How are police handling new leads in the Garrett Phillips case? (2024)

Mar 08, 2019 — A St. Lawrence County prosecutor says there's a new tip in the Garrett Phillips murder case. Phillips was the 12-year-old boy who was fatally attacked at his home in Potsdam in 2011.

His mother’s ex-boyfriend, Nick Hillary, was found not guilty of the murder just over two years ago in a trial that captivated the region.

At the time, lead prosecutors declared the case was closed. But now, St. Lawrence County’s new prosecutor, Gary Pasqua, says he's learned of another lead that points away from Hillary. The DA says an investigation is ongoing, but it’s hard to know if police are taking the new information seriously.

Phillips' uncle: "We weren't gonna get justice for him."

For years, one of the loudest voices demanding justice for Garrett Phillips belonged to his uncle.

Brian Phillips helped produce hundreds of yard signs that read "Justice for Garrett," with a picture of the boy, smiling. The signs became iconic in Potsdam.

"It was over five years — whether it was selling stickers, selling T-shirts, [raising money for] the reward, " Brian Phillips said in an interview with NCPR last week.

It was a long wait leading up to the trial in 2016. After it ended in an acquittal, Phillips said he had to draw back.

"I think about him every day. I probably will the rest of my life," Phillips said. "But the day of the verdict, something just hit me. Just to say, I tried. I did everything I could."

"That day, I pulled the sign out of my yard. Because we weren’t gonna get justice for him."

Phillips was convinced police had the right suspect, but he felt it was time to move on — and it became clear that law enforcement wanted to move on, too.

What's the deal with this new lead?

St. Lawrence County district attorney Mary Rain argued Garrett's case in court. Rain had campaigned on a promise to deliver justice to Garrett’s family, but the day the verdict came down, Rain said it was over.

"There will be no further investigation," Rain saidat a press conference, "because I’m 100 percent certain, as are police, they got the right man."

Now, it looks like as if the case is not over after all — not since new information made its way to police.

North Country Public Radio has learned that a local source reached out to state troopers last fall with a possible tip.

It concerns a group of people who were living in the North Country around the time of the murder. At least one of them had talked to police back in 2011, and their story did not add up. The lead does not involve Nick Hillary, the person who was found not guilty of Garrett Phillips' murder.

Potsdam Police still control the case

The big question now is how law enforcement’s following up. Rain is no longer in office, and the new St. Lawrence County D.A., Gary Pasqua, was reluctant to discuss the tip in an interview with NCPR.

When asked if it was under investigation, Pasqua responded: "I think that's safe to say, yes."

Pasqua wouldn’t provide any details beyond that, but it appears state troopers passed the new information to Potsdam Village Police, which is still the lead agency in control of the case. As of this week, the source who originally contributed the new lead said that they have not been contacted by Potsdam investigators — roughly six months since this person first attempted to share information with law enforcement.

Potsdam's chief of police is now Mark Murray, who was lead detective on the Garrett Phillips investigation. After the trial ended in 2016, Murray told NCPR, “we’re confident we prosecuted the right person.”

We reached out to Murray this winter ask how he’s handling the investigation, but he declined to comment.

Homicide expert: Police work top-down

It’s no secret how police usually do their work. In most cases, there's a hierarchy.

"The head person, the most dominant person — everybody is gonna follow their lead," said James Trainum, a nationally-recognized police consultant.

Trainum has an extensive background workingon cases himself. He spent more than two decades asa homicide detectivein Washington, D.C., where he eventually opened a cold case unit.Before he spoke with NCPR, Trainum reviewed press clippings and media coverage to familiarize himself with the Garrett Phillips case.

When it comes to investigating new tips, Trainum said, it matters who’s in charge.

"In [the Garrett Phillips] case, the head person is a chief of police who ran the investigation originally, is convinced that they got the right person, and is not going to want to devote a lot of time and resources of his personnel into something that hethinks is useless," Trainum said. "And so, who’s going to challenge him?"

Criminal justice experts say it’s not uncommon for an investigation this complicated to have leads that don’t really go anywhere — but that doesn’t mean police should just forget about them.

If there's been an acquittal, Trainum said, that’s all the more reason for investigators to take a step back and consider how the case unfolded.

The value of looking backward

That process has a name — sentinel event review. Trainum is part of a growing movement that encourages police and prosecutors to check their work with these reviews.

"Ideally, it should be used as a learning experience, where all the parties go back and they’re open with each other and honest with each other," Trainum said. "They’re able to benefit from the mistakes that they learned."

The process can help officials uncover things like tunnel vision or confirmation bias, which may arise when police are under serious pressure to solve a crime.

Shortly after he took office in 2018, the new St. Lawrence County D.A., Gary Pasqua, told NCPR he wanted to conduct his own review. "There is obviously no resolution to Garrett Phillips’ murder," Pasqua said at the time. "In my mind, that investigation is still out there."

NCPR checked in with Pasqua last month. By then, the D.A. said he had gone through the case files himself. He also said he'd talked with police and met with Garrett Phillips’ mother — but he didn't want to discuss his findings.

"To keep dredging up that case and to continue to put people in the spotlight who I’m sure don’t want to be in the spotlight — like Garrett Phillips’ family," Pasqua said. "I don’t know that it’s fair to them to keep reliving it unless something new or different happens."

"Everybody knows what I believe."

So far, this new lead doesn’t seem to count as "something different."

Brian Phillips, Garrett’s uncle, said he hadn't been notified about the existence of any tips — but he also admitted he's not too interested in continuing to hear them. "Everybody that knows me knows what goes through my head and who I believe," Phillips said. "That’s not gonna change."

Phillips said he's aware that there’s a civil lawsuit still moving forward on behalf of Nick Hillary. The former soccer coach has accused Potsdam Police of mishandling the investigation — and he's seeking financial damages.

Phillips also knows that the former DA, Mary Rain, had her law license suspended last summer. In their ruling, a state disciplinary panel wrote that Rain's handling of the Garrett Phillips case was one of several ethical issues that contributedto her punishment.

Whatever has come to light — or will come in the years ahead — Phillips said he’s tried to focus on the good.

While Garrett was alive, his uncle said,the boy was deeply loved.

"He was something else. Just like his father, spitting image of my brother, a heck of a little athlete. He loved his ripstick," Phillips said. "He was a kid — he was a 12-year-old kid. What 12-year-old kid just isn’t right full of life?"