- A beloved Bronx schoolteacher
who dedicated his life to
helping the city's most underprivileged students...
- I said, man, that's like a war zone up there.
- Discovered tortured and murdered in his own apartment.
- And we observed a lot of blood.
He had slash wounds, but they weren't deep--
superficial, to get his attention.
And then, boom, and it's over.
- The investigation discovers
this hard-working teacher's true identity.
- This was the son of the Time Warner CEO.
- Facing expectations and pressure
from New York City's highest ranks.
- The NYPD used six tactical squads.
- [imitating forceful knocking] Police.
- I don't know who pulled the trigger.
But the teacher is dead because of him.
[gun cocks]
[dramatic music]
* *
[upbeat music]
- By 1997, New York City was safer
than it had been in decades,
with crime plummeting across all boroughs,
except one, the Bronx...
Which still struggled with poverty, drugs,
and violent crime, even in the borough's schools.
And the school with the worst reputation
was the William H. Taft High School in the South Bronx,
where English teacher Jonathan Levin
dedicated his life to proving to his students
there is life beyond the streets.
- Jonathan loved what he was doing.
He was very dedicated.
He wanted to make a difference
in the lives of his students.
- They cherish that.
They value that very much when we believe in them,
no matter what they come from
and no matter the struggle they go through,
that we were there to help them.
[school bell rings]
I was going to a workshop
about restructuring the school.
All the teachers were going to be there.
John was in charge of restructuring
one of the groups for English.
Early spring, we were getting very close.
That's when we were, like,
spending a lot of time together,
and we started a relationship.
I couldn't wait for the workshop.
I arrived early Saturday morning, probably 7:30.
And I was just looking for him.
And the time goes by, and the meeting finishes,
and I haven't seen Jonathan.
If I was dedicated to student, he was even more.
And for him not to be there on Saturday
knowing that he was, like, a strong participant
in the restructure, it was surprising to me.
[line rings]
I called Jonathan, and I left a message.
[answering machine beeps]
How come you were not there?
Are you OK? I hope you're still alive.
He never got back to me.
[answering machine beeps]
Monday, when he didn't show up in school
after having perfect attendance
for the three years that he was teaching,
I feel something is really wrong.
I was trying to ask every colleague that I know
if they had seen him.
One of my male colleagues, he said,
"Oh, he's OK. Don't worry about him."
But all day, I couldn't sit down.
I was, like, moving back and forth, and I say,
"I do not know what to do."
So my female colleague went with me
to his apartment that night to check on him.
[knocking]
I couldn't get in.
But I will never forget
the scent coming through his door.
So I started, like, crying right away.
And that's when my colleague called 911.
[sirens wailing]
- I guess it was around 10:00, I get a knock on the door.
There were two uniformed police officers
and these teachers, friends of Jonathan.
They were very concerned about Jonathan Levin.
I have a key to Jonathan's apartment
because he had asked me if he had to work late,
could I walk the dog for him?
So I go to the apartment,
but soon as I opened the door, I smelled a putrid smell.
[ominous music]
* *
The apartment was totally dark.
I couldn't see anything.
I instinctively go towards the crate
where Jonathan kept the dog.
When I walked into the kitchen,
I could see the cage was empty.
And I saw a very dark shape on the floor.
And that's when I said,
"Oh, my god. I think the dog is dead."
And my eyes got more adjusted to the dark,
and I could see it wasn't the dog.
I could see it was a body.
- I said, I need to get in.
I need to see what happened to him.
They just grabbed my hand, and they pulled me out.
And I said, let go, let go.
But then I saw the body.
And I knew it was Jonathan
because he was wearing a shirt that I gave him.
I started going crazy, like crying, screaming.
* *
- My partner and I were having dinner,
and we got a buzz on the beepers.
We were told it was a young man dead
on Columbus Avenue.
I said, OK, and we responded.
The West Side has always been a nice area.
You can walk the streets at night, in the day,
and feel perfectly safe.
