Christopher Harris: 28 Years, No Answers

She was barely 16 years old when she last saw her son, Christopher. The toddler was swept into the web of a fractured and estranged family. Where is Christopher Harris? Today he would be 28 years old, and Elizabeth Harris-Liuhouolo has spent her adult years trying to find him. She thinks she has, and she’s hoping that the police will listen, but they have another idea of who they think he is.

In 1996, Christopher William Harris was born in Milwaukee to his mother, Elizabeth Harris-Liuhouolo, when she was only 15 years old. In the wake of family turmoil, Christopher was passed to another family member to be temporarily cared for – at least this is what his mother was told. But as of the fall of 2024, she has not seen Christopher since the summer of 1997. Harris-Liuhouolo is 43 now. 

The case is an intricate and tragic story of a mother’s search for answers. For years, Elizabeth has suspected she knows who her son is, and she’s even written to him on Facebook. But Milwaukee police say DNA eventually ruled that man out. They’ve now, at long last, pinpointed another man in a different state as possibly being the long-lost Christopher Harris. The issue is – they need his DNA to be sure. Elizabeth doesn’t believe their theory, and the man won’t cooperate, the police say. The investigation is ongoing. 

Over the years, there were several points where this case might have been solved. While there was some good police work done, it came in spurts with years passing in between. The investigation has heated up with the pressure that Elizabeth has continuously applied to the case, as a new detective thinks she’s unraveled the mystery of the missing child’s current identity. 

“When he turned 1 year old, I guess my mother didn’t really want to deal with me or him,” said Harris-Liuhouolo, in an interview with Media Milwaukee. “I was devastated, hurt, confused, didn’t know what to do, too young to help myself.”

Although Milwaukee police have declined to answer specifics about this case, they did release the entire police file to Media Milwaukee after an open records request. A team of student journalists spent the semester investigating missing people of color cases in Milwaukee, especially those that didn’t receive much coverage in the news. One of those was the vexing case of Christopher Harris, a Black child who didn’t become a big news story, although even police did not know he was missing for years.

Harris-Liuhouolo reported Christopher as missing to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in early 2006 and had attempted to report him missing to local police in Chicago and Gary, Indiana. On May 14, 2013, 16 years after his disappearance, Christopher Harris was officially reported missing by his mother to the MPD. Christopher was last seen at his mother and grandmother’s address in Milwaukee’s Merrill Park neighborhood, and missing people must be reported to the jurisdiction they went missing from – even though Elizabeth had moved out of Milwaukee over a decade ago. 

About 32,711 people have gone missing in the City of Milwaukee in the last 10 years, according to the Milwaukee Police Department. At any given time, about 500 people are actively missing in Milwaukee. Many are people of color, yet very few make the news.  

In 2024 through Oct. 15, 2,466 people were reported missing in the city. Each year in the past decade, between 2,500 and 3,300 people have been reported missing each year. Many are short-term missing cases where people are quickly found, highlighting a crisis of online grooming, group home runaways, and other issues. Stereotypical stranger abductions are exceptionally rare.

The information that follows comes from the police reports.

Detective Andrew Wagner was the first officer who was assigned to Harris’ case, and he was able to make a notable amount of progress in the time that he had with the investigation. However, the case’s momentum started coming to a halt near the end of 2013 when the investigation began to switch hands in the department.  

As early as the case’s first police report, Elizabeth alleges that the last time Christopher was seen was when he left home to go to the store with a family member, never to return. In the decade since, said family member has allegedly avoided any contact with some of Christopher’s family, according to Elizabeth. 

“She destroyed my life,” said Harris-Liuhouolo. “Mentally, physically, emotionally. I don’t trust people with my kids, and I don’t trust people around my kids. When she did that to me, it made me protect the four that I got – and they didn’t understand why I protected them the way I did. She destroyed me and my family.” 

A Facebook post made by Elizabeth’s family member would throw a wrench into the case. When Elizabeth saw a photo of the family member and her children, she noticed a small boy – he looked strikingly similar to Christopher, and he even looked to be around Christopher’s age, according to Elizabeth. She said that she was sure of the fact that her family member had not given birth to a child of that age. From this point forward, any reference to this boy will be as “John Doe,” for the privacy of all involved.  

Elizabeth knew John Doe’s mother, a previous romantic partner of another one of her family members. She accused another person of manipulating Social Security records to keep him hidden, but she could not provide solid evidence of this accusation to the police.  

