Episode 652: Jean Harris and the Murder of Herman Tarnower (Part 2)

Hey, weirdos. Elena here.
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I'm Elena. I'm Ash.
And this is Morbid. Yeah!

I feel like we should have body slammed at the end of that. Ready? Like a dude bro.
Ooh. Ooh.
Yeah. I like that.
Like metaphorically. Metaphorically.
I don't know. I like that.
So. Overtook me.
What's up? So lots is up. Lots is up.
Lots is down. Lots is all around.
We. That's what I was going to say.
I was going to finish it. I knew you were going to.
Lots is all around. You even did the all around with your head.
Bring it around. Help.
So once again, very cool thing that happened was hanging out with Andrew McMahon. Wild.
16-year-old me. Screaming.
Literally can't handle it. Screaming.
But he's very rad, and it was very nice of him, and we appreciate him.

Yes.

And so a really, really cool thing as well has already happened for you guys.

If you're on Wondery Plus.

Yeah.

Right?

No, in general.

For everyone.

In general.

We just can't say who it is because.

We'll never understand it.

But we're here.

Everyone got it. It's a bonus episode.
It was on top of your regular episodes. It already happened for you.
But guys, it hasn't happened for me yet. So can you tell me how it went? Everyone just commented on the eventual post that comes up.
It was great, Elena. It went so well.
It was great, Elena. You i know i did and ash you had fun too you know what right now i i feel it now and i'm like wow you feel it i had so much fun it was an it was fun it was lovely it was exciting it was grand it was so grand it was incredible it's something i was meteoric It was meteoric.
It was meteoric. I like that.
Yeah. It was great, I think.
It was like a religious experience. You know, I hope you guys fucking loved it.
I know you did. Of course you did.
Because I know you guys. I know you.
And I know this is like right up your wheelhouse. I don't think it's up your wheelhouse.

I think it's in your wheelhouse. I think that's how it goes.
Could be both. I got weird with it, which is kind of on brand right now for what is going on.
Careful. Back it up.
I'm not. Yeah, I think in like a week or so I can properly like talk about it, you know, and mention what it actually is.
and actually to make sure that I can because I want to like be excited with you guys and like

you to be able to hear the excitement in real time, we're going to record the intro to that episode that comes out after it, right after we record this, that exciting bonus episode. And then we'll get into the episode.
So that we can properly capture the state I'm in. It's going to be interesting.
It is. I don't know if you'll be capable of recording anything after that.
I'm very excited. Yay.
In case you couldn't tell. But it's going to be really fun.
You guys can look forward to it, I swear. And yeah.
And we have some good cases coming up. We got some good stuff coming up.
Yeah. It's all good.
Well, right now we're in part two of gene harris and the murder of dr herman tarnauer this has been a ride so far just in terms of everything how the ups and downs and the turns and the yeah this feels is like an epic drama it is an epic drama yeah it's giving like soap opera yeah a little bit it for sure is you know so in part one we heard all about jean's upbringing and how it would obviously later affect her man picker her man picker her picker how her first marriage didn't work out how fucking everybody hated jim yeah and how she was so close to a second chance at marriage with dr herman high tarnhower but how that all ultimately unraveled then of course we got into how she started relying on desoxone a prescription form of methamphetamine you know the one that was for her chronic back pain and how that was really starting to change her personality and shift her way of thinking yeah and then of course we got into dr tarnauer's relationship with his girlfriend, Lynn, and how that kind of lined up with some pretty scary and strange harassing phone calls that were leaving Jean quite paranoid. Yeah, understandably.
Yeah, now let's get into part two. At the same time that her relationship with Dr.
Tarnower seemed to be basically reaching a pretty bitter end, Jean was at the peak of her career. Which you would have hoped would have kind of taken all that energy.
I know. But it's not always that easy.
No. And I think where she was in a mental state, it just wasn't possible for her to really like relish in that.
Sometimes it's hard to disengage. It is.
Exactly. So as the headmistress of one of the nation's most elite private schools, like I i was saying in part one she regularly attended galas and dinner parties with some of the nation's wealthiest families and she was invited to speak at education conferences around the country in a letter to high uh in 1977 she wrote my work day begins at 8 a.m and lasts until i drop damn so it's like she was at the peak of her career but but it was also really taxing on her physical health and her mental health.
For sure. And her relationship with High is taxing on her mental health.
Yeah. And it's like sometimes having that busy of like a professional life can like distract you a little bit, but it doesn't, you know, the second you come out of it, it all comes crashing down.
And you're burning the candle at both ends it's not healthy precisely so like the thomas school the madeira school had also been struggling in the mid-70s including an incident this is fucking awful um where a mentally ill man abducted and sexually assaulted one of the students he left her tied to a tree on campus and she died from exposure.

Holy shit.

Yeah, it's something we're definitely going to look more into.

That's horrific.

Yeah, well, it was this incident that eventually led the previous headmistress to retire, you can imagine why, opening the job for somebody new who could revitalize the school.

