The Central Park Five: The Untold Story Behind One of New York City's Most Infamous Crimes Paperback – Illustrated, April 3, 2012

Although what you get in this book is just the facts, it is a gripping and riveting read. I thought it would be somewhat dry reading but I could not put this book down. It would be the middle of the night and I just couldn't stop reading. I was not yet a teenager when the events that comprise this novel happened. Most Americans have heard of the Central Park Jogger--an affluent white woman who was brutally raped and beaten nearly to death in Central Park in 1989. In fact, I had read her book which came out several years ago although her book dealt mostly with her recovery and the effect of the attack on her life. She does not remember the attack. In The Central Park Five, Sarah Burns chronicles how five teenagers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time were successfully prosecuted and imprisoned for the rape of this woman when ALL OF THE EVIDENCE pointed to it being someone else. Although they all confessed under intense coercion, even the details in their confessions are completely inconsistent. It is horrifying and appalling that so many people could just swallow the story that these boys committed the crime in spite of all the evidence showing otherwise. But that is the narrative that the public was presented with and that is the narrative that the public accepted. Burns spends some time setting the scene for us of an uber racist 1980s in New York--and in America--that was just ripe for something like this. The Central Park 5 had been in the park that night with a much larger group of boys who did assault and accost several people in the park. But the rape happened nowhere near where these boys were walking and later, a serial rapist confessed to the crime and his DNA was a match. What's truly horrifying is the realization that if the police had not forced the case through with the Central Park 5 as their prime suspects, that serial rapist might have been caught and he might not have gone on to attack several other women--and even kill one of them. This book really shows how powerful the whole "see-what-you-want-to-see" way of thinking can be. This book is a huge eye-opener. The depth and breadth of the miscarriage of justice that happened after the rape of the Central Park Jogger is simply staggering. You'll be incredulous--beyond incredulous. Days later, I am still reeling. My heart and prayers go out to the 5 men wrongly convicted. I'm even more appalled that the City of New York has been fighting a civil lawsuit brought by these men for a decade now. After what the police and prosecutors did to those boys, they should be throwing money at them. Burns did an amazing job with this book--telling this important story with elegance and compassion. This is powerful stuff and I think everyone should read it.

The author gathered so many real facts and presented them in a very clear way to show what went wrong in the unlawful prosecution of these boys. I am a young female who runs at night in NYC parks and it makes me sick to think of what happened to her, for no reason at all and then what happened to the boys because of a lack of due diligence by those here to protect our freedom.A quick, thought-provoking read.

This book recounts the steps that led to a horrible injustice done to five teen aged boys who are referred to as the Central Park 5, who were convicted of raping the Central Park Jogger in 1989, and whose convictions were vacated completely after they served their full sentences. I lived in NY at that time, and the book is a fair recounting of the frenzy around the case as well as the details that led to overturning their convictions. The book and film are the work primarily of Sarah Burns, daughter of documentarian Ken Burns, and show the background research and production values of a Burns project. It's an easy and effective read, and highlights the ineffectiveness of the justice system when it is deliberately perverted by those in control of the process. I used the book and DVD in a class on how racial conflict is presented in the mass media focusing on the racial elements of the story, and found it very effective and balanced. Greater coverage of how the minority media covered the ongoing story would have strengthened the project, since the few references that are included indicate the coverage was very different, and especially since the five teenagers were all members of minority communities. Chapter titles would also have been handy. The whole mess is sad and frustrating and infuriating, and the interviews with the now-grown men reflect the pain and injustice of lives that cannot really be recovered. These kids were put into prison for years when they were not guilty and simply wanted to play baseball, create some art, and go to the prom. The impact of the film and book have been significant; for the first time in about ten years, the NY City government is starting to negotiate with them on compensation for unlawful imprisonment.

This true story was made into a Netflix series. The book goes into much more detail regarding the facts and legal process

I love the book but it came kind of dirty so I had to wipe the dirt off

“The Central Park Five” is a true crime book about the huge miscarriage of justice surrounding the convictions of five boys, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam, for the rape and brutal assault of a jogger, Tricia Meili, in Central Park in 1989.I had heard about the Central Park Five and the basics of what had happened but didn’t know the full details. The case has been in the media again recently with the release of a Netflix documentary about it.Burns’ book is incredibly detailed; she sets the scene with descriptions of what the boys and Tricia were like and also what New York, especially Central Park, was like at that time. She’s honest about what the boys were doing in the park the night of the attack on Tricia Meili and why some of them were initially picked up by the Police who were intending to send them home with summonses to family court for the relatively minor crimes.Once the Police learned of the attack on Meili everything changed. It seems like the Police saw an easy opportunity to solve the case quickly. These boys were known to have been in the park causing trouble and the same time Meili was attacked, obviously they must have been involved. It seems reasonable to me to ask them about the attack, even if they weren’t involved they might have seen something, but what they actually seemed to do was start trying to coerce a confession out of them. The Police seemed to have already decided that these boys were responsible and set out to make sure they could make charges stick.This book angered me so much when I was reading it. I read a lot of true crime and crime fiction and I watch a lot of crime related tv shows and it seemed obvious to me that huge mistakes were made. There was no physical evidence that the 5 boys were involved. Without being too graphic about it Meili was viciously attacked and lost an awful lot of blood but the boys that were supposed to have carried out this attack didn’t have a single speck of blood on them.The media reaction to the incident was also extremely telling of the racial tensions running through New York at that time. The boys were described in words that essentially dehumanised them. People were calling for the death penalty with no real evidence against them and let’s not forget the oldest of the five was just 16 at the time. We are talking about children.Once the case went to trial the anger kept coming for me. The way the defence teams ran the cases was horrendous, none of them caught on to the lack of evidence and they pretty much all tried to focus on blaming the victim. Meili’s treatment in Court was awful and it should never have happened. There were huge holes in the Prosecution case that nobody drew attention to.I do think this is an important story to read and to learn from. Racism and ignorance hasn’t gone away. There are still people now who refuse to believe that the Central Park Five are innocent; despite overwhelming evidence pointing to the fact that Matias Reyes committed the attack and always acted alone people are still trying to claim that the boys assisted Reyes in this case.The Central Park Five did eventually manage to settle a civil case against the City of New York for their ordeal but there were no winners on this one. The lives of the five boys were changed forever the night of April 20th 1989 along with Tricia Meili and nothing will ever fix that.I would recommend this to all lovers of true crime but be warned it may make you extremely angry!

Good book! Impressive this story! After watching when they see us on netflix I had to buy the book to know the details.

Thank you Sarah! I have followed this story since it happened and from the onset it was obvious there was "more to it",. Sarah Burns gives the facts and with her talent as an author, she sets the record straight on behalf of the 5 men who's lives were destroyed by the NYPD! This is a story told many times over without the facts. Everyone needs to take the time to read the truth.