The murder of Garrett Phillips

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On the rainy afternoon of Monday, October 24, 2011, Tandy Cyrus rushed to Canton-Potsdam Hospital in the small village of Potsdam, New York after she was told that her 12-year-old son, Garrett Phillips, had fallen. As she reached his hospital room, she found her son in cardiac arrest with medical staff frantically tending to him. Meanwhile, the doctor asked her if she thought he would ever try to harm himself since he had noticed marks on his neck.

Tandy was in complete shock, unable to wrap her mind around what was going on. As the team performed CPR on her beloved son, she noticed bruising to his face & marks to his neck, but she had absolutely no idea how badly he was hurt or what happened. The moment felt utterly unreal; she felt as if she was standing in someone else’s body, watching someone else’s life.

The next thing she realized, a doctor was looking at her over his glasses & she remembers hearing him say that there was nothing else they could do. She couldn’t understand how her 12-year-old athletic son could have died from cardiac arrest related to a fall.

Unable to tear herself away from her child, Tandy stayed in the hospital room with Garrett for the night until the staff came in & told her she needed to come out. Before the grieving mother left the room, she told her son that she loved him.

Since mid-August of that year, Tandy had been living at the North Country Manor Apartments in Potsdam at 100 Market Street. She, Garrett & her younger son, Aaron were in a 3-bedroom unit on the second floor in the 100-year-old building that had only one door to enter & exit from.

Potsdam is a college town in Upstate New York only about a half-hour’s drive to the Canadian border. Because it’s home to both State University of New York at Potsdam as well as Clarkson University, during the school year, the town’s population rises by about 8,000 students.

On that Monday in October, Tandy’s neighbors, Marissa Vogel & her fiance, Sean Hall, had gotten home at about 4:20 pm. They began cooking dinner & at just about 5 pm, they sat down with their food to watch Dexter as they ate.

At this point in time, another neighbor, Shannon Harris, & her boyfriend, Andrew Carranza, were just outside the building changing a tire on their car in the apartment building’s parking lot. While they were out there, they began hearing noises, but they weren’t sure what they were or where they were coming from.

Meanwhile, Marissa & Sean heard the sound of running followed by a crash & then silence coming from the unit next door where they knew a single mother & her two sons lived. It sounded as if something heavy had fallen to the floor. Seconds later, they heard a child’s moan that was either ow or no. Although the sound was muffled through the wall, they could tell that the child sounded scared & they also heard them say, help more than once. After that, they could hear mumbling, but they couldn’t make out the words.

Concerned, they immediately walked to the unit next door & as Marissa knocked on the door, she was able to hear faint movement on the other side, but rather than the door opening, she could hear the click of a lock engaging. Feeling unsettled, she dialed 911 at 5:08 pm, telling the dispatcher that she was probably being paranoid, but she felt she should call in case someone needed help or was in trouble.

When Marissa looked out the window, she didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, such as a car that seemed out of place. However, she couldn’t help but realize just how eerily quiet things had gotten after the noises on the other side of the door stopped. She never heard anyone walking down the stairs to exit the building which she would have had someone done so.

The dispatcher told her that an officer would come out to check on the situation & minutes later at 5:10 pm, Officer Wentworth was up at the door of the unit in question. Although there had initially been no sound or movement from the other side of the door, when he began knocking at 5:14 pm, he could hear someone walking around.

At 5:21 pm, a dispatcher from the Potsdam Police Department contacted Rick Dumas, the landlord of the apartment building, who said he would come over with a key. While Officer Wentworth waited for Rick to arrive, he knocked on the door again, this time using his patrol stick & began calling out for someone to open the door. Once again, he could hear movement on the other side of the door, but his knocks went unanswered.

According to Officer Wentworth’s statement, he heard what sounded like movement though no one came to the door. Then he heard what sounded like something falling. Although it wasn’t loud, he thought it came from near the door. At the time, he thought maybe something was knocked off a table or had fallen off a shelf. When he got on his knees & peered under the small gap between the bottom of the door & the floor, he didn’t see anything.

When Rick arrived at 5:33 pm with the key to the unit, they opened the door & found a young boy alone inside. He was lying on the floor in the entryway to a bedroom, wearing a blue, long-sleeved shirt & gray shorts with blue & white stripes. There was swelling along his brow line, small marks on the front of his neck & scrapes & blood on his knees that appeared to be from a rug burn.

