#442 Maggie Freleng with Amer Zada

Early on the morning of June fifteenth, nineteen seventy nine, Amir Zeta was driving home from partying with friends when his car got stuck in an embankment down near the Hudson River waterfront in Nyak, New York. Amir called a friend from a payphone to help him secure a tow truck. While he waited in the darkened parking lot of a nearby restaurant, he heard a strange noise coming from behind a dumpster.

It was a growl, like a gruff, growling noise. I didn't want to go in the corner, but at the same time I was saying, like, well, whatever is going on over there, Like, you know, don't be a punk, go over there and check it out.

What he saw there shocked and terrified him. But before he could react, police cars were on the scene, sirens blaring.

Two police officers dow me down. He handcuffed me behind my back, searched me, and then they put me in a back at a car just that quick.

Amir was arrested and charged with sexual assaults and the brutal murder of a young local woman, Shirley Smith. The woman he had found lying behind a dumpster covered in blood and had tried to help.

My name is Emir Zeta. I did forty one years in prison for a crime that I didn't commit.

From Lava for good.

This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Amir Zeta.

I'm an Arab American. I was born in Nyak Hospital in Rockley County.

New York.

Amir Zeta was born in nineteen sixty one into a large, loving family.

My mother and father are from Jordan. They immigrated to the United States in nineteen fifty eight. At the time, it was my eldest brother, Nasar, eldest sister in the Zira, and the two twins, Samir and Samir who was my next oldest, and then myself from the baby of the family.

Growing up, Amir didn't feel any different from the other kids at school, but when he was five or six years old, something happened changed the way others saw his family and the way he felt about himself.

My father got a dispute with a neighbor over property. Apparently my father didn't speak English at will, and they ended up calling a police officer. The police officer ended up getting a glass cut on the back of his hand. But at the time they maintained that he had been shot by my father. It wasn't the case. But I still have the memories too of being a six year old kid sitting in my father's attempted a murder on a police officer's trial.

And how it affected me, and then how it affected.

Me through my school years from that point on, about being called the murder the cop killer's son, even though there was no police officer killed or even shot.

The charge against his father was dismissed, but from that time on, Amir says his family was treated differently by the police.

They started going after my family in a methodical manner, for my eldest brother, then my next brother, and me. My eldest sister left out of the county. She seen the writing on the wall and she took off. She got married and left the county.

Amir's other sister, Samira, was deported to the Middle East and later died from a medical issue that Amir beliefs could have been.

Easily treated in the United States.

His brother Samir ended up serving nearly forty two years in prison and was also deported upon his release. Despite his family's troubles, Amir found a bright spot in all of this darkness.

I knew a mirror from the time I was like in grammar school, and I always knew Amir had a crush on me.

So we were like, what maybe twelve years old.

This is Bonnie McKenna, But when Amir met her in seventh grade, she was Bonnie Stalter.

We shared an art class, I believe, in a music class at the school. I used to always sit at the table with her in the class, and you know, spend more time paying attention to her than I was to class. And then one day I took a chance and I walked up to her when we were at the lockers.

And he's like Bonnie Sue Stalter, and he like just takes me and he flings me up against the locker and.

He starts kissing me, and I kissed her.

Man, he like stole the kiss from me, his first kiss from me, and we have like connected ever since that moment on.

Amir soon went away to military academy, but he never forgot that first kiss. A year and a half later, he came back to Nayak to register for high school.

She was the first person I seen she was actually outside the school and I still had I was in the military academy. I still have my uniform on, and she was the first beautiful face that I seen. And then from there we just reignited the flame that you know has been lit for quite a while. And you know, I've always felt like I loved her.

So I didn't have the perfect life. My life was very complicated as a child, and I was a runaway and I wound up with mister and missus.

Zaida Bonnie moved in with a Meher's family when she was fifteen. They gave her a stable home, and she says his parents treated her like a princess. By then, she and Amir were inseparable.

He was the most generallest, kindest person I ever met, and we had a good time together. You know, in the seventies, we were just popping around, you know, being kids having a good time.

