Oct 30, 2026 · 49 min
Lawyers hide victims’ bodies to protect a killer’s secret
The Buried Bodies Case
The case exposes the collision between attorney-client confidentiality and the families’ need for truth, closure, and justice.
- 1Robert Garrow’s confession forces his lawyers to choose between protecting privileged information and helping locate two missing girls.
- 2Frank Armani and Francis Belge face public outrage while defending Garrow under an insanity strategy and withholding what they know.
- 3The lawyers are cleared under legal ethics rules, but the victims’ families remain burdened by unanswered grief and moral injury.
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After locating the two girls’ bodies, Armani and Belge decide they cannot reveal the information because of attorney-client confidentiality.
The brief
In 1973, Robert Garrow’s capture ends an Adirondack manhunt but begins a more disturbing dilemma: his lawyers learn where two missing girls are buried.
Frank Armani and Francis Belge discover the bodies while representing Garrow, then confront whether attorney-client confidentiality permits—or requires—them to stay silent.
Their attempt to exchange the information for psychiatric confinement fails, leaving Armani unable to answer Susan Petz’s father while preparing Garrow’s defense.
The lawyers survive criminal and ethics proceedings, and the case becomes a teaching touchstone; Susan’s mother sees that lesson as another injury to the families.
The episode’s final tension is irreconcilable: legal rules may justify protecting a murderer’s confidence, but they cannot erase the families’ suffering.
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