Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Happy holidays, everyone. As we wrap up the year, we're taking a short break to rest and reflect.
This year has brought a lot of changes for the team here at Serial Killers. We've covered stories of killers who have yet to be caught, and we tried new angles like our specials on manhunts and hitmen. Thanks for sticking with us through it all and letting us bring you the stories we find the most fascinating every week. For the next two weeks, we're highlighting a favorite episode from this year, the story of the Buried Bodies Killer.
Thank you so much for tuning in during 2023, and we'll see you in 2024. Stay safe out there.
Due to the nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, sexual assault, child abuse, bestiality, gun violence, and kidnapping. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. To get help on mental health and sexual abuse, visit Spotify.com slash resources.
The crisp, bright mornings in the Adirondack Mountains often make the forest feel idyllic. But it only seemed ominous to four men walking along its dirt roads back in the summer of 1973. Though they looked like an ordinary group of hikers, they were actually on a grim mission. Their friends, Danny and Susan, had been missing for days.
The crew remained silent as they moved, each trying to hide their fears as they searched for their friends. Jim King walked a few paces ahead of the others, his eyes scanning over the landscape, looking for clues. Finally, he saw it, at the bottom of a steep embankment beside the road, a sliver of white. Without hesitating, Jim clambered down the slope.
When he reached the bottom, he looked around, disoriented. For a moment, he wondered if he'd imagined it. Then he saw Danny's white shoe. But that wasn't all.
Hi, I'm Greg Polson. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast. Every Monday and Thursday, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're continuing our exploration of Robert Garrow, the buried bodies killer. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson.
Hi everyone. You can find episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify Originals from ParCast for free on Spotify. In the previous episode, we explored Garrow's lonely childhood and his increasingly savage acts of violence in Syracuse. Today, we'll discuss Garrow's brutal murder spree in the Adirondack Mountains. We'll also chronicle Garrow's year-long plot to escape justice and the dramatic legal saga that followed his capture.
We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us.
This episode is brought to you by Oli. Back to school means food changes, early breakfasts, school lunches, after school snacks, and let's not even talk about dinner. Oli's here to help you cover all the wellness spaces from daily multivitamins to belly balancing probiotics. Oli's got your fam covered. Buy three and get one free with code bundle24 at O-L-L-Y dot com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Hi there, Carter Roy here. If you're interested in true crime, especially unsolved murders, serial killers, and cold cases, you'll love my brand new show, Murder True Crime Stories. Each episode covers a notorious murder or murders with a special focus on those who were impacted the most. We'll always leave with the knowledge of why these stories need to be heard. You can listen to Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts.
- Hello there, I'm Mike Flanagan, and welcome to Spectre Vision Radio's production of "Director's Commentary." "Director's Commentary" is a deep dive into a film through the eyes of the filmmaker or filmmakers who made it. It combines an in-depth interview format with a classic "Director's Commentary" track, the likes of which used to be common on physical media releases, but sadly are becoming more and more rare these days. Filmmakers talking about film with filmmakers for people who love film.
and filmmakers. In the summer of 1973, 37-year-old Robert Garrow left behind the idyllic suburban life he'd worked so hard to build. For years, he'd kept up appearances with his neighbors, children, and parole officer. He'd concealed his true monstrosity from everyone but his victims.
But now that was all over. He'd just killed a teenage girl, Alicia Houck. He knew the cops already had him on their radar. He had to get out of town. And fast. So that July, he packed up a few belongings and drove north, more than 150 miles to the vast expanse of Adirondack Park.
A sprawling six million acre stretch of forested mountains, it was a popular spot for tourists and hikers. It was also an ideal place to get lost and never be found. Once he'd picked a secluded place to set up camp, Garrow tried to unwind. But out in the wilderness, with only birdsong and his own thoughts for company, he became more agitated. His head was pounding, a white-hot pain that worsened every hour.
Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg.
These headaches date back to the car accident Garrow had the previous year. Persistent headaches are the most common symptom of a traumatic brain injury, and the risk may be increased if a person experiences recurrent head trauma. You'll remember from our previous episode that, according to Garrow's sister, their mother knocked him unconscious at least once when he was a boy. We already discussed the well-established risks of childhood brain injuries.
