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July 13, 2024, 9:31 AM

NYPD cop-killer Eddie Matos’ eighth bid for freedom denied: ‘Extremely relieved’

By Dean Balsamini

A Manhattan cop-killer’s eighth bid for freedom was denied this week, giving the officer’s family peace of mind for at least another year, The Post has learned.

Eddie Matos, who is serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for the October 1989 murder of Officer Anthony Dwyer, was denied parole and will remain in maximum-security Green Haven Correctional Facility upstate, state officials announced.

“My family and I are extremely relieved that parole was denied again and that we have a year and a half to breathe easy knowing Anthony’s killer is right where he belongs,” Dwyer’s sister, Maureen Brisette, 46, told The Post.

Matos, 56, comes up for parole again in September 2025.

Dwyer’s family said they’re still reliving the day they lost their loved one, who worked at Midtown South Precinct for two and a half years and taught Sunday school at St. Vincent de Paul in Elmont, LI.

On Oct. 17, 1989, around 3:15 a.m., Matos and three accomplices shattered the glass door of a McDonald’s on Seventh Avenue and West 40th Street with a sledgehammer, and rounded up the employees at gunpoint, court papers show.

A maintenance worker escaped, and flagged Dwyer — who was walking the beat — and two other Midtown South Precinct officers, who saw Matos run toward the back of the restaurant and scramble up a ladder to the roof. Dwyer quickly followed.

Once on the roof, Matos shoved the young officer down a 25-foot air shaft. Dwyer was trapped for over a half hour before emergency services could remove the doomed cop from teh shaft. He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 4:50 a.m.

Matos was captured the next day.

He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced in 1990 to 25 years to life.

“We are glad that this cop-killer will stay behind bars and this hero family will have some peace of mind for at least another year,”  Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said. “We need all New Yorkers to keep speaking up and telling the parole board that cop-killers should never go free.”