Herman Tarnower

Case background and investigation

Herman Tarnower was a physician in Westchester County, New York, who became widely known as the author of the best-selling Scarsdale Diet book. According to his Wikipedia biography, he was born in New York City on March 18, 1910, and was 69, a week short of his 70th birthday, when he died.

On March 10, 1980, Tarnower was shot at his home in Purchase, New York. The shooter was Jean Harris, a school headmistress, who had been in a relationship with him for many years. According to the Wikipedia articles on both Tarnower and Harris, he was hit four times at close range by rounds from a .32-caliber revolver. Harris was arrested shortly afterward.

Harris was charged with second-degree murder and tried at the Westchester County Courthouse in White Plains before Judge Russell R. Leggett. According to Encyclopedia.com's account of the trial, proceedings ran from November 21, 1980, to February 24, 1981. Harris did not deny firing the gun. Her account was that she had driven to Tarnower's house intending to take her own life and that he was shot accidentally as the two struggled over the weapon. The jury, in convicting her of second-degree murder, did not accept that account.

The trial lasted about 14 weeks, and the jury deliberated for eight days, according to Wikipedia. Harris was found guilty of second-degree murder, and Judge Leggett imposed the sentence of 15 years to life. She served her sentence at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Westchester County. Encyclopedia.com notes that her appeals continued through the 1980s and that an earlier clemency request was turned down as premature.

On December 29, 1992, Governor Mario Cuomo commuted Harris's sentence. According to Wikipedia, the decision came as she was about to undergo quadruple bypass heart surgery, and she had by then served about 11 years. She was paroled in early 1993.

Following her release, Harris spoke publicly on behalf of women in prison; Encyclopedia.com describes her as a vocal advocate for better treatment of female prisoners. She lived for a time in a retirement community in Hamden, Connecticut, and died of natural causes on December 23, 2012, at age 89, at an assisted-living facility in New Haven, according to Wikipedia. Her conviction was never overturned.