Carolyn Gusoff, Weekend Anchor
The buzz from the blackberry was not extraordinary. It was identical to dozens of others that vibrated in my hand Wednesday. But when I glanced at the text that accompanied the buzz, I stopped walking. In fact, I stopped breathing.
I spotted the words “drop murder charges against Martin Tankleff”.
The Suffolk D.A. had decided to drop murder charges against Martin Tankleff. There would be no re-trial. The young man who had spent half his life locked up would not go back to prison.
I was by myself but I’m pretty sure I smiled. I know my heart did.
That’s when I started to wonder if it is ever justified for journalists to take sides. Journalists are professional observers. The imperative of our job is to remain outside of sometimes bitterly contentious debates while presenting both sides fairly and accurately. We record history as it happens but try never to become part of the story ourselves.
That was my role covering the murders of 53-year old Arlene Tankleff and 62-year-old Seymour Tankleff. I literally had a front row seat to the process that imprisoned Marty Tankleff. I was present at the Belle Terre home as homicide detectives outside questioned the then 17-year old. I covered each day of the 9-week trial, eight days of jury deliberations and the heart-wrenching moments the guilty verdict was delivered and a 50-year prison term imposed. I reported extensively on the Tankleff family’s insistence that the wrong person was on trial and I was well versed in the mountain of doubt defense attorneys had amassed.
I was also obligated to report with equal weight the passionate case Suffolk prosecutors and police presented to the jury. They were certain Tankleff was a “cowardly killer” motivated by “an adolescent tantrum gone haywire.” Perhaps most memorably, they detailed what they said were petty complaints catalogued by the teen himself in a graphic confession, a confession that was quickly recanted.
I would present diametrically opposed positions to the public and privately pray the jury would deliver justice.
In 2004, something of a paradigm shift began to occur among most objective observers of the then 16-year old case. New witnesses had come forward who shed a new, sinister light on the man who had testified at the trial as the self-proclaimed “Bagel King of Suffolk County.” Jerry Steuerman, the Tankleff’s business partner who had owed the victims half a million dollars and who staged his own death after their murders had a son, we would learn at hearings, who was a convicted drug dealer and had associates who were involved in assaults and shootings. He had criminal ties to Joseph Creedon who had told several people over the last two decades that he killed the Tankleffs. Witnesses apparently risked their lives to come forward and testify about these alleged conversations.
Suddenly the emotional man on the stand who proclaimed, “I am no murderer…I did not do this” was more believable in connection with a heinous murder-for-hire. And long time observers like this reporter began to get a sick feeling in the gut that a terrible miscarriage of justice may have occurred before our eyes. Few could deny that a reasonable jury would find reasonable doubt.
It was then that I came to recognize that there was yet another side to cover in this harrowing story — the side of justice.
New evidence did not change locked minds in the district attorney’s office. In fact, until last Friday the lead prosecutor in the case was vigorously arguing that Martin Tankleff was guilty and that DNA technology would be even more damaging today than it had been in 1990.
Thankfully, hubris did not prevail. I can say that now, easily, not worried that I am unfairly taking sides, in violation of my responsibility to be objective. Nineteen years after pulling up to a grisly crime scene at a waterfront ranch in Belle Terre, I well understand that journalists must not only vigorously question authority, but must also, at times, take a side — the side of justice.
Yes, I smiled inside and out when I learned Tankleff’s long ordeal is over and I began to breathe again.
TINY Blog 