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Disappearance of Michele Anne Harris
On the night of September 11, 2001, Michele Anne Harris (born September 29, 1965) of Spencer, New York, United States, left the restaurant where she worked as a waitress in nearby Waverly after finishing her shift, and shared drinks with two coworkers (one of whom she had been romantically involved with) in the parking lot. She then went to see a boyfriend in Smithboro and left shortly after 11 p.m. This was the last time anyone is known to have seen her. The next morning, her car was found on the road near the home she shared with her children and estranged husband, Cal. He was later tried for her murder four times and convicted twice before being acquitted.
The investigation into her disappearance was hampered since many of the state troopers who would normally have been involved had been bused to New York City the previous day in response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Suspicion centered on Cal, whose divorce from Michele had grown acrimonious as he could have lost a considerable portion of his family fortune in a settlement. Cal was described by some as seemingly unconcerned in the aftermath of his wife's disappearance, dating other women and selling her belongings within weeks. Further evidence of foul play was also circumstantial, largely consisting of some blood in the house and a secondhand account of his threatening her.
Cal Harris was eventually charged with second-degree murder, and convicted despite Michele's continued absence. The morning after Harris was convicted, a witness emerged who claimed to have seen Michele outside the family home on the morning of September 12. Cal was retried and convicted again. After he had served several years in state prison, his conviction was overturned on appeal. A jury in a different county deadlocked on a verdict, leading to a bench trial, which acquitted him.
Harris has continued to protest his innocence; he has sued the state police, the Tioga County District Attorney's office and several others for malicious prosecution. In 2017 he was arrested again after allegedly stalking one of the investigators. The lead defense investigator has written a book alleging his theory of how Cal Harris was framed, and focuses on one of the men Michele had reportedly dated at the time as a more likely suspect given some evidence found at his former house. Her friends and family believe just as strongly in Cal's guilt, and continue to search for stronger evidence even though he cannot be prosecuted again; this has led to her family and her children becoming estranged from each other.
Cal Harris, a Vestal High School graduate who later became a star attackman and four-year letterman for the Hobart College men's lacrosse NCAA Division III champion teams in the early 1980s, met Michele Anne Taylor, who had earned an associate's degree from the State University of New York at Morrisville, later in the decade when she worked on the lot of one of the car dealerships his family owned in Tioga County, on the Southern Tier of upstate New York, between Binghamton and Elmira and south of Ithaca. They married in 1990 and settled on a 252-acre (102 ha) estate outside the village of Spencer in northern Tioga County, where Michele had grown up. She had the first of the couple's four children in 1994.
In 1999 the marriage started to fail when Michele discovered, while pregnant with their youngest child, that Cal had been having an affair with another clerk on one of the car lots. He justified this affair on the grounds she was not keeping the house clean enough. When she confronted him, he promised to end it but, she later learned, did not, rekindling it on a vacation trip to Barbados.
After her son was born, in October 2000, she stopped sharing a bed with her husband, sleeping on the couch in the family's home. A month later, at a bar, she met Brian Earley, a younger man visiting the area from Philadelphia, where he worked as a surveyor. Soon the two were having discreet meetings in the Poconos of nearby Northeastern Pennsylvania. The two used phone cards when they called each other, so that the caller ID would display as a random jumble of numbers, in order to keep their relationship a secret from Cal Harris and the children.
At the beginning of 2001, Michele filed for divorce. During the first half of the year, Cal repeatedly told Michele he would not let her divorce him. Barb Thayer, the couple's nanny, recalled hearing frequent loud arguments. Cal tried to get Michele's family to talk her out of the divorce, believing she had been influenced by the people she was increasingly associating with and might even be using drugs. Michele told her sisters that at one point in March Cal told her during an argument that he would not need a gun to kill her and the police would never be able to find her body. She also let her hairdresser overhear Cal threaten to kill her and make her disappear over the phone in July.
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Disappearance of Michele Anne Harris
On the night of September 11, 2001, Michele Anne Harris (born September 29, 1965) of Spencer, New York, United States, left the restaurant where she worked as a waitress in nearby Waverly after finishing her shift, and shared drinks with two coworkers (one of whom she had been romantically involved with) in the parking lot. She then went to see a boyfriend in Smithboro and left shortly after 11 p.m. This was the last time anyone is known to have seen her. The next morning, her car was found on the road near the home she shared with her children and estranged husband, Cal. He was later tried for her murder four times and convicted twice before being acquitted.
The investigation into her disappearance was hampered since many of the state troopers who would normally have been involved had been bused to New York City the previous day in response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Suspicion centered on Cal, whose divorce from Michele had grown acrimonious as he could have lost a considerable portion of his family fortune in a settlement. Cal was described by some as seemingly unconcerned in the aftermath of his wife's disappearance, dating other women and selling her belongings within weeks. Further evidence of foul play was also circumstantial, largely consisting of some blood in the house and a secondhand account of his threatening her.
Cal Harris was eventually charged with second-degree murder, and convicted despite Michele's continued absence. The morning after Harris was convicted, a witness emerged who claimed to have seen Michele outside the family home on the morning of September 12. Cal was retried and convicted again. After he had served several years in state prison, his conviction was overturned on appeal. A jury in a different county deadlocked on a verdict, leading to a bench trial, which acquitted him.
Harris has continued to protest his innocence; he has sued the state police, the Tioga County District Attorney's office and several others for malicious prosecution. In 2017 he was arrested again after allegedly stalking one of the investigators. The lead defense investigator has written a book alleging his theory of how Cal Harris was framed, and focuses on one of the men Michele had reportedly dated at the time as a more likely suspect given some evidence found at his former house. Her friends and family believe just as strongly in Cal's guilt, and continue to search for stronger evidence even though he cannot be prosecuted again; this has led to her family and her children becoming estranged from each other.
Cal Harris, a Vestal High School graduate who later became a star attackman and four-year letterman for the Hobart College men's lacrosse NCAA Division III champion teams in the early 1980s, met Michele Anne Taylor, who had earned an associate's degree from the State University of New York at Morrisville, later in the decade when she worked on the lot of one of the car dealerships his family owned in Tioga County, on the Southern Tier of upstate New York, between Binghamton and Elmira and south of Ithaca. They married in 1990 and settled on a 252-acre (102 ha) estate outside the village of Spencer in northern Tioga County, where Michele had grown up. She had the first of the couple's four children in 1994.
In 1999 the marriage started to fail when Michele discovered, while pregnant with their youngest child, that Cal had been having an affair with another clerk on one of the car lots. He justified this affair on the grounds she was not keeping the house clean enough. When she confronted him, he promised to end it but, she later learned, did not, rekindling it on a vacation trip to Barbados.
After her son was born, in October 2000, she stopped sharing a bed with her husband, sleeping on the couch in the family's home. A month later, at a bar, she met Brian Earley, a younger man visiting the area from Philadelphia, where he worked as a surveyor. Soon the two were having discreet meetings in the Poconos of nearby Northeastern Pennsylvania. The two used phone cards when they called each other, so that the caller ID would display as a random jumble of numbers, in order to keep their relationship a secret from Cal Harris and the children.
At the beginning of 2001, Michele filed for divorce. During the first half of the year, Cal repeatedly told Michele he would not let her divorce him. Barb Thayer, the couple's nanny, recalled hearing frequent loud arguments. Cal tried to get Michele's family to talk her out of the divorce, believing she had been influenced by the people she was increasingly associating with and might even be using drugs. Michele told her sisters that at one point in March Cal told her during an argument that he would not need a gun to kill her and the police would never be able to find her body. She also let her hairdresser overhear Cal threaten to kill her and make her disappear over the phone in July.