After decades in prison, three men were cleared Friday in one of the most horrifying crimes of New York’s violent 1990s — the killing of a clerk who was set on fire in a subway toll booth.
A judge dismissed the murder convictions of Vincent Ellerbe, James Irons and Thomas Malik after prosecutors said the case was built on falsehood-filled confessions, shaky witness identifications and other flawed evidence.
“What happened to us can never be fixed,” Ellerbe told the court as he quietly described the ordeal of prison. “They break you, or they turn you into a monster.” The men have long said they were coerced into falsely confessing in the case, which involved detectives who later were repeatedly accused of forcing confessions and framing suspects.
Kaufman was attacked Nov. 26, 1995, while working an overnight shift on overtime to put away extra money for his son’s future college tuition. The attackers first tried to rob him, then squirted gasoline through the tollbooth coin slot and ignited the fuel with matches, authorities said at the time. The booth exploded, and the 50-year-old Kaufman ran from it in flames. The married father died two weeks later.
The men maintained that they had been coerced into false confessions, with Malik saying Detective Louis Scarcella screamed at him and slammed his head into a locker. Scarcella testified that he cursed, pounded a table and was trying to scare the then-18-year-old Malik, but didn’t beat him. The same witness’ identification of Malik was also problematic, partly because she had earlier pointed to someone else — a man an informant had named separately, prosecutors said.
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