Brooklyn-Queens-Staten Island
Victims of the State

29 Cases

State Menu

County:   Kings (Brooklyn)   Queens
Richmond (Staten Island)

Pietro Matera was convicted of the murders of Frank Zappo and Salvatore Felie during the robbery of a speak-easy at 230 Bay 49th Street. Matera was sentenced to death. The real culprit's wife confessed on her deathbed in 1960 that she had “fingered Matera to save her husband.” Matera was released in 1960.  [1/07]

John Valletutti was sentenced to death for the murder of Pfc. Leo Conlon, a 30-year-old disabled paratrooper who was home on leave. The murder occurred during an attempted robbery of a bar and grill at 5011 Avenue L in Brooklyn. After another man, William Cronholm, was arrested for the crime, he first said he committed the robbery alone, but later said he committed the robbery with two others. Cronholm said he implicated others solely to stop lengthy police questioning. He said he had only recently met his two accomplices. He did not know the name of the getaway driver, and the guy who accompanied him into the bar he only knew as “Johnny.” At his trial Cronholm went back to his original story of committing the robbery alone.

Police investigated Cronholm's background and found out that he knew a John Valletutti, 19, who had once been arrested for car theft. Thirty hours after taking Valletutti into custody, police had their second confession to the crime. Valletutti maintained that he only confessed after he had been brutally assaulted by police. No independent evidence connected Valletutti to the crime. Cronholm testified in Valletutti's defense that he committed the robbery alone. Alibi witnesses testified that Valletti was playing shuffleboard several miles from the scene. After convicting Valletutti, the jury recommended mercy, but the trial judge sentenced him to death. Prosecutor James McGough later said that while the jury was deliberating, he had offered Valletutti the opportunity to plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter, a charge that carried a maximum sentence of 15 years. Valletutti declined the offer, insisting he was innocent.

Valletutti's conviction was reversed by the NY Court of Appeals which found that his confession was of doubtful reliability due to the evidence of the wounds he received while in police custody and to the lack of other evidence implicating him in the crime. Charges against Valletutti were subsequently dropped and he was released from imprisonment in 1948.  (News Articles) (The Innocents)  [7/09]

Samuel Tito Williams was sentenced to death for the murder of 15-year-old Selma Graff. Graff was fatally bludgeoned by an intruder about 2 a.m. in the bedroom of her home. She lived at 143 East 96th St. in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Graff's 9-year-old brother, Donald Graff, shared her room and struggled with the intruder before being clubbed into unconsciousness. Donald described the intruder as a 5'5" white man who simpered or giggled. The murder touched off one of New York City's biggest manhunts.

Five months after the murder, police arrested 18-year-old Williams for a series of alleged burglaries. He reportedly was inclined to giggle. After police questioning, Williams confessed to the Graff murder and identified a flashlight found at the scene as his own. However, Williams was not a 5'5" white man, but a 6' tall black man. Following Williams' confession, eight police officers involved with the case received rewards in the form of promotions, added pay, and certificates of commendation. Eleven officers on the case were awarded $50 government bonds during an eight-course banquet sponsored by the Pitkin Avenue Merchants Association.

At trial the victim's brother identified the killer as a white man, but later said he “was all mixed up.” Williams testified that his confession was obtained under duress. He said detectives had was beaten him with “a blackjack, a rubber hose, and a club,” and that they also burned him with “lighted cigarettes and cigars.” The jury convicted Williams of murder with a recommendation of mercy. However, trial judge Louis Goldstein imposed a death sentence. Governor Dewey later commuted Williams' death sentence to life in prison. In 1963 the U.S. Court of Appeals vacated Williams' conviction after ruling that his confession was coerced. In 1973 New York City awarded Williams $120,000 for his false arrest and the malicious prosecution he suffered.  (NY Times)  [7/09]

Camilo Leyra was convicted of murdering his father, 75, and mother, 80, with a hammer in the couple's Brooklyn apartment. Leyra and sentenced to death. Following the murders, Leyra was interrogated for several days without much sleep, during which time he suffered from a painful sinus. Police brought him a doctor allegedly to treat his sinus, but the doctor was a psychiatrist with considerable knowledge of hypnosis. By skillful and suggestive questioning, threats and promises, the psychiatrist obtained a confession. An appeals court found that the confession was coerced and overturned the conviction. Since little outside evidence implicated him in the murders, Leyra was released in 1956.  (NY Times) (Appeals) (Post-Gazette)  [1/07]

