On 7th September 1988 Marty Tankleff arose to start his first day of his senior year of high school. Instead he found his parents murdered in the house. He called 911 and as police began investigating, they became suspicious of Tankleff's version of the morning's events.

Police took Tankleff in for questioning and eventually got a partial confession of the murders before his lawyer put a stop to the interrogation. Tankleff immediately recanted, but was convicted at trial two years later.

After 4 years, Tankleff's appeals had been exhausted and his only hope for another day in court was to find new evidence in the case. Starting in 2001 Jay Salpeter, a former NYPD detective, began a search for new clues. He apparently discovered that Seymour Tankleff's business partner, Jerry Steuerman, owed Tankleff more than $300,000 and to avoid this debt, had hired two men to kill the Tankleffs.

Tankleff's current attorneys, Barry Pollack and Bruce Barket, petitioned Suffolk County Judge Stephen Braslow for a hearing to present this new evidence. The hearing started in July 2004 and ended in February 2005. Judge Braslow ruled sometime after 1st May, 2005 on whether the new evidence was strong enough to merit a new trial for Marty Tankleff in the murder of his parents.