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Players Scrutinized in Tankleff Murder Mystery
by
findingDulcinea Staff
New York’s attorney general reviews the 1988 murder case that saw Martin Tankleff serve 17 years in prison for murdering his parents. A former business partner of the slain husband is under scrunity.
30-Second Summary
At the beginning of January, Suffolk County district attorney Thomas Spota said he wouldn’t retry Martin Tankleff in connection with the 1988 murder of his parents, Arlene and Seymour Tankleff. A state court of appeals had said in December that Tankleff should have a new trial because of evidence that emerged in the intervening years.
Tankleff, who was 17 at the time of his parents’ death, gave a confession that he almost immediately recanted and wouldn’t sign. That verbal confession was used to convict Martin of his parents’ murder. At 19, he was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison.
Witnesses later implicated Peter Kent and Joseph Creedon. Those witnesses also suggested that Jerard Steuerman, a business partner who owed Tankleff senior $500,000, was behind the murders.
Steuerman moved to California and changed his name soon after the Tankleffs were killed. To this day, Steuerman denies involvement, and the police have never identified him as a suspect. His relationship with Seymour was described as “cool,” and Arlene had told a relative she was afraid of her husband’s business partner.
Those involved in the Tankleff tragedy are also connected in other ways. Spota was a partner in a law firm that represented Steuerman’s son in the early 1980s, and Martin Tankleff’s brother-in-law went into business with the chief investigator of the case after the trial.
It may have a bearing on the case that studies have shown teenagers are more susceptible to the delusions that lead to false confessions. If Martin Tankleff was persuaded to confess to a crime he didn't commit, it was not the first time an innocent teenager had done so.
Tankleff, who was 17 at the time of his parents’ death, gave a confession that he almost immediately recanted and wouldn’t sign. That verbal confession was used to convict Martin of his parents’ murder. At 19, he was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison.
Witnesses later implicated Peter Kent and Joseph Creedon. Those witnesses also suggested that Jerard Steuerman, a business partner who owed Tankleff senior $500,000, was behind the murders.
Steuerman moved to California and changed his name soon after the Tankleffs were killed. To this day, Steuerman denies involvement, and the police have never identified him as a suspect. His relationship with Seymour was described as “cool,” and Arlene had told a relative she was afraid of her husband’s business partner.
Those involved in the Tankleff tragedy are also connected in other ways. Spota was a partner in a law firm that represented Steuerman’s son in the early 1980s, and Martin Tankleff’s brother-in-law went into business with the chief investigator of the case after the trial.
It may have a bearing on the case that studies have shown teenagers are more susceptible to the delusions that lead to false confessions. If Martin Tankleff was persuaded to confess to a crime he didn't commit, it was not the first time an innocent teenager had done so.
Headline Links: “The Names Stay Linked: ‘Bagel King’ and Tankleff”
The New York Times takes a closer look at the life of Jerard Steuerman, business partner of the late Seymour Tankleff. Steuerman, who declined to comment for the story, became partners with Tankleff in 1983. Steuerman’s family had been in the bagel business for years, and Tankleff was looking for a new investment opportunity. Former co-workers describe him in two ways: “a stand-up guy” and “I still get goose bumps when I hear his name.” Tankleff had loaned Steuerman $500,000 at a 35 percent interest rate, and had wanted $50,000 of it back immediately before his and his wife’s death. A graphic on the left side of the page describes how the people in the case are connected, including how Tankleff’s half-sister was linked to the lead investigator.
Source: New York Times (free registration may be required)
Tankleff’s trial for the deaths of his parents painted two pictures of the then-18-year-old: a “sweet, well-mannered young man” and “cowardly killer,” according to a 1990 article from The New York Times. Marty Tankleff allegedly told the police he felt smothered and angry at having to drive a Lincoln instead of a flashier car. Tankleff, according to the paper’s account of his testimony, decided to kill his parents after he was reprimanded for not setting up the poker table. His attorney said the forensic evidence didn’t support that theory at all.
Source: New York Times (free registration may be required)
Thomas Spota, Suffolk County’s district attorney, announced on Jan. 2 that his office would not retry Martin Tankleff for the 1988 murders of his parents, Seymour and Arlene, and the charges would be dropped. Spota also plans to ask New York’s governor to have a special prosecutor investigate an alternate theory Martin Tankleff’s lawyers have put forward – that men who were hired at the behest of Jerard Steuerman, Seymour Tankleff’s business partner, killed the couple. Steuerman has never been a suspect in the eyes of police or the district attorney. New York’s Appellate Division vacated the conviction on Dec. 27 and ordered another trial, based on new evidence.
Source: Newsday
Jerard Steuerman, Seymour Tankleff’s former business partner, whom Martin Tankleff’s defense team has suggested is behind the murders, has never been identified by the police as a suspect. Now 68, he lives in Boca Raton, Florida, where the Steuerman family has popular bagel shops, like the ones he and Tankleff started on Long Island. Though some found Steuerman’s disappearance shortly after the murders suspicious, Suffolk County’s former DA said he never thought the murderer would be “foolish enough” to be the last one out of the Tankleff home, and then draw attention by immediately leaving town.