One of the board members later said of their search for a replacement,

we wanted someone womanly. Like a woman? Is what like what are you what are you talking about cool that's we wanted someone womanly what what that's all i guess that's the requirement well jean was womanly she got on the board's criteria for an ideal headmistress wow but the job proved far harder and like i was saying way more emotionallying than she had anticipated.
And adding to her stress was the additional work that she had taken on in order to help High with a diet book that he was actually contracted to produce about his popular Scarsdale diet. this is like a high protein low carb method of weight loss and despite its immense popularity

at the time the diet the scarsdale diet has since been labeled a pretty good example of a fad diet

where low-carb method of weight loss. And despite its immense popularity at the time, the diet,

the Scarsdale diet, has since been labeled a pretty good example of a fad diet where you would lose a great deal of weight when you first did this, but you would, once you stopped dieting, you just gained the weight back because it's not sustainable. Yeah.
I have feelings about diets for the most part. I do too.
It's a very unhealthy industry. It is.
I don't care. Don't come at me.
Yeah. nevertheless

it's my opinion

it's my opinion

nevertheless though

in the late 1970s, Dr. Tarnauer's diet was extremely profitable, and publishing houses across New York were just clamoring to publish his first official book.
Yeah. Diet book.
So in late 1978, his diet really wasn't more than just a one-page eating plan that he was giving out to patients who wanted to lose weight. But his publisher hired ghostwriter Sam Sinclair, author of more than two dozen self-help books, to develop that one single sheet into a several hundred-page book.
Damn. I feel like you're going to find this part interesting.
Yeah. Sinclair was given six months to produce the entire book.
whoa but when when Jean read the first draft of what he'd produced, she was shocked by really how unethical and actually poorly written the book was. Oh, no.
Her opinions led, obviously, she's a woman with opinion, so that's not great in this time. No, not in that time.
A lot of tension started to, you know, unravel between herself, Dr. Tarnower, and the ghostwriter Sincclair to the point where she offered to rewrite the entire manuscript herself wow she was like this is so bad that like i'm gonna do it all and make it better and i'm not she wasn't like she wasn't a writer damn you know like obviously she's a very she's a trained professional when it comes to like being a teacher and that kind of thing so she can write i'm sure but like she proves herself holy shit yeah under any circumstances rewriting dr tarnower's book would have been um a huge time commitment but considering that jean also had a very demanding full-time job it seemed pretty unrealistic and unnecessary and unnecessary yet somehow she managed to pull off the impossible and produced a respectable final draft for the publisher on time wow yeah read the whole thing over i'm just like why'd you do that like that that's very impressive but like i think she just was like this is shit and it can't go into the world with hi's name on it and I love him so much so I'm gonna help here and I think she probably was like, this is shit, and it can't go into the world with High's name on it.
And I love him so much, so I'm going to help here.

And I think she probably thought, like, I'm going to do this for him and prove my worth to him.

Oh, 100%.

That's all it is.

It's like, but girl.

She's in a constant loop of trying to prove her worth.

Yeah, she is.

I feel, it's oof.

So The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet by Dr. Herman Tarnower and Sam Sinclair.

I'm sorry we missed a name there.

I think y'all mean Gene Harris, but okay.

Came out in late December of 1978 and it was an immediate success.

Of course, all the credit really went to Dr. Tarnower alone.

Instead of the group of doctors who had really created the book at the Scarsdale Medical Group.

Or Gene Harris who literally wrote the entire fucking book. That's gross.
Yeah. Yet for Gene, writing the book was the scarsdale medical group or gene harris who literally wrote the entire fucking book that's gross yeah yet for gene writing the book was never about money it was an opportunity to prove to high that she was still of use to him and worth keeping in his life so when he offered to pay her two thousand dollars for her work she was deeply hurt and immediately left new york and returned to virginia me i would have taken that cash yeah and get the fuck away two weeks later she received a check from dr tarnower along with a note that read for reasons that i cannot explain it is imperative that i make all book disbursements at this time i am enclosing a check for four thousand dollars that i hope you will accept so he wanted to pay her for this this was a professional exchange in his mind and for her it's like it was proving her love yeah exactly her her work on the book was a labor of love yeah something to show him how much she valued him yeah and he basically dismissed that and treated it like it was a service that could be bought which it is that's the thing but that's not that that was not her intent and why she did it i also and just to just to flip this on its head did she tell him this is a labor of love for me uh i don't know because if you don't express that to someone then they are going to look at it as a professional thing yeah no treat it as such if you don.
And treat it as such. If you don't express things to people, they can't read your damn mind.
That's the thing. So there is that whole thing where it's like, yes, I'm sure it was a labor of love for her.
But if you do not express that, no one's going to know it. Yeah.
So you got to say it. Just to look at it from both sides.
Yeah, no, it's important to. He was paying her for the book because she did a service.
Yeah. And I don't know if she did.

I don't think they were great communicators.

That's the thing.

I don't think there's a lot of communication.

So it's a lot of assuming somebody's going to understand my intention here.

Yeah.

And that never works out.

No, it doesn't.

You got to be pretty upfront with people.

Well, and this was a pretty big turning point in their relationship.

Oh, I imagine.

She wrote to him, you have said to me so many times, I never ask anything of you.

I never ask anything of anyone.

But my dear, that isn't true.

