In 1981, author Alice Sebold was violently raped in Syracuse, New York, leading to the wrongful conviction of Anthony Broadwater, who spent decades imprisoned and registered as a sex offender before being exonerated in 2021. A ProPublica investigation reveals that Broadwater's tragedy was the result of systemic failures, where Syracuse police and university officials actively suppressed a local rape epidemic and ignored a prolific serial rapist who matched the attacker's description. This case underscores the devastating consequences of junk forensic science, prosecutorial overreach, and institutional self-preservation in the U.S. justice system.
**EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!**
**THE TRAGEDY OF THORNDEN PARK!**
**COPS SLEEP AS MONSTER PROWLS THE SALT CITY!**
*Innocent Doughboy Sent Up the River on Bum Rap While Campus High-Hats Hush Up the Horrors!*
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**SYRACUSE, N.Y.** — It’s a tale to curdle the blood and make the honest citizen lock his doors! A drama of a dazed college doll, a lazy flatfoot, a framed-up leatherneck, and a whispering campaign of silence by the high-and-mighty of Syracuse University! For forty-odd years, the truth lay buried under a mountain of police hokum, but today the wraps are off!
### THE MIDNIGHT AMBUSH AND THE FIVE-HOUR SHAMUS
It was the dark night of May 8, 1981, when young Alice Sebold, an eighteen-year-old co-ed with stars in her eyes and poetry in her head, was snatched by a brute in the shadows of Thornden Park. The fiend beat her head against the bricks, choked her, and did her the dirtiest deed a brute can do.
The next morning, the poor canary was practically unconscious in a hospital cot, her skull rattled, her body broken, pumped full of the powerful drug Demerol to stop the screaming pain. Enter Detective George Lorenz—a burly, seventeen-year veteran of the force who used to slice beef as a butcher before he wore the copper’s star. Did he hunt the monster? Did he scour the avenues? Baloney!
The big gumshoe seemed sore that the dazed doll couldn’t keep her eyes open. "Stick to the facts," he barked like a drill sergeant. Five measly hours after getting the case, Lorenz wrote it off as "inactive" and went to lunch.
### THE FINGER OF DOOM AND THE FLIM-FLAM LINEUP
The co-ed went back to campus, her nerves wound up like a cheap clock. In October, she spotted a fellow on the street. Her heart hit her ribs. "That’s the brute!" she gasped.
The coppers pinched Anthony Broadwater, a twenty-year-old ex-Marine who worked a telephone racket. Broadwater screamed his innocence to the high heavens. He gave ’em his hair, he agreed to a lineup—anything to beat the wrap.
But the lineup was a dirty frame-up from the word go! Broadwater looked nothing like the other bums they corralled. When the doll looked through the glass, she got flustered and pointed her finger at the *wrong fellow*—a guy Broadwater had begged to be put in the lineup to make it fair!
Any honest flatfoot would have thrown the case in the ashcan. But Assistant District Attorney Gail Uebelhoer—a lady lawyer who wanted a win more than the truth—whispered sweet hokum to the frightened girl. "They played a shell game on you, sister," she lied, claiming the two men were dead ringers who ran a hustle together. The grand jury swallowed the yarn hook, line, and sinker.
### THE "GARBAGE MAN" AND THE JURYLESS CIRCUS
When the trial rolled around, the state brought out their heavy artillery: William Mastine, a six-foot-six legal gladiator they called the "Garbage Man" because he could take a pile of garbage and turn it into a conviction.
The defense, terrified of a mob-minded jury, asked for a bench trial. But the judge had a soft heart for the weeping damsel, even cozying up to her during recess to ask about her folks!
The prosecution’s "evidence" was pure moonshine. Just a single strand of hair under a microscope. The lab expert swore it was "consistent"—which only meant it belonged to a Black man, of which there were twenty-seven million in the country!
The trial was a sham. The lady prosecutor even took the stand herself to trash the lineup! In a flash, the judge banged his gavel. Guilty! Broadwater was sentenced to eight-and-a-third to twenty-five years in the Big House.
### THE REAL GHOUL APOLOGIZES
While poor Broadwater was cracking rocks and dodging shivs in the state pen—wrapping his torso in *National Geographic* magazines just to keep from getting punctured—the *real* terror of Thornden Park was still stalking the campus greens!
Just nine days after the gavel fell on Broadwater, another jogger was dragged into the park’s bushes and brutally assaulted. The description matched Thomas Weakfall—a sixteen-year-old hoodlum with a twisted soul.
Detective Paul Clapper got Weakfall to sing. The kid confessed to five brutal rapes. He’d break into a doll’s house, threaten her with a blade, violate her, and then—the strangest twist of all—wrap her in a blanket, hold her, and weep, "I’m sorry, sister." It was the exact same routine Sebold’s attacker had used!
But the flatfoots bungled the pinch! They took Weakfall’s confession without his mouthpiece in the room. The confession was ruled out, and the savage walked away with mere probation! He would strike again and again, even raping Sebold’s own roommate in their shared apartment in 1983, before finally getting sent up the river for other outrages in 1985.
### THE UNIVERSITY’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET
Why did the coppers let a serial fiend run wild? Because the high-hats at Syracuse University put their squealing wheels in motion!
Old police records had "NO PRESS" scrawled across them in big, bold letters. The university didn’t want the rag sheets telling the world that their beautiful campus was a hunting ground. They wanted the greenbacks from wealthy parents to keep rolling in. Even when Michael Holm—the blue-blooded grandson of a university trustee—was caught red-handed raping a co-ed, they let him cop a plea to simple "burglary" to keep the family name out of the mud!
### THE HOLLYWOOD SHAMUS CLEARS THE SLATE
Decades rolled by. Sebold became a famous scribe, writing her memoirs of the attack in a book called *Lucky* that sold a million copies. But when Hollywood picture-makers came snooping around to turn the book into a photoplay, they smelled a rat!
A private investigator named Dan Myers started digging through the old trial transcripts. He saw the frame-up for what it was. He brought in two sharp legal eagles who filed a motion to throw out the conviction.
In 2021, the district attorney stood up in court and admitted the state's great shame. Anthony Broadwater—now sixty-one, gray-haired, and walking with a cane—wept as the judge struck the shackles from his name.
### THE SHADOWS THAT NEVER FADE
Today, Broadwater has $5.5 million in state gold in his pockets, but the scars of sixteen years in the stir don't heal. "Ain't never gonna be normal," he whispers, hiding away in a quiet farmhouse.
And what of the famous scribe, Alice Sebold? The hero of the sob sisters is now the villain of the tabloids. She sits in her quiet room in San Francisco, too terrified to leave her neighborhood, staring at a three-page letter she took four years to write. It’s an apology to the man she wrongly sent to the hoosegow—a letter of deep, unending sorrow.
The files are closed, the evidence is long since burned, and the real monster’s crimes are washed away by the statute of limitations. In the Salt City, justice slept, and the innocent paid the toll!