Bagel king's son seeks new chance to prove innocence
Tankleff was convicted in 1990 for killing parents
By John Springer
Court TV
RIVERHEAD, New York (Court TV) -- Despite the absence of physical evidence and the existence of a more likely suspect whom police barely investigated, a trial-weary jury deliberated more than eight straight days before finding a Long Island teenager guilty of murdering his parents in 1988.
Since the 1990 trial, Martin Tankleff has been willing to tell anyone who visits the maximum-security prison that has been his home these past 14 years about how police got him to confess falsely by tricking him with a whopper of a lie: That his father had emerged from a coma and said that his 17-year-old son attacked him in his study.
On Monday, lawyers for Tankleff began telling the story again. But this time, the tale has new wrinkles and the person hearing it -- a judge -- holds the keys that can release Tankleff from his sentence of 50 years to life.
"We intend to prove that Martin Tankleff is innocent of the murders of his parents," said Barry Pollack, a Washington, D.C., attorney who is representing Tankleff for free. "Marty Tankleff is an innocent man."
Suffolk County Court Judge Stephen Braslow does not have to decide whether Tankleff killed his parents, Seymour Tankleff, 62, and Arlene Tankleff, 54. What Braslow must consider at the end of the hearing is whether Tankleff's defense team has dug up enough new and compelling evidence during the 14 years since his sensational 13-week trial to warrant holding a new trial.
The defense is relying on a new witness to corroborate what they have believed for about 10 years: that a career criminal with ties to Seymour Tankleff's partner in a chain of bagel stores was recruited or paid to execute the Tankleffs and end a business feud.
With Marty Tankleff in jail and Seymour Tankleff still comatose with an uncertain prognosis, the business partner -- Jerry Steuerman -- shaved his beard and faked his own disappearance by leaving his car's engine running and the doors ajar near an airport. At the time, questions about Steuerman swirled because he was the last of a half-dozen men to leave the Tankleff home after a high-stakes poker game the night of the attacks.
Police found Steuerman hiding out under an assumed name in California, but concluded he was merely avoiding the media and questions about the $570,000 he owed Seymour Tankleff at the time of the assaults. Jurors concurred and rejected Martin Tankleff's own trial testimony that he confessed only because he was in shock and told police what they wanted to hear to end the "nightmare" he was living.
Private investigator Jay Salpeter, one of two witnesses to take the stand on the opening day of the hearing, told the court that soon after taking the case in 2001 he decided to track down known associates of Joseph Creedon, who -- according to another witness who will testify -- bragged about being involved in the murders during the early 1990s.
Salpeter's investigation led him to a witness named Glenn Harris, who, coincidentally or not, was serving time in the same upstate prison where Martin Tankleff is housed.
Now 35, Harris told Salpeter after a little prodding that his conscience has bothered him since the 1988 murders because he drove Creedon and a man named Peter Kent to the Tankleff home for what he thought was going to a burglary.
"Joseph Creedon has admitted that he knows Martin Tankleff is an innocent man. He knows that because Joseph Creedon is the murderer," Pollack, the defense lawyer, said during his five-minute opening statement.
Creedon and Kent have denied any involvement, which leaves the defense with people who say Creedon incriminated himself. But the problem with all these people, prosecutor Leonard Lato said during his opening statement, is that they contradict one another or carry baggage that makes them unbelievable.
"All the primary defense witnesses will have credibility problems," Lato told the judge, who is presiding over a courtroom packed with reporters and Tankleff supporters.
Lato was not involved in the original prosecution of Tankleff, who was to start the first day of his senior year in high school when his parents where bludgeoned and hacked to death with a sharp instrument. He reminded the court, however, that the Tankleffs' expansive home in the affluent Long Island village of Belle Terre did not look like the scene of a home invasion or robbery.
"It was a scene of rage. This was not a planned assassination," Lato said. "This was a rage that basically grew out of Marty's frustration about living in that house."
According to trial testimony, Marty Tankleff confessed to killing his parents because he was upset about a curfew, having to do chores, the loss of boating privileges and his parent's insistence that he drive the "crummy old Lincoln" to school.
"Only one person is responsible for the murder of the Tankleffs, and that is Mr. [Marty] Tankleff himself," said Lato.
'A mind is a terrible thing to waste'
The proceedings in Braslow's third-floor courtroom are extraordinary in several respects. Tankleff has already lost all his appeals, including those that centered on the methods police used to get him to confess. Braslow is also permitting attorneys to bring hearsay evidence to his attention.
Unlike the trial, where prosecutors had to prove Tankleff guilty beyond any reasonable doubt Steuerman could have produced, the defense now bears the burden. The defense has to convince Braslow that the jury would have acquitted Tankleff had it learned about Harris' claim that he drove a known associate of Steuerman's away from the crime scene.
The problem the defense might encounter, however, is that Harris has described himself as a credibility-challenged "psycho," drug addict, burglar and "piece of [excrement]" in the eye of society. Lato cross-examined Salpeter, the defense investigator, at length Monday about the more than 50 letters Harris wrote to Salpeter after they first met in prison in March 2002.
In one letter, Harris referred to himself as "Crazy Glenn." In another, he recalled refusing to review his own psychiatric records as the defense asked. "We know I'm nuts," Harris explained in the letter.
Lato also used the letters to build a case that Harris was telling Salpeter what he wanted to hear, and expected to be "rewarded" or "compensated" with either a career as a true-crime writer, or a transfer to a forensic psychiatric facility in a non-prison setting.
"A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and mine is shot," Harris wrote in one letter.
On redirect examination, defense lawyer Bruce Barket tried to rehabilitate his private investigator. Barket led Salpeter through a series of questions designed to establish that Harris can be melodramatic at times, a joker at others.
Barket got Salpeter, a retired New York City homicide detective, to agree that police often use drug dealers, addicts and other unsavory characters as primary witnesses in prosecutions.
"That doesn't mean he's lying, does it?" Barket said, referring to Harris' addiction. "People who have drug problems tell the truth sometimes, don't they?"
"Yes, they do," Salpeter replied.
The judge eventually will have to determine whether Harris is telling the truth, and, if so, if anyone will believe him.
The hearing is expected to last all week.
