A Chicago police detective from 1977 to 2007, he won awards for getting confessions – even as his suspects allege physical abuse and manipulated evidence in their cases. Similar tactics were on display when Zuley, a Navy reserve lieutenant and later lieutenant commander, took charge of a brutal military interrogation.

Boyd, a former drug dealer who reformed and became successful in real estate, served 23 years in prison for murder before being exonerated in 2013 for lack of evidence. "No nigger is supposed to live like this," Boyd remembered Zuley telling him, while shackled for 5-6 hours, after Zuley searched Boyd's posh Chicago loft.

Zuley leaned on this small-time hustler for information to solve a high-profile murder, even allegedly paying for his family's hotel stays. When Zuley and other detectives they charged Harris with the crime, despite a lack of evidence and aided by a jailhouse snitch. Harris is serving a 90-year prison sentence.

A heroin addict and petty criminal, he found himself accused of a major 1994 murder case after a snitch claimed Griggs boasted about it. Griggs says he was cuffed to a precinct wall for “maybe 30 hours” – and claimed that narcotics withdrawal led him to sign a false confession.

A drug dealer, Johnson also confessed to a role in the murder and implicated her ex-boyfriend, Griggs, while also cuffed to a precinct wall after she says Zuley and his colleagues threatened to take away her children and seek the death penalty.

A Mauritanian who took part in the anti-Soviet Afghanistan jihad before getting captured by US allies post-9/11, Slahi had his interrogation at Guantanamo Bay – prolonged shackling, family threats, demands to implicate others – led by Zuley. In a now-bestselling memoir, Slahi says the brutal tactics led to false confessions.