The truth about Izell Parrott
is in the trees.
14 months missing.
14 years unsolved.
Does someone in Glens Falls know what happened to Izzy, or will the truth remain hidden in the trees?
A 61-year-old Black man goes to the bar in Glens Falls, New York, and never comes home. Fourteen months later in a nearby town, his body is found—30 feet in the air, hanging from a tree. Within hours, the autopsy report rules it a suicide.
The closed case is an open wound for Izell Parrott’s family. Was Izell lynched? Was it a business dealing gone wrong? Or, in its examination of mental health in Black communities, will Strange Bird uncover a story of a man so systemically unsupported that he was willing to take his own life?
An independent production, this urgent documentary investigates Izzy’s life and untimely death, alongside a disturbingly recent timeline of Black bodies found hanging from trees—all cases deemed suicides. Against the backdrop of America’s racist tradition and amid a real-time reckoning for a country where lynching is still not a federal crime in 2020, Strange Bird is a story that must be told with immediacy as part of a national conversation around race.
IZZY’S STORY
If you ever met Izzy Parrott, you didn’t forget him—“He was not just The Barbecue Man, he was a good man.” The extroverted local chef nourished the town of Glens Falls with his larger-than-life personality, a love of people, food and music—and his famous Southern barbecue, of course. Everyone in town knew who he was. He was a complicated man with an uncertain future before his disappearance, but would taking his life be his only way out? Or, was he killed? Did the death investigation go far enough? Was Izzy killed over a dispute? Were there suspects the police failed to identify? Is this a hate crime? How does a 250-pound man climb a thirty-foot tall tree in the middle of winter in upstate New York to kill himself? Why?
Fourteen years later, Strange Bird reopens the case of a Black man hanged, to investigate suspicions around the suicide ruling, the historical racial context of lynching in America, and the unsettling clues that preceded Izzy’s death in 2006. Like a returned check to a local motorcycle club. A harrowing racial slur spray-painted on a tree on Izzy’s property. Since then, racial tensions have come to a fever pitch, both nationally and locally. As recently as the summer of 2018, KKK recruitment flyers were rumored to be found on the hood of cars in the neighboring town of Saratoga Springs.
Does someone in Glens Falls know what happened to Izzy?
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Brittany Gooden
Strange Bird Director
Ernest Media CEO Brittany Gooden is a filmmaker with 8+ years working in TV, media and advertising. For her directorial debut, she is raising a fund to continue shooting and pursuing experienced production partners to develop Strange Bird as a series examining Izell Parrott’s death. A series format is important in order to fully tell this story as we dive into the various elements surrounding Izzy’s death: physical evidence, circumstantial evidence, potential suspects and key players from the sheriff’s office, local news publications, Glens Fall residents and Izzy’s family.
Brittany is the niece of Izell and grew up in Glens Falls, New York, where she has worked independently over two years to capture footage and interviews with Izzy’s family and key members of the community.
Strange Bird is a story about the truth.