But those good times would soon come to an end, and Amir's troubles that the police were about to begin.

He was seventeen years old in June of nineteen seventy nine, and the night that this crime happened, he and his friends went out drinking and partying. You know, they were out all night.

This is Arthur Larkin of the law firm Hale and Monico, Amir's post conviction attorney.

And the last five years I'm representing plaintiffs in civil rights cases, including people like Amir Zeta who've been wrongfully convicted of crimes and are seeking to overturn their convictions.

So, Arthur, can you walk us through what happened that night June fifteenth, nineteen seventy nine.

Emir was driving. He admits he was drinking. He actually he bought Kayludes at Joseph Flente's Deli. He bought a couple of magazines and he bought kayludes. So, as the knight's coming to a close, he's driving around the town. After he dropped all his friends off and he starts driving home. He took a right turn down I believe it's Gedney Street, and he turned off the street onto a sort of a dirt area, an embankment adjacent to the wind Jammer parking lot, and his car got stuck.

The Windjammer restaurant was located at the foot of Main Street on the Hudson River waterfront. After trying unsuccessfully to free his car from the embankment, Amir walked to a phone booth and called his friend John Nash to tell him he needed a tow truck. John offered to call around looking for one, and after making a couple of calls, he left to pick a mirror.

Up and Amir had told him in the phone call. Amir had said, listen, just meet me at the in the Windjammer parking lot. That's where my car is. It's adjacent. After a Mer hangs up the phone, he goes down back to his car. He tries to drive it again. He can't. He wanders down to the parking lot and as he's walking through the parking lot, he hears a sound.

It was a growl, like a gruff growling noise. I was reluctant to actually even walk into that area because it was dark. It was completely pitch black. There was a garbage dumpster there, the trees were hanging over the top. I had fear. I didn't want to go in the corner, but at the same time, I was saying, like, well, whatever is going on over there, Like, you know, don't be a punk over there and check it out. I approached slowly, and when I first looked, I seeing that

A young woman was lying face down behind the dumpster, her clothes and shreds. She was nearly naked and had been stabbed multiple times.

He leans over and he tries to lift her up. Oh my god, you know are you okay?

That's when I noticed, you know who that was?

The woman was seventeen year old Shirley Smith.

Amir recognized her because he'd gone to school with her cousin, but he didn't know Shirley well.

By the time I had stepped up, discovered the victim and attempted to try to help her, to you know, give her assistance. I heard the my police car pulling down the street.

Amir looks up. He sees a police car. He's standing over a body. His family has had trouble with the police before. Okay, so Amir immediately runs. He scared and he runs.

Officers John McCorry and James Thurston were the first ones on the scene. When they spotted a mirror crouch next to the body. They immediately ran for him.

The two police officers threw me down.

He hand cuffed me behind my back, took me threw me over the back of the police car, searched me, took everything out of my pockets and put it in a police officer's hat, and then they put me in the back of the car just that quick.

And that's so fast, I mean, did you even register what was happening at that point?

I knew something was wrong, it was someone there, but I didn't realize the extent as far as my involvement. I just walked up on it just that quick.

They put him in the backseat of the car and they go to the victim and they try to revive her. The victim is very bloody and they're trying to you know, they're trying to do CPR, but she's pronounced dead at the scene.

Unfortunately, at that point another officer, Michael Roman, had arrived. The policeman put a mirror back out of the car, patrol car number three eighty three, to frisk him.

Now keep in mind, they've been touching the victim's body, so their hands are bloody, they weren't wearing gloves, and they don't find a murder weapon on a mirror there.

You took me up in the troll car. They transported me up to my police station, and then later on that morning I went before I believe it was Judge mccar thing, and he arrayed me without bail and charged me with second year murder and remanded me to the Rockland County Jail.

You're listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I honestly believed that the truth would come out. I really I did not realize the extent that they were going to go to to make me look guilty.

So Arthur Shirley Smith's body has been found.

She's apparently been sexually assaulted and stabbed to death, but no weapon has recovered and a mirror is the number one suspect. So can you tell us about the investigation that followed? What did police report say?

