CARMEL – It was a crime that shocked Putnam County.
In 1979, Franklin Morrison, a stable hand at the old Tilly Foster Farm in Southeast, raped and murdered 15-year-old Jill Garrett, a Carmel schoolgirl hitchhiking along Route 6 before dumping her body in a wooded area off Simpson Road at the Carmel-Brewster line.
Then living in Patterson, Morrison was arrested by the Putnam Sheriff’s Department and charged with murder and rape.
Extensive pretrial publicity led officials to move the case to Rockland County, where it was tried before a jury in New City.
The month-long trial concluded with a conviction on all charges.
Morrison was sentenced to 37½ years to life in prison by the late Putnam County Judge Frank Bowers.
Morrison filed numerous appeals over the years, citing prosecutorial errors, ineffective counsel, and mistakes by the trial judge, but none succeeded.
Now 76, and once among New York State’s longest-serving inmates, Morrison has been paroled after nearly four decades at the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility.
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