A Bronx woman is thankful for her freedom after spending nearly 14 years in prison on a faulty murder conviction.
Instead of eating another prison meal at the upstate correctional facility where she languished for nearly a quarter of her life, Kimberly Hanzlik, 59, will sit down on Thursday for a real Thanksgiving meal with her grateful family.
“They’ll have a lot to be thankful for,” said Irving Cohen, the determined lawyer who worked pro bono for seven years to help secure her release. “She’s doing really well. It’s been a long time since I had somebody released from the court. It’s quite exciting.”
A Bronx judge vacated Hanzlik’s sentence on Tuesday after evidence used to tie her to the murder of a man 25 years ago was ruled unreliable.
Hanzlik had been sentenced to 20 years to life after she was convicted in 2011 for allegedly tipping off her boyfriend, gunman Joseph Meldish, that his intended target, Thomas Brown, was sitting in a Bronx bar on March 21, 1999.
But new evidence uncovered by the Bronx DA’s office brought into doubt whether Hanzlik was even at the Throggs Neck bar when the murder took place.
That wasn’t the only mistake made that night, according to prosecutors. Thomas Brown wasn’t there either. The killer gunned down the wrong guy. He shot Brown’s brother, Joseph, by mistake in front of Joseph’s wife.
Investigators say Meldish wanted to murder Thomas Brown over a loan dispute.
According to court documents, Meldish entered Frenchy’s Tavern and shot Joseph to death in the crowded bar before escaping in a car driven by David Thiong, a local drug dealer.
The case went cold for about a decade, when Thiong, who was facing drug charges in Westchester County, agreed to testify against Hanzlik and Meldish.
The getaway driver told detectives that Hanzlik scouted the bar and came out and told Meldish where his target was sitting.
Hanzlik was convicted in 2011 of second-degree murder.
Seven years later, new evidence surfaced, with an unsealed transcript of the getaway driver’s guilty plea casting doubt on Hanzlik’s participation.
The murder victim’s wife, Eileen Brown, never mentioned any suspicious female lookout until she met with detectives in 2007, eight years after the shooting.
“I’ve been working on this case for seven years,” Cohen said. “It meant a lot to me. No one could understand how the conviction was still in effect.”
Despite the injustice, Cohen said Hanzlik remained a model prisoner, training service dogs for police departments.
He said Hanzlik, a Bronx Hall of Science graduate, developed a drug habit that put her in with the wrong crowd, including Meldish, a reputed mob hitman.
On Tuesday, a judge vacated the conviction, dismissed the indictment, sealed the case and freed her from prison.
“Ms. Hanzlik served 13 years in prison based on trial testimony that would not meet today’s threshold of credibility given the discovery of new information, which casts doubt on the integrity of her conviction, and we cannot stand by it,” said Bronx DA Darcel Clark.
Cohen, who said he would seek compensation from the state on Hanzlik’s behalf, said his client and her family are elated.
“She walked out into the street for the first time in 14 years,” Cohen said. “It makes me feel good about what I’ve done.”
Originally Published:
