Flashes flashed and shutters snapped as an exuberant crowd centered its consideration on Martin Tankleff.
It was once Dec. 27, 2007, a couple of days after a New York appeals court docket had overturned Mr. Tankleff’s conviction within the vicious killings of his oldsters at their waterfront mansion. Now, surrounded by means of legal professionals, aunts, uncles, cousins and pals at a Long Island courthouse, he was once a loose guy after just about twenty years in jail.
Standing simply at the back of him within the celebratory throng was once a beefy guy in a dismal swimsuit and pink tie: Jay Salpeter, a former New York City police detective became non-public investigator who had carried out up to, possibly greater than, someone to make the satisfied instance imaginable.
“I’m letting you know you’ll never get rid of me for life since you’ve given me my life back,” Mr. Tankleff wrote to Mr. Salpeter the day the conviction was once put aside.
Fourteen years later, Mr. Salpeter, leaner and grayer, was once in a Long Island courthouse once more, his face at the back of a blue surgical masks as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. He was once handcuffed and charged with felonies in reference to a three-year barrage of ominous calls and emails searching for cash from a former consumer: Martin Tankleff.
The Tankleff case had in brief put Mr. Salpeter, a son of Bayside, Queens, at the low rungs of famous person. He was once a visitor on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Dr. Phil” and “Nancy Grace.” He and Mr. Tankleff shaped an investigative company, Fortress Innocence Group, and offered it at a splashy Manhattan news convention. Later got here monetary misery, psychological well being issues, heavy ingesting and claims of impropriety lodged by means of offended purchasers.
Now, accused of threatening to hurt Mr. Tankleff and damage his recognition, Mr. Salpeter was once going through the possibility of years in jail.
Mr. Salpeter, 71, had as soon as stated that, with the exception of for when his youngsters have been born, the day Mr. Tankleff left jail was once the most efficient day of his lifestyles. But by the point of his arraignment in May 2021, he regretted ever having opened Mr. Tankleff’s pressing letter searching for his assist all the ones years in the past.
“I never had these problems before Marty,” he stated in one in all a number of interviews over the last two years.
How It Began
On a September morning in 1988, Marty Tankleff, then 17, woke to seek out his mom, Arlene, fatally stabbed in her mattress, and his father, Seymour, bleeding within the den, stabbed and overwhelmed so badly he would die in a month. The boy known as 911.
Marty, his family and others instructed investigators to concentrate on Jerry Steuerman, a store proprietor who known as himself the Bagel King of Long Island and who owed Seymour Tankleff $500,000.
Detectives homed in on Marty as an alternative, partially as a result of what they stated was once his insufficient show of emotion. They bought a handy guide a rough confession with a lie: that Seymour Tankleff had in brief come to on the health facility and named Marty because the attacker.
The trial was once sensational. When it was once over, regardless of recanting, Marty was once convicted on two counts of homicide and sentenced to twenty-five years to lifestyles.
A decade later, in December 2000, a fellow prisoner from Long Island advisable that Mr. Tankleff, on a ceaseless force to turn out his innocence, touch Jay Salpeter.
By then, Mr. Salpeter have been a personal investigator for a couple of years, beginning with matrimonial and minor legal instances after twenty years with the New York Police Department as a beat cop, boulevard decoy, hostage negotiator and murder detective.
He was once skeptical of Marty Tankleff. In reality, he idea he was once to blame.
But after explaining that he may assist Mr. Tankleff provided that he was once actually blameless — after which arranging a lie-detector check — Mr. Salpeter took the case. Unlike Mr. Tankleff’s legal professionals, he didn’t paintings professional bono. He wasn’t that liquid.
His price: a flat $5,000.
The investigation would last longer than six years.
A Thread to Tug At
Mr. Salpeter’s first step was once to check the thick case document. He was once surprised by means of what he discovered. The killings had by no means been completely investigated. The prosecution rested nearly only at the recanted confession. The meant reason — an adolescent’s anger over a automobile his father had given him — was once shaky; the bodily proof was once scant; and the police had by no means handled Mr. Steuerman, the Bagel King, severely as a suspect.
Mr. Salpeter discovered a thread to pull at within the remark of a girl who had instructed detectives {that a} native hoodlum had admitted his function within the murders to her, pronouncing he have been on the Tankleffs’ space with anyone named Steuerman at the evening of the assaults.
No one had adopted up at the lead. Mr. Salpeter tracked down the hoodlum’s legal friends. One confessed to being the getaway motive force and likewise implicated a 3rd guy within the crime. The statements underpinned a movement to reopen the case.
