Michael Darnell Harris (born March 7, 1963) is an American
serial killer
A serial killer (also called a serial murderer) is a person who murders three or more people,An offender can be anyone:
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* (This source only requires two people) with the killings taking place over a significant period of time in separat ...
and rapist who has been convicted and sentenced to
life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is any sentence (law), sentence of imprisonment under which the convicted individual is to remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term). Crimes that result in life impr ...
for four murders and one rape committed in
Michigan
Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
from 1981 to 1982, but is a suspect in several others.
Harris has insisted on his innocence since his conviction, and in the mid-2010s,
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...
testing put his guilt into question. According to his attorneys, his first conviction influenced all of Harris' subsequent trials, due to which the
Michigan State Police
The Michigan State Police (MSP) is the State police (United States), state police agency for the U.S. state of Michigan. The MSP is a full-service law enforcement agency, with its sworn members having full police powers statewide.
The department ...
launched an investigation into supposed falsified evidence against him. In the end, his remaining convictions were upheld, but Harris is still considered by some to be innocent.
Early years
Michael Darnell Harris was born on March 7, 1963, in
Muskegon Heights, Michigan
Muskegon Heights is a city in Muskegon County in the U.S. state of Michigan
Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares w ...
, the eldest of five children. He spent most of his childhood in Muskegon, where he claimed to have been raised in a good family. In 1973, his mother found a high-paying job at a
veterans hospital
Veterans' health care in the United States is separated geographically into 19 regions (numbered 1, 2, 4–10, 12 and 15–23)In January 2002, the Veterans Health Administration announced the merger of VISNs 13 and 14 to create a new, combined n ...
in
Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...
, where the family soon moved in to live with a stepfather. Since the move, Harris began to frequently argue with his stepfather, who became increasingly aggressive and physically abusive. In the late 1970s, Harris dropped out of school and began spending a lot of time on the streets, sleeping in the homes of friends and acquaintances, as well as
homeless shelters
Homeless shelters are a type of service and total institution that provides temporary residence for homeless individuals and families. Shelters exist to provide residents with safety and protection from exposure to the weather while simultaneou ...
. In 1980, he left Ann Arbor and moved to
Lansing
Lansing () is the capital city of the U.S. state of Michigan. The most populous city in Ingham County, parts of the city extend into Eaton County and north into Clinton County. It is the sixth-most populous city in Michigan with a popul ...
, where he met a woman who bore him a daughter. For the next two years, Harris struggled financially, leading him to do jobs involving low-skilled labor and to live a
vagrant
Vagrancy is the condition of wandering homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants usually live in poverty and support themselves by travelling while engaging in begging, scavenging, or petty theft. In Western countries, ...
lifestyle.
Arrest, investigation and trial
On December 7, 1982, Harris was arrested at a homeless shelter in
Jackson
Jackson may refer to:
Places Australia
* Jackson, Queensland, a town in the Maranoa Region
* Jackson North, Queensland, a locality in the Maranoa Region
* Jackson South, Queensland, a locality in the Maranoa Region
* Jackson oil field in Durham, ...
for breaking into the property of 68-year-old Lenora Nayrhardt, whom he was accused of beating and raping.
Soon after his arrest, he was proposed as a suspect in the murders of 85-year-old Margorie Upson and 84-year-old Louise Koebnick, who were raped and strangled on September 28 and 30 of that year, respectively, in
Ypsilanti
Ypsilanti ( ), commonly shortened to Ypsi ( ), is a college town and city located on the Huron River in Washtenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 20,648. The city is bounded to the north ...
.
Authorities from the Lansing area also suspected him in a series of rapes and strangulations in their city:
* Edna Ryckaert (78), October 18, 1980
* Edith Crossette (83), February 14, 1981
* Ula Curdy (79), November 2, 1981
* Denise Swanson (79), November 30, 1981
In addition to these, Harris was also among the suspects in the murder of 91-year-old Florence Bell, who lived near Upson and was found with her throat slit in her home on January 8, 1982.
The reason for this suspicion was the fact that, at the time of the killings in Lansing, Harris lived in the city, which stopped right after he left in October.
Not long after, similar killings started to occur in Jackson, where he moved to.
On December 14, during a visual identification procedure, Harris was identified as the rapist of Nayrhardt.
He pleaded not guilty to the crime, claiming that he was in a homeless shelter at the time, which was backed up by an attendant who worked there.
On January 12, 1983, he was charged with Curdy's murder after his fingerprints where found on a chair in the room where she was killed. At the request of his attorneys, he was sent for a psychiatric evaluation at the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ypsilanti, which declared him sane in March of that year. Soon after, he was also charged with Swanson's murder.
