Patty Valentine was an important witness for the prosecution because she saw the getaway car leave the murder scene from her upstairs bedroom window. (She saw the killers jump in the car, but she was unable to identify them.) She gave a description of the getaway car to police minutes after the murders, as did Alfred Bello.

The defense, therefore, needed to attack Patty Valentine's credibility. At the second trial, the defense lawyers tried to suggest that the car seen leaving the crime scene was a Dodge Monaco, not a Polara.

But Patty Valentine never wavered in her testimony, from 1967 to today, that she saw Carter's Dodge Polara, with its distinctive tail-lights and out-of-state plates, leave the murder scene. She awoke to the sound of gunshots and a woman's screams. She jumped off the couch where she had been dozing and rushed to the window. As she later explained:

"I got a good, clear look at it as it pulled away from the murder scene. I knew something terrible had happened downstairs and that I had to remember what it looked like, so I stared at it as long as I could. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was Rubin Carter's car. I identified it outside the bar less than an hour after the murders, I identified it again in the police garage, I picked it out of a book of photos, I identified it at two trials, and I say it again today: It was Rubin Carter's car that took the killers from the Lafayette Grill."

At the second trial, the jury rejected the defense's suggestion that Patty Valentine had confused the two makes of car. They believed Valentine. Years later, the Canadians tried to revive the car issue [the idea that the getaway car was a Monaco didn't originate with them, although it was depicted that way in the movie]. The car issue had already been thoroughly discussed and thoroughly answered by the prosecution long before the Canadians came on the scene.

Patty Valentine's original police statements, grand jury testimony and testimony at the first trial is now available on line (see links lower left).

The 1966 Dodge Polara

With respect to the tail-lights, Mrs. (Patty) Valentine further explained that they did not light across the whole back of the car, that they were wide on the outside, tapering off, and not a direct triangle, since a direct triangle comes to a point and these did not, but tapered and "squared off"

-- Prosecutor's brief

"Another possibility the Canadians researched was that the car in question was not a Dodge Polara, but a Dodge Monaco. The Canadians felt the Monaco’s lights, which extended across the back of the car, were more butterfly-like than the Polara's. In the movie, (Patty) Valentine’s testimony is falsely given as "(the) taillights lit up all across the back." In real life, Valentine testified that the taillights did not light up all across the back. But little facts like that didn’t stop the producers of the movie from insisting that the car was really a Monaco."

(from the Hurricane Hoax)

1966 Dodge Monaco

Patty Valentine's identifies Carter's car as the getaway car -- excerpt from prosecutor's brief:

In her testimony, Mrs. Valentine stated that shortly after drawing the diagram [of the car's taillights] for Officer Greenough she went downstairs and saw two police cars and a white car they were escorting pull up and stop alongside the Lafayette Bar and Grill. Officer Greenough then asked her to walk to the rear of the white car to look at the taillights, which she did, and which she recognized as “the exact same taillights.” She then began to cry and ran to the front of the tavern.

At the 1976 trial, Mrs. Valentine.... drew a circle around that portion of the taillights depicted on a photograph of the white Dodge leased by defendant Carter to correspond to her testimony as to the portion of the taillights she had observed to light up. This portion of the taillights conformed to the configuration of the back of the 1966 Dodge Polara leased by Carter....

[Alfred] Bello testified that he saw that the license plate was out-of-state, New York or Pennsylvania, being orange and blue, and that the back of the car had a “funny geometric design,” sort of wide like a triangle, and it tapered in, and it was shorter on the end part, and both ends of it lit up when it hit its light. The car itself was white, highly polished, brand new.

Did Patty Valentine's testimony change over the years?

Carter's supporters contend that Patty Valentine wasn't sure about Carter's car at the first trial, but "hardened" her testimony, as a result of police coaching or bribery, for the second trial. By selectively quoting and misrepresenting her testimony, they create the false impression that Patty Valentine wasn't sure about whether Carter's car looked the same as the getaway car at first, then grew more insistent over time. But in fact, from the morning of the crime, on June 17,1966, Patty Valentine was certain that Carter's Dodge Polara was the car she'd seen leaving the Lafayette Grill at 2:30 a.m.

The Canadians' depiction of Valentine's testimony is misleading and inaccurate. Her actual testimony is now on the internet -- and it shows why she was such a powerful witness for the prosecution and why Carter's supporters tried to discredit her in any way they could, including making snide remarks about her morals (she was an unwed mother at the time of the crime).

Grand Jury testimony

In her Grand Jury testimony, Patty Valentine did use the word "Monaco." She later explained that she wasn't that familiar with car makes and models.

Patty Valentine sues Bob Dylan

After Bob Dylan's Hurricane song came out, Patty Valentine unsuccessfully tried to sue the rock legend, because his song implied that she was a party to a conspiracy to frame an innocent man.