- There were a lot of restaurants and street cafes
on Columbus Avenue at the time where people would hang out.
It was a destination place all through the '90s.
[siren blares]
[ominous music]
- We got there, went up to the apartment.
It was just a mess.
Drawers were open. Stuff was on the floor.
And then I saw the body, and we observed a lot of blood.
- Jonathan's body was partially decomposed.
He had probably been there for three days.
- However, the decomposition
did not prevent Detective McKenna
from getting a closer look at the obvious cause of death.
- He was shot in the head.
And he had slash wounds across the neck and on the chest,
but they weren't deep--
superficial to get his attention.
But he had stab wounds too, which means they stuck him.
It hurts a lot more to get stuck
than it does to get sliced.
When I got there, he was on the floor.
He had binds on his legs and on his hands.
So imagine they had him tied to the chair.
Crime Scene, they safeguarded the duct tape
and they dusted it for prints.
- Duct tape that's used to bind his hands, to bind his feet,
and slashes and pinpricks are consistent with torture.
It tells us a lot about
the intent of the person who was there.
- He was tortured and he was shot.
Why? They needed something from him.
What's the normal thing that they would need from him?
Money.
There was a wallet, and it didn't have his bank card.
We couldn't find that.
- McKenna makes a note to look into
Jonathan's recent banking.
In New York, anyone could be the target of a robbery.
But Jonathan's apartment doesn't instantly scream
wealth to detectives.
- Our building, it wasn't like a slum,
but it wasn't an expensive building.
It didn't have a doorman or anything like that.
It's a brick prewar with small apartments.
In New York, it means a glorified closet.
I wouldn't say it was bare bones,
but it was close to that.
- McKenna turns his attention to the messy condition
of Jonathan's apartment.
- A lot of food, bottles.
Somebody had been drinking, eating.
- There were two plates of Chinese food,
and the food was still on the plate.
So two people were in the process of
literally sharing a meal.
- There was no forced entry.
So I think Jonathan knew who killed him.
- They still had my door open at 4:00 in the morning.
This was still like Grand Central Station going on.
[indistinct radio chatter]
And then the police were coming out with the dog.
And I said, where you taking the dog?
And they said, the dog was locked up in the bedroom
this whole time.
So I grab Julius and I go out of the building.
And this is the first time I walk out of the building.
And there is an army of media.
Every network in New York City
was parked in front of my apartment.
- I was a reporter for a new Time Warner startup
called New York 1.
I found myself covering the story
from the outside of the apartment building.
In cases of murder, especially in a neighborhood
like the Upper West Side, it's a big story.
[ominous music]
- But a murder on the Upper West Side
isn't the only reason this case draws so much attention.
The media catches wind of Jonathan's secret identity.
- I overheard that his father was the CEO of Time Warner.
And I was in shock. I didn't realize.
- Gerald Levin ran corporate.
He was on a C-suite executive board.
And at some point, my news director told me,
this is the boss' son.
- Coming up...
- If you are one of the most powerful men in New York
and your son could be murdered in his own apartment,
then who is safe in Manhattan?
- It was an incoming call on the answering machine.
Mr. Levin, I got to speak to you.
It's really, really, really important.
[suspenseful music]
* *
- Dedicated English teacher Jonathan Levin was found
tortured and executed inside his own apartment.
Crime scene investigators push through
a crowded sidewalk of cameras
to recover potentially crucial pieces of evidence,
like duct tape, to forward to the lab for testing
while reporters dig into Jonathan's history
and unearth his true identity.
- The day after the body was discovered
was when I was informed that
this was the son of the Time Warner CEO.
- He is a media mogul, one of the most powerful
corporate figures in the entire city.
- Rudy Giuliani was trying to get reelected
after his first term.
He's the so-called law and order mayor
and advertising New York as a safer place
under his administration.
- So if you are one of the most powerful men in New York
and your son could be murdered in his own apartment,
then who is safe in Manhattan?
- For Giuliani and the powers that be,
the specter of fear is something that
they couldn't have.
