Brian Boles

The Crime

On Feb. 8, 1994, the body of 83-year-old James Reid was found in his apartment on the second floor of a building on 138th Street in Manhattan. He had been beaten, gagged, and strangled. Mr. Boles, who was 17 years old, lived in the same building with his father. Mr. Collins, who also was 17, was staying with them at the time.

The Investigation

On March 10, Mr. Boles was arrested for an unrelated robbery of an 80-year-old man. Police began interrogating him about the murder of Mr. Reid. They questioned Mr. Boles for two days. During that time, he was handcuffed to a chair. The detectives repeatedly lied to him, threatened him, and abused him physically and verbally. Ultimately, Mr. Boles, who was sleep-deprived, scared and wanting to go home, gave a statement saying that he and Mr. Collins had murdered Mr. Reid. Police fed Mr. Boles details about the crime, which he repeated back. These formed the basis of his confession. Mr. Collins was interrogated similarly and also falsely confessed to the murder.

Detectives recorded a video statement from Mr. Boles in which he said that the murder occurred between noon and 1 p.m. He said that he and Mr. Collins had pushed in Mr. Reid’s front door, and Mr. Collins hit him several times, then gagged him with a T-shirt. Mr. Boles said that Mr. Collins removed cash from Mr. Reid’s wallet and they left the apartment.

On March 25, 1994, a grand jury indicted Mr. Boles and Mr. Collins on charges of first-degree murder and first- and second-degree robbery. 

The Trial

Mr. Boles and Mr. Collins were tried separately. Mr. Boles went to trial in New York County Supreme Court on March 15, 1995. Detectives testified about their interrogation and denied threatening or mistreating Mr. Boles. The prosecution presented his confession as well as the testimony of a detective who said that a bloody boot print found in Mr. Reid’s living room was a “match” to boots that had been seized from Mr. Collins.

Mr. Boles testified and denied involvement in the crime. He said his confession was false and the result of hours of physical and verbal abuse, including being slapped in the head. 

“I was scared,” he testified. “And the abuse that I was getting, I was never in that kind of abuse by an officer before. And I just wanted to go home.”

On March 22, 1995, Mr. Boles was convicted of all charges. He was sentenced to 25 years to life. Subsequently, Mr. Collins pled guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree robbery. He was sentenced to 20 years to life on the murder conviction and a consecutive term of two to six years on the robbery conviction.

The Exoneration

In March 2022, Jane Pucher, an attorney with the Innocence Project, asked the Post-Conviction Justice Unit (PCJU) of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to reinvestigate the case. Ms. Pucher asked for DNA testing of the physical evidence. The PCJU opened an investigation, which included testing the material found under Mr. Reid’s fingernails. The testing found a mixed DNA profile that included a major donor and a minor donor. The testing identified Mr. Reid as the major donor and excluded both Mr. Boles and Mr. Collins as the minor donor.

The re-investigation also showed that the police and prosecution had failed to disclose statements from witnesses who said they saw or heard Mr. Reid after 1 p.m. on the day his body was discovered. These statements rendered the timeline of the confession impossible. The reports also said that neighbors heard loud sounds and furniture being dragged in Mr. Reid’s apartment around 10:30 p.m., suggesting he was killed late at night.

In addition, a forensic report was discovered that contracted the trial testimony that the boot print at the scene was a “match” to Mr. Collins’ boots. The forensic report said that the print at the scene was too partial, and as a result, no comparison could be made.

Ms. Pucher and lawyers for Mr. Collins from the law firm of Ropes & Gray also presented evidence that  cast doubt on the veracity of the confessions. The coercive interrogation tactics, combined with Mr. Boles’s youth and a history of trauma, made him uniquely vulnerable to giving a false confession. The tactics detectives used have been shown to produce false confessions at a high rate: they lied to Mr. Boles repeatedly, first telling him that a neighbor had seen him outside Mr. Reid’s apartment, which was false; and then telling him that Mr. Collins had implicated him in the murder, which was also a lie. Mr. Collins, in fact, had told police that he and Mr. Boles had nothing to do with the murder.  

Mr. Boles was released from prison on March 8, 2024. He continued his studies after his release and earned a degree in sociology from Bard College in May 2025.

On May 22, 2025, Ms. Pucher and Foderaro Post-Conviction Litigation Fellow Shabel Castro filed a motion for a new trial based on the DNA exclusion and the discovery of the undisclosed exculpatory evidence contradicting Mr. Boles’s confession.

A similar motion was filed in June 2025 on behalf of Mr. Collins.

In a response filed on July 8, 2025, the PCJU agreed the convictions should be vacated and the charges dismissed.  

On July 10, 2025, New York County Supreme Court Justice Ruth Pickholz vacated the convictions and dismissed the charges.