The Empire State’s Big Hoax
When a Gadfly Went from Grifter to Cable Channel Star
Today was the 35th anniversary of a major event in the state of New York. It involved one of the current stars of cable channel MSNBC. Strangely, the network did not celebrate the momentous occasion at any time during its programming day. (We're taking a gamble it won't merit a mention during the final three hours of the evening.)
On November 28, 1987, just two days after Thanksgiving, a 15-year-old girl was found by police wrapped in a trash bag in Wappingers Falls, New York, about a ninety-minute drive north of New York City. She was filthy. Her clothes were burned and torn. She was covered in feces and had racial slurs written on her. Tawana Brawley had been missing for four days when she was found. She told authorities she had been held in a wooded area for several days where she was repeatedly raped by a gang of white men including a police officer.
A sexual assault examination of Brawley was conducted, but medical authorities came up with startling results. There was no evidence a sexual assault had occurred. Nor was there any evidence Brawley had been exposed to the below-freezing elements that were present when she claimed to have been in the woods for several days. Her family had not filed a missing-person report on the teen girl. She had recently brushed her teeth. Forensic evidence suggested she wrote the racial slurs on her body, as they were written upside down. There was even a report she was sighted at a party during the time she claimed to have been abducted.
Her story appeared fabricated.
Because there were allegations of police involvement, Democratic New York Governor Mario Cuomo appointed State Attorney General Robert Abrams as a special prosecutor to investigate the claims. A grand jury was convened in February 1988 to look into the matter.
Al Sharpton, a political gadfly in New York, immediately became Brawley’s advisor. Sharpton would later gain a national reputation as a race-baiting hustler who would make outrageous claims of racist behavior. Joining him as advisor were a pair of controversial attorneys, Alton Maddox, Jr. and C. Vernon Mason. The Tawana Brawley case quickly devolved into a circus-like atmosphere.
After early statements to police, both Brawley and her parents, on the advice of Sharpton and the attorneys, refused to participate further in an investigation. Although Brawley and her family were not speaking, Sharpton and the two lawyers were doing plenty of talking.
According to the trio of Brawley advisors, groups conspiring with state and local officials to cover up the involvement of a white police officer and others were the Irish Republican Army, Ku Klux Klan, and the Mafia. The episode got more bizarre by the day.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan spoke to a group of one thousand protestors chanting, “Death to the KKK.”[1] “When the courts won’t find a white man guilty for a crime he committed, then we try them. Then we execute them,” he exhorted.[2] Filmmaker Spike Lee included an image of a graffiti message reading, “Tawana told the truth,” in one of his films. Poet Amiri Baraka told a rally, “The police, prominent people, raped Tawana.”[3]
Sharpton and the attorneys began soliciting contributions on behalf of the families. Reportedly, thousands of dollars were mailed to the advisors. There was no public accounting of how much money was raised or how it was spent.
A couple of days after Brawley’s discovery, part-time Fishkill, New York, police officer Harry Crist Jr., committed suicide. That officer, Sharpton and others suggested, was involved in the alleged abduction and rape. Fortunately, Crist had an alibi. Steven Pagones was the assistant district attorney for Dutchess County. Pagones explained that he and two other men were with Crist shopping in Danbury, Connecticut, during the time period in question. Additionally, Crist explained his own suicide by leaving a note that stated he was upset over the breakup with his girlfriend earlier in the day, and he was despondent over his failure to get hired as a state trooper.
Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason countered that Pagones was lying. The three claimed Pagones was a racist and one of the alleged rapists. In short order, people began stalking Pagones at work and at home. They screamed obscenities at him in public. He received threatening telephone calls. People following Sharpton’s lead insisted Pagones was involved in the alleged sexual assault. However, a criminal investigation produced sixty witnesses who could vouch for Pagones’s whereabouts during the four days of the alleged abduction.
Perry McKinnon joined the team of Sharpton and the lawyers in January 1988 and quit a few months later. McKinnon was a former police officer who wanted to assist Brawley. He came forward in June and said Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason knew Brawley concocted her story from the very beginning. The allegations were a “pack of lies,” McKinnon claimed. The goal of Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason was an attempt to build their reputations, according to McKinnon. He quoted Sharpton as saying, “We beat this, we will be the biggest n*****s in New York.”[4]
After her initial interview, Brawley and her family refused to cooperate with investigators. Her mother, Glenda Brawley, was sentenced to thirty days in jail in June 1988 for refusing to testify at a grand jury hearing. Glenda Brawley evaded arrest for weeks before finally fleeing New York State with Tawana and the rest of their family.
The grand jury overruled State Attorney General Robert Abrams and voted to subpoena Tawana Brawley to appear before panel. Abrams had argued against it.[5] Brawley was subpoenaed but refused to appear.
A final report was issued by the grand jury in October 1988. The grand jury reached the conclusion that Brawley’s allegations were fabricated because Brawley was fearful of getting into trouble for leaving home for several days. The four days she was away from home included a visit to her incarcerated boyfriend. She told a witness she was afraid of her mother’s live-in boyfriend, Ralph King, who previously punished her for misbehaving, including staying out all night and skipping school.
King once tried to beat Tawana at a police station after she was arrested for shoplifting. The temper-prone King had served seven years in prison for murdering his wife, Wanda Ann, by shooting her in the head four times in 1970.[6]
The grand jury took the rare step of also exonerating Pagones of any involvement in the Tawana Brawley incident. The attack on his reputation and the harassment he endured led Pagones to file a defamation lawsuit against Brawley, Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason in order to set the matter straight. Ten years would pass before he would get his day in court.
In the months-long defamation trial, television pundit Geraldo Rivera arrived at the courthouse as a defense witness for Sharpton. Rivera was barred from testimony because he did not have any information relevant to the defamation claims. He arrived because he wanted to defend Sharpton. “I believe history will ultimately regard him as one of the great civil-rights leaders in America,” he told a media outlet.[7]
The jury found Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones. Maddox made two, and Mason made one.[8]
Brawley lost her defamation case by default in 1991 when she refused to participate in any of the legal proceedings. The jury awarded Pagones more than $500,000 in damages to be paid by Brawley, Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason.
Brawley fled to Virginia and dropped out of sight for several years. Maddox had his law license suspended over his role in the affair. Mason was later disbarred and became a Baptist minister. Sharpton made a couple of failed runs for elected office and then was hired as a television host by MSNBC.
Mark Hyman is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, and Parler at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.
His books Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation and Pardongate: How Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Brothers Profited from Pardons are on sale now (here and here).
[1] “1,000 March to Protest Racial Violence,” Associated Press, December 12, 1987.
[2] Robert D. McFadden, Outrage: The Story Behind the Tawana Brawley Hoax, (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), 137.
[3] McFadden, Outrage, 334.
[4] Ford Fessenden, “Ex-Sharpton Aide is Subpoenaed; Advisers Labeled ‘Frauds,’” New York Newsday, June 16, 1988.
[5] “Grand Jury Decides to Subpoena Brawley,” Chicago Tribune, August 16, 1988.
[6] McFadden, Outrage, 93-95.
[7] Gersh Kuntzman, “‘Tawana Brawl’ Judge KOs Geraldo,” New York Post, June 18, 1998
[8] “Winner in Brawley Suit Says Victory is Bittersweet,” CNN.com, July 14, 1998, accessed December 2, 2017, https://archive.li/ksYLE.