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SEPTEMBER 7, 1988
In the summer of 1988, Marty Tankleff's best friend might very well have been his father. Seymour Tankleff, a retired insurance executive, was still an entrepreneur and delighted in teaching Marty about business. The younger Tankleff often sat silently in the corner during his father's meetings and planned to study business in college in order to partner with his father.
From his study in his home in the Long Island suburb of Belle Terre, Seymour often spoke on the phone with his business partner, Jerry Steuerman. Seymour and Steuerman shared ownership in a chain of bagel stores on Long Island, and also a couple of racehorses. Seymour financed the bagel stores and Steuerman ran them. Marty worked part-time in all of them.
On the evening of September 6, 1988, Marty hung out at the mall with friends. Marty had just turned 17 the week before, and tomorrow would be the first day of his senior year of high school. He had to get home, though, as one of his chores was setting up the table for his father's weekly poker game, which would soon begin. That night, Marty showered, set his alarm for 6:00 a.m. and went to sleep.
September 7, 1988
6:00 a.m.
Marty awakens. Surprised to see lights on in parts of the house, he begins walking through the halls. He walks by his parents' still-darkened bedroom, glances in but sees nothing and continues on. Seeing lights on in his father's study, Marty enters and discovers his father bloodied and unconscious, viciously bludgeoned and stabbed, his throat cut. Seymour is unconscious but still alive, and wearing the same clothes he had on at the poker game the night before. Marty immediately calls 911, screaming that his father's been stabbed, and follows the operator's instructions to render first aid. He then explores the rest of his home and finds the dead body of his mother in his parents' bedroom. She has been stabbed multiple times and almost decapitated.
When police arrive, Marty tells them he knows who must have done it: his father's business partner, Jerry Steuerman, one of the poker players from the night before. Marty tells the police that Steuerman owed his father a lot of money and the two had been arguing over it. Police instruct Marty to sit in a patrol car and wait while they seal the crime scene.
7:55 a.m.
Detective McCready begins questioning Marty, asking him what he had done the evening before. Marty is asked to repeat his story three times to different detectives.
8:35 a.m.
The detectives ask Marty to accompany them to the station, ostensibly to provide more background information on Steuerman. Marty is still barefoot, in shorts and a sweatshirt; the detectives would not let him get his shoes or glasses from the house, which was now a sealed crime scene. When Marty's family members call the police station from the hospital in search of Marty, police tell them Marty is there assisting them with information on Steuerman, and that the police will bring him to the hospital. When there's still no sign of Marty, the Tankleff's family lawyer, Mike Fox, goes to the Tankleff residence in search of him. Police again say Marty is on the way to the hospital. Fox tells the police to get on the radio to order Marty brought back to the house. Later, it would be discovered that the police radio transmission tapes for that morning had malfunctioned, and there would be no record of these transmissions.
9:40 a.m.
At the police station, questioning resumes in a 10x10 windowless room, with the door closed, and proceeds without interruption for two hours. Detective McCready, approximately 6' tall and weighing 225 pounds, sits at the desk in front of Marty. Detective Rein, 6'2" tall and weighing about 190 pounds, sits next to Marty, who is 5"8" tall and 140 pounds. Marty has still not been informed of his Miranda rights.
The detectives soon become hostile and accusatory. Detective McCready challenges Marty for not shedding a single tear over the attack. When Marty notes that he had cried before the police arrived, Detective Rein counters that such a short period of grief is improper. The detectives have Marty again go over the events that he had already described three times to different detectives at the crime scene. But this time, the detectives challenge his statements. They challenge the time that he said he got up and got dressed that morning. They challenge his inability to see his mother when he initially looked into his parents' bedroom. They challenge why there is no blood on his clothes if he rendered first aid to his father. Shortly after 11:00 a.m., Detective McCready tells Marty his story is "ridiculous." Rein terms it "absurd" and "unbelievable." Still no Miranda warnings are provided.
11:45 a.m.
Detective McCready leaves the room and, within earshot of Marty, fakes a phone conversation. When he returns, he points at Marty and lies that he had been on the phone with the hospital, and that following an adrenalin injection Marty's father had come out of his coma and had positively identified Marty as his attacker. Marty still maintains his innocence, even offering to submit to a lie detector test, which the detectives refuse to administer.
11:54 a.m.
The questioning has continued uninterrupted. Finally Marty, whose father, he says, never lied to him; who was brought up to trust the police; who hours earlier had experienced the traumatic shock of finding his parents' bodies; who is being kept from visiting his dying father in the hospital; who is isolated from his remaining family members; who has not eaten all morning; who has been questioned repeatedly at the crime scene and again at the police station; who by nature wants to be helpful when confronted with a puzzle, asks if it were possible that "another Marty" could have done it, or that he could have "blacked out" and attacked his parents, but had no memory of it. The detectives encourage this line of thinking and prod him further. "Well, Marty, we dont want to hear 'no'. Just say yes... we dont want to hear 'I don't know' ...Just say 'yes!' make it easy." Finally, Marty says that "[i]t's starting to come to me." Only now, for the first time, do the detectives provide Marty with his Miranda warnings.
With no break whatsoever in the interrogation, the detectives then elicit a fantastic tale from Marty about how he supposedly killed his mother and attacked his father. The detectives "assist" Marty by providing information they had gleaned from the crime scene. Detective McCready writes the story, which goes like this: Marty decided the previous day he would awaken early and murder his parents. When he awoke at 6:00 a.m., he went into their bedroom, naked, with a dumbbell from a set of weights in his room. Fortuitously, only his mother was in the room. He hit her on the head repeatedly with the dumbbell. Apparently not managing to kill her this way, he then went to the kitchen and took a knife that the detectives had observed on the counter, returned to the bedroom, and stabbed his mother. He next went through the length of the house and found his father in the study where he had been playing poker the evening before and proceeded to beat and stab his father. He then went to the bathroom by his bedroom far from the study, without leaving any trail of blood on the white carpet, showered, washed off the knife and dumbbell, returned them to their respective locations and called 911, purporting to have just found his wounded father. All of this would have taken place between 6:00 a.m., when Marty awoke, and 6:37 a.m., when police arrived.
Marty's "motives," according to the "confession," included his not wanting to drive the "crummy old Lincoln," and his wanting to use the family's boat more often, and his wanting to stay home alone when his parents went on vacation.
1:22 a.m.
As the detectives are midway through writing Marty's "confession," Myron Fox, the Tankleff's family attorney, telephones the police station and insists that no further questioning of Marty occur. The "confession" is unsigned by Marty and, at the discretion of the detectives, unrecorded.
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