The Murder of Carol Stuart | The Perfect Couple | 1

This episode contains descriptions and details that some listeners might find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. It's just after 8:30 p.m.

on October 23rd, 1989. In Boston, 29-year-old Charles Stuart, Chuck, as everyone calls him, turns his car out of the parking garage at Brigham and Women's Hospital onto the busy street. Beside him sits his wife Carol.

She's seven months pregnant, and they've just taken a prenatal class. As he navigates the thinning evening traffic, Chuck reaches over and places his hand protectively on Carol's belly.

He can't wait to become a father, and he knows she's over the moon about motherhood. Chuck's just slowing for a stoplight near Huntington Avenue when it happens. Without warning, the back door opens, and a man slides into the seat behind Carol.

Carol cries out in surprise as Chuck looks over his shoulder at the stranger. He's wearing a black track suit and a black baseball cap over a thick short afro.

Before Chuck can say anything, ask what he's doing or tell him to get out, the guy yells at him to turn around and drive. Too startled to do anything else, Chuck presses down on the gas, already starting to sweat from adrenaline.

He looks to his left and right, pretending to be checking his blind spots. But really, he's scanning the road, wondering how he could signal someone that they need help.

The intruder clocks Chuck's movements and orders him to turn into a quiet street, leading into the Mission Hill neighborhood. Turn by turn, the man directs them onto darker, quieter streets. He doesn't want witnesses.

Eventually, he instructs Chuck to stop beside an empty parking lot. The street outside is totally empty, so Chuck knows it's no use yelling for help. Who would hear him?

And would anyone come running? He doubts it. Everyone knows the city's a violent place.

Mission Hill especially. It's been in all the papers lately. Chuck keeps his hand on the steering wheel, forcing himself to breathe deep as their abductor demands Carol hand over her jewelry and purse.

Then he spots Chuck's gold watch and says he'll take that too. As the man leans forward to snatch the items out of Chuck's hands, he notices the couple's car phone nestled between the front seats and leans back like he's been burned.

Chuck turns around to see him reach into his jacket and pull out a silver snub-nosed revolver. He points it towards them, yelling that they're 5-0, local slang for cops.

Chuck doesn't even have a chance to explain that it's not a police radio, just a car phone, before the man points his gun at Carol and squeezes the trigger. As the guy swings the gun towards the driver's seat, Chuck ducks down.

The second shot misses, hitting the roof of the car. Then, with his wife's bloody form slumping further down in her seat, Chuck reaches back, trying to wrest the gun away from the attacker.

The struggle lasts just seconds before Chuck hears a third gunshot. He feels a tearing pain in his abdomen. The bullets rip through his insides, leaving Chuck gasping and in shock.

He barely registers the man in the tracksuit getting out of the car. Chuck's ears are still ringing as he looks over at Carol. She's bleeding a lot and struggling for breath.

Chuck reaches out and puts his hand over her pregnant belly again, then grabs the car phone from the console. If he can just get them help, everything will be okay. It has to be okay.

Things like this don't happen to good people like Chuck and Carol Stuart. And you know what? They don't.

Because everything I just told you is a lie. And it's a lie that will tear the city of Boston apart. From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

Towards the end of 1989, Boston was rocked by a violent attack on a young couple. Charles and Carol Stuart had just left a birthing class at Brigham and Women's Hospital when they were shot inside their own car.

Carol didn't survive, but her husband did, and his harrowing story about what happened that night chilled people across the country.

One newspaper dubbed the Stuarts the Camelot Couple, a not so subtle reference to the Kennedys, who were all so cruelly separated by gun violence. But this wasn't a simple story of a fairy tale romance cut tragically short.

Because despite outward appearances, Charles and Carol didn't have a perfect marriage. And despite what he told investigators, his family and the press, Chuck Stuart wasn't the victim he claimed to be.

The truth was that Chuck was a man who had a problem he wanted dealt with. And he happened to live in a city where the media was screaming about violence on the rise. This wasn't an isolated situation.

