The New York State Parole Board denied parole for Eddie Matos on Nov. 6, 2026, marking the latest chapter in a decades-long fight by the family of the NYPD officer he killed to keep him behind bars. Matos was convicted of murdering Officer Anthony Dwyer in 1989, and he is currently serving a sentence of 25 years to life at the maximum-security Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County.
The denial came in what the Police Benevolent Association described, per family members and the union, as Matos’s fifth parole hearing in three years. According to a report republished by us.headtopics.com, the board had previously denied Matos’s release following an October 2025 appearance, but a Dutchess County Supreme Court judge ordered a new hearing after Matos’s lawyer, Isaac Zaur, challenged the board’s characterization of his disciplinary record. Zaur, a partner at the Madison Avenue law firm Clarick Gueron Reisbaum, is representing Matos pro bono.
Zaur argued that Matos had received no disciplinary reports since 2019, and that his only two tickets since 2013 were for minor infractions, including talking in the hallway, the same report states. The parole board, for its part, cited Dwyer’s killing along with Matos’s prior criminal convictions in Connecticut for burglary, larceny, and theft of a firearm.
A Rooftop Chase That Ended in Tragedy
Dwyer was 23 years old on Oct. 17, 1989, when he and two other officers responded to an armed robbery call at a McDonald’s on Seventh Avenue and West 40th Street in Times Square. Accounts of what happened next differ: the New York Daily News reported that Dwyer was pushed into an air shaft 40 feet deep while pursuing a suspect on a Manhattan rooftop, while the Headtopics report characterized his death as a fatal shooting. Dwyer died at Bellevue Hospital, and Matos was sentenced in 1990 to 25 years to life for second-degree murder. He has been denied parole more than a dozen times since…