Tankleff at his bail hearing, 2007
(AP Photo/Kirk Condyles, Pool)
Tankleff’s lost years
Martin Tankleff is out of jail, but he’s still not really a free man, says Alfonso Castillo in Newsday. In 1988, when Tankleff was 17, his parents were beaten and slashed to death at their home on Long Island, N.Y. The teen called 911 and ran out of the house, shouting, “Murder! Murder!” But police were suspicious, and a detective says Tankleff confessed after he was told, falsely, that his father named him as the killer in his dying words. Two years later, Tankleff was convicted of his parents’ murders. The jury, he says, “got it wrong,” ignoring evidence that the confession was coerced. Sentenced to 50 years behind bars, Tankleff spent long hours studying law in the prison library, working on an appeal. “I’d fall asleep with law journals on top of me and books on top of me. Guys used to always laugh that I would spend all my free time, instead of doing something fun, working on my case.” Then, last fall, his conviction was overturned and he was released on bail. Amid continuing doubts about Tankleff’s innocence, New York state officials are trying to decide whether to drop the original indictment. Whatever happens, Tankleff knows he will be forever stigmatized. “I don’t think it will ever be completely behind me. It’s frustrating, knowing that the criminal justice system doesn’t function. [The real killers] are still out there, doing God knows what.”