The police's version of events is that they pulled into the parking lot after they received a call about screams and dogs barking in the vicinity of the Windjama parking lot. They say that when they got to the scene, they saw a pair of legs protruding from behind a dumpster with the underwear and pants down, and they said that pair of legs was Amir Zeta's and that Amir was trying to sexually assault the victim.

Officers McCord and Thurston claimed that when they came upon a mirror, he wasn't wearing a shirt, and that as they chased him, his pants were falling down. They said that when they cuffed him and put him in the car, his pants were still down.

And after they had attended to the victim and they opened the police car door to try to frisk them, his pants were miraculously pulled up and zipped up. Okay, so they frisk a mirror and they find no murder weapon. Nothing. There's some blood on his underwear, the back of his underwear, there's some blood in his front pants pocket, and there's a marijuana cigarette that they say they found in his pocket with blood on it. Later tests show that that

Divers searched the nearby Hudson River, and detectives scoured the Windjammer parking lot, but no murder weapon was ever found. Two days later, another officer, Douglas McDonald, was driving the same patrol car number three eighty three, as McDonald later testified, when he stopped to get gas, he ran into another officer who was doing the same and the two started talking.

Now the crime is on a Friday morning, this is now Sunday, and son of a gun. If both officers don't look in the backseat of the car and say, oh, my goodness, there's a knife.

Remember, patrol car three point eighty three had been searched thoroughly after a mirror was picked up, and no knife had been found at the time. But now this knife had somehow been discovered in the car's back seat. This was before DNA testing was available, but when tested, traces of blood found on the knife were shown to be consistent with Shirley Smith's genetic profile.

And the prosecution's theory of trial is that the knife was the murder weapon, and that even those hands were handcuffed behind his back after the officers put him in the car, a meir Zeta had somehow managed to wherever he had secreted the knife on his person. He managed to extract it, shove it under the seat somehow, and pull his pants up all in one shot. Okay.

There were no fingerprints on the knife, nothing that directly connected it to a mirror, and the blood found on the knife could very well have gotten there the next day, when Detective Arthur Keenan took it to New York City for testing along with two vials of the victim's blood. But determined to hold onto their prime suspect a mirror, the police went looking for a witness to corroborate their theory.

They went to see Joe Lenti, who was known to be a local drug dealer and who had sold a mere the queludes and the magazines the night before. Joe Lenti says, Yeah, that's very similar to the knife that I sold a mer on Thursday night.

So the main evidence against you, allegedly was this knife. Did you buy this knife?

Was this knife yours?

I'd had no knife. The knife miss magically appeared.

The knife the cop said they found in the car was a black folding knife with the word leopard on the handle. When they went to see Joseph Lenty, they didn't show him this exact knife, but one that was very similar, a white handled knife with a lion on the handle the detective Keenan had found in a drawer at the police station. Joseph Lenty told police that he had bought seventeen of these knives at a place called the Bronx Terminal Market.

And that he had sold them all, well, sixteen of them. Amir came in the knight before the crime and bought the last of them, the seventeenth knife, and he had the receipt for fifteen dollars from a mer but that was for the kueludes and the magazines. That wasn't for a knife.

Based on this knife that was found in the patrol car, the alleged murder weapon which a Mirror had supposedly purchased from Joseph Lenty, and the fact that a mirror was at the scene when police arrived, A Mirror was charged with second degree murder, first degree attempted sodomy, and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. His trial was set for six months later.

So did you always believe in his innocence?

You know, back then when you guys were kids and he gets arrested.

What were you thinking.

When that happened? And I heard mama downstairs, and I heard her crying and screaming, I never in a thousand years thought that he had gotten arrested for such a crime or anything of that nature. And I lost a lot of friends over that because they were like, Bonnie, you know your life's going to change. I didn't care that my life was going to change. I stayed beside him, I stuck by him, and I said, this is going to get better. I don't know why they're doing this.

Within a week following the crime, a grand jury was convened and Amir gave testimony about the events of that night. Amir's trial began six months later on January seventh, nineteen eighty, in Rockland County Court before Judge Albert Rosenblatt. The prosecutor was Rockland County's first Assistant District Attorney, William Frank. Amir's defense attorney was William Kunstler.