Source: Newsday
Background: Tankleff Case Timeline; Court Documents
Newsday has a timeline for Tankleff’s case, starting in 1988 when Martin Tankleff said he found his parents dead and injured in their home. The site also has a video interview with Tankleff, slide shows, and links to court documents.
Source: Newsday
The Appellate Division reversed a lower court’s decision to vacate Tankleff’s conviction. The appeals court found that a "review of the record on appeal reveals that the County Court’s determination amounted to a misapplication of its gatekeeper function relative to the evaluation and admissibility of the proffered 'new evidence.'"
Source: Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division
Suffolk County court has PDF files of some of the Tankleff decisions available on its Web site. They include a decision to deny a motion to vacate the conviction and a denial of a motion to disqualify Spota.
Source: 10th Judicial District, Suffolk County
Opinion & Analysis: Tankleff family support; questions remain
Martin Tankleff’s Web site carries his account of his arrest and conviction, along with legal documents dating back to 2002. Under “additional info” there are statements from Tankleff’s relatives, including a June 2007 letter from Arlene Tankleff’s sister. She asks, “Why are you fighting so desperately to keep Marty Tankleff in prison?” and closes by asking whether Spota has heard of Mike Nifong, a former North Carolina district attorney who was disbarred after it was discovered he hid exculpatory evidence in the Duke University Lacrosse rape case.
Source: Marty Tankleff
In this commentary, Jami Floyd of CNN says that the district attorney, Thomas Spota, the case’s investigating officer Jim McCready and Tankleff senior's business partner, Jerard Steuerman, “should be made to answer for what went wrong in this case.”
Source: CNN
The Tankleff case has some similarities to another New York-area case, that of Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for the rape and murder of a classmate. He said his confession was coerced, and when DNA was finally tested, it showed that another man was the killer. That man, who was in prison already, confessed and Deskovic was released in 2006. This New York Times editorial encourages the appointment of a special prosecutor, noting possible conflicts of interest with Spota, who in private practice had represented the case’s lead investigator.
Source: The New York Times
Shari Mistretta, Martin Tankleff’s half-sister, believes he is guilty, and answers some questions raised in the press, regarding matters such as her inheriting their father’s estate, and allegedly having business dealings with McCready, the lead investigator. She did not testify in Tankleff’s trial. She said her half-brother profited from their father’s estate, and he waived his rights to inheritance, and that she didn’t inherit $3 million. Regarding McCready, her then estranged husband, she said, dealt with him, not her. In response to other family members’ support of Martin’s innocence, she said their extended family wasn’t familiar with the immediate family dynamics on a daily or weekly basis. She also called Spota’s decision “senseless and illogical,” and motivated by “media pressure.” These recent events, she said, has left her and her family, “appalled, ashamed, discouraged and disillusioned in our judicial structure."
Source: Newsday
Related Material: False confessions, double convictions
When a juvenile confesses to a crime, courts tend to allow experts to testify about false confessions generally without drawing a conclusion in that specific case, according to a 2006 National Law Journal article. Tankleff and the case of Tyler Edmonds, a Mississippi boy who confessed to killing his brother-in-law at age 13 at his older sister’s request, are described, along with studies that suggest teenagers can be particularly vulnerable in the matter of false confessions.
Source: Northwestern Law/National Law Journal
Edmonds is scheduled to have a new trial in February. He was released in May 2007 after the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered that he be retried, but said his confession could be used as evidence again. The U.S. Supreme Court in December refused to hear an appeal.
Source: Commercial Dispatch
In California, an innocent man was almost sentenced for first-degree murder in 2000, before the real killers were discovered and brought to justice, all thanks to an informant. David Quindt had been convicted of killing an 18-year-old and seriously wounding a 15-year-old during a drug robbery. His alleged accomplice was scheduled to go on trial when an informant interested in a reward called the assistant district attorney to tell him they had the wrong men. None of the investigators had heard the name of the real killers, and the survivor described a man who closely resembled Quindt to a sketch artist. “It’s an interesting story about how an innocent man, just based on this circumstantial web and his own kind of stupidity and lying, can get 12 jurors, beyond a reasonable doubt, to convict him of first degree murder,” said an assistant district attorney involved in the case. To get to the second part of the story, click on “APF Reporter Vol. 20 #2 Index” at the top of the page and then scroll down.
Source: APF Reporter
In 1995, Texas executed Jesse Dewayne Jacobs for complicity in the death of Etta Urdiales. Jacobs confessed to killing her, but later recanted and said his sister had shot the woman. Jacobs was sentenced to death, but he testified against his sister, who was convicted of murder and received a prison sentence. Prosecutors argued that Jacobs was involved in other elements of the crime, including kidnapping and pistol-whipping the victim. The Supreme Court refused to hear Jacobs’ appeal, but Justice John Paul Stevens disagreed with his colleagues. He said, “It would be fundamentally unfair to execute a person on the basis of a factual determination that the state has formally disavowed. I find this course of events deeply troubling.”
Source: The Ethical Spectacle, March 1995
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