Last month, Tracy’s book, “Sworn to Silence,” went on sale in bookshops and online. In it, he chronicles the life and crimes of multiple murderer and rapist Robert Garrow, including Garrow’s trial and conviction, his escape from prison, his death in a shootout with officers and the ethical dilemma faced by his lawyers, who knew but couldn’t tell where Garrow had hidden the bodies of two of his victims.

Tracy first wrote Garrow’s story for The Post-Star in 2000 in a six-part series, “Blood in the Adirondacks,” that ran one after another over the course of a week.

Garrow, who grew up in Mineville, committed four murders in the early 1970s — three in the Adirondacks and one in Syracuse, where he lived as an adult. He was also implicated in numerous other rapes and murders, cases that Tracy, using his skills as a reporter, explores in greater detail in this book than anyone has previously.

The 1973 manhunt for Garrow — the largest in state history at the time — generated nationwide publicity. The transcript of his trial in Hamilton County offers readers a wild ride all by itself, featuring controversial defense tactics and horrifying revelations about the accused.

Jim Tracy (Photo provided)

But Tracy has gone beyond the printed record in “Sworn to Silence,” tracking down never-before interviewed witnesses, including two people Garrow targeted who got away, and conducting multiple in-person interviews with key figures, such as Frank Armani, one of Garrow’s two lawyers.

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More than four

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Since he has been working on the book on and off for two decades, Tracy was able to interview people important to the case who died years ago, such as the state police investigator, Henry McCabe, who led the Garrow investigation and the manhunt.

It was McCabe who insisted Garrow had gotten away with many heinous crimes throughout the upstate region.

“He died convicted of four murders,” Tracy said. “Henry McCabe, who knew the case better than anyone, swore he had killed more than the four.”

After many interviews, Armani eventually admitted to him McCabe was right, Tracy said.

“Years later, Armani put his head down and said, ‘Put it this way, I would go with what McCabe says,'” Tracy said. “He would go out on the prowl, find targets of opportunity, abduct them, use them and kill them.”

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Keeping secrets

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“Sworn to Silence” tells three intertwined stories: Garrow’s murders and the police manhunt; his trial, conviction, imprisonment, escape and death in a shootout with officers; and the ethical struggle of his lawyers, Armani and Frank Belge, after they learned the location of the bodies of two of Garrow’s victims.

Torn between the grief of the victims’ families and their duty to protect the interests of their client, the lawyers walked a tightrope of silence, keeping their client’s secret in the face of terrific pressure from the police and the victims’ families.

It’s a lot of material for one book, and the tone shifts abruptly when Tracy moves from the visceral terror of the murders to the emotional torment of the lawyers, but he makes it work.

Tracy presents sensational details in an understated way, letting Garrow’s brazenness and perversity speak for itself. The book is 350 pages, but with fairly large print, it’s a quick read.

“I could have wrote twice the length of that book, but they gave me a page limit,” Tracy said.

The book is published by Post Hill Press, where, Tracy said, the staff was hoping to sell 500 copies in the first three months. Available in various book-selling outlets and online, it has sold 500 copies in a month so far.

Tracy had been doing research for the book when he could ever since leaving The Post-Star but started work on it in earnest in 2012, after stepping away from a full-time gig as a trainer at the Saratoga harness track.

The success of another Garrow book, by North Country author and publisher Lawrence Gooley — “Terror in the Adirondacks: The True Story of Serial Killer Robert F. Garrow,” published in 2009 — helped persuade Tracy he needed to finish his own effort.

Gooley drew heavily from the 2,000-page trial transcript and newspaper accounts. What Tracy adds are insights from personal interviews and a focus, in the second half of the book, on the lawyers’ dilemma.

When it was revealed during the trial that the lawyers, Belge and Armani, had withheld their knowledge of where two of Garrow’s dead victims were hidden, they faced a torrent of public criticism. But decades later, their actions are viewed within the legal field as ethical, upholding lawyers’ duty to their clients, and are used as examples in law school courses.

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Will Doolittle is projects editor at The Post-Star newspaper in Glens Falls.