Garrett Phillips

Case background and investigation

On the afternoon of October 24, 2011, 12-year-old Garrett Phillips was fatally attacked inside the Market Street apartment he shared with his mother and younger brother in Potsdam, a small college village in St. Lawrence County, New York. According to news accounts, neighbors responded to sounds of a struggle and Garrett was found gravely injured; he died shortly afterward. Reporting on the case has described the manner of death as strangulation and suffocation. Garrett's mother, Tandy Cyrus, was at work at the time. The killing shook the tight-knit North Country community and set off an investigation that would stretch on for years.

Investigators soon focused on Oral "Nick" Hillary, a Jamaican-born men's soccer coach at nearby Clarkson University and a former boyfriend of Tandy Cyrus. Hillary maintained his innocence from the outset, and his supporters and defense argued that the investigation fixated on him without physical evidence tying him to the scene. The case moved slowly through the courts: Hillary was arrested in May 2014, but a first indictment was dismissed in October 2014 when a judge found problems with the grand jury proceeding. A St. Lawrence County grand jury indicted him a second time on January 22, 2015, charging second-degree murder.

Hillary's 2016 trial in Canton, New York, was a bench trial: he waived his right to a jury and had his case decided by St. Lawrence County Judge Felix Catena. On September 28, 2016, after the prosecution presented its case, Judge Catena found Hillary not guilty. Hillary was acquitted. Prosecutors did not produce physical evidence directly linking him to the crime scene. The prosecution drew lasting scrutiny: District Attorney Mary E. Rain was later found to have committed professional misconduct, including failing to disclose evidence to the defense, and was subsequently suspended from practicing law. It is important to state clearly that Hillary was tried and acquitted, and the killing of Garrett Phillips has never been solved.

The case drew national attention through the two-part HBO documentary "Who Killed Garrett Phillips?", directed by Liz Garbus. It premiered at the AFI Docs festival on June 20, 2019, and aired on HBO on July 23 and 24, 2019. The film examined the investigation, questions of racial bias, and the prosecutorial conduct surrounding Hillary's prosecution. Hillary later pursued a federal civil-rights lawsuit alleging he had been targeted; he lost that case at trial in June 2022, and a federal appeals court rejected his appeal in 2023.

More than a decade after Garrett's death, no one has been convicted of the crime and the case remains officially unsolved. Coverage in local and national outlets has periodically revisited investigative leads, but none has resulted in new charges. Garrett Phillips's homicide continues to be listed among unsolved cases, and Nick Hillary — the only person ever charged — was acquitted and has consistently asserted his innocence.