Brooklyn DA tosses convictions in fatal 1995 token booth arson investigated by notorious NYPD detectives

When the truth finally came out, so did three men wrongfully imprisoned for decades in a notorious 1995 killing.

The now forty-something defendants, found guilty and jailed as teens for killing a helpless subway worker by torching his token booth, were exonerated Friday as authorities linked their wrongful convictions to two notorious Brooklyn detectives.

Thomas Malik, James Irons and Vincent Ellerbe returned to the borough courthouse for the first time in more than 25 years more for a hearing where all charges were dropped in the headline-grabbing case.

“I’m just happy that I was able to stand strong, to endure the journey,” said Malik, now 45, in his first moments of freedom in the 21st century. “They knew the truth all along. They withheld it deliberately, intentionally.”

Malik and Irons, 44, arrived in handcuffs after their releases from prison for the hearing that all three men feared would never come. Ellerbe, 44, was paroled in 2020 for the murder of MTA worker Harry Kaufman.

The victim was mortally injured on Nov. 26, 1995, when his real assailants squirted a flammable liquid through the change tray and set the booth ablaze.

“The three young men before you lost 79 years of their life,” said lawyer Ron Kuby, who represented Malik at the 1996 trial. “Nobody except the defendants in these cases has suffered any consequences.”

Kuby’s remark was an apparent reference to lead detectives Louis Scarcella and Stephen Chmil — a hard-charging pair once considered two of the NYPD’s top investigators but more recently exposed for misconduct leading to 15 prior overturned convictions since 2013.

“Before he met former detectives Louis Scarcella and Stephen Chmil, James was not a suspect,” said Irons’ attorney David Shanies. “Or even on the investigators’ radar at all.”

Gonzalez, prior to the courtroom appearance where the three men were set free, said his office’s conviction review unit came to an indisputable finding after a long second look at the case.

“Because of the serious problems with the evidence on which these convictions are based, we must move to vacate them,” said Gonzalez.

The copycat crime appeared motivated by the movie “Money Train,” starring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson and featuring a similar token booth scene. The film was released four days earlier, and the horrific arson ignited a national furor.

Kaufman, 50, died two weeks after the botched hold-up that tore the booth apart and sent the screaming victim, his clothes still burning, running through the station.

Gonzalez said their review found improprieties worthy of exoneration in the mishandling of the case by Scarcella and Chmil.

“Among many reasons are the problematic circumstances of the (defendants’) identifications, the myriad factual contradictions between the confessions and the evidence recovered at the scene, and the material contradictions between the confessions themselves,” he wrote.

Jurors, for example, never heard about the numerous inconsistent statements from a witness who pointed to a different man before identifying the 18-year-old Malik as holding the bottle of gasoline used in the arson. The same witness made other inconsistent pre-trial statements about the case, authorities said.

The 17-year-old Ellerbe’s supposed confession was inconsistent with both the facts and the evidence of the deadly crime, including an inaccurate claim that fire was set using a spray bottle. The fire marshal said the flammable liquid was poured through the coin opening.

Legal reversals in cases closed by decorated detectives Scarcella and Chmil during the ‘80s and ‘90s have already cost the city more than $50 million in payouts to wrongly convicted suspects. Both have denied any misconduct.

The defendants had long insisted on their innocence, with Malik and Ellerbe declaring as much during their December 1996 sentencing.

“I’m very sorry for the pain that Mr. Harry Kaufman suffered, but I was not there,” said Ellerbe. “I say over and over again, I am an innocent man.”

The DA’s conviction review unit has now vacated 33 cases since 2014, with another 50 or so still under review.