Richard Firstman - A Criminal Injustice. A True Crime, a False Confession, and the Fight to Free Marty Tankleff

The principal characters in the Tankleff case:

THETANKLEFFS

Marty Tankleff, Class of 89, Vandermeulen High School

Seymour Tankleff, Marty's father

Arlene Tankleff, Marty's mother

THE FAMILY

Ron Falbee, Marty's older cousin and (with his wife, Carol) Marty's legal guardian after his parents murders

Marcella (Mickey) Alt Falbee, Ron's mother and Arlene's older sister

Marianne McClure, Arlene's younger sister

Mike McClure, Marianne's husband

Shari Rother (later Mistretta), Seymour's daughter from his first marriage

Ron Rother, Shari's husband at the time of the murders

Norman Tankleff, Seymour's older brother

Ruth Tankleff, Norman's wife

THE FAMILY LAWYER

Myron (Mike) Fox

THE STEUERMANS

Jerry Steuerman, the Bagel King of Tong Island

Todd Steuerman, Jerry's son, a convicted drug dealer

THE POKER PLAYERS

Vinnie Bove, Frank Oliveto, Joe Cecere, Bob Montefusco, Peter Capobianco, and Al Raskin

SUFFOLK COUNTY POLICE HOMICIDE SQUAD

Detective K. James McCready, lead detective on the Tankleff case

Detective Norman Rein, McCready's partner

Detective Sergeant Robert Doyle, supervisor of the Tankleff investigation

SUFFOLK COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, 1988-90

John Collins, Tankleff trial prosecutor

Edward Jablonski, chief of the homicide bureau

Patrick Henry, district attorney, 1978-89

James Catterson, district attorney, 1990-2001

THE TANKLEFF DEFENSE, 1988-94

Robert Gottlieb, trial attorney

Ronald Sussman, Gottlieb's law partner

Mark Pomerantz and Warren Feldman, appeals attorneys, 1991-94

John Murtagh, private investigator, 1988-90

William Navarra, private investigator, 1990-94

TRIALS OF THE JURY

Joseph Fisher, the juror who talked too much

Frank Spindel, the juror who led the charge

Peter Baczynski, the juror who blew the whistle

Theresa Quigley the juror in the middle

MARTY'S PRINCIPAL LAWYERS, 1995-2008

Stephen Braga, lead attorney in federal appeals, 1995-98, and in the drive to reverse the convictions based on new evidence, 1999-2008

Barry Pollack, co-counsel in federal appeals, 1995-98, and litigator of the motion to reverse the convictions, 2002-2008

Bruce Barket, litigator of motion to reverse the convictions, 2002-2008

Jennifer O'Connor, principal author of Marty's final appeal brief, 2006-2007

SUFFOLK COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, 2002-2008

Thomas Spota, district attorney

Leonard Lato, assistant district attorney assigned to oppose a new trial

Walter Warkenthien, investigator assigned to the Tankleff case

THE JUDGES

Alfred Tisch, Suffolk County Court, trial judge, 1990

Stephen Braslow, Suffolk County Court, 440 hearing judge, 2004-2006

Stuart Namm, Suffolk County Court, 1982-92, critic of Suffolk homicide prosecutions

Lawrence Bracken, Cornelius O'Brien, Geraldine Eiber, Vincent Pizzuto, and Thomas R. Sullivan, Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court, Second Department, 1994

Thomas Platt, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, 1997

Guido Calabresi, Jose Cabranes, and Fred Parker, United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals, 1998

Reinaldo Rivera, Gabriel Krausman, Anita Florio, and Mark Dillon, Appellate Division, 2007

THE REINVESTIGATOR

Jay Salpeter, private investigator, retired detective, New York City Police Department

THE SELDEN CROWD

Joseph (Joey Guns) Creedon, Peter Kent, Glenn Harris, Billy Ram, Brian Scott Glass, and Joe Graydon

THOSE WHO CAME FORWARD

Karlene Kovacs, who first came forward in 1994

Joe Guarascio, Joe Creedon's son

Terry (Guarascio) Covais, Creedon's ex-girlfriend and Joe Guarascio's mother

John Guarascio, Terry's brother

Lenny Lubrano, the first to link Steuerman and McCready

William Sullivan, who reported seeing Steuerman and McCready together

Neil Fischer, who heard Steuerman incriminate himself in 1989

Mark Callahan, friend of Scott Glass

MARTY'S ADVOCATES

Lonnie Soury Soury Communications

Eric Friedman, webmaster of martytankleff.org

PART ONE
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Unfortunate Son

Belle Terre, Long Island:
September 6, 1988

A LL ALONG THE COASTLINE , a succession of jagged peninsulas gives the northern shore of Long Island its idiosyncratic contours and most desirable real estate. Great Neck Manhasset Neck Lloyd Neck Eatons Neck eight haphazard glacial formations in all, each in its way heaven or hell to centuries of seamen. Fifty miles out from the New York City line, the last of them pushes into Long Island Sound. And then the coastline abruptly straightens, becoming as regular as a riverbank from there to Orient Point.

It is a hilly cape, this last one, smaller than the others, shaped something like a crabeater seal. The peninsula's tree-lined western edge shelters Port Jefferson Harbor, whose wharf docks the ferries that rumble by on their way to Connecticut and back. On the sound side of the neck, a line of low cliffs overlooks a stretch of rocky shoreline. There was a time, before the first land speculators came along in the early 1900s and gave it a more agreeable name, that the peninsula was known for the misfortune it brought ship captains who didn't see it in the night. Mount Misery Neck was what they called it, before they called it Belle Terre.

Now, late in the century, the cape remains serene and secluded, home to a small community of suburbanites who live in upscale homes on significant properties. Apart from a lavish estate at the end of Cliff Road, where a manor known as the Pink Mansion is inhabited by a woman known as the Contessa, the most enviable addresses are on a sleepy, L-shaped lane that runs toward the sound for a few hundred feet before turning sharply to the right to hug the coastline. It's precisely at this bend, hard by what locals know as the Cliffs, that the first waterfront home comes into view. A roadside mailbox displays the address: 33 Seaside Drive.

The residence is a sprawling, ranch-style house nestled beneath a canopy of leafy treesif five thousand square feet of living space can be said to nestleand shrouded in a small forest of shrubbery. In the ground out back is a gunite swimming pool surrounded by a deck of mountain laurel stone. And then, over the cliffs, an endless midnight-blue panorama. On sun-splashed afternoons, Long Island Sound sparkles, sailboats bob in the breeze, and the occasional powerboat leaves a V-shaped wake of foam. Distant on the horizon is the Connecticut shorelineNew Haven straight ahead, Bridgeport slightly to the left. Late in the day, the sun casts an orange glow across the western sky, and at nightfall the blue sea dissolves into a vista of blackness, the southern New England coast twinkling faintly in the distance.