February 5, 2021
By David Von Drehle
[The] essential fact of capital punishment — the fatal gulf between the letter of the law and the chaos of the world — is the subtext of a brilliant new book, “Two Truths and a Lie” by Ellen McGarrahan.
As a young reporter in 1990, McGarrahan volunteered to witness the execution of Jesse Tafero, convicted murderer of two law enforcement officers in South Florida. What she saw — an electric chair malfunction that set the prisoner’s head on fire — changed her life.
That gruesome killing also set in motion a reexamination of Tafero’s case, in which responsibility for the crime was unevenly distributed among three adults in one suspect car: The driver served time and went free; Tafero’s wife went to prison; and Tafero was burned alive. Ultimately, the wife also walked — fully exonerated, in the opinion of her supporters.
Now an accomplished private investigator, McGarrahan was haunted by her morning in the death house at Florida State Prison. Years passed without dimming those nagging memories, and she grew determined to find the truth of the events that brought her to that place. As her spellbinding memoir makes plain, when Ellen McGarrahan is determined to find something, there is no stopping her.
A search that begins at a Florida rest stop early one morning in 1976 ultimately spans years and crosses oceans, bumps up against a jewel thief, a movie star, a religious cult and the Irish Republican Army. Along the way, the author sinks into the queasy obsession that is familiar to anyone who has ever delved into the heart of darkness and found it to be not a substance but an emptiness; a room whose occupant has vanished; a deserted sidewalk that passes a shadowed doorway where someone, or something, might be lurking.
To summarize her conclusions would spoil the experience of reading a book that is among the truest of true crime stories ever written. But if the author comes full circle in her understanding, what matters is the fullness of the circle itself. McGarrahan’s story renders the tawdriness and banality of crime, the frustrating limits of witnesses and evidence, the hazy frontier between truth and lies, the slipperiness of culpability. This is capital punishment as it looks and feels on the inside — a tattered, dirty curtain over the inexpressibly sad and stupid fact of violence.
Praise
“A frightening, thrilling, and moving detective story that is also a personal and moral journey. [Ellen McGarrahan is] a brave and glorious writer… Two Truths and a Lie is stunning. I came away shaken and moved, and I think you will too.”
—Mark Harris, author of Mike Nichols: A Life
“In these beautifully written pages, the decades-long quest of journalist–turned–private detective Ellen McGarrahan to come to terms with an unusually cruel death-row execution that she witnessed early in her career becomes both page-turning whodunit and sobering assessment of the American justice system. We walk, at times nervously, in McGarrahan’s footsteps as she reinvestigates the brutal murder that led to that ugly execution, and we find ourselves weeping with her when it becomes clear that there is only one thing of which we can be certain: In our country, meting out punishment is far easier than seeking, finding, and telling the truth.”
—Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Blood in the Water
“A masterpiece—more honest than In Cold Blood and more profound than The Executioner’s Song. This riveting memoir of a private investigator’s search for the buried truth about a shocking tragedy is a brilliant addition to the literature of crime and punishment.”
—David Von Drehle, New York Times bestselling author of Triangle
“Both a mesmerizing page-turner and haunting meditation on various shades of guilt. Ellen McGarrahan is an investigator with the storytelling chops of a novelist, and her tour de force goes well beyond traditional true crime.”
—Claudia Rowe, author of The Spider and the Fly
“My heart was in my throat through each page of this captivating memoir…. McGarrahan chases her story across the globe, drawing near to a cast of fascinating and dangerous characters along the way. All important stories involve some risk, and McGarrahan laid her life on the line for this one.”
—Sarah Gerard, author of Sunshine State
“McGarrahan’s eagle eye and relentless drive to learn the truth—whatever it may be—carry us with her on this powerful and fascinating journey.”
—Eilene Zimmerman, author of Smacked