For starters, you... Oh, I imagine.
She wrote to him, Wow, that was a good line. Reads upon reads upon reads in here.
In giving her a check for the work, Hy reminded Jean yet again that their relationship had become purely transactional. But still, she couldn't let go of their relationship.
It was almost like she became addicted to him. Oh, 100%.
Almost as addicted as the pills that he'd been prescribing her. And now she was stuck in this terrible position of being totally emotionally reliant on a man who really didn't want anything to do with her pretty clearly.
Yeah. And at that point, it's like if he is being clear that like nothing is coming of this yeah you got to walk away yep then it then it does become on you that you're not letting it go and i do think it got to that and that's the thing it's like there there's there's times when and again i don't know what the interactions were or anything like that if he was because it's shitty when someone's pretending that're still, they're alluding that there might be something there.
Of course, that's going to leave you with a little string of hope. Of course.
And when you're in that position of desperation and you love someone and you're, you know, all that, you're going to take anything as a little string of hope. So you don't know what kind of things were dangling in front of her, but it does sound like he was at least attempting to communicate that this is a transactional relationship now and at that point you need to do the work to get away yeah to like walk away yeah because it's been made clear you know yeah it really has it's it's it's just one of those things if he's not making it clear i get why you're hanging on to hope because when you're in that position nothing's logical yeah but none of kind of sounds like it's being made clear.
I get why you're hanging on to hope because when you're in that position, nothing's logical. Yeah.
But none of. It kind of sounds like it's being made clear.
It, yeah, none of this is logical. Well, that's, I was going to say, and even that's not logical.
No. Yeah.
Oh, there's so many things to take care of every single day. Like, got to wake up, you got to do your breakfast.
You got to, luckily I don't have kids. I don't know how you people with kids do it because then you have to make like 47 more breakfasts.
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Well, throughout the later years of the 1970s, Gene's relationship with Dr. Tarnower began to crumble at a pretty rapid rate.
He was just seemingly replacing her with his younger lab assistant, Lynn. By the end of the decade, her emotional distress and her drug dependency at this point had really started to distort her thinking.
She was profoundly depressed, very lonely. She was struggling with anxiety on a daily basis, and it was all showing.
And not only in her personal life, but her professional life too. That makes, that's so sad.
She unraveled. Because outside of this man, she has so much worth.
She does. You know? Yeah, absolutely.
One colleague said, sometimes she was a very beautiful woman. At other times, she looked like a haggard, skinny old woman all hunched over.
And she also started having, quote unquote, spells of anger and other bizarre behaviors where she would lash out at people for like a lot of the times no reason. Her co-worker said anything could set her off.
It needn't be a major crisis. She really didn't like the girls, meaning the girls at the school where she was headmistress that's not cool in fact at one point she became so irrationally frustrated with their lack of respect for cleanliness that she banned oranges from the campus because the girls always left their peels their orange peels laying around instead of tossing them so she was like hey no more oranges on campus that's some headmistress shit which i'm also like who like isn't there somebody above you that you have to get like approval from that you can you ban oranges from a school don't oranges fall under like free something yeah you know free something free oranges you know but but that just shows like how irrational her thinking was Yeah, the end of 1980 the entire affair had started to take a toll on actually everybody involved and of course jean in particular at the end of january her contract with the school was renewed and she received a substantial raise which was good wow but in private she told her secretary she quote felt like packing a bag and getting the hell out of there.
Yeah, it sounds bad. Yeah.
The comment was understood to indicate that she was burning out. But in truth, things were far worse than really anybody even knew.
In late February, Jean spent 10 days traveling on the West Coast in a fundraising and recruitment effort for the school. And during that trip, she ran out of Desoxone.
Oh. When she got back to washington in the first week of march she immediately called hi who promised that he would send more but any relief she felt was quickly undermined when he also told her that he had decided not to bring her as his companion to an upcoming heart association banquet he said she was still invited to attend but lynn was also invited to attend see in here it's like he's being clear yeah this is clear it's cruel to say it's very clear what he's saying but it's also like but so you were bringing her yeah he had asked her so it's like and then said that's unclear like you know like it feels like it's flip-flopping i think revoking the invitation probably came from her state at that time.
Yeah. I think he was like, you are clearly not doing well.
And like, I don't. Like, you can still come if you want.
Like, I think he was trying to let her down easy. Yeah.
It was probably one of those things where it was like, you can come if you want because I invited you. But like, we don't.
Up to you. Yeah.
And like I said, when Hai had initially asked her to accompany him to the to the banquet like he did gene took that invitation to mean that things between them were returning to normal of course so his decision to attend the banquet alone now not only felt like a rejection of her as a companion but also an indication that she was now on equal ground with lynn because lynn he wasn't going with lynn but she was invited to come if she wanted to oh yeah and she always believed that lynn was nothing more than high's mistress which meant that she probably like gene herself probably was at this point too damn you know so his rejection was an absolute shock to gene which is interesting but rather than react in the moment she simply said she'd call him back and she abruptly hung up the phone. In the days that followed, she seemed to operate on autopilot, meeting with difficult parents and students, a lot of whom were confrontational.
It's a very elite school. And by then, de Soxin had completely left her body and the symptoms of withdrawal were starting to set in.
Among other things, she was feeling even more depressed and despondent, and her ability to cope with her declining mental health pretty much evaporated. Oh, this is really sad.
It's very sad. On the evening of March 9th, after spending days unable to reach high, and he hasn't sent a prescription, he's basically just, like, ghosting her.
Oh, fuck. She sat down to write her lover a letter.
She said, I am distraught as I write this. Your phone call to tell me you preferred the company of a vicious, adulterous psychotic was topped by a call from the Dean of Students 10 minutes later and has kept me awake for almost 36 hours.
What I say will ramble, but it will be the truth. And I have to do something besides shriek with pain.
This is a quote. I haven't played the slave for you i would have never committed

adultery for you but i have added a dimension to your life and given you pleasure and dignity as you have me i've watched you grow rich in the years where we have been together and i have watched me go through moments where i was almost destitute and now that thieving slut has the run of your home and you accuse me of stealing money and books the many things your whore does openly and obviously you now have the cruelty to accuse me of.

