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Whatever transpired, by New Year's Day Matthew reportedly become distraught and worn down. At Reardon's pub in Revere after a concert in Boston, Matthew was so depressed that a friend thought he was considering suicide. "I've got to do it, got to get it over with. I'm destroying myself," a friend recalled him saying. Matthew explained he wasn't talking about killing himself. "You don't understand. That's not what I mean. When it happens, you'll all know. The whole world will know."
Before the whole world would know, Matthew warned his family. It is still not clear what the Stuarts knew or when they knew it. According to Richard Clayman, attorney for Matthew's brother Michael, within three days of the murder Matthew confided to Michael that Charles had been involved. And Clayman, who presented four of the Stuart siblings at a press conference in his Chelsea office last Thursday, said Charles may have approached Michael weeks before Carol Stuart's death in an unsuccessful effort to enlist him in the murder plot.
On Tuesday, Jan. 2, Michael telephoned his half sister Shelley Yandoli from the Revere fire department. She told him that all of Charles' siblings, including Matthew, would meet at their parents' house. Like all calls to and < from the fire station, it was recorded:
Shelley: We're going to tell Mom and Dad.
Michael: What are you going to tell them?
Shelley: We're going to tell them we know that Chuck was involved. We're not going to say that he killed her.
Michael: Yeah, right.
Shelley: O.K.
Michael: Wow.
Sometime after that family meeting, Charles learned that Matthew planned to go to the police. At around 4 p.m. on Jan. 3, a neighbor spotted Charles pulling into the driveway and going into his Harvest Road house for a few minutes. A short time later, he arrived at the office of his family's lawyer, John T. Dawley, where he spent the next three hours.
Dawley had spoken to Matthew earlier. Now he told Charles it would be a conflict to represent either of them. Dawley gave Charles a list of four defense attorneys and suggested that he go to a nearby phone booth and call one. Instead, between 9:30 and 10 o'clock that night, Stuart checked into Room 231 of the Sheraton-Tara in Braintree, a Boston suburb. The clerk remembers that he had no luggage, used a credit card and asked for a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call.
At 2 a.m. on Jan. 4, Stuart left his room and walked to a nearby all-night mini-convenience store attached to a Mobil station. The clerks, who pay attention to late-night customers out of fear they might be robbed, remember that he was dressed in a black pullover sweater with white trim and black slacks and purchased soda and a snack. "He was grinning from ear to ear," says Stephen Newcomb. "He was very up, very bubbly and very friendly, but very weird." As Stuart left the store, he turned, still smiling, and asked if the store was open all night. The attendants answered yes. "O.K.," Stuart answered. "I might see you in a while. I might get hungry again."