will never go away. i m never going to have my son back. i don t get to go to his high school graduation. or see him go to college. i had no idea what had happened! it was like a meteor hitting. potsdam rescue, need an ambulance. a 12-year-old kid. loved to ride his scooter everywhere. lost his life at the hands of a killer. he s a soccer coach! great person on and off the field, a great role model. there is absolutely nothing connecting him to this case. they don t have the fingerprint. they don t have blood. they don t have the witness. there s a darkness that s at work here. you believe nick hillary killed your boy? yes. people call me a murderer. i m 100% innocent. you could have heard a pin drop in that courtroom. way upstate new york. a small speck on the map on the road to the canadian border. that they like to joke up there that there s more cows than people, and i don t think they re joking. in this sleepy place, with a main street from th
there when he finally gives up? yes. they can t bring him back. no. how awful for you. garrett phillips, unstoppable in life, was dead at age 12. what happens in the next few hours, tandy? it was kind of a blur. we were at the hospital for a while. we got sent home. and i slept in aaron s room with him. at the hospital tandy had been joined by some of the men in her life, her ex-husband casey collins and john jones, the sheriff s deputy. but no one notified nick hillary. turns out, he and tandy had split up the month before and he was no longer in her loop. so lieutenant mark murray of the potsdam pd called nick. mr. hillary speaking. it s mark murray of the potsdam police department. we had an incident occur this evening and we d like to speak with you in regards to it. minutes later, lt. murray and two other investigators were at nick s door, a courtesy
her saying that this happened. investigators started knocking on doors all over potsdam to get the lowdown on nick. tandy s side didn t pull any punches. attorney for the potsdam p.d., tom mortati family, friends, relatives. they all immediately thought, well, there s only one person that we can think of that might do something to garrett, and that was nick hillary. that he has reason to have a grudge against garrett, what, for breaking up this relationship? essentially, yeah. still wants to be with the mom? yep. tandy s parents gave statements to police. her mother wrote he kept telling me it was tandy s fault they broke up and that garrett was a factor. nick had gone to her parents to basically lobby them to help help me get back in tandy s good graces. i m good for garrett. i m good for her. you know, help them see the light. as investigators continued targeting nick, they say they still had the other ex-boyfriend, fellow cop john jones, on their radar. he
tandy at the hospital, and they even sat next to her during her interview at the potsdam p.d. the next morning. john jones is to tandy s left, holding her hand. casey collins was quickly eliminated as a suspect, because he had a solid alibi that placed him nowhere near garrett s apartment at 5:00 p.m. on october 24th. but john jones, the local sheriff s deputy, got a deeper look. so it s early hours, but something might be going on with john jones. you just don t know what it is, huh? potentially, yes. he told police he got home about 5:00, and he lives just two blocks from garrett s apartment. police say this is jones on a very grainy security video, across the street from where garrett passed on his skate ride home. in a police interview room, jones was asked to roll up his shirt and pants to check for possible wounds and a leg injury. meanwhile, tandy was talking to police, and she had some thoughts. strong thoughts. coming up
no reason to think he was a suspect that night, or the next morning, when police asked him to come down to the potsdam pd and help their investigation. for what purpose? to see if i could identify a list of garrett s friends. are any of the kids in his grade monsters compared to him? or no? but then the conversation veered away from the list and kids. i mean you re here to help me with something i m clueless about. so i m clueless about it as well. nick seemed surprised by the cops line of questioning. the questions i am being asked right now is not the questions i come down here to answer. what we would like to do is eliminate you as being part of this whole thing. am i a suspect in this thing? no. we what we would like to do we know you re using the word eliminate. it s a big word. everybody s a suspect to us. this whole town s a suspect. nick now realized he was being accused. he shut down. what time was practice on monday? do you remember? i have