I saw a documentary on this. They confessed in detail, but the DNA evidence said otherwise, and the guy who later took responsibility knew of at least two details no one else but the cops knew.
I guess the moral of the story is be careful what you confess to.
That is my understanding. This case set off a media frenzy and the victim, as I recall, was a virtual candidate for canonization. The NYPD was under the hammer big time to find some likely suspects and shake a confession out of them. They did. These people were not Sunday school scholars but they were rail roaded. One does wonder how many got this treatment before DNA was around. Police and big city police especially often do believe what the magistrate told Steve McQueen in Papilion . ‘It is irrelevant whether you are guilty of these charges. You have committed many crimes you were not prosecuted for and if you remain in France will go on committing crimes. France is rid of you.’
Sorry. Guilty. And no Ken Burns doc is going to tell me differently. This happened about two blocks from where I lived at the time.
It happens more often than most can imagine, innocent people being worn down and confessing to crimes they didn't commit, just to stop the interrogations.
A disturbingly large number of people have confessed to crimes they never committed. Always have a lawyer with you when being questioned by the cops. Cops are very good at wearing people down and getting them to say what they want them to say.
“the guy who later took responsibility knew of at least two details no one else but the cops knew”
Ah, but at least one of the original five suspects knew a detail of the crime that even the cops did not know at the time he stated it, so it would have been impossible for the police to “suggest” it to him as part of a false confession. I’m talking about the theft of the walkman from the victim. Police didn’t know about it, because at the time that the suspect related it, the victim was still in a coma and couldn’t have told the police that she had a walkman that was stolen.
Collecting DNA evidence back then was still in the stone age and they didn’t rape her, they bashed her face in with the same lead pipe they used to bash in a guys head earlier. They then groped her, grabbed her breasts. Read this article, this is from the lead cop in the case who BTW is black. My theory is these punks attacked this woman, beat her unconscious and robbed her and this other punk came along and raped her.
Ann Coulter did a whole investigation on this, wrote a lot of articles laying out all the facts.....
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2018-07-25.html
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/224068/what-media-wont-tell-you-about-central-park-five-ann-coulter