Marty Tankleff had just turned 17 years old when he was arrested for killing his parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff. Two years later, in a Suffolk County criminal court on Long Island, Marty was convicted and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. Now 32, Marty has been imprisoned for 13 years for a crime he did not commit. The only evidence against Marty was an unsigned "confession" extracted from him following hours of interrogation. Meanwhile, Marty's father's business partner, Jerry Steuerman, was never considered a suspect by the authorities -- despite the fact that he was in the Tankleff home the night of the crime, owed Seymour hundreds of thousands of dollars and, in the aftermath of the attacks, mysteriously disguised himself, disappeared, and turned up in California under an assumed name.

Now 13 years later, new evidence has emerged that implicates individuals with connections to Steuerman. This evidence may be Marty's last and best chance of proving his innocence, but will it unlock Marty's cell door, finally putting an end to his long legal nightmare? In order to answer this question, we must first visit the past and answer the questions that are sure to trouble all of you who are hearing of Marty's case for the first time:
If Marty is innocent, why did he confess to killing his parents?

If his confession was false, how was he convicted and why does he remain in prison to this day?

The answers lie in how this amazing story unfolded in the unique environment that is the Suffolk County criminal justice system.

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 "[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.

Marty's high-profile trial took place amid the byzantine backdrop of Suffolk County politics and, some would say, cronyism. Marty's attorney, Robert Gottlieb, had ambitions to run for the district attorney's office as a Democrat. Many believed the presiding judge in Marty's case, Alfred Tisch, intended to run as a Republican. Gottlieb did not endear himself to Tisch when he asked Tisch to recuse himself from the trial, based on the belief that a sitting judge, especially on a high-profile case, should not run for district attorney. Tisch refused to recuse himself, and ultimately never ran for district attorney. Some believe Tisch has always blamed Gottlieb for ruining his political aspirations.

Just a few years prior to Marty's trial, a New York State Commission had begun investigating widespread allegations of prosecutorial and police misconduct in Suffolk County. The driving force behind the Commission's formation was Suffolk County Court Judge Stuart Namm, known as the "Serpico of Judges." Beyond numerous ongoing misconduct complaints and an unusually high confession rate in Suffolk County, Judge Namm was disturbed by police misconduct in murder trials over which he presided. One specific instance involved false testimony by none other than Detective James McCready, who took Marty's "confession." Among the Commission's overall findings was: "The Suffolk County Police Department and District Attorney's Office engaged in and permitted improper practices to occur in homicide prosecutions, including perjury, as well as grossly deficient investigative and management practices."

But long before Marty's trial would start, and just a week after the murders, as Seymour lay unconscious in the hospital, the story took a bizarre turn. Jerry Steuerman, Seymour's business partner, the self-proclaimed "bagel king" of Long Island (he wore a gold chain with a gold bagel on it), who was at the poker game in Seymour�s house the night of the attacks, faked his own death. Shortly after telling people he had received death threats, he withrew thousands of dollars from one of his and Seymour's joint bank accounts and checked into a motel, where he shaved his beard and changed his clothes. He then abandoned his car with the motor running in the hotel parking lot, to make it look as though he had been abducted. He flew to California under an alias, where he changed his hair weave and stayed, among other places, in Big Sur. Ultimately, Steuerman called his girlfriend and uttered a single, prearranged word -- pistachio -- to indicate he was still alive. The homicide detectives on the Tankleff case traced the call and tracked Steuerman down in California, assuring him that he was not a suspect, and brought him back to testify against Marty. Steuerman explained he ran because he was stressed out over the assault on the Tankleffs and by business problems. The final Missing Persons report states, among other things, "Tankleff and Steuerman own a race horse and Tankleff has helped Steuerman finance numerous bagel stores… Steuerman has been thoroughly questioned and Homicide does not believe he was involved."

Marty's trial began in April of 1990, about a year and a half after the murders, and lasted for nine weeks. At trial, it was established that the poker game had broken up around 3:00 a.m., and the last poker player to leave the Tankleff house that night was Jerry Steuerman. Further, prior to trial, police were told that Steuerman had attempted to hire someone to cut out Marty's tongue, because Marty continued to implicate him. Steuerman had also once reportedly hired a motorcycle gang to resolve a business dispute.

The government's forensics experts had identified mysterious hairs on Arlene Tankleff's body, particularly in her hand, that were rootless and did not match Marty's hair. Likewise, rootless hair was found on Seymour Tankleff that was inconsistent with Marty's hair. Jerry Steuerman had a hair weave made from rootless human hair.

