"Hurricane Hoax"
a full length article about Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and the Lafayette Grill murders

Raab's big scoop was old news -- Carter's defense attorney claimed Bello and Bradley were lying at the first trial. The jury didn't buy it.

Carter's credibility problem

The amazing true story behind Bello and Bradley's recantations -- was bribery involved?

Visit Cal Deal's site for amazing graphics of the Lafayette Bar, the route of the getaway car, the view from Patty Valentine's window and what Al Bello saw.

No conspiracy -- how the movie got it wrong

The first policeman on the scene, Sgt. (and later Deputy Chief) Jim Lawless, says the police officers involved in the investigation never would have allowed DeSimone to frame anyone. He says, "We knew (the victims). They were our neighbors. Only an idiot would think we could see what we saw that night and then try to convict an innocent man."

" I would never be involved in framing anyone," states retired
Det. Robert Mohl.

How the New York Times got it wrong

On September 27, 1974, a dramatic article by investigative reporter Selwyn Raab appeared on the front page of the New York Times: “Murder Case Witnesses Recant 7 Years After 2 Got Life Terms.” Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a middleweight boxer, and John Artis, a young nobody-in-particular, were convicted in 1967 by an all-white jury for the gangland-style slaying of three people in a working class bar. The trial took place “at a time of racial tension,” and the defendants, both black, received life sentences. Seven years later, the two key eyewitness -- both white, both criminals -- retracted their testimony, claiming they were pressured by police into framing the boxer and his companion. Raab’s article raised “serious doubts about (Carter and Artis’s) guilt” and set off a chain of events that led to a nation-wide publicity drive for the convicted men, a special investigation, and a new trial.

But, as it turned out, Raab’s scoop was wrong. The recantation stories fell apart and Carter and Artis were re-convicted. Raab should have dug a little deeper, and should have examined, not only all the facts about the murder case, but all the facts about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.

Raab’s article presupposed a number of things -- firstly, that the two eyewitnesses lied at the 1967 trial about seeing Carter and Artis flee the murder scene and were telling the truth about a police frame-up in 1974; secondly, that the police had a reason to frame Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and his hapless co-defendant; and finally, that “Hurricane” Carter was a truthful man.

One problem that bedeviled Paterson police was that the eyewitness walking up to the Lafayette Grill when two black men emerged at two-thirty a.m. on June 17, 1966, wasn’t an insomniac Salvation Army chaplain or some other irreproachable character, but a petty thief by the name of Alfred Bello. Like Carter himself, Bello was a product of the New Jersey juvenile detention system, a multiple felon, a high-school dropout and army washout. Both were alcoholics. Both were inveterate story-tellers. Both were up to no good that night. And by 1974, both were in a position to profit financially from the notoriety of the Lafayette Grill murders.

In the years following their testimony against Carter and Artis, Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley (Bello’s partner in crime) had never received the reward money promised by the city of Paterson. After his fifteen minutes of fame as a key eyewitness in the trial, Bello had several brushes with the law. He was at a low ebb, serving a sentence for burglary, when an investigator for the public defender’s office named Fred Hogan found him and urged him to recant his testimony against Carter. Bello obliged, and Hogan put him in touch with Selwyn Raab. Raab quoted Bello as claiming “detectives warned (Bello) that he might become a suspect in the murders unless he helped them by incriminating Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis. (Bello) said detectives referred to the two black men as ‘n-------rs, Muslims, animals and murderers.’”

But by the time the second trial rolled around, Bello recanted his recantation and returned to his original testimony.

Carter’s supporters try to discredit Bello by pointing out he’s told many different versions of what happened that night at the Lafayette. (The most dramatic version is that he was inside the bar, hiding behind one of the victims as the bullets whizzed around him). Bello, they say, was a greasy little punk who lied every time he got on the stand. Why then, do Carter’s supporters believe that there was one truthful link in his chain of lies, the version Raab published in the NYT -- that Bello was coerced by the police into framing Carter and Artis? Is there any reason, other than wishful thinking, to single this version out as the correct one? A careful examination of the known facts shows that Bello’s recanted version is false and in fact, his trial testimony, which places him outside the bar and 15 to 20 feet from the killers as they ran to their getaway car, fits the testimony of other witnesses.

