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Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (May 6, 1937 – April 20, 2014) was an American-Canadian middleweight boxer, wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for murder, until released following a petition of habeas corpus after almost 20 years in prison. In 1966, Carter, and his co-accused, John Artis, were arrested for a triple homicide which was committed at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, United States. Shortly after the killings at 2:30 am, a car, carrying Carter, Artis, and a third man, was stopped by police outside the bar while its occupants were on their way home from a nearby nightclub. They were allowed to go on their way but, after dropping off the third man, Carter and Artis were stopped and arrested while they were passing the bar a second time, 45 minutes later. Carter and Artis were interrogated for 17 hours, released, then re-arrested weeks later. In 1967, they were convicted of all three murders, and given life sentences, to be served in Rahway State Prison; a retrial in 1976 upheld their sentences, but they were overturned in 1985. Prosecutors appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but declined to try the case a third time after the appeal failed. Carter's autobiography, titled The Sixteenth Round, written while he was in prison, was published in 1974 by Viking Press. The story inspired the 1975 Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" and the 1999 film The Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington as Carter. From 1993 to 2005, Carter served as executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (later rebranded as Innocence Canada). In 2019, the case was the focus of a 13-part BBC podcast series, The Hurricane Tapes. The series was based on interviews which were conducted with survivors, case notes which were taken during the original investigations, and 40 hours of recorded interviews of Carter by the author Ken Klonsky, who cited them in his 2011 book The Eye of the Hurricane. Early life Carter was born in Clifton, New Jersey in 1937, the fourth of seven children. He later admitted to a troubled relationship with his father, a strict disciplinarian; at the age of eleven, he was sentenced to a juvenile reformatory for assault, having stabbed a man who he alleged had tried to sexually assault him. Carter escaped from the reformatory in 1954 and joined the United States Army. A few months after completing basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, he was sent to West Germany. While in Germany, Carter began to box for the Army. He was discharged in 1956 as unfit for service, after four courts-martial. Shortly after his discharge, he returned home to New Jersey, was convicted of two muggings and sent to prison. Boxing career After his release from prison in September 1961, Carter became a professional boxer. At 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m), Carter was shorter than the average middleweight, but he fought all of his professional career at 155–160 lb (70–72.6 kg). His aggressive style and punching power (resulting in many early-round knockouts) drew attention, establishing him as a crowd favorite and earning him the nickname "Hurricane". After he defeated a number of middleweight contenders—such as Florentino Fernandez, Holley Mims, Gomeo Brennan, and George Benton—the boxing world took notice. The Ring first listed him as one of its Top 10 middleweight contenders in July 1963. At the end of 1965, they ranked him as the number five middleweight. He fought six times in 1963, winning four bouts and losing two. He remained ranked in the lower part of the top 10 until December 20, when he surprised the boxing world by flooring past and future world champion Emile Griffith twice in the first round and scoring a technical knockout. That win resulted in The Ring's ranking of Carter as the number three contender for Joey Giardello's world middleweight title. Carter won two more fights (one a decision over future heavyweight champion Jimmy Ellis) in 1964, before meeting Giardello in Philadelphia for a 15-round championship match on December 14. Carter landed a few solid rights to the head in the fourth round that left Giardello staggering, but was unable to follow them up, and Giardello took control of the fight in the fifth round. The judges decided unanimously in favor of Giardello. After that fight, Carter's ranking in The Ring began to decline. He fought nine times in 1965, winning five but losing three of four against contenders Luis Manuel Rodríguez, Dick Tiger, and Harry Scott. Tiger, in particular, floored Carter three times in their match. "It was", Carter said, "the worst beating that I took in my life—inside or outside the ring". During his visit to London to fight Scott, Carter was involved in an incident in which a shot was fired in his hotel room. Carter's last fight was in August 5, 1966, against Juan Carlos Rivero. He lost the fight via Points decision. Carter's career ended short with a record of 27 wins with 19 total knockouts (8 KOs and 11 TKOs), 12 losses, and one draw in 40 fights. He received an honorary championship title belt from the World Boxing Council in 1993 (as did Joey Giardello at the same banquet) and was later inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame. Arrest and conviction At approximately 2:30 AM on June 17, 1966, two men entered the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, and began shooting. The bartender, James Oliver, and a customer, Fred Nauyoks, were killed immediately. Hazel Tanis died in a hospital a month later, having suffered multiple wounds from shotgun pellets; a third customer, Willie Marins, survived the attack, despite a head wound that blinded him in one eye. When questioned, both told police the shooters had been black males, but neither identified Carter or John Artis. Ten minutes after the murders, around 2:40 AM, a police cruiser stopped Carter and Artis in a rental car, returning from a night out at the Nite Spot, a nearby bar. Carter was in the back, with Artis driving, and a third man, John Royster, in the passenger seat. The police recognised Carter, a well-known and controversial local figure, but let him go. Minutes later, the same officers solicited a description of the getaway car from two eyewitnesses outside the bar, Patricia "Patty" Valentine and Alfred Bello. Bello later admitted he was in the area acting as a lookout while an accomplice, Arthur Bradley, broke into a nearby warehouse. At the time, he claimed to have discovered the bodies when he entered the bar to buy cigarettes; it also transpired that he took the opportunity to empty the cash register, and encountered the police as he exited. At the trial, he testified he was approaching the Lafayette when two black males, one with a shotgun, the other a pistol, came around the corner. He ran from them, and they got into a white car that was double-parked near the Lafayette. Valentine lived above the bar, and heard the shots. Like Bello, she reported seeing two black men leave the bar, then get into a white car. They re.... Discover the Ken Klonsky popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ken Klonsky books.