The officer's testified to finding the knife in the backseat of the car two days later, Joe Lenti testifies that he bought the knife the Bronx Terminal market.

The prosecution also presented a witness, Donald Lewis, someone who had gone to school with Shirley and knew a mirror as well.

And he claimed that he saw a mir at a phone booth and the Amir turned and said to Shirley Smith the victim, hey, Shirley, want to smoke a joint? And Shirley said sure. That was his testimony at trial.

Amir maintains that this encounter never happened, and in fact, Donald Lewis was later tape recorded telling an acquaintance that he had made the whole story up.

And Lewis said, listen, you know I had a beef with him. Don't tell anybody I didn't see him at a phone booth. In essence, what he said was his trial testimony was a lie and he had that recorded.

After the trial, Amir tried to appeal his conviction based on that recorded confession, but at the hearing Lewis changed his story again.

Instead of sticking by the recantation, Lewis said, yeah, I knew that he was recording me, and so we just orchestrated it, and the judge did not buy the recantation. He wouldn't accept it, and Amir's motion was denied. I think the police probably got to him and said, look, you better, you better stick to your story.

And that's because, as it turned out later, Lewis was facing criminal charges in another matter and thus highly incentivized to incriminate a mirror. By sticking to his story that he'd seen Amir and Shirley together, he was able to avoid prosecution. So Arthur, the defense did not know that at the time. It wasn't disclosed by the prosecution. So what was the defense that Amir's attorneys presented.

You know, Counsseler did a pretty good job tracking down the witnesses who confirmed Amir Zeida's version of events. His friend John Nash testified. John Nash's mother, Catherine, testified that Emir had called the house at four o'clock in the morning. Kunstler got phone records from the phone company showing that a call was made from a payphone in nayak All on Broadway to Nash's house at four in the morning.

John testified that he had driven down to the waterfront that night, but his own car broke down, and when he couldn't locate a mirror, he called a taxi to take him home. And John's version of events matches up with the testimony that Amir gave at the earlier grand jury hearing.

Amir testified in his own defense, and so the jury had Amir's version of what happened, and his explanation, as I just said, is backed up by witnesses and by telephone records and by the business records of this Buds taxi. Right, But it didn't it didn't matter to the jury. The jury credits the officer's version of events and they convict him.

It was surreal. I guess the first time the reality of my situation hit me, dawned on me was the day of my sentencing, when they gave me twenty five to light. I just fell apart. I just started crying. I couldn't believe I can still feel that feeling right now in my heart as to what they did to me and Howard felt, you know, they took my life away.

You know I could.

I still could not understand what motivated them to want to do what they did to me. We always believe, you know, like the truth will prevail. And once I got convicted, we believe that when we filed the appeal, you know, that I would win the appeal and they would be all be put in the past and then we can go on with our lives. And then as time started to go by, reality set in. I was in prison. There wasn't really much I can do. I've

You mean like a sex offense.

The sex offense. Yeah, the corrections officers took it upon themselves, the you know, hurt people that had cases like mine. Yeah, they thought it was funny, you know. Yeah, I guess they thought it was their place in life to get revenge for the victims.

Amir and Bonnie had gotten married in nineteen eighty before he went to prison. She continued to believe in him and to visit regularly. They were allowed conjugal visits, and in nineteen eighty one, their son, Amir Junior, was born. In nineteen eighty eight, they had a second son, Jimyor.

You know, I'm sure if things had went better, we would have had more children.

We had the two boys, and it was becoming complicated. I mean, I always thought that things were going to change, you know, because it was innocent. I thought that tomorrow is going to get out. Tomorrow, things are going to change.

So what did you tell your kids over the y years with their dad in prison.

That he was always innocent?

That, you know, when they were little.

That was hard to tell them things like that, you know, but they always hurt the same thing over and over, so they always believed in his innocence. I mean, I didn't want to get into the glory parts of it, you know, It's not something you really wanted to discuss. But the kids were being subjected to things they shouldn't have.

