Man convicted of killing parents still blames businessman
By John Springer
Court TV
 |  Martin Tankleff testifies in 1990 about damp towels found on his bed. |
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RIVERHEAD, New York (Court TV) -- Lawyers for a Long Island man convicted in 1990 of killing his wealthy parents are continuing an all-out legal and media campaign to get the case called back to court.
In new papers filed last week, attorneys for 32-year-old Martin Tankleff charge that they have uncovered even more evidence implicating the former business partner of Tankleff's father in the murders. The defense's suspect, Jerry Steuerman, told two people after the case made headlines again last year that he "cut their throats" but would die of old age before law enforcement caught up with him.
The filings come on the heels of a "48 Hours" segment on the case in which a recently paroled inmate named Glen Harris insisted that he drove the getaway car for two men who actually killed 62-year-old insurance executive Seymour Tankleff and his 54-year-old wife Arlene.
The Tankleffs were attacked in their expansive home in Belle Terre, a tiny incorporated village filled with million-dollar homes, on September 8, 1988. That Wednesday was supposed to be the first day of Martin Tankleff's senior year at Earl L. Vandermeulen High School in Port Jefferson.
Martin called 911 at about 6:11 a.m. to report that he awoke to find his father severely wounded in the neck. When police and ambulance personnel arrived, however, they learned that Arlene Tankleff had died from similar wounds.
From the start, Martin told police that Steuerman owed his father a lot of money and that he was probably involved. Steuerman was the last of a half-dozen card players, Belle Terre's mayor and other prominent citizens, to leave a high-stakes game the night before.
It took police just hours and a trick to get Martin Tankleff to confess to the crimes. After a detective pretended that he learned from another detective that Martin's father had come out of a coma and implicated Martin, the teenager confessed.
At his trial, Martin testified that he was only telling the overzealous detectives what they wanted to hear. He insisted that he loved his parents and must have slept through the attacks, but his voice remained flat and devoid of emotion when he denied being the killer. Jurors said later that Martin's demeanor on the stand cast doubt on his story. They also found troubling his testimony that his mother's blood was found on a tissue in his sweatshirt pocket; he said he saw her body from the doorway but never entered her bedroom because he believed the killer could still be there.
In the new court papers, Tankleff's lawyers chastise the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office for opposing defense efforts to obtain an evidentiary hearing. Prosecutors say that Harris' story about driving a getaway car lacks credibility, is not corroborated and will never be repeated in court unless they grant him immunity, which they will not do.
"Having itself repeatedly and utterly failed to conduct an objective fact-finding investigation, the DA's office now argues that this Court should refuse to hold an evidentiary hearing, ensuring that Martin Tankleff, the remainder of the victims' family and the public will be forever deprived of learning the truth about who murdered Arlene and Seymour Tankleff," the defense papers say. "The new evidence, particularly when viewed in conjunction with the factual record in this case, is simply too important to be swept under the rug."
Assistant District Attorney Leonard Lato, who was not involved in Tankleff's 13-week trial and decade-long appeals process, said the defense has stepped over the line in the way it has championed Tankleff's cause. He noted that before, during and after the trial, attorneys hired by relatives who still support Tankleff attacked the trial prosecutor, judge and even the jury.
"Now they're basically taking potshots at the DA's office. We don't agree with them, so we must be bad people," Lato told Courttv.com. "Everyone is responsible for Marty Tankleff's plight except Marty Tankleff."
Defense lawyer Bruce Barket said he is 100-percent sure Tankleff is innocent and equally convinced he will prove it in court one day. He said Harris' statement rings too true to be ignored, given that he implicates people associated with Steuerman as the real killers.
Lato, however, said the defense is hanging its whole case now on Glen Harris, whom he described as a career criminal with psychiatric problems. The District Attorney's Office will never grant Harris' demand for immunity in exchange for testimony, particularly considering what Harris is seeking.
"When a witness tells you he wants immunity from perjury, that means he may have lied and wants protection from it," Lato said. "I think he's nuts."
Lato likened the defense effort for a new trial after exhausting direct appeals to a golfer who stays on the teebox until he hits the shot he wants.
"It's like mulligans. You keep taking mulligans until you like the shot," he said. "The problem is that no jury would convict anybody of anything based solely on the testimony of Glen Harris."
According to the new court papers, Harris did not only tell the story about being the getaway driver to defense investigators; they say he told a priest and a nun. It's clear from the filing that the defense is worried first about getting a hearing, another trial after that.
"The DA's office highlights minor inconsistencies between the different statements made by Harris at different times in an effort to cast doubt on his credibility," the court paper say. "Of course, the proper way to determine his credibility is at an evidentiary hearing."
Judge Stephen Braslow has not indicated when he will rule on the motion for an evidentiary hearing. Tankleff is serving a sentence of 50 years to life in prison in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York.
