Scrapped: Justice and a Teen Informant

"Scrapped captures the barren roads and fallow fields of Oswego County the way Capote captured Finney County, Kansas in In Cold Blood." —Tom Barbash, New York Times bestselling author of The Dakota Winters

A convicted man. A missing teen. A buried informant file. And a justice system more interested in closing a case than getting it right.

When criminal defense attorney Lisa Peebles uncovered a secretly recorded phone call and long-buried police evidence in the 1994 kidnapping of 18-year-old Heidi Allen, she realized the case against Gary Thibodeau—the man convicted of the crime—may have been built on the wrong suspects from the start.

Teaming up with investigative reporter John O’Brien, Peebles reopened a case that had haunted upstate New York for decades. What they found was explosive: hidden evidence, a possible police cover-up, a teenage confidential informant left unprotected, and disturbing leads pointing not to the convicted man, but to other violent suspects with ties to drugs, a scrapyard, and Heidi’s disappearance.

As they pushed deeper, the story became even more shocking. Heidi Allen may have been targeted because she was working with law enforcement. Her killers may have remained free while Gary sat in prison proclaiming his innocence. And the truth may have been sitting in plain sight all along—buried beneath years of silence, fear, and institutional failure.

Scrapped is a gripping true-crime investigation about wrongful conviction, corruption, hidden evidence, and a relentless search for justice in a case that never should have been closed.

Lisa Peebles has been head of the Federal Public Defender's Office in Syracuse, N.Y., for 10 years, and has been a lawyer in the office for the past 21. She's taken 30 cases to trial in that time, with nine acquittals. In 2014, the New York State Criminal Defense Lawyers Association gave her the Thurgood S. Marshall Award as the state's outstanding criminal practitioner. She's been a lawyer in the Syracuse area for 27 years.

John O'Brien was a reporter for The Post-Standard newspaper and Syracuse.com for 30 years, the last 10 as an investigative reporter. He's a co-author of the 1996 true-crime book Goodbye, My Little Ones. In 1993, The Post-Standard nominated him for a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering corruption in the local medical examiner's office. In 2017, he ended 35 years as a reporter to take a job as an investigator in Peebles' office. In 2018, the Syracuse Press Club inducted him onto its Wall of Distinction.