Scarcella, 61, defends his record and bristles when asked what went wrong with Ranta.
Scarcella says he fed meals to suspects he was trying to get to confess.
Since Ranta's release, police say Scarcella has received death threats, but he won't talk about them.
After learning earlier this week of Ranta's pending release, the retired Scarcella defended his work.
Scarcella, who retired in 2000, has slowed down since his days as a brash young crime fighter.
"We come from the same neighborhood, " Scarcella recalls telling David Ranta, also from Brooklyn, during questioning in 1990.
In the 1996 trial in the token booth case, the defense accused Scarcella of beating one of the suspects.
Scarcella says his coaxing got Ranta to confess he was in on a botched robbery that led to the killing.
Scarcella had good reason to need a break: In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the city averaged up to six killings a day.
Scarcella's hair is still dark but thinner than in a black-and-white photo showing him leading away a handcuffed Ranta following the arrest in the rabbi case.
Two men being held in other cases gave them the name of an unemployed drug addict named David Ranta, who was eventually tracked down by Scarcella.
Louis Scarcella, one of the detectives who investigated the case, told CNN that Ranta admitted his involvement in the heist attempt and that he stands by the arrest.
CNN: Freed NY convict's first goal: 'Get the hell out of here'
They don't intend to examine Scarcella's past any further, either.
All the drama has cast a harsh spotlight on Scarcella, who during his time with the New York Police Department earned and embraced a reputation as a larger-than-life investigator.
But a few weeks ago, Scarcella was summoned to the Brooklyn district attorney's office and told that a recent review revealed too many flaws in the case to hold Ranta any longer.
Joseph Astin, who had died in a 1990 car accident, had been possible suspect before: Scarcella had brought the courier to the morgue in hopes that he could identify Astin as the gunman, but he couldn't.
CNN: Freed NY convict's first goal: 'Get the hell out of here'
New York Police Department detective Louis Scarcella claimed at a 1995 appeals hearing that he "engaged in numerous investigative steps" to check out Astin, but couldn't produce any paperwork to show that, according to the prosecutor's recent court papers.
Feb. 8, 1990, brought another high-profile case: Scarcella and other detectives got word that a gunman had approached the car of Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger a Holocaust survivor and a leader of the Satmar Hasidic community shot him in the forehead, pulled him out of the vehicle and drove away in it.
Scarcella was credited with solving sensational cases that gave the city a scary reputation and made NYPD detectives redeemers that of the ruthless drug lord known as "Baby Sam, " of an intruder who stabbed a dance choreographer and of two teens accused of killing of a transit worker by torching a subway token booth.
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