Mr. Salpeter introduced a Long Island attorney with whom he had labored ahead of, Bruce Barket, onto the Tankleff workforce and persisted to dig. He arrange a tip line that yielded further witnesses in an investigation that fed on 1000’s of hours.
Mr. Salpeter was once catching up too. He seemed on TV; collaborated on a e-book concerning the case; and joined the protection workforce that gained the discharge of the West Memphis Three, 3 Arkansas males convicted as youngsters of killing 3 boys in what prosecutors known as a cult ritual. The writer Dominick Dunne employed him for assist in a lawsuit. He aided the protection of Anthony Marshall, convicted of stealing from his mom, the socialite Brooke Astor.
In 2008, Mr. Salpeter and Mr. Tankleff teamed as much as get started the Fortress company. The function: Get paintings from company regulation companies on their professional bono instances. They celebrated at Peter Luger steakhouse the evening ahead of saying the challenge, whose brand confirmed a silhouette of 2 birds flying loose. Rubin Carter, the previous prizefighter and exoneree referred to as Hurricane, was once on the news convention. A wonderful day, he known as it.
But the company by no means were given off the bottom, and by means of 2011, Mr. Tankleff and Mr. Salpeter had fallen out.
Mr. Salpeter blamed Mr. Tankleff’s spouse, Laurie, whom he had met and married after leaving jail. The break up got here after a disagreement on the Long Island workplaces of Mr. Barket’s company, the place the Tankleffs labored and the place Mr. Salpeter saved an workplace.
After showing abruptly on the door sooner or later, the couple entered. They talked for a time, after which Ms. Tankleff unloaded on Mr. Salpeter, accusing him of keeping up his ties to Mr. Tankleff just for cash.
Mr. Salpeter was once furious. There was once no cash to talk of. The litigation in opposition to Suffolk County and New York State had no longer been resolved. The alternate become heated, and Mr. Salpeter screamed at Ms. Tankleff. Mr. Tankleff, in Mr. Salpeter’s telling, sat by means of silently. (Mr. Tankleff filed for divorce from Laurie Tankleff final yr; efforts to touch her thru her attorney have been unsuccessful.)
Mr. Tankleff, who declined to be interviewed, presented others a distinct reason for what had led to the estrangement. He felt as regardless that Mr. Salpeter was once looking to keep watch over him. He resented, amongst different issues, being requested to assist advertise Mr. Salpeter’s e-book and he idea Mr. Salpeter had invited him to his daughter’s wedding ceremony to turn him off. Yes, Mr. Salpeter had given him his lifestyles again. Why wouldn’t he let him reside it?
The courting between the 2 males had received one in all them freedom and either one of them a measure of repute. Suddenly, they weren’t even on talking phrases.
A Downward Spiral
The monetary issues that had begun whilst he labored on that case fixed, court docket data display. His house in Glen Cove went into foreclosures. Tens of 1000’s of bucks in federal and state tax liens piled up.
As Mr. Salpeter’s fortunes declined, Mr. Tankleff prospered. After graduating from school and getting married, he earned a regulation stage. In 2014, he settled his swimsuit in opposition to the state for $3.4 million. His legal professionals took the everyday 3rd.
Mr. Salpeter, who have been paid a number of thousand bucks to seek the advice of at the civil fits, became to Mr. Barket: Would he organize a gathering with Mr. Tankleff to talk about whether or not there could be the rest within the payout for him?
Mr. Tankleff didn’t need to meet, Mr. Barket stated. And, he added, criminal ethics avoided anyone who was once no longer a attorney from collaborating within the agreement.
Mr. Salpeter sank into despair. Sometimes, he went to his workplace and slept. He spent a yr, perhaps two, most commonly at house. His ingesting greater. Several purchasers complained to state officers that he had no longer supplied them with written contracts or detailed experiences of the paintings he had carried out. He settled the issues with nominal fines.
The residual repute from the Tankleff case nonetheless attracted purchasers. One, Marina Lebron, met Mr. Salpeter in August 2014.
Ms. Lebron, whose husband was once in jail for homicide, was once do away with by means of how Mr. Salpeter bragged about his significance. Nonetheless, she paid him a $6,000 retainer to assist get her husband out. Then, after listening to not anything for months, she faced him. He apologized, despatched her $2,000 and vowed to pay off the remainder. When he didn’t, she were given a judgment in opposition to him. When he didn’t pay that, she filed a grievance with the state.
The complaint was once one in all no less than 9 filed in opposition to Mr. Salpeter, state data display. One stated he must be investigated “because he is taking advantage of inmates.” Another stated he had responded to inquiries with “excuses and mild threats.”