On March 28, 1983, Harris went on trial for the assault and rape of Nayrhardt. During the proceedings, the prosecutor's office presented evidence which showed that the perpetrator's blood type and seminal fluid matched Harris, as well as cat hairs found on his clothing that matched those of the two cats in the woman's home.
In addition, nineteen people, including the victim herself, identified Harris as the attacker.
On April 4, he attempted to hang himself in his cell using a rope made from the torn fabric of his mattress.
The rope was unable to support Harris' weight, and after it broke, other inmates called in staff, who transported him to the Ypsilanit Regional Psychiatric Hospital for treatment for depression.
On May 19, Harris was found guilty of assaulting and raping Nayrhardt, but was initially deemed incompetent to stand trial for the murder charges. He was eventually sentenced to 60-to-90 years imprisonment, and while his sentence was read out, he showed no emotion. After undergoing treatment, Harris went on trial for the murders of Swanson and Curdy in July 1983. On September 27, he was found guilty of Curdy's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole on October 24. An identical verdict was handed down in the Swanson trial on November 3, for which he was given another life term without parole.
Imprisonment, new revelations and current status
Following his conviction, Harris was transported to the
Muskegon Correctional Facility
Muskegon Correctional Facility (MCF) is a prison of the Michigan Department of Corrections in Muskegon, Michigan. It opened in 1974. Additional housing units opened since then to accommodate more prisoners.
In 2010 the state of Michigan shut the p ...
to serve out his sentence. In the late 1990s, DNA testing was performed on the seminal fluid samples found on the bodies of Upson, Koebnick and Bell, all of which matched Harris' genotypic profile. As a result, he was charged in their murders in December 2001, with prosecutors presenting implicating evidence at all trials against him.
In the end, Harris was convicted and given two additional life terms for Upson and Koebnick's killings, but was not tried for the Bell murder due to his multiple life sentences.
Throughout the years that followed, Harris continued to insist on his innocence and regularly appealed, accusing the police and forensic experts of fabricating evidence against him by placing his blood samples on items found at the crime scenes and then isolating his DNA. He also argued that the contaminated items, along with his blood samples, were not shown to the jury at his trials, and his attorneys' motions for independent DNA testing were denied. However, each of these appeals were dismissed, as they were found be without merit.
In 2015, Harris asked the Ingham County District Judge
Rosemarie Aquilina
Rosemarie Elizabeth Aquilina (born April 25, 1958) is an American judge. She is a judge of the 30th circuit court in Ingham County, Michigan. Previously, Aquilina was the 55th District Court Judge, where she served as both a Sobriety Court Judg ...
for DNA testing to be performed on the seminal fluids found on Ula Curdy's belt, which investigators believe the perpetrator left behind.
The testing began in early 2016, with the results revealing that the DNA matched another individual, and not Harris.
This caused a public outrage, causing to case to garner new publicity and his guilt to be questioned. The Michigan State Police subsequently began an investigation to determine whether Harris had tampered with the evidence, with the Ingham County District Court set a hearing for September 23, 2016 to consider new evidence that could overturn his conviction in Curdy's murder.
In addition to the test results, Harris' attorneys insisted that the conviction be overturned on the grounds that the chair found at the crime scene, on which Harris' palm prints were supposedly found, had been returned to the police by family members of the murdered woman before the trial began, instead of being retained as physical evidence during it.
Accusation of racial bias were also leveled, with some of Harris' supporters pointing out that the
jury consisted entirely of white people.
In early 2017, the Ingham County State Attorney's Office petitioned for a second DNA test, which subsequently found Harris' DNA at the Curdy crime scene, prompting Justice Aquilina to dismiss the evidentiary hearing on September 27, thereby preventing the possibility that Harris could be granted a new trial.
He again reasserted his innocence and accused both the police and the prosecutor's office of yet again falsifying the evidence. Backed by his attorneys, Harris filed a motion demanding that Aquilina schedule a hearing in which Harris and his attorneys could question the crime lab technicians who worked on the case. However, Aquilina denied this request, stating that she had no authority to do so because the DNA tests proved Harris' culpability in Curdy's murder.
See also
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List of homicides in Michigan
This is a list of homicides in Michigan. This list includes notable homicides committed in the U.S. state of Michigan that have a Wikipedia article on the killing, the killer, or the victim. It is divided into three subject areas as follows:
# Mu ...
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List of serial killers in the United States
A serial killer is typically a person who kills three or more people, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines serial murder a ...
External links
Cross-Cultural Comparison of Two Serial Sexual Murder Series in Italy and the United States
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Michael Darnell
1963 births
20th-century American criminals
American male criminals
American people convicted of assault
American people convicted of murder
American people convicted of rape
American prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
Living people
People convicted of murder by Michigan
People from Muskegon Heights, Michigan
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Michigan
Serial killers from Michigan
Violence against women in Michigan