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Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

Coakley was convicted of raping Olga Delgado.  The crime occurred in Delgado’s room at the Bronx Park Motel.  Delgado, her boyfriend, Gabriel Vargas, and Delgado’s brother-in-law, Jorge Rios each independently described the rapist as a dark complexioned black male with a Jamaican accent, about 26-28 years old, with a short "afro" haircut.  Rios identified Coakley from a photo lineup and got the other two to agree that he was the perpetrator.

Coakley was 28 years old.  However, he was light complexioned and had no Jamaican accent.  He had no “afro” haircut when arrested two days later.  Coakley maintained that he had been at a Bible study meeting at the time of the crime and eight witnesses confirmed his alibi.  Coakley also demanded, took, and passed a polygraph test.  At trial, the jury was forced to resolve a difficult dilemma--eyewitnesses against alibi witnesses.  The jury convicted Coakley.  Coakley’s post-conviction counsel then gathered serological tests and other new evidence.  Twenty-five months after the trial, this evidence convinced a court to set aside the conviction.  The DA then agreed to dismiss the charges.  (When Justice Fails)  [1/07]

Jose Morales and Ruben Montalvo were convicted of murdering Jose Antonio Rivera.  Rivera was chased through Kelly Park in the Bronx by a group of teenagers he had been feuding with.  He was stabbed and hit with a baseball bat and sticks.  One of the real killers, Jesus Fornes, confessed responsibility for the killing to a priest.  The apparently guilt-stricken Fornes admitted to him and later to others that he had been part of the group that had killed Rivera, but he insisted that Morales and Montalvo were innocent.  The priest advised he to speak to the court.  Fornes spoke to a defense attorney on the defendants’ day of sentencing.  The sentencing was postponed.  In the meantime, Fornes found a lawyer of his own, who advised him not to talk.

After Fornes died in 1997, both the priest and the lawyer independently came forward, as Fornes’ death relieved them of any professional responsibility to keep Fornes’ statements confidential.   Both Morales and Montalvo were released in 2001 after this new evidence exonerated them.  (NY Times)

Garcia was convicted of the murder of a friend named Cesar Vasquez.  Three gunmen shot Vasquez to death in a courtyard on Bailey Avenue.  Prosecutors at Garcia’s 1993 trial claimed Vasquez and Garcia were linked to a drug gang battling for turf with rivals.  However, they failed to show proof of Garcia's alleged motive.  Their case rested on the testimony of one witness who claimed she saw the shooting.

Garcia was in the Dominican Republic at the time of the shooting and did not return to the U.S. until 17 days later.  At trial, Garcia’s lawyer presented almost nothing of his alibi.  In Dec. 2006, after Garcia had served 15 years of imprisonment, a judge overturned his conviction.  The judge credited Garcia with a strong alibi, including documents that appeared to show that he was arrested in the Dominican Republic for traveling with false documents a day before the murder.  The judge ordered that Garcia be given a new trial or released within two months.  (NY Post)  [10/07]

Diomedes Polonia was convicted of attempted murder for allegedly shooting Thomas Hosford three times in the course of a robbery.  The victim said Freddy Polonia was his shooter.  Pedro “Freddy” Polonia is Diomedes brother and bears a strong resemblance to him.  When police visited Diomedes’ apartment they believed they had found “Freddy.”  While in the hospital, the victim was shown fresh mug shots of Diomedes, whom he identified as “Freddy.”  Later, the victim further identified the wrong brother at a precinct station house line-up.

The actual Freddy signed a handwritten confession to the crime, but then reportedly fled to Puerto Rico.  He was later located in Massachusetts where he had been arrested for drug dealing and was making regular court appearances there.  A team of assistant DAs got in a car and drove up to Massachusetts, but Freddy invoked his right to counsel and silence.  Then, within days, Freddy fled again, reportedly on a plane out of Boston.  Diomedes’ conviction was eventually overturned and he was released in Jan. 2003, but only after his Legal Aid attorneys logged 1300 hours on the case, and Diomedes spent over 5 and a half years in prison.  (Law.com) [1/07]

Wong, a busboy in Manhattan's Chinatown, was arrested for participating with co-workers in an armed robbery of his employer's Long Island home in 1983.  While serving his sentence upstate at Clinton Correctional Facility, he was charged with and convicted of murdering inmate Tyrone Julius.

