Radiolab - The Buried Bodies Case

Episode Date: June 3, 2016

In 1973, a massive manhunt in New York's Adirondack Mountains ended when police captured a man named Robert Garrow.  And that’s when this story really gets started.   This episode we consider a string of barbaric crimes by a hated man, and the attorney who, when called to defend him, also wound up defending a core principle of our legal system.  When Frank Armani learned his client’s most gruesome secrets, he made a morally startling decision that stunned the world and goes to the heart of what it means to be a defense attorney - how far should lawyers go to provide the best defense to the worst people? NOTE: This episode contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault and violence. Produced by Matt Kielty and Brenna Farrell. Reported by Brenna Farrell. Special thanks to Tom Alibrandi, author of Privileged Information, with Frank Armani, Laurence Gooley, author of Terror in the Adirondacks: The True Story of Serial Killer Robert F. Garrow, Charl Bader and the students in her Criminal Defense Clinic at Fordham University, Leslie Levin and the students in her Legal Profession class at The University of Connecticut School of Law, Clark D. Cunningham at Georgia State University College of Law, Debra Armani, Mary Armani, Lohr McKinstry, Tom Scozzafava, Stephanie Jenkins, Brian Farrell, Jennifer Brumback and Nick Capodice.   

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. C. See?

Yeah. 321. Hey, I'm Chad Abumrah. I'm Robert Crilwich. This is Radio Lab. And today we have a legal case. Well, it's actually, it's really more than just a legal case. This case, it's what my husband and I refer to as

mental magnet. Once you start thinking about it, it won't go away. It gets under your skin. This is Lisa Lerman. I'm a law professor at Catholic University. At B. Columbus School of Law, where she teaches legal ethics. And she sat down not too long ago with me and our producer, Brenna Farrell, who brought us this story and under whose skin it also seems to have gotten. Yeah. It just made me not know whether to side with my head or my heart. And let me just jump in and say this episode contains some violence and explicit imagery in it. So if you're listening with kids, you just know that going in and you might want to skip this one. So to get the story started, Jim Tracy.

My name is Jim Tracy and I'm an award-winning journalist. Former newspaper guy. For the post-iron Glens Falls. He's been reporting on this story since about 2000. He's interviewed hundreds of people. And I think the reason he's been so focused on it is that it's pretty close to home for him. I live in the foothills of the Adirondex. Which is where this story begins.

So Saturday night, July 28, 1973, four young people. Ages 18 to 23. Three men and a woman go camping in the Adirondex. Pulled off the road, a side road off Route 30. They made up a makeshift campsite. It was a grass clearing. They set up two tents and went to sleep for the night. And then Sunday they, you know, woke up and about 9 a.m.

Two of the campers. Heard somebody walking outside their tent. And all of a sudden they heard the zipper on the tent go up. And what they saw was his middle-aged man peering into the tent. Who looked like a conservation officer. He had a fedora with a feather on it, sunglasses, a rifle. He had a buck knife, binoculars around his neck. And very calmly, he told him almost politely to step out of their tent, which they did.

He got the other two campers. He got all four of them rounded up together, and they were kind of standing in a semicircle. And then the man cocked the gun and said, listen, I've killed before and I'll kill again. I'm going to take your gasp. I don't want to get caught, so I'm going to tie you to trees. And he started marching the kids off into the woods. Took him into the woods near a brook and pairs of two with him behind him. The kids, of course, were scared out of their wits.

He pulled out some ropes. Basically, he had each of them tie themselves, you know, as he pointed the gun. at him and then the last one he tied. So after he had the four people tied, he went back to the first boy, 18-year-old Philip Dumbluski. Because the other three kids were spread out through the forest. They couldn't really see what was happening. But they could hear clearly and they heard vomiting sounds.

And then they heard Philip's voice get really high and they knew something was happening, something bad was happening to him. What was happening was the man was stabbing Dumbuski with his buck knife. He stabbed him five times in the chest. And when this happened, the three of them, in their panic, were able to break loose and start running. Nick Fiorelloa ran to his car. Carol Ann Malinowski ran through the woods. But the man caught one of them, David Freeman.

