WILLIAM D. LARUE

ABOVE: A page from Brian McCarthy's prison file. In the summer of 2018, I sat at a desk inside the village police station in Potsdam, New York, and thumbed my way, page by page, through a department case file that was more than 30 years old. By reading that 2-inch-thick folder – which I was permitted to see after filing a Freedom of Information Law request – I was transported back to 1986, back to that horrific morning of August 29 when officers got the call about a brutal at

I first met Terry Taber in spring 2018 at Riley’s restaurant in Syracuse, New York, where I picked at my salad of ribeye steak over mixed greens as I explained how I wanted to write a book about the 1986 murder of her daughter Katy Hawelka. Terry’s attorney and close friend, retired Onondaga County Court Judge Joseph Fahey, joined us for our lunch, where he and Terry spent a lot more time listening than asking questions. Besides describing to them the book I wanted to write,