Sworn to Silence: The Truth Behind Robert Garrow and the Missing Bodies' Case

by Jim Tracy

Overview

Two small-town attorneys who outraged the nation defending a hated man; the detective who desperately sought answers to the whereabouts of missing women; the unveiling of a modern-day serial killer; and the author who witnessed the drama firsthand.

Jim Tracy’s Sworn to Silence is an unforgettable story of two American lawyers who did the unprecedented. They searched for, found, and photographedthe lifeless bodies of their client’s victims and then kept it secret. They did so in the face of unendurable pressure from the authorities and the victims’ families, who suspected the lawyers knew more than they were saying.

When the American public eventually learned of the lawyers’ actions, they were horrified, outraged, and vengeful. People could not fathom how two attorneys—fathers of teenage girls themselves—and supposed officers of the law, could conduct themselves in a manner seemingly beyond any concept of humanity.

Today, this landmark legal case is studied and analyzed in law schools worldwide.

These events have been indelibly marked in Tracy’s mind since he was eight years old; in fact, he was present at the scene of New York state’s largest manhunt after the killer broke into Tracy’s father’s hunting camp in the Adirondack Mountains. In Sworn to Silence, Tracy weaves together a true crime narrative that should rank with some of the most compelling American crime stories of modern times. He does so while taking you—the reader—on a page-turning journey back to the early 1970s, unveiling an American serial killer most people have never heard of.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642936261
Publisher:	Post Hill Press
Publication date:	03/30/2021
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	196,819
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jim Tracy has won multiple national and state writing awards, including first place in the prestigious Associated Press Sports Editor contest. Around this time, he spent ten years at The Post-Star, a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper in Glens Falls, N.Y.

He graduated from the State University of New York. Prior to a successful career in journalism, Tracy was a former aide to New York State Senator Norman Levy (R-Nassau County). He was born, raised, and still resides in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains, with his wife, Angela, and teenaged daughters Sam and Shay. He’s spoken publicly about the Garrow case at several historical societies in New York state.

Table of Contents

Introduction: 1973… An Uncertain Future xv

Part I The Crimes

1 The Omen 3

2 A Cop's Cop 13

3 Gone Girl 16

4 A Day of Days 26

5 Fugitive's Name Released 46

6 A Country Lawyer 54

7 The Map 66

8 Wife, Son Plead For Surrender 70

9 Blood's Thicker Than Water 77

10 "This Was The Game Garrow Chose…" 91

Fear Was Real to Eight-Year-Old Boy 99

Part II The Dilemma

11 Unbroken 103

12 A Telling Lie 115

13 Cold Cases 117

14 Strange Scenes Inside the Lair 127

15 Other Accusations 142

16 Outfoxing the Foxes 147

17 Skull Sessions 154

18 Hypnosis 156

19 Switcheroo 159

20 Oakwood Cemetery 163

21 Pawning the Bodies 170

22 Sleepless Nights 178

23 Hamilton County Jail 180

24 Girls in Shallow Graves 189

Part III The Trial

25 An Unusual Upbringing 197

26 North Country's Trial of the Century 208

27 Theater of the Absurd 218

28 Verdict 264

29 Deciphering the Defense 267

Part IV The Aftermath

30 An Enduring Agony 271

31 Dannemora 278

32 Backlash 284

33 Landmark Decision 288

34 Garrow Sues His Lawyers 290

35 Some Empathy 293

36 The Gun 298

37 The Escape 303

38 "I Killed My Father" 313

39 The Final Con 320

40 The Funeral 324

41 Four Decades Later 326

Serial Killer 331

Coda: The Garrow Curse 332

Endnotes 343

Acknowledgments 349

About the Author 351

Editorial Reviews

"As I worked construction on Lake George in the Adirondacks in the summer of 1973, I listened on radio for news of the manhunt for Robert Garrow. I've never forgotten the haunting feeling of knowing that random killer was loose in the mountains around me. It was like a living ghost story told around campfires at night. Jim Tracy had done an excellent job of filling out the story that is much more than the news bulletins and headlines of the day."

Brian Rooney

"Like Watergate headlines and long lines at gas stations, this twisty, politically-tinged examination of the unsolved questions of the Missing Bodies case is redolent of the early 1970s. Tracy navigates this complex story brilliantly, leaving no stone unturned."

John Temple

"When I began working with Jim Tracy at the Glens Falls (N.Y.) Post-Star two decades ago, he was kicking around a project about Robert Garrow's reign of terror through the Adirondacks in the 1970s. A subsequent newspaper series was merely the appetizer to Sworn to Silence, a master class in reporting and storytelling that is equal parts labor of love and effort in excellence."

Ryan O'Halloran