"A Messier Story Than the Parables It Became"

"But what's striking about that editorial, published on April 26, 1989, isn't just how mightily it struggles, and fails, to explain the Central Park jogger case in real time, but how earnestly it strains to reconcile the ugly overtones of its headline—'The Jogger and the Wolf Pack'—with some of the less cooperative facts of the case. Later coverage would leave little room for doubt as to the kids' guilt, but this early piece registers some hesitation as it tackles a set of unrelated incidents that took place the week before, on the evening of April 19, 1989—the rape, and a group of young men who variously robbed and assaulted parkgoers elsewhere—that got rolled together in ways it would take decades to untangle."

Lili Loofbourow at Slate writes about the legacy of the Central Park Five.