For some, his crimes serve the purpose of a ghost story, something to be whispered across a campfire. Fodder for goosebumps. For others, the story is something else entirely: memories stained by evil hands.

Robert Garrow Jr.’s 1973 killing spree and his subsequent trial serve as the basis of “Garrow,” a true-crime drama shot last year in southern Essex County by director, producer and writer Lori Kelly-Bailey. The movie makes its Lake Placid debut today at 8 p.m. at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts.

Kelly-Bailey’s father, when he was a child, lived down the street from Robert Garrow Jr. In the small hamlet of Mineville, the two boys inevitably crossed paths often. They went to school together. When they grew older, they worked in the mines together.

“I’ve always known about Robert, and of course the family was … different from other people in Mineville,” she said. “Robert, as a child, acted out.”

No one knew what Garrow would become — the subject of the state’s then-largest manhunt, long before the infamous 2015 escape of convicted murderers Richard Matt and David Sweat from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora.

In the summer of 1973, Garrow abducted two young girls from an ice cream stand in Syracuse, where he lived at the time, and raped them, before going on a two-week-long killing spree, according to the Glens Falls Post-Star.

He started with the murder of a 16-year-old high school student from Syracuse, Alicia Hauck. Three days later he attacked two campers in Warren County, Danny Porter and Susan Petz, whom he also raped. More than two weeks later, he attacked four more campers in Hamilton County, one of whom he murdered.

He was able to evade law enforcement for 12 days after that, before he was spotted and shot by a state Department of Environmental Conservation officer, Hilary LeBlanc.

At his trial in Hamilton County in 1974, Garrow took the stand and described his childhood, littered with violent abuse at the hands of his parents. He spoke about his sexual perversion — including bouts of bestiality when he was a teen. And he described his crimes, one by one, in excruciating detail.

Lori Kelly-Bailey plans a shot for the movie “Garrow” with Director of Photography Korey Row in Essex County last year. (Photo provided)

“When you watch the film, it’s word for word what he said on the stand,” Kelly-Bailey said.

“For me, the struggle of the film was figuring out how to do something that’s so large-scale.”

Garrow’s testimony came to underpin the entire movie, a narrative thread that connects a series of flashbacks. Kelly-Bailey used the transcript of his testimony as a guide, supplemented by the stories of locals who knew him.

Garrow died in 1978 after he escaped from Fishkill Correctional Facility and was tracked down and shot by corrections officers two days later. He had been put in the prison’s minimum-security wing for disabled inmates because he appeared to be paralyzed from being shot upon his arrest. But it turns out he had been faking his paralysis.

“Garrow” debuted in December 2018. It’s an independent film made with a very small budget, but it’s cultivated a following, Kelly-Bailey said. Venues throughout the region continue to screen it. After the Lake Placid showing, another at the Strand Theater in Schroon Lake is planned for July 13.

Police take a wheelchair-bound Robert Garrow into the Hamilton County Courthouse in Lake Pleasant for his murder trial in May 1974. Garrow fooled people into thinking he had been paralyzed when he was shot and arrested, but his hoax was revealed in 1978 when he escaped from prison, scaling a wall to do so. (Enterprise file photo)

“It just gets people talking. There’s still such a fascination about the case,” she said. “I don’t know why. I wish I knew.”

Following the screening at LPCA, there’ll be a Q&A with members of the cast and crew. Tickets cost $12. The LPCA Box Office will be open today from 1 to 5 p.m. and reopen one hour before the show. For more information about the screening, visit lakeplacidarts.org/performances/film.

Actor Mark Valley and director Lori Kelly-Bailey are happy with the turnout to a “Garrow” movie screening. (Photo provided)