In March 1999, a New York Times article quoted former prison employees who stated that Wong's innocence was "common knowledge" at the prison.  Fellow inmates understood that Nelson Gutierrez, a long-time rival of Julius, had killed him, but they were afraid to speak up at the time.  Gutierrez was paroled in 1994 and returned to the Dominican Republic where he died of an apparent drug overdose in May 2000.  By 2002, almost a dozen former inmates had signed affidavits supporting Wong's innocence.  Wong was denied a new trial, but the decision was reversed on appeal and all charges against Wong were dropped in 2004.

Wong, an undocumented alien, remained held by immigration authorities until Aug 2005, when they deported him to Hong Kong.  (Asianweek) (www.freedavidwong.org)  [11/05]

DeJac was convicted in 1994 of the Feb. 1993 strangulation murder of her daughter, Crystallynn M. Girard.  A family friend testified that DeJac confessed to the crime.  The friend was facing a possible life sentence on a forgery indictment.  DeJac has always maintained that her former boyfriend, Dennis Donohue, must have killed Crystallynn.  A judge called that proposition a “red herring.”  On the day of her sentencing, she told reporters, through her sister, that she knew one day that it would become clear that Donohue was a serial killer.

In 2007, Donohue was charged with the Sept. 1993 strangulation murder of Joan Giambra, a South Buffalo woman.  Donohue also became a “person of interest” in the murder of DeJac’s daughter, as well as in the 1975 strangulation murder of a woman, Carol Reed.  On hearing the news about her former boyfriend, DeJac was ecstatic, and believed that she would be released soon.  (Buffalo News)  [10/07]

After Elba Borrereo, a twenty-year-old practical nurse from Puerto Rico, was assaulted, Police Officer Frank Isola heard her scream and fired warning shots at the fleeing assailant.  Five hours later Isola encountered George Whitmore, Jr. on the street, but concluded that Whitmore was shorter and thinner than the assailant.  However, the next day, Isola and a detective spotted Whitmore again and took him to the precinct station for questioning.  At the station Borrereo viewed Whitmore through a peephole and identified him as the man who tried to rape her.  She had earlier only stated that the assailant tried to snatch her purse.  Whitmore had in his possession a picture of a young woman that a detective identified as Janice Wylie.  Wylie, 21, and Emily Hoffert, 23, had been stabbed to death 8 months previously in the apartment they shared on the East Side of Manhattan.  Wylie was a Newsweek magazine researcher and Hoffert was a teacher.  Newsweek offered a $10,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the murderer or murderers.

Police then interrogated Whitmore for 26 hours and got him to sign a 61-page confession admitting to the Aug 28, 1963 murders of Wylie and Hoffert.  The confession also admitted to the April 14, 1964 Brownsville murder of Minnie Edmonds, as well as the April 23 attempted rape of Borrereo, also in Brownsville.  In November, Whitmore was tried and convicted of the assault and attempted rape of Borrereo.  In deliberations, one of the jurors stated, “This is nothing compared to what he is going to get in New York,” referring to Whitmore’s indictment in the Wylie-Hoffert murders.  In Jan. 1965, the photo found on Whitmore was found not to be of Wylie, but instead was determined to be that of a New Jersey woman.  In addition, an alternate suspect was charged with the Wylie-Hoffert murders and Whitmore was absolved of the crime.

In April, Whitmore was tried for the Edmonds murder.  Whitmore testified that his confession was beaten out of him.  The trial ended in a hung jury.  Fourteen months later, a judge dismissed the indictment against Whitmore for the Edmonds murder.  In March 1966, Whitmore was retried for the Borrereo crime and convicted again.  The judge allowed evidence of Whitmore’s confession to the Borrereo crime, but barred evidence of his false confession to the Wylie-Hoffert murders.

