Jean harris trial

Jean Harris met Harold Tarnower in He was a lifelong bachelor, cardiologist, and later became the bestselling author of The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet. This one was half his age. She brought a. Instead, she shot Tarnower in the hand, arm, and chest at close range. She claimed on the stand that all four shots she fired were accidental. The People vs. Jean Harris would take 14 weeks, at the time one of the longest trials in New York history.

According to transcripts, Harris said she pulled her gun out to shoot herself in front on him. When he tried to stop her, she testified, the gun went off.

Tarnower was shot four times. The case generated a number of books and two television movies: "The People Vs. Jean Harris" in and "Mrs. Harris" in Harris was convicted by a jury in of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life.

She served nearly 12 years before being granted clemency in by then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo because of health problems. At her sentencing, she denied murdering Tarnower, saying she loved him. After her release, she established a foundation that raised money for the children of women in prison in New York.

We know for a fact she was addled, confused, strung out and exhausted from a laundry list of meds and stressors that would make a mess of absolutely anybody. So I suspect the surface-level motivation was exactly as she said: she went there to die. I wonder if she baited him into grabbing the gun, then fired three shots that missed center-mass, and, watching him reel back, squeezed the trigger one more time to make sure.

I wonder most of all if the thought of suicide floated away then, no longer necessary as a smokescreen for what she really wanted, since what she really wanted was finally done. Whether her self-delusion became her story once again, masking forever the suppressed, compressed, nuclear-grade anger that serves as premeditation in so many homicides.

This is where our justice system, and any justice system presided over by mere mortals, fails. Ida Libby Dengrove, the artist whose work led me to learn about this case, struck up a friendship of sorts with Jean Harris.

She was the only defendent with whom Dengrove ever portrayed herself in a sketch. Barbara Walters and Joan Rivers were ardent supporters of Jean, and numerous activists still decry the verdict and sentence as gross miscarriages of justice. The fact that she practically wove the rope to hang herself strikes me as poetic, for if her story was truly true, and she went to New York determined to end her life, then she succeeded.

And if, as I suspect, her story was only somewhat true, if what she profoundly and honestly desired was freedom from Hi Tarnower and the hold he had over her feelings of self-worth, if Jean Harris made that long drive on a dark and stormy night determined to create an identity of her very own?

Then she succeeded there, too. Advertisers: Contact Us. Privacy Policy. August 7, By Gina Wohlsdorf. Via Algonquin. Article continues after advertisement. She lives in Colorado. What Should You Read Next? Find CrimeReads on Facebook. Read More.