January 11, 2006
Tom Reilly and the Southboro Car Crash: A Primer
Bostonist can hardly open the paper these days without seeing another story about Attorney General Tom Reilly's intervention in the investigation of a car crash in Southboro. Our first inclination was to tune the whole thing out and wait for it to blow over, but with each passing day, we fall further and further behind - we're getting the feeling that some time soon, we're going to find ourselves needing to know and totally unprepared, like that time in our senior year of high school we wrote a detective story on the back of our Trig. test because we didn't know any of the answers (Sorry, Mrs. Doulis). So, we decided to go back over the news and brush up on Drunken-teen-car-crash-gate (yeah, we hate the -gate suffix, but it's fun when you stick it on something long and unwieldy).
So, way back on October 13, two teenage sisters from Southboro were killed when their SUV ran into a utility pole as they returned home from a party where they may have been drinking. The Northborough police began investigating (because that's where the party happened) to see if there was any illegal furnishing of alcohol to minors, and they were apparently prevented by Worcester County DA John Conte from seeing autopsy reports of the two girls. Then, early this month, it came out that Reilly called Conte and asked him not to release the reports, purportedly to protect the family's privacy. Reilly specified that he only asked Conte to keep the reports from the media, not the investigating local police, but the fact that Christopher Murphy, the girls' father, was a contributor to Reilly's campaign (albeit, as Adam at UniversalHub points out, a minor one) meant only one thing: Commence shitstorm. Practically every day has brought a raft of articles and opinion pieces on this story, even though not much has happened (the Governor condemns the AG; the AG tearfully condemns the Governor for condemning him; etc.). Today some actual real news came out: In addition to talking with the girls' father (who contributed a paltry $300), Reilly took a call from Lycos founder and Murphy family friend Bob Davis, who actually did some real fundraising for the AG.
So what does this all amount to? Bostonist isn't sure. By now, everyone pretty much knows the girls had been drinking, so any attempt by the AG to shield the Murphys from further pain has backfired miserably. The Northborough police have decided not to charge the host of the party under the "social host" law, because the girls apparently brought their own booze to the party. That leaves the awful personal fallout for the girls' family, which is too terrible to need more elaboration by us, and the political fallout, which continues to unfold daily. The interesting thing will be to see whether Kerry Healey can make hay of this when the governor's race gets serious. As always, stay tuned.
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Rumors be happenin'
yo.
The Reilly intervention should have never happened. Drinking teens are a serious problem in Northborough. In addition, there have been many cases of parents drinking with teens. It was shown, on web pages where these two kids were at parties with parents in the background. Yes, we need a program where this permissiveness must cease. Maybe the school should give a course to the parents of drinking kids. Maybe parents should pay more attention to what the kids are doing with mind altering substances. Or maybe parents did the same during the sixties. But it really isn't the same now as it was then. A son or daughter walk out the door never to be seen again except in pieces. This is the kind of issue(s) that Reilly and Conte have raked up. Why is Berberian being left off the hook? Now folks, who is going to run with it? Who is going to fix it. Or, shall we just lift the carpet up and move on. Yes, these parents are suffering and my heart goes out to them. However, we must ask them if they, along with the complete social culture contributed to the problem. No, we do not need an answer from them. We need an answer from Reilly and Conte about their efforts to fix the problem. If they are just worried about autopsy reports being divulged then they ought not be in the jobs that they hold let alone that one of them wants to be governor. God, save us all.
Good points, all, Alex. I won't pretend to answer most of the questions you pose, but I can say that, as I understand it, Berberian (the host of the party) is off the hook because, as far as the police can determine, the girls provided their own booze. The social host law only punishes people who actually furnish alcohol to minors, not those who simply furnish a place where minors can drink their own alcohol.