Killing of Pregnant Woman Stirs Outrage

Outrage grew Wednesday over the robbery-killing of a pregnant suburban lawyer and the wounding of her husband, while their baby, born by Cesarean section, struggled for survival.

In housing developments, in posh hotels, in student haunts and in the streets, the talk was of the attack on Carol Stuart and her husband, Charles, who were abducted Monday night as they left a childbirth class at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Their assailant forced them to drive into the inner city area bordering the hospital. There, the assailant robbed the couple and shot Stuart in the abdomen, his 33-year-old wife in the head.

Stuart, 29, remained in critical condition Wednesday, a Boston City Hospital spokesman said.

Late in the day, Police Supt. Joseph Saia said that detectives had been able to narrow the list of suspects “down to a chosen few” after speaking to Stuart in his hospital room.

“It hit home,” Beryl Cohen, a prominent Boston attorney, said Wednesday as he made his way through the downtown shopping district, miles from the site of the crime. “It’s not a suburban story. It’s not about rich and poor. It’s not made-for-television fiction. I just called my son, who takes guitar lessons on Tremont Street (near the shooting), and told him to be careful.”

In the Mission Hill area, where police officers found the couple shot and slumped in their car, 23-year-old Anthony Stanley was standing outside a liquor store with a friend.

“The man who did it should be taken out. We got to get the death penalty back. The guy was foul. He had no heart,” Stanley said.

At a downtown cutlery store, proprietor Arthur Marks said his employees could talk about nothing but the crime and its brutality.

“It’s almost too hard to look,” the 73-year-old merchant said, “because of its enormity and the fact that it’s so needless.”

Charles Stuart, general manager of a fur store, used a car phone to call police. Family members said the telephone had been installed in Mrs. Stuart’s car after she became pregnant so she could remain in touch with her husband.

Several hours after the shooting, a son, Christopher, was born prematurely. On Wednesday, hospital spokeswomen would say only that the infant was alive.