The boy’s face was blue & he was unresponsive so Officer Wentworth immediately began CPR until an ambulance arrived to transport 12-year-old Garrett Phillips a half-mile down the road to Canton-Potsdam Hospital. In the meantime, authorities worked on getting Tandy’s contact information to notify her of what was going on.

At about 5:30 pm, while first-responders had been working on Garrett, Tandy had already picked Aaron up at daycare & she was at the school gym watching his basketball practice. Since Garrett had practice at 6 pm, she planned to go watch the second-half of his practice next. While she was sitting in the gym, her landlord found her & told her that he’d just been at her apartment. He went on to say that something was wrong with Garrett & she needed to get to the hospital.

When Garrett’s paternal grandma & uncle, Patricia & Brian Phillips, met Tandy at the hospital, they saw that Garrett was on a ventilator just before he began to go into cardiac arrest.

Tragically, 12-year-old Garrett Phillips was pronounced dead at 7:18 pm that evening.

According to his obituary, Garrett was born on August 13, 1999 in Potsdam to parents Robbie Phillips & Tandy Cyrus. When he was about 16-months-old, his parents split up & sadly, when Garrett was only 2-years old, Robbie suddenly died from a brain aneurysm.

In 2001, Tandy began dating Casey Collins, & Aaron was born about a year later. Even after Tandy & Casey broke up, he continued to raise Garrett as if he were his son & Garrett called him dad.

In 2011, Garrett was a sixth grade student at A.A. Kingston Middle School. He loved being outside, going camping, riding his four-wheeler, hunting & fishing. He was very athletic & played football, soccer, hockey, basketball & lacrosse.

Lt. Mark Murray, who later became Potsdam’s chief of police, was contacted at 5:53 pm that Monday while Garrett was being rushed to the hospital under highly mysterious conditions. He found the inside of the apartment very clean & tidy with Garrett & Aaron’s school schedules posted on the fridge while family photos adorned the walls.

Nothing within the living room seemed out of place & he could see that Garrett had placed his gym shoes by the closet while his rip stick, something similar to a skateboard, was propped neatly against the wall next to his backpack. The only obvious sign of a struggle that was visible within the main area of the apartment was Garrett’s sweatshirt, which was lying in the hallway.

While they photographed the third bedroom of the apartment, the officers immediately noticed that the blinds on the window were very noticeably bent outward while the window was open & the screen had been pushed out. As they looked more closely, they realized that someone had likely fled from the building through this second-story window to the ground twenty feet below. When officers went outside to assess the area, they saw that a tile on the ledge just below the window had a large crack, likely from the impact of someone’s jump.

Because Shannon Harris & Andrew Carranza had been outside changing their car’s tire between 4:50-5:20 pm, based on the timing of events, they would have just missed the person jumping from Garrett’s 2nd floor window. The sounds they’d heard while they were out there was likely the ripping of the screen as the screen was being pushed out. Had someone killed Garrett, they were likely waiting for them to leave so they could jump.

At this point, it wasn’t entirely clear what had happened to Garrett. Investigators tried to come up with possible scenarios & wondered if maybe Garrett had fallen from the window, made his way back up to his apartment & then succumbed to his injuries. However, the autopsy would soon prove that he died as a result of strangulation & suffocation.

There were various rumors & theories swirling around that two boys from Garrett’s school could have been responsible. They may have been playing a game that ended in a tragic accident while some even considered autoerotic asphyxiation since a bra had been found near Garrett.

According to witnesses, Garrett had stayed late at school that day, playing basketball in the gym with his classmates only forty minutes before he’d been found unresponsive.

While Tandy had been at work & she hadn’t heard from her son by 4:30 pm, she called his cell phone & told him to get home. About 20 minutes later, at about 4:50 pm, a school custodian saw Garrett near the ramp that connects the middle school to the elementary school. He was alone & he had his skateboard with him.

Garrett’s cousin, Kayla Phillips, told police that she saw him outside Potsdam High School as he was heading toward the school’s parking lot. After he skateboarded over to her to ask for some of the popcorn she was eating, she asked where he was headed & he told her, home. Surveillance from the school proved he left the high school’s parking lot at 4:52 pm, less than fifteen minutes before Marissa Vogel began hearing concerning sounds from the unit next door.

Although no one could imagine who would have wanted to harm Garrett, there were concerns voiced about Tandy’s ex-boyfriend, Oral “Nick” Hillary, who immediately became the main suspect in this case.

After Tandy’s break up from Casey Collins in 2006, she began dating local sheriff’s deputy John Jones from 2007 to 2010. As their relationship was coming to an end, she met Nick Hillary at ½ Tons Bar & Grill where she worked as a bartender.