After Elba Borrereo, a twenty-year-old practical nurse from Puerto Rico, was assaulted, Police Officer Frank Isola heard her scream and fired warning shots at the fleeing assailant. Five hours later Isola encountered George Whitmore, Jr. on the street, but concluded that Whitmore was shorter and thinner than the assailant. However, the next day, Isola and a detective spotted Whitmore again and took him to the precinct station for questioning. At the station Borrereo viewed Whitmore through a peephole and identified him as the man who tried to rape her. She had earlier only stated that the assailant tried to snatch her purse. Whitmore had in his possession a picture of a young woman that a detective identified as Janice Wylie.  Wylie, 21, and Emily Hoffert, 23, had been stabbed to death 8 months previously in the apartment they shared on the East Side of Manhattan. Wylie was a Newsweek magazine researcher and Hoffert was a teacher. Newsweek offered a $10,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the murderer or murderers.
Read More by Clicking Here

Eric (Erick) Jackson, also known as Eric Knight, was convicted of setting a fire to a Waldbaum's Supermarket in Sheepshead Bay. Six firefighters died in the blaze. The investigation was plagued by public disputes between fire marshals and police arson investigators. After an informant fingered him, Jackson was indicted in May 1979 on arson and murder charges. Police said he confessed to setting the fire for $500. Jackson was sentenced to 25 years to life.

The firefighters’ widows hired an attorney, Robert Sullivan, to bring a lawsuit for civil damages. In the course of preparing that lawsuit, Sullivan concluded that Jackson was innocent. Sullivan turned his efforts toward obtaining Jackson’s release. He was later recognized by the New York State Bar Association for his efforts in the case.

In 1988, a judge overturned Jackson's conviction because prosecutors had withheld evidence from his defense. This information included a fire marshal’s report that there had been “four separate and distinct fires” in the supermarket, of which only one caused the deaths of the firefighters. In addition, a New York City Police detective who had been involved in the investigation concluded that the fire was caused by an electrical short circuit, and said that he had repeatedly told this to the District Attorney’s office.

In 1994, Jackson was retried. The defense maintained that Jackson's confession was coerced and that the fire was an accident resulting from faulty electrical wiring. Jackson was acquitted and released after serving nearly ten years in prison.  (IP Arson) (Inevitable Error) (People v. Jackson)  [7/07]

“Vincent Rivers was convicted of murder in the second degree in a Kings County retrial in [Nov. 1979], following [a hung jury mistrial]. He was sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison. [The victim, Dutch Reid, was shot and killed at 2080 Nostrand Ave. in Brooklyn.] A third trial ended in a mistrial. A fourth trial [in 1983], at which Rivers was again convicted of murder, was reversed because of numerous prejudicial errors by the trial court. On July 17, 1986, following a fifth trial, Rivers was acquitted on all counts.” – Inevitable Error  (Appeals)

Collin Warner was convicted of second-degree murder for the shooting death of Mario Hamilton, 16, outside Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush. Hamilton was killed by a single bullet that struck him in the back of his neck. In 2001, Warner's co-defendant, Norman Simmonds, 15, confessed that he acted alone. Warner's conviction was vacated and he was released. The victim's brother, Martell Hamilton, said he fingered Warner under pressure from detectives and felt awful about it for years.  (Archives) (News Articles)  [6/05]

Scott Fappiano was convicted of rape, sodomy, burglary, and sexual abuse. The victim picked him out of a photo lineup and out of a live lineup. The victim's husband, a police officer, also viewed the live lineup and picked one of the fillers. Fappiano's first trial ended in a hung jury that voted 11 to 1 for acquittal, but he was convicted on retrial. Fappiano was sentenced to 20 to 50 years imprisonment. In 2006, DNA tests cleared Fappiano of the crime and he was released.  (IP) (NY Times)  [12/06]

Barry Gibbs was convicted of murdering Virginia Robertson, a prostitute whose strangled body was found dumped on the Belt Parkway near Mill Basin Bridge. A witness, Peter Mitchell happened to be jogging on the bike path of the Parkway and said he saw the man who dumped the body.

Ten days later Gibbs was working as a counterman at a deli at the junction of Flatbush and Nostrand Aves. Police detective Louis Eppolito came in and took a can of soda out of the fridge. Gibbs told him, “That will be 75 cents.” According to Gibbs, Eppolito got so PO'd that he had asked for money that he took him down to the precinct station and tried to beat him into confessing to Robertson's murder, a murder he had no idea about. The witness, Mitchell, then identified Gibbs from a lineup as the man who dumped the body. Mitchell had initially described the dumper as 5-foot, 6-inches tall with a moustache. Gibbs was was 5-foot, 11-inches tall and had no facial hair.

