by TChris

Martin Tankleff's case teaches us why police officers should not be viewed as doing their job well when they lie.

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.

Tankleff, convicted of murdering his parents in their Long Island home, is trying to prove that he deserves a new trial. That effort will be aided by new evidence of his innocence, discussed at length in the linked article: "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.

Tankleff contends that the police, having tricked a confession out of him, didn't seriously investigate other suspects, including Steuerman.