Diet Novelties .com

…„Jean Harris, former headmistress of Virginia’s Madeira School who murdered cardiologist Herman Tarnower, author of the “Scarsdale Diet,” was granted clemency by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo (D) today, hours before she underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery.

Harris, 69, has served 11 years, 10 months and six days of her sentence of 15 years to life for the 1980 shooting of Tarnower, her longtime lover. Last week, she suffered her third heart attack in prison, said Shana Alexander, Harris’s confidante and co-author.

Cuomo had denied three previous requests for clemency, despite receiving nearly 25,000 letters and a petition with more than 50,000 signatures on Harris’s behalf, said her attorney, Michael Kennedy.

The governor relented this time, aides said, because of Harris’s failing health and her record of good work in prison.

Harris learned of Cuomo’s action today in a telephone conversation with Aristide Haravon, a cardiologist in Mount Kisco, N.Y., and one of the surgeons who operated on her three hours later.

Haravon said he received a phone call from Cuomo’s office asking him to convey the news if he thought it appropriate just before surgery. He said he decided to do so and phoned her at Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y. “She was elated and happy and started crying,” Haravon said. “Then she said, `I can’t believe it.’ ”

After several hours of surgery, Haravon said that Harris had been given four heart bypasses and “so far . . . is doing fine.”

Harris was in intensive care last night after seven hours of surgery. Hospital officials said she would probably be hospitalized for at least 10 days.

Formerly headmistress at the selective all-girls school in McLean, Va., Harris applied her talents to educating fellow inmates and their children at the all-female Bedford Hills Correctional Center, a maximum-security facility in Westchester County.

“Despite her advancing age and emerging medical problems,” Cuomo said in a statement, “Ms. Harris consistently sought to apply her skills as a teacher and educational administrator for the benefit of other inmates and their children.”

Since she was sentenced in March 1981, many people who once judged Harris harshly have concluded that her sentence was excessive. Vito Titone, a judge on New York state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, had voted to uphold Harris’s conviction while a justice in the Appellate Division. Today, he applauded Cuomo’s decision, saying Harris is a threat to no one.

“She was a battered woman, an emotionally battered woman, not a murderer,” Titone said. “Maybe if she were tried today, things would be different. We know more now about battered women.”

Harris has always maintained that she drove to Tarnower’s estate in Purchase, N.Y., with a .32-caliber revolver the night of the murder because she wanted him to kill her. She was nearly deranged, she said, suffering from withdrawal from an amphetamine that Tarnower had prescribed for her for more than nine years. Harris said she was ready to commit suicide that night and simply wanted to say goodbye.

Their affair of 15 years was ending. Tarnower, 69, a bachelor with a profitable cardiology practice, had taken up with his assistant, a younger woman, it was revealed at Harris’s trial. Prosecutors argued that Harris killed Tarnower in a jealous rage.

Testifying on her own behalf, Harris insisted that Tarnower was shot by mistake as the two struggled for control of the gun. At times appearing haughty and argumentative on the witness stand, she failed to convince the jury, which convicted her of second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.

Harris appealed her conviction on grounds that her attorney provided an inadequate defense, failing to present her as an extremely emotionally disturbed defendant. But her appeals failed, and her lone remaining hope for freedom was clemency.

“She had almost given up” after Cuomo rejected clemency three times, Kennedy said in a telephone interview today. “She harbored a tiny glimmer of hope each year . . . then when the hopes were dashed, it hurt all the more.”

Literary and prolific, author of three books while imprisoned, Harris wrote personal letters appealing to Cuomo for her freedom. With each new book, her network of supporters grew, and they deluged Cuomo with letters and petitions.

This year, “I had a confidential source indicate to me that we had some reason for optimism,” Kennedy said. “But I didn’t share that with her. I’m not sure she could have taken the disappointment had it not come through. I’m not sure she could have survived that physically.”

As she awaited surgery, Harris never mentioned the prospect of clemency in a phone conversation Monday night with Alexander, who has become a close friend since she wrote a book about Harris’s trial. A book of Harris’s letters to Alexander describing her life as an inmate was published this year.

“She told me she was frightened,” Alexander said. “And she sounded very, very tired.” Harris “never was based in self-pity,” Alexander said. “She never cried or sobbed. She’s one of those persons who does better in adversity and tends to fall apart when things are going very well.”

Cuomo’s grant of clemency makes Harris immediately eligible for parole. Her 15-year minimum sentence would not have sent her before the parole board for the first time until February 1996.

In most cases, authorities said, the state Board of Parole quickly frees prisoners granted clemency. In Harris’s case, the parole board is faced with an exemplary inmate.

As Prisoner 81-G-98, Harris resided in the facility’s “Honor Block,” reserved for inmates with a record of above-average behavior.

She taught parenting skills to young mothers at the prison’s children’s center. She organized an annual summer program enabling inmates to receive regular visits from their children. Every Friday, she went to a separate ward to visit the mentally ill inmates, playing Bingo with them and washing their hair.

She contributed all proceeds from her books to the Children of Bedford, a foundation she established to provide scholarships to enable inmates’ children to attend some of New York’s finest private schools, her attorney said.

“No matter what you know or how you feel about the events which resulted in her imprisonment,” said Elisabeth Griffith, current headmistress at Madeira, “she gained the admiration of hundreds of people once she was in prison . . . . She took her own gifts into that environment and cared for people.”

Although Harris’s criminal behavior brought the school a degree of infamy, Griffith said, her deeds as an inmate have inspired the school’s students to become involved with prison-support programs, such as those providing babies born in prison with clothing and inmates with cosmetics.

Friends said they anticipate that, even after Harris is freed, she will continue writing about women inmates and their children and working on their behalf. Most likely, she will retire to a small cottage that she bought in rural New Hampshire with royalties from her first book, Alexander said.

With one exception, prison life has changed Harris little, Alexander said. “She once believed that, if you got up on the witness stand and told the truth, the truth would make you free,” she said. “And she doesn’t believe that any more. She’s wised up.”…”