It was an apology 34 years in the making.

On Wednesday morning, Mayor Michelle Wu formally apologized on behalf of the City of Boston to two black men wrongfully arrested and accused in the Oct. 23, 1989, shooting murder of Carol Stuart. Those men were Alan Swanson, who appeared at the event himself, and Willie Bennett, who was represented by members of his family.

The murder was in fact orchestrated by her own husband Charles “Chuck” Stuart who blamed it on a random black man, an accusation that inflamed the city’s racial tensions.

“We are here to acknowledge the tremendous pain that the City of Boston inflicted on the city’s black community 34 years ago,” Wu said. “In response to the murder of Carol Stuart and her child and acting on a false, racist claim accusing a black man for her death.”

That response “unleashed” terror on the Mission Hill community, Wu said.

“If you knew and loved a black man in Boston, you feared for his life. There was no evidence that a black man had committed this crime, but it didn’t matter,” she continued. “Everyone closed their eyes to the truth because the lie felt familiar … As a result, Alan Swanson suffered, Willie Bennett suffered, and their families continue to suffer.”

“On behalf of the City of Boston and the mayor’s office,” she said, “I would like to say that I am so sorry for what you endured,” she continued over applause from the Eagle Room in her office, which was filled to capacity. “I am so sorry for the pain you have carried for years. What was done for you was unfair, racist and wrong. And this apology is long overdue.”

Charles Stuart called 911 with a declarative statement: His wife had been shot, in the head. He was also shot. They had just left a birthing class at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a man had robbed them and shot both of them. He was losing consciousness, he told the dispatcher, and just knew he was somewhere around Tremont Street.

When the cops arrived, it was a bloody scene. The Herald ran a cover photo the next morning of the couple sitting in their blue Toyota Cressida, Carol Stuart slumped over, seatbelt still on, her head and body drenched in blood. Charles Stuart’s face was contorted in a grimace as he clutched his own gunshot wound at his side.

In the ambulance, he gave a labored description of his assailant: a 5-foot-10 black man wearing a black tracksuit with white or red stripes who spoke with a gravely voice. He had fled back into the Mission Hill housing projects and left the couple for dead.

The thing was, none of it was true. Charles Stuart had shot his own wife in the head and then either shot himself in the side or directed an accomplice to do so. Carol Stuart would hang on for maybe six more hours. Her baby was delivered by cesarean section that night and lived for a few weeks before also dying.

Mission Hill, one of Boston’s traditionally majority-black neighborhoods, was from the night of the shooting on swarmed with Boston Police. A participant in the HBO documentary on the case, Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage & Reckoning, released this year, described it as “open season” on the city’s black population.

The first wrongfully arrested member of the community was Alan Swanson, who had a black tracksuit soaking in the sink, which the police took as evidence. While he was actually only accused of an unrelated unarmed robbery, but police leaked to the media that they considered him their guy in the Stuart murder.

His attorney at the time said Wednesday that Swanson “lived in terror” because of the accusation. He feared being in general population because he would be killed as a “baby killer.” He couldn’t eat because they spit in his food at the prison.

He was eventually cleared. But it didn’t take long for another black man to be fingered for the crime.

Some errant talk by teenagers established the rumor that Willie Bennett, another member of the Mission Hill community, had done the shooting.

Willie Bennett’s nephew Joey Bennett accepted Wu’s apology Wednesday on behalf of his uncle and family.

“We are truly humbled to finally be receiving this apology,” he said.

This is a developing story.