THE MOUNTAIN MONSTER
Tortured, raped and killed young campers in Adirondacks
The wilderness around Speculator, N.Y., has long been a prime summer vacation destination, with beautiful lakes, miles of hiking trails, and camping spots among the lush Adirondack forests.
Yet in July and August 1973, the height of the tourist season, the area was deserted.
Police had cleared it, telling people to drop everything and run. They were hunting for a monster.
The object of their search had stabbed a camper, Philip Domblewski, 18, for no apparent reason. At the time of the murder, Domblewski was tied to a tree, helpless, as the monster plunged a knife into his torso five times.
On the morning of July 29, Domblewski, a student from Schenectady who had just graduated from high school with honors, and Nick Fiorello, 20, a musician, woke early to get breakfast and go fishing. Two other friends, Carol Malinowski, 23, and her fiancé, David Freeman, 19, stayed behind in their tent.
A few hours after their friends left, Malinowski said later that a man wearing a fedora and dark glasses poked his head into the tent. He told the couple he had run out of gas and said he was going to siphon some out of their car. They put up no resistance. He was carrying a rifle.
Moments later, Domblewski and Fiorello returned.
At gunpoint, the stranger forced the campers to tie their companions to trees spaced far apart so they couldn’t see one another.
“I’ve killed before and I’ll kill again,” he told them.
Next, Malinowski recalled, she heard an argument between Domblewski and the stranger. Then she heard a weird noise, like someone vomiting, wrote Jim Tracy in his 2021 book on the case, “Sworn to Silence.”
It was Domblewski dying. The stranger had cut him four times with a knife before plunging the blade deep into his chest.
Malinowski, Freeman, and Fiorello untied themselves, fled the killer, and ran for help.
Police later found a gaudy orange Volkswagen abandoned in the area. A records check showed that the car belonged to Robert F. Garrow, Sr., 37, a married father of two teens. He worked as a mechanic in a local bakery and appeared to be a good family man, pleasant and helpful to neighbors.
Garrow kept the monster — a man with a 20-year record of rapes and assaults — well hidden. In 1961, he received a 20year sentence in the Dannemora prison for attacking a young couple, beating the man senseless and raping the woman. It was not his first violent offense.
But his willingness to follow prison rules and a passion for inmate education made him a darling of his jailers. In 1968, this model prisoner was set free on parole.
The survivors of the most recent attack identified Garrow through photos. Detectives wondered if this parolee was behind other recent murders and disappearances, at least three since mid-July. In one case, a couple from Connecticut, Daniel Porter, 23, and his girlfriend, Susan Petz, 21, had traveled to a one-day camping trip about 30 miles from Speculator.
Porter’s body was found on July 18, stabbed through the heart. There was no sign of Petz.
More than 200 state troopers and volunteers, bloodhounds, and helicopters were brought in on the largest manhunt in the region’s history to that point.
Police also turned to Garrow’s family for help, asking his wife and son to make recordings begging him to surrender. All day, the voices of his family boomed from helicopters.
“The children and I want you to come out,” his wife pleaded. “Please listen to me and do what I ask.”
There was no response.
It took 11 days, but he was finally tangled in the dragnet. After a gun battle in which he was seriously wounded, police
had their fugitive.
While Garrow recovered in the hospital, his attorneys — Frank Armani and Francis Belge — tried to pull the truth from their client about the other murders in the area. Garrow admitted to killing four people. Then, he gave his attorneys a map pinpointing the spots of two female victims.
The attorneys followed the map to a mineshaft near Mineville, N.Y., where Garrow said he raped and murdered Petz. They found her remains exactly where he said they would be. The map also led them to the body of another missing person, Alicia Hauck, 16, in a Syracuse cemetery.
Belge and Armani took photos but told no one. They felt that revealing what Garrow had admitted would violate the rules of client-attorney confidentiality. Both paid steep prices — personally and professionally — for adhering to the ethical standards of their profession.
About three months later, both bodies were found. Two boys playing in the mine found Petz and a Syracuse University student spotted Hauck’s remains while he was taking a walk.
At his trial for Domblewski’s murder in June 1974, he told of his horrible childhood, starting with his parents sending him off as farm labor when he was 7. He admitted to a string of rapes, sodomy, and murders and to forcing Petz to live in a tent with him for three days while he sexually abused her.
After two hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty. The judge sentenced him to 25 years to life.
Garrow himself cut that sentence short with an escape attempt in September 1978. Since his capture, he had pretended to be paralyzed.
So it was a surprise when he exited his cell, climbed a fence, and dashed off. Garrow died in a shootout with police a few days later.
To this day, Garrow is remembered in law schools and legal seminars as a case that questions the limits of confidentiality between attorneys and dangerous felons.