17-year-old American Marty Tancliffe wakes up on the morning of the first day of school to find his mother dead and his father bleeding profusely.

The young man did what any sane person in such a situation would do, which was to call 911.

Tancliffe told the BBC's Outlook programme: 'I lost consciousness from the shock, I have no words to describe what happened to me at that moment and God forbid anyone ever goes through what I went through. 

Marty had no idea that after calling the emergency services, he would become the main suspect in the murder of his parents and that he would spend 17 years in prison for this crime.

Marty was jailed in 1990 for the murder of his parents and was released in 2007 after a court reexamined the case and dismissed the charges against him. gave

Marty Tancliffe tells his story of release and restarting life.

A happy childhood:

Marty's parents, Arlene and Seymour Tancliffe, adopted Marty before he was born, raising him in suburban Long Island, New York.

"My father had nothing as a child, but when I was growing up he was financially stable, so some of the things that my father or mother wanted as a child were given to me," he says.

But Marty still doesn't understand why, on that fateful September morning when his parents were found seriously injured, the police took him to the hospital for a brutal interrogation, instead of taking him to the hospital or keeping him at home. No record exists.

"I felt at that time that maybe they were seeing me as a victim of this incident but later I came to know that they were considering me as an accused in this incident," he says.

Police investigation:

Marty recalls that the police interrogation began as expected, with officers asking questions that sought to elicit details of the youth's relationship with his parents, or to find out whether Who can be a possible suspect?

Marty names his father's business partner, Jerry Steuerman, because he believes the man may be behind the crime.

In a December 1988 lawsuit, Seymour Tancliffe's attorneys claimed Steuerman owed Marty's father nearly $900,000.

But at the time of the incident, Steverman was playing poker till dawn at his home with his parents and other guests.

"But there was a turning point, he says, in that the questions were not made part of the investigation, and accusations were made."

The lead investigator in the Tankeliff case was Detective James McCready, who died in 2015 and who spoke to the press about the case on several occasions.

In an interview with American network CBS, McCready talked about one of the tactics used during the investigation.

McCready told CBS that after hanging up on the bogus call, he went into the interrogation room and lied to Marty that his father had been knocked unconscious by adrenaline and that he wanted to shoot his son. was accused.

Recalling the lies he was told, Marty says, "In America, investigators are allowed to lie to suspects, and they did the same to them."

"They said they found my hair in my mother's hand which was not true, they said they gave my father Adderall and they identified me as the attacker, which was not true."

Steuerman was not considered a suspect by police after he returned to California a week after the incident and gave a statement that he fled in fear of being accused of involvement in the murder.

Case hearing

As Marty put it, the investigators' strategy at his trial was to 'make him break down' and give the statements the investigators wanted him to make.

This was also demonstrated during the trial which began two years after the incident.

One of the key pieces of evidence presented by the prosecution during the trial was a document, written by Detective McCready but not signed by Marty, that was deemed a confession.

Marty says that he doesn't remember exactly what he said during the interrogation, but assures him that he can say anything during the interrogation.

'If you take a young suspect in for questioning who has recently suffered some traumatic event, and isolate him, scold him, abuse him, you make him think,' he says. They say that the only way out of this room is to say what they want to be said.

Steuerman also testified during the trial that because Marty had framed him, he went to get the money from his insurance policy because he was afraid of going to jail so he could pay him back to his family before he went to jail. can give And I have not committed this murder.

Marty gets two life sentences for the crime.

"What I remember about the day they took me to the county jail and the jail clerk in the personal baggage room asked me what are you doing here, you were convicted, not this," Marty says. Maybe.'

During his time in prison, Marty studied law so he could defend himself. In addition, he has also written to several retired prosecutors asking them to review his case.

Thus, 14 years of his life were spent in prison.

Freedom:

In 2004, after years of information gathering, nearly 20 witness statements and new evidence, defense lawyers asked for a new trial.

In addition to the evidence, lawyers obtained at least 20 new testimonies that focused on Seymour Tancliffe's accomplice.

Among them was the testimony of a man named Glenn Harris who claimed to have driven the car in which hired killers Joe Creedon and Peter Kent were riding and that they had gone to Tancliffe's house.

However, this request was rejected.

Marty's lawyers then focused on trying to move the case to another jurisdiction because, as defense attorney Barry Pollock said, 'the bottom line is that there is no justice for him in Suffolk County. do not have.'

It took another three years before the Brooklyn Court of Appeals re-examined the case and overturned Marty's conviction because there was "insufficient evidence" to convict him in the incident.

Marty said at the time that it took him more than 24 hours to understand what was happening to him.

"I didn't know until the next day, when a prison guard brought me a newspaper and I saw my picture on the front page, I realized what had happened. This was something I had been trying to do for a long time. And I came to know about it when I saw it in the newspaper.

By the time Marty was released, half his life had been spent in freedom and half behind bars. That is why he says the first steps he took after his release were very important.

When we were leaving the jail, I told those who were walking with me to walk slowly and when they asked me why? So I told them that these are the first steps towards my freedom and I want to take them slowly.

Between 1990 and 2007, the world had completely changed, and the lives of the people around them had also changed. Marty began his law studies at the age of 35 and embraced the world full of technology.