In the affluent Long Island village of Belle Terre, New York, Seymour Tankleff was a successful and wealthy man. Known for his business acumen, the 62-year-old male lived with his wife, Arlene, and their 17-year-old son, Martin, in a sprawling waterfront home. The Tankleffs were prominent members of their community, often hosting social events, including a regular high-stakes poker game known as the "After Dinner Club," attended by influential locals, including the village mayor. Seymour had numerous business interests, including a partnership in a chain of bagel shops with a man named Jerry Steuerman. By all appearances, the Tankleffs were living a comfortable life.
The tranquility of their lives was shattered in the early morning hours of September 7, 1988. It was the day Martin was supposed to start his senior year of high school. Instead, at approximately 6:00 a.m., he awoke to a horrific scene. He found his mother, Arlene, dead on her bedroom floor.
She had been bludgeoned and stabbed, and her throat was slit. In his study, Seymour was still alive but barely, having been severely beaten and also having his throat cut. Martin called 911, but his father’s injuries were too severe. Seymour Tankleff was rushed to the hospital, where he remained in a coma for nearly a month before succumbing to his injuries on October 6, 1988, without ever regaining consciousness.
The Suffolk County Police investigation quickly and intensely focused on one suspect: Martin Tankleff. During a lengthy interrogation on the day of the attack, detectives employed a ruse. Detective James McCready falsely told the teenager that his father had awakened from his coma and identified him as the attacker. Devastated and confused, Martin wondered aloud if he could have blacked out and committed the crime, providing a speculative narrative that police treated as a confession. Though he refused to sign the statement and recanted almost immediately, it became the cornerstone of the prosecution's case. Investigators largely dismissed Martin's suggestion that they should look into his father’s business partner, Jerry Steuerman, who owed Seymour a significant amount of money.
In 1990, Martin Tankleff was convicted of the murders of his parents and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. He spent the next 17 years fighting to prove his innocence, supported by his extended family and a team of pro bono lawyers. Over the years, a substantial body of evidence emerged that pointed away from Martin and toward Steuerman and others. Witnesses came forward with accounts of hearing confessions from men allegedly hired to carry out the killings. One man, a career criminal named Glenn Harris, gave a sworn statement that he drove two hitmen, Joe Creedon and Peter Kent, to and from the Tankleff residence on the night of the murders.
The new evidence suggested a plot orchestrated by Jerry Steuerman to eliminate his large debt to Seymour. Steuerman's behavior after the murders was also suspicious; he faked his own suicide and fled to California under an assumed name, shaving his beard and adopting a disguise. When later questioned, he claimed stress had caused his erratic behavior. Despite these revelations, Steuerman, who was the last person to leave the Tankleff home after the poker game ended around 3 a.m., has always denied any involvement and was never charged.
In December 2007, a New York appellate court overturned Martin Tankleff's conviction, ruling it was probable that a new jury would reach a different verdict given the new evidence. The following month, in January 2008, prosecutors announced they would not retry him, and all charges were dropped. The state later appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the claims against Steuerman and others, but the investigation did not lead to any new arrests. Martin Tankleff was awarded a settlement for his wrongful conviction and has since become an attorney.
The brutal double homicide of Seymour and Arlene Tankleff remains a stark and unsettling case. Though their son was exonerated after nearly two decades in prison, the question of who entered their home and ended their lives has never been answered by the justice system. As of June 2023, no one else has ever been charged in connection with the crime, and the case is still officially considered unsolved.