Across America, the crack cocaine epidemic was ravaging communities, fueling gang violence and terrifying wealthy suburbanites. Cities had a reputation. They weren't safe for people like them, people like the stewards.

Chuck saw that fear, saw people's willingness to believe the worst, and decided he'd use it to cover up his own horrific crime. This is episode one in our three-part series on the murder of Carol Stuart, The Perfect Couple.

It's a balmy summer evening in 1978.

6:42

The Ideal Teenager

Across the road from Revere Beach in Massachusetts, the Driftwood Restaurant is bustling with customers. A couple are just opening the door to see if they can get a table when a teenage waitress rushes out.

Usually, people would describe Carol DiMadi as bubbly and friendly, quick with a smile and a kind word. But right now, her brown eyes are steely and her lips pursed.

She pauses briefly with her dark curls bouncing as she turns her head from side to side scanning the crowd.

When she spots what she's looking for, her eyebrows narrow and she marches away from the restaurant and along the sidewalk into the nearby parking lot.

Ahead of her, a group of men are climbing into a car, laughing about something one of them just said. Their laughter falters when they notice Carol. She stands in front of them.

All five foot three of her staring down four grown men. She holds up her hand. Three coins clenched in her fingers.

She makes sure they all see the money. It's the tip they left her on a hundred dollar check. Once she's made eye contact with all of them, she calmly places the coins down on the hood of the car, turns and walks back towards the restaurant.

About 19 years before she flips off some jerks who stiffer on a tip, Carol DiMati was born in March of 1959 in Medford, Massachusetts. Her parents, Evelyn and Guisto, treasured her.

They made sure she grew up with a connection to their Catholic faith and a strong work ethic. That drive to excel showed dividends in school, where Carol was an overachiever in the best way.

When her sixth grade report card came home with straight A's, Guisto folded it up and tucked it into his wallet, where it stayed for years. Beyond her academic success, Carol was the kind of girl people gravitated towards.

It wasn't that she was popular, necessarily, but she was one of those rare types who could strike up a conversation with anyone. That's not an easy thing to do, especially in high school. But to Carol, it was nothing.

And she didn't just talk to people, she helped them, too. She tutored other kids in English and math, calmly and patiently walking them through the material, genuinely wanting to see everyone succeed.

When she wasn't taking students under her wing, she was volunteering in the administration office. There was never a quiet moment for Carol, and she loved it.

When she turned 15, Carol got a job as a busser at the Driftwood, a restaurant in the beachside town of Revere. Her dad tended bar at the Driftwood for his second gig, so it wasn't a difficult application process.

But despite the family connection, Carol never thought about taking it easy on the job. She ran circles around the other bussers, impressing everyone with her hustle, and lighting up the place with her boundless enthusiasm.

She worked a few nights through the week, and on summer breaks all through high school. Once she turned 18 and could legally serve alcohol, she was promoted to the waitstaff, which left an opening for a new busser.

The restaurant owners hired a 14-year-old girl to fill Carol's shoes, and the kid was pretty nervous about it. It's early April 1977 at the Driftwood. There's still a couple of months until summer, so it's not an especially busy night.

Still, Christine Barada's got butterflies in her stomach. When she got the job here, the manager told her that she'd have a lot to live up to. The last girl who had the gig was a big hit with the customers.

Plus, she never missed a shift, was always on time, and spread joy into every corner of the restaurant. So, as she ties an apron around her waist and steps out of the break room, Christine is trying to calm herself down.

She spent the last few days wondering if she'll ever be able to measure up to this other girl. She walks slowly through the kitchen, dreading the moment when she has to step onto the floor and start her shift.

But before she reaches the swinging doors, she's just about bowled over by a young woman with shining brown eyes and a cloud of dark curls. She takes Christine's hand in her own and introduces herself, Carol DiMadi.

She's so excited to meet Christine, she says she can't wait to teach her everything she's learned over the years. Before she knows it, Christine's being led around the restaurant. First, Carol introduces her to the other staff members.