Mr. Salpeter said that he had no longer at all times achieved what the aggrieved purchasers had was hoping, however he stated that they had unrealistic expectancies. Do a miracle as soon as, and everybody assumes that’s what they’ll get.
Whatever he earned was once no longer sufficient. In July 2017, he started to borrow cash from a chum of a chum from Bayside.
Over the following two years, Mr. Salpeter borrowed $120,000 in transactions documented on A.T.M. receipts, memo-pad pages and different paper scraps, in step with a lawsuit the lender filed however later deserted. With pastime tacked on, the debt had reached $200,000 by means of overdue 2019.
Mr. Tankleff settled his swimsuit in opposition to Suffolk County in April 2018 for $10 million. Mr. Salpeter once more requested Mr. Barket if he may organize a gathering with Mr. Tankleff in hopes of having a percentage, he was once once more instructed no.
By then, when the workdays, corresponding to they have been, ended, Mr. Salpeter would hit the bar at Ruth’s Chris steakhouse on the Roosevelt Field mall and feature 4 or 5 vodka and tonics.
Drunk and depressed, he would bombard Mr. Tankleff with emails and speak to messages difficult cash. As time handed, the badgering became darker.
“So Marty, do you think your freedom is worth 150-200k?” Mr. Salpeter wrote in a February 2020 e mail shared by means of anyone with regards to Mr. Tankleff. “It’s better than being at Clinton,” he added, regarding the upstate jail the place the 2 had first met.
In any other e mail a number of months later, he requested whether or not Mr. Tankleff may “recommend a good lawyer for a homicide arrest.”
Mr. Salpeter would touch Mr. Tankleff a number of instances an afternoon, shedding references to how robust he was once or how he had simply noticed the film “Dead Man Walking.” Sometimes he commented on adjustments in his former consumer’s look in ways in which made Mr. Tankleff really feel he was once being stalked by means of a person who he knew was once approved to hold a gun.
Mr. Tankleff attempted at least one time to defuse the location, telling Mr. Salpeter by way of e mail that he was once no longer ignoring his messages, however blockading them at the recommendation of legal professionals and others. When the time was once proper, he wrote, he would organize a gathering.
No assembly ever took place.
A Halfhearted Defense
Mr. Barket warned Mr. Salpeter many times to prevent. He didn’t. That left Mr. Tankleff with 3 possible choices: Let the calls and emails proceed, pay Mr. Salpeter or cross to the government. He selected the final one.
When Mr. Salpeter was once indicted, Mr. Tankleff answered with a short lived remark calling it a tragic day. Mr. Salpeter denied doing the rest sinister and insisted he would by no means harm his former consumer however he admitted to the calls and emails.
His legal professionals prompt a psychiatric protection: Depression, irritated by means of heavy ingesting, and post-traumatic rigidity led to by means of his police profession and his revel in with Mr. Tankleff have been accountable.
A couple of months after he was once indicted, a listening to on Ms. Lebron’s grievance was once held in a colorless govt room in Lower Manhattan. Because of the pandemic, the contributors — an administrative pass judgement on, a state attorney, Ms. Lebron and Mr. Salpeter — seemed by way of video track. A reporter and two state staff have been the one ones bodily provide within the room.
Mr. Salpeter’s protection was once halfhearted. He didn’t deny the gist of the allegations, despite the fact that he produced a record he stated he had secured for Ms. Lebron’s get advantages. He was once a sufferer of unrealistic expectancies, he maintained.
Several weeks later, the executive pass judgement on, mentioning dishonesty and incompetence, suspended his license. Mr. Salpeter had already contacted state officers to relinquish it.
The legal case ended quietly. Mr. Salpeter pleaded to blame final June to irritated harassment, a misdemeanor. He was once sentenced to a few years of probation and ordered to steer clear of Mr. Tankleff, now a attorney at Mr. Barket’s company. When the transient listening to ended, Mr. Salpeter thanked the pass judgement on with courtesy and headed out into the sweltering warmth.
Nine months later, on the Glen Cove apartment he stocks along with his 3rd spouse, Amy, Mr. Salpeter seemed sober, reflective and most commonly retired — regardless that he nonetheless sends hectoring emails to Mr. Barket. He stated he was once basically filling his time with workout, Alcoholics Anonymous conferences and periods with a psychotherapist. He and his spouse reside off his police pension, Social Security and what she brings in.
He can now not lift a gun and is, for all sensible functions, carried out investigating.
“That was my passion,” he stated wistfully. “I was good.”
As he spoke, he paused and pulled out an inventory of his maximum notable purchasers and instances. At the highest was once a well-recognized title: Martin Tankleff.
Was it a supply of pleasure or be apologetic about?
“I would do it again,” Mr. Salpeter stated.