On Friday, February 20th, 1976, Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Phillip Black saw a green Camaro at a rest stop on I-95. Black’s friend Donald Irwin was with him for a ride-along. Jesse Tafero, his wife, Sunny Jacobs, their two kids, and Tafero’s former prison cellmate, Walter Rhodes, were in the Camaro. In episode 32, The Murders of Phillip Black and Donald Irwin, I speak with Ellen McGarrahan.

Ellen McGarrahan founded McGarrahan Investigations, a boutique private investigation agency based in London and San Francisco. For more than 20 years, her agency has provided investigation expertise to law firms worldwide. Ellen earned a degree in history at Yale and worked as an investigative reporter at newspapers, including The Miami Herald. In 2021, Random House published her true-crime memoir Two Truths and a Lie about her investigation of an infamous US death penalty case.

NOTES:  The episode transcript is here.  All links are at astudyincrime.com. Take our listener survey.

You can find Ellen at https://www.mcgarrahaninvestigations.com/

You can find her book, Two Truths and a Lie, at https://ellenmcgarrahan.com/

Sources for this episode include:

• 
  
• Two Truths and a Lie: A Murder, A Private Investigator, and Her Search for Justice 
  
• Officer Down Memorial Page https://www.odmp.org/officer/1893-trooper-phillip-a-black
  
• FHP Memorial https://www.flhsmv.gov/florida-highway-patrol/fhp-memorial/phillip-a-black/
  
• Local 10 News https://www.local10.com/news/2019/11/21/stretch-of-i-95-honors-two-fallen-troopers/
  

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A Study in Crime™ is written and produced by Scott Fulmer, author of the true-crime memoir Confessions of a Private Eye. A veteran private investigator, Scott has spent the last 30 years conducting investigations throughout the US. He’s a decorated combat veteran of the Gulf War and lives in the Texas Hill Country near San Antonio. You may contact him at hello@astudyincrime.com.