She fixes all the guys in the kitchen with a glare, telling them to be nice. Then Carol hands Christine a rag and a bussing tray and shows her around the dining room.

She demonstrates the fastest way to bus a table, stops to take a couple of orders and chats with some of the regulars. Christine can't believe how much energy this 5'3 girl has. She never stops.

And she's so nice to everyone. By the end of her first shift, Christine feels like she's been adopted by the world's kindest big sister. Carol made Christine's early days at the driftwood a lot smoother than the young girl was anticipating.

And to her surprise, Carol didn't lose interest and move on with her life once she got her replacement up to speed. Instead, she took Christine under her wing.

Over the next few months, the pair grew closer, to the point that Christine felt comfortable coming to Carol with all the trouble she may turn to an older sibling for.

Little things that she was too shy to ask her friends at school about, like hair and make up tips. And bigger stuff, like how to ask a guy to the prom. Carol even went shopping with Christine to help her choose a dress for the dance.

One evening, Christine came in to work kind of bummed out. When Carol asked her what was wrong, Christine explained that she was starting to wonder if she'd ever learned to drive.

Her dad hadn't had much patience for teaching her, and the instructors at the driving school she tried were just too intimidating. It's hopeless, she said. But in Carol's world, nothing was ever hopeless.

After work that night, she handed Christine the keys to her white Datsun 210 and sat her down behind the wheel. They headed to an empty parking lot by the beach, where Carol started leading her young friend through the basics.

Within a month, Christine had her license. Then comes the tipping incident. It's a busy table in Carol's section.

They keep her on her toes the whole time and rack up a bill over a hundred bucks. When they finally leave, she goes to pick up their check and finds that they left her an insultingly small tip.

It's the kind of tip you'd leave if the server forgot half of your order, and when the food finally arrived, it was bad. But that's not what happened here. The food at the Driftwood is tasty, and Carol is an attentive, cheerful waitress.

It's impossible not to like her. And yet, these guys leave her what amounts to pocket change, and she's not having it. Christine watches from across the restaurant as Carol calmly picks up the coins and follows her customers out of the building.

She walks across the parking lot and stands in front of their car. She doesn't yell. She doesn't throw the money at them.

She just makes sure they can all see it when she holds the money up and places it gently down on the hood of the car. Then, without uttering a word, she walks back inside to finish her shift. She's all class as Carol the Matey.

She's also, no surprise, a great planner. The whole time she's been at the Driftwood, she's been putting her money away, managing to save up some 10 grand by the time she graduates high school.

Today, inflation would make that number a little over 50,000. With a healthy bank balance to help her get by, Carol enrolls at Boston College, where she sets about impressing a whole new batch of instructors with her dedication to her studies.

Initially, she has plans of becoming a teacher, which fits in with her inclination to nurture the potential of people around her. But the longer she thinks about it, the less sensible that feels.

Sure, she loves to help people learn, but the baby boom generation has worked its way through America's school system by now, so there are fewer enrollments. And teaching jobs are getting harder to come by.

If she wants a stable career, she needs to pick something that will always be in demand. So at the beginning of her sophomore year, she changes her major to political science, telling people that she's going to become a lawyer someday.

But for now, she's carrying on with her undergrad studies, saving money by living at home with her parents and still working at the Driftwood. Through it all, she keeps her relationship with her boyfriend from high school, a guy named Jeff.

These days, he's on the football team at Brown. So by plenty of people's standards, he's a catch. But he's only got eyes for Carol.

And pretty soon, he's going to find himself with some stiff competition.

16:41

A Restaurant Romance

It's a cool evening in the fall of 1978 in Revere, Massachusetts. The Driftwood restaurant opposite the beach is quiet. School went back a month or so ago, and plenty of local families are staying home after the expenses of summer.

But with it being a slow night, that gives 19-year-old Carol DiMadi a chance to get some studying in. She sat in a corner booth, a couple of books spread open in front of her while she keeps her eye on her customers.

