Death of the Diet Doctor

Headmistress held in shooting

He knew how to savor the good life, and had the money to do it. He was the author of the bestselling The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet. He was an avid hunter and fisherman, and a connoisseur of good food, fine wine and thoroughbred women. One evening last week Dr. Herman Tarnower, 69, dined with a few intimates at his secluded, $500,000 estate in exclusive Purchase in Westchester County, 29 miles north of New York City. His guests included Lynne Tryforos, about 40, an attractive blond divorcee who had been his medical assistant for 19 years and, more recently, his frequent social companion.

By 9 p.m. the guests had departed and Tarnower was in his second-floor bedroom. Two hours later, shots rang out. While Housekeeper-Cook Suzanne van der Vreken phoned the police, her husband raced upstairs. He found Tarnower, clad in beige pajamas, lying between twin beds and dying from four bullet wounds. Van der Vreken rushed to the window and glimpsed a blue 1973 Chrysler sedan in the driveway.

It had all the elements of an Agatha Christie mystery--an intimate dinner party at a country estate, followed by the shooting of the wealthy and well-known host--but there was no need for a Hercule Poirot to find the suspect. The police arrived in time to stop the sedan and arrest the driver. Her identity was a shocker: Jean Struven Harris, 56, the well-groomed headmistress of the prestigious Madeira School in suburban Washington, which for 74 years has educated the daughters of some of America's richest and most prominent families.

As police investigated the shooting, they found no elegant Christie puzzle but the stuff of soap operas: indications of a romantic triangle, a possible suicide plot, and the tragic end of a 13-year relationship.

Son of a well-to-do New York City hat manufacturer, Hy Tarnower (M.D., Syracuse University, '33) had quietly been practicing medicine in upper-income Scarsdale, seven miles from Purchase, when his diet book was published in January 1979. It quickly caught the fancy of weight-conscious Americans, selling nearly 3 million copies and grossing more than $11 million. The book promised dieters that they would lose an average of a pound a day by adhering to Tarnower's highprotein, low-carbohydrate regime.

Despite his public success, the doctor remained intensely private. Associates regarded him as brilliant--but austere, humorless and egotistical. "Medicine was his life," said Samm Sinclair Baker, who co-authored the book. But Tarnower also hunted big game in Africa, birds in the Carolinas and Newfoundland and went fly-fishing in Iceland and Scotland. Above ail, he was fond of giving small, elegant dinner parties at his brick house, which overlooked a duck pond and a statue of Buddha. Twice a day he weighed himself to make sure he stayed at 174 Ibs., but he rarely had to diet. He once explained: "My cravings are not for Big Macs, but for low-calorie Italian white truffles."

And apparently, until recently, for Jean Struven Harris. Daughter of a career military officer, she graduated with honors from Smith College in 1945, married and had two children: David, now 29, a banker in Yonkers, N.Y., and James, 27, a Marine lieutenant. She divorced her husband in the early '60s, when she was teaching at the University Liggett School in Grosse Pointe, Mich. She later was director of the Thomas School in Rowayton, Conn., and in 1977 became headmistress of Madeira. With a student body of 325 girls (tuition for boarders: $6,100), the school occupies almost 400 closely guarded acres of woodland in Greenway, Va., overlooking the Potomac River. Harris soon became known as a stern disciplinarian. She watched every detail, banning packages of crackers because she was upset about the wrappers thrown on the dining room floor. On a larger issue, she once ruled nearby Georgetown off-limits because some students had been drinking in its taverns. Just two weeks ago she expelled four popular students, including three members of the school's judiciary committee, for smoking marijuana. She lectured the girls so often about maintaining high moral standards that she was nicknamed "Integrity Harris."

Over the years Harris was often in the company of Tarnower, whom she had met through mutual friends. She was a frequent guest at his home in Purchase; she kept a small place in Mahopac, 24 miles away. One sign of their close relationship was the fact that her name tops the list of acknowledgments in Tarnower's diet manual ("for her splendid assistance in the research and writing"). But in recent months, according to friends, Harris' relationship with Tarnower had cooled. He increasingly was seen in public with his medical assistant, Lynne Tryforos, who called him "Dr. T." A friend said they even vacationed together in the Bahamas.

Last week, according to police testimony at a preliminary hearing, Harris arrived at Tarnower's six-acre estate carrying a .32-cal. Harrington and Richardson revolver in a box. She told police that she and Tarnower had a violent argument in his bedroom. "Get out! You're crazy!" he shouted at her. They struggled. Harris was severely bruised on her upper lip and left arm, and Tarnower was shot four times.

Patrolman Daniel O'Sullivan later testified that she said "she had driven up from Virginia with the intention of having Dr. Tarnower kill her." O'Sullivan also said that when he asked who had killed Tarnower, she replied: "I shot him.

I did it." Harris then directed the officers to the gun, which lay on the front seat of her car. At week's end a judge ordered that Harris, free on $40,000 bail, be bound over to a grand jury, which will determine what charges, if any, should be filed against the headmistress of the Madeira School.

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