MD MD - Susan Hurley Harrison, 52, Baltimore County, 5 Aug 1994

In the shorthand beloved by the media, Susan Hurley Harrison became, upon her disappearance, the missing Ruxton woman. "Ruxton" carries a lot of weight in two syllables. Read: "privileged." Read: "wealthy." Read: "Not your typical homicide victim." Susan Harrison was all of those things, but she was only recently a Ruxton woman, and not by design. She had moved into a small cottage there after literally running from her second marriage in late 1993, shoeless and coatless into the frigid night.

Allegations of violence had been part of the relationship with James J. "Jim" Harrison Jr. almost as soon as it began, a decade earlier... His explanation for her disappearance is the same as his explanation for Susan's bruises and broken bones over the years. Susan was manic-depressive, Jim says, an alcoholic who injured herself, then blamed him...

In the early evening, Susan went to visit Jim. The next day, she was to go to Boston with Nicholas, for a long-anticipated visit with her brothers. After running a few errands, Nicholas went to his mother's Ruxton home, where the door was ajar and her purse was on the counter, but with no wallet inside...

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Three weeks later, Susan's dark green Saab was found in a lot at what is now known as Ronald Reagan National Airport. It had been there since the weekend Susan had disappeared. Everyone -- her sons, her siblings, her first husband, her friends -- believed she was dead, and that her killer had gone to the airport because the Washington Metro allowed one to flee without a trace.

Only Harrison maintained that she was a runaway wife, who was still alive somewhere. He continued to express this increasingly dubious hope until Nov. 29, 1996, the day two hikers stumbled on the remains of a woman's body in a shallow grave in Frederick County...

The discovery of the body in Frederick County created jurisdictional problems, and the criminal investigation ended up with the state Attorney General's office. That office made the call last week to suspend the active investigation in the case.

The case is not closed. Unsolved homicides are never truly closed. But it waits, inactive, for some outside force to stir it up again. A new piece of evidence, a witness's epiphany, a killer's remorse.

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aussiegran said:

My sister, Susan Hurley Harrison, 52 at the time, disappeared on August 5, 1994, in Baltimore County, MD; her remains were found on November 29, 1996, in rural Frederick County, by two hikers. Her death was subsequently ruled a homicide by the state medical examiner. Our family had been assured by police that if Susans body were found and her death determined to be a homicide, charges would be brought against Jim Harrison, her allegedly abusive estranged second husband, who was the last person to see her alive and whom she had been in the process of divorcing.

Susan Hurley Harrison

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