The trouble is, she can't concentrate. Her friend Christine and the other waitresses scheduled on for the night keep giggling as they make their way through the dining room.

They've been making excuses to linger in the kitchen to check out the new assistant cook, Chuck. Carol hasn't met him yet. She usually doesn't have much time for the guys in the kitchen.

They can be a bit short with the waitresses, so she's found it easiest to give them a wide berth. But eventually, Carol can't resist the temptation anymore. Sure, she's got a boyfriend, but she's curious.

So she abandons her books and heads back to the kitchen. There's a radio blaring music, so no one notices Carol walk in. She grabs a cup and starts making herself some tea.

As she lets it steep, she leans back against the counter, trying to make it look casual, and lets her eyes roam around the room until they fall on the one guy she doesn't recognize. He's tall, over six feet, and broad-shouldered.

He's got thick, dark hair, deep blue eyes, and a solid jaw. Overall, he's pretty handsome, Carol thinks, but nothing special to her eyes. She's happy with the boyfriend she's got.

She picks up her tea and heads back out to check on her tables, thinking that at least it's nice to have something to look at while she's at work.

Almost 19 years before Carol deMade first lays eyes on him at the Driftwood, Charles Stuart was born in December 1959.

Now, what's important to know about little Charles is that his parents were newly married, and he had two older half-sisters from his father's first marriage. As the first boy born into the new family, he was doted on by all of his relatives.

And it helped that he was a cute kid too, so he wasn't hard to love. For the first few years of his life, Charles, or Chuck as everyone called him, was lavished with undivided attention.

But eventually, some younger brothers arrived, three of them in all. Each of them diluted Chuck's share of familial affection and made the home more crowded. Not that it's unusual for a Catholic family to have a lot of kids, right?

And all four of the Stuart boys were the kinds of kids other parents wished they had. As they grew up, Chuck and his little brothers were coveted babysitters and unofficial neighborhood role models. That said, Chuck wasn't a perfect kid.

He was no Carol de Maidie. Sure, he became an altar boy at his mother's request and was never late to perform his duties, but he wasn't a great student at school. And while he could turn on the charm like nobody's business, he was undeniably a snob.

Nothing was ever good enough. Even his family was a disappointment to him. There were too many kids, too much mess in the house, and his youngest brother Matthew was a loser.

Even his hometown of Revere was a letdown for Chuck. The beachside city had once been a desirable weekend spot for Boston locals, but the beach and its surrounding facilities started to deteriorate in the 1950s.

The water quality at the beach also wasn't great, so even going for a swim wasn't a very appealing option. And on top of it all, Revere was getting overcrowded. At least its school system was when Chuck entered the busy halls of his high school.

Looking for ways to thin out the crowds, the school district started encouraging some students to transfer to a vocational technical college instead. Kids who didn't have grand college aspirations mostly. Chuck jumped at the chance.

He was eager to get his life started and figured learning a trade was the best way to set himself up for success. Chuck studied culinary arts at the VOTEC. It seemed he was gearing up for a life in restaurants.

Looking around his hometown, he saw successful restauranteurs driving flashy cars and sporting gaudy jewelry. They were paragons of wealth. That would be him someday.

Just with better taste. After a couple of years of study, Chuck got his diploma and enrolled at Salem State University. But he flunked out after a month.

School just wasn't for him. Still, he didn't want to get stuck in what he thought of as his crumbling hometown. So he got his own apartment in the next city over and paid the rent by working in kitchens.

First, as a short-order cook in a hotel restaurant, and then as a member of the kitchen staff at the Driftwood, right on Revere Beach. It's there he meets the woman who'll change his life, Carol DiMati. Chuck's into Carol right away.

Everyone in the restaurant can see it. He's so obvious. Coming from another guy, the attention might feel creepy, but Carol doesn't seem to mind.

Chuck's charming, handsome, and best of all, kind. Not just to Carol, but to everyone in the restaurant. He helps young Christine the Buster carry stuff upstairs from the store room, and always has a smile at the ready.

