The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 29

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1990 The Palm Beach Post SECTION Accent City divided: Boston rages over slaying ft A SI- Mm DAY IN THE LIFE OF A OCIALITE By JIM NAUGHTON Washington Post News Service REVERE, Mass. The investigators on the Dizzy Bridge stare into the Pines River as though they are expecting an answer to emerge from its waters. There are about 20 of them, peering down at low tide, as rubber-suited divers alight from patrol boats and plunge toward a bottom that has yielded a handbag. By Tuesday police had recovered a snub-nosed, nickel-plated .38 revolver. The investigators' vigil is a staple on the evening news in these parts, along with Charles and Carol Stuart's wedding portrait, photos of the couple's slate-blue suburban home and the siren-lit scene outside a Boston housing project last October.

Rescue workers arrived that night to find Carol Stuart seven months pregnant and soon to be dead, slumped in the passenger seat of the couple's car with a bullet in her head, and Charles behind the wheel with a serious wound to the abdomen. WA If you wonder what it might be like to be very wealthy, here's a look behind the scenes IIS- Photos by C.J. WALKERStaff Photographer PERFECT FIT: Mary Rubloff tries on a jacket she will buy at the Ungaro boutique in the Esplanade. Rub-loff, a former model, is the widow of developer and philanthropist Arthur Rubloff. Across the river from the investigators, in the parking lot of the Wharf Restaurant, three people cluster around a man in a Red Sox cap who hac hie hinnMtlare IIUU Hid Ullll'kUlWl X-' I trained on the bridge.

I TVia Hicf onnA a turner 1 lit. UlOiailLC lV. I the observers and the observed on this MORNING MASSAGE: Masseuse Ligia Fradi-que gives Rubloff a massage in the bedroom of Rubloff's Palm Beach villa. Afterward, Rubloff dresses, eats a light breakfast and heads out for the day. yi Carol Stuart chilly gray afternoon is telling, because until last Thursday, most everyone in the Boston area felt personally involved in the murders of Carol Stuart and Christopher, her prematurely delivered son.

But that morning, after learning that he had become the prime suspect in the case, Charles Stuart, 29, leaped to his death and left a confused and self-alienated community in his wake. Domestic intrigue The alarming story of a white couple terrorized by a black marauder was reduced to the level of domestic intrigue, yet the city could take no comfort in that because it had believed so deeply in the wrong person and expended such passion on the wrong narrative. When Stuart's body hit the surface of the Mystic River below the Tobin Bridge, the nexus of evil in this case shifted from a primarily black housing project in the Mission Hill neighborhood to the slate-blue split-level in Reading. With it shifted the burden of guilt, passed from the black community onto the white, not merely because so many people were willing to take Stuart's word over that of a black ex-convict named Willie Bennett, but because police investigated the minority community with a state-of-emergency-like zeal, engendering a fury in Mission Hill that is probably yet to play itself out. By AVA VAN de WATER Palm Beach Post Staff Writer You know what they say.

The rich are different from you and me. And the very rich are very different. How different? We wanted to know, so we spent the day with Mary Rubloff, the widow of Chicago developer and philanthropist Arthur Rubloff, who died in 1986. Last year Mary Rubloff sold their Breakers Row condo for $4.3 million a sale that broke real estate records at more than $1,000 per square foot. Four months ago she moved into a $1.3 million Mediterranean villa in the north end of Palm Beach.

She's a supporter of many charities, especially the Eye Research of Retina Foundation, cerebral palsy and the Guild for International Piano Competitions. She spends most of her time in Palm Beach but also has an apartment in New York. For Rubloff, Dec. 27 was a typical Wednesday. For most people, it would be a trip to fantasy land.

Here's how it went: 8 a.m.: Rubloff starts her day with a massage in her bedroom in front of the fireplace (the temperature outside was in the 50s), watching CBS This Morning. "Isn't that terrible about Noriega? Any criminal can escape to the Vatican," she said. She tries to relax during the massage. "This is the only exercise I get," she said. Her second-floor, sloped-roof bedroom is spacious.

Besides a bed, desk, computer and filing cabinet, there is ample room for the massage table. Built-in bookshelves line the walls. On one shelf is a baby picture in a silver frame. "That's what happened 25 years ago. That's my daughter (Felicia)," Rubloff says.

Felicia's father was actor Rod Taylor. Rubloff had met him on a blind date while living in California, but the marriage only lasted a few years. When she married Arthur Rubloff (whom she also met on a blind date) in 1980, Rubloff adopted Felicia. 9:15 a.m.: Masseuse Ligia Fradique leaves; Rubloff showers and dresses. 10 a.m.: Rubloff is ready to go dressed in a red jacket (with huge Chanel scarf that Felicia gave her for Christmas), white blouse, black skirt, black stockings and black patent leather pumps.