In March 1967, Whitmore’s conviction for the Borrereo crime was overturned for a second time because the trial court refused to allow cross-examination with reference to all of the defendant’s statements to the police, including those related to the Wylie-Hoffert murders.  At Whitmore’s third trial, his confession was ruled inadmissible, because he had not been Mirandized.  Whitmore was again convicted, but solely because of the victim’s identification.  In Dec. 1972, Borrereo’s sister came forward with an affidavit stating that before Borrereo identified Whitmore, police had shown her a photo array and she had identified another person as her assailant.  Based on this affidavit, a judge released Whitmore in April 1973 at the request of the Brooklyn (Kings County) DA. (NL)  [9/07]

Eric Jackson, also known as Eric Knight, was convicted of setting a fire to a Waldbaum’s Supermarket in Sheepshead Bay.  Six firefighters died in the blaze.  The investigation was plagued by public disputes between fire marshals and police arson investigators.  After an informant fingered him, Jackson was indicted in May 1979 on arson and murder charges.  Police said he confessed to setting the fire for $500.  Jackson was sentenced to 25 years to life.

In 1988, a judge overturned Jackson’s conviction because prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense.  This evidence included statements by a police arson investigator stating that the fire could have been caused by an electrical accident.  In 1994, Jackson was retried.  The defense maintained that Jackson’s confession was coerced and that the fire was an accident resulting from faulty electrical wiring.  Jackson was acquitted.  (IP Arson)  [7/07]

Hector Luis Gonzalez was charged with murdering Lemuel Cruz who was killed in a fight outside the Con Sabor Latino nightclub.  A witness placed him at the scene of the fight.  Gonzalez also had six bloodstains on his pants, five of which had markers consistent with the victim, but also with more than half the New York City population.  On this basis he was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years to life in prison.

A subsequent federal investigation into the Latin Kings street gang produced testimony that Gonzalez was not involved in the murder.  DNA tests were performed to corroborate the testimony and the results showed that the bloodstains did not come from the murder victim but from two men wounded in the fight.  Gonzalez had been tending their wounds when their blood was transferred to his pants.  Gonzalez was released in 2002.  (IP106)

Bell was convicted of the robbery and shooting of Brentonol Moriah.  Moriah, who suffered enormous blood loss from a single shot to the thigh, spent the next 11 days under heavy sedation and in a near-comatose state.  Moriah knew Bell from having lived in the same rooming house with him for more than a year.  Nevertheless, at the scene of the crime, he did not name Bell, but instead described the perpetrator as a black male who wore a lemon-colored shirt.  Twelve days after the shooting, Moriah identified Bell.  The identification was the only evidence used to convict Bell.

Following his conviction, Bell submitted an affidavit from a neuropsychologist, who stated that Moriah's testimony contained “unequivocal evidence that he suffered from retrograde amnesia for the events predating the loss of consciousness,” that the amnesia was made worse by the medications he likely received, and that it was unlikely that he had regained full consciousness when he first named Bell.  Even a month after the shooting, Moriah was unable to recall his description of his assailant that he had given at the crime scene.

In 2007, the federal Second Circuit Court overturned Bell’s conviction.  It ruled that Bell’s defense lawyer was ineffective because he failed to inquire into the effects of blood loss and heavy sedation on the memory of the victim.  (Law.com)  [10/07]

Dennis Halstead, John Kogut, and John Restivo were convicted of raping and murdering 16-year-old Theresa Fusco.  Kogut confessed to the crime and implicated the other two, but he later recanted his confession.  In the sixth and final version of Kogut's confession, Kogut confessed to strangling Fusco using rope, but the ligature mark on Fusco indicated she was strangled by cloth rather than rope.  Rope leaves a crisscross pattern caused by the weave, but the ligature mark on Fusco was smooth.  The detectives who extracted Kogut's confession, Joseph Volpe and Robert Dempsey, had also extracted a false confessions in two other murder cases.  Volpe got Robert Moore to confess in 1995 that he shot a man, but Moore was acquitted and later awarded $85,000.  Dempsey got Shonnard Lee to confess in 1999 to murder, but Lee was acquitted and later awarded $2 million.