- When I heard that,
I knew there was going to be a lot of heat on the case.
And I knew we had to have it right.
- Meanwhile, Jonathan's community
at Taft High School in the Bronx
finds out about his murder
when news crews show up outside.
- I had the difficult task of talking to these students
outside of the high school.
There was a lot of emotion. These--these kids knew him.
You could tell that they cared about him.
He was making a difference in their life.
- Jonathan showed love to the students.
And he tried identifying with them,
what they were going through in their lives.
When the school found out, we had to call the crisis team
to talk to students.
- Jonathan's students were crying and screaming.
They were really overcome with emotion.
Some were hospitalized. Some were in shock.
- He was a father figure to them.
- Jonathan's funeral becomes a reflection of
the blended life he led,
with over 1,500 mourners in attendance.
- It was attended by a lot of powerful, wealthy figures.
Ted Turner's there, Jane Fonda's there,
but it's really the students that are sort of
the focus of this event.
And they marched down the aisle with signs that say,
"We are his kids." They sit in the front pews.
In this hall of immensely powerful people,
they are the emotional center.
[somber music]
* *
- Jonathan being the son of a New York elite
doesn't just apply pressure, it suggests a possible motive.
- I went to the funeral. I usually go to all of them.
If you're looking for a perp,
a lot of times, the perp will go.
But if you don't know who you're looking for,
you just look at the crowd.
There's a lot of people, an awful lot of people.
[suspenseful music]
* *
- After the funeral, detectives talked to
each of Jonathan's friends
to find out more about his relationships.
- We had spoken to his girlfriend.
- Detectives, they went to my house.
And I told them, Jonathan and I met in 1996
when I was hired to teach bilingual students.
And after that, we started a relationship.
[upbeat music]
He had went to Dominican Republic with me.
He met my family, my son.
He even told me,
if we ever get married, we would get married here.
I couldn't say a word after he said that!
Jonathan and I, we were, like,
spending a lot of time together.
And my ex-husband didn't have access to me like he used to.
We'd been separated for over three years.
But he was used to see me just single,
only with our child, nobody else.
Around April 1997, probably like a month before,
my ex-husband came to the house uninvited.
I said, I have a visitor. You have no place here.
He couldn't believe I was, like, telling him to stay away.
- Detectives learned that the visitor was Jonathan,
and Cleo's ex-husband was not having it.
- When I saw his face, he was completely, like, transformed.
He was in a very jealous rage.
He started to make trouble with Jonathan,
calling him names.
And Jonathan could run his mouth
when somebody made him angry.
I was trying to be calm,
not to cause any trouble between the two of them.
My ex-husband and I were talking outside
for like an hour.
And finally, he left the house.
- You got a husband mad at the ex-wife.
We need to know more.
- We need to know if Cleo's ex-husband was capable
of this kind of brutal torture and murder.
- The precinct detectives interviewed both Cleo
and they interviewed her ex-husband about this conflict.
- They were interested in knowing
what happened with my ex-husband.
I told them, that night, I was worried because I saw his face.
But I knew him very well.
We were friends before we got married.
So I told them, my ex-husband is not capable of
doing something like this.
- In the end, we learned that
the verbal conflict didn't escalate
and that the ex-husband did not have a history of violence.
And he told detectives that
he had been with his own girlfriend at the time.
During the course of their interviews,
his girlfriend, she was able to confirm that
he had a credible alibi.
- She could be telling us the truth,
but we can't rely on her statement.
It wouldn't be the first time
a girlfriend lied to protect her boyfriend.
- You need to find a way to rule in or rule out
the ex-husband as a suspect.
They're showing photos to neighbors
to see if they've seen him in the area or in the building.
They see if there's video surveillance of the area.
But in 1997, there's no significant video evidence.
And ultimately, there wasn't any indication of him
being at or around Jonathan's apartment at any time,
and that sort of shut that door.
He didn't appear to be a likely suspect.
- With Cleo's ex-husband cleared,
McKenna reviews evidence from the crime scene,
and one thing stands out.