He took the boy back to the campsite and he had him lay down in a ditch next to him. To kind of monitor the situation, I guess. So Freeman and the killer are laying in a ditch. After about an hour. The men come. Men that the other two campers, the ones who had gotten away, had managed to alert. Locals that knew the area, they came with rifles, and all of a sudden they spotted them. The killer and Freeman.

Laying down in the ditch, and when they did, Freeman got up and ran towards the men, screaming for help, saying he's got a gun and he's going to shoot. And the man with a gun just kind of stood up. And calmly and coolly walked into the forest. And thus began. What was at the time? The largest manhunt in state history. Here this morning in about 1130, you can see it. The state police car is parked almost as far up the road as you can see.

When the Manhattan commenced on Monday morning, many deputies in the state police standing by. It was a scene like never been seen before up there. Today we've broken down our manpower into roving patrols. Men aren't with all kinds of weapons, rifles, shotguns, bloodhounds. That are traveling trails. Helicopters. And it's a waiting game right now.

By Monday or Tuesday, they had 200 men on the case. Waiting to flush the fugitive out of the woods. They eventually find the man's car. and they're able to run the license plate, and then it comes back with an ID. A 37-year-old... Robert Garrow. Robert Francis Garrow, Sr., of Syracuse, New York.

As the fugitive police are looking forward today. He was an ex-convict. He'd been in prison for rape. It served seven years. Now we're armed with a 30-30 rifle and knife, and this story was on every TV station, CBS, ABC, and NBC. So by Tuesday...

How do you feel at night when... People got panicked. When you're all alone. Well, when I'm at night, the doors are sure locked. People loaded their rifles, they locked their doors for the first time, and... We've noticed a lot of people leaving around here, but... People left the area so fast. A lot of them cleared out last night and the day before.

That they left their tents up, they left barbecue smoldering, they left behind coolers. So as the manhunt dragged on... What happened was Garrow was able to use those camps and that food and those drinks to survive. Day after day. The manhunt, it's about 400 men now. The police follow a lead that he had stolen a car and he had been sighted, and they're kind of closing in on him. And then...

Day 12. Thursday, August 9th, 1973. Very, very hot day. One of the hottest of the summer. That day, a conservation officer named Hillary LeBlanc spotted Garrow. He said, freeze or drop your gun, something to that effect. And Garrow started running. LeBlanc fired four times.

Got him in the back, the arm, and the foot. Garrow went down once, got back up, and kept running. They end up, you know, chasing through the forest. You know, found a blood trail. And just in a very short time, they saw Garrow and he was laying down in the mud. Not moving. And so they thought he might be dead. Because he was just laying there.

But, you know, took his pulse and everything, and he was certainly alive. So they put him in an ambulance and they rush him to the nearest hospital in Plattsburgh. And according to Jim, a couple of cops go with him. They're grilling him the whole time because they think that he might have been responsible for an additional murder and for a girl who's gone missing. but he wouldn't talk. And it's at this point that the story that I'm interested in really gets started. It's known as the Buried Bodies case. And I think one of the things that's so fascinating about this case...

This is Law Professor Lisa Lerman again. ...is the conflict between what a good lawyer should do and what a good person should do in this situation. Okay, and we are recording. So the guy at the center of this conflict, was a man named Frank Armani. Frank H. Armani. Hello. I'm Brenda.

The lawyer in Syracuse. I never know whether to pronounce it Armani or Armani. That's Mary Armani, Frank's wife. In our area in South, they use Armani, but it is Armani. A couple of months ago, producer Simon Adler and I went up to visit them. They live right outside of Syracuse, New York. Mr. Armani's now in his 80s, he's retired. My name is Frank Armani, and I was the attorney for Robert Garrow.

I'd love to have you start wherever you like. How did this whole story start for you? So just to give a bit of background, Mr. Armani told me that when he was a kid, he got picked on for a couple different reasons, and he said he was always the guy that wouldn't walk away. I was a fighter. I liked fights, physical fight. I'd like standing up for the little guy.

And that's partly why he became an attorney. When you're fighting a case for a defendant, you're fighting the state and tyranny. And he was doing really well. He was well respected, had a good reputation. But then he met Robert Garrow. Yeah. Black hair, strong man. To take him out, you'd need a 45. And I just had that feeling that this guy is dangerous. and a lot of things are going to happen.

