PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Mr. Raab followed up Hogan’s leads and, in October 1974, had a front-page story with a Paterson, New Jersey, dateline. “Seven years after former boxing star Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter and another man were sentenced to life imprisonment for a triple murder here, new evidence has been uncovered that raises serious doubts about their guilt,” he wrote. His reporting helped bring a retrial in 1976, but that also ended in convictions. Carter, meanwhile, became a folk hero and, to many, a symbol of racial injustice after Bob Dylan’s protest ballad “Hurricane” was released in late 1975. Nearly a decade later, a federal judge, H. Lee Sarokin, threw out the convictions and Carter walked free in 1985. (Artis, who had a lesser sentence, was freed on parole in 1981.)"
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Mr. Raab’s book on the Whitmore case, “Justice in the Back Room” (1967), was adapted (with the victims’ names changed) into a 1973 TV movie co-written by Mr. Raab, “The Marcus-Nelson Murders.” Mr. Raab’s part in the case was reenacted by Telly Savalas, but as a fictional New York police detective instead of a journalist. The movie launched the 1970s CBS series “Kojak,” with Savalas as a tough, lollipop-loving cop. “Whitmore’s case showed how fragile the whole system was, and still is,” Mr. Raab said in 2012 after Whitmore’s death. (Richard Robles, a burglar looking for drugs or money, was convicted in the Manhattan slayings.)"
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STORY: "Selwyn Raab, journalist who helped expose legal injustice, dies at 90," by Reporter Brian Murphy, , published by The Washington Post on March 6, 2025. (Brian Murphy joined The Washington Post after more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East. Murphy has reported from more than 50 countries and has written four books.)
SUB-HEADING: "Mr. Raab’s reporting at the New York Times delved into organized crime and helped overturn the murder conviction of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter."
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GIST: "Selwyn Raab, an investigative journalist whose reporting into wrongful prosecutions helped overturn the murder conviction of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and cleared another suspect in a case that inspired the TV police series “Kojak,” died March 4 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 90.
The cause was intestinal complications, said his son-in-law Matthew Goldstein, a reporter at the New York Times, where Mr. Raab spent the bulk of his career.
At various news outlets in New York, Mr. Raab built a reputation as a dogged fact-chaser who specialized in coverage of crime and flaws in the justice system. His beats also ranged into mob activity as he became a journalistic expert in New York organized crime — often recalling how his first lessons came as a child watching mobsters, bookies and others flex their muscle in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
“I grew up with guys I later covered,” he told Time magazine in 1974.
Mr. Raab’s 2005 book, “Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires,” was widely regarded as one of the definitive studies of organized crime and its influence. Mr. Raab stripped away much of the pop culture glamour of gangland life, describing the Cosa Nostra as a ruthless empire that grew to become “the invisible government of New York.”
“What makes Raab so wonderful is that he eschews legend and suspect anecdotage in favor of a Joe Friday-style just-the-facts-ma’am approach,” wrote reviewer Bryan Burrough in the New York Times. “In a 765-page book, not one gangster is ‘linked’ to anything more profound than a keychain.”
Mr. Raab’s writing style carried an old-school newsroom punch: lean, to the point and rarely venturing into wordy storytelling. His early heroes, he said, where “muckrakers” such as authors Upton Sinclair and Emile Zola, and New Yorker columnist A.J. Liebling.
“In effect, I learned on the job how to dig up facts, the art of probing interviews and the necessity of persistence in chasing important stories, regardless of the obstacles,” he recalled in a 2014 oral history interview with the University of the West of England. “Good journalism and good writing are instinctive arts.”
His first major scoop came from working the phones and knocking on doors in Wildwood, New Jersey. Mr. Raab, then a reporter for the New York World-Telegram and Sun, heard that holes were emerging in the prosecution of George Whitmore Jr., a young Black laborer living in Brooklyn who was accused of carrying out the August 1963 murders of two women in their apartment on East 88th Street in Manhattan.
Whitmore at first confessed to what newspapers called the “Career Girl Murders” of 21-year-old Janice Wylie, a researcher at Newsweek magazine, and 23-year-old Emily Hoffert, a schoolteacher. Their bodies were found tied up and covered with stab wounds.
He then recanted, claiming he was beaten by police and pressured to sign a statement of guilt. He said dozens of people could vouch that he was in his hometown, Wildwood, on the day of the murders, which occurred about the same time as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at a civil rights rally in Washington.
