Family enlists Ridge community's help to keep relative's killer behind bars 

James Folk spent a recent October lunch break visiting the businesses along Middle Country Road in Ridge to share his family’s story, one he’s told for 29 years — since the Sunday afternoon in October 1993 when his older brother Dennis was found dead of a gunshot wound to the face inside a gas station along that same small-business corridor.

Folk, 50, had a message for the owners and customers of the shops he visited: Help keep his brother’s killer behind bars.

“My mom and my daughters and I got together and made a petition,” Folk said of his effort. “I blanketed Ridge with them.”

The petition opposes the release of Matthew Svanberg, 49, of St. James, prior to serving the minimum 25 years he was sentenced to following his conviction at trial in July 2000. It was  inspired by an Aug. 26 New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision letter informing Folk that Svanberg’s initial parole hearing had been moved up from 2023.

The Folk family is scheduled to give victim impact statements to the parole board Friday. 

Svanberg was arrested in 1998, five years after the killing, which prosecutors said occurred during an attempted robbery at the gas station on the corner of Raynor Road, where Dennis Folk, 26, was a clerk. The station is a short walk from his family’s home. An accomplice, Ernie Driggers, who was the getaway driver and testified against Svanberg, was also imprisoned. 

At trial, an attorney for Svanberg, who was 20 years old at the time of the killing, argued his client was looking for drugs, not money, when the gun accidentally went off. If the jury found no robbery occurred, it would have been forced to acquit Svanberg of the felony murder charge, Newsday reported in 2000.

Department of Corrections spokesperson Thomas Mailey said Svanberg has earned “limited credit time,” which allows him to appear before a parole board six months early. 

Lars Svanberg, Svanberg’s older brother, said his sibling “has done everything you possibly can while in the system,” including earning a master’s degree. He added the parole packet includes about 100 letters supporting Svanberg’s release and is 700 pages long.

“He’s a totally changed man,” said Lars Svanberg, adding that his brother was consumed by drugs and alcohol as a teen and now feels deep remorse for the crime.

Dennis Folk’s mother, Kathleen, said that while she recognizes Svanberg will likely be released from prison at some point and she will have to find peace with that, she said she doesn’t think she can ever forgive him.

“He totally destroyed our lives,” she said of her family, including her late husband, Dennis Sr., who died in 2016.

The Folks, who still live around the corner from the murder scene, said they have collected hundreds of signatures from their petition effort at local stores. More than 1,000 others have signed an online petition. James Folk’s daughter, Kaila, who was born five years after her uncle was killed, called the petition “the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write.”

As James Folk dropped the petition off at Unique Tastes, a Ridge liquor store, co-owner Caryle Francis suggested he share his story with customers. 

“I wanted them to hear his passion, to see his tears,” she recalled. Francis lowered the music and asked the six customers to listen up.

“I held up the petition with the picture of [Dennis] and said, ‘This is my brother who was murdered [almost] 30 years ago,” Folk recalled. “… Nearly all of them knew the story.”