Marty Tankleff Exonerated 20 Years Later

For a jury member in a murder case, it's a tough to get past a confession. Most jury members find it difficult to believe that a false confession is possible, but it does happen more than you might think. An astounding ¼ of wrongful convictions were based on false confessions, which were later disproved by DNA evidence.

Martin Tankleff's case is a textbook example of how a false confession happens. Marty was just 17 on the morning he discovered his parents, who had been brutally stabbed and bludgeoned. His father was still alive, so he called 911.

His father was taken into the hospital, where he lay in coma. Meanwhile, Marty became the prime suspect, despite the fact that his father's business partner had threatened his father recently.

According to martytankleff.org:

A week after the attacks, as Marty's father lay unconscious in the hospital, the business partner would fake his own death, disguise himself and flee to California under an alias. Despite the business partner's motive and opportunity, he has never been considered a suspect by Suffolk County authorities to this day.

Lead Detective McCready was convinced of Marty's guilt and focused all his energy on him. Marty, who had always been taught to respect authority figures, believed McCready when he told the boy that his father had come out of his coma and said that his son had attacked him. Since his father had never lied to him, Marty began to doubt his own innocence and wondered aloud if he had blacked out.

The detectives then constructed a confession for Marty, indicating when he said the wrong things and revising the confession. When it was finally written out, Marty refused to sign the document.

Still, he was convicted based mostly on that confession. It's more than just the confession that got the conviction. The prosecutor's case seems pretty damning. Young Tankleff was banned from school after he threatened another student with a knife and they called several witnesses that alleged that he said his parent's deaths would solve all his problems. Plus, he was set to inherit millions from them.

Suffolk County, at the time, did not have the greatest of track records when it came to correct convictions and at least one of the detectives that handled the Tankleff case was under investigation for perjury. The most damning testimony came from these detectives.

Neither of the supposed murder weapons (a dumbell and a large kitchen knife) had any blood remnants on them. Since forensics in 1988 wasn't what it is today, that's not all that surprising.

But Tankleff's defense eventually brough forth expert testimony that the wounds were more consistent with a hammer and a different type of knife. And, there was testimony from several witnesses that Jerry Steuerman, the irate business partner, had in fact committed the murders.

According to a 2003 New York Times article by Bruce Lambert:

Despite evidence of violent struggles, the son bore no injuries, case records show. None of his hair, blood or skin was found on or near his parents' bodies, nor was theirs found on him or in his room. Investigators did find rootless hairs on both victims that did not match hairs from them or their son. Mr. Steuerman wore a hair weave with rootless hairs, the lawyers said.

Although the confession said a dumbbell was used to beat the parents, it had no blood. Expert witnesses said the injuries appeared to be from a hammer and knife, which were not recovered. There were also glove prints, but no gloves were found. The driver said the passengers he drove to the Tankleffs' house had gloves, however. A muddy footprint found inside an open rear door of the house indicated an intruder, the defense lawyers said.

While crusading for his own innocence in jail he earned an associate's degree in criminal justice. He wrote thousands of letters and hired a retired policeman to track down leads about the case.

He hopes to finish his law degree and is pushing for the requirement that all police interviews be video taped.