New York’s prison agency has looked into a report that a convicted murderer had threatened to torture and kill the parole commissioner who voted against letting him out.
Per a report by the New York Post, that commissioner is now off the board, and she says her removal and her handling of the case are connected.
Tyece Drake had been a state parole commissioner since 2017, following an earlier career in mental health and prison reentry services. In June 2025, she learned the state was replacing her, after months of letters to board leadership and elected officials about the case.
“I have been afraid for my life for two years,” she told the New York Post. “When I complained, I was fired. It has impacted me psychologically.”
The story goes back to a robbery at a Getty station in October 1993. Dennis Folk, an attendant working the overnight shift, got shot by Matthew Svanberg, who was then 20. Svanberg left New York and stayed free for five years before police picked him up. A second-degree murder conviction followed, along with a sentence of 25 years to life.
Drake, the parole commissioner, sat on the three-member panel that questioned him, and authored the denial. “He was angry because I asked him so many questions,” she said. “It’s a murder case. I have to be thorough so that I am sure that if I’m releasing someone that the public is going to be safe.”
Svanberg went to court over it, and it sent him back for a fresh hearing. A different panel approved his release, and he went home in May 2024.
The letter that made Drake fear for her life
A letter from another man held at Woodbourne Correctional Facility described Svanberg’s response to the denial, which apparently included a racist tirade and a vow to hurt Drake if he ever walked free.
The letter’s author said he would disavow it if asked, and did exactly that when investigators reached him. Svanberg denied everything too.
Regarding Drake’s removal, the department’s position is that her appointment had run out, and it declined to discuss personnel any further. Drake says that it had already been expired for six years by then.
That timeline matches what parole reform advocates were already saying. In June 2024, Parole Preparation Project deputy director Anthony Dixon wrote in The Appeal that Drake was among several commissioners whose terms had lapsed more than five years earlier while they kept serving as holdovers. He wanted Gov. Kathy Hochul to replace them, because he thought the board was too stingy with release, not too generous.
Drake says Svanberg should go back to prison. She argues the second panel skipped the test in state Executive Law 259-i, which requires the board to weigh whether a release would “undermine respect for law.”
During a 2022 interview with News 12, Svanberg, overcome with emotion and crying, apologized to the victim’s family. “I wish I could take their place,” he said, though they reportedly remained unmoved.
Svanberg has been living in Wainscott and working for a family business.
Published: Aug 2, 2026 07:30 am