Crime figure. Until the time of the incident, Harris was the headmistress at the exclusive Madeira School for girls in McLean, Virginia. Her 1981 trial for the murder of a prominent physician galvanized the nation with its story of vengeance by an aging woman scorned. For more than a year — from her arrest on March 10, 1980, to her conviction and sentencing for second-degree murder on March 20, 1981 — her case was front-page news. Wealthy cardiologist, Dr. Herman Tarnower, the 69-year-old founder of the Scarsdale Medical Group whose best-selling book 'The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet' had been a best-seller that sold three million copies, was found lying in an upstairs bedroom, dying of four bullet wounds in his secluded estate in Purchase, New York. When police arrived, they came across Harris driving away from the crime scene. Jean told them that she was going to look for a phone booth to call for help, but officers found a .32-caliber gun in the glove compartment of her car, and she was arrested. The doctor and Harris, who was the divorced mother of two grown sons and 13 years his junior at the time, had been companions for 14 years. He had refused to marry her despite promises that he would. During her eight days on the witness stand, she testified that in the years before the shooting, he had begun appearing at dinner parties and taking vacations with his office assistant Lynne Tryforos, a petite woman who was 33 years his junior. Harris said that she had decided to commit suicide when she bought the revolver and drove to his home so that she could have a few quiet moments with him before she shot herself. Finding him in an upstairs bedroom, she testified that she drew the revolver out of her pocketbook. Tarnower immediately tried to stop her by pushing her hand down and the gun fired. They continued to struggle, and the gun went off a second time. A total of four shots were fired but she could not account for two of the bullets. On Feb. 24, 1981, after eight days of deliberations, the jury of four men and eight women determined that they could not believe her testimony, and jury foreman Russel Von Glahn returned a "guilty" verdict to the charge of second-degree murder. Judge Russell Leggett sentenced Jean to the minimum punishment of 15 years to life in prison. Harris spent 12 years at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, N.Y. where she counseled fellow prisoners on how to take care of their children. She also set up a center where infants born to inmates could spend a year near their mothers. She was released in 1993 following a grant of clemency by then-Governor Mario M. Cuomo. Harris set up a foundation that raised millions of dollars for scholarships for children of women in prison in New York State. While in prison in 1986, she wrote 'Stranger in Two Worlds', offering her account of the Tarnower relationship as well as a chronicle of prison life. Despite the occasional made-for-TV movie or book about the case (Ellen Burstyn played her part in a 1981 movie, and Annette Bening played her role in 2005), she devoted herself to writing and running the foundation. Harris died of natural causes at an assisted-living center in Connecticut at age 89 in 2012.