[suspenseful music]
- There was messages on Jonathan's answering machine.
So of course I'm going to listen to it.
- A lot of the messages were from concerned friends
who didn't know where he was.
But one of those messages,
right around the time that he was last seen alive...
[answering machine beeps]
Was different.
[suspenseful music]
* *
[phone ringing]
[suspenseful music]
- The afternoon of May 30th, there was an incoming call
on Jonathan Levin's answering machine.
[answering machine beeps]
"Mr. Levin, this is Corey. I got to speak to you.
"It's really, really, really important.
I got to see you."
He sounded urgent.
My thought process: identify this guy,
find out who he is, what he's all about.
He sounded young, so I assumed it was a student.
* *
Two days later, we developed information
from his fellow teachers and friends.
[school bell rings]
When Jonathan told me he was working at Taft,
I said, man, that's like a war zone up there.
But he kept on giving, kept on giving.
That was his nature.
Jonathan, he was a diehard Yankee fan.
He would talk about taking a bunch of kids
to Yankee Stadium.
- Places they never thought of visiting,
like, expensive ticket to baseball games,
he was doing all that,
trying to show a different life outside the neighborhood
for the students.
- Take it away, Mr. Levin. - Yo, Taft, represent.
Class of '96, congratulations. Keep it real.
- When it come to student, he didn't know about boundaries.
- Jonathan gave out his phone number, his address.
He would lend them money.
- He saw that these kids lack a lot of things that they need
to grow up in life,
and he took it as responsibility to help.
[somber music]
* *
- We show up at Taft High School looking for Corey.
- There's no current student named Corey,
but there was a student in the 1993 to 1994 school year
who teachers identified as Corey Arthur.
- The name definitely rang a bell with me.
Corey Arthur, at one time, was my student
as well as Jonathan's.
Corey Arthur was a rough and tough kid,
and it showed in the classroom.
He did what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.
- Many just considered him a lost cause,
but not Jonathan.
[school bell rings]
- Corey was in Jonathan's eighth period English class.
And Jonathan and Corey forged a friendship.
And they discovered, actually, that they had
the deeper bond of rap music.
[hip-hop music]
- Jonathan Levin understood
that rap was the literature of the day,
that the kids from Taft didn't want to hear Shakespeare.
They wanted to talk about division,
and race, and frustration
from the language that they could understand.
And it resonated with them.
- Jonathan encourages Corey to write poetry, rap lyrics.
- Jonathan found a poem that Corey wrote
and said, you should pursue this.
And Corey actually takes that advice
and becomes sort of like a D, C-level rapper
running around with Christopher Wallace,
a.k.a. Notorious B.I.G.
- Despite Jonathan's effort to mentor him,
Corey was already deeply embedded
in his life on the street.
- Corey grew up in the housing projects
in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn
from a really impoverished neighborhood,
a dangerous neighborhood.
[siren blares]
- In 1994, at just 16 years old,
Corey was arrested three times in just four months
for drug possession,
once caught with over 200 vials of crack cocaine.
At the time, Corey pled guilty to felony drug sale.
- Corey's sent to a sort of military style
juvenile prison upstate.
- Even though Corey was no longer a student,
Jonathan felt like he could still
make a difference in Corey's life.
And he felt like this is what his purpose was.
He wanted to be able to give someone who had
very little reasons to be optimistic about their future
some sort of glimpse of what their life might be like
if they began to make the right choices.
- That's why he was, like, getting close to Corey,
even invited him to his place to talk to him.
[dramatic music]
- Detectives need to determine
how much Corey knew about Jonathan's background.
- Very few in the school even knew who his father was--
students and teachers.
But near the end, he came out as to who his father was,
the head of Time Warner.
- I knew him very well.
And I was warning him that it was dangerous.
I said to Jonathan, it's kind of risky
to expose yourself so much to the students.
What if they got the wrong idea?
[dramatic music]
- Coming up...
- We need to go out and get him off the street.
- The NYPD used six tactical squads.
