TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE

Vivid re-examination of a puzzling double murder.

Journalist and private investigator McGarrahan’s debut is an engrossing, authoritative fusion of true crime and memoir. She has a particular connection to the grisly crime at is center, which she portrays in a chilling prologue. In 1990, as a young reporter for the Miami Herald, she witnessed the execution of Jesse Tafero, convicted with his girlfriend, Sunny Jacobs, in the 1976 slayings of two police officers during a roadside stop. Their convictions were based on the testimony of Walter Rhodes, who recanted and changed his story numerous times, which led to Sunny’s release—and celebrity following the case’s dramatization in the play and movie The Exonerated. Haunted by questions about Tafero’s possible innocence, McGarrahan took a leave of absence to review the case. During her investigation, she was able to link Tafero, Sunny, and Rhodes to a startling web of South Florida criminality, including mysterious mob deaths, celebrity jewel thieves, a violent drug gang, and even tales of “men forced to dig their own graves in the Everglades.” McGarrahan interviewed Jacobs and tracked down Rhodes, by then a fugitive, in a tense encounter: “He knew about the murders,” writes the author, “the blood monolith suddenly in the center of my life again.” Throughout, she maintains tension by connecting the case’s labyrinthine backstory to her own life of wanderlust and detection, portraying her exasperated husband as a source of solidity and her PI career as an enigmatic motivation for grappling with the ugly mystery of the murder. She eventually makes a conclusion about the case after a full consideration of available evidence, including talks with the state’s attorney and surviving eyewitnesses. Although her reflections are occasionally redundant, McGarrahan captures a keen sense of place and the significance of the entire ordeal.

An accomplished, unsettling look at a confounding crime and larger issues of memory, culpability, and punishment.