None of this information -- Steuerman's strong financial motive for murdering the Tankleffs, his being the last guest in the Tankleff residence the night of the attacks, the unexplained rootless hairs at the crime scene and his inexplicable disappearance following the assaults -- caused the police to consider Jerry Steuerman a suspect or to revisit their initial conclusion as to Marty's guilt.

Throughout the trial and ever since, Marty's entire family, including his aunts and uncles, who were also the victims' brothers and sisters, supported him unequivocally. "He loved his parents and would never do this," maintained his friends and family. They scoffed at the motives advanced by the state -- that Marty resented having to drive the "crummy old Lincoln," and had wanted to use the family's boat more often, and had wanted to stay home alone when his parents went on vacation. This support group had one exception -- Marty's half-sister Shari, who would gradually turn against him, and who, incidentally, stood to inherit a significant portion of the estate if Marty were convicted; whereas if Marty were found innocent, he would inherit the bulk of the estate.

At trial, the only evidence against Marty was his "confession". Not one shred of physical evidence connected Marty to the crime, despite a three-day search of the crime scene by teams from Homicide, the Crime Laboratory, the Identification Section, the K-9 Unit and the Crime Scene Unit. All knives in the kitchen (and those found elsewhere in the house) and the dumbbells in Marty's room were disassembled and tested for the presence of even the most minute quantity of blood or human tissue. Each tested negative. Although Marty "confessed" to using a dumbbell, both the physician who treated Seymour at the hospital and the forensic pathologist testified the weapon was likely a hammer. No hammer was ever recovered.

Marty's shower had been searched exhaustively for blood, human tissue, or hairs or fibers belonging to his parents, including removing and analyzing the trap from the shower drain. All tests proved negative. The towels in his bathroom likewise exhibited no signs of blood. No drops of blood were found on the floor between the parents' bedroom, the study or Marty's bathroom.

No blood identified as belonging to Marty had been found in either room where the bodies were located, despite government forensics testimony that Arlene Tankleff put up a significant struggle against her attacker. Likewise no hair or fiber evidence from Marty was found in either room. While Marty was recovering at the time from nose surgery that had resulted in some bleeding, the police had observed no cuts or other evidence of a struggle on Marty. Scrapings of his fingernails produced no evidence of a struggle. No defensive wounds were found on Marty. Scrapings of Arlene's fingernails produced no sign of Marty's skin.

Contrary to Marty's "confession" that he murdered Arlene and then murdered Seymour, Seymour's blood was found in the master bedroom where Arlene's body was found, thereby indicating a different order of attack. A blood stain on the fitted sheet on the bed was consistent with Seymour's blood, and inconsistent with Arlene's or Marty's blood, as was a blood stain found on the wall of the master bedroom. Bloody glove prints were found in the parents' bedroom and by the light switch in Marty's bedroom. But Marty never mentioned gloves in his statement to the detectives, and none were ever found.

So the only evidence the authorities had on Marty was his "confession", and in 1990, before the phenomenon of "false" or "coerced" confessions was well known, it was enough. Some jurors apparently agreed with McCreedy that Marty hadn't shown the proper emotion at the proper time. Others simply couldn't fathom how anyone could admit to a heinous crime if they were innocent. Gottlieb, Marty's attorney, may have hurt Marty's case by promising testimony he did not deliver. For example, after promising in opening statements to demonstrate Marty's close relationship with his family, he failed to call any family members as witnesses. In his summation, District Attorney John Collins pointed out Gottlieb's omission.

On June 28, 1990, after eight days of deliberation, the jury reached a verdict. In an apparent compromise, they acquitted Marty of first degree murder of his mother, but convicted him of murdering her in the second degree and of first degree murder of his father. Judge Tisch sentenced him to the maximum of 50 years to life. Marty is currently in the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, in upstate New York.

Prior to sentencing, Gottlieb made several accusations and recusal requests, saying a bartender had seen Judge Tisch, DA Collins and Detective McCready out celebrating Tankleff's conviction, which Tisch angrily denied. Gottlieb raised questions about whether a juror exchanged hand signals during the trial with Collins, the prosecutor. And Gottlieb requested a special prosecutor to investigate charges that an assistant district attorney called Gottlieb a "Jew bastard" in a Riverhead restaurant.

Figuring out how to win his freedom became Marty's vocation, and he immediately became a fixture in the prison library. Throughout his ordeal, beyond the inevitable ups and downs, he has maintained a remarkably even and positive attitude that has provided inspiration for his supporters. Over the years, Marty has also helped many fellow inmates with their own appeals.