Nick was born in Jamaica & moved to the U.S. as a teenager. After serving in the Army, he was honorably discharged in the 1990s. He was a former soccer star from nearby St. Lawrence University where he played all four years. As the captain, he led his team to the program’s first national championship in 1999. After graduating in 2000, he worked as a math teacher & as a college soccer coach.

In 2009, he became Clarkson University’s men’s head soccer coach, a time when he was living with his girlfriend, Stacia & their three children.

When he & Tandy started dating in late 2010, Nick & his teenage daughter, Shanna Kay, moved into Tandy’s two-bedroom apartment where she was living with Garrett & Aaron. In January 2011, the new family of five, Nick, Tandy, Shanna Kay, Garrett & Aaron, moved into a four-bedroom house in Potsdam.

Unfortunately, throughout their relationship, Garrett & Nick often bumped heads. Although Garrett was very well-liked by both his classmates & his teachers, he did struggle in school. Knowing that Nick used to teach fifth grade math, Tandy asked for his opinion on how she could get her son back on track.

It wasn’t long before tension was growing as Garrett felt that Nick was far too strict. While Tandy felt it was fine that the kids watch TV after their homework was done, Nick didn’t agree. He felt that during the school week, TV should be off limits so their full attention was on the homework. Garrett wasn’t fond of the discipline that Nick brought to their household & he often reached out to Aaron’s father, Casey Collins, asking if he could come live with him since he hated Nick.

Their varying parenting styles eventually drove a wedge between them, Tandy being far more lenient than Nick. She later made a statement to police indicating that he expected her to change her parenting style to be more like him. She described him as an extremely structured, scheduled & meticulous person, someone who outlined his schedule in a planner which was the opposite of herself. These differences caused increasing stress in their relationship, which carried over to their blended home.

A few months before Garrett’s death, their differences reached a boiling point & after nine months together, they broke up in July 2011 while Nick had been out of town recruiting soccer players. During this time, she had a sit down with her boys to discuss their feelings about their living arrangement. Both Aaron & Garrett expressed their unhappiness so in mid-August 2011, she & her boys moved out to the apartment at 100 Market Street.

Although they were living apart, they continued to try to work on their relationship & Tandy had given Nick a key to her new apartment. However, she indicated that during the first week of September, when he came to visit her there, she told him that she needed some space & Nick agreed to leave her alone.

However, later that same night, when Tandy heard the sound of a door opening, she said she woke up to find Nick there & when she asked him what he was doing, he told her that he was just going to sleep. After that, she asked him to return the key that she’d given him.

However, during a later deposition, Nick indicated that although he had a key which he returned to Tandy in September, he’d never let himself into her apartment uninvited after they’d broken up.

While Tandy admitted that she had never seen Nick hit a child, lose his temper or threaten a child during their yearlong relationship, she felt sure that he was responsible for her son’s death, believing that he’d always blamed Garrett for their breakup.

When officers went to Nick’s house on the night of Garrett’s death, they acknowledged that he seemed genuinely shocked & upset at the news of the young boy’s death. Regardless, he was immediately considered a suspect in the case.

One day after her son’s death, Tandy & her ex-boyfriend, who worked as a county sheriff’s deputy, John Jones, arrived at the police station for her first interview one day after her son’s death.

That same night, when Lt. Mark Murray went to Nick’s soccer game to observe him, he claimed that Nick seemed to be favoring his right leg & claimed that he was walking with a significant limp. He felt that he could have injured himself after jumping out of the second-floor window of the apartment.

However, years later, a video from this night surfaced that depicted Nick walking with no obvious limp whatsoever. When confronted with this, Lt. Murray indicated that there were points in time that he walked perfectly fine & other times that he appeared to want to conceal the limp.

On Wednesday, October 26, 2011, two days after Garrett’s death, Nick was asked to come down to the police station. Although he’d been told that they just wanted to go over the student roster of Garrett’s class, when he arrived it was clear this wasn’t the case. Based on the questioning, it was immediately clear that he was being viewed as a suspect, while they assured him that everyone in town was considered a suspect at that point. They claimed that they just wanted to eliminate him as being involved.

Although he was told that he could leave at any point since he wasn’t under arrest, when he stood to do so, Officer David Snell & Lt. Mark Murray stood to block his exit. They told him they needed to confiscate his phone & in the meantime, his Honda CRV was impounded.