This is a year before the Manhunt, 1972. Frank remembers he represented him at first on two pretty small things. One. One, a school teacher had assaulted his child. He wanted a suit of school, and I talked him out of it. And then he had an automobile accident. I represented him on that. But then pretty quickly it gets dark.

Yeah. Garrow was charged with trying to kidnap two college kids. That case got dismissed, but then... We got picked up for molesting some young girls kids. Two very young girls, age 10 and 11. Garrow was released on bail. He skipped his court date and just disappeared. And then we pick up where we left off.

The murder, the manhunt, and on August 9th, the night Garrow got captured, Frank gets a call from Garrow's wife. Telling me that he wanted to talk to me. He wanted Armani to represent him. My impression is that Armani didn't want to do it. In my mind, I'm saying, what the hell do I want to get involved in this, you know, for? He had never handled a murder charge. Full trial murder case, no. He didn't know how.

The problem was. Gero wouldn't talk to any lawyer except for Armani. He looked at me as his attorney. So Armani eventually decides to go and talk to the judge who'd been assigned to the case. And the judge is basically like, we have an obligation to... provide the counsel that this guy wants. So, I mean, unless you have a good reason why you can't do it, I want to appoint you his public defender.

And Armani agrees. And so at that point, he has to defend Garrow. Yeah. So. This is reporter Jim Tracy again. Harmony decides to elicit a man named Francis Belgi. We skied together. His friend.

Our family's picnic together. To help him with this case. As co-counsel. Because I felt I needed support. Belgi was the top criminal defense lawyer in central New York. I need someone with brains and guts. So Armani goes to talk to Belgi. He kind of resembled Mickey Mantle, a blonde hair, blue eyes, good looking.

I told him, I said, I just need backup. That's it. He's like, no. It was a lose-lose case. There's no money in it? You know, the prosecution had three eyeball witnesses. They had his car at the scene of the crime, and they had his two-week flight. He was guilty.

And I said, come on. I'm not going to try to prove he didn't do it. I wanted to go on an insanity defense. Maybe Garrow murdered this kid. But maybe it was because he had temporarily gone insane. Maybe he's crazy. He really believes this. I'm telling you about my theory.

And on top of that, Armani tells him... I says, this is going to be a big case. If we pulled this off... We're made. It would take Belgium a while, but eventually... He says, I'm in, Frank. Now we're into late August, 1973. So, we went up to the hospital.

When they got there, they went up to the hospital. up to Garrow's room, up on the fifth floor of the hospital. Police are standing guard. They walked into the room. And I hadn't seen them in a while. And we greeted each other and we talked. And just to picture this, Jim told me that the room they put Garrow in was what he described as a training observation room, which meant that it had this big window that ran alongside Garrow's bed. So they could keep an eye on them. And the cops are stationed right outside, just watching. And according to Jim, and I should say I've heard differing accounts about this, but apparently the cops had brought in a lip reader to try to see what Garrow was saying.

Wait a second. I don't think you can do that, right? I mean, that's not legal. Yeah, I think that's probably not okay. But from the cops' perspective, they think that he's involved in a recent murder and a missing girl. And they think that girl could still be alive. So they want to know absolutely anything they can that's going to get them closer to solving that murder. finding that girl. But at the same time, the defendant has to be able to share absolutely everything

with the lawyers and know that they're in that safe space of that relationship. Because we have Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate oneself. If he can't freely speak to his attorney, then you have no real justice system. And Armani and Belgium, they need as much information about what Garrow has done as they possibly can get so that they can start to build their defense. I don't like surprises. I'm the kind that wants to know everything. Wow, so as a lawyer, you're in a strange spot here.

Mm-hmm. He needed to get from Garrow his story, and it needed to be just that. He didn't want the cops in on it yet. And you don't know if there are taps in the room or what. So they turn up the TV, turn up the fans. But he was playing games, you know. He'd talk basically about anything but the cases. kept saying he couldn't remember, he couldn't remember.

And they're trying to convince him. Like, you've got to talk to us if you're going to have any shot. It's like a lynch mob out there. The police pretty much have you cold. There's witnesses. And Garrow knew he could be going to prison. He could be going to prison for a long time. Maybe 25 to life.

And a pedophile in prison? You have to be careful. Things can get rough. But they tell him, if you talk to us, maybe we can get you... Not guilty by reason of insanity. That was our only defense. To help get Garrow into. a mental hospital instead of a prison.

