Download Mrs. Harris: The Death of the Scarsdale Diet Doctor eBook

As a reader of true crime, I enjoyed this book. Usually, I don't like the long, tedious court-room part
of these tomes, but this author was different. She was so interested in the character of Mrs. Harris,
that I found it fascinating. Even the court room part, she handled well -- and expedited what could
have been where I cut off. I really appreciate the background of the "players" and their emotional
components -- and this book delivered!!

This book provides greater insight into the Jean Harris and Herman Tarnower story. It explains Jean Harris as clearly as you are likely to get. A great companion to Shana Alexander's Very Much A Lady.

I went to Jean Harris's high school, she remains the most well known if not notorious alum who ever attended. A sensational case that there ever was, Jean Harris brought to light many issues having to do with relationships, our legal system, celebrity, and a clashing of old school Victorian values and the new school liberated ones. It's also a character study on Jean Harris and Herman Tarnower, who were both very successful yet two deeply flawed people.

Jean Harris was the head mistress of a girls' boarding school in Virginia and had a lot of things on her plate. Some students at the school were caught smoking pot. While today (and in 1980 at the time of the events), we would excuse this as simply "something that kids do to be bad", Jean was faced with a dilemma whether to allow the girls to remain at Madeira School. When she opted for them to be expelled for it, the entire campus was in an uproar. She had angry students, angry parents and faculty screaming at her for her decision. Coupled with that, her long time boyfriend, Herman Tarnower, a cardiologist preparing to publish his book, The Scarsdale Diet, nowadays a precursor to The Atkins Diet, informed her that she would not be sitting at the head table at an upcoming banquet in his honer and would be off to the side with other friends. The other friends included Lynn Tryfornos, the receptionist at his medical practice who he had also been carrying on an affair with. Plus the prescription speed she had been taking for years that Tarnower had prescribed for her to keep up with the demands of her schedule had run out and she was going through withdrawl. She was falling apart very quickly. She seemed to focus all of her anger about Tarnower's infidelity on Tryfornos when she was not the only woman he was cheating with, fearing loosing him to her and her alone. She then sat down and wrote a long rambling letter to Tarnower which she would send registered mail as her suicide letter, but would be read aloud in court to condemn her. It was then on a March night in 1980 that she decided she was going to commit suicide in Tarnower's backyard. She said she went into his bedroom, hoping to have some final words with him before she actually did it, when it all went wrong. A struggle ensued, and Jean ended up shooting and killing Tarnower accidentally.

Many came down on Jean for her actions and how she approached it. She was embarrassed of what happened for a variety of reasons and ended up having her dirty laundry aired publicly. No one wants to be in a position like this. And yet, she ended up in this position like many women who go to prison for the same reasons: drugs and a man. Instead of coping a plea to have her sentence reduced, she refused to cooperate and ended up behind bars for far longer than most women who end up in similar situations. Jean was lucky that she was able to take a bad situation and make something of herself, continuing her education career while behind bars teaching parenting classes and helping other women inmates get their GEDs. She was also lucky that she had friends and family come to see her and accept her phone calls when so many other women who go to prison are left alone. She saw her prison sentence as making lemonade out of lemons, of which she had no choice in the matter to do so. And yet, she had a lot of time to sit and face her demons like so many who did a bad thing.

Diane Trilling's book about the "Diet Doc" murder is engrossing and informative. She really has a great understanding of the appalling relationship of Herman Tarnower and Jean Harris. Both Tarnower and Harris are depicted as they really were: a pair of unlikeable, emotionally crippled snobs who deserved each other.

Trilling also gives the reader a great view of the trial, the testimony, the witnesses and Harris's disastrous testimony. Her time on the stand really showed her for what she was: a snotty, scornful, spiteful woman who had no idea what the truth was, a woman steeped in self-pity and bitterness and rage. After listening to her no doubt the jury thought: "yep...she MURDERED him."

Apparently, Harris was VERY angry (she was ALWAYS angry, prone to rages and fits of temper, even without the speed that Tarnower prescribed for her) at Trilling for the way she was portrayed in Trilling's book. In Harris's self-serving memoir, "Stranger in Two Worlds" Harris calls Trilling "senile!" Trilling was a woman of superior intellect; she was NOT senile, not by a long shot.

Anyone interested in this case should read this book. It's truthful and unbiased and very interesting to read. Trilling tells the TRUTH about Jean Harris.