Scrapped: Justice and a Teen Informant

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