Wow.

Yeah. Which, if you think about the letters that we read between them in part one, obviously they're like love letters, and this is clearly not a love letter.
But even just like her way of thinking, you can tell is completely distorted. Oh, 100%.
Like she is angry. This is rage coded coded this is like that thieving slut calling her a whole it's like what i'm not a doctor but she seems a little manic here yeah she seems like there's i mean clearly because she's going through withdrawal symptoms this is it's not in her right mind like she is not in a normal state of being like her homeostasis here exactly and scary in the end she's talking about lynn basically like she thought that it's a little unclear because it almost seems like she saw like because he was saying lynn is invited to the banquet and so are you and i think she thought they were on the same playing field and then i don't know if there was like another call that happened where he was saying like no I'm still with Lynn.
Yeah or like I am taking Lynn. Yeah it's a little unclear but she she's focusing a lot of anger at Lynn.
Yeah and it's like don't focus it on the gal. Other girl.
Focus it on the guy. But not how you do apparently.
No. No.
Well that's like a small excerpt because this letter went on for pages and pages as gene poured out every ounce of anger and resentment that she felt toward hi and lynn over the previous five years she had a lot to say but she still indicated that all she wanted was to spend as much time with hi as she could which is very no now she planned to send the letter by registered mail to ensure that he would receive it, but then she got a better idea. She would drive the five hours from Washington to New York to deliver it to high in person.
Yeah, this has gone far beyond. Yeah.
What it should have gone. Way far beyond.
By the morning of March 10th, Jean had been withdrawing from methamphetamine and painkillers for days, and she was severely sleep-deprived as as well so to say that she was not in her right mind would actually be a serious yeah oh yeah she's dangerous she is she is to herself i was gonna say to herself and everyone around her yeah she had spent 14 years devoting everything she had to her job and to her man tarnower and now she was just starting to feel like she was being pushed out of both it felt to her she later said that quote the last of her support systems had now been knocked out from under her so that morning she called her secretary and told her to cancel all her appointments for that afternoon and then she called hi and actually managed to get through to him and she said hi it's been a bad few weeks i'd like to come up and talk to you for a few minutes. And he said he was having dinner guests that night.

And that it would be better if they could chat the following day.

But she insisted and he relented and said, fine, come see me tonight.

Oh, boy.

Neither Herm and Tarnauer nor anybody else knew it, but Jean Harris had come up with a plan.

And I just want to give a trigger warning for suicide here.

She purchased a .32 caliber handgun a few days earlier after seeing high one last time she planned to walk a short distance to a little park that she liked near high's house and there was a pond in the park that she actually always liked to sit by and she decided that would be the place she wanted to go to end her life oh man that's sad very very sad before leaving she actually finalized her will and she wrote a letter of resignation addressed to the board of directors at the Madeira School. And then she got in the car and left Washington bound for New York.
So it was late, almost 11 o'clock at night, when Jean finally got to Dr. Tarnower's apartment.
A student had actually given her flowers earlier that day, so she thought High might like to have them. So she grabbed that bouquet of flowers and the gun before exiting the car and going up to the apartment.
Inside, it was dark, and it seemed that High and his housekeeper, Suzanne, had already gone to bed. So Jean climbed the stairs, called softly out to High, but got no response, and quietly she entered the bedroom where she found him sleeping, and she whispered to him as she fumbled with the wall switch to turn the light on.
This is already very scary that she just, like, walked into his bedroom while he's sleeping. Yeah.
And he's just going to flick the light on? Yeah. That's literally my worst nightmare.
Immediately jarring. Yeah.
So when the light came on, Hai was just waking up, so he was rubbing his eyes, and he's like, what the fuck? And fuck and despite his giving into seeing her that night he told her at that point that he was tired and he didn't want to talk in the middle of the night like yeah probably smart yeah but gene just sat down on the edge of the bed hoping that her continued presence would rouse him but hi was like yeah cool i'm gonna go back to sleep yeah so she just started chatting casually and, he said, Jesus, Jean, just shut up and go to bed. Which, like, I can kind of understand.
I'm going to be honest. That I probably wouldn't be as nice.
Like, that, I'd be pissed. I'm a horrible person when I just wake up.
Like, Drew is like, you're so mean when you first wake up. Or, like, you're not quite awake.
I think I would say worse. Yeah, I definitely.
And if you're saying I'm going to like I was asleep and you woke me up by walking in my room and flicking the light on and then just talking at me and I tell you to leave. I'm going to sleep and you just keep talking.
Yeah, I'm going to say shut up and go to bed. And like talking about nothing.
Yeah, no. Just casually sitting there on the edge of my bed talking.
Come on, stop it. That's also how you know that she is very much not thinking clearly here.
Because this is not logical behavior. And it's not logical and it's not characteristic for her.
No. Like based on everything we know.
This just seems over the top. Yeah.
So not wanting to sleep, Jean went into the primary bathroom to gather a few of her things that she intended to give her daughter-in-law. And it had always been the responsibility of High's housekeeper, Suzanne, to remove Jean's things when she left and replace them with Lynn's clothing and vice versa when Jean was coming.
That's fucked up. Which, like, think of that job.
Being like, oh, let me take this woman's clothes. One mistress's stuff out.
And that's fucked up.

Yeah.

That's super fucked up.

That's really fucked up.

It's fucked up of him to do that.

And it's fucked up of him to have a woman that works for him do that to two other women.

