Hebron’s Old City, where 35,000 Palestinians lived, was once a major tourist attraction with a history of Islamic pilgrimage for many centuries. What I saw when I visited in 2019 was a deserted city with most of its shops closed. Some of the closed doors were overgrown with ivy and other climbers. Netting was placed overhead to protect the occasional passerby from the missiles of rubbish the settlers in their rooftop apartments throw down on the street. Many of the Palestinian houses had been abandoned. I walked through its attractive souks and all I could see were the occasional settlers and Israeli soldiers, heavily armed, prowling the streets and manning the checkpoints. The once vibrant city was practically deserted.
a key witness came forward, a 13-year-old neighbor of the rabbi, on his way to school that morning, a teen named menachem lieberman saw a suspicious looking man in a car around the time of the shooting. eventually, police honed in on david ranta and he was brought in for a lineup. the 13-year-old lieberman identified ranta as the man in the car. at trial, alleged accomplices of ranta s testified that he had killed the rabbi. he was found guilty of second degree murder and has been in prison ever since with all hopes of appeal failed. that is until two years ago, when lieberman revealed a secret, something that only he knew and that had been weighing on him for over 20 years. he admitted in an affidavit that he was coached, told by an nypd detective to pick the guy with the big nose. more troubling allegations emerged. michael baum was david ranta s original lawyer. you believe he was framed? without a doubt.
accident not long after the murder. now, ranta s initial attorney said that he used that information to try and get the conviction overturned in the mid- 90s and that didn t work. he said that there were questions about credibility that were raised, and now those claims had been examined once again. investigators now saying that the woman s claim there was not enough evidence to either back them up or discredit them so the bottom line is, we may never know who killed the rabbi. mary snow, appreciate it. david ranta s road to prison started with that 13-year-old boy, menachem lieberman who said he was coached in a lineup to i.d. david ranta. ranta s road to freedom also began with that same young man, mr. lieberman, his word, only this time freely given and truthfully spoken. 23 years without freedom for one man. for the other, 23 years carrying a very heavy weight on his conscience.
13-year-old neighbor of the rabbi, on his way to school that morning, a teen named menachem lieberman saw a suspicious looking man in a car around the time of the shooting. eventually, police honed in on david ranta and he was brought in for a lineup. the 13-year-old lieberman identified ranta as the man in the car. at trial, alleged accomplices of ranta s testified that he had killed the rabbi. he was found guilty of second degree murder and has been in prison ever since with all hopes of appeal failed. that is until two years ago, when lieberman revealed a secret, something that only he knew and that had been weighing on him for over 20 years. he admitted in an affidavit that he was coached, told by an nypd detective to pick the guy with the big nose. more troubling allegations emerged. michael baum was david ranta s original lawyer. you believe he was framed? without a doubt.
joining me tonight in a 360 exclusive, menachem lieberman. what happened during the lineup? what did the detective say to you? as i was walking in the room to the lineup, he told me that i should pick out the guy with the biggest nose. when he said that to you, what did you think? i was too young back then to realize that this was a setup. i mean, to me this was basically it was just part of the process. when did you realize that david ranta probably wasn t guilty and the investigation, particularly your picking him out of the lineup, was mishandled? i think as the years went by, i remembered what happened, that somebody told me, but as more and more i found the news of innocent people getting let free in various ways, i started to think back to the trial i was