BOSTON -- This week marked the 20th anniversary of one of the most deeply disturbing events in Boston’s history.

On the night of Oct. 23, 1989, after attending childbirth classes together in the Mission Hill section of the city, Charles Stuart murdered his pregnant wife, Carole. Their prematurely-delivered son died 17 days later. But the full, fiendish sweep of Stuart’s horror wasn’t complete.

He played despicably on the city’s still raw and tender racial undercurrents by telling police that his wife’s murder -- and his own wounds (self-inflicted, as it turned out) -- were the work of a black man who forced his way into their car. In other words, a horrible hoax on top of a horrific murder.

How much has changed in 20 years?

In some ways, not a hell of a lot.

The capacity for some to commit unspeakable cruelty and evil obviously still exists. So does the nearly universal capacity to be taken in by hoaxes.

Only a week before the anniversary of the Stuart murder, the nation was transfixed by video of a wayward weather balloon flying across the autumn skies of Colorado and the question of whether a 6-year-old boy was on board or not. All part of an elaborate hoax , according to police.

Pick an area of life or a field of interest and there is a hoax for the ages attached to it. Science? Ever hear of "Piltdown Man?"

In 1912, in Piltdown, England, Charles Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward produced a skeleton that purported to represent the famed “missing link” between apes and humans.

It took 40 years for the hoax to be debunked.

Literature and publishing?

Where to begin?

Hate-mongers the world over (Egypt, Iran, Syria) still quote passages from an entirely made-up, viciously anti-Semitic screed first published around 1900 called, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” And speaking of celebrated anti-Semites, Hitler’s own alleged diaries were rushed to print by the German magazine Stern in 1983. Only problem was they turned out to be the work of a master forger.

In 1970, Struggling writer Clifford Irving almost pulled off a spectacular literary hoax when he stunned the publishing world with word he possessed the autobiography of the world’s most famous and wealthiest recluse, Howard Hughes. Unfortunately for Irving, Hughes came out of hiding just long enough to expose the whole thing as a fake.

Oops.

And only three years ago, America’s biggest book booster herself, Oprah Winfrey was scammed by author James Frey, whose own autobiographical novel, “A Million Little Pieces” was revealed to be shot full of untruths and outright fiction.

The world of pop culture and entertainment has seen some of the most, well, entertaining hoaxes of all time. There was Orson Wells’ famous “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast in 1938, which sowed widespread panic nationwide.

Thirty years later, the world itself was sucked into a rumor-turned-hoax involving the Beatles, and the three simple words, “Paul is dead.”

Ah, for those lighthearted hoaxes. Where no one dies. Except Paul. (Supposedly.)

In the end, it is the truly evil and insidious hoaxes that haunt us.

The hoaxes that help start wars , incite racism or anti-Semitism, and kill.

The inescapably sad fact is that hoaxes work. And will work again. And again. Why? Because we believe them, that’s why. Most of us, anyway, simply cannot do otherwise.

In the end, it’s a terrible trade off, isn’t it? We feel sick afterwards in comprehending the actions of a Charles Stuart. And sicker still for believing the original lie.

Yet human nature seems nonetheless hardwired to tend toward trust, and faith, and hope. How ironic that the very elements that allow hoaxes to succeed in the first place, are the only things to comfort us in their sobering wake.