In 2003, DNA tests were performed on a discovered semen sample, which excluded the men.  Defense investigators also procured an affidavit from a former detective, who performed prosecution analysis of hairs found in the defendants' van that at trial were said to belong to the victim.  The analysis showed that these hairs were planted.  The detective explained that the hairs had post-mortem root banding which meant that they were attached to a corpse that had been dead for at least eight hours.  Because the victim was only alleged to be in the van for a few minutes after death, they could not have come from her then.  They could have been taken from her at her autopsy.  Convictions for all three defendants were vacated in 2003.  Because of his confession, Kogut was retried in 2005, and found not guilty.  (Newsday) (CM) (NY Times) (IP172, IP169, IP173)  [9/06]

Frank Pezzulich and Frank Sgelirrach were convicted of armed robbery charges.  On Mar. 22, 1919, seven pistol-wielding masked men robbed a rooming house at 36 Beach St. occupied by nine Croatians.  The victims were robbed of $1728, $85, $13, and $15.  One victim, Mike Zic, followed a group of robbers that went towards Varick St.  He caught one of the robbers, Frank Strolich, and held him for police.  Strolich denied his participation in the robbery and gave his address as 408 W. 24th St.  A detective went to the address, a rooming house, along with Frank Zic, the heaviest loser in the robbery.  There they met two Austrians, Frank Pezzulich and Frank Sgelirrach.  Zic identified both as robbers.  During the robbery two robbers’ masks had allegedly slipped, allowing them to be identified.  Both Austrians admitted knowing Strolich, but denied being robbers.

Strolich was tried first and convicted.  Then an assistant DA, Owen Bohan, questioned him with the idea of using him as a witness against Pezzulich and Sgelirrach.  For the first time, Strolich denied the two had been involved in the robbery, and to substantiate his statement, he gave Bohan the names of all the others who took part.  Police began a search for these men.  In the meantime Pezzulich and Sgelirrach were tried.  Three of the victims identified the defendants as robbers, though the other six victims were unable to do so.  The defendants had seven alibi witnesses, but were convicted.  Each was sentenced to 8 to 16 years in prison.

By December, Lino DePiero, a man named by Strolich as one of his accomplices, was arrested and tried.  However, the judge felt that the evidence was insufficient, and directed a verdict of acquittal.  In January 1920, three other men named by Strolich were arrested in Milwaukee.  The men initially confessed, naming their accomplices, but said nothing about Pezzulich and Sgelirrach.  One jumped bail, but the other two were tried and convicted despite repudiating their confessions.

Bohan, impressed by the Milwaukee confessions, became doubtful of Pezzulich and Sgelirrach’s guilt.  He tried to get the Milwaukee convicts to repeat their confessions.  With the help of Father Cashin, the Catholic Chaplin at Sing Sing prison, he got the convicts to admit their guilt.  Both denied emphatically that Pezzulich and Sgelirrach had participated in the crime.  With these admissions Bohan initiated proceedings that freed Pezzulich and Sgelirrach.  Both had served about 14 months of imprisonment.  (CTI)  [11/07]

William Fisher was convicted of manslaughter for shooting David Feldman to death in a Harlem speakeasy.  Feldman's killing occurred at the Belden Social Club on the southeast corner of 124th Street and Second Avenue.  Three others were wounded during the incident, a "wild melee," in which pistols roared and knives flashed.

Fisher was paroled in 1944.  In 1958 a state court overturned his conviction for two reasons:  (1) The trial prosecutor had introduced a gun into evidence as the murder weapon, which he knew had not been fired by Fisher.  (2) The prosecutor had also suppressed witness statements that clearly supported Fisher’s innocence.  In 1986, Fisher was awarded $750,000 for his wrongful imprisonment.  (GNS) (ISI)  [9/07]

Harlem teens Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, and Kharey Wise, ages 14 to 16, were accused of bludgeoning, raping, and leaving to die a 28-year-old female jogger in New York's Central Park.  The jogger was later learned to be Trish Meili, an investment banker at Salomon Brothers.  The media referred to the attack as a brutal "wilding" by out of control youth.

