Sunny Hostin said she “picked off” jurors one by one until a cannibal killer avoided a guilty verdict.
The ABC co-host revealed her role in the old New York case Tuesday on “The View,” where Lindsay Clancy’s defense team and its bid to investigate a holdout juror had become the day’s argument.
Hostin showed the table a 1991 New York Times article and identified herself as the juror who would not convict Daniel Rakowitz, who killed his roommate, Monika Beerle, but was found not criminally responsible by reason of mental disease or defect.
“That was me. It was because I saw clearly that he was psychotic,” Hostin told the table.
Sunny Hostin brags about being a holdout juror that prevented The Butcher of Thompson Square Park from going to prison.
She admits "once he killed her, he chopped up her body parts, yes, boiled her body parts … and fed her body parts to the unhoused." pic.twitter.com/sLbElgLuGt— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 22, 2026
The Times quoted Hostin by her maiden name, Asunción Cummings, after the trial, while several jurors told the paper that one person had blocked a guilty verdict.
“We don’t think he intended to kill her,” Cummings told the Times then. “But once he did, he dismembered her body in an effort to commit the perfect crime.”
Hostin then described the killing on the show as her co-hosts listened. “He did not mean to kill her, and once he killed her he panicked. He chopped up her body parts, yes, boiled her body parts, tried to commit the perfect crime,” Hostin explained.
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She followed that with the detail that jolted the table. “And he fed her body parts to the unhoused,” Hostin added.
Alyssa Farah Griffin immediately put the obvious question to her. “You got this guy off?” Farah Griffin asked.
Hostin answered by going back inside the jury room, where she said the panel was sequestered for nine days and one angry juror threw a chair at her.
“All that being said it was so clear to me in the jury room — we were sequestered for nine days, one juror threw a chair at me,” Hostin recalled. “They were so angry at me. But one by one, I picked them off.”
Hostin told the panel that every juror eventually joined the insanity finding.
“We ended up, all 12 unanimously, voting that he was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity,” she continued.
The New York Times wrote in 1991 that Rakowitz, whom the paper called a “former mental patient,” eventually admitted boiling Beerle’s body parts.
Beerle’s skull later turned up in a bucket of kitty litter inside the baggage room at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City, according to the Times.
During the trial, a witness testified that Rakowitz had served soup to homeless people in Tompkins Square Park that contained a finger, the Times reported.
The insanity finding sent Rakowitz to a New York state hospital for the criminally insane, according to the Times.
NBC New York reported in 2010 that Rakowitz, known as the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park,” would stay at the maximum-security Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Wards Island after trying to be moved.
Hostin used the Rakowitz verdict to defend jurors who resist pressure inside a deliberation room.
“The insanity defense is a real thing and I think this lawyer, you know, who is — wants the juror investigated,” Hostin argued. “That’s going to have a chilling effect on juries.”
Even after recalling the chair-throwing and nine-day sequestration, Hostin called jury service one of the most important things she had done.
“Jury duty is a duty,” Hostin insisted. “It is one of the most important things I think I’ve ever done in my life.”
She then condemned the effort to investigate a juror over a vote. “To investigate a juror for doing his or her duty is despicable,” Hostin charged.
The Clancy segment also turned to Patrick Clancy’s remarriage after Lindsay Clancy strangled their three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, eight months, in January 2023.
Sara Haines questioned why Patrick’s marriage to Lindsay ended so quickly after the killings, while also saying she liked that he had spoken about forgiveness.
“What bothers me is that he talks about forgiving her, which I love, but he focuses on that and never jumps to what so many people struggled with, how did the marital love end so quickly?” Haines asked.
“How did the marital love end so quickly…in sickness and in health.”
Sarah Haines of The View gripes that Patrick Clancy isn’t still married to Lindsay Clancy, the woman who murdered his kids. pic.twitter.com/cwTusxO4VI
— Natalie Jean Beisner (@NJBeisner) September 22, 2026
Haines put herself in Lindsay Clancy’s place and said she would want her own husband to stay.
“But I would hope, you know, in sickness and in health,” Haines replied. “I would hope that my husband wouldn’t just move right along.”
Hostin asked whether Patrick’s remarriage bothered her, and Haines answered that some people look for love again after a loss.
“Some people need love and they need to fill themselves again,” Haines answered.
Haines said she did not want to shame Patrick, but still questioned why the marriage itself was being left out.
“I just don’t know why we skipped over all the marital things,” she remarked.
Farah Griffin challenged that view when the panel discussed reports that Lindsay did not ask Patrick for forgiveness during a prison conversation.
“That stood out to me… him admitting she never sought forgiveness,” Farah Griffin responded.
Farah Griffin said that if she had done what Lindsay Clancy did, her first words would be an apology for taking the three children.
Patrick and his new wife, fertility doctor Rachel Danis, spoke with “60 Minutes” correspondent Ross Douthat after Lindsay’s mistrial.
Danis met Patrick at a New York City run club about a year after the children were killed and did not know his story at first.
They went for coffee, where Danis saw children on Patrick’s phone wallpaper and asked, “Who are those cuties?”
Patrick answered, “They died,” while they were “just at the cashier,” Danis recalled.
Danis said she could not bring Cora, Dawson and Callan back, but wanted to help Patrick rebuild his family while keeping their memory present.
“If I can honor them and allow Pat to grieve but also just continue to honor them in the present, it, I guess that’s all I can do,” Danis offered.
Patrick said his future child will grow up hearing about Cora, Dawson and Callan.
“I think every parent can agree, you have different relationships with your kids, but they’re all your kids. And I can’t wait to tell them about their brothers and sister,” Patrick said.