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But some of Matthew's story raised a new set of unanswered questions. How could Charles, suffering from such a severe wound, pass a heavy bag to Matthew? How could Matthew, as he claimed, not have seen his sister-in-law's body slumped in the front seat of the car? Even his motive for going to the police seemed in doubt. Matthew's attorney asserted that he came forward out of concern that an innocent man might be prosecuted for Carol's murder. But on Friday the Boston Herald reported that he broke only after his girlfriend informed her parents about his involvement and they in turn took her story to an attorney on the day before Christmas.
The Stuart family seemed an unlikely source for a monster like Charles to spring from. Charles and his siblings grew up in Revere, a blue-collar, predominantly white suburb north of Boston. Charles Sr., an easy, gregarious man, tended bar at a tavern called the Dublin and often served as toastmaster at Knights of Columbus banquets. He had two daughters by his first wife. Charles Jr. was the first of four sons of a second marriage. Always attractive and popular, Charles was never much of a student. He went to Immaculate Conception school, and then Northeastern Metropolitan Regional Vocational in nearby Wakefield, a school for boys who weren't college material. He played basketball and baseball, was a member of the gourmet club. A picture in his yearbook shows him standing under a white chef's hat. He graduated in 1977 and soon got a job as a cook, first at Reardon's, a local pub owned by a cousin, and then at the Driftwood restaurant, where he met Carol DiMaiti, a dark- haired, lively waitress and the only daughter of Giusto DiMaiti, who tended bar there.
While the Driftwood was a rung on Charles' career ladder, it was just a summer job for Carol, who had been an outstanding student at Medford high school and a member of the National Honor Society. An honors graduate of Boston College, she was working at the Driftwood to help pay her way through Boston's Suffolk Law School.
A difference in aspirations and temperament did not keep them from falling in love. Carol was cheerful and outgoing, while the always smiling, ever gregarious Charles kept friends guessing about what he was really thinking. On Oct. 13, 1985, they were married.
By then, Charles had become general manager of Kakas furs. He had lied on his application, saying he had won an athletic scholarship to Brown University (which awards none), but the managers were so impressed by Stuart's composure and charm that they would have hired him anyway. Stuart seemed to enjoy his job, or at least the things his eventual $100,000-a-year salary could buy. The Stuarts purchased a slate-blue clapboard house in suburban Reading. In the back was a heated pool that the Stuart brothers, a world away in dingy Revere, loved to use. Several times Carol invited co-workers from Cahners Publishing, where she worked as a lawyer, for weekend pool parties. To neighbors, the Stuarts were a devoted couple, jogging together around a nearby lake, kissing each other at the door as they went off to work each morning. Colleagues recalled that Carol always ended her frequent phone calls to her husband by saying she loved him. Carol's brother Carl called the marriage the "perfect relationship."