Maggie, she had two sons to raise and she had a life of her own that she had to live, so it became difficult for her.

Eventually, Bonnie and Amir made the difficult decision to divorce. Bonnie later remarried and had a third son, Connor.

She did what she had to do, and I respected that. It broke my heart. But the thing is is though even though she went on and made a life for herself, I was still always a part of her life and she was still there for me.

Filed a number of appeals between nineteen eighty seven and two thousand, but his conviction was upheld in every case. He went up for parole seven times, but was denied each time because he refused to admit guilt for the murder. The Parole Board has since relaxed its requirement that defendants admit guilt in order to be eligible, and finally, in February of twenty eighteen, after serving almost forty years of his sentence, Amir was granted parole, but his incarceration didn't end there.

I wasn't released for two more years because parole sabotaged my release.

He couldn't find suitable housing, and the reason for that is he's got a sex offense as part of his conviction, and there were restrictions on where he can live.

My family, my son were attempting to get me a place to stay, but I also still went through trouble because every time my family rented a place with the New York state law, with the Registry, you have to inform the landlord as to what you're incarcerated for.

Finally, Amir was able to find a housing situation that satisfied the parole board and he was officially released in twenty twenty one, but the charges and the restrictions remain on his record.

You're still a registered sex offender right now. You have not been cleared of that.

No, I haven't been cleared of anything yet. So I am a Level three and I'm basically under house arrest.

So yeah, after Jesus, I don't know how many years we've got back together again. I never stopped loving them, and I never stopped believing in them.

Amir is now living with Bonnie, whose husband Brian McKenna passed away in twenty twenty one. Amir is able to spend time with his sons and under certain conditions, his grandchildren. But his current status out of prison but with severe restrictions on his freedom is taking a toll.

You know. It's it's hard for him just to become a grandfather at home because he's actually not fully home yet if you look at the big picture of it. We can't go to them and Vermont. We can't play with the grandchildren over there. We can't go to a Thanksgiving dinner over there, or at Easter dinner.

Amir also suffers from PTSD as a result of his decades in prison.

So sometimes he's got to take a step back because it just it's too overwhelming. He'll just sit there and sometimes stare. You know, I don't even know what's going on in his mind, and what does it look like throughout the night? He fights, he yells, he's he's.

Got a lot of you know, things that happen to him in the sleep, and we're still learning how to control that.

He's still in his back of his mind, is not released from this hole that's on him. It's rough sometimes, but I love him. He doesn't need me any harm. Here's a man that wouldn't hurt a freaking fly. We had one incident where it was a little rough and oh my god, didn't cry and cry and cry, And it was something that we got through and it's something we continue to get through.

In twenty twenty, Arthur Larkin learned about a Mirror through Jeffrey Dskovic, an XANNERI, who upon his release, started a foundation to look into other cases of wrongful conviction.

And he took letters from people all over the country who alleged that they were wrongfully convicted. And this is one case that he and I started working on a couple of years ago.

So what was it about this case?

You know, on its face, it does seem like this was a guy who was found next to a body, kind of wrong place, wrong time. So what was it about this that you were like, you know, I think this guy might be innocent.

I think it's a good point you're making, because a lot of these cases, when you first look at them, you think, Okay, you know this guy saying he's innocent. Knock me over with a feather. You know, you were at the scene, you were found leaning over the body, according to your version of events, at a minimum, so

In twenty nineteen, Paula Parrish, a caseworker for the Deskovic Foundation, filed a freedom of information in law request to review the Nayak police records from Amir's case.

And in this box of documents is a lot of information, a lot of stuff that was never turned over to the defense. The first document is an investigation memorandum prepared by an investigator, James Stewart, who was a DA investigator at the time.

And so what does this memo say?

The memorandum says that in August nineteen seventy nine, investigator Stuart and a Nayak detective went to the Bronx terminal market and they interviewed a security supervisor who told them that, to his knowledge, the Bronx terminal market does not sell knives, which means that Joe Lenti's story about buying knives at the Bronx terminal market and selling one to Amir Zeta was highly suspect.

