Marty Tankleff lets his freedom ring out
LI ‘exoneree’ marks 10 yrs. out of clink after false conviction in folks’ 1988 slay
INNOCENT prisoners who spend decades behind bars, only to be exonerated and freed, usually follow one of two paths when released.
There are those who retreat into solitude, haunted by their wasted youth, unable to fully cope with the pain. There are others who are seemingly able to put their tortured past behind them, quietly re-entering society.
Then there’s Long Island’s Marty Tankleff.
Tankleff spent 17 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of killing his parents in a 1990 trial that gripped the nation. On Dec. 27, the Babylon man will mark the 10th anniversary of his exoneration and release — and a decade of embracing the world rather than running from it.
Since his release, Tankleff has graduated from college, earned his law degree, married the love of his life, adopted her daughter and gotten hired at a law firm.
He has emerged as the hopeful face of exoneration campaigns across the nation, working with organizations such as The Innocence Project to lift his falsely accused brethren out of their own pits of despair.
“For me, it’s about moving on in life,” he told The Post in a recent interview.
“The more success I have, the more I set an example for other exonerees.”
Tankleff proudly broadcasts his complicated past from all platforms available to him — even his car.
He sometimes catches motorists trying to solve the phonetic puzzle on his license plate — “XONER8ED.” It is also his social-media handle. “My wife told me once, ‘You’re exonerated. Be proud of it. Be honored. Show the world,’ ” Tankleff explained.
TANKLEFF was only 17 years old when his adoptive parents were stabbed and bludgeoned in their tony Belle Terre home in 1988. A manipulative detective falsely told the shaken teen that his father had awakened from his coma and implicated him in the attack.
Exhausted — and encouraged to think he couldn’t remember the attack because he had blacked out — Tankleff confessed under duress.
But after regaining his senses, Tankleff quickly retracted that admission and refused to sign a written statement police had prepared for him.
After Tankleff’s conviction at trial, private detectives and a legion of boosters turned up witnesses who implicated others in the killings and punched gaping holes in the deeply flawed case against him.
The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court in Brooklyn finally ruled in 2007 that it was “probable” a new jury would render a different verdict, and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office dropped the case against him.
Tankleff’s lawyers accused a former business partner of his father of having killed the couple to avoid coughing up debts.
The early days and months after his 2007 release were difficult, said Tankleff, now 46.
He had been tossed in a cell as a teenager and was spit out into a different planet at age 36.
He recalled standing transfixed in supermarket aisles — sometimes for hours at a time — mesmerized by the food options in front of him.
“In prison, you could choose from three or four cereals,” he said. “Now you had an entire aisle in front of you. It created a sensory overload that was difficult to handle.”
Some of life’s daily experiences — which would barely register for others — triggered alarms in Tankleff’s scarred psyche.
For example, activating a metal detector at an airport security checkpoint conjured fears of detentions and searches for him. Or catching a cop behind him in his rearview mirror during a drive around the neighborhood would make him physically ill.
“That type of psychological damage can be overwhelming,” Tankleff said.
AFTER weathering difficulties in his initial years of freedom, Tankleff is thriving, both professionally and personally.
He met a young woman who attended one of his lectures at a Long Island college, and the pair is now married.
His wife, Laurie Tankleff, a former single mom who escaped an abusive relationship, said she was overwhelmed by Marty’s grace and humility when the couple first met.
“I would have never thought that I would be married again,” she said.
“But he was just an amazing human being. His goals. His determination. His values were everything that I wanted.”
She recalled how he stuck by her when she was diagnosed with an incurable nerve condition while they were dating — and then later proposed to her.
“He was devastated,” she recalled of her diagnosis. “But maybe he understood. It was my own sentence, my own death row.
“But Marty is not easy to shock. He said he’s not going anywhere and that I’m not going anywhere.”
Laurie’s daughter, Kourtney, had long struggled to trust male figures after difficulties with her own father. But Tankleff’s gentle care loosened her trust — and he officially adopted her in 2014, her mom said.
STILL, despite Tankleff’s success, the ghosts of his sensational court case never fall completely silent.
The man whom his legal team long fingered for the slayings of his parents, a Long Island convict named Joseph Creedon, recently died.
“I regret not having my day in court with him,” Tankleff said.
Tankleff’s federal civil suit against Suffolk County also is slated for trial in July. He already settled claims against the state for $3.4 million in 2014.
Meanwhile, Thomas Spota, the former Suffolk County DA who opposed his release, is now facing prison himself on corruption charges.
Asked if Spota’s reversal of fortune left him with any vengeful satisfaction, Tankleff paused. “No comment,” he said. “I’m focused on other things,” Tankleff added. “All I know is that as an exoneree, I’m in the most honorable group of people nobody wants to be in.”