Trial of 3 in Rape, Beating of Central Park Jogger Opens

As three teen-age defendants sat stone-faced, a prosecutor charged Monday they were part of the gang that assaulted, raped and left for dead a woman jogger in Central Park during a night of random violence that shocked the nation a year ago.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Elizabeth Lederer told the jury of 10 men and two women that Yusef Salaam, 16, one of the defendants, allegedly confessed to detectives hours later: “It was fun.”

When the 29-year-old jogger, an investment banker, was found in a puddle of blood and mud April 20, 1989, she was barely alive, Lederer said. The jogger was bound with a blood-soaked shirt. She was thrashing and groaning. Her left eye was swollen shut. Her right eye was staring blankly. She had multiple skull fractures. Her pulse was 40. She had lost three-quarters of her blood.

“She was cold to the touch. . . . She was dying,” the prosecutor said.

“Use your common sense. Listen carefully,” she urged the jurors in opening arguments in the Central Park jogger case. “I submit to you after you hear all the evidence, these defendants are guilty of a savage attack.”

The attack by a gang of 30 young men who swept through the park randomly beating, robbing and raping people in their path added the word “wilding” to New York’s vocabulary of fear and violence. It sparked a national debate over the deeper causes of the incident as the jogger clung to life in a Manhattan hospital.

Her recovery surprised even her physicians. She has resumed jogging, returned to her job at Salomon Bros. where she has been promoted to a vice presidency. She has not been identified by news media because of the nature of the attack.

Lederer said the jogger had no memory of her assault and rape.

“Because of the severity of the injuries, she has lost any ability to recollect those hours,” the prosecutor explained.

Salaam, Raymond Santana, 16, and Antron McCray, 15, are the first of six defendants to go on trial in the case. They are charged with attempted murder, rape, assault, robbery and riot. The others will be tried later in the year.

Lederer told the jurors that statements the defendants made to detectives after the crime would play a large part in the prosecution’s presentation during the trial, which is expected to last about a month.

The prosecutor quoted McCray as telling detectives: “We charged her, everybody started hitting her and such. We grabbed her legs and such and we took turns getting on top of her.”

The tone of the defense attorneys’ arguments Monday was that the police took advantage of their clients and put words in their mouths.

“When you listen to the evidence, you will see that it does not establish the guilt of my client,” said Michael Joseph, McCray’s lawyer. He said that the wilding victims would not be able to identify their attackers.

Salaam’s lawyer, Robert Burns, indicated that the prosecution’s evidence will be inconclusive. The defense lawyers also argued that no scientific evidence directly linked their clients to the rape of the jogger.

But Lederer told the jury that statements by the defendants detail how the jogger was struck on the head by a pipe, a brick and a rock at 9:30 p.m. on April 19, and how she was gang raped.

As part of its case, the prosecution said it would call 50 witnesses, including other joggers and bicyclists who were attacked by the gang, would present medical and photographic evidence showing the extent of the jogger’s injuries when she was rushed to Metropolitan Hospital near Central Park.

Lederer told how the jogger was found by two men walking through the moonlit park at 1:30 a.m. They heard moaning, and summoned the police. In the glare of police car headlights, officers saw a shocking sight.

“They saw a young woman whose hair was matted with mud and blood,” Lederer said. “She was naked but for her jogging bra, tied up with a blood-soaked shirt that went around her neck, mouth and wrists. She lay there in the mud thrashing and groaning.”