So why would Lenti lie.

Lenti would lie because he was under investigation at the time for selling drugs in Niak and in July of nineteen seventy nine, about a month after he gave his statement, he was arrested and charged in a federal case. He was arrested by the Niak police working in conjunction with the FBI, and he was charged with federal drug crimes. He was indicted and he was allowed to plead guilty

The information that lenty could not have bought the knives of the Bronx terminal market was never turned over to the defense. Withholding evidence from the defense is known as a Brady violation.

And not only that, the reports of the two officers who supposedly found the knife, their daily activity reports were never turned over to the defense. Now we've seen them, they're full of crossouts and strikeouts. They suggest that they were both at this garage at different times. They weren't there at the same time as they said they were a trial.

So that would be another Brady violation.

Yes, that would be clearly be a Brady violation my view, absolutely, But the jury did not know the information about the knife.

All of this points to police and prosecutorial misconduct, which in itself is basis for a new trial. But when they took a deeper dive into those recovered police documents, the team uncovered further evidence that could prove even more significant.

We did make another FOIL freedom of information law request to a different agency within Rockland County known as the Bureau of Criminal Identification, and one of the things that that agency does is process crime scenes. So we requested everything that they had on this case, and we got over one hundred photographs as well as additional reports and summaries of what the investigators found that morning when they came to the crime scene after the crime had occurred.

Arthur and his team showed those photographs to a renowned crime reconstruction expert, Brent Turvy.

So one of the conclusions he drew after looking at all the photos is that the victim was transported within the parking lot inside of a car. You can see blood spatter on one end of the parking lot, and then you see the victim's body is found on the other end of the parking lot, and there was a large blood stain close to where the victim was apparently thrown out of a car and then dragged behind the dumpster.

Remember this is the knife that the two policemen said they found in the patrol car days after the crime.

He said clearly that knife was not used in this crime because if it had been, it would have had a lot more blood on it than it did. The thing would have been full of blood if it had been used to stab this woman twenty six times.

Arthur believes this new evidence, along with a number of other conclusions Turvy drew from the crime scene photos, is a game changer for Amir's case.

What we have now is affirmative evidence that Amir had nothing to do with this, and so we've asked the court to hold a hearing on a claim of actual innocence that Amir is actually innocent of the crime. And I really think the court should take a very hard look at everything we've presented. I really do think this is a compelling case of a miscarriage of justice and I hope the court agrees with us.

But for now, until he's fully exonerated, Amir's life is still on hold.

I want to go on with my life and be able to live my life like a human being, not like a trapped animal. That throle has me like, you know, caged up.

As I just you know, I want.

To be able to go and go to water parks and amusement parks with my grandkids. I am not allowed to go anywhere where there's children. I mean, they're just like, really, they literally have me designated as being an animal, a monster.

What does that feel like emotionally to be called these things? A murderer, a rapist and you're none of those?

What is that like?

I mean, it breaks my heart. I see it in the look that people give me when they look at me, like I'm an animal and I've never done anything to anybody in my life in a cool way.

My mother and father raised me right. They were beautiful people. I want people to know. I want them to know the truth. I want my mother and father to finally be able to rest in peace. I don't want this to be the legacy.

That I leave behind from my children and my grandchildren.

We wanted all to come to an end. We haven't started living again, Maggie, you know, and that's where we need to get at.

Amir and Bonnie are planning to remarry when the time is right, she says, when all of this is behind them.

I envision us like getting married next to the ocean.

Us being dressed in attire that we dressed in the seventies, like me in this beautiful white, easy going dressed with some flowers in my hair.

And I envision him and white khakis and you know, a shirt from that time period. I do envision good things, and I envision all our kids with us.

What beach do you think? Is there a place that you like?

I would say down at the shore.

We used to spend a lot of time down at the shore, Seaside heights, that area, those are our stopping grounds. Yeah, we both missed the shore.

If you'd like to support the work of the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, please go to the link in the episode description, and we'll also have a link to amersko fund me campaign to help support him in his new life. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in the episode description to see how