By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2025-04-05 11:30:44 | Updated at 2025-04-06 02:06:02
14 hours ago
One of New York City’s most notorious cop killers – the gangbanger who murdered Police Officer Edward Byrne as he sat in his patrol car in Queens in 1988 — could become the 44th convicted cop killer sprung from prison in the last eight years when he faces the parole board later this month, The Post has learned.
The ruthless assassination of the rookie cop by David McClary on the orders of a drug kingpin stunned a city in the throes of the crack epidemic in the 1980s — and became a national symbol of the era’s lawlessness.
Byrne was just 22 and on the force for just a month when he was ambushed by McClary and three accomplices on Feb. 26, 1988. He was guarding the South Jamaica home of a witness who was planning to testify against druglord Howard “Pappy” Mason.
McClary snuck up on Byrne as he sat alone in a marked patrol car and shot him five times in the head.
Byrne’s killing struck such a chord that then-President Ronald Reagan called his family to offer condolences. President George H.W. Bush later brought the officer’s badge with him to the Oval Office, where he kept it on his desk.
Mason, 65, who ordered the cop’s murder from jail, was sentenced to life in prison for drug-racketeering charges that included Byrne’s murder. He is currently being held at Devens, a federal prison in Ayers, Mass., records show. The three accomplices were all convicted of murder.
The getaway driver, Scott Cobb, was paroled in 2023. Two other men, Todd Scott and Phillip Copeland, remain behind bars — for now.
McClary, now 59 and at the Wende Correctional Facility near Buffalo, has served 36 years of a maximum life sentence. He comes up for parole on an unknown date later this month — his eighth hearing so far.
The Byrne family, speaking out for the first time in decades, is outraged he is even being allowed to sniff freedom.
“This was someone who was clearly the most culpable and dangerous out of the group, but to this day he still denies any knowledge of what was going to happen that night — even though it was very clear that they all sat around the table and planned this and drew straws on who was going to execute my brother,” Kenneth Byrne told The Post.
“This was an absolutely shocking crime, executing a uniformed police officer in a marked car protecting a witness who was being tortured by this drug gang,” said Byrne, 56 and a lawyer, adding that the witness’ home was firebombed.
“He should not be released. I don’t care what alleged accomplishments he has in prison,” said Byrne, who is preparing a victim impact statement he will send to the parole board.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed 12 of the state parole board’s current 16 members.
The board has released 43 cop-killers since 2017, after Cuomo reshaped how the board decides whether to grant parole.
The new guidelines, which were backed by liberal activists, require the board to consider an inmate’s “progress” behind bars, as well as their risk to society, with such factors outweighing the egregiousness of the original crime, sources told The Post. The board also considers age — and many paroled inmates have been 60 or older.
“Andrew Cuomo stacked the parole board with radicals and changed the rules to favor criminals over cops — and now 43 cop killers have walked free because of it,” Republican mayoral hopeful Curtis Sliwa said. “No one who murders a police officer should ever see the light of day again.”
Cuomo through a spokesperson declined to address the criticism, except point out all of his appointments to the “independent board … were confirmed by the state Senate under both Republican and Democratic control.”
Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for Mayor Adams, said that “as a former NYPD officer who has personally experienced the profound loss of colleagues in the line of duty . . . Adams urges the parole board to deny David McClary’s release.
“We must uphold the principle that the murder of a police officer is an intolerable offense, warranting the full measure of justice. Our commitment to the safety and respect of our law enforcement community necessitates unwavering support and the assurance that such sacrifices are forgotten.”
Byrne’s brother said he gets the transcripts of cop-killer’s parole hearings.
“Since the standard for parole changed under Gov. Cuomo, I’ve read I don’t know how many transcripts . . . because I get a copy of what each defendant says before I submit my statement, and they all focus on the progress they’ve made in jail, whether it’s programs or classes or maybe they didn’t get in a fight,” he said.
“And it completely disregards that my brother never got the opportunity to develop his life. . . . He planned to get engaged and to get married and have a family and he never got to go any further, and so his development ended.”
Byrne added angrily, “That’s great they’re completing programs, but it completely disregards any victim of a homicide, how their future was taken from them, and the impact it has on their families and their lives and their futures.
“Quite frankly, I think the system’s upside down.
“I mean, you have a legislature sitting in Albany who are aware of this, have the ability to pass legislation and change it, and to this day . . . no one has done anything and they’re just accelerating releases of dangerous people, especially cop killers,” he said.
The night Eddie Byrne left for his last shift on Feb. 26, 1988, his retired police officer father told him the same thing to him he always said: “Have a safe tour,” his brother said.
That was the last his family would see of the young cop.
“The next morning, I’m answering a door at 5 a.m. and there’s a police chaplin standing there and you know that’s bad news,” recalled Byrne, who lived in North Massapequa at the time. “I watched my parents collapse and then go to trial every day for months . . . They were just drained and devastated.”
Byrne has since lost his father and his brother, Larry Byrne, who was the NYPD’s top lawyer until his death in 2020. His mother, Ann, is 88 and lives in an assisted living home.
“She’s got pictures of Eddie all over the apartment,” Byrne said, describing a shelf that contains one of her favorite photos of a smiling, uniformed Eddie standing next to their Christmas tree shortly before he was killed.
“I’m hoping I’m not sitting down having another conversation with her before it hits the news telling her that the man who put five bullets in her son’s head is getting out of jail,” he said, “because I don’t know if she would survive this one.”
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry is asking New Yorkers to go to the union’s website and sign a petition “to keep this cop killer behind bars.”
“After Eddie was assassinated, cops and New Yorkers banded together to send a message that vicious drug dealers do not rule our streets,” he said. “We cannot let the parole board erase that message.”
