The Real Truth of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter

“To DeSimone and his acolytes, two cold-blooded murderers were freed. To our system of justice, two persons, their innocence always in question, were unfairly tried and convicted.”

There are few homicide cases that engender as much controversy and divisiveness as that of the late Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and his friend, John Artis. Convicted twice of “triple murders” they claim they did not commit, both verdicts were overturned, once unanimously by the New Jersey Supreme Court and once by the Federal District Court of New Jersey. Today the murder of two patrons and a bartender at the Lafayette Grill in Paterson, N.J. on June 17, 1966, the crime of which they were accused, technically remains a cold case.

Finally we have a memoir that captures the words, deeds, and motivations that drove Carter’s principal antagonist, Vincent J. DeSimone, who was chief of detectives in Passaic County and a leading figure in Carter and Artis’ prosecution. The book was the result of an effort by DeSimone’s son, James, to bring his father’s manuscript written decades before to the public. A word of caution however, is in order. DeSimone’s memoir presumably ends in 1979, the year he passed away. Since then, information has been uncovered that —in many respects—raises many more questions that are unlikely to be satisfactorily explained.

As often is the case with any memoir, usually what is not included is more relevant and informative than what is. That is certainly the case with DeSimone’s memoir. DeSimone himself clearly anticipated this, prophetically suggesting that, “the case against them [Carter and Artis] is intriguing enough to engender speculation by those who consider themselves as modern-day ‘Sherlock Holmes.’ So I suspect in the next decade we will be hearing over and over again about so-called ‘new evidence’ discovered by the sleuth sayers…”