IL IL - Jamie Harper, 20, Rantoul, 10 March 2007

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http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2007/10/19/agencies_look_for_harper_at_vermilion

Several law enforcement agencies searched a rural Vermilion County location Wednesday in connection with missing woman Jamie Harper.

and

Harper, 20, of Paxton was last seen at a party in Rantoul in the early morning hours of March 10. She was reported missing later that month. In the spring, Rantoul police searched fields north of Rantoul and in Dogtown, an area between Paxton and Rantoul.

and

Wooten said he's been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the last few weeks on Harper's case and succeeded in getting the FBI to put her on its Web site.

For more information, go to www.FBI.gov and click on missing persons and kidnappings.

He said Harper's case is also expected to be featured at the end of the CBS show "Without a Trace" later this month.

Anyone with information about Harper can call Rantoul Police at 892-2103 or Ford County Crimestoppers at 784-4173. Crimestoppers is offering up to a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

Harper stands 5 feet tall, weighs about 130 pounds, has brown hair and eyes, has a tattoo on the small of her back and a nose ring in her left nostril. She was last seen wearing blue jeans, a white jacket, sandals and carrying a black handbag.

no pic at link
 
http://www.crimelibrary.com/news/original/1007/2201_jamie_harper1.html

Police Investigate Possible Lead in Disappearance of Jamie Harper

PAXTON, IL. (Crime Library) — There have been new developments in the search for 20-year-old Jamie Harper, a young woman who has been missing since last spring. According to Sgt. Jeff Wooten of the Rantoul Police Department, investigators recently searched a property on the west side of Route 49, just north of Route 136, in Vermilion County. The property allegedly belongs to a family member of an individual whom Jamie's family has long considered a person of interest in this case. That same individual is also allegedly connected to another missing persons case dating back to 1997.

(more at link)
 
JamieHarperandHeatherZimmermanMISSI.jpg


http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg241/LavandaDolce/JamieHarperandHeatherZimmermanMISSI.jpg
 
FEB 1, 2021
Reward still available years later for tips on missing woman | WCIA.com
[...]

Ford County Crime Stoppers is now putting the money in its general fund. President Dennis Higgins says if anyone is eligible for the reward, they’ll pay out the $2,900 dollars.

He says they’re going to keep it there just in case they get a tip about harper. Despite the reward money available, tips to Crime Stoppers about Harper have been dormant for years.

[...]
 

Status
Missing
Date Missing
03/09/2007

Age (then)
20
Age Now (would be)
36
Gender Female
Ethnicity White
Hair color Brown
Eye color Brown
Height 5'0"
Weight 127 lbs.

Characteristics- Unknown tribal designtattoo on small of back.Nose ring in left nostril, both ears pierced.

Clothing- Blue jeans, white jacket, sandals, carrying small black bag.

Jewelry- Nose ring in left nostril.

Medical Alert- Has epilepsy; hasn't had needed medication since she went missing.



Circumstances
Jamie was last seen on March 9, 2007 in Paxton, Illinois. She left to go to a party in Rantoul, Illinois with her boyfriend and said she would be back the next morning. Her boyfriend had things to take care of and she was going to find a ride home but no one has seen her since.

Shortly after her disappearance, police received a tip from an anonymous caller that Jamie had overdosed, and her body had been disposed of in an area southeast of Paxton known as Dogtown. The area, which includes three gravel pits, has been searched, but no evidence was found.

The chief of police has noted similarities between Jamie's disappearance and that of Heather Dawn Mullins Zimmerman. Some of the same people may be involved. A tipster had also called in to a news station in 1997 stating that Heather would be found in the Dogtown gravel pits. Foul play has not been ruled out in either disappearance
 

March 10, 2022

<<RANTOUL — Early in their investigation into the disappearance of 20-year-old Paxton resident Jamie Harper, police were keying in on a person of interest.

The 30-year-old man from Rantoul was at the party in the Maplewood Estates trailer park on Rantoul’s north side where Harper was last seen. One witness told police that the man and Harper left the party together during the early-morning hours of Saturday, March 10, 2007, but he returned without her, and she was never seen again.

The man also happened to have spent time in prison for aggravated battery and was rumored to have been involved in the disappearance of Gifford resident Heather Zimmerman 10 years earlier.