But if there's one thing Chuck's not at this stage, it's confident. Not with women at least. He's always asking his colleagues if they think Carol's into him.

And because everyone likes Carol so much, they're always telling her that the new guy's asking about her. Even the news that she's got a boyfriend doesn't put him off. In fact, it might even inspire him.

You remember how I told you that Chuck was a snob? Well, it seems like he thinks he's better than even his own life story.

It's unclear exactly when he starts telling people this, but the word gets around the driftwood that Chuck had a football scholarship to Brown University. But a serious injury saw him cut from the team and kicked out of school.

And to his new colleagues, that story seems plausible. Chuck's got the build for an athlete, and why would someone lie about that? But yeah, it's definitely a lie.

And it's one that would be so easy to reveal too. For starters, Carol's current boyfriend does go to Brown University, and he does play on their football team. So he and Chuck would know each other, right?

Oh yeah, and Brown's an Ivy League school, so it doesn't have football scholarships. But no one questions it, which is going to be a recurring theme in this story.

That means Chuck maintains his reputation as the handsome, shy jock who's got a crush on everyone's favorite waitress. Pretty quickly, their colleagues get behind the idea of them as a couple and do whatever they can to fan the flames. And it works.

With Chuck's determination to get what he wants, and her friends telling her how great a couple they'd make, Carol starts to see it too. Her boyfriend is 50 miles away, Chuck's right here. What's a girl to do?

Eventually, she breaks up with Jeff and makes sure Chuck knows she's interested. And soon enough, they're dating. And while most of their colleagues are happy about the match, not everyone's thrilled.

In particular, Carol's dad isn't on board. He works alongside both the kids, and there are two things about Chuck that he doesn't like. He's not in school, and he's not Italian.

That's plenty of reason to insist that the pair aren't right for each other. He even throws Chuck out of the family home when he stops by to pick Carol up for a date one night. But Carol doesn't let her dad's opinion influence her.

She's independent and headstrong. And she's also secure enough to understand that if it's true love, her parents will come around eventually. And if she ever waivers, well, Chuck love bombs with the best of them.

He buys her gifts, sends cards for no reason, and leaves flowers in her car for her to find after work. It's just constant physical reminders of his affection one after another. And apparently, Carol's powerless against the onslaught.

Over the next few months, the romance gets serious, and talk soon turns to marriage. They're both sure they want to spend the rest of their lives together, but they disagree on when that should start.

Eager to lock things down, Chuck thinks their wedding should happen as soon as Carol graduates college in the summer of 1981. But Carol's in no rush. She's on the path to becoming a lawyer, which means she wants to go to law school.

After that, they can get married, she says. Law school? That's a lot for Chuck to take in.

He didn't even make it two months of college, and his girlfriend, the woman he's gonna marry, is going to law school? It's impressive, and he should feel proud, but he doesn't. He feels inferior and juvenile, like he's going nowhere.

All his life, he's known, been absolutely certain, that he's better than most people. He deserves the very best, and sure, in his mind, that includes an impressive, attractive woman like Carol.

But it also means he deserves an enviable house, nice cars, quality clothes. And although he doesn't hate his job at the Driftwood, he knows that it won't give him the money to live the life he wants.

And he certainly doesn't want to rely on his wife for a good income. No. Chuck knows that if he wants to get ahead, he's gonna have to make it happen for himself.

It's the spring of 1981 in Maldon, Massachusetts, the next town over from Revere.

27:18

A Troubled Marriage

20-year-old Chuck Stuart is hunched over the coffee table in his cramped apartment. A red marker in his hand and the classifieds open in front of him. He takes a sip of coffee as his eyes scan down each column of listings.

He's after a new job. Three years as a cook in a beachside restaurant is enough, more than enough for a man like him. He needs better things.

Mostly, he needs to keep up with his girlfriend, who's schoolbound in the fall. So for weeks now, Chuck's been looking for a new job that'll help him keep up with her. Actually, he's not just looking for a job.