The teens had been picked up in a police sweep of the park and conveniently were already in custody when the victim was found.  All the teens except Salaam confessed to the crime on videotape.  The prosecution would admit 13 years later that the confessions “differed from one another on the specific details of virtually every major aspect of the crime—who initiated the attack, who knocked the victim down, who undressed her, who struck her, who raped her, what weapons were used in the course of the assault and when the sequence of the events in the attack took place.”  The victim was knocked unconscious and was not able to identify any attacker.  All five were convicted at trial solely because of the confessions.

In 1990, following the convictions, DNA tests on semen found inside and on the victim, showed that it did match any of the Central Park Five.  The test results received little publicity and the recovered semen was attributed to a sixth "mystery" member of the gang.  In Jan. 2002, Matias Reyes, 31, a serial rapist, confessed to committing the crime alone.  DNA test results matched Reyes and the convictions of the five were vacated.  The five had already served their seven to thirteen year juvenile sentences.  At least three were denied parole for maintaining their innocence in the crime.  (IP119) (IP118) (IP117) (IP120) (IP121) (NL)

David Lemus and Olmado Hidalgo were convicted of the murder of Marcus Peterson and the attempted murder of Jeffrey Craig.  Both victims were nightclub bouncers who were shot at the Palladium on East 14th St.  Prior to the shootings, the bouncers had an argument with their assailants.  During the argument, another man acted as a mediator between the two parties.  At trial, three witnesses identified Lemus and Hidalgo as the shooters.  The witnesses also identified Jose Figueroa as the mediator.

In Dec. 1992, Bernardo Rodriguez, a police informant and member of a Bronx gang named C&C, told police detectives that he had seen the Palladium shooting and that it was carried out by C&C members.  He reported that the gunmen were Joseph Pillot and Thomas Morales.  Two years later, Pillot told authorities in two separate interviews that he and Morales were responsible for the crime.  He said that they had shot the bouncers after being denied access to the club. (Pillot claimed that his gun jammed but that Morales' did not.)  In 1996, Pillot again testified to his involvement at a court hearing.

In 2000, during a federal investigation of C&C, Richard Feliciano, a former gang member, told the authorities that he was the mediator in the Palladium dispute and that Lemus and Hidalgo did not shoot the bouncers.  He named Morales as the shooter.  Several other witnesses backed up Feliciano’s testimony, although some were gang members who may have had an incentive to turn on their own in the hopes of gaining leniency.  Two of the witnesses were deemed to be more credible.  In 2004, defense lawyers obtained prison records that showed that Figueroa, the mediator identified by trial witnesses, was in jail on the night of the shootings.  In 2005, a judge overturned Hidalgo’s conviction.  Lemus’ conviction has not been overturned.  In a taped conversation, played at trial, Lemus had confessed to a woman that he committed the crime.  Lemus said that he exaggerated to impress the woman.  (NYT 2004)  (NYT 2005)  [10/07]

Charles Stielow and his brother-in-law Nelson Green were convicted of murdering their neighbor, Charles Phelps, and his housekeeper, Marjorie Wilcott.  Green was sentenced to life, and Stielow to death.  Both men allegedly wrote or dictated confessions, purported to be in their own words, which they refused to sign.  In addition, a ballistics report was presented which showed that the fatal bullets had come from a gun found in Stielow's home.

After the convictions, further investigation by a newspaper showed that both the confessions and ballistics report were fabricated.  Both men were illiterate and the confessions included language beyond their comprehension.  The two detectives who obtained the confessions were hired on a contingency basis.  They would be paid only if they solved the crime.  A dictograph machine recording of conversations occurring during the alleged confessions provided clear proof that no confessions had occurred and showed that the detectives, the sheriff, and undersheriff had lied under oath.  In addition, ballistic analysis showed that the state ballistics expert had also committed perjury.  No official was punished even though Stielow came within an hour of execution.  Both Stielow and Green were pardoned in 1918.  (NL) (CTI) [8/07]

Crimmins was suspected of abduction murders of her son, Eddie, and daughter, Missy, in part because the investigator thought she did not show "proper" grief.  Some also thought Crimmins was too interested in her appearance.  The murders occurred on July 14, 1965 and the case became a tabloid sensation.  Police wiretapped her phone and were treated to titillating talk with her many sweethearts.  However, the taps did not reveal any conspiracy with others.  The murders would have required at least two accomplices.  Police waged a campaign of harassment to break her.  They called up Crimmins' employers and repeatedly got her fired.  They also called her estranged husband when she was with another man.  The husband chased one of her paramours outside without giving him a chance to get his clothes.