On April 4, 2007 — about a week into the multi-agency investigation into Harper’s disappearance — investigators were staking out the mobile home in Rantoul where the man was staying. After they saw him arrive in a vehicle, enter the trailer and return carrying some clothing, they followed the vehicle and stopped it, asking if he would come to the Rantoul Police Department to be interviewed. He agreed.

“I began by asking (him) if he knew why we asked him to come in,” a Rantoul police sergeant wrote in one of dozens of reports on the unsolved case obtained by the Ford County Chronicle from the Rantoul Police Department via an open-records request last fall.

“A little bit,” the man reportedly answered, explaining that he had recently talked with two others who were at the party in the 1300 block of Laurel Drive and learned that police were investigating the party.


During the interview, investigators asked him if anyone left the trailer during the party. He said people were in and out all the time, but he himself left the party only twice — once for about 10 minutes to talk to someone about some tires, and the other time to go home.

“I had been drinking a lot,” he said. “I left and went home (around 1 or 2 a.m.). I know that. … My brother lives down the street. I went home and went to bed.”

When asked what he thought happened to Harper, he said, “Hopefully she’s partying with (her boyfriend)” He then said: “I don’t need this. I’ve been blamed before.”

When asked, he said he was 100 percent innocent. However, he then refused to submit to a polygraph exam.

“I don’t believe in them,” he told police. “I won’t take it.”

Later in the interview, police told him they thought he was not being completely honest regarding what he knew about Harper’s disappearance. When a picture of Harper was set on the table in front of him, he immediately got defensive and said: “Do I need a lawyer? I’m done.”

He continued to talk, however, saying: “I will find out what happened to her. I plan to go talk to everyone.”

Police then accused him of not cooperating, to which he responded: “I don’t like to talk to cops. Check the reports. I never give statements. … I gave you more of a statement to you guys than I’ve ever given before.”

He then got upset and said he was ready to leave, and the interview ended.


Police continued to keep their focus on the man as their investigation into Harper’s disappearance continued. Meanwhile, they also continued a separate investigation into his suspected involvement in recent burglaries in Champaign County involving the theft and pawning of rings.

Police soon obtained a subpoena for his cell phone records. The records showed that the day after his interview with police, he left Illinois and went to Kentucky, then Tennessee, then Alabama and then Louisiana. In late June, police found and arrested him in Florida, extraditing him back to Illinois on Champaign County warrants related to the burglary case.

While in Florida, he reportedly got emotional and told a person he was staying with one night when he was drunk: “I did something really bad.” Before he could say more, however, the phone rang and he answered it, never returning to the topic again.

On June 28, 2007, Rantoul police tried to interview him again — this time at the Champaign County Jail — but he refused, immediately asking for an attorney.

“(He) never even entered the (interview) room that we were seated in,” police said.
Later that summer, he received five years in state prison after pleading guilty to burglary.


That October, police searched a property owned by his father in rural Armstrong in Vermilion County. Additionally, they searched nearby wooded areas and the banks of the Middle Fork River.

During their search, they found and seized various items, including several articles of clothing, a partially burnt bucket, and several metal rivets and barrettes that were found in a burn pit. None of the items could be confirmed as having any link to Harper or her disappearance.

Later, police obtained a subpoena for recordings of the phone calls he made and received from prison in the days after his father’s property was searched. In one of the phone calls, he spoke with his mother, telling her that the investigation was “all bull sh**and that his family will need to start fighting back. He asked her to tell his father that “this is a bunch of horse sh**” and “people are making sh** up.” He suggested that none of the family have any further contact with police without a lawyer present.

In subsequent phone call with his father, his father suggested that “maybe the ones responsible” for Harper’s disappearance “are pushing the button” in the investigation, and he told his son he thought the police were trying to set him up.

“They want to drop this in somebody’s lap,” his father said.

The man then told his father it will take a lie or a setup for the police to get him in this case. He suggested that his father stop talking to the police.

After the man served his sentence for the burglary conviction and was released from prison, he was charged and convicted of aggravated domestic battery and sentenced to 20 years. His projected parole date is in 2032, when he will be 56 years old.

“He’s not a pleasant person.” police were told by one of his acquaintances. “I’ve seen him get angry.”


The aforementioned person of interest was never charged with any crime related to Harper’s disappearance. Nor was he the only person investigated for their possible involvement.

While police have said they do not consider Harper’s boyfriend to be a suspect in her disappearance, it appears they did consider him a possible suspect at least initially.

