Exclusive | Family of NYC cop thrown off a Times Square roof battles killer and his pricey lawyers over parole bid
A killer who threw an NYPD cop off a Times Square roof 35 years ago will soon have his third parole hearing in two years – pitting the officer’s family in a “nightmare” battle against a high-powered law firm that’s already sprung another cop killer.Eddie Matos, who murdered Midtown South Officer Anthony Dwyer in October 1989, was granted repeated appeals with the help of lawyer Isaac Zaur, a partner at the Madison Avenue law firm Clarick Gueron Reisbaum. “It’s like a joke and a nightmare,” said the slain cop’s younger sister Maureen Brisett, as she prepared to testify Friday with her two brothers and 83-year-old mom at the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision’s Midtown office.“I just don’t understand how he keeps getting chances and then he has these high-powered lawyers taking on his case.”Forty-three NYC cop killers have been released since 2017 when the left-leaning state Parole Board, whose members were mostly appointed by then-Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, began letting cop killers off in droves under new rules.Dwyer, 23, and two other cops responded to a call of an armed robbery of a McDonald’s restaurant on Seventh Avenue and W.40th Street on Oct.
17, 1989, and saw Matos fleeing to the roof, according to court records.“As soon as my brother got up there, Matos was waiting and kicked him down an air shift and then escaped,” Brisett said.
“When the other cops got up there, my brother said he was pushed, and was in and out of consciousness.” Dwyer, who plummeted 40 feet, later died at Bellevue Hospital.Matos, 57, was sentenced in 1990 to 25 years to life for second-degree murder.He has been denied parole more than a dozen times and is jailed at the maximum-security Green Haven Correctional Facility upstate.On its website, Zaur’s firm boasts “extensive experience representing companies and individuals in the art and entertainment industry.” It also handles bankrupcy and corporate cases.Zaur’s company bi...