After serving 14 years for murder, Kareem Bellamy was released from jail last summer when a tape recording surfaced of another man confessing to the crime. It was a stunning reversal for Bellamy who had been convicted despite tenuous evidence and never stopped proclaiming his innocence. But within months, the authenticity of the tape recording was called into question, a star witness recanted and Bellamy lost his legal team.

Now his high-profile defense team – lawyers from one of the country’s top law firms, a decorated former FBI agent and a retired NYPD homicide detective – stands accused of fraud while the 41-year-old Bellamy could soon be sent back to jail to serve out the rest of his sentence.

Through court documents, audio and video recordings, and interviews with many of the people involved in the case, my colleagues Danielle Friedman, Venkat Srinivasan and I sought to shed light on a 15 year-case that has the outsized characters and shocking twists and turns of an Elmore Leonard novel. Our 5000 word story was serialized over four weeks in the Rockaway Wave and mentioned in New York Magazine’s annual reasons to love New York issue .

Pt.1 “Kill me God”

Pt.2 “I’d like to get something off my shoulders”

Pt.3 “I think we just got your boy out of jail”

Pt.4 “This case is going to end up in some bar exam in a few years”