PORT JEFFERSON, N.Y. — Jurors were right 17 years ago when they convicted a Long Island teenager of killing his wealthy parents, a judge ruled Friday in a much-anticipated decision.

Saying Martin Tankleff's bid for a new trial was rooted in the lies of "nefarious scoundrels," Suffolk County Court Judge Stephen Braslow effectively ended the latest chapter in a saga that began Sept. 7, 1988, when the bodies of Seymour and Arlene Tankleff were found in their expansive million-dollar home.

Prosecutors tried and convicted the couple's then-17-year-old son, Martin, based on his own confession that he killed his adoptive parents because they were smothering him and constantly fighting.

The case gained national attention partly because of the disputed confession, which was obtained only after a detective pretended to receive a telephone call from a hospital where a mortally wounded Seymour Tankleff was in a coma. The detective told Martin Tankleff falsely that his father had awoken and implicated his son, and Martin told police, "Yeah, I did it."

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Tankleff later recanted the statement. But at his sensational 13-week trial in 1990, jurors rejected the teen's claim that he was just telling overzealous detectives what they wanted to hear.

Tankleff suggested his parents were actually murdered by Jerry Steuerman, Seymour Tankleff's financially troubled business partner in bagel stores and race horses.

On Friday, Braslow rejected Tankleff's latest claim that drug fiends linked to Steuerman attacked Seymour, 62, and Arlene Tankleff, 54, with a pipe and knives while Martin slept.

"This case has been reviewed extensively by every state appellate court and federal court having jurisdiction, all of whom have declined to upset the jury's verdict," Braslow wrote in his 19-page decision. "After thoroughly reviewing this matter, this court reaches the same conclusion that the jury reached seventeen years ago ... Martin Tankleff is guilty of murdering his parents."

Tankleff's lead attorney, Bruce Barket of Garden City, said the decision comes as no surprise given what he called an "institutional article of faith" in the Suffolk criminal justice system that Martin Tankleff was guilty.

"I'm angered, sickened and disgusted. The saddest part of it all is that I am not in the least bit surprised," Barket said. "It was a poorly written and poorly reasoned decision."

Barket said the amount of evidence was so overwhelming that it should not be dismissed summarily.

"Nobody was suggesting Marty get a new trial based on a single witness. It was the whole being greater than the sum of the parts," he said. "To honestly conclude you don't believe these people, you have to explain how they all came about pointing the finger to the same three or four people, who are connected to the chief suspect, who made multiple admissions, who don't have alibis."

Assistant Suffolk County District Attorney Leonard Lato, who was not involved in the original prosecution, welcomed the ruling, particularly Braslow's finding that most of Tankleff's evidence was hearsay and would never be admissible.

"For all practical purposes, this is the end for Marty Tankleff," Lato said, noting that Tankleff's planned appeal does not have to be heard by a higher court. "You had an unbiased judge with no stake in the outcome come to the same conclusion that the jury came to."

Lato said the defense has now added the judge to a long list of people conspiring to deny Tankleff justice, a list that already included the police, two elected district attorneys from different political parties, and the trial judge.

"The truth is incontrovertible. Tankleff murdered his parents," Lato said. "And a baseless allegation of an ever-widening conspiracy is not a substitute for real evidence, which a jury heard and carefully considered before rendering its verdict."

Family members who have stood by Tankleff's side from the beginning, including the victim's siblings, repeated their contention that prosecutors are "coddling" the real killers to protect two murder convictions that grew out of a false confession.

"There is overwhelming evidence not only of Marty's innocence, but that he is a victim of a wrongful conviction based on a false confession taken by a detective found to have previously perjured himself," the family members said in a statement in response to the ruling. "There is also evidence this detective may have been bribed. All impartial observers — including retired judges and district attorneys, law professors, cops, wardens and prison guards — know that Marty Tankleff deserves a new trial. And a growing number of Suffolk County citizens are aware that in keeping Marty in jail, the D.A. is coddling violent felons and allowing the real murderers of Arlene and Seymour Tankleff to walk the streets."

Although public sentiment remains strong in Port Jefferson and Belle Terre that Tankleff is innocent, others are pleased with the ruling.

K. James McCready, the county homicide detective who got Tankleff to confess by telling him falsely that Seymour Tankleff had implicated his son, said he had been confident that Braslow would see through the defense's case, which was presented at a lengthy evidentiary hearing that began in 2004.

"I'm ecstatic," said McCready, who is now retired and living in South Carolina. "I never had a doubt [Braslow] was going to deny it. I just couldn't believe he would listen to so many lies and innuendo. Tankleff had his day in court, so the hell with him."

The latest bid to win freedom for Tankleff, now 34, stemmed from the 2002 involvement of Barket and private investigator Jay Salpeter, both based in Nassau County. Dusting off old witness statements claiming that a sometimes drug enforcer named Joseph Creedon was making incriminating statements, Salpeter tracked down associates of the ex-convict. His investigation led him to a drug-addicted burglar named Glenn Harris, who was serving time in the same upstate New York prison where Martin Tankleff was housed.

Barket got the case back into court largely based on Harris' statement that he drove the getaway car for the Tankleffs' killers, whom he identified as Creedon and Peter Kent. Harris, who later recanted his statement in letters to Salpeter, invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and refused to testify at Tankleff's evidentiary hearing.

Braslow rejected the testimony of other defense witnesses as not credible hearsay from men who have never done anything that was not in their best interests.

"The defendant has introduced what he has characterized as newly discovered evidence which consisted mainly of the testimony from a cavalcade of nefarious scoundrels paraded before this court by him," Braslow wrote. "Most of these witnesses were persons with extensive criminal histories that included illegal drug use and sales, burglary, robbery, assault and other similar crimes."

Barket responded that he is not surprised that Braslow broadly painted his witnesses as "not credible," based on biases he believe have existed within the Suffolk County criminal justice system since the hearing began in 2004.

"In Suffolk County, there seems to be an institutional article of faith that Marty Tankleff is guilty. Against that article, all argument, reason and facts are shattered," Barket said.

Tankleff's lawyers plan to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court, but if they are unsuccessful, he will first be eligible for parole in 2040.