Eats light breakfast of oatmeal, banana, orange juice and coffee. 10:15 a.m.: Chauffeur Clarence Eads is polishing Rubloff's 1982 Rolls-Royce in the driveway. Rubloff hands him three packages, which she asks him to deliver while she's getting her nails done or having lunch. 10:30 a.m.: Clarence drives her to Armonds on Worth Avenue, where she gets her acrylic nails filled, buffed and polished with "high-voltage red." 11:30 a.m.: It's time to shop. Rubloff arrives at Sara Fredericks salon on Worth Avenue where LA TASTE TEST: Rubloff samples the hors d'oeuvres housekeeper Nelia Velazquez has prepared.

PRECIOUS GEMS: Rubloff picks up a repaired necklace from Jo Ann Maguire at Greenleaf Crosby Jewelers in Palm Beach. As reports of Charles Stuart's in- i I voivement witn an- I other woman and his HOLIDAY CHEER: Ryan Kidd, 5, opens a present from Rubloff. His mother was formerly Rubloff's housekeeper. Ryan loved his toy horse with rider, and he also had fun with a stuffed toy he found on Rubloff's sofa. role in previous scams filled the newspapers, rumors circulated throughout Boston that he had a cocaine habit and extensive gambling debts.

Meanwhile, the Please see SOCIALITE7D I yi HJ- 7 II Modern portraits show family style Charles Stuart phone lines at radio call-in shows were jammed with people venting their rage at Mayor Raymond Flynn, District Attorney Newman Flanagan and the media, which for six weeks used unnamed sources to characterize Bennett as "the prime suspect." The city's anger seems inexhaustible. That may be because it is impossible not to feel sullied by the Stuart case. Either one was duped by a fabrication with racist overtones, or one was impotent as police focused their investigation on a succession of innocent black men. "I'm sick of hearing about it," said a middle-aged waitress working the counter at Ted's Pub in Chuck Stuart's old Revere neighborhood. "I don't know who to feel sorry for anymore." Then she asks, "What did the news say about it?" Her conversation, as well as the scene at the Dizzy Bridge, illustrates the anguish here.

The people of Boston are fascinated, yet repelled. They want answers, but they want distance. So they watch the waters and, through binoculars, they watch themselves watching. The false scenario This is how it was supposed to have happened: Carol and Charles Stuart left Lamaze classes at Brigham and Women's Hospital at about 8:30 on the night of Oct. 23 and pulled up to a stoplight at Huntington Avenue and Francis Street, a busy intersection in Mission Hill, a diverse inner-city community.

As they sat at the light, a black man wearing a black sweat suit with red stripes, black open-knuckled gloves and a basell cap jumped injg tjie back seat Please see STUARTS6D Today, family portraits are far more likely to follow flights of fancy, whether of the photographer or the subject. riff hirt Jl 'd' Gardens, offers his clients a choice of-indoor or outdoor locations for family portraits. More are opting for the outdoors. "Especially the young families," he said. One way to show off the Florida lifestyle to the folks back home is to have the family pictured in shorts and T-shirts in the middle of winter.

"When they send photos back to the family in New Jersey or New York, it's nice to show the blue sky and green background," he said. "You put people in a studio and it could be anywhere." One family photographed by De Filippis is shown standing in front of a large banyan tree standing, that is, except for the youngest child who is sitting on a tree limb above the rest of the group. "The only other way to do it was to have someone hold him," he said. Perched on the limb, the child was added to the group in a more casual and eye-catching way. f.

Please see PORTRAITS8D Palm Beach Post Staff and Wire Reports When actress Ali MacGraw decided to be photographed with her son, Joshua Evans, they both wore white T-shirts, she wore black tights and he wore jeans. They were photographed in an art deco bathroom. "While the photo is in a funny way, arranged, it has a realness about it," MacGraw said. It is, however, as far removed from traditional portrait photography as are jeans from party dresses and starched -wing collars. Since the camera was invented 150 years ago, families have been portrayed in stiff, symmetrical groups that spelled out roles and hierarchy.

Today family portraits are far more likely to follow flights of fancy, whether of the photographer or the subject. This change owes much to the technological advancements that enable both photographer and subject to move about freely and pose with liihthearted informality. Rigid posture and glazed eyes have given way to cartwheels, sudden grins and in-flight moments. But there is more to this change than mere technology. It is also closely aligned with the wider social revolution: a new freedom to express one's self, the radical changes in family relations and groupings, a society that no longer demands that, at all costs, people hide flaws and vulnerability.

Roy De Filippis, owner of Totally Visual photography in Palm Beach Photo by PATRICE KELLY. Photospf Distinction i.1 Diane Mears and her son Aaron. 5. had wis infor mal portrait taken on the beach in Jupiter..