The Case
In 1983 I came home to find my mother dying. Within minutes, the people who should have found her killer decided the killer was me. What followed took twenty-six years to undo: the mishandled and misrepresented evidence, the jailhouse informant, the dozens of documented police lies and distortions.
v.
BRUCE LISKER
Docket
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Dorka Lisker, 66, is beaten and stabbed in the family home in Sherman Oaks. Her son Bruce, 17, finds her, tries to save her, and calls for help. She dies in surgery that afternoon.
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Bruce is arrested the same day. The count of days begins: day 1 of 9,653.
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Convicted of second-degree murder, Van Nuys Superior Court.
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Sentenced to 16 years to life.
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Private investigator Paul Ingels takes the case. For the next decade, long after Bruce’s money runs out and without pay, he runs down every lead as he uncovers the evidence that will ultimately overturn Bruce’s wrongful conviction.
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A letter Bruce writes from prison, an internal-affairs complaint, lands on the desk of LAPD Internal Affairs Sergeant Jim Gavin, who exhaustively investigates several critical aspects of the false case against Bruce, then puts his career on the line to do the right thing.
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In the Los Angeles Times’ “Was Justice Served?”—the award-winning first article of what would come to total more than fifty—Scott Glover and Matt Lait lay out the many holes in the case.
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Los Angeles Times: the FBI confirms a shoe print at the crime scene is not Bruce’s.
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U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips overturns the conviction, finding it rested on false evidence and ineffective counsel.
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Released after 9,653 days.
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All charges dismissed.
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The City of Los Angeles settles his wrongful-conviction civil rights lawsuit.