TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/81/81.43

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 8KB | 152 lines

                                                                                March 8, 1981

NATION

Murder with Intent to Love


The story was a classic one:  a jealous woman, a man who done
her wrong, to put the blame in a blizzard of passion. It
happens every day on television, in films, even in real life.
But the trial of Jean Harris, 57, accused of murdering
Scarsdale Diet Doctor Herman Tarnower, 69, assumed the
proportions of a national melodrama. During the three-month
trial, as her precious privacy and guarded respectability were
stripped away, the pitiably proud former headmistress of
Virginia's Madeira School for girls became the centerpiece of
a passionate drama--the old battle of the sexes, fraught with
newer, feminist tonalities. In the end, the outcome seemed
almost predetermined:  the jury found Harris guilty of second-
degree murder, of shooting Dr. Tarnower with the intent to cause
his death.

During the trial, Harris had admitted driving five hours from
her home in Virginia to Tarnower's Westchester County, N.Y.,
estate on March 10 with a gun in her purse. Nor did she dispute
that, late in the night, she pulled the trigger five times
(though she could not account for all of the shots), wounding
the doctor, whose lover she had been for 14 years, four times.
But in her eight days of testimony she insisted that she only
wanted to kill herself, and Tarnower died trying to save her.

The summation by Defense Attorney Joel Aurnou, 47, was emotional
and dramatic. "Don't let Dr. Tarnower's life itself be
tarnished!"  he shouted. "Don't say he died as a result of a
homicidal rage, of some sordid affair. Restore the dignity of
Dr. Tarnower, who himself died trying to save Jean Harris."  He
ended his impassioned plea by quoting a poem of Edna St. Vincent
Millay:  "I miss him in the weeping of the rain . . ."

Prosecutor George Bolen, 34, was cold and indignant in his
summation, insisting that jealousy over Tarnower's affair with
his lab assistant, Lynne Tryforos, 38, was the motivating factor
for the murder. Argued Bolen:  "There was dual intent, to take
her own life, but also an intent to do something else . . . to
punish Herman Tarnower . . .to kill him and keep him from Lynne
Tryforos."  Bolen ridiculed the notion that Harris fired her
.34-cal. revolver by accident. He urged the jury to examine the
gun while deliberating. Said he:  "Try pulling the trigger.
It has 14 pounds of pull. Just see how difficult it would be to
pull, double action, four times by accident."  Bolen, who was
thought by her superiors to be too gentle when he cross-
examined Harris earlier in the trial, showed little mercy as he
painted a vivid picture of what he claims happened that night.
He dramatically raised his hand in the defensive stance he
says Tarnower used when Harris pointed the gun at him. When the
judge sustained an objection by Aurnou that Boden's version went
beyond the evidence presented, the taut Harris applauded until
her body shook.

The eight-woman, four-man jury--the class-conscious Harris
would probably never admit they were her peers--began their
deliberations by requesting all 400 pieces of evidence. As Lisa
Zumar, mother of two, told the New York Daily News:  "We wanted
it all--the bloodstained pajamas, the .23-cal. gun, the bloodied
bed sheets, the schematics showing the trajectory of the
bullets, and the letters--including of course the crucial
Scarsdale Letter."  That frenzied, tenpage epistle, the
emotional centerpiece of the trial, had been sent by Harris to
Tarnower the morning his death. "I have to do something besides
shriek with pain," she wrote. She called rival Tryforos "a
vicious, adulterous psychotic" and "a thieving slut."  Harris
described her pain, saying she felt "like discarded trash ...
You keep me in control by threatening me with banishment, an
easy threat which you know I couldn't live with."  To Bolen, the
letter was proof of Harris' pathological jealousy. To Aurnou
it was an emotional suicide note within a love letter.

On the second day of deliberation, the jury took its first vote:
it was split. The crucial factor in the jurors' minds was
Harris' detailed yet contradictory description of the shootings.
They asked to have five hours of her testimony re-read.
Foreman Russel Von Glahn, a bus mechanic from Yonkers, had a
clerk repeat aloud again and again the parts where Harris tried
to recall how the shots were fired, Marion Stephen, a teacher
from Rye, asked to have Harris' account of how she attempted
suicide re-read twice.

Then the jurors retired to a deliberation room dominated by
wooden tables, where they joined in macabre re-enactments of the
crime. "We used two tables to simulate the bed," recalls Marian
West, an administrative assistant for a community service
program. Von Glahn, donning the bloodstained pajama top, played
the doctor, as other jurors came at him with the actual gun.
"We did it many times," said one. "It was Jean Harris'
testimony that convicted her," said Marie Jackson, a clerical
worker. "We tried it like it was told. We couldn't see how he
could have come in back of her and gotten shot in the hand. If
there was a struggle over the gun, someone else would have been
wounded."  Added Geneva Tyler, a keypunch operator:  "It was a
lot of shots. If you're going to commit suicide, you only need
one, in the right place."

For eight days the discussions and re-enactments continued,
never acrimonious but always intense. The jurors applied no
pressure on each other. On the ground floor, a hundred or so
journalists and half as many dedicated trial followers waited.
The celebrity of the victim and the social standing of the
accused, their intriguing affair, and the misogynist overtones
that many women found in Tarnower's treatment of Harris, all
combined to make the trial a press spectacular, a debate over
man's inhumanity to woman. Said one courtroom regular, a
sharp-eyed lady of about 60:  "I pray for Jean Harris every
night. I know all about men. I know what they did to me. They
went out with my girlfriends."  And so there were television
crews catching catnaps in the corner, and authors calling their
agents from the makeshift phones in the lobby-cum-pressroom.
After more than 47 hours of deliberation, a final secret ballot
was taken. A unanimous verdict was reached. A note was passed
to Judge Russell Leggett, and he reconvened the court.

Then came the final scene:  Jean Harris, primly clad in a suede
jacket and brown skirt, her hair held back by a tortoise shell
band, was led in, staring straight ahead. Each day of the
ordeal seemed to have shriveled her a bit more. The jurors,
stone faced and grim, did not look at her, seated at the defense
table, as they filed in. "I understand the jurors have arrived
at a verdict," said Judge Leggett. Von Glahn rose and nodded
yes. The clerk asked:  "How do you find the defendant, Jean
Harris, on the first count of second-degree murder?" Replied Von
Glahn:  "Guilty!"  He was asked about two lesser charges,
second- and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon
"Guilty!" he said. "Guilty!"

Two of the defense lawyers started to cry. Aurnou, who has
announced plans to appeal but has not yet said on what grounds,
explained later that he did not present any psychological
testimony, which some jurors said would have been useful to the
defense, because he did not believe Harris acted out of
insanity. The judge set her sentencing for March 20; the woman
once known as "Integrity Jean" faces a minimum of 15 years in
prison before she is eligible for parole.

A sheriff's deputy moved behind Harris as the judge remanded her
into custody. To her attorney she whispered:  "Joel, I can't
sit in jail."  With the verdict, gone was the $220,000 Tarnower
had left her in his will; under state law convicted murderers
forfeit any bequests from their victims. Gone also are the
comfortable weekends at the house in Westchester County she
considered home, gone is the man she loved. The deputy touched
Harris' shoulder. She rose slowly, shook off the hand. Softly
said she:  "I must go now," and then left to spend her first
night in jail as a convicted killer.

--By Walter Isaacson. Reported by James Wilde/White Plains