After returning home to find his 66-year-old mother, Dorka, beaten, stabbed, and dying on the floor of the family's Sherman Oaks home, 17-year-old Bruce Lisker frantically telephoned police, para ...Show More
After returning home to find his 66-year-old mother, Dorka, beaten, stabbed, and dying on the floor of the family's Sherman Oaks home, 17-year-old Bruce Lisker frantically telephoned police, paramedics, and his father, Robert. Neither Bruce's first aid, nor the medical attention of the paramedics and emergency room doctors, could save Dorka. She died from her injuries at 3:27pm on March 10, 1983. The murder case was assigned to a newbie homicide detective, Andrew Monsue, who focused exclusively on Bruce as the alleged assailant. Monsue, the courts later found, testified incorrectly regarding various pieces of evidence, including bloody shoe prints found in the house, which he said matched the shoes Bruce was wearing when he discovered his mother. Bruce was ordered to stand trial for First Degree Murder. A jailhouse informant, in exchange for an early release from his own prison sentence, further strengthened the case against Bruce by claiming the youth had confessed to him while the two were housed in the L.A. County Jail's notorious "snitch tank." A court would later find that the snitch's claimed lacked any substantiating details, and were of dubious veracity. In 1985, Bruce was convicted and sentenced to 16 Years to Life. It would be 26 years, 5 months, and 3 days until Bruce would regain his freedom. Many long and arduous years of battling his wrongful conviction ensued. At great emotional and financial expense, Bruce enlisted several sets of attorneys and private investigators, the last of which (private investigator Paul Ingels, and attorneys William Genego, Vicki Podberesky, and Richard Hirsch) uncovered numerous pieces of new evidence that disproved the State's case against him. Bruce filed an Internal Affairs complaint against Andrew Monsue, the LAPD detective he alleged had framed him, a complaint which was honestly and vigorously investigated by honest officer Sgt Albert James Gavin, an the officer who would later allege LAPD retaliation against him as a result. Gavin's efforts, for example, proved that the bloody shoe prints were not Bruce's, and that other evidence against the youth had apparently been fabricated. The Los Angeles Times also investigated the case, and after an 8-month investigation, published the first of what would become over 40 articles (at latest count) about the case, the first winning the paper and its staff writers Scott Glover and Matt Lait the distinguished Heywood Broun award for journalistic excellence. Detective Monsue retired days after the Times articles published. On August 13, 2009, days after the United States District Court ruled that Bruce had been wrongly convicted based on false evidence and ineffective assistance of counsel, and that no reasonable juror would now convict him in light of new, exculpatory evidence, he was released from state prison. In October 2010, 48 Hours Mystery (CBS) aired an episode entitled "The Whole Truth," which assembled all of these pieces into a damning exposé of the Lisker case. The episode concludes with correspondent Erin Moriarty asking Bruce, only weeks after reawakening into a world a quarter-century older than when he'd left it, "What's next?" After a reflective sigh, Bruce smiles gently before answering, "Everything." Hide
