CASE ANALYSIS: SUMMARY/OVERVIEW

My name is Bruce Eliot Lisker. I stand wrongly convicted of the 1983 murder of my adoptive mother, Dorka Grace Lisker, in our Sherman Oaks, California home.

The Los Angeles Times newspaper has published more than 20 articles so far about my false conviction. The first article, entitled "A Case of Doubt: New Light on a Distant Verdict" (May 22, 2005) was awarded the prestigious 2005 Heywood Broun Award for journalistic excellence. It deftly exposes the false evidence and unchecked police misconduct that doomed to failure the investigation into my mother's murder, and thereby destroyed my life [view Complete List of Times Articles].

    A brief overview of the travesty:

• A 16-year old violent former roommate of mine, John "Mike" Ryan, Jr, is my mother's most likely killer. The corrupt Homicide Detective who arrested me, Andrew R. Monsue, glossed over Ryan, even after my father and I literally begged the police to investigate the young misfit as a suspect.
  
  A mysterious phone number, matching Ryan's mother's number but for the final digit, appears on our home phone bill minutes before my mom's attack.
  
  Ryan's own mother and father believe their son is guilty, and that I have been wrongly imprisoned for a crime he alone committed.
   

• Bloody shoe prints in our house did not match my shoes, as police had claimed. These mystery prints have been confirmed by LAPD SID and the FBI to belong to a mystery intruder, as well as to match a shoe impression photographed on my mother's scalp at autopsy.
   

• Phillip Rabichow, the man who prosecuted me, now has "reasonable doubt" about my guilt due to recently discovered exculpatory evidence.
   

• Monsue, the corrupt cop who botched the investigation, has fled the debate. Just 16 days after "A Case of Doubt" published, Monsue abruptly announced his retirement from the LAPD. He left behind a lucrative 5-year hire-back program some say could have earned him as much as half a million dollars.
   

• Fully seven of the 12 jurors who convicted me now say they would have voted to acquit had they known of the new evidence.
   

• According to a U.S. Magistrate Judge, the evidence heard at a recent evidentiary hearing investigating my actual innocence "effectively dismantled the case the prosecution presented at trial."
   

Thank you for visiting my site, FreeBruce.org, and keeping my case in your thoughts and prayers.