Central Park jogger reveals identity in book

NEW YORK -- The woman at the center of the Central Park jogger case is breaking her 14-year silence and revealing her identity, and she says the reopening of the case in the past year made her live the horror as never before.

Trisha Meili, 42, is coming out of anonymity at the same time her book, entitled "I Am the Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility" is being released, the Daily News reported Friday after obtaining an audio version of the book.

The book, being published in print form next month by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, is a memoir of her ordeal and her recovery. In it, she recounts the trial of the five teenagers who were originally convicted in the case, and her reaction when another man said last year he was the culprit.

Meili, an investment banker with dual master's degrees from Yale, was attacked and raped on April 19, 1989, while jogging in Central Park.

Then 28, she suffered brain damage, lost three-fourths of her blood and spent two weeks in a coma. She has no memory of the attack.

Five teenagers, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, Kharey Wise and Kevin Richardson, were arraigned after four of them made incriminating videotaped statements to police. Genetic evidence found on Meili later failed to connect the attack with the youths, but they were eventually convicted and served up to 13 years in prison.

Last year, however, Matias Reyes, a man serving time for murder and serial rape, claimed that he was the attacker, and DNA evidence linked him to the crime. The five men's convictions were thrown out at the district attorney's request.

The police department said it was possible both Reyes and the teens attacked the jogger, but the prosecutor's office said there was "substantial reason" to believe Reyes' claim that he acted alone.

Meili wrote that upon learning Reyes had come forward, she was "too stunned to respond."

"Reyes became real to me in a way the five had not," she wrote. "I didn't want to see him in the papers or hear him talk on the television."

Referring to other crimes which Reyes had been convicted of, she wrote, "He had murdered a woman and raped more, forcing some at knifepoint to make a choice: 'Your eyes or your life.' How the hell did I survive?"

Still, she said, the lingering conflict about who was responsible "makes me feel helpless, not as a victim, but as someone who wants to contribute to the truth." She said she needed to accept that she may never know.

Now married and living in a Connecticut suburb, she has left investment banking and hopes to devote herself to helping others overcome trauma. The book, she says, is part of that effort.

Doctors have called Meili's resilience and recovery miraculous. She returned to work eight months after her attack and ran in the New York City Marathon in 1995. She said however that she's still sometimes unsteady on her feet and not as quick-witted as before the attack.