Yeah.

Like, that's a lot of manipulation.

Again, it reminds me of Richard and his housekeeper that was in love with him.

Yep.

So, not saying that his housekeeper was in love with him.

She wasn't.

But Jean was surprised when she switched on the light and found the room filled with somebody else's clothing. The realization that that clothing and that jewelry all around belonged to Lynn seemed to cause something to snap inside of Jean.
So now she was irrationally angry, like irate, and grabbed a handful of clothing and other items and stormed back into the bedroom she threw the items at at high on the bed but overshot and ended up sending several of the heavier items crashing through one of the bedroom windows yeah i don't know escalated to a point also i'm like what did you throw between clothing and jewelry that it crashed through a bedroom window? Was it like shoes or something? Maybe. But also, you gotta hum those shoes at a window to get them to go through.
Yeah, that's the thing. I don't know if this was simple overshooting of the bed.
I think it was humming as hard as you can. I think so too.
Yeah. And this whole version of

events is Jean's version of events, obviously. So we're going to have to kind of step in

every now and again and say like, she said that happened, but we probably could do this. we all have routines that bring us calm in a chaotic and often scary world.
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So by that point, High was out of bed and very angry and apparently slapped Jean hard across the face, which sent her retreating into the bathroom. Fucked up.
She said, yeah, super fucked up. She said he was angrier than she had ever seen him.
And when he entered the dressing room adjacent to the bathroom, he hit her again, just as hard as he had the first time. During the four-hour drive to New York, or the five-hour drive to New York, Jean had envisioned one last romantic moment with Hai where she would say goodbye and then go to the park according to her.
And in her mind, the whole thing had been so romantic and peaceful, but now things had fallen apart so quickly and none of it was going according to her plan. Yeah.
So she said later that she yelled at him, and this is so fucking bleak and sad and awful, hit me again High, make it hard enough to kill me. Oh, this is awful.
Yeah. But rather than hit her again, he just looked down at her with disgust and told her to get out.
So she hesitated for a moment, and then she stood up and started walking toward the bedroom door, she said intending to start her walk to the park. But when she reached the edge of the bed, she said it occurred to her that her entire plan had already unraveled, so it made no difference whether she went to the park to end her life or if she just simply did it right there and then in his bedroom so she said to him according to her never mind hi i'll do it myself and she grabbed the gun from her handbag and placed the barrel to her temple again given the outcome of this incident we only have her description of the events to go by.
But until her death in 2012, she did maintain that what happened next was entirely accidental. I'm just, and obviously there's a little bit of a reason, I guess.
I don't know why you would have the gun on your person. Yeah, like why you would even take it in there if you were planning just

to go to the park yeah i don't know if maybe she was planning to leave her car and walk and walk over but even still you could walk out to your car and grab your grab the gun yeah i just think she had to valet possibly i think i just think walking into his home with a loaded gun the way things have gone and the the tense moments you have had together and and you know this being oh the middle of the night where you're gonna flick on his light and wake him up i don't know if having a gun with you is sending the right message you know i would say probably not so i feel like it's strange that she was able to just grab that gun out of her purse, but who knows? It gets stranger. Okay.
So apparently, according to Jean, when Hai saw the gun in her hand, he jumped toward her from behind, which knocked the gun away from her head and caused it to discharge. When she turned around, Hai was standing there with a shocked look on his face and he shouted at her, look what you've done, while holding up his bloody hand.
In the webbing where his thumb connected with his right hand, there was a bullet hole where blood was just pouring out. So they stared at each other for a few seconds and then High walked to the bathroom and Jean could hear the water running, which makes my hand radiate.
I body like i was like like starting to rinse that off i'm just like oh that makes my legs hurt for some reason that's interesting i don't know maybe it's like a thing in your brain i think it is but also this guy's a doctor and he just got shot in the hand yeah like he's going to be insanely angry yeah or you would assume yeah so with high out the room, Jean said she began frantically looking for the gun on the floor, hoping that she'd find it and end her own life before he came out of the bathroom. So she dropped to her hands and knees and she could see the gun under the bed.
And she said she just reached it and was raising it to her head again when High's arm came at her from the side and wrenched it out of her hand for the second time. They sat across from each other, just staring at each other for a short time.
And then High reached over for the phone to call his housekeeper, Suzanne. So for the most part, Jean's recollection of the night's events appear to be pretty clear and somewhat supported by the evidence.
Like some of them. but when it comes to what happened after Hai reached for the phone, her version of events became cloudy and left investigators with a lot of questions.
Okay. According to Jean, she must have tried to reach for the gun again because she recalled physically fighting with Hai.
And during that attack, she was struck in the face again. And during the struggle, she fell back on the bed with Hai on top of her and she felt something poking her stomach.
She assumed it was the barrel of the gun, so she squeezed the trigger and heard a loud bang as the gun went off. But to her surprise, she didn't feel any pain.
High then slid off of her and without thinking, she jumped off the bed and ran toward the bathroom, knowing that she needed to shoot herself again or he was definitely going to get the gun from her for a third time. So High was on his knees by the side of the bed, and when Jean stopped and looked at him, she didn't understand why he stopped chasing her.
But without giving it much thought, she raised the gun to her head, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger, she said. She said the gun made a clicking sound, but nothing happened.
And then she looked down and saw that all of the chambers were empty she ran to the bathroom and she started rummaging around in her pocket for more bullets which so she had more bullets which is strange to me so how many how many chambers are in this gun i don't two shots have gone off correct according to gene we'll get there because like yeah you just threw two in there no no so she ran and again why do you have more bullets if you're planning on just shooting yourself you would have just taken that loaded gun and in my opinion you would have just taken that loaded gun with you i would have left it in the car probably like i'm not i don't want to put myself in these shoes, but I don't think I would have brought the loaded gun in to say goodbye to hi. And I definitely wouldn't have extra bullets that I brought with me as well.
No, that the extra bullets makes no sense. But when she found the extra bullets, it occurred to her, she didn't know how to load or unload the gun, she said, which that, so how, like, do you buy a loaded gun? Does that make any sense?

