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District Attorney says Phillips homicide in Potsdam remains unsolved

Posted 10/13/19

BY ANDY GARDNER North Country This Week POTSDAM -- St. Lawrence County’s District Attorney Gary Pasqua says he still considers the Garrett Phillips homicide to be an unsolved case. Oral “Nick” …

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District Attorney says Phillips homicide in Potsdam remains unsolved

Posted

BY ANDY GARDNER

North Country This Week

POTSDAM -- St. Lawrence County’s District Attorney Gary Pasqua says he still considers the Garrett Phillips homicide to be an unsolved case. Oral “Nick” Hillary was charged in 2014 with second-degree murder in the boy’s Oct. 24, 2011 death and was acquitted following a sensationalized trial that drew national media attention.

Former DA Mary Rain at the conclusion of Hillary’s murder trial on Sept. 28, 2016 said she was not pursuing any other leads in the case.

Soon after she left office in 2017, Rain was suspended from practicing law. One of several reasons cited in the June 2018 ruling on her suspension was that she withheld potentially exculpatory evidence from Hillary’s defense team.

Hillary’s prosecution by Rain is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit he has filed in federal court.

Pasqua says he hasn’t had many tips on the Phillips case, but has forwarded them along to investigators.

"Any leads that have been brought to me have been passed on to the appropriate law enforcement agency to be investigated ... there haven't been many, maybe one or two” since the start of his term, Pasqua said.

He said he has spoken with Phillips family members but didn’t want to get into specifics of the discussion.

"I won't go into the specifics of what we talked about ... I think what gets lost in all this, in these documentaries and the stories, is we have a little boy who was murdered. No one has been brought to justice at this time. That's something the family has to constantly live with and be reminded of on a semi-regular basis,” Pasqua said.

"I don't want to add to what they're going through unless something happens in the future, I have something to tell them or announce. Unless that happens, I just hope that at some point this isn’t a constant topic of conversation so they can, in some way, though they'll never be able to, find some sort of peace and just be able to live their lives without it constantly being brought up.

"My position has been the same from the very beginning. If anyone brings us information, we are going to vet it, we are going to have it investigated because as we sit here, no one has been convicted of that crime.”