Woman freed from prison after new evidence contradicts accounts of 1999 NYC murder

A woman who has sat in prison for more than a decade was released Tuesday after new evidence contradicted accounts that she helped a hitman take out an innocent victim 25 years ago in the Bronx.

Kimberly Hanzlik, 59, was convicted in 2011 alongside gunman Joseph Meldish for allegedly tipping Meldish off that his intended target, Thomas Brown, was sitting in Frenchy’s Tavern on East Tremont Avenue on March 21, 1999.

A judge sentenced Hanzlik to 20 years to life in state prison, and that’s where she languished — until new evidence unearthed by the Bronx District Attorney’s Office cast doubt on whether she was ever even at the Bronx watering hole when the murder took place.

The story went that Meldish — who is suspected of being involved in 40 gangland murders — was furious that Brown, a one-time drug dealer, refused to lend him cash for a deal, then reported him to the cops when Meldish burglarized his home in retribution.

Hanzlik — then a crack-addicted prostitute — allegedly went with Meldish and another man to the Throggs Neck bar where Brown hung out, peaked in, saw him sitting with his wife and told Meldish he was there.

Meldish busted in and shot the man eight times, killing him.

But it turned out Meldish had actually gunned down Brown’s lookalike brother, Joey.

And unfortunately for Hanzlik, Meldish’s getaway driver testified that she’d helped the criminals carry out their dastardly mission — which led to her conviction.

In 2021, Hanzlik’s attorneys asked the DA’s Conviction Integrity Bureau to re-investigate the case — and that’s when they found old police documents that quoted the getaway driver as saying Hanzlik wasn’t there when the shooting went down.

Investigators also found that Brown’s wife — who claimed she’d seen Hanzlik in the bar before the shooting — never mentioned her until 2006, seven years after the killing.

And the now-deceased NYPD detective who got the identification coerced a false ID in a separate, unrelated case, Clark said.

On Tuesday, an administrative judge in the Bronx Hall of Justice granted Hanzlik’s attorney’s motion to vacate the conviction, dismiss the indictment, seal the case and free her from prison.

“Ms. Hanzlik served 13 years in prison based on trial testimony that would not meet today’s threshold of credibility given the discovery of new information, which casts doubt on the integrity of her conviction, and we cannot stand by it,” Clark said.

“I realize this causes pain and anguish for the victim’s family, but in the interest of justice, we are dismissing the indictment against Ms. Hanzlik.”

Afterward, Hanzlik’s attorney, Irving Cohen, said it was an “amazing day.”

“We knew she was innocent right away,” the attorney said, adding that his client was “really emotional” about being freed.

“I mean, she is totally innocent. She wasn’t there when this event happened.”

Not everyone was elated, however.

“I am disgusted this is happening,” Eileen Brown, Joseph’s widow, told The Post. “I don’t understand how they could be letting her out.”

“Her record will be erased. It’s like she was never even arrested,” she continued. “If she didn’t walk into that bar and point out my husband, he would still be with us today. My husband was a good man. He had a good job and he was in the Air Force Reserve. We had a young son.

“We were a happy family with a great future and because of her it all ended that night.”