It's possible that the car crash aggravated existing damage, causing Gero's debilitating headaches. Several studies indicate a link between severe headaches and hostility. A 2021 case report published by researchers at a Turkish university described a patient whose headaches triggered what seemed to be dissociative aggression.
While headaches aren't enough to make someone a murderer, they could have made Garrow's violent impulses worse. Over the next two days, the pain persisted, making it hard to sleep or even think straight. By July 14th, Garrow had become a powder keg.
That same morning, 23-year-old Danny Porter and his girlfriend, 21-year-old Susan Petz, set off on a camping trip in the Adirondacks. Danny was working hard as a political pollster for a local election at the time, while Susan was about to begin her final year at Boston University. They were both looking forward to a well-deserved break out in the wilderness. By mid-afternoon, the couple reached a pretty stretch of woodland on the southern side of the mountain range,
There was no formal campground in this area of the park, and as far as they could tell, there was nobody else around for miles. But they were wrong.
The details of what happened next are sketchy. The only account we have is from Garrow himself, and by his own admission, his memory is vague. Here's what he told his lawyers, according to Jim Tracy's book, Sworn to Silence. Garrow had pulled over to the side of a narrow forest road because his head was killing him. He sat there in agony as Danny and Susan pulled up behind him.
They didn't have enough room to pass, so Danny got out and walked towards the driver's side of Garrow's car, perhaps to see if he needed help. The exchange quickly took an ugly turn. It's unclear who said what, but good intentions devolved into conflict. Given Garrow's hair-trigger temper, it likely didn't take much to push him over the edge.
At some point, Garrow exited his car and started scuffling with Danny. The pair ended up falling into a steep embankment that ran alongside the road. In a moment of pure fury, Garrow reached for the knife he'd concealed inside his jacket and stabbed Danny repeatedly.
When he was sure Danny was dead, Garrow calmly walked back up the slope towards the road. Susan was still sitting in the car, completely terrified. Garrow told her that he was taking her hostage, but he had no intention of letting Susan go. He drove her about an hour north towards Mineville, a tiny hamlet close to the Vermont border. They camped there for two days, during which Garrow repeatedly coerced Susan into having sex with him.
On July 16th, he said that Susan asked if she could go home. When he said no, he claimed she grabbed his knife and tried attacking him. Garrow wrestled the knife away and then killed her. After his rage subsided, he hid her body inside the air vent of an abandoned mine shaft, where he hoped it would go unnoticed.
Meanwhile, 200 miles away in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Danny's friend Pat Cadell was already worrying. It was Monday morning and Danny hadn't shown up for work. That wasn't like him. He was reliable, the kind of guy who always called if he was running late. That afternoon, Pat called the police and reported his friends missing. Soon afterwards, state troopers found the couple's abandoned car on the same narrow forest road where they'd left it.
Nothing about the scene seemed suspicious. The car was parked and locked, and there were no signs of a struggle nearby. The police dismissed Pat's concerns. They knew a big group of Boston University students were on a whitewater rafting trip in the area that week. They figured Danny and Susan had decided to join the others.
But Pat had an uneasy feeling. He just knew something was wrong. So he gathered a group of friends and together they drove out to the spot where Danny and Susan's car had been found. Trying to keep their anxiety at bay, the group fanned out and started searching the wilderness.
Eventually, a young man named Jim King noticed Danny's body lying in the ditch. He picked Danny's remains up, carried them to the road, and yelled to the others for help. But he knew there was nothing to be done. Danny had been dead for days.
In a cruel twist of fate, when the friends called the police, they initially became suspects. The authorities were suspicious because Jim had disrupted the crime scene by moving the body. But the group was well connected. Jim worked for Senator Ted Kennedy, and so authorities turned their attention elsewhere.