I'm not positive about this, but I don't think you do.

I don't think so either.

I'm fairly certain you don't. I'll look it up just to be sure, but I'm like, what?

I would think you wouldn't. I'll keep going while you look it up.

Yeah.

Feel free to interrupt me. So she banged the gun on the side of the bathtub, hoping to dislodge

the empty shells, but all she succeeded in doing was breaking the cylinder from the gun, which meant at that point it was useless. You cannot buy a loaded gun.
I didn't think so. In the United States.
That makes sense. I didn't think so either.
But I was like, I don't want to claim that I know this for sure. I don't, you never know if maybe like she said to the person, I don't know how to load this.
Can you load it up for me? And like they did something illegally, but I don't know. It't know it's i'm gonna go with no one though i would go with no on that too but at this point she remembered exiting the bathroom and telling hi that the gun was broken and she said it's probably dead and he she said he replied you're probably right and he slowly climbed into bed and covered himself with a blanket then according to gene it was then that she realized Ty was injured.
His coloring was off and he looked absolutely exhausted, so she decided she needed to

go get help. So she ran down the stairs into the dark and she could hear Suzanne talking to someone

in the dining room, but she paid no attention to what she was saying. Outside, she said that she

remembered there was a payphone down the street about a quarter mile away, so she jumped in her

car and raced in the direction of the phone, which is strange to get in your car and leave the scene uh-huh as she neared the phone a police car sped up behind her with its lights flashing so she made a u-turn and started heading back toward the house with the police car obviously following very closely behind her and when she reached the driveway she jumped out and shouted to the officer hurry up he's been shot when they entered the house suzanne was standing by the stairs and she when she saw jean she shouted she's the one she did it jean suzanne and the officer went upstairs to the bedroom where they found herman tarnauer on his knees beside the bed slumped against the side table one bloody hand still reaching for the phone so when she said he got into bed and he put a blanket over himself i don't think now he's kneeling on the yeah i don't think that happened with suzanne's help the officer laid high down on his back and then went down to his car to get an oxygen tank gene lay across the bed just caressing high's face as he lay on the floor struggling to breathe and asked him oh oh, High, why didn't you kill me? A short time later, Dr. Herman Tarnower died from a severed artery caused when a bullet entered his chest.
So he just bled out. I have several questions.
So Jean never denied that she had shot High, but from that point point forward her story about the night's events would change a number of times that does not shock me because it needs a little work from that first one at first she told detectives at the scene quote there was a fight and the gun went off in his testimony in court officer daniel o'sullivan recounted his questioning of gene for the jury. According to O'Sullivan, Jean, quote, asked the doctor to kill her, meaning Dr.
Tarnower, and the struggle then resumed and several shots were fired. Several means more than two.
Yeah. In fact, Jean had told the officer he wanted to live, I wanted to die.
I've been through so much hell with him, I loved him very very much he slept with every woman he could and i've had it the next morning the news of the murder broke on the front page of the new york times and in the article police chief william harris is quoted as saying we found a revolver in the glove compartment of her car and she made certain admissions okay so she put the she threw it in the glove compartment yeah okay in her frenzy of going to help again that doesn't make sense to me yeah uh he stopped short obviously of providing any details as to what gene had admitted to later that day she was booked on a charge of second degree murder a charge which her lawyer strongly objected to the lawyer joel are now told reporters nothing I've've heard would would apply to intentional homicide okay which it's gray yeah i don't know yeah the story of high's murder though obviously was one of the most scandalous things to hit the front page in a long time he was one of the most well-known and well-respected doctors in the country at the time and it seemed like he'd been killed by a jealous lover who also came from high society now like i said earlier jean stuck to her story and she sort of she stuck to her story in the way that she maintained that it was an accident yeah but the other aspects of the story didn't make sense like you and i have kind of touched on according to jean she did shoot high in the hand and one time in the stomach thinking that she was shooting herself but when dr uh i think it's lewis roe performed the autopsy the next day he noted that dr tarnower had been struck by four bullets yeah four yeah one in the upper interior chest wall one in the hand one in the right, and one in the shoulder. Yeah.
So that doesn't even really make sense for if he's on top of her and she feels the gun poking her stomach. That was my main question.
He would have been shot in the stomach if they're belly to belly like you would imagine they would be. Yep.
Or even really like they could have been groin to belly if he's a bit taller than her yeah you know like but for his chest to be at her stomach that doesn't make a lot of sense that doesn't make any sense he has climbed on top of her like she said yeah no none of that makes sense and the amount of bullets that were shot yeah i don't i i don't believe her story i don't either yeah So it was the bullet that entered near her shoulder that likely killed him.

According to the autopsy, the bullet had entered the right chest cavity, fracturing three ribs.

The fractures had caused the laceration of the pleural lining.

The bullet had traveled in a downward trajectory on the surface of the lung, causing a great deal of hemorrhaging in lung tissue.

