Confusing discrepancies between the show, the book and contemporary news accounts

While Friedman is undoubtedly a remarkable man, I am kind of confused as far as which version of some of his stories are fact and which have been altered, and for what reasons.

For example: In the first episode of the show, Friedman and his partner, Kal Unger, responding to a report of a burglary, enter a darkened apartment, hear a woman screaming and then a man appears and opens fire on them. They exchange shots and Unger is seriously injured while the civilian is killed. Friedman then finds out that the man had been in the process of beating his girlfriend to death when they arrived just in time to save her life and kill her assailant. The show says the dead man was a known criminal as well. Friedman's book gives basically the same story...

However... The New York Times gives a drastically different version of the story. http://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/02/archives/burglary-victim-slain-by-mistake-traded-shots-with-police-patrolman.html?mcubz=3

In this article, dated Nov. 11, 1972 it says that the dead man was the person who actually had called police to report the burglary. He had not been beating the woman, who was his wife, not his girlfriend. She was screaming because they had just been burglarized by teenagers, and when Friedman and Unger entered the apartment, the man and his wife thought they were the criminals and the man opened fire. Rather than being a career criminal, the dead man had been employed in the kitchen of a veterans's hospital.

I don't know what to make of this. In the book, Friedman basically admits to falsifying information several times in order to present himself in a better light to his superiors on the force.

There are other differences between the account Friedman gives in the book and on the show as well. For instance, when Friedman is hunting a serial rapist, the show describes the perpetrator as an underaged (16 year old) hispanic man, when the book says he was a 19 year old black man.

I always used to think these documentary shows were more or less presenting the truth. Now, I am not sure which account, if any, to believe. Not knocking Friedman, the guy is obviously a legendary lawman and clearly one of the good guys, but the discrepancies are pretty confusing.