Nick called his friend, who was also a lawyer, Mani Tafari, who made the seven-hour drive up from New York City. He also contacted a local lawyer, Jane Garland. In the meantime, the Potsdam Police Department also obtained a warrant to search Nick himself. This included the clothing he wore, the belongings he carried as well as an exam of his body to assess for any injuries.

After he was stripped until fully nude, officers took photos & looked his body over, noticing a scrape to his right ankle. According to Lt. Murray, Nick was very vague in regards to how he got the scrape, but eventually said it was from moving a piece of furniture around his apartment, although he couldn’t say which piece.

After eight hours at the station, Nick was allowed to leave as no arrest was made. He left the station wearing a hazmat suit rather than his own clothing. He indicated that since that moment, his life has never been the same again. Not only did no one ever look at him the same, but Clarkson University also no longer wanted him on campus.

Investigators spoke with Clarkson University’s men’s assistant soccer coach, Ian Fairlie, who lived at 16 Garden Street, 0.3 miles from Tandy’s apartment. He said that Nick had stopped by on the evening of Garrett’s murder. Because he’d been on a phone call when Nick walked in, he could say for sure that he came in at 5:21 pm. He said that nothing about Nick seemed out of the ordinary. After Nick left to head to the university, he resumed the call at 5:23 pm. Since they had plans to meet with a player at 5:45 pm before practice began, Ian followed him to his office about five minutes later.

The player ended up not showing up so they talked to him on the phone & then Ian & Nick hung out for a bit before they went to the locker room. They were out on the field at about 6:30 pm for their 7 pm practice, but because of the rain, the two hour practice ended one hour early at 8 pm.

At 9:30 pm that night, officers went out to Nick’s house which is when he said he first learned about Garrett’s death. He said he felt completely numb when he was told & was at a complete loss for words.

If Ian’s statement was correct that without a doubt, Nick had arrived at his house at 5:21 pm, it would have made it impossible for him to be the killer. Just after 5 pm, Tandy’s neighbors began hearing concerning sounds coming from next door & Officer Wentworth responded to 100 Market Street at 5 pm. While he was standing at Tandy’s door at 5:24 pm, he heard the faint sound of someone walking around inside the unit.

Despite the fact that Tandy’s ex-boyfriend, a local sheriff’s deputy, John Jones, was involved in the investigation, Lt. Murray argued that he had also been considered a suspect. Murray went on to say that like Nick, his fingerprints & DNA were taken as well as photos of his body.

However, Nick’s lawyer, Mani Tafari, argued that in these photos, his face was not shown & he was allowed to remain clothed, only rolling up the sleeves of his shirt & the legs of his pants. He went on to say that if both John & Nick had been suspects, why had only Nick been forced to fully disrobe when photographed? Based on comments made by those within the police force, taking photos of a suspect fully nude at the police department like Nick had been, was unheard of.

There was a lot of discussion about the role race played in this case. Some wondered if Nick was immediately considered a suspect because he was one of the few Black men in Podsdam. With a population of 9,400, nearly 90% of the community was white while < 3% were black.

Before Garrett’s death, Nick had always been an involved, respected member of the community. Not only was he the head soccer coach at Clarkson University, but he was a military veteran who had no criminal record & was a teacher & a coach.

Many people believe that because Nick was the main focus of the investigation despite the fact that no evidence tied him to the crime scene, the Potsdam Police Department failed to look at other potential suspects.

Some speculated that sheriff’s deputy John Jones could have been framing Nick for Garrett’s murder. Their interactions had always been strained since as his relationship with Tandy was ending, she began dating Nick. There were allegations that he was an angry, racist man who could have been responsible for the murder himself.

Tandy had actually filed a formal complaint against John in January 2011, nine months before Garrett’s death, indicating that he had been acting in a way that made her fear for the safety of herself & her sons. She went on to write that in September 2010, he came into the home they previously shared & physically removed their belongings from the house without notifying her. He also sent her threatening text messages & in October 2010, he came to her apartment uninvited.

When a minute sample that was scraped from one of Garrett’s fingernails was tested, it was determined to have come from an unknown individual. There was no physical evidence connecting Nick to the crime. The fingerprints & hairs collected did not match Nick, including the prints recovered from the window, which remained unidentified despite the police testing every person with access to the apartment, including maintenance staff & residents.

Investigators began focusing on surveillance footage from Potsdam high school that was captured on the Monday Garrett was murdered between 4:47 pm & 4:53 pm that depicted a small SUV entering the lot at 4:46 pm that fit the description of Nick’s car as well as Garrett riding by on his ripstick. However, since the video lacked a license plate & also did not show the driver’s face, they couldn’t prove for sure that it had been Nick.