He wants a career. Something that'll sustain him, get him out of his tiny apartment and into a bigger, nice place. Something where he can be sure he's the breadwinner once he and Carol get married.

He turns the page, and there, right at the top, is the answer to his prayers. A store in Boston is hiring for a management trainee. But it's not any run-of-the-mill retailer.

This is Cacus, a furrier that sits beside other upscale boutiques on Newbury Street. The people who shop there are looking to spend thousands on a single garment. That makes them better than the rest.

And as a superior specimen himself, Chuck feels that a place like that is just right for him. Chuck lands the job at Cacus Furs and quickly endears himself to the store's owners. Just like his girlfriend, Chuck's an attractive, eager employee.

It's clear from very early on that he wants to succeed. And succeed he does, proving himself an excellent salesman at ease with the store's wealthy clientele.

He's also unafraid to put in extra effort to make customers feel valued, with little touches like handwritten birthday cards for his clients. He's handsomely rewarded for his commitment.

By the end of his first year with the company, he's clearing $40,000 in salary and bonuses. With inflation, that would be nearly $150,000 today. But there are non-monetary bonuses to working at Cacus.

Chuck's surrounded by well-heeled richies day in, day out. Men who wear designer labels and get expensive haircuts. They're living the life Chuck wants for himself.

Fortunately, his paychecks help him step up his game, improve his wardrobe and elevate his day-to-day lifestyle in general. But while things are going well for him professionally, not everything in Chuck's life is perfect.

His inferiority complex emerges in his relationship to Carol, who's at law school, closing in on her goal of becoming a lawyer. He doesn't seem comfortable with the idea that she's more educated than he is.

One winter, they go on a ski trip with some of Carol's friends from class. They get a cabin, have some wine, and make the most of the day, but at night, they settle in to play Trivial Pursuit.

And at some point, a couple of Carol's friends make a joke about Chuck not knowing the answers to some of the questions. And to be clear, that's some high school level bullying right there, but Chuck's reaction is pretty immature, too.

He pulls Carol into their room, where he initiates a huge fight and insists that they go home. But he doesn't want her friends to know that they hurt his feelings.

So he makes Carol go downstairs and tell everyone that she's got too much homework to do, and that they have to go home right now. Then they pack up their stuff and leave in the middle of the night.

Carol giving in to Chuck's demands seems pretty unusual to plenty of her friends, who've always known her to be quite assertive. And it's not like she's afraid of confronting people, even ones she loves.

Among her friends, she's infamous for pulling people aside and giving them a talking to when she thinks they're in the wrong.

Now, she doesn't do it to embarrass anyone, she's just trying to help, so no one can work out why she seems to let Chuck walk all over her. But love can change people in strange ways, and Carol really does love Chuck.

So when he proposes to her at Christmas in 1983, she says yes right away. By this stage, he's earning even more money and is eager to let people know how well he's doing.

Case in point, he proposes by giving Carol a Gucci wallet that has a $4,500 diamond ring tucked inside.

After they share the good news with their families and Carol's dad is forced to accept that Chuck's not going anywhere, the young couple spend the next 18 months planning their wedding.

Chuck demonstrates his dominant personality by choosing their china patterns, their towels, the wedding invitations, everything.

When her friends ask what Carol thinks of her fiance's choices, she tends to laugh and flutter a hand saying that she's happy to let him take care of it because he has much better taste than she does.

But that feels wrong to the people who know Carol best. She's always had such a strong sense of style that it's hard to believe she'd abandon that for her own wedding.

Unless someone told her that she doesn't have good taste, that she's no good at this stuff. Now whether that's the man she's going to marry or someone else entirely, I couldn't possibly say. Well, I could, but I won't.

In October of 1985, Chuck and Carol get married in the same church where Carol's parents tied the knot. And over the next couple of years, their relationship evolves alongside their changing lives.

Chuck's eventually promoted to the general manager position at Coccas Furs, which comes with a sizable pay raise. Before long, he's closing in on $100K a year. Meanwhile, Carol graduates and turns her skills to tax law.