Crimmins was eventually convicted of the murder of her son Eddie, and the manslaughter of her daughter because of the memories of witnesses, which grew over time.  One witness claimed to hear normal speaking voices from two hundred feet away.  The prosecution alleged Crimmins killed her daughter because she intruded on her and her lover when they were having sex, and then killed her son because he learned about the killing of his sister.  Crimmins was paroled in 1977.  (CrimeLibrary)  [5/07]

Burt was convicted of the murder of Wilfredo Cesacro.  A man on a street corner groped Cesacro’s girlfriend, Lissette Saillant in East Elmhurst. The groper then shot Cesacro to death in the ensuing confrontation.  Saillant identified Burt as the shooter.  Saillant later said police had pressured her into making an identification she knew to be wrong.  In 2001, evidence surfaced that another man, Jarrett Smith, was Cesacro's killer.  Burt was released in 2002 and Smith was convicted of the murder.

About a year after Burt’s release, Ronald Laws, a man who was shot in the leg, claimed that Burt had shot him.  Laws was the only witness to the alleged crime, there was no bullet casing or blood found where Laws said the shooting occurred, and it took Laws three months to identify Burt.  Burt spent 10 months in prison on assault charges.  Prior to Laws’ claim, Burt had filed a $30 million suit against the state for the decade he spent wrongfully imprisoned.  At trial, Burt’s defense argued that Laws had shot himself in the leg either accidentally or intentionally, and that the claim against Burt was an attempt to hustle him out of money.  A jury acquitted Burt.  (Pollard & Koenig, Attorneys)  [1/07]

When some jewelry vendors were returning to their hotel in Elmhurst from a gem show in Manhattan, four Latino men snatched three cases of Tahitian black pearls from them.  The pearls were valued at $1.5 million.   As they escaped, the thieves attempted to carjack an off duty police officer.  The officer managed to shoot his service weapon, a 9-millimeter Glock, before he was knocked unconscious.  He later told detectives later that he thought he had hit a robber who was grabbing at the barrel of the gun.

That same night, Napoleon Cardenas accidentally shot himself in the hand with a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol that he had been showing to two visitors at his girlfriend’s apartment.  He showed up screaming in pain at the same hospital that the off-duty officer and one of the jewelry vendors were being treated.  A detective put Napoleon in a lineup, but none of the robbery victims identified him.  A friend cleaned up the blood in his girlfriend’s apartment. The police never searched the site.

Napoleon was due to serve a four-month sentence for credit card fraud.  Days before it was to begin, he fled to the Dominican Republic.  In his absence, one of the vendors called a detective days after the crime, saying he could now identify Napoleon as one of the robbers.  The police visited Napoleon’ brother, Carlos Cardenas, to ask about him and they began to suspect that Carlos had been involved as well.  When the jewelry vendors returned to New York from California a year later, the police put Carlos in a lineup. One of the vendors chose someone else.  Another chose Carlos.

At Carlos’ trial, a jewelry vendor identified him.  With the coincidence of his brother’s gunshot wound, Carlos was convicted and sentenced to 8 to 25 years in prison.  A year later Napoleon surrendered to federal marshals in Columbia.  He served his credit card fraud sentence and was tried for the jewelry heist.  After the off-duty officer and a jeweler identified him, he was convicted and sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison.

