Weds, March 8 at 7:00 PM on Zoom – The Combat Zone is a true account of a brutal murder, two flawed trials and the not so delicate balance between justice and revenge. It tells the story of an annual Harvard ritual that sent forty football players into Boston’s crime-plagued red light district for a “last drink, together,” and the death of a heroic 21-year old cornerback who tries to save a friend.
Three Black men are charged with first degree murder in a racially divided city at the peak of busing violence. The book tells story of a victim’s family trying to cope with a devastating loss, while verdicts seesaw, and the Italian mob offers to step in.
The 1976 murder and the city’s two trials will forever change the way juries are chosen in Massachusetts and the nation, and end the once common practice of excluding jurors based on the color of their skin. But it comes at a high price for Andy Puopolo and all those who grieve.
The Combat Zone shows how a murder trial isn’t always about the victim or the accused, but about a city in turmoil and a criminal justice system in need of reform.
Co-sponsored by the Wayland Free Public Library and the Wayland Human Rights, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee.
Jan Brogan has been a journalist for more than thirty years, working as a correspondent for the Boston Globe, a staff writer for the Worcester Telegram and the Providence Journal, where she won the Gerald Loeb award for distinguished business writing.
She is the award-winning author of four mysteries, Final Copy, Confidential Source, Yesterday’s Fatal, and Teaser. Transactional Pictures, (Steven Soderbergh and Philip Fleishman) purchased the rights to A Confidential Source, which is currently under development for a television series.
Jan grew up in Clifton, New Jersey, and moved to New England to study journalism at Boston University. She holds a master’s degree in English from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She continues to work as a novelist and a journalist, and teaches writing at the BU Summer Journalism Institute. She lives with her husband in a Boston suburb.