She'd flirted with the idea of going into criminal law, but Chuck didn't like that idea. So she's in a slightly less demanding role that allows her to be home with him more. Luckily, they've got a really nice home.

They buy a three-bedroom house in the desirable town of Redding, about 16 miles north of Boston. The new place has everything, a big yard, a pool, a hot tub, a built-in barbecue. And best of all, it's one of the nicest houses on the street.

That makes Chuck feel important, which has become a fixation of his. Ever since he started earning the big bucks, Chuck's obsessed over his image.

He splashes out on expensive suits and frequent haircuts, insisting that he needs them to succeed at work. Carol hates to cook, and after years of working in a kitchen, Chuck's fine skipping dinner duty too.

Instead, they go out to eat a lot, always somewhere nice. And when they invite friends to join them, Chuck will happily pick up the tab. So it's no surprise that the couple never really accrue any savings.

It's not unusual for Carol to go to the ATM and find that their account is empty. Still, she trusts her husband to take care of their money, or just doesn't fight him on it when he insists that he knows best.

She just hands over her paychecks and lets him handle the rest. Mortgage, bills, insurance.

She accepts the allowance he gives her and doesn't question his spending habits, which include regular weekend trips with his high school friends and casual sports bets during nights at the bar.

From the outside, it seems like money means nothing to Chuck. But that's just what he wants people to think. Really, it's all part of the image.

Which he's desperate to project, successful, wealthy, cultured. The perfect husband living the perfect life. But nothing is perfect.

And in Chuck's eyes, that includes his wife. He frequently criticizes her appearance for putting on a little weight since they first met. He works out every day, so that makes it okay that he's getting soft around the middle.

At least he's putting in some effort. In his mind, Carol's not, and it's making him look bad. But all of this is nothing to Carol.

35:39

A Deadly Secret

Sunshiney person that she is, she takes it in her stride, and even starts to push back.

As the decade draws to an end, she starts to get more assertive with her husband, insisting that she be allowed to make some decisions about their future, about their money.

She loves Chuck, but she clearly won't spend the rest of her life under his thumb. She has her own dreams that she wants to see through, and her husband's not going to derail that with his insecurities. One of those dreams is for a big family.

Ask anyone who's ever met Carol, and they'll tell you that she wants to be a mom. Even her teachers in high school knew that she wanted to have kids someday.

Since they got married, she's been asking Chuck if they're ready, but he keeps saying they should put it off. They'll have time for kids later. Mostly, he's worried the children will cramp his style, and have an adverse effect on his bank account.

So Carol's been patient while they've both built their careers. But at the start of 1989, she gets pregnant. It's a surprise to both of them, but Carol's not complaining.

The timing feels perfect for her. She's about to turn 30. Her husband is bringing in over $100,000 a year.

They've got a big house in the suburbs. I mean, what are they waiting for? But Chuck's not impressed.

When he hears about the baby, he flies into a rage, tells Carol that she has to get an abortion. She refuses. She won't even consider it, which makes him even more angry at first.

But he simmers down after a couple of days. He even starts telling friends that they're expecting. And he seems genuinely excited about it.

Carol's over the moon. She knew he'd come around. But Chuck Stewart hasn't come around to anything.

He's just learned to accept something he has no control over. And if he can't control his wife, he'll just eliminate her. From Airship, this is Episode 1 in our series on the murder of Carol Stuart.

On the next episode, Chuck starts making plans to kill his wife, but he doesn't want to do it alone. We use many different sources while preparing this episode.

A couple we can recommend are Deadly Greed by Joe Sharkey and Reporting by the Boston Globe. This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details.

And while in some cases, we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research. American Criminal is a co-production of Air, Ship and Evergreen podcasts. It's hosted, edited and produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing and sound design by Sean Ruhl-Hoffman. Music by Thrum. This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan.

Managing producer, Emily Burke. Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsey Graham.