She gave other details that made Baum feel she was credible, and also revealed that her husband’s two accomplices were “your people” (Baum is Jewish), Jewish “men who wore yarmulkes,” but she gave no names.
[emphasii added] Baum tried to persuade Theresa to come forward, but
for several years she was afraid, telling him that “snitches wear
stitches.”
Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger, shot dead in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1990
The Jewish Week reports:
Late last month, after 23 years behind bars for crimes he almost certainly did not commit, a gray-haired David Ranta, 58, carrying a purple fishnet laundry bag containing all his worldly possessions, walked out of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn a free man. (Ranta suffered a serious heart attack just a day after his release but is said to be recovering and in “good spirits).
Ranta, who was convicted in 1991 of attempting to rob a chasidic jewelry courier and then murdering a prominent chasidic rabbi [Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger], was released after a yearlong investigation by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s recently established Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU).
The investigation, prompted by Ranta’s trial attorney, Michael Baum, found that “the evidentiary foundation upon which the jury relied in delivering its verdict in this case has been significantly eroded.” In its reporting on the unraveling of the case, The New York Times highlighted the intense community pressure to solve the case and the conduct of one detective in particular as playing major roles in Ranta’s wrongful conviction.…
Shortly after Ranta’s conviction, his attorney, Michael Baum, received anonymous calls from two women, one of whom named Joseph Astin as the man responsible for the crimes. Ultimately, one of the callers identified herself to Baum as Astin’s wife, Theresa (the other caller was Astin’s mother), and told him that her late husband had confessed to being involved in the crime, committing the botched robbery and accidentally shooting the rabbi in an attempt to take his car to flee the scene. (He died in a car chase with police two months after the crimes).
She gave other details that made Baum feel she was credible, and also revealed that her husband’s two accomplices were “your people” (Baum is Jewish), Jewish “men who wore yarmulkes,” but she gave no names. [emphasii added] Baum tried to persuade Theresa to come forward, but for several years she was afraid, telling him that “snitches wear stitches.”…
In 1995, Theresa Astin signed an affidavit in support of her statements to Baum, and in November of 1995 Ranta filed a motion to vacate his conviction. He alleged that “the judgment was procured by fraud on the part of the prosecutor and police personnel acting on behalf of the prosecutor, that material evidence adduced by the prosecution at trial was false and known by the District Attorney or his agents to be false and newly discovered evidence from Theresa Astin and [Chaim] Weinberger.”
The trial judge granted a hearing 1996, at which Theresa Astin testified to what she had told Baum. But the Appellate Division ultimately unanimously affirmed the conviction, citing questions about Theresa’s credibility and a failure by Ranta to show that her information would have led to a more favorable verdict.…