Tankleff update: Free at last

Previous comment on this disgraceful case on January 10th. The bond requirement below was an abuse too.

A man found guilty 17 years ago of murdering his parents as a teenager was freed from prison Thursday, days after an appeals court overturned the conviction. The court ordered a retrial because of new evidence. Martin Tankleff, 36, was released on $1 million bail and thanked his friends, supporters and witnesses who came forward “because it was the right thing to do.”

An appeals court threw out Tankleff’s 1990 conviction last week, saying that new evidence suggested that someone else might have killed Seymour and Arlene Tankleff in their Long Island home. “I was as upset when Marty was convicted as I was the day I learned that there were murders,” said his aunt, Mary Anne McClure. “Now we can mourn my sister properly, because we haven’t been able to for 19 years.”

Tankleff was 17 when his parents were bludgeoned and stabbed in their house in 1988. After a detective falsely told the teen that his father had awakened from a coma and implicated him, Tankleff confessed to the crimes. But he quickly withdrew the confession, refusing to sign a statement that police had prepared. He was sentenced to from 50 years to life in prison after being convicted in one of the nation’s first televised trials.

Private detectives working on Tankleff’s behalf later turned up witnesses who implicated a business partner of his father’s and others in the killings. The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court in Brooklyn said it was probable that a new jury would render a different verdict if given a chance to hear all the evidence now available, including how the police obtained Tankleff’s confession.

Report here



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