With Susan still missing, investigators launched a statewide search. At the time, Garrow was still lurking around the vast Adirondack park, blending in amongst the day hikers and backpackers. It must have been an odd feeling. Between stints in prison, his various jobs, and his family, he'd gotten used to having constant company. But in the two weeks after he killed Danny and Susan, Garrow spent more time alone than he had in years.
He was reminded of his childhood, the total isolation he'd felt on the farm, where he'd been left with little supervision. It wasn't a happy memory. In fact, it fanned the flames of his rage even further. ♪
On July 28, 1973, a group of four friends set out from the outskirts of Albany for the Adirondack Mountains. They were all in their late teens and early twenties, looking forward to a long weekend camping together. But the site where they planned on staying was full. Undeterred, they found a secluded clearing off of Route 30 and set up camp there for the night.
23-year-old Carol Malinowski, the oldest of the group, shared a tent with her fiancé, 19-year-old Dave Freeman. In another tent were Dave's friends, 18-year-old Phil Domblewski and 20-year-old Nick Fiorello. The next morning, Phil and Nick woke up before sunrise to go fishing, while Dave and Carol slept in.
When the couple awoke around 9 a.m., they heard footsteps outside their tent. They called their friends' names, assuming they'd returned from the fishing trip. But there was no reply. Instead, Dave and Carol watched in horror as the zipper to their tent slowly opened. Still half-asleep, they wondered if it was a dream.
Garrow, on the other side, was wide awake. He hadn't slept all night. He'd been parked nearby, just out of sight, watching the group. Waiting for this moment. At first, the couple thought Garrow looked like a park ranger. He was wearing a fedora and had a pair of binoculars around his neck. But then they saw the rifle. Garrow calmly told them to leave the tent, and they obeyed. He claimed he'd run out of gas and needed to siphon some from their cars.
Just then, Nick and Phil returned from their fishing trip to find this strange scene. Dave and Carol's paralyzing fear briefly turned to relief. Now it was four against one. But it seems they were too disoriented and scared to try to overpower Garrow, who didn't seem phased at all. He told the group he just wanted their gas, but he had a criminal record and couldn't risk getting caught. So he was going to tie them all to trees to make sure they didn't rat him out.
He marched the foursome into the woods at gunpoint. Along the way, the group tried to defuse the situation, telling Garrow he was welcome to just take the gas. They promised they wouldn't tell anyone. Garrow wouldn't hear it. He snapped, "'Don't try anything or I'll blow a hole in you. I've killed before and I'll kill again.'"
One by one, Garrow had the four friends tie one another to trees while he watched. He made sure to leave several feet of distance between the trees so that none of the captives could see each other. Slowly and methodically, Garrow walked back through the woods, surveying his hostages. Eventually, he reached the first tree, where 18-year-old Phil was tied up. He lowered his gun and pulled out a buck knife.
Garrow stabbed Phil repeatedly in the chest. Though the others couldn't see what was happening, they heard Phil's anguished cries, and then a terrible silence. Panicking, the others began struggling against their ropes. Since Garrow had forced them to tie themselves up, it wasn't too difficult to break loose. Soon, Nick, Dave, and Carol were all free.
They all fled in separate directions. Momentarily stunned, Garrow looked around frantically and spotted a set of footprints in the mud. He started running after the tracks and caught up with Dave in the woods. Pressing his rifle into the back of the young man's head, Garrow forced him to return to the campsite. He ordered Dave to lie next to him in a ditch and help keep watch. It's not clear exactly why. It might have made more sense to flee, but as far as we can tell, Garrow simply froze.
Everybody's likely familiar with "fight or flight," but there are actually three typical responses to danger: fight, flight, and freeze. It's believed that the third response arises when the other two are unlikely to be effective. In those situations, the human body stays put to wait for the danger to pass.
Consciously or not, it seems Garrow decided that fighting and fleeing weren't his best options. He was acting on pure instinct. Regardless of what was going on in his mind, the two escapees weren't dwelling on it. Carol sprinted through several acres of dense woods and onto a nearby road, where she luckily managed to flag down a passerby.
Almost hyperventilating, she told the driver what had happened, and he agreed to take her to the nearby village of Speculator for help. Meanwhile, Nick ran to his car and gunned it, still half-blind with panic as he drove away.
