Who Killed Garrett Phillips? "Solved!"
Roberta Glass True Crime Report
Roberta Glass
3.3 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2020
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The opinions expressed in this episode are those of Roberta Glass and her guest Thomas J Mortati. Oral "Nick" Hillary was aquited of the murder of Garrett Phillips.
The Roberta Glass True Crime Report is produced by Ati Abdo MacDonald
Many thanks to my Patreon supporters.
This episode is dedicated to Garrett Phillips and the family and friends who loved him.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Roberta Glass and you're listening to my true crime report. On October 24, 2011, in Potsdam, New York, |
| 0:10.2 | 12-year-old Garrett Phillips was found in the home he shared with his mother and half-brother, |
| 0:16.5 | Barron, hanging on to life and suffering from what would become fatal injuries. |
| 0:22.8 | His mother's Jamaican ex-boyfriend, Oral Nick Hillary, was tried and acquitted for the crime in 2016. |
| 0:31.0 | The case was the subject for the HBO documentary, Who Killed Garrett Phillips? |
| 0:36.7 | The documentary argues that Hillary was the victim of a racially |
| 0:40.5 | motivated witch hunt, but like so many true crime documentaries, leaves out much of the prosecution's |
| 0:46.7 | case. To talk to me about this case is Thomas J. Mortati. A graduate of Fordham in Albany Law School, Tom has been a practicing |
| 0:57.1 | defense attorney, specializing in personal injury, medical malpractice, law enforcement, construction, |
| 1:04.7 | and products liability. Now he works for the plaintiff's side. He has litigated cases both in the state and federal court |
| 1:15.0 | and made news in 2019 when he obtained a record $7.436 million verdict in the St. Lawrence County Supreme Court in a medical malpractice case. |
| 1:29.5 | He has been featured in the aforementioned HBO documentary, Who Killed Garrett Phillips, |
| 1:34.8 | as well as the 2020 episode Rear Window about this case, and Garrett Phillips is the subject |
| 1:42.9 | of today's episode, Welcome Thomas J. Mortani. |
| 1:48.1 | And thanks so much for doing this interview. You're welcome. Happy to be here. So you're a civil |
| 1:54.5 | litigator. Why are we talking about a criminal case? And how did you get involved in this case? |
| 2:00.3 | So, yes, my entire career has been in the |
| 2:03.2 | world of civil litigation almost 30 years now, 26 of which was on the defense, primarily civil |
| 2:09.4 | defense side in the last three years. I had moved over to the plaintiff's side. So how I got |
| 2:15.0 | involved in a murder case was I did work for an insurance company that insured the village of Potsdam, New York. |
| 2:23.3 | And they were sued by Mr. Hillary. There were some things that occur before the actual lawsuit that are unique somewhat to New York, where we got to take testimony from Mr. Hillary before |
| 2:35.1 | there was even a lawsuit. And I was contacted by the insurance company for the village of |
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