Nick went on to file a civil suit against the Potsdam Police Department & the village of Potsdam, claiming that his civil rights were violated after what he calls his false imprisonment when he was taken in for questioning two days after Garrett’s murder. In the suit, which was first filed in 2012, he alleged that he suffered from both physical as well as psychological trauma due to the way he was treated. From that moment on, he went from being a respected part of the community to a face associated with Garrett’s murder. He claims that his children were bullied in school & threats were made to his physical safety on a daily basis.

During the deposition on January 20, 2014, when asked how he spent the day that Garrett was murdered, Nick indicated that he had driven into the parking lot of the high school to watch his daughter’s soccer game. He waited for a bit for the rain to stop, but when it didn’t, he drove to his home at the Meadow East Apartments at 118 Leroy Street. This confirmed that the SUV seen in the footage from the high school at the same time as Garrett, was Nick.

He was informed that he left the parking lot only seven seconds after Garrett, each of them turning left onto Leroy Street. However he maintained that he hadn’t noticed Garrett as he pulled in or out. Although his apartment was to the right of the lot, he turned left & indicated that he did so because Ian lived in that direction & he wanted to drive past his house to see if he was home.

From the high school footage where Garrett was seen leaving at 4:52 pm, had he gone straight home, it would have taken him about six minutes based on the speed he was traveling on his rip stick skate board, putting him home at about 4:58 pm. Nick pulled out at 4:53 pm while Marissa Vogel placed the 911 call fourteen minutes later at 5:08 pm in response to the noises they began hearing minutes earlier, somewhere around 5:06 pm.

Nick said he got back to his house a little before 5 pm & his daughter, Shanna Kay, was there & could attest to this. He remained there until sometime between 5:10-5:15 pm when he left to go to Ian’s house, arriving at 5:21 pm.

According to Lt. Murray, the biggest factor connecting Nick to the case was his disdain for Garrett. He described the surveillance from the high school that depicted both Garrett & Nick leaving at the same time, only ten minutes before Garrett’s death, as compelling evidence.

However, according to Nick’s defense team, 29 seconds after John Jones pulled into his driveway where he lived just around the corner from where Tandy lived with her boys, Garrett rode by on his rip stick. However, while this had been simply chalked up to a coincidence, when Nick was seen on surveillance as Garrett rode off from the high school, it was presented as evidence to support his guilt.

Years went by without an arrest until Mary Rain began running for the district attorney’s office in 2013. She pushed for advancements in Garrett’s case & during her run for office, billboards popped up with the slogan, Justice for Garrett. This made some believe the young boy’s murder was being used for political gain.

Four months after the deposition was held for the lawsuit that Nick filed, District Attorney Mary Rain presented evidence to a grand jury on May 12, 2014, in order to secure an indictment against Nick Hillary for second-degree murder. This was a charge that carried a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Three days later, he was arrested & held at the St. Lawrence County Correctional Facility for seventy days until he was released on bail in July.

District Attorney Rain suggested that after he left the high school’s parking lot at 4:53 pm, he drove two blocks, parked his car & jogged two additional blocks to Garrett’s apartment. Although he said he’d given Tandy her key back in September & made no copies, she believes that he entered the apartment with a key, attacked Garrett & fled from the second-story window.

In October 2014, the judge dismissed the indictment against Nick Hillary citing an opinion that the prosecution heavily relied on circumstantial evidence as well as the fact that no eye-witness could place Nick at the crime scene. He also found Mary Rain’s grand jury questioning of Nick’s teenage daughter, Shanna Kay, who was his main alibi witness, to be bullying & improper.

Shanna-Kay, who had been in high school at the time, testified in front of the grand jury that she had been with her dad on the day of Garrett’s murder. She had gotten home from soccer at 4:30 pm & her dad came home a little before 5 pm.

However, on February 2, 2015, DA Mary Rain gathered another grand jury & Nick was indicted for the second time on second-degree murder charges.

It can be noted that three years later, in June 2018, Mary Rain was barred from practicing law in New York for two years for severe & persistent misconduct. In 2016, two years before this happened, law professor, Bennett Gershman dubbed her the most dangerous prosecutor in New York State, going on to claim that she had made a mockery of the justice system & that her professional career was littered with lawless conduct & an almost pathological ability to show discord & controversy everywhere she goes.

As they were preparing for trial, Sarah Johnson, a St. Lawrence University trustee, helped fund Nick’s legal expenses while Norman Siegel & Earl Ward worked to defend him.

