn't a strong enough argument in the eyes of the jury, because in December 1990, both Wise and Richardson were also found guilty of sexual abuse and first degree assault and riot.

And in the case, Richardson was sentenced as a juvenile and received a sentence of also five to 10 years in juvenile prison. And Wise was sentenced as an adult and received the longest sentence of 15 years behind bars.

After the Central Park Five's convictions, everyone seemed to be satisfied. Justice was served. The state won its case despite the lack of forensic evidence. The victim got to go on with her life, believing her attackers were behind bars. And the police did an excellent job by getting taped confessions. And then lastly, the public, the public was satisfied. Minority unruly teenagers were punished for attacking an innocent white woman.

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Over the years, the teenagers started to be released from prison, many of them in their 20s. By 2002, four out of the five were released on parole after countless failed attempts at an appeal. Throughout their years behind bars, the Central Park Five maintained their innocence. They stuck to their defense that the police coerced their confessions. But as the years went by, nobody believed them, and their pleas fell on death's ears.

The first one to be released from prison was Antron McCray in 1996 after serving six years. Next was Yusuf Salam. Salam served a total of six years and eight months in prison and was released on parole in 1996. Shortly after him, Raymond Santana was also released in 1996 after also serving six years and eight months.

Kevin Richardson served a little more time. He served a total of seven years and was paroled the following year in 1997. Throughout their time in juvenile correctional facilities, Richardson, Salam, and Santana all finished their GEDs and then completed associate's degrees all while in custody. The only member of the Central Park Five that remained in prison after 1997 was Corey Wise.

Remember, Corey Wise was sentenced as an adult and received a much longer sentence than the others. Throughout his sentence, Corey Wise served time in multiple adult prison facilities, including Rikers Island Prison, Auburn State Correctional Facility, and Attica Correctional Facility, and that's just to name a few. The case of the Central Park Five took an unexpected turn in 2002.

Thirteen years after the Central Park jogger was attacked, a new suspect emerged. A man came forward to the police and said that he was their guy. For over a decade, the wrong people were behind bars. In 2002, a guy by the name of Mateus Reyes came forward claiming to be the Central Park jogger's sole attacker.

Reyes, who was already serving 33 years to life for a previous murder-rape conviction, told the NYPD that he was the one responsible. Now, at first, the authorities were skeptical about Reyes' story. First off, you've got a convicted rapist and murderer talking to you. Generally speaking, these types of criminals aren't going to be the most trustworthy.

But then second of all, the police couldn't really understand why he would confess to something 13 years later. Third, and probably most obvious, was that the police already believed they had their suspects, the Central Park Five. It's obviously terrible publicity for the police if someone comes forward in a case claiming to be responsible after someone else has already been convicted and put in prison.

So from the perspective of the New York police, they don't want Mateus Reyes to be their guy. Because if he is the guy, this means that the system sent five innocent teenagers to prison for a crime they didn't commit. And it also means that they got it wrong.

The police brought Mateus Reyes in for questioning. They wanted to find out if this guy was telling the truth or not. So they started asking Reyes about the night of the attack. And right away, investigators were surprised at just how much Reyes knew about the attack. In fact, he knew things about the attack that the police and media didn't even release to the public.

He knew things that only the person responsible would know. Reyes told investigators about that night in Central Park. He said that he was alone in the park that night and he saw a woman jogging. After she jogged past him, he started zigzagging behind one side of the path to the other. Sometimes he would jog, sometimes he would walk.

but he made sure that he gave her enough distance so that she would have no idea that someone was following her. After several minutes of zigzagging behind her, he said he saw an opportunity to attack. He grabbed a branch and struck her over the head with it from behind, causing her to fall forward. Once she was on the ground and probably incredibly surprised, that's when he dragged her off the jogging path and into the bushes.

According to Reyes, he starts taking her clothes off as he's dragging her farther and farther into the bushes. Sometime while all of this is happening, Reyes said that he asked the woman for her address. But when she wouldn't answer him or tell him what her address was, that's when he said he became angry and started beating her.

After the beating, that's when he sexually assaulted her. Before he left the immediate area, Reyes told the police that he thought she was dead, that he had beaten her so badly that she must have been left for dead. Until years later, he had no idea that the jogger, number one, survived, and that, number two, that the police arrested five teenagers in the case.

Mateus Reyes was no stranger to the criminal justice system. Besides his current rape and murder conviction, Reyes was known to the New York State Police as the East Side Rapist. He'd been given this nickname because of a rash of sexual assaults along Madison Avenue in the spring and summer of 1989.

Reyes had even attacked a woman on April 17th, not too far from where the Central Park jogger was attacked just two days later on April 19th. Now, because Reyes was no stranger to the system, this meant that his DNA and fingerprints were already on file from several previous criminal convictions. So while investigators may have been skeptical about his involvement in the case, the

All of their questions would be answered by performing a simple DNA test. All they had to do was compare Reyes's DNA with the DNA and semen sample obtained from the jogger. And when the test results came back, it was a match. Mateus Reyes's DNA matched the DNA sample from the Central Park jogger.

In 2002, after months of investigating, the Manhattan District Attorney agreed to reopen the case. Not only did Mateus Reyes' confession make more sense than the stories provided by the five teenagers, but now they also had DNA evidence proving that Reyes was responsible.

So after the DA's investigation, the DA's office announced that they would withdraw all charges against the Central Park Five and that they were going to vacate their convictions.

In their decision, the prosecution's office doubted that the teenagers made sound and clear confessions in the hours following their arrest. The prosecution now believed all these years later that the teenagers were in fact pressured into falsely confessing and that the NYPD coerced their taped confessions. Their report also confirmed that Mateus Reyes was the sole source of DNA found in the semen sample.

