jash
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2011
- Messages
- 3,325
- Reaction score
- 20,488
June 4th 2023 very lengthy article.
''What happened to Dia Abrams?![]()
Disappearance of wealthy Riverside County ranch owner still a mystery after 3 years
Dia Abrams’ disappearance is an intriguing tale of wealth, family estrangement and heated litigation over her assets.www.ocregister.com
View attachment 426540
Bonita Vista Ranch owner Dia Abrams, right, and ranch hand Jodi Newkirk. (Illustration by Staff Artist Jeff Goertzen)![]()
''The answer has eluded Riverside County sheriff’s investigators for three years and baffled residents of the San Jacinto Mountains where Abrams abruptly disappeared on June 6, 2020.
It is a whodunit shrouded in a tale of wealth, family estrangement and heated litigation that continues to intrigue and attract attention from local and national media.
“It’s like being in a ‘Dateline’ mystery,” said Peggy Kotner, Abrams’ sister. Asked what she thinks happened to her sister, Kotner said, “Your guess is as good as mine. I really want to know.”
Abrams, who was 65 when she vanished, is presumed dead, though her body has never been found.
Abrams’ disappearance
Abrams had been estranged for years from her husband, a wealthy La Jolla developer who died in 2018. She loved the outdoors and animals, so in about 2004 or 2005 she decided to trade the affluent seaside community in San Diego County for a tranquil 115-acre ranch in Mountain Center.
Abrams “just wanted to get away from the stress of things and be around animals,” said Julie Stanford, a retired postal worker and Mountain Center resident who met Abrams in 2011 while working part-time at the Lake Hemet Market.''
''Living on the Bonita Vista Ranch with Abrams was Keith Leslie Harper, a retired parole agent for the Utah Department of Corrections with a sketchy past who had served time behind bars. In a 2022 deposition, Harper said he and Abrams met in 2016 on a dating website.
After Harper flew into Ontario International Airport to meet up with Abrams, the two quickly hit it off and Harper said he moved in with her at the ranch six months later. Harper said he worked to upgrade Abrams’ property, building dams, bridges, fences and helping care for her animals.
Harper also claimed to be Abrams’ fiance.
In public statements and the sworn deposition given in a legal dispute with Abrams’ children over control of her multimillion-dollar estate, Harper, 73, said he was the last person to have seen Abrams before she went missing sometime after 2:30 p.m. on June 6, 2020.''
Thanks for posting. There is so much suspicion around KH.
“He didn’t get involved with us at all, which gave me a bad gut feeling,” said one man who participated in the search but asked not to be identified. “If it were my fiancee and someone I loved, I’d want to be involved. You don’t run away a few hours before (police) get here to do a search. And yet that’s exactly what he did — he packed up his RV and he took off. What in the world?”
...[RI], whose wife played bunco with Abrams, also participated in the search, and cast doubt on Harper’s claim about mowing the meadow.
“That meadow was not freshly mowed. I walked through it. There were weeds up to my knees. There were foxtails in my pants and socks,”...
Additionally, [RI] recalls Harper telling him during the first search that he had been working on a building on the property — not mowing the meadow — when Abrams went missing.
“He said nothing about the meadow,”...
Diana Fedder, a retired U.S. Secret Service agent and friend of Abrams who helped organize the search, said Harper told her he had to leave the state to check in with his probation officer, which is inconsistent with his deposition testimony two years later.
Harper did not respond to requests for comment regarding Abrams’ disappearance, but has denied having anything to do with it.
www.ocregister.com/2023/06/04/disappearance-of-wealthy-riverside-county-ranch-owner-still-a-mystery-after-3-years/