She Denied a Killer Parole. He Allegedly Vowed to Torture and Murder Her. New York Fired Her, Not Him.
Tyece Drake spent eight years on New York’s Board of Parole, appointed in 2017 by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D). In 2023 she was the commissioner who read a fellow inmate’s letter describing exactly what Matthew Svanberg, a convicted killer, allegedly wanted to do to her — and voted to keep him locked up anyway.
A court overruled her. A second commissioner freed him. And in June 2025, Drake says, the state told her she was done. “I have been afraid for my life for two years,” she told the New York Post. “When I complained, I was fired.”
- 25-to-life the sentence Matthew Svanberg received for the 1993 murder of gas-station clerk Dennis Folk — Fordham Law Parole Information Project
- $190,000 the current annual salary of a NYS Board of Parole commissioner — NY Post, April 2025
- 2 years how long Drake says she lived in fear of Svanberg's alleged threats before she was removed — Drake, to the NY Post
On October 24, 1993, Matthew Svanberg, then 20, shot and killed 26-year-old Dennis Folk during an armed robbery of a Getty gas station in Ridge, New York, on Long Island. He fled to Las Vegas and stayed at large for roughly five years before he was caught after bragging about the killing. Extradited to New York, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life.
Folk’s family never stopped fighting his release. Ahead of Svanberg’s first parole eligibility, Folk’s sister, Patricia Connelly, ran two Change.org campaigns — “Please help us to keep this bragging killer in prison, where he belongs, for the full term of his sentence — Life,” she wrote in October 2022. Svanberg’s own brother, Lars, told a different story to local reporters the same month: “He’s a totally changed man.”
Drake was one of three commissioners on Svanberg’s 2023 panel. She denied him parole and wrote the decision herself. “It’s a murder case,” she later explained. “I have to be thorough so that I am sure that if I’m releasing someone, the public is going to be safe.”
Svanberg challenged the denial in an Article 78 proceeding. On March 4, 2023, a Dutchess County Supreme Court judge, Thomas R. Davis, ruled the board couldn’t deny him parole solely because of the seriousness of his crime, and ordered a new hearing. Roughly a year later, at Svanberg’s second hearing, a different commissioner — Tana Agostini, also appointed by Cuomo in 2017 — led the panel and wrote the decision granting his release, citing the court order.
“It's a murder case. I have to be thorough so that I am sure that if I'm releasing someone, the public is going to be safe.”
Tyece Drake · former NYS Board of Parole Commissioner
Sometime in the year between the denial and the release, a fellow inmate at Svanberg’s facility sent the Parole Board a letter. According to Drake’s account, it described Svanberg vowing, in racist and graphic terms, to torture and kill her if he ever got out — because, in his telling, her questioning had “emotionally tortured” him. It is a secondhand account relayed in a letter, not a recorded threat, and Svanberg has not been charged over it. Drake says it’s the reason she spent the next two years afraid.
Drake’s original term expired in August 2019; like many commissioners, she continued serving in holdover status for years afterward. State records show she was a sitting commissioner as of a June 2024 board meeting. By July 2025, the same official DOCCS roster no longer lists her.
Drake told the Post she was informed in June 2025 that she was being replaced — after she had complained to the state about Svanberg’s alleged threats. “It has impacted me psychologically,” she said. No lawsuit, grievance, or formal complaint by Drake has been reported. No response from DOCCS, the Board of Parole, or Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D) office — whose administration made the replacement — was available at publication. This account rests on Drake’s own record to the Post; treat it as her allegation until the state responds.
Tana Agostini, the commissioner who freed Svanberg, has her own documented history with lenient parole outcomes. Before joining the board, while working as a New York State Assembly staffer overseeing prison policy, she lobbied then-Parole Board chair Bob Dennison in 2013 to help parole Thomas O’Sullivan — a man serving 25-to-life for a 1982 murder-for-hire. She later married him. Both facts are drawn from a 2018 NYC Police Benevolent Association report and a corroborating 2025 New York Post follow-up; Agostini has not disputed them publicly.
Both Drake and Agostini were 2017 appointees of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D). The board’s current chairman, Darryl C. Towns, was appointed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), confirmed in June 2022 and named chairman the following January; he is a former Cuomo-administration housing commissioner and the son of former Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-Brooklyn). Commissioners currently earn $190,000 a year, up 87% since 2019.
Former Gov. George Pataki (R) has been blunt about the pattern: Cuomo, he said in 2025, “stacked the parole board with his leftist friends who have no appreciation for the sacrifice our police make.” The board’s critics point to a wider dataset, not just this one case — New York Post reporting from April 2025 found the board’s Cuomo- and Hochul-era appointees had freed 43 people convicted of killing police officers.
Andrew Cuomo's appointee Tana Agostini making $190k to release murderers like her husband, rapists and cop killers.
A commissioner who denied a killer parole and reported his alleged threats against her is out of a job. The commissioner who freed him, with a documented history of favoring a different killer she later married, is still on the board. Both were appointed by the same governor, to a panel now run by the next one. New York has not explained why it fired the first commissioner, or why it hasn’t fired the second.