When he reached the nearby village of Wells, he pulled into the parking lot of a diner and began screaming for help. According to author Jim Tracy, the locals were wary. Nick was covered in dirt and, to them, appeared to be having some kind of psychotic episode. His story about being attacked by a lunatic in the woods sounded like a bad acid trip. Eventually, though, he persuaded a group of residents to come with him to the campsite.
There, they came across Dave and Garrow, still lying on their stomachs in the ditch. When Dave saw the locals coming, he leaped to his feet and ran towards them, screaming, "He's got a gun, and he's going to shoot!" But Garrow didn't shoot. Instead, he calmly got to his feet and walked away into the forest.
Once again, it's hard to make sense of Garrow's thought process here, but retreating turned out to be a smart call. His calm attitude surprised and confused the locals, so much so that no one bothered pursuing him. Meanwhile, the man who picked up Carol called the sheriff in the town of Lake Pleasant, about 15 miles away.
Once the authorities in both towns got involved, it soon became clear that Carol, Dave, and Nick's stories matched perfectly. State troopers found Phil's body, still tied to a tree near the campsite. This wasn't some acid trip gone wrong. This was nearly a mass murder.
Within 48 hours, a sprawling manhunt was underway. More than 200 police officers combed the woods and mountains around the crime scene. Helicopters buzzed overhead and bloodhounds blazed a trail on the ground. Amidst the chaos, Garrow abandoned his car and fled into the woods on foot. That turned out to be a fatal mistake. Before long, the authorities found his car and traced the license plates. 37-year-old Robert Garrow was now the most wanted man in the state of New York.
Looking into his record, the police discovered he was on bail for sexually assaulting two minors in Syracuse. He'd recently missed his court date. At some point, they also identified Garrow as the suspect in Danny's murder, based on the similarities between the killings and the location in Adirondack Park. Susan Petz, meanwhile, was still considered missing.
The possibility that she might still be alive, maybe even a captive, added new urgency to the investigation. Rumors that a serial killer was on the loose spread terror throughout the area. After hearing the news, some panicked campers abandoned their tents and campsites, leaving their supplies behind. To catch Garrow, the police set up a sprawling network of roadblocks around Adirondack Park.
They were confident they were closing in on the killer. But Garrow was crafty. He evaded the police roadblocks and, without anyone noticing, stole a car from a lodge. And escaped. He'd gotten away again by the skin of his teeth. But he had no intention of ever getting caught.
By early August of 1973, 37-year-old Robert Garrow had been on the run for about a week. After somehow slipping out of Adirondack Park, he made his way east towards Lake Champlain. His younger sister, Agnes, lived nearby, and he knew she wouldn't turn him away. The cops already had her house under surveillance, but as it turned out, Garrow happened to arrive shortly after the police left to follow up on another lead.
He stayed briefly, just long enough to watch himself on the 11 o'clock news. Thanks to that report, he realized the police had already identified his stolen car. Garrow told his sister and her family that the whole thing was a misunderstanding. According to journalist Jim Tracy, Agnes believed him, so she didn't alert the police to his presence. After an hour or so, he slipped out of the back door and disappeared into the night, leaving the stolen car behind.
The next day, the authorities found the vehicle on a dirt road near Agnes' home. Now in its second week, the manhunt widened to cover the entire county. Garrow traveled by foot through nearby wooded areas, stealing food and drinks from homes and campsites when he could. Maybe he figured he had better odds of surviving in the woods.
He was wrong. On August 9th, a game warden spotted Garrow and recognized him immediately. He tried to place Garrow under arrest, but the killer fled. Until then, running had always worked well for him. This time though, the game warden gave chase. When Garrow refused to stop, he pulled out his gun and shot him four times.
Somehow, despite bullet wounds to his back, arms, and legs, Garrow kept moving, but only for a few moments. Finally, he collapsed into the undergrowth. Authorities rushed him to the hospital. As soon as he awoke, they bombarded him with questions, desperate to determine Susan's whereabouts. But Garrow refused to say a word, except to ask for his lawyer, Frank Armani.
