DailyMail.com has spoken to the movie producer that helped reverse the wrong conviction of an innocent black male for raping Lovely Bones author Alice Sebold. He was fired from the Netflix adaptation of Lucky, which he claimed was glossed over the facts and made him suspicious about the case.
Sebold was attacked by a black male in 1981 while she was still a Syracuse University student. In court she incorrectly named Anthony Broadwater her rapist, even though she had previously identified a different suspect.
Although there is no evidence that Broadwater did it intentionally, Broadwater was a Marine 22 years old at the time and had no criminal records. Broadwater ended up serving 16 years of her sentence.
Broadwater, who was 38 years old at the time of his release from prison, was freed in 1998. Since then, he has lived in poverty, refusing children to his wife as he didn’t want to see them carry the stigma of Broadwater’s rape conviction. Lucky was her memoir of the rape. The Lovely Bones became her best-known book in 2002.
Broadwater was released from prison on Monday. This happened after Anthony Mucciante (a movie producer) became suspicious and hired a private detective to examine the matter. While he does not believe Sebold was raped as does everyone else, he says that he began to be suspicious about some details when he read the book.
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Timothy Mucciante (film producer) is shown here with Anthony Broadwater. Broadwater has been exonerated for raping Alice Sebold on January 31, 1981 at Broadwater’s Syracuse, New York home.
Mucciante was appointed as executive producer of Lucky. The adaptation had originally been planned for Sundance but eventually became Netflix. Your star Victoria Pedretti was chosen to portray Sebold. Karen Moncrieff (director of 13 Reasons Why) was also present. Jonathan Bronfman was the director of JoBro Productions.
Mucciante signed up in January. However, he told DailyMail.com that he soon became suspicious of the script. It didn’t seem to closely match the story for him.
“The script was excellent, but didn’t follow the book as closely as it should have. That just makes me wonder why? These are all important aspects of the book. Why is that? He said.
‘I was actually fired from the film because I was not cooperating with everyone. Some of the reports indicate that I left the film based on this but they fired me as Executive Producer and frankly I was a bit relieved.
He said that there was so much anger about these topics.
Broadwater was a male role-playing actor. In March, he called Moncrieff to tell her that he wasn’t interested in the job.
Mucciante claimed that the actor was not black. He told Moncrieff he doesn’t want the role in a movie that perpetuates the stereotype, even though that is exactly what happened with Sebold.
Victoria Pedretti (left), a Netflix actress, is best-known for her roles in You. However, she had also signed up to portray a young Alice Sebold. Karen Moncrieff was appointed the 13 Reasons Why director.
Mucciante says Moncrieff told cast members that they were going to hire a white male to perform the role. Mucciante protested as the facts clearly showed that Moncrieff was not a black rapist.
JoBro Productions turned Sebold’s book Lucky into a movie they believed would sell well at Sundance. They also hoped to eventually get it on Netflix.
He said, “I can understand that if this were a fiction piece you wouldn’t want to depict the stereotypical of a black man sexually assaulting a woman of color,”
Karen insisted that the rapist must be played by an African-American man.
“I tried to push back and the people pushed me back very hard.”
Mucciante quickly left the film and stated that this was when the alarm bells began ringing. Then he began to reexamine Lucky and compared him with the files from police investigating the case. He became suspicious.
‘Once that happened in May, when they wanted to change the assailant from black to white, all kinds of bells were ringing in my head and I realized, if this is a true story it is a travesty of justice. Although I am a lawyer by training, I worked in Wayne County’s prosecutor’s office years ago. It was difficult to see the logic in sex cases after I had read it critically.
Certainly, I don’t challenge [Alice Sebold’s] story. He said, “It’s only the prosecution of wrong man.”
A private investigator was hired by him to investigate the matter because he could not sleep at night after seeing the inconsistent information in the book.
One of the most important was that Sebold identified another man in a police line-up before identifying Broadwater in court. Sebold claimed to have’represented’ Gregory Maddison, the name she used in the book, as the rapist.
He also had a major problem with the fact that Broadwater was never brought into the investigation until Sebold, five months later after his rape, saw him on a Syracuse street. Sebold saw him and believed that he was her accomplice in rape.
Alice Sebold, age 58, was seen walking her dog Wednesday near her San Francisco house, which is worth $6 million.
Lucky was her first book. She said, “He smiled when he approached. He recognised me. He thought it was just a walk in the park. It had been a chance meeting someone on the streets. He said “Hey, girl!” “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”‘
Broadwater and the police officer both testified during trial that they had met with him to greet him, who was also a brother of his.
Sebold after publication of The Lovely Bones in 2002
He waved to him, and then he moved over to say: “Hey, don’t you know me from somewhere?”
Sebold chose the man in front of him to be her rapist, when he came into police custody.
However the police detectives then told her she had ‘failed to identify the suspect’ and the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Gail Uebelhoer, pursued the case on analysis of a public hair.
Broadwater’s public hair was consistent with hers, she argued.
Sebold identified Broadwater during the two-day, brief trial. He was then convicted by the judge. She was 18 at the time. He was 22 years old. He was 38 when he was released in 1998 after spending 16 years behind bars.
One year later she released Lucky, and then The Lovely Bones in February 2002. Lucky’s popularity grew rapidly after The Lovely Bones made an immediate success.
Lucky never used Broadwater’s real name, though Sebold did use some of the other names involved like that of ADA Gail Uebelhoer, or Sergeant Lorenz, one of the Syracuse Police Department detectives who investigated the case.
