One mom said she especially missed her son in the evening when she could hear “his basketball bouncing, bouncing, as he walked home from the park.”
The boys, who became known as the Clinton Avenue 5, seemed to have vanished from a Newark street in 1978, according to The Associated Press, but evidence recently surfaced allowing the case to finally be brought to a close. An aunt of one of the boys responded: The arrests are a “bittersweet victory,” she told reporters.
All five of the deceased were last seen with a carpenter who often hired teens for odd jobs.
One of the arrested, Lee Evans, who is also black, was initially cleared in the investigation but was arrested yesterday, police told the Star-Ledger. It was uncovered that Evans and an accomplice forced the teens into a building at gunpoint, locked them in and burned it to the ground, said sources, who didn’t reveal a motive. –gerald radford
