The Slaying in Scarsdale
She fell head over heels for a famous and well-off cardiologist, so what made her kill him?
On April 27th, 1923, Jean Harris neé Jean Struven was born to Albert and Mildred Struven in Chicago, Illinois. She lived in an upper-middle class household and she was the second of four children. Jean attended Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio before attending Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
After she graduated with a degree in economics, she married Jim Harris and had two sons by 1952. Thirteen years later, in 1965, she had divorced her husband, who later died in 1977. She filed for divorce after complaining about “extreme and repeated cruelty”. She asked for custody of the two boys and possession of the house and requested that James Harris continue to pay the mortgage. James Harris had agreed to the “cruelty complaint” but said his wife was guilty of acting the same. The court ordered him to make weekly payments of $54.
In 1966, she met Herman Tarnower, a well-known cardiologist who authored the book “The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet” which detailed the rules to a controversial fad diet coined “The Scarsdale Diet” and began a 14-year relationship with him.
During this time, Tarnower was having relationships with other women and Harris knew of the other relationships. Tarnower had given Harris a ring and promised to marry her.
Even though the marriage never took place, they continued to maintain a long-distance relationship as her teaching career took her across different states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.
At her trial, she testified that Tarnower would always go out to dinner parties. When he did, Harris stayed at his home and actually worked on the manuscript of the diet book that would make him a household name. Right before the murder, Harris had been working as the headmistress at a private college preparatory school called the Madeira School for girls in McLean, Virginia.
During this time, Tarnower hired a very young woman named Lynne Tryforos to become his medical assistant, whom Tarnower began an affair with soon after hiring her. Harris outwardly did not get along with Tryforos.
Before the murder occurred, Harris detailed a letter that she sent to Tarnower which was later known as “The Scarsdale Letter” during her trial. In the 10-page long note she called Tryforos a “whore”, “ignorant slut”, and “a vicious, adulterous psychotic,” and lamented about how she found herself unattractive and could not compete with the young assistant as they were both vying for his attention.
On March 7th 1980, Harris expelled four teenagers after finding marijuana stems and seeds in their dorm rooms. Harris had received a letter from one of her students that condemned her for expelling the four and most of the students staged a “sit in” to protest the expulsions. Harris felt emotionally damaged and faculty members noticed that she had become dispirited and later it was revealed that she had become addicted to one of her prescriptions.
The next day, on the 8th, Harris had come up with the intention of killing herself but also had second thoughts about the letter she had sent to Tarnower. She phoned him on the 10th to tell him that she didn’t want him reading the letter and pleaded to see him in person to which Tarnower agreed to.
On March 10th, 1980, Harris drove five hours to Tarnower’s home in Purchase, New York with a revolver. As soon as she arrived at the house, she noticed Tarnower was distant and saw Tryforos’ lingerie and a few of her other items around the house. This led to an argument between Tarnower and Harris.
During the argument, she preceded to shoot Tarnower four times at close range but claimed in trial that she repeatedly tried to call for help. She also claimed that the killing was accidental and that the gun went off as Tarnower tried to take it from her, as she was explaining to him that she was about to kill herself. Prosecutors disputed her claim, noting that there was extra ammunition in her pocket before confronting Tarnower.
Tarnower’s housekeeper had heard the gunshots and called the police. Harris had already left but saw the police cars headed for the house. Feeling guilty, she turned around and followed the police back towards the house. She was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Harris’ siblings bailed her out of jail by posting a $80,000 bond and quickly signed her into the United Hospital of Port Chester to receive psychiatric treatment.
On November 21, 1980, the case first went into trial at the Westchester Country Courthouse in White Plains, New York. Her trial lasted 14 weeks and is considered one of the longest trials in the state’s history.
Even though Harris maintained that she did not mean to kill Tarnower, her defense attorney, Joel Aurnou stated that pleading guilty to a lesser charge would work in her favor thought he was also criticized for not prepping Harris well for the trial. However, the jury could not offer that she could be guilty of manslaughter and the mental health professionals who treated Harris were not called to testify.
The letter that Harris wrote to Tarnower was read aloud during her trial. She did not agree for the letter to be read outloud and stated that it was a “very private letter”.
In it, she addresses Tarnower directly, “You keep me in control by threatening me with banishment,” Harris wrote, “an easy threat which you know I couldn’t live with and so I stay home alone while you make love to someone who who has almost totally destroyed me.”
She explained how heartbroken she was to see that Tarnower had fallen in love with a much younger woman. Harris was met with sympathy from some of the public as her words were laced with overtones of feminism, denouncing male entitlement to explain her motive for revenge.
Jean Harris was sentenced to 15 years to life at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York. Before she was imprisoned there, Harris had worked in the children center and started programs where incarcerated women could work toward obtaining their GEDs or college degrees. She also taught a parenting class to inmates and developed the in-prison nursery for babies born to inmates.
The story of her trial was made into the 1981 television movie The People vs. Jean Harris in which she was portrayed by Ellen Burnstyn who was nominated for an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award for the performance. Burstyn later cameoed as one of Tarnower’s former lovers in the 2005 film Mrs. Harris, in which Jean Harris is played by Annette Bening opposite Ben Kingsley as Herman Tarnower. The actors both received Emmy and Golden Glove nominations for the film as well.
During her incarceration, Harris wrote a memoir and two books. Of the two books, one was a collection of letters to journalist Shana Alexander, the other detailed multiple stories of her time in prison. In all of her works, she continued to maintain her innocence.
Governor Mario Cuomo commuted the rest of her sentence on December 29th, 1992, as she was expected to undergo a quadruple by-pass heart surgery. She moved to the Whitney Center, a retirement home in Hamden, Connecticut after being released.
When Herman Tarnower died, he was interred in the Larchmont Temple section of Mount Hope Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. After her release, Harris visited his gravesite several times.
It was revealed that at the time of her affair with Tarnower, Lynne Tryforos had just recently divorced from her husband, Nicholas Tryforos but had two children with him. In 1984, she later remarried Benjamin Padilla, who owned an engineering business. She also worked at the Berlin Steel Co., in Berlin, Connecticut where was the international marketing and operations manager until her retirement in 2006. She died on May 11, 2020.
Harris died at the age of 89 in 2012 of natural causes in New Haven, Connecticut and is survived by her two sons James and David; her brother, Robert Struven; her sister, Mary Lynch; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
-This story was previously published in the now-defunct True Crime Edition Medium page.
