Ex-L.I. lawmen stay jailed
Convictions upheld of DA & aide who covered up cop’s crimes
Charges that the former Suffolk County District Attorney and a deputy covered up an assault and other crimes by the county police chief — who at the time oversaw the Gilgo Beach serial killer probe — were upheld Friday by a federal appeals court.
Ex-DA Thomas Spota and his office’s former top anti-corruption prosecutor, Christopher McPartland, lost their bids to overturn their convictions on conspiracy charges involving witness tampering, obstruction of justice and other counts in the ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
The two men thwarted a federal probe into allegations former Suffolk top cop James Burke beat a man accused of robbing dildos, porn and Viagra from his car.
Burke — who resigned before his 2016 conviction for the brutal beatdown and sprawling cover-up — has come under fire for his actions years ago in the probe of the Gilgo Beach murders in the aftermath of July’s arrest of suspected serial killer Rex Heuermann.
The decision by the New York-based 2nd Circuit judges also comes on the heels of Burke’s arrest Tuesday on unrelated charges of soliciting sex and exposing himself to a park ranger in a Farmingville, L.I., parking lot.
Among other arguments in their appeal, Spota and McPartland contended that the trial judge in their case should not have permitted evidence about elements of Burke’s shady past or about law enforcement officers complicit in the cover-up who feared retaliation.
The former prosecutors also argued the trial court shouldn’t have allowed testimony about Burke’s decades-old relationship with a sex worker he slept with in his police cruiser.
“Because we conclude that the district [trial] court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the evidence of the officers’ fear of retaliation, that any error in admitting the evidence relating to Burke was harmless, and that Spota and McPartland’s other arguments are without merit, we affirm the judgment of the district court,” 2nd Circuit Chief Judge Debra Livingston wrote.
Spota and McPartland were both sentenced to five years in prison at a hearing in August 2021. Spota is serving his time at the federal prison in Danbury, Conn., while McPartland is at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
In December 2012, when Suffolk police chief Burke’s car was robbed of a “party bag” of dildos, condoms, porn and Viagra, Burke instructed a Suffolk County police unit to get a confession from Loeb, according to court records.
When detectives failed to get Loeb to confess by slapping and cursing at him, Burke took matters into his own hands, laying into the handcuffed and shackled Loeb in the interrogation room after he called him a “pervert.”
“Burke began violently assaulting Loeb — punching him in the head and body as Loeb was handcuffed to the floor, grabbing Loeb’s ears, and shaking and kneeing the detainee,” Livingston described the ferocious assault in the Friday decision.
“Burke desisted only when the detectives physically pulled him away.”
Burke enlisted DA Spota and McPartland to help steer Loeb’s case to a conviction and silence the detectives who witnessed the beating. He ordered then-Lt. James Hickey to keep the detectives “from ratting,” and told him to consider it his new full-time job, according to trial evidence.
After Loeb spoke out and the feds opened a civil rights probe in mid-2013, Burke, Spota, and McPartland launched an all-out offensive, threatening witnesses and preventing them from responding to grand jury subpoenas.
Justice Department investigators and the FBI soon ended their investigation — but they reopened the case in 2015 when detectives began cooperating. Burke, Spota and McPartland were soon indicted.
At the prosecutors’ trial, one of the detectives testified that he feared the notoriously vindictive Burke would frame one of his kids as a criminal if he testified against him.
Burke received a 46-month prison term in 2016 after he pleaded guilty of assault and obstruction of justice, and was released early in 2018. Also in 2018, Loeb reached a $1.5 million federal court settlement with Suffolk County.
Lawyers for McPartland and Spota lawyers did not respond to the Daily News’ requests for comment. Brooklyn U.S. attorney spokesman John Marzulli declined comment.
Heuermann, an architect from Massapequa Park, has pleaded not guilty to the cold case murders of Melissa Barthelemy, 24; Amber Lynn Costello, 22; and Megan Waterman, 27, whose bodies were found in the marshes along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo State Park in December 2010. He’s the prime suspect in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes. All four women were sex workers.
Burke was appointed chief of police in 2011, soon after the remains were discovered.
Critics have questioned his handling of the investigation — including his decision to cut ties with FBI investigators assisting in the probe of the killing spree.
On Tuesday, authorities said Burke pleaded with them to let him go, saying his arrest would lead to public embarrassment and asking rangers, “Do you know who I am?”