Marty's state and federal appeals -- based on the question of exactly when Marty was "in custody" and whether his Miranda rights were violated -- got him tantalizingly close to a new trial but ultimately proved unsuccessful. A state appeals court split two-two over whether his Miranda rights were violated; a fifth judge was added, who sided against Marty. The dissenting opinion stated the only evidence against Marty -- his confession -- should be suppressed and the case dismissed. Next a federal court ruled that Marty's state Miranda rights were indeed violated, but had no jurisdiction to overturn a state ruling.

Marty's team continued the search to uncover the kind of evidence that could reopen the case, evidence that, had it been available at trial, would have likely altered the outcome.

In 2001, Marty convinced a private investigator on Long Island named Jay Salpeter to join his team. A former New York City homicide detective, Salpeter read through everything on the case, and all roads led him to Steuerman. But all the Steuerman leads were ignored by police, who had already "solved" the case to their satisfaction. Salpter brought himself up to speed on what was never really a secret: At the time the Tankleffs were attacked, Jerry Steuerman owed Seymour Tankleff hundreds of thousands of dollars. He had been paying his debt through weekly cash payments, brought to the weekly poker games, but at the time of the murders he was experiencing serious financial difficulties that were affecting his ability to pay this debt. Throughout the months preceding the attacks, Steuerman's relationship with Seymour had deteriorated and they had numerous arguments over their respective business ventures. For example, Jerry Steuerman had wanted to enter into a new business with his son, but Seymour insisted that he could only do so with Seymour's participation. As Jerry Steuerman testified, Seymour seemed to think that he not only owned half of the partnership, but half of Steuerman.

Salpeter learned that in 1995, a woman named Karlene Kovacs signed an affidavit that a man named Joseph Creedon, whom she had met at a dinner party, told her that he and a "Steuerman" had been involved in the Tankleff murders. Kovacs says Creedon told her they hid in the bushes by the Tankleff home and that the murders were quite bloody, and that afterward "they were full of blood and had to get rid of their clothes," "how they had to make a quick dash to avoid being caught" that night, and how subsequently "he was afraid about being caught and therefore had to get out of town." Kovacs related this account to Gottlieb, Marty's attorney, who provided it to the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office and urged it to conduct a thorough investigation. Nothing came of it, despite the fact that, as Salpeter saw, this was the same Joseph Creedon who had signed an affidavit claiming that Todd Steuerman had told him that Todd's father, Jerry Steuerman, wanted to hire Creedon to cut out Marty Tankleff's tongue because Marty continued to implicate Jerry Steuerman in his parents' murders. According to Creedon, after he turned down this assignment to silence Marty, Todd Steuerman shot Creedon in the arm. Todd Steuerman was never prosecuted for shooting Creedon, although he was busted for possessing two kilos of cocaine, receiving a sentence of seven years to life, a relatively light sentence under the Rockefeller drug laws.

Poring over the arrest records of these individuals in a search for more leads, Salpeter learned that in 1989, Creedon was arrested for attempted burglary of one of Jerry Steuerman and Seymour Tankleff's bagel stores. Creedon's accomplice on the burglary attempt was a man named Glenn Harris. Salpeter began corresponding with Harris, who was in jail on another matter. The investigator had the growing sense that Harris wanted to unburden himself of something, and arranged to visit Harris in prison.

Harris told Salpeter that something had been bothering him for years. On September 7, 1988, he was the getaway driver for what he thought at the time was a burglary of a home in Belle Terre on Long Island. He said he drove a man named Joseph Creedon and another named Peter Kent to the home and watched them go around to the back of the house. Harris sat in the car. Between 10 and 30 minutes later, they "came running to the car" and were "nervous" and "winded" and demanded Harris drive off at once. Creedon had gloves in his jacket pocket. Harris dropped Creedon and Kent off at one of their homes in Long Island at approximately 5:00 a.m. After resting in his car, Harris observed Kent burning his jeans and sweatshirt and began to suspect that something more serious than a burglary had occurred. Harris later heard on the radio the initial reports of the attacks at the Tankleff home in Belle Terre.

As Salpeter listened to Harris, he realized the story interlocked perfectly with what Karlene Kovacs says Creedon told her: Kovacs quotes Creedon as saying that he and his accomplice hid in the bushes at the Tankleff home that night, while Harris reports observing Creedon and his accomplice go into the backyard at the Tankleff home. Similarly, Kovacs quotes Creedon as saying that they were full of blood and had to get rid of their clothes after the murders, while Harris reports seeing Creedon's accomplice burning the clothes he had on that night.

Reviewing the trial transcripts, Salpeter learned that police had discovered bloody glove prints on the light switch in Marty's bedroom. According to Harris, Creedon had gloves on him the night of the crime. Why would the killers check Marty's room but spare him? "Imagine the investigation that would take place if the whole family was murdered," says Saltpeter. "But with the kid alive, he's there as a suspect to take the fall."

