http://www.trib.com/articles/2008/08/23/news/casper/5762e8cc23da9d60872574ad000457d1.txtWithout any leads, Justin Harris case remains unsolved after four-plus years By CHRISTINE ROBINSON
Star-Tribune staff writer
Friday, August 22, 2008 7:50 AM MDT
A missing Casper boy would have turned 18 on Wednesday, and four-and-a half-years later his father still hopes for his return.
"I want his body," Phillip Harris said, "good bad or indifferent."
Justin Harris was 13 when he disappeared from the R.L. Mills Home on Feb. 15, 2004.
Police and public safety agencies mounted a massive search for the developmentally disabled boy and ultimately found very little information to aid in his discovery.
"There are still no leads, no nothing," Phillips Harris said. "This case is cold as ice water."
Justin's file is still open, according to Casper Police Sgt. Mark Trimble, but police haven't had any new information for the past couple of years.
"We certainly hope he is out there and alive," Trimble said.
Police have sorted through all existing information and exhausted all possible leads, Trimble said. Eventually, after years of no new information in a missing person case, it is listed as cold and filed away until something else is found.
The teen was staying in the north Casper boys' home when workers discovered he was missing, said home director Dick Dresang in an interview the day of the search.
When R.L. Mills Home staff members called the boys to breakfast on a Sunday morning, Justin didn't appear. Dresang said the workers shook the boy's bed and found it was stuffed full of clothes to make it look like he was there.
No one connected with the case knows if the boy ran away from the home or was abducted.
Phillip Harris, however, is convinced his son didn't run away. All of the child's clothes were in his room, he said. "Nothing was missing but him."
Police detectives conducted polygraph tests on an undisclosed number of people during the investigation, including Phillip Harris.
"If I had him, I wouldn't be sitting here," he said, from his home in Oklahoma. "I would be with him."
Since his son's disappearance, he has performed several independent investigations and searches for Justin.
The father participated in a joint effort with police and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to place a billboard of Justin's face and information on Interstate 25.
On Justin's 17th birthday, he said he started a four-month, nationwide search for the boy in every truck stop in the country.
"Since I had that billboard in Casper, he's also been in truck stop magazines," he said. "All that, and not one lead."
A week after Justin's disappearance the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children sent two retired investigators to Casper to help aid investigators in the search.
One year later, Casper investigators reexamined the home and the evidence but reported that instead of providing new direction it was more a "process of elimination."
Even after a child turns 18, Wyoming's Department of Family Services can still keep his or her file open, according to Juliette Rule, the department's public information officer. Rule can't release whether or not Justin ever had a case open, but said the department is allowed to remain involved in a case until the child is 21.
The Center's Web site still lists Justin as lost, missing or injured. He has blond hair, green eyes, stood about 5 feet tall and weighed 110 pounds when he disappeared.
Phillip Harris hopes that since Justin had his 18th birthday, he might reappear.
In the mean time he will keep waiting, he said, with the belief that he will see his son again.
Anyone with information about Harris' whereabouts is asked to call the Casper Police Department at (307) 235-8278 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at (800) 843-5678.
Contact city reporter Christine Robinson at (307) 266-0639 or
christine.robinson@trib.com Print a poster:
http://www.projectjason.org/aan/AAN_JustinHarris.pdf