That was the goal. So if you have anything to say... Say it now. It took several conversations to get Garrett at this point. But finally... Garrel poured a soul out. At this point, it was just Belgi in the room. And he told him, yes, he had killed them Bluski.

And he'd also killed other people, too. And the episodes when Garrow killed people seemed to have followed like a pattern. He would get these intense headaches and, you know, become psychotic and do horrible things. When it came to the details, he tended to not remember.

But then Garo mentions two particular girls who were then missing and whose parents had no idea where they were. 21-year-old Susan Pats and another girl's 16-year-old Alicia Hock. Susan Petz was from Chicago. She's the girl I mentioned earlier. The cops were already looking for her, hoping that Garrow might have some information.

Earlier that summer, her boyfriend had been found murdered. The two of them had been camping, and Susan had been gone ever since. Alicia Houck, she was a high school girl from Syracuse. She had gone missing just a couple of days before Susan. Everybody thought she might have just run away. But... Garrow told the lawyers that he had killed them and where he had left their bodies. One odd thing about Garrow's description of the incidents, he doesn't say I killed her.

He says, she got stabbed with my knife. She got stabbed with my knife. Like it wasn't even him doing the stabbing? Right. Like this is, what do you do? Well, first and foremost, you have to ask yourself, is this true? You know, your client is obviously severely mentally ill. This could be a dreamy.

had. It could be a delusion. If you're going to go and, you know, craft an argument and present a strategy, you need to know what actually happened. Belgi walks out the door. He grabs Frank and he says, he says, let's go. So they slip outside, they get in the car, and... We take off. To go look for the bodies. Gero told the lawyers that Susan Petz was in an air vent of a closed up mine shaft. The mine is up in Mineville. About an hour south of the hospital. Up in the Adironics there.

And in that moment, were you scared? Were you excited? Well, you're up high. It's a high. But you're scared. You're concerned. You have fear. You're a fool if you don't. In fact, at one point, looking in the rearview mirror, they got a little spooked. We thought we were being followed by the state police. So eventually, they pull over, get out of the car. and went into one bar.

Where one of Francis Belgi's lady friends was hanging out. For about 30 minutes, Belgium talked to her. Then he asked if he could borrow a car. And then we went out the back door and took off. Driving the lady friend's car. To try to lose any tails. And so they got back on the highway and they drove through the Adirondacks until finally they get here.

This may be as far as we're going to go. We can walk. Up to this old abandoned mine. I went out there last February with reporter Lorne McKinstree and the town supervisor of Mariah, Tom Scozofova. So is this a road that goes to the mines or what is? Yeah, to the mines. It was this sort of hilly area off the side of the road. Is this a trail that we're on or you're just?

It was very icy that day. This here? This used to be an old road well. We're walking up a very wooded hill. It was fairly steep. There were no leaves. And all the trees were black and very skeletal. We're walking right in the same area that Armani,

and this is the only way they could have came in here. So here we are in our Sunday suits, and here we go treading to the forest looking for the cave. And we spent a lot of hours looking around. And then we found this air vent. Wow. You see the air shaft here? They find this air shaft, which is just a hole in the ground,

a couple feet across, that shoots up from down in the depths of the mine. Be careful, this has given me such... Yeah, you don't want to slide down in there. And so they couldn't see anything down the hole. So Frank Armani lay down on the ground at the edge of the mine shaft. He's got a flashlight that he takes out. And then Belle, she held my feet and left me down in there. And as Frank got lowered down into the hole,

I could see her sneak. A blue shoe. A blue sneaker? Yeah. And a leg. I said to myself, the son of a bitch, did it. And he yells back up to Belgium. Get me out of here.

Pull me back up. Eventually, Belgium found the other body, Alicia Houck's body. She was in a cemetery where Garrow had said he'd left her. But Armani wasn't there when Belgi found her. So what ensued was a very long struggle where the lawyers tried to figure out what to do with the information about the bodies of these girls. So let's, yeah, let's play that out. What are your options? Sure. So option one, we've got to call the police. We've got to tell the prosecutor.

These are missing kids. We're the only ones who know, you know, shouldn't we just call the police? Right. No, you can't. You just can't. We took a note to keep the confidences of our client. Under the current rules, which have developed quite a bit since the time this happened, anything that is related to the representation of a client is under the confidentiality umbrella. So you're not supposed to tell anybody except to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm. That will be. That can be or will be.