Mucciante claimed that he found this surprising and that it made the case difficult to track down once he felt suspicious.
“I thought Gregory Madison was the real name of the rapist …., but we checked the records and couldn’t find any information on him. It was getting to me.
“We checked all the towns she was living in. It drove me crazy so I reached out a former Syracuse sheriff’s detective and now private investigator.
Sebold also said that he was troubled by Uebelhoer’s descriptions of the trial.
‘The case was originally closed by the Syracuse Police Department because the police reports are… they’re not skeptical but the description of the assailant is all over the place. The police closed the case, stating that “there is no way to get a description” of the attacker.
“There was inconsistence, and that carried through… Alice had an acquaintance do a sketch. That doesn’t look like Anthony Broadwater and anybody else in the lineup.
Alice Sebold gave this 1981 lineup of black men to her. Anthony Broadwater is in fourth place, second from right. He was the next man she chose, and she was placed in fifth place. However, police told her that she had “failed to identify” the suspect. Broadwater was a confirmed suspect and Broadwater was later named by her attacker. He was not named, and the reason he was included in the lineup is still unknown.
Broadwater, who was freed from prison in 1998, has lived in the Syracuse home (left) since that time. Although he is married, he has never had any children. He didn’t wish them to be subjected to the same stigma as his rape conviction. Sebold knew that the crime for which he was wrongly convicted was what Sebold used as a way to launch her career. Sebold lives now in San Francisco in the $6 million house (right).
They don’t dispute her story. But, they ask how you can catch someone when you don’t know who that person is. The case was put aside and Gail eventually found it languishing on her desk.
“At the time in New York, sexual assault law was changing. He said that she was searching for cases which had been overlooked and that she found this one.
Alice had written that the rapist has a criminal history, which he also stated was incorrect.
Private investigator Dan Myers believes he has the identity and the name of the man who murdered Lovely Bones author Alice Sebold
Alice stated in her book that Anthony did not have a criminal history. He had no criminal records and never had been in a line-up in his whole life. He was just out of the Marines. He had just gotten out of the Marines. She encouraged him to tell this story about “they fooled me”. [on Alice]According to the book, it is true. Prosecutors don’t believe so.
Another thing that he was concerned about was Alice’s claim in the book, that Anthony had ordered a hit on her roommate two years earlier.
“I’m not saying that this was faked, but I’m still unable to understand how she would have access to that information that was so completely false,” he stated.
Other portions of his book, he stated, “are not reflected reality”. Alice wrote the article about her pubic hair. This was passed the ’17/17 match test’.
It was not stated at the trial. We can’t locate it in any reports.
He also said that he was surprised to have read the portion in which Alice describes sitting down at the table with the trial judge during the middle of the trial.
This is not what happens in real courtrooms. The victim would not be able to meet alone with the judge during the trial. It’s absurd.
He stated, “Now I don’t really know if it occurred or not, but the whole trial description, which if true is the most crazy trial,”
Broadwater is insistent that Sebold was raped, and she didn’t ‘intentionally” identify the wrong person. However, in all the years that have followed, Broadwater believes the facts were misrepresented. Broadwater was an actual man who lived a miserable existence with his wife in poverty.
‘I am not for a moment suggesting she intentionally identified the wrong man. Although she tried her best as an 18 year-old girl, I believe she reached out to him.
“This man isn’t vindictive.” “He was angry at his attorney during the 1991 trial. We made arrangements for them to meet, and he accepted our forgiveness.”
Broadwater, aged 61, was overcome with emotion and sobbed when his Syracuse judge vacated the conviction.
Broadwater is seen in court on Monday. Broadwater said he was still crying of joy and relief after his exoneration that day.
Sebold didn’t comment on Sebold’s exoneration. She also did not say if Sebold fictionalized any parts of her memoir.
Mucciante claimed that Sebold should apologize now for his actions to Broadwater.
‘He wishes she would apologize. That would be very nice from a human perspective. Maybe her management have made a statement,’ he suggested.
Dan Myers was the private investigator. The Syracuse Police Department has received his information, but have yet to confirm whether or not they will reopen the case.
“I hired him, and he did a great job. He quickly investigated the events of that evening and who was responsible. At my request, he called Anthony Broadwater to ask him: “Does he want to speak?”
Broadwater was a Syracuse pariah. Broadwater married Elizabeth, his wife after meeting her in 1997. After meeting Elizabeth in 1998, she wanted to have children but he declined her as he was not ready to let them live together.
Because of the inconsistent memoirs, producer Tim Mucciante called Myers to investigate the matter.
Mucciante says that he tried many times to appeal against the conviction, but couldn’t afford to hire adequate legal counsel.
He was freed in 1998. One of the first things he did was get a polygraph test from a private operator to try to prove his innocence.
He passed it with flying colors, and also did another polygraph in the past month, which he also passed with flying colours.
“But he didn’t have the money to pay for good counsel. We were able, through our interaction, to locate some so we created a GoFundMe.
He stated, “That’s the way it happened.”
Broadwater shared earlier this week that he had found faith in his wife since he was released from prison. He refused to consent to their having children because he didn’t want them to be ‘into this world’ while on the sex offender registry.
He stated this: “On my two hands I can count all the people who have allowed me to attend their dinners or homes. I’m not able to get past 10.” It’s extremely traumatic for me.
Numerous requests for information to Sebold, Jonathan Bronfman’s producers and Victoria Pedretti representatives were not answered on Wednesday.
Mucciante states that Broadwater plans to sue Sebold as well as the publisher.