Key phone call detailed at Tankleff hearing

By Zachary R. Dowdy | Staff Writer

July 23, 2004

As attorney Robert Gottlieb of Commack got ready to defend Martin Tankleff in 1990 on charges of murdering his parents, he got a phone call from a man who is now suspected in the murders, Gottlieb testified yesterday.

Joseph Creedon told Gottlieb that he had been threatened by Jerry Steuerman, the man who Tankleff's defense attorneys believe ordered the killings of Arlene and Seymour Tankleff. Martin Tankleff was convicted in 1990 and is serving a 50-years-to-life sentence.

The phone call came to Gottlieb after Jerry Steuerman's son, Todd, shot Creedon - allegedly because Creedon declined Jerry Steuerman's order to cut out Martin Tankleff's tongue. But Creedon said the elder Steuerman answered with a threat: "What are you, -- crazy? I could have you dead."

Gottlieb recorded the exchange in a memo. After Tankleff was convicted, but before he was sentenced, Gottlieb said he got Creedon to submit an affidavit saying the same thing.

The exchange between Creedon and Steuerman - if Judge Stephen L. Braslow believes it occurred - could provide a crucial link that could free Tankleff.

In his testimony this week, Creedon said he worked as a drug debt collector for Todd Steuerman, but that he had never met or spoken to the elder Steuerman.

But Gottlieb testified that Creedon said he was sure it was Jerry Steuerman who threatened him because the two men had spoken on the phone at least twice before.

At the time, Tankleff, then 17, was charged with the Sept. 7, 1988, murders but was free on $1 million bail. Tankleff then was spreading the word that Jerry Steuerman, who owed Seymour Tankleff hundreds of thousands of dollars, could have ordered the Belle Terre couple murdered.

Gottlieb said he tried to explore links between Steuerman and the crime even during the trial, saying yesterday that "the heart of the defense was Jerry Steuerman was involved."

For Tankleff, the difference now lies in the emergence of new evidence, including statements and witnesses that were unavailable in 1990 and a recently discovered possible murder weapon. These witnesses and other evidence appear to strengthen the links between the double murder and associates of Jerry Steuerman.

Indeed, the hearing in which Gottlieb and others testified is geared to determine whether enough new material has been unearthed to vacate Martin Tankleff's conviction.

The defense attorneys, Bruce Barket of Garden City and Barry Pollack of Washington, D.C., have labored to expose what they see as previously hidden links between Jerry Steuerman and the crime by calling witnesses whose testimony connects Steuerman and Creedon.

John Guarascio, the brother of Creedon's ex-girlfriend, testified yesterday that one Easter in the early 1990s, he heard Creedon mention he had hidden in bushes outside a home and his adrenaline was up.

That was consistent with testimony from Guarascio's former girlfriend, who testified this week that she heard Creedon say the same thing on an Easter in 1990 or 1991 - and that he also said he helped kill the Tankleffs.

Barket said yesterday that he must demonstrate by a preponderance of evidence that the new information could sway a jury to deliver different verdicts than the convictions Tankleff received.

But Barket said there is a mountain of evidence pointing to Creedon.

"Give me a grand jury and power to make deals to get people out of jail to testify and I'd convict Creedon in five minutes," Barket, a former Nassau prosecutor, said only half-jokingly.

Today, Glenn Harris, a former Creedon associate, is expected to provide direct evidence of Creedon's complicity. Harris has told a private investigator that he drove Creedon and another man to the Belle Terre home the night the couple was killed.

"There is a web of evidence that leads to Steuerman and Creedon," Barket said, "and no evidence that leads to Marty."