In 1999, noted attorney Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project took up Gibbs case, but the case evidence file had mysteriously disappeared. In 2005, agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency arrested Eppolito in Las Vegas and charged him with being a hit man for the Lucchese crime family. In his home the Feds found Gibb's case file and when they contacted Mitchell, he told them Eppolito had coerced him into identifying Gibbs and that he “believed, and continues to believe, that Barry Gibbs is not the person he saw disposing of the victim's body.” Gibbs was subsequently exonerated and released after more than 18 years in prison. Eppolito was convicted of numerous charges including eight counts of murder.  (NY Daily News) (Fox News)  [4/10]

Anthony Faison and Charles Shepherd were convicted of murdering cab driver Jean Ulysses. They were convicted because an informant perjured herself in order to split the $1,000 reward with her boyfriend, who was the actual murderer. Faison wrote 62,000 letters trying to enlist help from someone on the outside. He found help from one police detective. Because fingerprints found at the crime scene that did not match them, Faison and Shepherd were exonerated. In 2003, each of them was awarded $1,650,000 for 14 years of wrongful imprisonment.  (NY Times)  [10/05]

Lamont Branch was convicted of shooting to death Danny Josephs, 37, in 1990. Branch's brother, Lorenzo later admitted responsibility for the shooting. Branch was freed in 2002.  (NY Times)  [10/05]

Jeffrey Blake was convicted of murdering Everton Denny and Kenneth Felix. The victims were killed by dozens of bullets fired from an automatic weapon into their car in East New York. Blake was convicted on the testimony of a single eyewitness, Dana Garner, whose testimony prosecutors later admitted was false. Blake's lawyer believes prosecutors should have taken a harder look at their witness's credibility since he also claimed to have witnessed another double shooting that occurred two weeks after the Denny-Felix shooting. Garner cannot be prosecuted for perjury as the 5-year statute of limitations for the crime has expired. Blake was freed in 1998.  (NY Times)  [10/05]

Hector Luis Gonzalez was charged with murdering Lemuel Cruz who was killed in a fight outside the Con Sabor Latino nightclub. A witness placed him at the scene of the fight. Gonzalez also had six bloodstains on his pants, five of which had markers consistent with the victim, but also with more than half the New York City population. On this basis he was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years to life in prison.

A subsequent federal investigation into the Latin Kings street gang produced testimony that Gonzalez was not involved in the murder. DNA tests were performed to corroborate the testimony and the results showed that the bloodstains did not come from the murder victim but from two men wounded in the fight. Gonzalez had been tending their wounds when their blood was transferred to his pants. Gonzalez was released in 2002.  (IP)

Jonathan Wheeler-Whichard was convicted of the murder of Joseph Foster. Foster was shot in the lobby of a crime-ridden building at 153 Marcus Garvey Blvd. in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He had attacked Wheeler-Whichard earlier, and a witness said Wheeler-Whichard confessed to shooting Foster for revenge. Another testified that she heard the two fighting.

Wheeler-Whichard was granted a judicial hearing in 2009 after one witness, now serving life on an unrelated murder, recanted. The other was proven a liar when the real 911 caller was found. The hearing judge, Justice Joseph K. McKay, reviewed this evidence and also heard from alibi witnesses not called at trial, including a correction officer. McKay said there are several suspects in Foster's murder, including a brother of one of the witnesses who implicated Wheeler-Whichard. He vacated Wheeler-Whichard's conviction on grounds of “actual innocence,” a ruling that appeared to be a first in the State of New York. A Manhattan convict, Fernando Bermudez, also had his conviction overturned on the same grounds later the same year. The rulings prevent the state from retrying Wheeler-Whichard or Bermudez.  (NY Daily News)  [4/10]

Derrick Bell was convicted of the robbery and shooting of Brentonol Moriah. Moriah, who suffered enormous blood loss from a single shot to the thigh, spent the next 11 days under heavy sedation and in a near-comatose state. Moriah knew Bell from having lived in the same rooming house with him for more than a year. Nevertheless, at the scene of the crime, he did not name Bell, but instead described the perpetrator as a black male who wore a lemon-colored shirt. Twelve days after the shooting, Moriah identified Bell. The identification was the only evidence used to convict Bell.

