The central park five

The central park five

The Central Park jogger case was a criminal case that involved the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a white female jogger, and attacks on others in the North Woods of Manhattan's Central Park on the night of April 19, 1989. The attack on the jogger left her in a coma for 12 days. Meili was a 28-year-old investment banker at the time. According to The New York Times, the attack was "one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980s

Trisha Meili was going for a run in Central Park shortly before 9 p.m.While jogging in the park, she was knocked down, dragged or chased nearly 300 feet (91 m), and violently assaulted.She was raped and almost beaten to death.About four hours later at 1:30 a.m., she was found naked, gagged, tied up, and covered in mud and blood. Meili was discovered in a shallow ravine in a wooded area of the park.

The first policeman who saw her said: "She was beaten as badly as anybody I've ever seen beaten. She looked like she was tortured.

She was comatose for 12 days.[18] She suffered severe hypothermia, severe brain damage, Class 4 (the most severe) hemorrhagic shock, loss of 75–80 percent of her blood, and internal bleeding.Her skull had been fractured so badly that her left eye was dislodged from its socket, which in turn was fractured in 21 places, and she suffered as well from facial fractures.

That same evening, police apprehended Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise between Central Park and 102nd Street. The boys were friends and they had been in the park that evening. They were all between 14 and 16 years old. They were all men of colour.

Police and prosecutors elicited signed confessions out of four of the five youths on camera, though each maintained that they did not rape Meili and that they had only been an accomplice to the attack. These confessions were obtained after arduous interrogations, some of which lasted up to 30 hours.

All of them later retracted these confessions and maintained their innocence. 

There was evidence to back up their claims, too. DNA collected from Meili’s body suggested that the attack had been carried out by a single person, rather than five different people. And yet, all five teenagers were charged and ultimately convicted.

But they didn’t do it. In 2001, a convicted serial rapist by the name of Matias Reyes met Wise when they were both moved to the same prison facility. 

After being imprisoned, Reyes had found religion and wanted to atone for his crimes. Reyes admitted that it was he who had raped Meili, and that he was the only person responsible for the attack. DNA corroborated his confession.