- We had 20-something detectives
and a homicide squad working.
- Corey Arthur's girlfriend told us
they should probably act quickly
because he was making plans to flee to North Carolina.
* *
[dramatic music]
* *
- For many years, very few colleagues
and no students knew about Jonathan's family connection
to one of New York's most powerful businessmen.
But it comes to light
that about a month before his murder,
Jonathan told his class who he really was.
- Jonathan had his students write
biographies of themselves,
basically where they would describe their lives.
And as part of that process, he submitted his own.
- He wrote that his father was a wealthy person
as an example how to write it.
[sirens wailing]
- Corey already dropped out
by the time Jonathan assigned the project,
but gossip can travel fast.
If he believed Jonathan was rich,
that makes for a possible motive.
Detectives trace the call,
hoping its origin will confirm or clear Corey Arthur
as the voice in the message.
- We can trace that phone call to where it comes from.
We work with the telephone company.
In this particular case, it came from a payphone
between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.
And then we called for Crime Scene to come and just dust it
to see if they could come up with prints on it.
But I mean, it was three or four days,
and a lot of people pressing numbers all the time.
So they did not find any prints on the phone.
- Then they get a call from the crime lab
with a critical piece of evidence.
- Chief said, we got a fingerprint
inside the roll of duct tape,
and it's Corey Arthur.
[dramatic music]
* *
- There is no acceptable explanation
for his fingerprints on the duct tape.
Fingerprints found on a weapon
or, in this case, the duct tape
not only places Corey Arthur at the scene,
it tells us that he handled
one of the instruments of death.
- We had certain locations of family.
We go to speak to them.
- But we don't find Corey at the homes of
any of his family members.
- Many people would think that
Corey Arthur would get on a bus, get on a plane,
get out of Dodge to avoid being found.
Nine times out of ten, people return home.
So I think he is seeking refuge
in the comfort of his community.
- Apparently, he had a lot of friends at Bedford-Stuyvesant.
I said, Corey Arthur, he's out in Brooklyn.
We need to go out and get him off the street.
[dramatic music]
[sirens wailing]
- With physical evidence tying Corey Arthur
directly to Jonathan Levin's murder,
we now have a Brooklyn-wide manhunt.
- Let's go. Everybody out, everybody looking.
We had 20-something detectives in the homicide squad working.
Let's get him in.
- The NYPD used as many as six tactical squads
looking for Corey Arthur.
[radio chatter]
- Each of Corey's friends and associates
point detectives in a different direction,
tracking Corey's movements around Bed-Stuy.
- There was tremendous distrust of police,
particularly in the African American community
in Brooklyn at that time.
So we believe Corey's friends or neighbors
give Corey Arthur the benefit of the doubt
and helped him evade capture by police.
[sirens wailing]
- But we don't give up.
And while teams in Brooklyn
continue searching for Corey Arthur,
here in Manhattan, detectives get a lead
on Jonathan's banking history.
[dramatic music]
- We found out about the ATM.
It was only a couple blocks from his house,
and they told us he had a withdrawal
on the afternoon of May 30th.
- So the evidence showed that there was $800 withdrawn,
which would have been the maximum amount at that time.
- The transaction took place
just minutes after Corey left a message for Jonathan.
- We ask if they have film of the transaction.
Yes, they do. We want it.
- So surveillance at ATMs in the 1990s was
comparatively primitive to what it is now.
Even from the grainy appearance of the tape,
it was clear to investigators that
whoever was using the card was likely short and stocky.
Corey was 5'11", about 200 pounds,
and that is completely inconsistent
with the image of the person.
- The guy in the bank was Black.
But the problem is,
it wasn't Corey Arthur.
[suspenseful music]
* *
- ATM surveillance video from the day of the murder
shows someone withdrawing hundreds of dollars
from Jonathan Levin's account.
But the person in the video
is not our prime suspect, Corey Arthur.
Now detectives theorize
Corey Arthur may have had an accomplice.
Together, the two men might have tortured the victim
to get him to give up his bank card and his PIN number.
