Criminal Injustice: A True Crime, a False Confession, and the Fight to Free Marty Tankleff (1st ed.)

When he went to bed on the night of September 6, 1988, seventeen-year-old Marty Tankleff was a typical kid in the upscale Long Island community of Belle Terre.

He was looking forward to starting his senior year at Earl L.

Vandermeulen High School the next day. But instead, Marty woke in the morning to find his parents brutally bludgeoned, their throats slashed.

His mother, Arlene, was dead. His father, Seymour, was barely alive and would die a month later.

With remarkable self-possession, Marty called 911 to summon help. And when homicide detective James McCready arrived on the scene an hour later, Marty told him he believed he knew who was responsible: Jerry Steuerman, his fathers business partner.

Steuerman owed Seymour more than half a million dollars, had recently threatened him, and had been the last to leave a high-stakes poker game at the Tankleffs home the night before.

However, McCready inexplicably dismissed Steuerman as a suspect.

Instead, he fastened on Marty as the prime suspectindeed, his only one.

Before the day was out, the police announced that Marty had confessed to the crimes.

But Marty insisted the confession was fabricated by the police. And a week later, Steuerman faked his own death and fled to California under an alias.

Yet the police and prosecutors remained fixated on Martyand two years later, he was convicted on murder charges and sentenced to fifty years in prison.

But Martys unbelievable odyssey was just beginning. With the support of his family, he set out to prove his innocence and gain his freedom.

For ten years, disappointment followed disappointment as appeals to state and federal courts were denied.

Still, Marty never gave up. He persuaded Jay Salpeter, a retired NYPD detective turned private eye, to look into his case.

At first it was just another job for Salpeter. As he dug into the evidence, though, he began to see signs of gross ineptitude or worse: Leads ignored.

Conflicts of interest swept under the rug. A shocking betrayal of public trust by Suffolk County law enforcement that went well beyond a simple miscarriage of justice.

After Salpeters discoveries brought national media attention to the case, Martys conviction was finally vacated in 2007, and New Yorks governor appointed a special prosecutor to reopen the twenty-year-old case.

At the same time, the State Investigation Commission announced an inquiry into Suffolk Countys handling of what has come to be widely viewed as one of Americas most disturbing wrongful conviction cases.

As gripping as a Grisham novel, A Criminal Injustice is the story of an innocent mans tenacious fight for freedom, an investigators dogged search for the truth.

It is a searing indictment of justice in America.From the Hardcover edition.