Inmate: I was Central Park rapist in 1989 attack

NEW YORK — Thirteen years after the beating and rape of a 28-year-old jogger in Central Park, lawyers said yesterday they will try to overturn convictions of five men found guilty in the case, arguing that a DNA matchup and confession point to a convicted rapist and murderer.

At a news conference, lawyers presented a notarized confession and described DNA evidence that Matias Reyes, 31, had beaten and raped the Central Park jogger and that he had acted alone. Attorneys on Monday will ask a judge to overturn the convictions.

"These boys did not commit the crime," said City Councilman Bill Perkins, D-Harlem, who is helping several of the youths obtain legal assistance. "These men are innocent of that rape."

Barbara Thompson of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office said, "We're in the middle of a thorough review."

One of the men remains in jail, on unrelated drug charges. But their attorney said that all of them have struggled with the stigma arising from these convictions.

"It's been difficult getting work," said Michael Warren, a lawyer who represents several of the men. "They are trying to live their lives the best way they can."

The reopening of the gang-rape case — known as "wilding" — recalls a bleak chapter in New York's history, when murder and rape were rampant and racial tension polarized much of the city.

The victim was a 28-year-old investment banker from the East Side, out for an evening run. The convicted attackers came from Harlem, five black and Hispanic youths 14 to 16 years old. With help from screaming tabloid headlines, the trial split along many race and class lines.

In the facts as laid out at the trial, on the night of April 19, 1989, the youths gathered for a night of "wilding" in which they roamed through Central Park, attacking runners and bicyclists at random. They then spotted the jogger.

Brutally beaten and raped, the jogger lost three-quarters of her blood and was in a coma for 12 days. When she testified, she had lost all sense of smell and of balance. She suffered from double vision, and amnesia prevented her from identifying her attackers.

In confessions, the five boys fingered each other. In the summer of 1990, Yusef Salaam, 15, Raymond Santana, 14, and Antron McCray, 15, were convicted of rape, robbery and assault.

In a later trial, Kevin Richardson, 14, and Kharey Wise, 16, were convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. A sixth teenager, Steve Lopez, 15, pleaded guilty to attacking a different, male jogger.

And so the case seemed closed, until convict Matias Reyes stepped forward after undergoing a "spiritual conversion." In a sworn statement dated Aug. 23, Reyes confessed to the rape.

"I was drawn by her appearance, and I just had to have her," he says in the statement.

Reyes is serving 33 years for rapes and murders on the Upper East Side. A statute of limitations prevents him from being prosecuted in the attack on the jogger.

Reyes also said that prosecutors told him that his DNA matched DNA found on the jogger. No DNA testing had linked the convicted men to the case.

The jogger reportedly lives in Connecticut and is writing a memoir about her recovery. A spokeswoman for her book publisher, Scribner, didn't say whether she will include details of the new admission in her book.

"If she decides in the writing process to put that in, that's up to her," said Patricia Eisemann, vice president and publicity director for Scribner.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.