It continued downward, perforating the diaphragm and the front part of the right kidney where it was recovered. Damn.
So he went through it. It really banged around in there.
Yeah. The autopsy directly contradicted Gene's story.
Like, everywhere. Yeah, to me, it's, I mean, it's black and white there.
It is. Not only had Hai been shot two more times than she had even told police, but he'd also been shot in multiple locations, including one wound that indicated the shooter had actually been standing over him.

A downward trajectory.

Exactly.

Dr. Rowe concluded, Dr.
Tarnower's wounds are not consistent with a struggle over a gun between a left-handed woman and a right-handed man.

Ah.

Yeah. I mean, I believe that forensic pathologist.
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That's 20% off your first order with code morbid at liquidiv.com. When Jean finally went to trial in late November of 1980, the prosecution and the defense immediately ran into problems selecting a jury.
Not only had a lot of people heard about the scandal in the paper or on the news, they were also familiar with the Scarsdale diet, and many prospective jurors had even tried it. Oh, man.
So that really puts a wrench in things. Yeah, that tinks at all.
Then there were the details of the case itself. In 1980, a love triangle between three society people wasn't really something a lot of Americans understood or condoned for that matter.
And just as important was the fact that Dr. Tarnower was Jewish and Jean was not.
As her lawyer put it, this relationship crossed religious lines, and there was a good chance that some jurors might seek to punish Jean for that. Wow.
Which it's like, I don't even know why that would come to play. I didn't even think of that as a possibility.
I was more like, oh, it was in the papers. And then people have tried the diet.
That's all I thought is like, he's a really popular doctor. A lot of people know him, the diet, high society.
But the fact that he's Jewish and she's not plays a role in this is like. Get a grip.
We got to do better as a society. Get a fucking grip.
Touch some grass, everybody. I'm like, how about she's a person and he is too and one of them got murdered? Yeah.
Let's focus on that. How about we look at the facts here? So when the trial began in earnest a few weeks later, the prosecutor, George Bolin, presented the case to the jury as one of simple jealousy and rage.
And, you know, I kind of agree with this case. He theorized that, quote, m.
Harris, desperately unhappy over the loss of Dr. Tarnower's affections and resentful of his relationship with a younger woman, entered his home unannounced and unexpected and intentionally shot him, causing his death.
I mean. That's pretty much what happened.
Yeah. In support of that theory, one witness after another was called to testify as to Jean's psychological state in the days leading up to the shooting.
Tarnower's housekeeper, Suzanne Van Der Brecken, which that's a really fun name to say. Van Der Brecken.
Van Der Brecken. That's a great last name.
She kept meticulous diaries documenting all the drama that went on in the house. We love a girly who keeps a diary for us.
That's a receipts queen. Yeah.
To me, that screams Gemini. I love that.
That does feel like a Gemini move. We love a goddamn drama and we love a goddamn receipt.
We love it. She told the jury she, quote, maintained the diaries to keep track of what she served at the doctor's dinner parties.
But they also contained information about who was staying at the house on particular evenings because it was her job to keep track of that what she had to know when to switch things over i love that and i think she just lacked the tea i think she just liked the tea yeah but the defense argued the opposite telling the jury that gene shooting of dr tarnauer was accidental i don't know how you accidentally shoot somebody four different times at least one of them being in a downward trajectory. Yeah.
That doesn't make a lot of sense. You're going to have, I don't think I can be convinced that you can accidentally shoot someone four times.
And to lie about the amount of times. Yeah, that's shady.
It's shady. So they argued, though, that she had gone to his house to say goodbye and had fully intended to take her own life after that but the situation escalated and the two ended up in a physical struggle the press hung on absolutely every word of every witness but none were more captivating than jean herself oh boy yeah she proved to be a crucial if somewhat problematic witness for the defense on one hand she was able to adequately explain the stress that she had been under, the multiple stresses at the time, and her state of mind leading up to the shooting, and when she managed to get her version of events out in a way that supported everything she claimed.
And which I believe, you do have to take into account that there's clearly some psychological break, chemical imbalance happening here, which obviously does not make it okay. No.
But it does need to be taken into consideration with, like, what her state of mind was here. I don't necessarily think she had a fully laid out plan for anything that was going to happen that night.
I think she probably thought that she would take her life at some point because she wrote her resignation letter to work and finalized her will. Yeah.
That's telling to me. Yeah.
But then on the flip side of that, she came with a loaded gun and extra bullets. Yeah.
You only presumably need one bullet if you're going to kill yourself. I wonder if this was always going to be a murder-suicide.
Yeah. And that she just didn't get to the other part.
Yeah, I think that's highly possible. Either backed out of it or didn't have the time to do it.
Yeah, because the whole jealousy angle of like, if I can't have you, nobody will, and I can't live without you. To me, this looks like a pretty cut and dry murder-suicide that was watched.
Yeah? Yeah. I think you're very much onto onto something there but on the other hand many observers found gene to be quote sad humorous and cutting she had spent so many years yeah humorous is an interesting adjective there i'm like sad and cutting totally yeah but like humorous okay that's interesting but she had spent a lot of years among the wealthiest of society and had adopted a lot of their behavior.
She was very cold, very distant on the stand, and her behavior, as she described it, was often difficult for many people to empathize with.

Mm-mm.

Equally challenging was the so-called Scarsdale letter, which Gene had written to Hyde before driving to New York.

