Dateline: The Accused - What happened to Garrett Phillips? Details of 12-year-old's murder explored

The Dateline episode titled, 'The Accused' focused on the murder of 12-year-old Garrett Phillips, who was killed at his home in Potsdam while being alone in his apartment. He lived there with his younger brother and mother but on that unfortunate day, no one was home when he was strangled and suffocated to death.

Being a small town, the murder of this young white boy had stirred the locality and Nick Hillary, Garrett’s mother’s ex-boyfriend, was quickly suspected of it. Nick, however, maintained that he had nothing to do with the murder and he was eventually found not guilty by a judge in upstate New York.

Let us now explore the murder of Garrett Phillips in detail including how he was killed and what led Nick Hillary to be considered as the primary suspect.

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What happened to Garrett Phillips as shown in Dateline?

October 24, 2011, was like any normal day for Garrett Phillips as he after playing basketball at school, decided to come back home skateboarding. Many surveillance cameras had captured the boy getting back.

However, once he reached home, one of his neighbors, a lady, heard screams coming from Garrett’s apartment some fifteen minutes after he had passed in front of the building security camera.

Hearing those screams, the lady went ahead and knocked on Garrett’s door but only heard the sound of a lock being clicked and thus she called the police. When the police arrived, only Garrett was found inside the apartment, strangled and in physical pain. When taken to the hospital, he could not be saved and passed away.

The killer was nowhere to be seen when the police had broken inside Garrett’s apartment. However, upon further searching of the apartment, the police concluded that the killer might have jumped out of the second-story window as the window screen was tampered with and pushed outside.

Also Read: Dateline: Manner Of Death - 5 harrowing details about Matt Podolak's murder, explored

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Nick Hillary was charged with the murder of Garrett Phillips as shown in Dateline

Garrett Phillips’ murder caused quite a shock wave around the quiet neighborhood of Potsdam and due to being a predominantly White locality, one of the only Black men Oral “Nick” Hillary was quickly a suspect.

Moreover, he also previously dated Garrett’s mother Tandy, and had broken up with her a few months before the murder, which further intensified the suspicion. In 2014, he was charged with second-degree murder and then after a very tedious trial, he was finally proven to be not guilty.

While Tandy had said Nick blamed Garrett for their breakup, no sample of his DNA could be found at the crime scene. The trial was also alleged to be full of racism and misconduct and HBO brought out a documentary on the same, titled Who Killed Garrett Phillips?

Nick had told Dateline:

“I have stated that since day one. I am one hundred percent innocent. I will continue to fight until I don’t have anything left to fight the same way I’m fighting now.”

Even though he was finally acquitted of his allegations, Garrett’s family seemed to believe him to be the murderer as Brian Phillips, Garrett’s uncle was seen to be shouting after the verdict:

“Karma will get you.”

While Nick was proven to be not guilty, the mystery of Garrett’s murder remained and it is still not clear who killed that innocent 12-year-old boy and for what reasons.

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Dateline can be streamed on NBC.

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