Right. So in this situation, the two girls are dead, then there's no future crime. It's over. It's done. And even if the parents of the missing girls in question are frightened and waking up, and even if they have hired detectives, and even if the local police are combing the woods and the taxpayers are paying for that, but there's no, if the people are already dead, then the law is shh.

That's right. It's a really tough job to be a defense lawyer. You have a very particular part to play. You have a role. And that role isn't what you think as a person is good and right and what you would do for your friend or your family member in that situation. What your role is is to play this part of a system in which you're the one who stands up for the guy that everybody else hates. Even if everybody hates you, even if maybe you hate yourself a little bit,

you have to do your job. and that job is to be in the role of the person that fights as hard as they can for their client. The lawyer is the agent of his client. Only, only the agent of the client or also a citizen and a member of the, and part of the justice system. And there's a, there's a double murder here and family seeking to find out what happened. He now knows what happens. Right. Isn't there a weight here building on, on the side of tell?

Just tell. Tell. Of course. Yes, and I knew Mr. Halk from bullying because his other daughter and my daughter were in the same class and I knew him from church and whatnot. You have to be an animal not to feel. The anguish of the parents of the family,

and yet you have your duty as a lawyer. You're caught between the two more men. Moralities. So now what does he do? Coming up, that hard spot gets even harder. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Lizzie from Arlington, Texas. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,

enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Okay, hey, I'm Jed. I'm Umerod. I'm Robert Krollwich. This is Radio Lab. We should get back to our story from producer Brenna Farrell. And when we left it, they were where they were stuck, right? They knew this thing.

They knew the client was very guilty of something. They had found the bodies of these two girls. Now, what's their next move? Well, so they decide to... Ple bargain. Ple bargain. To take this information to the prosecutor and say, I have information that will help you solve some cases.

Some cases. Yes. And in exchange, I want you to give me a better job. deal for my client. To get Garrow into a mental hospital instead of a prison. Oh, so right away they're going to use this as leverage. That was the idea.

Yeah. You're going to give a little and you're going to take a little. Well, that's kind of gross, no? Yeah, he's trying to get a better deal for this murderer. But, I mean, if you think about it from Frank's perspective, he's got this information. As a person, he doesn't want to have to keep that secret. So if he plea

bargains, then that's a way for him to get some closure for the family because He can give the information to the prosecution, but he's also not selling out his client. So. Reported Jim Tracy again. They called a meeting with Henry McCabe. Investigator from the state police. Detective McCabe and the district attorney at Armini's office.

And when they met, Armani and Belgi search the briefcases of the DA and the investigator, make sure they weren't wearing a bug. Because they're paranoid there's going to be a wiretap or some sort of bug. And then Belgi presents the deal. He says, listen, I've got information on. two bodies, I want you to agree to put my client in a mental institution instead of sending them off to prison. And the prosecutor apparently very quickly puts two and two together and immediately thought, holy shit, are you talking about Susan and Alicia? Like, these are the two girls that we are most concerned about. We think they're alive. And Belgi said, I'm not telling

you anything unless we have a deal. Both the DA and the investigator thought that the lawyers were absolutely ludicrous. They thought they had lost their mind. Like, are you kidding me? Like, are you trying to get a better sentence for a murderer by offering his murder victims? Are you seriously bargaining with people's lives? Yeah. But also, I'm sure that the prosecutor knew that this was doubtless, the highest profile case that would ever come to him. And so as the prosecutor, you're not going to look so good if you give a deal to this

reprehensible man. No. Well, what the hell's the difference? He's going to get life no matter what. How many times you want to give them life. But the meeting only lasted like five minutes. We went nowhere. The deal collapses completely.

And to back up a little ways. When that deal fell apart, that was particularly devastating for Armani because just the day before. Susan Petz's father had flown in from Chicago. To Syracuse. I remember Mr. Pets coming to my office. And he said, could I meet with you and talk to you? And in Armani agreed to it. So he comes in, he takes a seat.

And he asked him, father. Is there anything you can tell me about my daughter? I mean, the papers think that Garrow probably has something to do with her disappearance. Is there anything at all that he's told you that can help me? But I couldn't tell him anything. And Armani just, he says, no. I can't tell you. There's nothing I can tell you.