- There has to be more than one guy.
It's got to be two guys,
because one guy's got to stay here
while the other guy tries to get cash.
* *
[sirens wailing]
- The clock is ticking, and we need a way
to identify our second suspect.
- There is the announcement of an $11,000 reward
from the police for information.
[phone rings]
- They received this anonymous tip
that Corey Arthur had confessed to getting into some drama
with somebody called Monty
and gives them the name Montoun Hart.
If they can find the kernel of truth,
something that's consistent with facts
that are already known,
then that might be something to follow up.
So here, the tip is connecting Monty, or Montoun,
to Corey Arthur.
So as soon as the police have a new name, here Montoun Hart,
they're going to want to know who he is.
Police discover that by 1997,
Montoun Hart had more than one felony conviction
and more than one crime of violence.
Let's see if Montoun Hart wants to talk.
[sirens wailing]
- Now, we know who we're looking for.
We put two guys in a car right outside of his house,
and you wait until they get home.
* *
- 5:00 AM on June 7th,
he pulls up in his mother's car.
* *
Detectives, they don't have enough to arrest him,
so they can't put handcuffs on him.
They can't take him fully against his will.
So he voluntarily accompanies them to the precinct,
where he's given his Miranda warning,
speaks with detectives, and starts to talk.
[suspenseful music]
Montoun Hart said that Corey Arthur told him that
Jonathan Levin had access to crazy money,
that he would be a good mark.
We can only assume that that's a reference to
his dad, to his family, and their tremendous wealth.
- Montoun tells detectives
that the whole thing was a robbery.
They taped Jonathan up
and demanded his bank card and PIN number.
- Corey would implore, "I don't want to hurt you.
Better tell me the PIN numbers."
When you get a knife put to your throat,
they cock a gun at your head,
you're gonna tell people things.
You want to survive.
- Montoun Hart said that he took the card from Corey
and that he, meaning Montoun, went to the ATM
to withdraw the cash, brought it back.
And it was at that point that Arthur shot Jonathan Levin.
[dramatic music]
[gunshot]
Montoun provides an account of being complicit to a robbery,
but not a murder.
Montoun tells the police that
Corey Arthur did all of the dirty work,
that it was Corey who pushed his way in,
that it was Corey who bound him with duct tape,
and, according to Montoun Hart,
that it was Corey who shot Jonathan Levin.
- We have enough to formally arrest Montoun Hart.
But the other perpetrator, Corey, is still at large.
- We get out in the street and talk to the people.
And we found out that Corey had a girlfriend.
- She told the police that she knew that
Corey Arthur had killed Jonathan Levin
and that she knew it because Corey Arthur had told her so.
- Corey Arthur, he told her,
"I can't see you for a couple of days.
"I gotta hide from the cops.
They're after me for killing that guy in Manhattan."
- Then Corey's girlfriend tells detectives that
she knows where he is.
He's hiding in an apartment in Bed-Stuy.
- Corey Arthur's girlfriend also indicated that
they should probably act quickly
because he was making plans to flee to North Carolina.
- I've got a little adrenaline going.
You know, I'd like to get my hands on him and bring him in.
[siren blares]
- We quickly respond to the location,
hoping that the information is accurate.
[dramatic music]
- [imitating forceful knocking] Police.
"What do you want?" We want to speak to Corey.
And he's still there.
So I said, we got him.
- They're able to scoop him off of the streets of Brooklyn
rather quickly and rather calmly.
Now, once they have them in custody,
especially in New York,
the police do what is called a perp walk.
They call the media.
Cameras line up outside the station to show the public,
and you can feel a whole lot safer because we caught them.
- I remember the reaction of some of the teachers.
We heard that they arrested an African American student,
and his name was Corey Arthur.
I said, a student would do this to a teacher?
It was so unbelievable.
- They read him his Miranda warnings.
And Corey Arthur decides that he's gonna talk to the police.
He said that Jonathan paged him because he wanted to buy crack.