Napoleon’s trial lawyer did not investigate his alibi.  Napoleon’s friend, Eddie Padilla, who had cleaned up the blood after Napoleon shot himself, had the bullet jacket from the bullet Napoleon fired.  It had an aluminum casing unlike the police ammunition fired during the jewelry heist, which had a copper casing.  After years of imprisonment, Napoleon began to think that he had held proof of his innocence in his hand all along.  In 2005, he had surgery to remove bullet fragments from his hand.  The fragments removed were of entirely of lead, which did not prove helpful.  Nevertheless, the surgery convinced the DA to take a second look at the case.  The DA’s investigator became convinced from informants that others were responsible for the theft.  After Napoleon and Carlos were given and passed lie detector tests, the pair were exonerated and released in 2007.  (NY Times)  [4/07]

After being interrogated for five and a half hours, Martin H. Tankleff, 17, confessed to beating and stabbing his wealthy parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff. Arlene died and Seymour would die weeks later. Police falsely told Marty that his father had come out of a coma and identified him as his and Arlene’s attacker. Police convinced Marty (for a short while) that he must have attacked his parents in a blackout. No evidence linked Marty to the crime, and while his confession matched the crime theory police held at the time, it did not match the facts of the case. Marty soon recanted and none of his surviving relatives believed he committed the crime. In a highly publicized trial covered by Court TV, a jury convicted Marty of the murders and he was sentenced to fifty years to life in prison.

Since the trial, a man has come forward, stating he drove two accomplices to and from the house on the night of the crime, for what he thought was a burglary. One of the accomplices was connected to Seymour Tankleff's estranged business partner, Jerard Steuerman. Steuerman admitted he was under pressure from Seymour to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars in business loans. Steuerman had partnered with Seymour in bagel stores and horse racing. He was also the last person to leave a high-stakes card game at the Tankleff house early on the morning of the murders. Several days after the crime, as Seymour lingered in a hospital before dying, Steuerman staged his own death and fled to California, shaving his beard and assuming an alias.

Starting in 2003, several new witnesses came forward, implicating Joseph Creedon and Peter Kent as the killers. Creedon was an associate of Steuerman and Tankleff believed that Creedon and Kent had acted on Steuerman’s behalf. Evidence also emerged that the lead detective in the case, K. James McCready, had worked for Steuerman, and may have been bribed by him. In Dec. 2007, Tankleff’s conviction was overturned. The DA announced that he would not retry him.  (www.martytankleff.org) (NY Times) (Newsday) (LI Press) (JD33 p8)  [9/06]

Prompted by horrendous conditions, the 1281 inmates at the New York state prison in Attica took over the prison on Sept. 9, 1971 and took the guards there hostage.  One guard died died during the takeover due to his own attempt to be heroic.  The hostages were treated well and were guarded by the inmate leadership from potential assault from lone inmates.  The guard hostages were dressed in ordinary inmate clothing so that potential outside snipers would not be able to tell whom they were shooting at.  The uprising began as an unfocused riot, but grew into a focused and reasonable demand for better prison conditions.

The authorities were appalled that the uprising had attracted the attention of the national news media.  In response, the authorities cut off lines of communication from the area to give them time to create cover stories for whatever might happen.  Then they overdosed the prison with tear gas, completely incapacitating everyone inside, and rendering some unconscious.  Then to teach the inmates a lesson, 500 state policemen attacked the incapacitated occupants, firing 2200 bullets in 9 minutes.

In the attack, the authorities murdered 39 individuals including 10 prison guards who they presumably mistook to be inmates.  They also wounded at least 86 individuals.  Four others were murdered following the attack.  Mike Smith, an Attica guard who was shot in the stomach, said, "I don't know any other employer who could murder their employees and get away with it, except the government."

At the time of the attack, the news media dutifully reported official lies.  The prison guard hostages who died were reported as having had their throats slit by inmates.  However, autopsies soon revealed that no throats were slit.  Instead, the guards' bodies were riddled with bullets.  None of the inmates possessed or gained access to firearms.

The inmates who survived the massacre were beaten, burned with cigarettes, threatened with castration and death, forced to play Russian roulette, and forced to walk a glass strewn gauntlet while barefoot (actually naked) and being beaten as they walked.

None of the authorities who participated in the massacre of 43 American citizens were ever criminally charged.  New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller who ordered the attack went on to become an unelected U.S. Vice President.  A quarter century later, Attica inmates were awarded $12 million for the wrongs they suffered.  [7/05]