But I remember trying to assure him that, look, I've got a meeting set up. All I can say is it's with state investigators and the prosecutor on the case. They could have some information. for you, trying to give him hope that we would bring it to a conclusion. I thought we would, but we didn't. So then when Mr. Petz leaves Mr. Armani, he loses it. He threw a bunch of books. I think I threw the phone.

Basically just, you know, destroyed his office. Just trying to relieve my, that I couldn't help the man. Because he's looking right at this man, knowing exactly, well, imagining what he's going through. Like, Armani had lost a brother. Yes. He was much younger. He was four years younger than me. He was an Air Force pilot.

He had three kids. And in 1962, his plane went down and he was lost at sea. So after that, Armani said his mother, she'd be up at night crying. She would, like, go to bed at night. And my mother would wake up screaming. The fish are eating him. You know, she couldn't ever recover from it. Because you can't, you know, you just...

You don't really know, but you know. It's, I can understand it. And that's, you know, that's partly why this was so hard for Armani, because when that plea deal fell apart, that was his chance to try to get this information to the families. When the plea fell through, he didn't have any other options for sharing that information. He was stuck. So what happens next?

So they have to go to trial. And that means that Armani and Belgium have to knuckle down. to try to present an insanity defense. Meanwhile, Armani, he said he couldn't sleep. He was having nightmares. Wake up 2.30 in a morning with sweat running down your back. Go sit at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, and just waiting for the morning paper to come. Because he was just alone with it.

He was alone with his secret. And he knew at that moment that police are trying to find these girls. He knows that the parents are holding out hope that they might still be alive. You're questioning yourself. very, you're hurting people. So you begin to wonder, am I in the right profession? You know, you're looking for a way to give the information out. You know, we'll make us anonymous call.

Did you ever think of that? Sure. And why didn't you? Well, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it openly, you know. I don't know. Did he ever break? No. According to him, no. You know, in my mind, I was doing what I thought was the proper, ethical, legal, moral, moral thing to do.

And then, in December of 1973, five months after the girls disappear, their bodies happen to be discovered within two weeks of each other. Susan's body is discovered by two kids who are playing up in the mines. Alicia, I guess, I think a student from Syracuse University, which is right next door to the cemetery, is walking through and stumbles upon her, and so she's discovered then too. And then... Six months later...

In the summer of 1974... Opening day of the trial might be one of the most significant, even though... Robert Garrow's trial... For the murder of Philpton Blusky... ...begins. Robert Garrow's primary line of defense will apparently be not guilty by...

reason of insanity. So in order to make that case, what they decide to do is, is to put Garrow on the stand. And just get the facts. And Garrell would tell his whole life story. To shock the jury's mind. Including all these murders and all these rapes. To see that he were, at the time he was nuts. Sharon Smith, Channel 6 News in Lake Pleasant. So the trial opens. The courtroom is jam-packed. Prosecution starts. They have a really good case. They've got a good lawyer. from Syracuse that joined to help the guy from Hamilton County. And then it's the time for the defense to start their case. So Belgi stands up and he calls his first witness, Robert Garrow, to the stand.

Garrow gets on stand and he starts telling his life story and it's horrible. Severe beatings and abuse by his parents, very little education. He basically gets sent off to a farm to work as an indentured servant when he's seven. you know, slaughtering bulls when he's eight years old, weird stuff like that. He starts, like, drinking blood, having sex with the animals. And then he starts admitting to a series of rapes throughout his adult life. And he admits to killing Alicia and Susan. And what happens next, nobody's quite sure if it was a slip-up or if maybe it was on purpose.

But when Garrow's talking about Susan Pets, Belgi says, is that the one I found? He's that the one I found? Mm-hmm. So, the cat was out of the bag then. The next day, Belgium and Armani pulled a press conference to try to explain why they hadn't told anyone. Today, in a surprise announcement, Robert Gallo's defense attorneys. Because they had this duty to protect their client's secrets. They said they knew the body was here, and they had seen it.

