Raymond Santana

New York Mayor Ed Koch didn't shrink from calling it "the crime of the century. " A TV newscaster talked angrily about evildoers who "blazed a nighttime trail of terror" that culminated in the horrific beating and savage rape of a Central Park jogger on the night of April 19, 1989. The event became an all-consuming national sensation, but, as it turns out, everything everyone thought they knew was wrong. This is the devastating premise of "The Central Park Five," a careful, thoughtful documentary that meticulously re-creates what happened on that night and details how and why everything went so terribly off-course.

New York Mayor Ed Koch didn't shrink from calling it "the crime of the century. " A TV newscaster talked angrily about evildoers who "blazed a nighttime trail of terror" that culminated in the horrific beating and savage rape of a Central Park jogger on the night of April 19, 1989. The event became an all-consuming national sensation, but, as it turns out, everything everyone thought they knew was wrong. This is the devastating premise of "The Central Park Five," a careful, thoughtful documentary that meticulously re-creates what happened on that night and details how and why everything went so terribly off-course.

Jurors shook their heads in disbelief as they viewed for the first time a photo of the female jogger who was raped, beaten and left for dead in Central Park. Jurors at the trial of three youths in state Supreme Court in Manhattan heard the doctor who treated the jogger describe how "it was close to a miracle that she survived" the April 19, 1989, attack. Antron McCray, 16, Raymond Santana, 15, and Yusef Salaam, 16, are being tried on 13 criminal counts, including attempted murder and rape.

NEW YORK - They were five men - boys, really - accused of a violent rape. They were prosecuted aggressively by district attorneys and vilified by a tabloid press, then sent to prison for as many as 13 years. In 1989, the case of the Central Park Five, as the attack on a 28-year-old white investment banker in uptown Manhattan has come to be known, roiled the country, touching on race and class and fears about crime. But the defendants - all black or Latino, none older than 16 - didn't commit the attack on the Central Park jogger.

The father of Raymond Santana Jr. testified that his 15-year-old son confessed to helping gang-rape and beat a woman jogger in New York's Central Park in 1989 because the boy "didn't understand what he was saying." The older Santana, the final defense witness in the trial, was present during some of the time his son was being questioned, but he said that he had not read his son's confession before he and the boy signed it.

The woman known as the Central Park jogger--scarred, shaky of gait but steady of speech--made her first public appearance Monday, taking the witness stand to testify against three teen-agers accused of raping and attempting to murder her during a rampage that added the word "wilding" to the national vocabulary of violence. The 30-year-old investment banker used one hand to balance herself when she walked unsteadily up steps to the witness stand.

A police criminologist testified Thursday that none of the hair found on the Central Park jogger belonged to any of the three youths on trial for the gang-rape and beating of the woman last year. The testimony from Nicholas Petraco, a retired police detective, marked a blow for the prosecution, which has also failed to link the three suspects to the crime through blood and semen tests. Defense attorneys have said the results of the previous tests suggested that the rapist was still at large.

A police officer testified Monday about arresting two youths charged with beating and raping a jogger and leaving her for dead in Central Park, describing how he confronted a pack of teen-agers stalking through the park after the attack. Under questioning in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, Officer Eric Reynolds told how he was patrolling a moonlit Central Park on April 19, 1989, in an unmarked van after a number of reports had come over his police radio about attacks by gangs of youths.

The jogger who was raped and beaten during a "wilding" attack in Central Park emerged in public for the first time today to testify against her accused attackers and about the injuries she suffered. The blonde woman, who prosecutors say was gang raped and left for dead in the April 19, 1989, attack, spoke in a clear and firm voice as she told about waking up in a hospital more than a month after the brutal assault.

NEW YORK - They were five men - boys, really - accused of a violent rape. They were prosecuted aggressively by district attorneys and vilified by a tabloid press, then sent to prison for as many as 13 years. In 1989, the case of the Central Park Five, as the attack on a 28-year-old white investment banker in uptown Manhattan has come to be known, roiled the country, touching on race and class and fears about crime. But the defendants - all black or Latino, none older than 16 - didn't commit the attack on the Central Park jogger.

A Manhattan judge threw out the convictions of five men in the Central Park jogger rape case on Thursday, agreeing with prosecutors that newly discovered DNA evidence had implicated another man in the brutal attack. Supreme Court Judge Charles Tejada, noting that "the duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely to convict," dismissed the rape and assault convictions in the notorious 1989 crime that exposed the city's racial tensions.

Declaring they had turned Central Park into a "torture chamber," a State Supreme Court Justice on Tuesday sentenced three teen-agers to the maximum term of five to 10 years in prison for assaulting and raping a woman jogger. People in New York City have the right to "freedom to walk and to be secure in their homes," said Justice Thomas B. Galligan. The defendants, he added, had shown "no remorse, only defiance."

After 10 days of painstaking deliberations, a jury late Saturday found three teen-agers guilty of raping and assaulting a Central Park jogger in a case that added the terrifying word wilding to the national vocabulary of violence. The jury of 10 men and two women found Yusef Salaam and Antron McCray, both 16, and Raymond Santana, 15, guilty of rape and assault on the investment banker as she jogged in the park in April, 1989.

Defense lawyers in closing arguments Tuesday tried to convince jurors in the Central Park jogger trial that no testimony or physical evidence existed directly linking their three teen-age clients to the rape and attempted murder of a 29-year-old investment banker. One lawyer suggested that the jogger, who suffers from amnesia after the trauma of the attack last year, never was raped at all and could have had a sexual liaison before entering Central Park.

The father of Raymond Santana Jr. testified that his 15-year-old son confessed to helping gang-rape and beat a woman jogger in New York's Central Park in 1989 because the boy "didn't understand what he was saying." The older Santana, the final defense witness in the trial, was present during some of the time his son was being questioned, but he said that he had not read his son's confession before he and the boy signed it.

A police criminologist testified Thursday that none of the hair found on the Central Park jogger belonged to any of the three youths on trial for the gang-rape and beating of the woman last year. The testimony from Nicholas Petraco, a retired police detective, marked a blow for the prosecution, which has also failed to link the three suspects to the crime through blood and semen tests. Defense attorneys have said the results of the previous tests suggested that the rapist was still at large.

Defense lawyers in closing arguments Tuesday tried to convince jurors in the Central Park jogger trial that no testimony or physical evidence existed directly linking their three teen-age clients to the rape and attempted murder of a 29-year-old investment banker. One lawyer suggested that the jogger, who suffers from amnesia after the trauma of the attack last year, never was raped at all and could have had a sexual liaison before entering Central Park.

A Manhattan judge threw out the convictions of five men in the Central Park jogger rape case on Thursday, agreeing with prosecutors that newly discovered DNA evidence had implicated another man in the brutal attack. Supreme Court Judge Charles Tejada, noting that "the duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely to convict," dismissed the rape and assault convictions in the notorious 1989 crime that exposed the city's racial tensions.

The woman known as the Central Park jogger--scarred, shaky of gait but steady of speech--made her first public appearance Monday, taking the witness stand to testify against three teen-agers accused of raping and attempting to murder her during a rampage that added the word "wilding" to the national vocabulary of violence. The 30-year-old investment banker used one hand to balance herself when she walked unsteadily up steps to the witness stand.

The jogger who was raped and beaten during a "wilding" attack in Central Park emerged in public for the first time today to testify against her accused attackers and about the injuries she suffered. The blonde woman, who prosecutors say was gang raped and left for dead in the April 19, 1989, attack, spoke in a clear and firm voice as she told about waking up in a hospital more than a month after the brutal assault.