Last May, Ava DuVernay shed new light on the 30-year-old case of the Central Park Five with her Netflix miniseries, When They See Us. The scripted series is based on the true story of the "Central Park Five," a group of five teenagers wrongly accused and convicted of a crime they didn't commit. Now, they're known as the "Exonerated Five," since the real assailant was found in 2002.
Over the past two weeks, the miniseries has become one of Netflix's most-watched shows , won a Peabody award , and celebrated its one-year anniversary.
But before that, DuVernay's production company, Array Now, launched Array 101 , an educational resource for viewers of When They See Us, to help understand the historical context and work through their emotional responses to it. "So many people came up to me and were like, 'I cried' and 'I couldnt finish it,'" the director told Gayle King when discussing Array 101. "I think what I failed to do and many people in Hollywood failed to do and other people failed to do was connect the dots between the thing you make and the people who are watching it, particularly young people."
The show is an emotional one, because the case was a highly-publicized example of how systemic racism and implicit bias led to the boys' wrongful conviction and incarcerationwhich happens with startling frequency. ( The Innocence Project exists for this very reason.)
DuVernay signed on to direct the film after connecting with Raymond Santana, one of the Exonerated Five, over Twitter. "I was familiar with the story from growing up, but also Id watched the Sarah Burns documentary [about it]. In his DMs, I said, 'No one has your story?' And he said, 'No,'" DuVernay told Rolling Stone. "I was just fascinated by the case, not really thinking Id ever make a film. But once I met him and then gradually met all of the other men, I felt like I had to make it."
Before you tune in to the show, here's everything you need to know about the real Central Park Five:
Who are the Central Park Five?
In 1989, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana Jr., and Korey Wise (who later changed his name to Kharey) were in Central Park on April 19the night a white female jogger, Trisha Meili , was raped and severely beaten. All five were Black or Latinx teenagers from Harlem between the ages of 14 and 16.
What happened to the Central Park Five?
Simply put, they were wrongly accusedand convictedof raping and beating Meili, then a 28-year-old investment banker who fell into a coma after the attack. When she woke up, she had no memory of the sexual assault. By that time, prosecutors had already interrogated McCray, Richardson, Salaam, Santana Jr., and Wise, and coerced false confessions from four of the five teenagers, according to the Exonerated Five's lawyers.
The last teenager, Yusef Salaam, might have confessed, too, if his mother had not interrupted the interrogation before he could sign a formal statement, The New York Times reported. Still, the court allowed a detective to testify that Salaam had confessed to taking part in the attack.
Why did the Central Park Five confess to a crime they didn't commit?
It happensa lot, actually. According to the Innocence Project , 28 percent of wrongful conviction cases that are exonerated using DNA evidence in the U.S. involve false confessions. That percentage jumps to 33 percent when the false confessors are 18 years old or younger at the time of arrest. (Btw, the Innocence Project helped the Central Park Five get exonerated.)
According to The New York Times, the teenagers were interrogated for hours on end, with no lawyers present and often without the presence of a parent or guardian, either. The publication also reported that "they were denied food, drink, and sleep over many hours."
The young men were all led to believe that they only had one way outtelling the police what they wanted to hear. So McCray, Richardson, Santana Jr., and Wise all gave statements admitting to being present at the attack, but blaming others for the sexual assault. They believed saying this would not incriminate them (it did).
Watch the When They See Us cast talk about their real-life counterparts:
As for Meili, she doesn't believe that the prosecutors did anything wrong in their initial interrogation and conviction of the Central Park Five. "When that lawsuit was settled, it gave some the impression that the detectives and the prosecutors had acted improperly, and Id like to see it be acknowledged that there wasnt a violation of [the teens'] civil rights," she told the New York Daily News in 2018.
"I so wish the case hadn't been settled," Meili also told ABC News' 20/20 in January 2019. "I wish that it had gone to court because there's a lot of information that's now being released that I'm seeing for the first time. I support the work of law enforcement and prosecutors. ... They treated me with such dignity and respect."
Where are the Central Park Five now?
Salaam is now married and lives in another state with his wife and their 10 children (a blended family), The Root reported in 2018. Meanwhile, Santana Jr. lives in Atlanta with his daughter and works as a fashion designer, which often brings him back to New York.
Richardson, along with Salaam and Santana Jr., attended their former high school, Bronx Preparatory High School's, 2017 commencement to receive honorary diplomas, per The New York Times . "When we went to prison, this was taken away from us," Santana said at the time. "It was something we never got to experience. You felt like you were being robbed, and weve finally found redemption."
Little to nothing is publicly known about the current whereabouts of McCray and Wise (though they both did receive their honorary diplomas by mail). According to a 2013 interview with Wise, he currently lives in the Bronx and speaks on behalf of the Innocence Project at events.