Crime Immemorial

The murder of Nathan Blenner remains one of the more tragic and controversial cases in New York City’s criminal justice history from the 1980s. On October 20th, 1985, twenty-year-old Nathan Blenner, a resident of South Ozone Park in Queens, New York, was abducted in front of his home in a daylight carjacking-style attack. His body was discovered the following day in a secluded area of Aberdeen Park (also referred to in some reports as a park in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn), having been fatally shot in the head.

According to witness accounts, two individuals forced Nathan into his own Buick Regal outside his residence during the afternoon. The perpetrators drove off with him in the vehicle. Nathan’s body was found dumped in Brooklyn with a single gunshot wound. His wallet was missing, suggesting a possible robbery motive intertwined with the abduction. Medical examiners estimated the time of death around three fifteen p.m. on the day of the kidnapping.

The case drew attention amid New York City’s high crime rates in the mid-1980s, particularly car-related violent crimes and youth involvement in street offenses.

Police soon arrested two sixteen-year-olds from Brooklyn: David McCallum and Willie Stuckey. Both provided confessions admitting to abducting Nathan during an attempted car theft, forcing him into the vehicle, driving to Brooklyn, shooting him, and taking a joyride in his car before abandoning the body. They were charged with kidnapping and murder.

In 1986, following trials that relied heavily on these confessions and limited corroborating testimony (including one witness who claimed Stuckey had spoken about needing to dispose of a gun “with a body on it”), both young men were convicted of murder and sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison.

From early on, aspects of the confessions raised concerns. The accounts contained inconsistencies (such as differing details about the number of shots fired), and no physical evidence—such as fingerprints, eyewitness identification linking them directly to the scene, or forensic ties—connected McCallum or Stuckey to the crime beyond their statements. Critics later argued that the confessions appeared coerced or contaminated, with details possibly fed to the suspects by investigators, a pattern seen in several high-profile wrongful conviction cases from that era.

David McCallum maintained his innocence throughout nearly three decades of incarceration, pursuing appeals in state and federal courts without success under the long tenure of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.

The case gained renewed attention in the early 2010s. A documentary titled David & Me, directed by Ray Klonsky and Marc Lamy, explored McCallum’s claims of innocence and highlighted investigative shortcomings. Advocacy from figures including the late Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (who wrote an open letter to the incoming DA before his death in 2014) helped bring scrutiny.

After Kenneth Thompson became Brooklyn District Attorney in 2014, his Conviction Integrity Unit reviewed the case. They concluded that the convictions rested almost entirely on unreliable confessions with no other credible evidence linking the two men to the abduction or killing. Notably, later DNA testing on evidence reportedly pointed toward another individual (a fourteen-year-old at the time of the crime) rather than McCallum or Stuckey.

On October 15th, 2014, DA Thompson moved to vacate both convictions. A judge approved the motion, exonerating David McCallum after twenty-nine years in prison. Willie Stuckey had tragically died in prison years earlier at age thirty-one, but his conviction was also posthumously vacated.

The exoneration highlighted systemic issues in the 1980s New York justice system, including over-reliance on juvenile confessions without sufficient corroboration, potential police coercion, and barriers to revisiting old cases. McCallum’s release was celebrated as a victory for innocence advocacy groups like the Innocence Project and the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

The murder of Nathan Blenner remains officially unsolved as of the most recent public records. No one has been convicted for the crime since the 2014 exonerations.