Using a software program developed by a lab in New Zealand, called STRMix, DA William Fitzpatrick ordered another analysis of the minute DNA found under Garrett’s fingernails. The program is said to derive DNA evidence from microscopic amounts of biological matter. The results determined that the DNA mixture was from Garrett himself while the other was a partial profile of someone who was millions of times more likely to be Nick Hillary than a random stranger.

This seemed highly suspicious to those close to Nick as previous tests had not been a match to Nick.

When the judge held a pre-trial hearing to assess the admissibility of this new DNA report, it was decided that it would not be allowed to be presented during the trial because the sample size is so small & the state crime lab that handled the DNA was not a STRMix validated facility. With this, the trial would be largely relying on circumstantial evidence.

The trial began on September 12, 2016 in Canton, New York & lasted three weeks, a time when Nick made the decision to waive his right for a jury trial. Instead, the case was heard by Judge Felix Catena who would be the sole decider of the verdict nearly five years after Garrett’s murder.

The prosecution flew Andrew Carranza in from Hawaii, the man who had been outside Garrett’s apartment changing his tire with his girlfriend, Shannon Harris, during the timeframe that Garrett was attacked & strangled. When they provided statements after Garrett’s murder, they were asked if they had seen any person or movement in the second-story window & they both said they had not. However, with the trial now approaching, nearly five years after the fact, Andrew was indicating that he had seen a black man standing in the window. Meanwhile, Shannon remained outspoken that they had absolutely not seen a person in that window.

While he was on the stand, Andrew testified that he saw a figure peeking out from the window in question, but DA Fitzpatrick never asked him for a description.

Meanwhile, Nick’s lawyers requested a mistrial one day after the trial began because they accused prosecutors of withholding information regarding a witness from them. This witness, Greg Brown, claimed to have seen John Jones on the street where Tandy lived with her boys at the time of the murder. Police previously indicated that they had surveillance video showing John near his home during the timeframe in question.

Greg Brown’s statement indicated that he was walking past the apartment building’s parking lot on Market Street about fifteen minutes before Garrett would have gotten home when he noticed John’s black Chevy Silverado parked there. He claimed to have seen him get out of the truck & walk to the apartment complex. When he was asked how sure he was that it was John Jones he saw on a scale of 1-10, he said he was a 20.

According to prosecutor Mary Rain, although she was aware that Greg Brown had come forward, she was told his statement wasn’t truthful, therefore, it was not something to pay attention to which is why she hadn’t mentioned it to Nick’s lawyers.

Judge Catena went on to deny the defense’s call for dismal & after a 90 minute interview with Greg Brown, Nick’s lawyers chose not to call him to testify as a witness feeling that he was unreliable since he couldn’t remember critical details.

Closing evidence was presented on September 23, 2016 & Judge Catena returned with a verdict five days later on September 28. He found Oral Nicholas Hillary not guilty of the murder of Garrett Phillips.

In June 2022 Nick Hillary filed a second civil rights lawsuit against the Village of Potsdam, citing that Murray & other county personnel violated his civil rights, singling him out as the only suspect immediately following Garrett’s death. In July 2023, it was dismissed in appeals court.

Since that time, Nick still struggles to rebuild his life due to the negativity associated with his name on the internet & feels he’ll forever be in a disadvantaged position. He’s focusing on raising his children & is now coaching club soccer.

In March 2019, the new DA, Gary Pasqua, indicated that police are looking at new leads in Garrett’s case, which is considered an open & ongoing case.

In 2019, HBO Max released the two-part true crime documentary, Who Killed Garrett Phillips? which covers Garrett’s murder as well as the investigation, highlighting the issues of racial bias & prosecutorial misconduct.

12-year-old Garrett Phillips remains at the heart of this case while the person responsible for his death is still out there as this case remains unsolved. Meanwhile, Tandy Cyrus is raising money for after-school programs in her son’s memory.

Before we end today’s episode, I’d love to take a moment to remember Garrett Phillips. He was a big brother, a grandson, a cousin, a friend & a nephew, a young boy who loved being active & playing sports. According to his teacher, although he was the class clown, he was always respectful. Tandy describes her son as someone who was always happy & willing to help others.

Garrett never got the chance to complete sixth grade, get his driver’s license, graduate from high school, have his first love or get married. His life should have stretched on for many more decades & he is so much more than the headlines, the courtroom drama & the endless arguments about what happened on that evening in October of 2011 that led to his death.

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