But... Everyone is disgusted. There was columns written, editorials written, letters to the editor. There is just no way in the world you were going to convince. convince your average non-lawyer. Everybody turned against them. But this is anything short of shabby subversion of the law and of justice. Pretty soon, one of the prosecutors led out that Armani and Belgium had actually tried to

use these dead girls as leverage for Garrow. The headlines in the Syracuse papers would say bodies used as pawns in a game of law. It was Beslam. Armani was getting death threats in the mail. Then I'd get these crazy phone calls. People calling saying stuff like, how can you live with yourself? I'm going to kill you. We're going to get you.

At one point, he finds a dead fish in. his car. His wife finds an unlit Molotov cocktail in the backyard. He started to carry a pistol on my back. He kept a shotgun in the car. He kept one in the house. So we could sleep. That was the worst moment of my life. I had some horrible thoughts. I had some horrible thoughts. June 27th, Robert Garrow was convicted for the murder of Philip Dumbuski. He's given the maximum sentence. He's given 25 years to life in a maximum security prison. How did that feel? Were you...

Relief. You know? It's overwed. But then... It is up to the grand jury itself in their investigation to determine which charges they should bring against the two attorneys. Pretty soon after the verdict, Armani and Belgium learned that they could be facing criminal charges. No one's

really sure exactly what those might be, but it could be something like tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, or... The state's public health law and the provision that says that a body must be given a quick and decent burial. And on top of that... One of the touching questions and the one that's a greatest amount of controversy is the one over the attorney plan privilege. There was an ethical complaint filed against Armani and Belgi.

So basically, they were then facing disbarment. And the investigation into the ethical complaint, that would drag on several years. Belgi started drinking heavily, abandoned his law practice and moved to Florida. Armani toughed it out, but he suffered. No one wanted him as a lawyer anymore. I was thinking about what else can I do to make a living. He was just barely getting by for a little while, I think. All the distress and pressure, you know, takes its toll.

In fact, he has a heart attack while this is all going on. But eventually, the criminal charges are dropped and the ethical complaint is dismissed. And the reason, in the opinion of the court and the state bar is that, What Belgium and Armani did was right. What they did was good. Exactly. According to the law. And my view is Frank Armani is a, you know, real-life hero.

I always say, you know, people so admire Atticus Finch, and the difference between Atticus Finch and Frank Armani is that Armani is a real person. And Lisa told me about this panel she organized back in 2007. It was for the American Bar Association, a big conference on professional resources. And there were about 400 people in the room. Most of them lawyers.

And they were there to watch on stage the featured speaker, Frank Armani. And it was a love feast. What does that feel like? And did you ever think you'd get to that point when you were in the midst of the hardest parts? No. Never dreamed that I don't think I was a hero. I just was a lawyer that did his job. I mean, I was a good lawyer.

At least I thought so. All right, everybody. And now, you know, over 40 years later, this case... Let's talk about... And what Armani and Belgium did... The dead bodies case. It's taught in law schools across the country. Everybody teaches the case.

It's like a touchstone. What do people think? What do people think? So I went to a couple of classes. I went to one legal ethics... class, and I also went to a criminal defense class here in New York that was being taught at Fordham. I want to just stand up. I agree. His duty is to his client. He represents his client's best interest. And in sitting in these classes and in talking to law professors, I think one of the reasons that this

case is taught so widely is because professors can point to it. They can point to a real human being at the center of a really tough legal situation. And they can say, in this situation, This is what a lawyer should do. This is what a lawyer should be. So from the moment I started thinking about this story, I always wanted to talk to the families involved, which proved really difficult. I wrote letters to both families,

and I made a bunch of phone calls. And understandably, no one wanted to talk to me. But eventually, I did start corresponding with a family member of one of the victims. And she initially didn't want to go on the record, but we emailed and after a few phone calls, she ended up changing her mind and decided that she did want to go on the record. Okay, all right. Yeah, so with me on a phone call. Would you mind just telling us who you are, your name and international?

Okay. I'm Roberta Petz and I'm Susan's mother. Susan was the girl from Chicago. She was a college student who'd gone missing while she was camping with her boyfriend. And she's who Armani and Belgium found in the mine. You know, as I've explained before, my interest really in this story has to do with the fact that it seems that it's become sort of a key part of how a lot of legal ethics classes talk about the concept of confidentiality. And so I sort of wanted to just start with that idea to ask if that's something that you knew that law school. were teaching and if you had any feelings or thoughts about that?