Among other things, the letter made Gene look pretty petty and vindictive.

Which ultimately then supported the prosecution's theory that she killed out of jealousy. Unfortunately, yeah, it does.
It very much does. Because remember, I read an excerpt of that that was pages and pages long.
Yeah. Yeah.
So when the case finally came to an end in mid-February of 1981, the jury was instructed that they were to decide whether Jean was guilty or innocent, and if they decide the former, they could choose between a charge of manslaughter or second-degree murder. According to one of the jurors, Marie Jackson, she said, we never considered the lesser charges.
We stuck on the murder charge, and that's all we talked about. Whoa.
Which you can kind of understand. Yeah, I mean, it does seem like she came there with a gun.

That's the thing, a loaded gun at that.

Yeah.

The defense had based their argument largely on the fact that Jean was suffering from mental

illness at the time, but the jury actually found that difficult to believe.

And remember, this wasn't a time where they would have been like, oh my God, she's on

meth.

They would have been like, oh, she's on a prescription that, you know, like we don't

know a lot about. Yeah.
You know? Jackson told a a reporter we thought some people might have thought that she was crazy when she did it but there was no psychiatric testimony about that so we couldn't do it yeah they should have brought something in i know i don't know why they wouldn't yeah in the end though it was a reenactment of the shooting that ultimately brought the jury to you a unanimous decision after 48 hours of deliberation, the jury emerged and found Jean Harris guilty of second-degree murder. Ultimately, it was her own testimony, and of course, like I just said, the reconstruction of those events that night that swayed them.
Juror Marion Stevens said if her intent was suicide, the actions that took place that night should have worked out. Yeah.
Which I agree with. It doesn't make sense.
To the jury, exactly. It didn't make any sense that Jean would have had multiple opportunities to end her own life, but somehow ended up killing Dr.
Tarnower after shooting him four times. Exactly.
That's the thing. It doesn't add up.
Another juror said, if she never would have got on the stand, I guess I would have had to reconstruct in my mind what happened. But here, I had Jean Harris telling me what did happen.
Oop. So it's like she kind of sealed her own fate back.
Yeah. On March 19th, she appeared in court for sentencing, where she was given 15 years to life for the murder of Dr.
Herman Tarnower. And when asked if she had anything to say on her own behalf, she told the judge, I did not murder Dr.
Tarnower. I loved him very much much no one in this world feels his loss more than i do i am not guilty you and mr bolin the prosecutor have arranged my life in such a way that i'll be in a cage for the rest of it and with irons on my hands every time i get out that's not justice it's a travesty of justice whoa i mean that's a pretty heavy statement i think if you kill someone, you should go to jail for it.
Yeah, you made a big old mistake, girl. Despite the anger and bitterness that she felt around her sentencing, she did ultimately, she was said to have made the most of her time at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.
She was there for 12 years. She worked in the parenting center while she was incarcerated, teaching parenting classes to the inmate mothers and helping them build skills that they would need to get their kids back after they were done with their sentences.
And she also worked in and started programs that would help other inmates learn skills to help them find work when they were released, including getting a high school diploma or a college degree. damn and in the meantime she appealed her sentence and applied for clemency until she was eventually paroled in 1993 whoa she died of natural causes on december 23rd 2012 at the age of 89 damn and that is the story of the murder of dr herman tarnauer and gene Harris, who said murder.
What a twisty, turny damn. It's just sad.
It's just really, really sad. It's really sad.
Because I think she snapped a little bit, but actually I didn't even think about, I don't know why that didn't occur to me, that it was probably a murder-suicide. I completely agree with you there.
I completely agree with you there. I was like, that's what it reads to me.
When I first went through this, I was like, I think she snapped when she got into the bathroom and Lynn's clothes were there. Yeah.
And that's when she killed him. But I think you're right.
Yeah. That could have been her plan all along.
And that's why she had all those bullets. Yeah.
Because she was like, who knows how many bullets it's going to take to kill him. Yeah.
And then I need one left over. Yeah.
So it just makes sense. You're not going there to take your own life with a purse full of bullets.
No. I just don't get that.
And a loaded gun. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think you're pretty right there.
Yeah. It's just really sad.
It's really a sad case. And it's like none of this really ever had to happen if you just moved on from him.
Yeah. You know? Like it was just.
And he was, I think he was somewhat of a womanizer. But I don't think he deserved that ending.
No, I don't think he deserved to die. I think it's like he was doing what he had always done.
And people had let him do it for a long time. She let him.
And then she kind of let him do it as well until she didn't. Yeah.
And yeah, it's really sad. None of that had to happen.
No, literally none of it at all. And it started like so purely.
I know, It sounded like such a great meet-cute. A beautiful love affair at first.
I was like, wow, I'm rooting for you two kids. Yeah.
But then it pops off really quick. Yeah.
Crazy. So that's the story.
We got some more stuff coming your way. Some very exciting stuff.
Exciting stuff. Especially this girl over here.
Her eyes just lit the fuck up. Hell yeah.
I think it's already happened. But happened but you know we told you about it in the beginning yeah but we'll record right after so you can get the full feeling yeah and with all of that being said you guys we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that any of this takes place no you.
You just gotta get out when it's time to go, babe.

Yeah, get out of there.

Yeah, hit the road, girl.

Hit the road, Jean.

That's right.

Don't you come back.

No.

No, no, no.

No, no, no. Thank you.
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Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Everyone has that friend who seems kind of perfect.
For Patty, that friend was Desiree. Until one day...
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