Two Truths and a Lie

Starred review from December 21, 2020
Journalist-turned-PI McGarrahan brings readers along on her affecting quest to discover the truth about who killed two law enforcement officers in 1976 Florida. State trooper Phillip Black and a visiting colleague, Canadian constable Donald Irwin, spotted a car in a rest area containing five sleeping people: Jesse Tafero; his girlfriend, Sunny Jacobs; their two young children; and Tafero’s friend Walter Rhodes. Shortly after Black radioed that he saw a gun in the car, multiple shots rang out, leaving the officers dead. Based on Rhodes’s testimony, Tafero and Jacobs were convicted of the homicides. In 1990, Tafero was electrocuted, an execution McGarrahan witnessed in her role as a reporter for the Miami Herald. McGarrahan knew from attending a play based on the crime and its aftermath that Rhodes confessed to pulling the trigger less than a year after Tafero and Jacobs were convicted, then he recanted. She subsequently embarked on her own investigation, which included travel to Ireland to interview Jacobs and to Australia to interview Jacobs’s son. Ultimately, she reached a definitive conclusion about who was responsible for Black and Irwin’s murders. McGarrahan’s blend of detective work and insights into the criminal justice system make this must reading for fans of Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line. Agent: Mollie Glick, Creative Artists Agency.

January 1, 2021
Vivid re-examination of a puzzling double murder. Journalist and private investigator McGarrahan's debut is an engrossing, authoritative fusion of true crime and memoir. She has a particular connection to the grisly crime at is center, which she portrays in a chilling prologue. In 1990, as a young reporter for the Miami Herald, she witnessed the execution of Jesse Tafero, convicted with his girlfriend, Sunny Jacobs, in the 1976 slayings of two police officers during a roadside stop. Their convictions were based on the testimony of Walter Rhodes, who recanted and changed his story numerous times, which led to Sunny's release--and celebrity following the case's dramatization in the play and movie The Exonerated. Haunted by questions about Tafero's possible innocence, McGarrahan took a leave of absence to review the case. During her investigation, she was able to link Tafero, Sunny, and Rhodes to a startling web of South Florida criminality, including mysterious mob deaths, celebrity jewel thieves, a violent drug gang, and even tales of "men forced to dig their own graves in the Everglades." McGarrahan interviewed Jacobs and tracked down Rhodes, by then a fugitive, in a tense encounter: "He knew about the murders," writes the author, "the blood monolith suddenly in the center of my life again." Throughout, she maintains tension by connecting the case's labyrinthine backstory to her own life of wanderlust and detection, portraying her exasperated husband as a source of solidity and her PI career as an enigmatic motivation for grappling with the ugly mystery of the murder. She eventually makes a conclusion about the case after a full consideration of available evidence, including talks with the state's attorney and surviving eyewitnesses. Although her reflections are occasionally redundant, McGarrahan captures a keen sense of place and the significance of the entire ordeal. An accomplished, unsettling look at a confounding crime and larger issues of memory, culpability, and punishment.

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Starred review from February 1, 2021

Private investigator McGarrahan was haunted for decades after witnessing the botched execution of Jesse Tafero, who, along with two others, was convicted of murdering two police officers during a traffic stop in 1976 in Florida. The author became further consumed by the case when one of Tafero's coconspirators, Sunny Jacobs, claiming that she and Tafero were innocent, was released from prison and another, Walter Rhodes, confessed to the murder. McGarrahan embarked on a years-long quest to discover who was telling the truth. Documenting dozens of interviews with friends, family, and associates of the three convicted killers and examining the evidence still available at the Broward County courthouse in Florida, she meticulously studied the case from all angles. McGarrahan passionately and unflinchingly conveys the emotional impact of her investigation on her and her husband. The book is engaging and fast-paced, though readers may be frustrated by some of McGarrahan's unwise decisions, such as her choice to spend the night at the home of a suspect. VERDICT Dark, foreboding, and emotional, this title is as gripping as a thriller and laced with cogent insights--McGarrahan stresses that sometimes there isn't an objective truth to uncover. Fans of Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone in the Dark will be spellbound.--Ahliah Bratzler, Indianapolis

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