The boyfriend failed a polygraph test and, according to Harper’s mother, gave two different stories about why he did not bring Harper back home after they attended the party together. A family member of Harper’s boyfriend had given the two a ride to Rantoul, dropping them off at a location on Sunset Drive before they eventually headed to the party on foot, police were told.

At first, Harper’s boyfriend told Harper’s mother that he left her at the party to go handle “some business with some friends” and that she told him that she would find a ride home. Later, though, he said he was “passed out” at the party, which was why Harper planned to get a ride from someone else, her mother told police.

When police interviewed the boyfriend, he told them he and Harper arrived at the party together around 1 or 2 a.m He said he passed out at some point later. Before he passed out, he recalled Harper saying she would call a friend for a ride. He said that was the last time he saw her, as when he awoke, she was gone.

Before he passed out, the boyfriend said, the only people still there were himself, Harper, the party’s host and two others, including the person of interest. The next morning, he called the person of interest to ask if Harper had gotten a ride home. He said the person of interest told him that Harper had called for a ride to come pick her up.

Another man at the party — police learned of seven people there in total — said Harper left with the person of interest while her boyfriend was passed out. The person of interest later came back by himself about an hour to an hour and a half later, the man said.

The man said the person of interest’s girlfriend was at the party and seemed upset that he had left with Harper.

“He doesn’t even know her,” he told police about what the girlfriend reportedly said after they left. “What’s he doing with her?”

When the person of interest returned without Harper, no one asked him what happened to her, and no one said anything about it, said the witness, who passed a polygraph exam.

The person of interest’s girlfriend, meanwhile, told police a different story, saying that she left the party before Harper did. When the girlfriend left, she said, Harper’s boyfriend was passed out, but her own boyfriend, the host of the party and Harper, among others, were still there and awake.

“I have no idea what happened to this girl,” she told police. She, too, passed a polygraph exam.

The host of the party told police that he thought that Harper, her boyfriend, the person of interest and two others left the party around 3 a.m., and no one returned before he went to bed around 5 a.m.

When told that Harper’s boyfriend had claimed that he passed out at the kitchen table, the host said he did not notice him at the table but could not say with certainty that he was not there.

The host said he did not think anyone was in his residence until about 9 a.m., when he was awakened by a noise. The host said he asked several times from his bedroom who was in his house, and Harper’s boyfriend responded, saying it was him and that he had passed out at the table. No one else was there.

The host said Harper’s boyfriend left the trailer between 10:30 and 11 a.m., walking away.

That evening or the next evening, Harper’s boyfriend called Harper’s mother and told her that he had heard that Harper had supposedly gotten a ride home.


Despite interviewing all of the people they believe were at the party, investigators still have no clear answers as to what happened to Harper. After all, they were told conflicting stories about when and with whom Harper left, and some stories changed.

The evidence investigators seized to have analyzed also has apparently given them no further clues. That included the evidence taken from the Vermilion County property police searched that October, clothing belonging to Harper’s boyfriend and the person of interest, and a seat belt that appeared to have a blood stain on it. Police removed the seat belt from a minivan that Harper had reportedly been riding in with others to go get cigarettes from a convenience store during the party. She reportedly returned to the trailer after the trip to the store, only to leave later and never be seen again.

Whether Harper is ever found — and whether anyone is ever held responsible for her disappearance — might now rest on the public’s help. There is a $3,900 reward offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

As the years have passed, though, a declining number of tips have been received in the case, Rantoul police records showed. As of last fall, the most recent tip was received and investigated by Rantoul police on May 25, 2020. It was the first since March 2009.

Of the tips that have been received so far, many have been hearsay or rumors, not first-hand information. The credibility of some sources has also been questioned.

In response to a tip received shortly after Harper’s disappearance, police and volunteers searched an area in Ford County southeast of Paxton known as Dogtown, using boats, sonar equipment and dogs to search water-filled gravel pits around the secluded wooded area, but they found nothing of evidentiary value. Another tip led police to search the grounds of Maplewood Cemetery north of Rantoul, where they also found nothing of apparent value to the case.

According to Harper’s mother, Harper was carrying a black leather handbag with one or two straps and was wearing a white jacket, blue jeans and black, knee-high, zipper-sided boots — and possibly a necklace with a “J” on it — when she left her home in Paxton on the night of Friday, March 9, 2007, to attend the party in Rantoul.

Harper is 5 feet tall and 130 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes. Her ears are pierced, and she has a pierced left nostril. She has a tattoo of a tribal design on the small of her back.>>
 

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