Following his conviction, Bell submitted an affidavit from a neuropsychologist, who stated that Moriah's testimony contained “unequivocal evidence that he suffered from retrograde amnesia for the events predating the loss of consciousness,” that the amnesia was made worse by the medications he likely received, and that it was unlikely that he had regained full consciousness when he first named Bell. Even a month after the shooting, Moriah was unable to recall his description of his assailant that he had given at the crime scene.

In 2007, the federal Second Circuit Court overturned Bell's conviction. It ruled that Bell's defense lawyer was ineffective because he failed to inquire into the effects of blood loss and heavy sedation on the memory of the victim.  (Law.com)  [10/07]

(Federal Case)  Angel M. DeAngelo was convicted on federal charges of murdering Thomas Palazzotto. Palazzotto was shot and killed on the corner of Columbia and Kane Streets in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. Prosecutors argued DeAngelo committed the murder to gain entrance into a racketeering enterprise. The conviction was later vacated because a judge said he feared an innocent man had been convicted on “patently incredible testimony.” The judge said that prosecutors had relied on “blatant, critical perjury by all of the key witnesses.” Charges against DeAngelo were dropped and he was released in 2004.  (NY Times)  [4/08]

Louis Hoffner was convicted of the shooting to death Peter Trifon, a bartender, during a restaurant holdup. At trial, a restaurant waiter identified him as the killer. However, the DA's office had withheld exculpatory evidence. When shown Hoffner's picture, a part owner of the restaurant flatly stated, “He's not the man.” Also, the waiter initially failed to identify Hoffner, and only identified him after a 10-minute chat with police. Hoffner was set free in 1952. He was awarded $112,291 in 1955 for 12 years of wrongful imprisonment.  (Time #1) (Time #2) [1/07]

Paul A. Pfeffer was convicted of murdering 22-year-old seaman Edward S. Bates. Bates was found beaten to death in his car which was parked in a Rockaway Beach waterfront lot. Bates initially confessed to the crime, but then repudiated it, saying his confession was the product of coercion. Following Pfeffer's conviction, another man, John Francis Roche, confessed to the Bates murder as well as to a number of other killings. Pfeffer was granted a retrial after passing a series of lie-detector tests. He was subsequently indicted for manslaughter in the killing of Bates, but the indictment was dismissed prior to trial.  (MOJ)  [7/09]

Alice Crimmins was suspected of abduction murders of her son, Eddie, and daughter, Missy, in part because the investigator thought she did not show “proper” grief. Some also thought Crimmins was too interested in her appearance. The murders occurred on July 14, 1965 and the case became a tabloid sensation. Police wiretapped her phone and were treated to titillating talk with her many sweethearts. However, the tapes did not reveal any conspiracy with others. The murders would have required at least two accomplices. Police waged a campaign of harassment to break her. They called up Crimmins' employers and repeatedly got her fired. They also called her estranged husband when she was with another man. The husband chased one of her paramours outside without giving him a chance to get his clothes.

Crimmins was eventually convicted of the murder of her son Eddie, and the manslaughter of her daughter because of the memories of witnesses, which grew over time. One witness claimed to hear normal speaking voices from two hundred feet away. The prosecution alleged Crimmins killed her daughter because she intruded on her and her lover when they were having sex, and then killed her son because he learned about the killing of his sister. Crimmins was paroled in 1977.  (Crime Library)  [5/07]

Edmond D. Jackson was convicted of the shooting murder of Harold Dixon, a bartender at Harvey's Lounge in Jamaica, Queens. The conviction was was based on four witnesses' identification of Jackson as the gunman; there was no other evidence. In Aug. 1978, a U.S. District Court overturned Jackson's conviction due to the unreliability of the identifications. Four months later the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision. It found that the witnesses' identifications were too unreliable to support Jackson's conviction because the identifications were tainted by suggestive police procedures and because: (1) the witnesses did not have a good opportunity to view the gunman; (2) they had little motivation to study the gunman's face and every reason to turn and run; (3) there was no evidence of how the witnesses initially described the gunman (and therefore no basis for comparison); (4) the witnesses appeared to have displayed varying degrees of certainty when they identified Jackson at the police station; and (5) a considerable amount of time (one month) had elapsed between the crime and their identification of Jackson as the gunman. The court freed Jackson after eight years of imprisonment.  (Reversal) (Affirmation) (News Article)  [12/10]

