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March 16, 2024, 11:18 AM

Cop killer who shoved victim from Times Square roof 35 years ago could be free soon

By Dean Balsamini

Forty-one cop killers in New York state have been released since 2017, with one more possibly on the way.

Eddie Matos — who is serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for the October 1989 murder of NYPD Officer Anthony Dwyer, 23, who was shoved from a Times Square roof — is up for parole later this month after he successfully appealed the board’s denial last year.

“It’s just mind-blowing and very disheartening. They’re letting out all cop killers,” Dwyer’s younger sister, Maureen Brisette, 45, told The Post.

Matos has been denied parole seven times since 2014, but last year’s decision was scrubbed due to a legal technicality. The cop killer again goes before the parole board the week of March 25. The cop’s family submitted their victim impact statement on Friday.

“God willing, he gets denied,” Brisette said, adding, “He should get life. We all got a life’s sentence.”

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

A maintenance worker escaped, returning with Dwyer — who worked at Midtown South Precinct for two and a half years — and two other 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.

It took emergency services workers 45 minutes to retrieve his body, and he was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital.

Matos was captured the next day.

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

His three accomplices were also indicted.

Dwyer was a volunteer firefighter and devout Catholic who taught Sunday school at St. Vincent de Paul in Elmont, Long Island.

“My brother was great. He was an amazing person,” Brisette said. “He [Matos] is saying he’s changed and he’s not the same kid. He’s still going to be a cop killer.”

“He can rot in hell,” Dwyer’s mom, Marge, said.

If denied, Matos is next scheduled to go before the parole board in July, according to the NY state Corrections and Community Supervision.

Said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry: “It is a travesty that this hero family has to keep reopening their wounds every few months, because the facts of the case will never change. P.O. Anthony Dwyer was a hero police officer who was murdered protecting this city. The individual who took Anthony’s life is a cop-killer — and always will be. Those facts were true a year ago, and they will still be true in three months or 30 years.”

Hendry called for “all New Yorkers to message the parole board and demand that they face reality and keep this killer behind bars where he belongs.”