Salpeter tracked down yet another witness with infomation supporting Marty's innocence, this one by a fellow inmate of Todd Steuerman's named Bruce Demps. Demps signed an affadavit staing that Todd told him that he knew for a fact that Marty Tankleff did not murder his parents, and that associates of his father did it.

Finally, Salpeter noticed from trial records a piece of physical evidence that was never pursued by police but which takes on extraordinary significance in light of both the Kovacs and Harris statements: a crime scene diagram identifying mud stains inside the Tankleff home by an unlocked door that leads from the backyard into the home. If Marty Tankleff committed these murders from inside his home as the prosecution alleged, then there would be no occasion for mud stains near an unlocked door from the backyard. But if Creedon and his accomplice committed these murders after hiding in the bushes in the backyard and entering the home through that door, that would explain the mud stains. In this scenario, they would have encountered and attempted to kill Seymour Tankleff first in the study, and then moved through the house -- or around the outside of the house -- to the bedroom to kill Arlene Tankleff. This sequence would be consistent with the finding of Seymour Tankleff's blood in the bedroom, suggesting that - contrary to Marty's "confession" -- Seymour Tankleff was attacked before Arlene. As Salpeter says, it makes more sense for the man of the house, the protector, to be killed first.

Again, none of the forensic evidence pointed to Marty. In addition to the gloves, the mud and the rootless hair, a police forensics expert who examined the dried blood on the bodies determined the attacks must have taken place hours before Marty said he awoke that morning.

By late summer of 2003, Salpeter and the lawyers believed they had all they needed: compelling new evidence, none of which was available at the time of the trial of Marty Tankleff, and which could have altered the outcome. The evidence supported the theory of the defense all along, that Jerry Steuerman was inside the Tankleff's home at 3:00 a.m. with a significant financial motive to murder the Tankleffs. Marty's lawyers provided this new evidence to the Suffolk County District Attorney's office, which gave no indication it intended to act on it.

On the morning of October 2, 2003, Marty's attorneys filed a motion in Suffolk County Court, requesting that Marty's conviction be vacated or that an evidentiary hearing be held. That afternoon, Salpeter and the lawyers held a press conference announcing the new evidence. Prominent coverage appeared on local TV and in the major newspapers. With the new evidence now public, the District Attorney's office issued a statement that it would investigate the new evidence and prepare a response as to whether it agreed to vacate, oppose or hold an evidentiary hearing.

In early November, Glen Harris -- the alleged unwitting getaway driver -- was brought from Sing Sing to the Suffolk County jail to be interviewed by the District Attorney's office regarding his statement to Salpeter. It happens that the current Sheriff of Suffolk County is Alfred Tisch, the judge who presided over the trial and sentenced Marty. John Collins, who prosecuted Marty, is still a Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney. The current district attorney is Thomas Spota, who, subsequent to Marty's trial, defended Detective McCready on an assault charge. Harris says he was roughed up by Suffolk County jail guards in an effort to intimidate him, a charge denied by the authorities.

On December 12, the DA's office issued a response opposing the motion for a hearing. In the report, prosecutors say they uncovered evidence that helps Marty along with evidence that hurts him. Prosecutors concede Joey Creedon did tell multiple people that he was involved in the Tankleff murders; but as opposed to Marty's "confession", which the prosecutors find credible based on motives such as not wanting to drive the "crummy Lincoln," they find Creedon not credible because they believe he was only boasting to enhance his reputation. Joey "Guns" Creedon, prosecutors say, used guns not knives or blunt weapons, and only committed violence against drug dealers, and had no history of committing crimes in Belle Terre. Of course, Marty had no history of using weapons of any kind, nor had he committed crimes in Belle Terre or anywhere else.

On April 16, Marty's lawyers submitted a rebuttal to the District Attorney's report, leaving it to Suffolk County Court Judge Stephen Braslow to rule on whether there should be a hearing and, ultimately, whether Marty's convictions should be vacated and he be granted a new trial where all of the evidence can be considered.

In the meantime, Marty continues his routine in prison, waking early and getting to work on his case. He continues to correspond with his supporters and with anyone he thinks can help him. At the bottom of every letter Marty writes, on his home-made stationery, is a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Injustice found anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

On May 12, Marty got his first legal break in 14 years. In a stunning turnaround, Suffolk County prosecutors agreed to the defense's motion for a hearing on the new evidence of Marty's innocence. Prosecutors dropped their opposition to a hearing based on assurances that Glenn Harris would testify without immunity.

On May 21, Suffolk County Court Judge Stephen Braslow ordered that Marty's hearing begin on Monday, July 19. It is estimated that the hearing will take at least one week.