Two Truths and a Lie

By Ellen McGarrahan

Book Overview

EDGAR AWARD FINALIST - A private investigator revisits the case that has haunted her for decades and sets out on a deeply personal quest to sort truth from lies.

"[A] haunting memoir, which also unfolds as a gripping true-crime narrative . . . This is a powerful, unsettling story, told with bracing honesty and skill."--The Washington Post

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice - One of Marie Claire's Ten Best True Crime Books of the Year

Ellen McGarrahan was a young journalist for The Miami Herald in 1990 when she witnessed the botched execution of convicted killer Jesse Tafero: flames and smoke and three jolts of the electric chair. When evidence later emerged casting doubt on Tafero's guilt, McGarrahan found herself haunted by his fiery death. Had she witnessed the execution of an innocent man?

Decades later, McGarrahan, now a successful private investigator, is still gripped by the mystery and infamy of the Tafero case, and decides she must investigate it herself. Her quest will take her around the world and deep into the harrowing heart of obsession, and as questions of guilt and innocence become more complex, McGarrahan discovers she is not alone in her need for closure. For whenever a human life is taken by violence, the reckoning is long and difficult for all.
A rare and vivid account of a private investigator's real life and a classic true-crime tale, Two Truths and a Lie is ultimately a profound meditation on truth, grief, complicity, and justice.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812998669
• ISBN13: 9780812998665
• Release Date: February 2021
• Publisher: Random House
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A Gripping Read!

"There's an old party game called Two Truths and a Lie... Someone stands up and says a few things about herself, the more outlandish the better. The trick is in guessing which parts are made up and which are true, and the goal of the game is to get you believing something that never happened. To mix fact and fantasy until no one can tell them apart. As played among friends over a few drinks, it's harmless fun. But add an electric chair and put that game on the Internet, and there's a price to be paid." (p, 320) After witnessing the execution of Jesse Tafero in May of 1990, Ellen McGarrahan tried, for over 30 years, to find out what really happened on the morning of February 20, 1976, when two police officers were murdered. After reading court documents and interviewing people who have been called "the most dangerous people"(p. 25) DEA agents ever encountered, McGarrahan laments, "which truth" should she believe? Some of the lies, in this case, have become "myth", and as McGarrahan laments, "The myth lives on, the foolproof brainwashing of merciless repetition, no matter how many cold hard facts out in the real world contradict it, no matter how absurd it might be." (p. 322). This book was so gripping that I couldn't put it down. McGarrahan writes with deep humanity about the execution and its aftermath in her life. Her skill as an investigator is evident in her explanation of the process she went through to uncover long-overlooked facts. Near the end of the book, she writes, "I do not know exactly what happened at the rest stop that winter morning so many years ago. There are moments of the tragedy that remain a mystery to me. But there are a few things I can say for sure right now." (p. 319) Read the book to join Ellen McGarrahan as she travels around the world to investigate the facts behind the murders of two police officers that resulted in the unsettling, botched execution of Jesse Tafero.