A rape conviction at the center of author Alice Sebold’s 1999 novel Lucky has been overturned after investigators determined he was wrongfully convicted.
Sebold is best known for her novel, The Lovely Bones — a 2009 movie of the same name starring Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, and Saoirse Ronan, was based on the book.
Anthony Broadwater broke down in court this week when the rape conviction was finally overturned.
He spent 16 years in prison, and after his release in 1998, he tried five times to get the conviction overturned, according to CNN.
Tim Mucciante, a film producer, who was working on the movie adaptation of Lucky for Netflix, dropped out of the film after he found inconsistencies in the story.
He hired a private investigator to examine the evidence against Broadwater.
Alice Sebold remains silent following the exoneration of the man she accused of rape
The 58-year-old author, who made millions from her debut novel Lucky and others, has remained silent.
A spokesperson for Scribner, Sebold’s publisher, told The Guardian the following: “Neither Alice Sebold nor Scribner has any comment. Scribner has no plans to update the text of Lucky at this time.”
Lovely Bones author accused wrongfully convicted man of rape, then picked another man in a police lineup
Sebold said she was raped in 1981 when she was a freshman at Syracuse University at a tunnel to an amphitheater near campus.
She reported the assault to the police, but they could not identify any suspects.
Five months later, she walks past Anthony Broadwater on the street, and according to The Guardian, she wrote the following in her memoir.
“He was smiling as he approached. He recognized me. It was a stroll in the park to him; he had met an acquaintance on the street,” wrote Sebold.
She added,“‘Hey, girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’”
She said she didn’t respond, writing, “I looked directly at him. Knew his face had been the face over me in the tunnel.”
The author then went to the police after the chance encounter to report Broadwater as her attacker.
However, she didn’t identify him in a subsequent police lineup and picked a different man as her attacker, reportedly saying because “the expression in his eyes told me that if we were alone, if there were no wall between us, he would call me by name and then kill me”.