Armani had been effective and ruthless in defending Garrow against assault charges in the past. He'd even persuaded some victims to drop their cases. Garrow was confident his old attorney would come through for him again. Armani took the case and enlisted a criminal defense lawyer, Francis Belge, as co-counsel. The defense had an uphill battle, and both lawyers knew it. There was a lot of evidence against Garrow. Most importantly, there were three eyewitnesses who could testify against him.
So Garrow admitted everything. He told his team he'd killed not only Phil Domblewski, but also Susan Petz and Alicia Houck, the high schooler in Syracuse. By that point, Alicia's body had not been found. The police had her pegged as a teenage runaway. But Garrow told them exactly where he'd left her remains, in a cemetery near Syracuse University.
He also revealed that he disposed of Susan's body inside the air vent of a mine shaft. He seemed curiously detached as he described the murders. When he recalled killing Susan, he used the roundabout phrase, "She got stabbed with my knife."
This passive phrasing might simply indicate Garrow's unwillingness to take responsibility for his crimes. Or it could point to something deeper, a type of dissociation. In psychology, this word is a blanket term that refers to a break in a person's mental functioning, generally a disconnect between their thoughts, actions, feelings, or sense of self.
Research shows that some level of dissociation during a violent crime is relatively common, so it's possible Garrow knew he'd killed Susan, but felt no real-life attachment to the act. Armani and Belgi didn't have time to dwell on the nuances of Garrow's phrasing. They had to make sure he was telling the truth. So they followed the directions he'd given them, eventually coming to a steep hill in a stretch of woodland.
At the top, they found the mine shaft, along with the vent Garrow had described. Peering into the darkness with a flashlight, the men recoiled. Susan's body was exactly where Garrow said it would be. On a separate trip, Belgi confirmed that Garrow hid Alicia Houck's body at a cemetery in Syracuse.
The attorneys knew the police were searching for Susan and Alicia. Their families had been in agonizing limbo for weeks. Now, they alone knew the truth. But under the attorney-client privilege rules, they couldn't disclose anything Garrow had told them. There are some exceptions to this rule. In most states, lawyers can break attorney-client privilege if someone is in danger, for example. But that didn't help here.
In a 2016 episode of the podcast Radio Lab, Armani discusses how morally conflicted he felt during this time. Both families were still clinging to the hope that their daughters might be alive, and he couldn't say anything. During the Radio Lab episode, he said, "You wake up at 2:30 in the morning with sweat running down your back. You're questioning yourself. You're hurting people. So you begin to wonder, 'Am I in the right profession?'"
He searched desperately for ways to get the information out without directly betraying his client. He tried brokering a deal with the prosecution, offering up the location of the bodies in exchange for a more lenient sentence. But the DA refused on moral grounds, finding it unethical for the defense to use the bodies as a bargaining chip. Ultimately, the bodies were uncovered without Armani's help.
In the final weeks of 1973, two kids stumbled onto Susan's remains while they were playing in the mineshaft. Coincidentally, a Syracuse University student found Alicia's body in the cemetery around the same time. After months of agony, both families were, at last, able to bury their loved ones. Garrow's six secrets were all unveiled.
Six months later, the 38-year-old stood trial for the murder of Philip Domblowski and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. To support this claim, he testified on the stand about his abusive childhood and history of bestiality. It did little to convince the jury. On June 27th, they found Robert Garrow guilty of murdering Philip Domblowski. He was given the maximum sentence of 25 years to life and sent to the Clinton Correctional Facility.
In most episodes of Serial Killers, we'd be winding down around this point, but Robert Garrow's story is bizarre to the end. Far from showing any remorse for his crimes, Garrow spent his first few years behind bars lashing out at everyone. He sued the state, claiming they hadn't provided him with adequate care while he was hospitalized with gunshot wounds.
He also sued the officer who shot him, along with the doctors who treated him. He even sued his lawyers for inadequate defense, just in case they didn't already regret taking him on as a client. Eventually, representatives from the state reached a deal with Garrow. They would transfer him to a medium security facility if he agreed to drop his lawsuits.
