I agree 100% that innocent people get convicted of murder all the time and that Suffolk County has a high rate of murder confessions, but after you get a chance to read the investigation & evidence against Shulman, I am sure you will reach the conclusion that he is 100% guilty. In addition to initially confessing to the 3 murders, he went on to confess to 2 other murders. He also plead guilty at trials in Suffolk & Westchester counties. He said he felt horrible & apologized to victims' families upon his initial arrest. The only appeal is in his case was for a reduction of his death penalty sentencing. His brother also plead guilty in helping dispose of bodies and was sentenced to prison time. Yes SCPD is riddled with corruption. IMO it is probably one of the most corrupt in the country. But do I believe every LE officer there is corrupt, certainly not. And I do believe they got it right with Shulman. JMO
I've spent a few minutes googling and so far everything I can find is problematic for the prosecution.
1) He supposedly had quite a bit of cash in his bank account. Detectives said they did not know where the money came from.
I remember in the '80s running into an old friend who had spent a while smoking crack. He had a great job, making a lot of money, but he spent every last cent, down to the penny, on crack. Years later in the 2000s I remember another guy who had a family and a fair amount of money until he got into crack. When I met him he had nothing but debts. He told me in some length how fast the money went and what a drop.
So...
Shulman had a sum of money in his bank account that would have been consistent with him having saved a fair amount of his earnings from a 30k a year postal job. He didn't have a lot more or a lot less, he had about what you would expect for somebody who was a thrifty saver. And yet, he was smoking crack with prostitutes at least from '91 until he was 'caught'? I doubt it.
2) Sorry to use statistics, but there are problems with the bodies attributed to him. Two unidentifieds that closed sticky cases? A person should be skeptical.
3) Several of the bodies, and possibly all of them, are most certainly associated with other bodies the police were aware of but which he was not charged with. Highly problematic.
4) Victim found Dec 1994 had her leg severed midway between the knee and groin. This has implications that would only have been ignored by the prosecution for a reason.
5) Sorry for statistics again, but finding 1 body in a dumpster that somebody rummaged through to find a lottery ticked suggests that there were several bodies placed in dumpsters that were not rummaged through.
etc
The confession far crosses into the absurd. It is a bunch of big kids trying to get a little kid to admit something absurd, but they don't even have a sense of the ridiculousness.
In his own handwriting, defendant also inscribed three photographs from the Bunting investigation (two of the dumpster where Kelly Sue Bunting's remains were discovered; one of her body at the morgue) with statements admitting to his dismemberment and disposal of the body, and signed his name.
That's theater, not confession and
When one of the detectives suggested to defendant that he should "[g]et away from the lie about blacking out, [which was] just not believable," he agreed, stating that he had not blacked out but instead had "just lost control" and sometimes felt anger and rage.
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The entire case seems to rest on the following
on April 7 and April 8, 1996 the police executed a search warrant for defendant's room, which was photographed, partially disassembled and transported to various divisions of the crime lab. There they discovered evidence of drug use, baking soda, calcium carbonate, air fresheners, carpet cleaners, and hundreds of apparent bloodstains on the walls, ceilings and surfaces of practically every freestanding item. Through DNA analyses, various stains were determined to be consistent with the DNA profiles of Jane Doe Medford, Lisa Ann Warner or Kelly Sue Bunting.
My guess would be that the forensics were managed by the same person who handled Bittrolff's forensics, that Shuler's lawyer who was also Bittrolff's lawyer, gave the forensics crew adequate cover in court,
and that all of the crime scene photographs from Shuler's case were 'lost'.
edit to add
One last point and then I will drop this.
On reviewing the legal type papers online, it is clear that his defense was not based on facts but on technicalities. In other words the defense tried to portray him as a guilty person trying to 'use the law' to escape punishment.
Two other cases, Bittrolff and Esar Met or 'Samar' who was convicted of killing Hser Ner Moo in Salt Lake city, have the same feature.
The question a person should ask first is whether or not the person is actually factually guilty. Not whether their rights were violated in this or that way, which only serves as a distraction to cloud the issues.
Was Shuler crazy? Who cares, that was his business. Was he improperly treated with regard to the law, perhaps pressured into confessing? He may have been, but again not relevent to his guilt.
Was he actually guilty? The evidence is very strong that he did not commit all of the murders attributed to him, and further research may indicate that he commited none of them.
I'm burned out on this stuff for now but will follow the issue and hope that somebody does honest research on it.