‘Who Killed Garrett Phillips?’ Is the Most Infuriating Documentary of the Year

Who Killed Garrett Phillips? begins and ends with its titular question. Director Liz Garbus’ documentary never makes a definite claim as to who may have killed the 12-year-old boy who was brutally murdered in 2011. But it’s the reasoning behind that lack of an answer that haunts her two-part film. To this day, we still don’t know who killed Garrett Phillips because of a police force’s alleged racial discrimination and refusal to look past its favorite suspect.

From its first few minutes, Garbus’ documentary notes how bizarre and immediately biased the investigation into Phillips’ murder was. This was a case that was more concerned with finding someone to blame than someone at fault. Subjects in the documentary even say this. At one point a top Potsdam officer says notes that a child is dead, and they need to put someone behind bars for the family and the media. Not put the person who committed the crime behind bars — someone. That mentality, Garbus’ documentary explores, led to the arrest of Oral “Nick” Hillary.

By all accounts Hillary was a model member of the Potsdam community. After becoming a local soccer star, he became a soccer coach at Clarkson University. Texts and first-person interviews claim that Hillary had a loving and positive relationship with his ex and Phillips’ mother, Tandy Cyrus. But there was one thing that made Hillary stand out in Potsdam. He was a black man in a predominantly white community.

Who Killed Garrett Phillips? never explicitly says an innocent was arrested for a young boy’s murder because of police racism. It never has to. In Garbus’ open-handed way, the film brilliantly pairs Hillary’s straightforward testimony and interviews with his friends and attorneys with the myriad of filmed interviews Hillary gave officers. In almost every instance, argument’s for Hillary’s innocence are clear, concise, and earnest. Conversely ever argument for his guilt is tinged by desperation. At one point that desperation physically makes itself known when an officer is shown on camera to bodily prevent Hillary from leaving an office mid-interview.

That’s the sickening realization that haunts every moment of Who Killed Garrett Phillips? and cements Garbus’ mastery of telling this toxic mystery. This was a police force so desperate to get a suspect behind bars, they rarely paused to question themselves. Few if any people in the highest positions of local authority seemed to give Hillary what he was due: his innocence until proven guilty. As a result not only was an innocent man’s life and career ruined. The person who brutally murdered Garrett Phillips is still allowed to walk free.

Part 1 of Who Killed Garrett Phillips? premieres on HBO on Tuesday, July 23 at 8/7c. Part 2 premieres on HBO on Wednesday, July 24 at 8/7c.

Watch Who Killed Garrett Phillips? on HBO Go and HBO NOW