The older Elizabeth grew and the more independent she became, the more she wanted answers about where her son, Christopher, was. “I’m 21 and, you know, it’s really sinking in now,” said Harris-Liuhouolo.

Elizabeth was still absolutely certain that her missing son was the boy that she found on Facebook, and that his name had been changed. But there was no resolution after Elizabeth contacted John Doe on Facebook, telling him that she suspected that he was Christopher, and explaining to him that he had been abducted. Shortly after, Doe’s Facebook page disappeared or was deactivated, and Elizabeth was seemingly back at square one. 

Far from giving up on the case, Wagner was able to locate John Doe shortly after – he was attending middle school in southern Florida. The school’s principal said that he had recently been pulled out of school by his mother, who said that their family was moving to metro Atlanta. The school’s principal noted to the MPD that John Doe’s mother had been particularly protective of his birth certificate and social security number in the past, raising suspicion in the context of the investigation. 

Then a big twist.

Wagner was also able to obtain John Doe’s birth certificate, however – it was issued in Minnesota. Court records showed that his mother had attempted to change his last name twice, once in 1999 and again in 2004. It appeared as if the change was granted in 2010, but Ramsey County’s birth certificate records did not reflect any change to the original document.  

All this information was compiled by Wagner over the course of 2013, the same year that Christopher was reported missing. For nearly four years after the original investigation, next to no progress was made in the case, evident by the cyclical nature of the police file. Due to high turnover in the Sensitive Crimes Department, the case was passed down through several detectives – ultimately stunting its progress. 

The MPD had attempted to contact Elizabeth at several points to no avail, both over the phone and at the home address that they had on file for her. In January 2017, she called them back. She told them that she had moved to Gary, Indiana, and changed her phone number. She continued to be firm in her beliefs, claiming that Christopher had been given to a family member to raise as her own son, and his name had been changed. There was seemingly no other explanation.  

“These people have ruined my life,” said Harris-Liuhouolo. “I have been through hell and back.” 

In 2018, the MPD made a breakthrough after years of stagnancy. Officer Joseph Duncan located John Doe through a driver’s license search. An anonymous source tipped the MPD that he was attending college in western Georgia. It was the moment of truth – A DNA test was administered to Doe, but no valid match was found between his sample and Elizabeth’s sample. After almost five years of searching, it seemed to be a dead end. 

Police did not believe John Doe was the missing child.

Around the time of the DNA test, Milwaukee police officer Keyona Vines picked up the case and was able to make a fair amount of progress. In May 2020, Vines received another anonymous tip that someone had used Christopher’s social security number to receive an identification card in North Carolina. He was listed as living at the same address as Elizabeth’s family member, and the MPD was able to find his Facebook.

Could this man be Christopher? If not, why was he allegedly using the missing child’s social security number? But so much time has passed, and Christopher today would be an adult.

Elizabeth claims that this man is one of her family member’s sons. Further police investigation revealed that he had also allegedly used Christopher’s SSN in 2018 to apply for temporary employment in Virginia. At the time, he was not going by the name of Christopher Harris. Police reports noted that he had a tear drop tattoo under his left eye.  

The North Carolina man is currently on the MPD’s radar as possibly being the missing boy, but they haven’t been able to reasonably prove or disprove his involvement. In the case’s most recent police reports, current detective Jamie Sromalla has been attempting to collaborate with North Carolina police in order to advance the investigation further, but they have not been able to get a statement from him or administer a DNA test. According to past reports from the police file, the man has not cooperated with investigators in the past. 

Elizabeth vehemently denies the idea that the man in North Carolina is her son, and she claims that the police do not have enough evidence to conclude that he is Christopher. She says that the DNA test administered to John Doe was faulty, and that he never actually took it. Media Milwaukee asked the MPD for details regarding the administration and validity of the DNA test, but we did not receive a response prior to the publication of this story. 

But ultimately, she just wants closure. She wants to know where Christopher is, and she wants him to hear her side of the story. Elizabeth has four other children now, but Christopher’s disappearance has haunted her for her entire adult life. In the end, she just wants answers.  

“I’m his mother,” said Harris-Liuhouolo. “How come he don’t know his own mother?” 

And so the story concludes where it began: Where is Christopher Harris? Or perhaps more accurately: Who is he today?

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This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into missing people’s cases in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available here.