Whitmore said he discussed the speech with friends and others in Wildwood. Mr. Raab got to work, tracking down people who backed up Whitmore’s account. His front-page story effectively toppled the double-murder indictment and led to Whitmore being cleared in another homicide case — a woman killed in Brooklyn in 1964 — in which he also confessed.
Whitmore’s defense lawyers argued that the confessions had been made under duress and without a lawyer present. The case was cited by the Supreme Court as “the most conspicuous example” of police abuses in its Miranda v. Arizona ruling, a landmark 1966 decision establishing protections for suspects such as legal counsel and the right to remain silent.
Mr. Raab’s book on the Whitmore case, “Justice in the Back Room” (1967), was adapted (with the victims’ names changed) into a 1973 TV movie co-written by Mr. Raab, “The Marcus-Nelson Murders.” Mr. Raab’s part in the case was reenacted by Telly Savalas, but as a fictional New York police detective instead of a journalist. The movie launched the 1970s CBS series “Kojak,” with Savalas as a tough, lollipop-loving cop.
“Whitmore’s case showed how fragile the whole system was, and still is,” Mr. Raab said in 2012 after Whitmore’s death. (Richard Robles, a burglar looking for drugs or money, was convicted in the Manhattan slayings.)
Just months after joining the New York Times in 1974, Mr. Raab received a slim — but important — dossier from an investigator in the New Jersey Public Defender’s Office named Fred Hogan.
Inside, were recanted statements from the two key witnesses who testified against the middleweight boxer Carter and another man, John Artis, before their conviction in the 1966 shooting deaths of three people at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey.
Hogan never believed that Carter and Artis were involved. He had watched Carter climb the boxing ranks until he was close to a shot at the
championship belt. “I knew in my heart that there was no way that Rubin did that,” Hogan once said, referring to the triple murder. “And the more Rubin told me about the trial, the more I knew it stunk.”
He finally tracked down the purported witnesses, Alfred Bello and Arthur Bradley, two petty crooks who admitted to Hogan that they never saw Carter at the crime scene. Hogan believed Bello and Bradley cut a deal to give testimony at the 1967 trial in exchange for lenient treatment from prosecutors on other charges.
Mr. Raab followed up Hogan’s leads and, in October 1974, had a front-page story with a Paterson, New Jersey, dateline.
“Seven years after former boxing star Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter and another man were sentenced to life imprisonment for a triple murder here, new evidence has been uncovered that raises serious doubts about their guilt,” he wrote.
His reporting helped bring a retrial in 1976, but that also ended in convictions. Carter, meanwhile, became a folk hero and, to many, a symbol of racial injustice after Bob Dylan’s protest ballad “Hurricane” was released in late 1975.
Nearly a decade later, a federal judge, H. Lee Sarokin, threw out the convictions and Carter walked free in 1985. (Artis, who had a lesser sentence, was freed on parole in 1981.)
Mr. Raab covered Sarokin’s decision for the New York Times. His story stuck to the facts at hand and did not mention his part in the case.
‘Different standard’
Selwyn Norman Raab was born in Manhattan on June 26, 1934. His father was a bus driver, and his mother cared for the home.
Mr. Raab received a bachelor’s degree in English from the City College of New York in 1956 — after twice being suspended for battling the school administration.
One time was for resisting attempts to close the student newspaper, Observation Post, where he was editor; the other was for criticizing the dismissals of faculty who had been targeted by the anti-communist “Red Scare” purges of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin).
He landed his first newspaper job at the Bridgeport Sunday Herald in Connecticut and then moved to the Newark Star-Ledger.
His honors include the Heywood Broun Award from the New York Newspaper Guild and a regional Emmy Award for his work on “The 51st State.”
His wife of 56 years, the former Helene Lurie, died in 2019. Survivors include their daughter, Marian.
In 1999, the Carter case was revisited in the film “The Hurricane,” starring Denzel Washington as Carter in a screenplay that largely passed over the roles of Hogan and Mr. Raab. That omission opened a public spat between Mr. Raab and the filmmakers including one of the executive producers, Rudy Langlais, who was quoted as saying: “Facts can’t help but stand in the way of a good story.”
“Fortunately, reporters have a different standard,” Mr. Raab wrote in a 2000 essay in the Los Angeles Times. “We are obligated to separate the chaff from the wheat.""
The entire story can be read at:
selwyn-raab-hurricane-carter-dies
https://authory.com/HaroldLevy
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