I had no idea that this was being taught in law schools, and I'm pretty horrified to think that this is what is considered to be correct, because I don't think it's ethical at all and to think it's being taught as the right way to do things in an ethical class is totally incomprehensible to me. And was the first that you'd heard that it was being taught when I reached out to you? Yes. It was. Yes.

You were the only in talking to you, did I know that? Yes. Maybe they ought to think not only about the criminal who they are trying to defend, but what about the victims? And I think that that should at least be an equal thought in their mind, if not a greater consideration. Did you have a feeling that you really weren't taken into consideration as all of this was happening? Yes. and only my husband and I, when we first heard that she was missing, we flew immediately and went to the police station.

And when we were there sitting with the policemen, they received the policeman at the time that we were with, received a phone call that Danny's, my daughter's boyfriend, his body was found. And that's all we knew. and we never really had many updates, and nobody told us what was going on. And obviously, there was no closure, and it was just getting worse and worse. And then the only other time we were contacted by the police was, or some authority,

I can't even remember who was when her body, my daughter's body was found like five months later. And in the meantime, of course, we were all going crazy. my father, as a matter of fact, even went so far as to contact a psychic. That's how important it was and how it was our entire lives during that period. And as far as visiting the lawyer, which my husband did, it was a totally lie. The lawyer, maybe he considered it to be ethical, but what he was doing was lying to my husband and causing us more months of horror. And this is what is being taught in law schools.

So anyway. Just to try to be fair to everyone involved, as far as I've encountered anyone, law professors, law students there, when they approach this, it's with a lot of sensitivity and they are struggling with the pain. I think the instinct is to side with the families and to imagine what they went through. but my feeling is that how could any of us possibly imagine that if we hadn't gone through it?

And so I guess that's why I was hoping to talk to you to kind of let you have a chance to communicate some of that experience. Yeah, well, it's impossible to really communicate in words. I mean, 40 years later, I'm still, it's still a struggle to discuss this because it'll never go away as long as I live. I don't know. I guess I'm wondering, we've been talking a lot of sad stuff. I'm wondering if there's anything you would like to say about Susan that doesn't have to do with any of this, that you would want people to know, that you'd want to share. I don't, you don't have to. Well, what can I say? She did receive her degree posthumously. we didn't go and pick it up at Boston University. It was too difficult for us. And Danny, who was her boyfriend, had been just that summer,

and he had a full scholarship to Harvard, and he had graduated just a year before. And so two lives, and I'm sure the other two children had great futures ahead of them, too. and it's just a horrible tragedy. It's horrible, you know, to be in their position, to have to live through that. I mean, how do you relate losing your daughter, you know? What excuse is there for it?

To protecting the person to kill her? There's no justification. You couldn't justify it in my mind. I don't expect them to accept it but that's the way it is I'm going to get just a minute of silence up here if that's okay I can hear the echoes of dogs down the mountain things tend to travel up the

up the hill and kind of bounce around that water I think it's from deeper down in there dripping I can't tell where it's dripping everything up here is frozen solid so I'm not sure what that but I think I'm going to turn back around. I sort of wish I'd brought some flowers or something. Thanks to our producers, Brenna Farrell and Matt Kilty, and to Jim Tracy, who's currently writing a book about all this.

The working title is Twisted Soul. Thanks also to Tom Alibrandi, author of Privileged Information with Frank Armani. Also to Lawrence Gully, author of Terror in the Adirondacks, Cheryl Bader and the students at Fordham University, Leslie Levin, and the students at the University of Connecticut School of Law, Clark D. Cunningham at Georgia State University's College of Law, Deborah Armani, Brian Farrell, Jennifer Brumbach, Nick Caputiche, and archive researcher Stephanie Jenkins. Start of message. This is Beatrice Bastito from Toronto, Canada, calling to read the credits.

Radio Lab is produced by Chad Abramrad. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Soren Reeler is senior editor. Jamie York is our senior producer. Our staff includes Simon Alder, Brenner Farrell, David Gebel, Matt Kelty, Rob Krollwich, Annie McEwen, Andy Mills, Lateef Nassar, Melissa O'Donnell, Kelsey Padgett, Arian Wack, and Molly Webster. With help from Alexander Lee Young, Stephanie Tam, and McCall Lowinger.

Our fact checkers are Evadashir and Michelle Harris. Thanks. End of message.