After the court system vacated all five convictions, Corey Wise was eventually released from prison in 2002 after serving 13 years and nine months behind bars in multiple state prisons.

And just to touch on the other four sentences, Yusuf Salam, he served six years and eight months. Raymond Santana also served six years and eight months. Kevin Richardson served seven years. And Antron McRae served six years.

So we're not talking about months here. We're talking about years, years behind bars for a crime they did not commit and a crime where there was no physical and no forensic evidence tying them. There was no eyewitnesses tying them.

Now, here's the part of the story where I am supposed to tell you about the real criminal, Mateus Reyes, and I'm supposed to tell you how he was ultimately sentenced in the case. I wish. I wish that was the case, but sadly, it is not. Because the statute of limitations has already passed,

In other words, Reyes cannot be charged for the rape or the physical assault on the Central Park jogger. Although he's already in prison, he's serving a 33-year-to-life sentence for that previous rape murder conviction. He is eligible for parole starting next year in 2022. In 2003, shortly after the system vacated their criminal convictions against

Richardson, Santana, McCray, Salam, and Wise all banded together and sued the city of New York. In the lawsuit, they cited that the city committed malicious prosecution, for one, number two, that the city displayed racial discrimination, and that number three, the city caused all five to have emotional distress. After the lawsuit was filed, the city of New York wanted nothing to do with the lawsuit.

The city believed that they did nothing wrong and that all five of these now men received a fair criminal trial. Basically, they were saying it's not their fault a jury falsely convicted them.

Mayor Bloomberg at the time even held a press conference where he said that he supported what the NYPD did in their investigation. He said that the officers at the time did not know about Reyes's attack on the other women just two days earlier and that the police officers were relying on the teenagers' own confessions at the time.

So after years of going back and forth, we're talking years that this lawsuit was in the court system, the lawsuit wasn't resolved until 2014, which if you're keeping track, that's 25 years after the attack and over 12 years after all five men were released from prison and eventually exonerated. So it took over 12 years for this lawsuit to finally resolve itself.

By 2014, the city of New York finally settled with all five of them for a total of $41 million. Salam, Richardson, Santana, and McRae each received $7 million from the city. And Corey Wise, who spent the longest time behind bars, he received the rest at $13 million.

This settlement basically gave each of them about $1 million for each year they spent in prison. What's interesting to me about the settlement with the city is that even though New York agreed to a settlement all these years later, they never once admitted to wrongdoing.

Even when they made the agreement, the city stuck by the police and prosecutors and said that they do not support this financial agreement. And according to an article by ABC News that I read while researching this case, that Tricia Miley, the victim at the center of this story, didn't want the settlement either.

In 2012, a documentary was released and someone that spoke in the documentary was Corey Wise. Corey Wise spoke in the documentary about receiving money in that settlement with the city of New York. And in the interview, he said, quote, you can forgive, but you can't forget. You won't forget what you lost. No money could bring that time back.

No money could bring the life that was missing or the time that was taken away, end quote. So where is everyone now? Fast forward 30 years. The victim at the center of this story, the Central Park jogger, Tricia Miley, works with survivors of brain trauma and sexual assault victims.

She works to help other victims gain their strength back and gain back control of their lives. She uses her experience with trauma and sexual assault to help others heal and recover. In April 2003, she published a book titled I Am the Central Park Jogger.

The release of this memoir was the first time that Trisha openly admitted to the public and the media that she was the victim at the center of this story, even though her name had already been released. Within three to four months of the attack, she started jogging again. Now, what about the Central Park Five?

Of course, they are no longer teenagers but are now in their 40s. Most of them have moved away from New York and have started their new lives the best that they can. Richardson moved to New Jersey where he met his wife and has two daughters. He spends much of his time working towards criminal justice reform. McRae moved away to Georgia with his wife and six children.

Santana lives with his daughter in Georgia and in 2018 launched his own clothing line called Park Madison NYC. Salam is a published writer and public speaker. And like Richardson, he's also a big advocate for criminal justice reform and is the father to 10 children. And then finally, Corey Wise lives in New York and is a public speaker.

Many of them travel the country, speaking at colleges, appearing on TV, and doing podcasts. Then, finally, there's Mateus Reyes. As I mentioned, Reyes has never been charged with a Central Park jogger case since the statute of limitations has already passed. He is currently in prison serving out a near life sentence for a previous rape and murder conviction.

He will be eligible for parole next year in 2022. In 2016, while former President of the United States Donald Trump was running his campaign for the presidency, CNN asked him about those ads he took out on the Central Park Five all those years earlier. He told CNN, quote,

They admitted they were guilty. The police doing the original investigation said they were guilty. The fact that the case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. End quote. The story of the Central Park jogger and the Central Park Five has been turned into a Netflix documentary titled When They See Us.

The documentary allows for a whole new generation to learn about the story and the injustices. For many, myself included, the documentary was difficult to watch. But although it's difficult to watch, the story of the Central Park Five is an important story to tell. The story of the Central Park Jogger highlighted the racial and socioeconomic tension present in New York City in the later 1980s.

a story that ended up with five teenagers sent to prison just to have their convictions ultimately vacated. Even when the forensic evidence didn't match, the Central Park Five had their backs up against the wall. To share your thoughts on the Central Park jogger case, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales. Let me know what you think.

Do you think prosecutors should have brought charges against the teenagers, even when the forensic evidence didn't match? To check out photos from the case, be sure to head to our website, ForensicTales.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us.

You can also help support the show through Patreon. Please visit patreon.com slash forensic tales. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new story and a brand new case to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings. ♪

Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio production. The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fretwell. For a small monthly contribution, you can gain access to bonus content and be one of the first to listen to new episodes. Or, if you simply want to support my show...

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