Documentary Style
TopicalWho Killed Garrett Phillips?
Emmy-winning director Liz Garbus exposes how tunnel vision and racial bias in a small-town murder investigation may have let the real killer escape while destroying an innocent man's life.
Year
2019
Type
series
Episodes
2
Language
English
Director
Liz Garbus
Genres
Summary
In 2011, twelve-year-old Garrett Phillips was strangled in his apartment in Potsdam, New York. Five years later, the man accused of his murder—Oral "Nick" Hillary, a Black soccer coach—was acquitted. The boy's killer has never been found.
Director Liz Garbus gained access to eight hours of police interrogation footage that reveals how the investigation unfolded. The film examines small-town dynamics, racial bias in policing, and the pressure to secure an arrest when a community demands answers. What emerges is a portrait of tunnel vision—how investigators' assumptions shaped the case from the beginning.
What stays with you is the cost of getting it wrong—how a community's need for closure collided with systemic failures that valued a quick arrest over the truth.