Forty-one police killers have been released in New York state since 2017, with one more likely to be released.
Eddie Matos, currently serving a 25-year life sentence for the October 1989 murder of 23-year-old NYPD Officer Anthony Dwyer by pushing him off a Times Square roof, has appealed to the commission. He was successful and is scheduled to be released on parole later this month. He was in denial last year.
“It’s just shocking and very disheartening. They’re getting away with all these cop murders,” Dwyer’s sister, Maureen Brissett, 45, told the Post.
Matos has been denied parole seven times since 2014, but last year’s decision was reversed on legal technicalities. The cop killer will appear before the parole board again the week of March 25th. The officer’s family submitted a victim impact statement on Friday.
“If God wills, he will be denied,” Brissette said, adding, “He should get life. We all got life sentences.”
On October 17, 1989, Matos and three accomplices smashed the glass door of a McDonald’s on 7th Avenue and 40th Street with a sledgehammer, then rounded up employees at gunpoint, court documents state. It was revealed.
The maintenance worker fled and returned with Dwyer, who has worked at the Midtown South Police Station for 2 1/2 years, and two other officers to find Matos running toward the back of the restaurant and using a ladder to climb onto the roof. I witnessed it. Dwyer soon followed.
Once on the roof, Matos pushed the young officer down a 25-foot air shaft.
It took 45 minutes for paramedics to recover his body, where he was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital.
Matos was captured the next day.
He was convicted of second-degree murder in 1990 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
His three accomplices were also charged.
Dwyer was a volunteer firefighter and a devout Catholic who taught Sunday school at St. Vincent de Paul in Elmont, Long Island.
“My brother was great. He was a great guy,” Brissette said. “he [Matos] He says he has changed and is not the same kid. He will continue to be a cop killer. ”
“He could rot in hell,” said Dwyer’s mother, Marge.
If denied, Matos will next appear before the Parole Board in July, according to the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said: “It’s a travesty that this hero’s family has to keep opening their wounds every few months because the facts of the case never change. The person who took Anthony’s life was a cop killer and always will be. These facts were true a year ago, and they will be true three months and 30 years later. It would be true.”
“Every New Yorker should send a message to the parole board and demand that they face reality and keep this murderer behind bars, where he belongs,” Hendry said.
