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Martin Tankleff

American convicted of murder

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ6776721 ↗
Source-derived summary

Martin H. Tankleff (born August 29, 1971) is an American man who was wrongly convicted of murdering his parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff, on September 7, 1988, when he was 17 years old. After serving almost 18 years of imprisonment, his conviction was vacated and he was released from prison in 2007. He is now an attorney.

Trial, conviction and sentencing

Tankleff was convicted of killing his parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff, on June 28, 1990, and sentenced to two consecutive terms of 25 years to life in prison. In December 1993, a divided New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division affirmed Tankleff's conviction.

Tankleff was admitted to the New York State Department of Correctional Services in October 1990. In state custody, Tankleff was incarcerated at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, in a special housing unit called "APPU" for high-profile inmates and inmates at high risk of victimization.

In January 1997, federal district Judge Thomas Collier Platt Jr. denied Tankleff's petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In January 1998, that judgment was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, with Judge Guido Calabresi writing for the unanimous panel.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Martin Tankleff” is american convicted of murder. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Martin, Tankleff and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1971, 1988, 2007, 1990—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1971-08-29. For this dossier, Martin, Tankleff and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american convicted of murder” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6776721. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1988, 2007 and 1990.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Martin Tankleff primary sources, Martin Tankleff archive and Martin research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Martin Tankleff” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.