Corey Arthur goes to Jonathan's home.
And that shortly after he arrives,
two men push into the apartment.
These two strangers tell Corey he's gotta bind up Jonathan.
Corey Arthur told the police that he did it,
but he did it because it was at threat of knifepoint.
Corey then tries to make a break for it.
According to Corey Arthur,
Jonathan is still alive when he leaves.
* *
- He told us, "I would never shoot Jonathan.
He was my friend."
* *
- Corey was asked why he didn't come forward.
He said that he thought that
his fingerprints on the duct tape would seal the deal,
that nobody would believe his story.
[dramatic music]
[suspenseful music]
* *
- After a week on the run, Corey Arthur is now in custody
and telling his side of the story.
Detectives can tell he gets one thing right:
we don't believe him.
* *
- Corey's story doesn't line up with
what the police already know.
We've talked to Montoun Hart at the same time.
And Arthur's story doesn't reference Montoun Hart at all.
According to Corey Arthur,
he and Jonathan smoked crack together.
- I mean, just inane stuff like that,
that they were doing drugs. Come on.
The toxicology report, it came back negative.
Jonathan wasn't a drug user.
- The only inference we can draw from that
is that Corey's a liar.
And what the judge will charge this jury is that if they found
that the defendant has lied to them about one thing,
they are free to find that he's lied to them about everything.
- Corey faces charges of first and second-degree murder
and first-degree robbery.
He's tried first.
- We thought that his fingerprints on the duct tape
and that Corey Arthur had confessed to his girlfriend
would seal the deal.
The jury deliberated for two days.
They returned the verdict on November 11th, 1998.
Among the jurors, some felt that
there's not sufficient evidence
of murder in the first degree.
But they found Corey Arthur
guilty of murder in the second degree.
* *
- I wasn't in the apartment,
don't know who pulled the trigger.
But Jonathan Levin is dead
because of Corey Arthur.
- Due to the vicious nature of Corey's betrayal,
the judge hands down a maximum sentence of 25 years to life.
Two months later, Montoun Hart goes to trial
on charges of second-degree murder.
- The Montoun Hart case is a tougher case.
The police, they didn't have his prints in the apartment.
They didn't have anybody, including Corey Arthur,
implicating that he was the one who did it.
So the confession was the foundation of
the prosecution's case.
And it's the only evidence they have.
- On February 11th, 1999,
not guilty on all charges.
That means that the jury decided that
the prosecution could not prove his guilt
beyond a reasonable doubt.
It's not a declaration of innocence.
But once somebody's been acquitted of a crime,
he will walk out the courtroom a free man.
[ominous music]
- My colleagues at Taft,
we were outraged that Montoun was acquitted,
'cause, at the least, he admitted to being there.
- I felt that I wasn't sure that justice was met.
[somber music]
We were on a break, and he died.
The workshop on that Saturday morning,
well, this is my opportunity to talk to him.
And I was going to say, "Yes, I'm in love with you.
Let's go for it."
And now that opportunity is gone.
* *
- After Jonathan's passing,
the Yankees had a tribute memorial game
to Jonathan Levin.
About a thousand students
from Taft High School were at that game.
And one of the athletes from Taft High School
was honored with throwing out the first pitch.
It was 0-0 going into extra innings,
and we were all on the edge of our seat.
Another batter comes up and hits a line drive
that drives in the game-winning run
to win the game for Jonathan.
Those thousand students from Taft went bananas.
Jonathan would have been going bananas, I'm sure.
[cheers and applause]
* *
- Off the baseball field,
Jonathan's legacy continues to live on
in his family, friends, and the students he's inspired.
- You know, they named a street after him
in front of the high school.
And I think his legacy is the students that have graduated,
and went forward in their life,
and that he had something to do with that.
And I'd like to think that his students will--
will take him forward.
[somber music]
- There's not one day of my life
that I don't think about him.
I made a promise that day
that I was going to continue
with the legacy that he left behind,
trying not to let students down ever,
and to let them know that we are there for them like he did.
* *