Nathaniel Carter was convicted of stabbing his ex-wife's foster mother, Clarice Herndon, to death. He was convicted after his ex-wife, Delissa Durham, testified against him. He was cleared two years later when Durham admitted that she was the person who had stabbed her mother to death. Durham cannot be prosecuted for murder because she was granted immunity for her testimony at Carter's trial.  (NY Times)  [9/05]

Angelo Martinez was convicted of the murder of Rudolph Marasco, 70. Marasco was killed while leaving an Ozone Park bingo hall. Charles Rivera, a hit man, confessed to the crime in 1989 when he entered the federal witness protection plan. Rivera said he killed Marasco because the Richmond Hill man would not move from a building that its owner wanted to sell. The information about Rivera was turned over to Martinez's attorney, Jenny Maiola, in 1991 but she never filed an appeal. Maiola was disbarred in 1995 after being indicted for stealing $300,000 from client escrow accounts. Martinez was eventually exonerated in 2002.  (Archives)  [4/08]

Lazzaro Burt was convicted of the murder of Wilfredo Cesacro. A man on a street corner groped Cesacro's girlfriend, Lissette Saillant in East Elmhurst. The groper then shot Cesacro to death in the ensuing confrontation. Saillant identified Burt as the shooter. Saillant later said police had pressured her into making an identification she knew to be wrong. In 2001, evidence surfaced that another man, Jarrett Smith, was Cesacro's killer. Burt was released in 2002 and Smith was convicted of the murder.

About a year after Burt's release, Ronald Laws, a man who was shot in the leg, claimed that Burt had shot him. Laws was the only witness to the alleged crime, there was no bullet casing or blood found where Laws said the shooting occurred, and it took Laws three months to identify Burt. Burt spent 10 months in prison on assault charges. Prior to Laws's claim, Burt had filed a $30 million suit against the state for the decade he spent wrongfully imprisoned. At trial, Burt's defense argued that Laws had shot himself in the leg either accidentally or intentionally, and that the claim against Burt was an attempt to hustle him out of money. A jury acquitted Burt.  (P&K)  [1/07]

Joshua Rivera was convicted of the murder of Leonard Aquino and the attempted murder of Paul Peralta. Both victims were shot at 4725 48th St. in Woodside. Since Rivera's conviction, two witnesses have surfaced who say Rivera was not the shooter and that they unwittingly gave the actual perpetrators a ride to and from the shooting. Peralta, who identified Rivera at trial, was reportedly wavering on his identification of Rivera. A neighbor who rendered first aid at the time of the shooting said Peralta had told her that it had all happened too quickly for him to recognize his assailants. Despite maintaining his innocence, Rivera pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Dec. 2006, in exchange for a time served sentence.  (Strange Justice) (NY Times)  [1/07]

Lee Long was arrested in 1994 for a rape that occurred in Jackson Heights. When Long told police he had been at his girlfriend's house all night, one of the officers called the woman. She confirmed his alibi. But in March 1995, Long was convicted of rape, sexual abuse and robbery, and was sentenced to 8 to 24 years. The officer who made the call to Long's girlfriend did not testify at his trial. In 1999, a lawyer from Queens Legal Aid interviewed Long for his appeal case and realized he was dealing with an innocent man. Legal Aid tracked down the police officer who had spoken with Long's girlfriend, and in June 2000, his conviction was overturned. In 2006, Long successfully sued the O.J. Simpson dream-team firm of Cochran, Neufeld, and Scheck for $900,000. The high-powered lawyers bungled his compensation claim against the state by missing a filing deadline.  [1/07]

When some jewelry vendors were returning to their hotel in Elmhurst from a gem show in Manhattan, four Latino men snatched three cases of Tahitian black pearls from them. The pearls were valued at $1.5 million.  As they escaped, the thieves attempted to carjack an off duty police officer. The officer managed to shoot his service weapon, a 9-millimeter Glock, before he was knocked unconscious. He later told detectives later that he thought he had hit a robber who was grabbing at the barrel of the gun.
Read More by Clicking Here

Harry L. Hoffman was convicted of the shooting/stabbing death of Maud A. Bauer on South Ave. in Chelsea, Staten Island. The victim was killed after her car had stalled and she had been lured into another auto. Following the murder, police closed off every exit from Staten Island including the Manhattan ferries to search for the killer. Hoffman was exonerated in 1929 at his fourth trial for the murder.  (Archives)  [1/07]

James O'Donnell was sentenced to 3 1/2 to 7 in prison years for attempted sodomy and assault. DNA tests exonerated him of the crime after he served 2 years in prison.  (IP)  [5/05]