Immediately after the murders -- before any policemen had a chance to put their heads together and say, “Tell you what. Forget about solving this case. Let’s frame that uppity boxer” -- Alfred Bello was seen running down the sidewalk, away from the Lafayette Bar, by a witness who also saw a white car fly past his window. Bello was running because he’d just come face-to-face with the murderers. Luckily for him they had emptied their guns into their victims in the bar and they elected to jump in their car and leave, rather than chase him with weapons in their hands and the incriminating vehicle double parked outside the murder scene.

Moments later, Bello ran back to the bar, where he was seen by Patty Valentine, who lived upstairs and was awakened by the shots. (She saw two black assailants leave in a white car). He stepped over the body of bartender James Oliver, grabbed money from the cash register and went to the pay phone to call police. Then he ran down the street with the stolen money to his partner, Arthur Dexter Bradley. He then ran back to the bar to meet the police. As he ran back, he again saw Patty Valentine and she saw him and they both independently described this to police. When the police arrived, he described the getaway car -- a new, white car with out-of-state plates with butterfly-shaped taillights. (It was this description that sent Sergeant Theodore Capter and his partner back out on the empty streets of Paterson to apprehend “Hurricane” Carter, whom they had stopped and let go moments before, in a new, white car with out-of-state plates and butterfly-shaped taillights.) Bello also told police at that time that the killers were carrying a pistol and a shotgun, a fact confirmed later by ballistic tests.

In his revised version for the NYT, Bello told Raab that he’d been pressured by the police, chiefly Lieutenant Vincent DeSimone, to implicate Carter and Artis. This doesn’t fit the known facts either. In the hours following the murders, DeSimone accused Bello of having been up to no good (and the veteran detective was right. Bello was the look-out man for a burglary that night). DeSimone’s zeal nearly cost him Bello’s testimony, because Bello then refused to speak to DeSimone. When Bello left the police station, after having described Carter in all but name, he went to his friend’s apartment and exclaimed, “Rubin Carter just shot up the whole bar!”

In the weeks following the murders, while police dragged the river for the murder
weapons and the mayor posted a reward, Bello kept quiet. He was afraid of Carter, who was said to have friends in the militant fringe Black Muslim community. His fear was by no means fanciful (see Carter's reputation, below). Carter himself had been twice arrested for public brawling, had a conviction for three violent muggings, and he’d openly boasted to sports reporters on several occasions about other violent criminal acts he’d committed. Bello’s fear of being charged for robbery, plus his fear of Carter, was at odds with his desire for the fame and financial reward that would come to him when he stepped forward to solve Paterson’s hottest unsolved murder mystery.

A month after the murders, Bello was approached by an off-duty detective in a strip joint. They started talking. “You had the man and you let him go,” Bello finally allowed. Three months later, Bello wanted to go into protective custody because of threats he’d allegedly received from Carter’s friends. He finally met with DeSimone, who surreptitiously taped the conversation. On the tape, Bello asks for help with his parole violation but DeSimone says he can’t make specific promises. DeSimone does promise to forget about the attempted break-in that night. No one uses the n-word. Bello finally names Carter. Detectives then visited Arthur Dexter Bradley, who was at that point in jail, awaiting trial on charges of armed robbery, and he too, allowed that he knew it was Rubin "Hurricane" Carter that night at the Lafayette Grill.

Bello’s account at the first trial fit the known facts, his recantation did not. Bello and Bradley’s initial testimonies fit together, their recantations did not. If Bello was lying from the beginning about what happened that night, then a dozen or more other people had to be liars, too, and had to have crafted their lies within hours of the murders. This was why Judge Samuel Larner turned down Carter’s appeal for a new trial in 1974 -- because Bello and Bradley’s recantations lacked “the ring of truth.”

