The Nation - News from June 19, 1988

Advisers to Tawana Brawley intensified their efforts to discredit a former associate, Perry J. McKinnon, by introducing his estranged wife, who said McKinnon’s “mind has been going year by year.� McKinnon, 39, last week charged that the black teen-ager’s story of being abducted and raped by six white men last November was a “pack of lies� and that her advisers had embellished the story for political purposes. The woman, Aljetta McKinnon, 36, was flown to New York from Reidsville, Ga., by the Brawley family advisers--the Rev. Al Sharpton and lawyers Alton H. Maddox Jr. and C. Vernon Mason. At a news conference in Brooklyn, Sharpton said that although McKinnon had never divorced Aljetta McKinnon, he had married two other women. The Brawley advisers offered no evidence to support their charges.