and you can i only have one thing to say, though. i didn t do it. i wasn t there. i was in my house asleep. detectives didn t believe him and cosme was arrested for both murders. days later so was eric glisson. originally you were charged with both murders, with denise raymond s murder and the cab driver murder. yes. but by the time eric went to trial prosecutors dropped charges against him in the denise raymond case, citing lack of evidence. so what evidence was there against him in the cab driver case? it was really pretty simple. there was a witness against him. her name? miriam tavares. tavares told the cops she looked out her window and saw it all, eric and the others, smack in the middle of the cab driver robbery that ended in murder. is it possible miriam saw you commit a crime? no. not any crime? i wasn t there. bad blood between you and miriam? yes, bad blood.
angus king as an independent. she announced friday, she s leaving the democratic party. but we ll still caucus with them. the democrats hold a slim 50 1:49 majority in the senate. the cdc says cases of the flu have spiked and 120,000 people have been hospitalized from the virus. more than 7000 have been died so far this year. prompting cities like new york and los angeles to strongly recommend indoor masking. now, back to dateline. w, back to dateline. welcome back to dateline. i m craig melvin. eric glisson insisted he was innocent of the murder that put him in prison. after years behind bars he finally found crucial new evidence. that and a powerful ally in the justice system gave eric something he had not had in a long time. hope. back to josh mankiewicz with a bronx tale.
you would think so. i think they got on the horse early on in this case and they rode that horse and they weren t going to change direction. we wanted to speak with miriam tavares. she died of a drug overdose in 2002. other than her testimony, there was no physical evidence, no forensics, no prints, nothing that tied eric or the others to the cab driver s murder. even so, detectives donnelly and aiello went with what they had and closed both murder cases. within three weeks, they arrested their suspects and the bronx district attorney tried them. in all, six people were convicted. we ll call them the bronx six. five men and a woman. all sent away facing 25 to life. one of them was eric glisson. what s it like to hear that verdict read? it s like a shot in the chest. it s like your heart just melts. just dissolves. you actually think that, you know,
it s really hard. i told her grandma, i just lost my last appeal. i don t know what i m going to do. i always say, eric, let s keep the faith and let s go and pray and i said, we have many, many sisters praying with you. sister joanna offered more than just her prayers. that s when she brought in peter cross, who was now fighting for eric on the outside. so you have detective donnelly as the officer assigned. yes. with eric as his guide, cross got up to speed. and he found some troubling information about how detectives donnelly and aiello connected the two murders. it was through this witness. her name is kathy gomez. kathy, we re on the record. cross tracked her down and videotaped his interview with her. you know i m here today because eric glisson gomez, who was 16 at the time of the murder, says she first came in contact with the detectives for only one reason.
they read the wrong verdict. that this can t be true. the nypd was quite proud of detectives donnelly and aiello s work, so proud that five months after the arrests the department allowed the detectives to be featured in new york magazine about how they amazingly cracked the cases. how the detectives could have believed that and decided to run with this and send them to jail for the rest of their lives on the basis of this garbage still shocks me today. all these years later, attorney cross knew his opinion of the detective work in this case wasn t going to free eric glisson or anyone else. i think the only kind of evidence that s going to sway a court is if we can point to who the real killers are. that was quite a lot to hope for. but from behind bars, eric glisson was already on the trail. i got some documents and so i see this guy s name keeps coming up. coming up