In 1978, four years after his conviction, Garrow arrived at Fishkill Prison, known for housing inmates with disabilities and the elderly. That was only the beginning of his master plan. He also claimed to have lingering injuries from being shot and used a wheelchair to get around. For that, he was placed in a low-security unit for those with physical disabilities.
In time, the guards became particularly lax around him. That was a mistake. In reality, Garrow didn't need the wheelchair. He spent his nights secretly working out in his cell, preparing himself for what was to come.
In September of 1978, Garrow's 18-year-old son, Robert Jr., paid him a visit. While the prison was technically medium security, it seems the security on that day was minimal. Because somehow, Robert Jr. smuggled a pistol inside, of all things, a box of KFC chicken.
It's been suggested by some that for Robert Jr., it was an act of love for the distant father he craved validation from. For Garrow, the gun was an insurance policy. He wouldn't use it unless he absolutely had to.
That night, after lights out, Garrow made a dummy out of pillows, stuffed it inside his prison clothes, and left it under his sheets. According to Jim Tracy, Garrow then exited his cell in his wheelchair and used a table leg to pop off two railings from his ward's porch, leaving a gap just wide enough for him to wiggle through.
Armed with the pistol, he was ready to use it if anybody confronted him. But once again, security was lax, and it seemed nobody noticed Garrow go. Nor did they see him head outside, scale the prison fence, and disappear into the darkness beyond. Garrow must have been elated as he jumped down from the fence onto free soil. Yet again, he defied extraordinary odds to evade justice. Breathing in the night air, he felt invincible.
The morning after, a guard saw what appeared to be Garrow still asleep in his cell after the wake-up call and yelled at him. When there was no response, he realized what was going on and raised the alarm. Within an hour, officers had combed every square foot of the prison and its grounds. In Beacon, the closest town to the prison, residents were warned that an inmate had escaped.
As guards, police, and state troopers scoured the surrounding area, they must have felt hopeless. After all, Garrow had a huge head start. His escape had gone unnoticed for an entire night. He might already be out of the state, maybe even out of the country.
But he hadn't. For reasons that remain unclear, Garrow didn't even run once he was free. He didn't take off into the dense woods or steal a car from the lot. Once again, he just froze.
Three days after his escape, corrections officers found him running through the woods just beyond the prison fence. Astonished, they yelled at him to stop and began chasing him. In response, Garrow shot one of the officers. With that, the officials opened fire, shooting him 39 times in all. On September 11th, 1978, Robert Garrow died at the age of 42.
Three weeks later, his son pleaded guilty to a charge of promoting prison contraband. He claimed he hadn't known the details of his father's escape plan and thought the pistol was to defend himself from a fellow inmate. Though he was 18, Robert Jr. was tried as a juvenile and ultimately released on parole after serving three months in a youth facility.
Garrow's escape and demise are so absurd that it can be easy to overlook how the killer bent the system to his advantage. He served less than five years behind bars, during which he focused on nothing but his long con. Ultimately, he died without fully bearing the weight of what he'd done. Thanks again for tuning in to Serial Killers. We'll be back soon with another episode.
For more information on Robert Garrow, amongst the many sources we used, we found Jim Tracy's book, Sworn to Silence, The Truth Behind Robert Garrow and the Missing Bodies Case, and Radiolab's 2016 episode, The Buried Bodies Case, extremely helpful in our research. You can find all episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Stay safe out there.
Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Our head of programming is Julien Boirot. Our supervising sound designer is Russell Nash, with Nick Johnson as our head of production and Spencer Howard as our post-production supervisor.
Stacey Mimic is our supervising editor, and Derek Jennings is our writing lead. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Emma Dibdin, edited by Robert Tyler Walker and Terrell Wells, fact-checked by Cheyenne Lopez, researched by Brian Petras and Chelsea Wood, produced by Bruce Kitovich, and sound designed by Anthony Valsick. Our hosts are Greg Poulsen and me, Vanessa Richardson.