Confession expected to clear gang of 1989 rape

Five men jailed for the brutal rape of a jogger in New York’s Central Park in 1989 are expected to have their convictions overturned tomorrow after another man confessed to the crime.

The group, aged between 14 and 17 at the time, were found guilty of a string of assaults during a rampage through Manhattan which they called “wilding”.

It culminated with the attack on a 28-year-old investment banker who was pummelled with rocks and pipes, slashed with a knife and raped.

The victim spent 12 days in a coma and received the last rites. She eventually recovered, but still has no memory of the attack.

Reports of the terrifying assault shocked the US and came to symbolise the lawlessness of New York in the late 1980s.

Subsequent confessions from the five black youths that they had carried out the random attack on the white woman also stoked racial tensions in the city.

But convicted murderer and rapist Matias Reyes, 31, confessed to the crime earlier this year after becoming a born again Christian.

His DNA was found to match semen found at the scene of the attack.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is expected to ask a judge to overturn the convictions of the five men at a hearing tomorrow.

Reyes is serving a life sentence for raping four women and killing a pregnant woman two months after the Central Park incident.

He has given a detailed account of how he dragged the jogger into a ravine and beat her with branches and rocks before leaving her to die.

“I have to get this off my chest,” he said. “I had to do one thing right in my life.”

Police apparently ignored evidence linking Reyes to the attack and instead obtained videotaped confessions from Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise a few days after the crime.

A fifth teenager, Yusef Salaam, also made admissions, detectives said.

One of the youths was said to have shouted: “Let’s get a female jogger. Let’s rape her.”

Their confessions were riddled with contradictions and no forensic evidence linked them to the crime.

But their statements were enough for prosecutors to win convictions for rape, assault and attempted murder at two trials in 1990.

The five have now completed their prison sentences, which ranged from five to 13 years.

Defence lawyers and civil rights activists claim authorities mishandled evidence and coerced confessions from the unsophisticated youths, who were prevented from talking to their families during the early part of the interrogation.

Michael Warren, the lawyer for three of the five men, said: “Those confessions were totally invalid, totally unwarranted, brought about by police methods of intimidating young children.”

But detectives and prosecutors involved in the investigation maintain that they were obtained fairly.

Former Manhattan prosecutor Linda Fairstein said: “I don’t think there’s a question in the minds of anyone present during the interrogation process that these five men were participants in the attack on the jogger.”