Raab’s dramatic scoop turned out to be a red herring.

By the time of the second trial, as noted, Bello appeared again as a witness for the prosecution. (Neither the prosecution or the defense wanted anything to do with Arthur Dexter Bradley by this point, he was in prison again and had serious addiction problems). The prosecution, led by Burrell Ives Humphreys, a civil rights lawyer and member of the NAACP, contended that Rubin Carter’s supporters, far from uncovering a police scandal, had bribed Bello to change his story, with an eye to possible future book and movie deals. An excerpt from the prosecutor’s brief lays out the story:

“Alfred Bello explained how he was visited in jail by (Fred) Hogan, Raab and (television reporter Hal) Levinson who were soliciting his recantation. Bello said that Hogan offered him money if he would recant. Hogan told him he had a "piece" of Rubin Carter’s book and that Bello could get a "piece" if he recanted.”

The prosecution discovered that Carter had indeed given Fred Hogan the $10,000 advance he’d received for writing The 16th Round.

“(Fred) Hogan’s original notes (of his meeting with Bello) state that Alfred Bello would testify for the highest bidder and that $20,000 was mentioned....

The prosecution also contended that Hal Levinson had informed Selwyn Raab of this fact...

“Hal Levinson’s diary.... noted at least 30 conversations with Hogan in the
five month period ending in August of 1974.... (Levinson) testified that Selwyn Raab was his superior and that, during this investigation, he reported to Mr. Raab and kept him "closely advised" Hal Levinson’s diary showed.... a reference that Bello could cut Carter loose for $20,000.”

In addition to the diary, Levinson testified that he had “no doubt” that he had discussed Bello’s willingness to recant for a bribe, with Selwyn Raab. The prosecutor then asked Levinson:

Question: And you didn’t advise anybody in law enforcement about that $10,000 to $20,000, did you? $10,000 to $20,000, did you?

Answer: No, sir.

Question: And when you later reported on this story, you didn’t write that, did you, sir?

Answer: No.

This interesting bit of courtroom dialogue never made it onscreen for the movie, The Hurricane, released in 1999. We only learn that Carter and Artis lost their second trial. In a highly critical article published just after the movie’s release, Raab wrote that the film exaggerated the efforts of the Carter supporters known as “the Canadians” and minimized the efforts of crusading journalists like himself. He repeated Bello’s discredited allegations against DeSimone, even though a jury found the charges to have no merit. But he doesn’t mention the allegation that casts discredit on Raab himself, that Raab was supposedly aware that Fred Hogan offered Bello a bribe to recant his testimony.

Carter's prison reputation

"Bello feels certain at this time that his life is in danger," according to the police report that explained why Al Bello waited for four months before naming Carter as the one he'd seen fleeing the scene of the crime. Bello, like Carter, was a product of the New Jersey correctional system. They'd both been to Bordentown and Annandale. Bello knew Carter's fearsome reputation. Bello knew Carter had friends in and out of prison and he only had to say the word....

Carter's reputation is confirmed by, of all people, the Canadians. In their book, Lazarus & the Hurricane, they actually boast about it:

Rubin sent out a message through one of the Bordentown prisoners who had been temporarily moved into Trenton [prison]. He told him to spread the word that if anyone laid a hand on [a prisoner Carter was protecting], they would have to answer to the Hurricane. Nowhere in the prison system would they be safe. Rubin's reputation was legendary. He had only to open his mouth in displeasure and drastic things would ensue, as the Canadians were soon to find out.

Later, Carter gets annoyed with another prisoner who is hogging the telephones:

Rubin.... made his displeasure known to another prisoner who happened to be standing near the phones... [t]hat evening, the "whacked out" prisoner's cell was burned out. Luckily, he wasn't at home at the time. Not only was his cell now uninhabitable, but the authorities said his safety was in jeopardy.