Case Details
- Photo URLs:
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- Missing Since:
- Missing Since 11/01/1974
- Missing From:
- Missing From Independence, Missouri
- Classification:
- Classification Non-Family Abduction
- Gender:
- Male
- Race:
- Race White
- Date of Birth:
- Date of Birth 01/27/1974 (50)
- Age:
- Age 10 months old
- Height and Weight:
- Height and Weight 2’5, 22 pounds
- Clothing/Jewelry Description:
- Distinguishing Characteristics:
- Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian male. Brown hair, brown eyes. Michael’s height and weight are approximations.
- Details of Disappearance:
- A mom (Freda Denman), her kids (Michael and Sheri Johnson), and her husband (Henry Lee Harbison, also called Henry Johnson) vanished in late 1974. Nobody noticed until five months later, when their landlord alerted the police.
Police found the mom’s clothes at home, but the dad’s and kids’ clothes were gone. There was blood on a cushion, but tests couldn’t say what it was.
The dad had a long criminal history and used different names. Some people who knew him think he killed the whole family. The mom’s family thinks she was murdered, and the kids were given away.
The police and the FBI looked into it, but the police closed the case, thinking the FBI would keep working on it. The FBI didn’t. The case stayed closed until 2004, when it was reopened.
Because it’s unclear what happened, the kids’ disappearances are treated as abductions by someone who wasn’t family. But the mystery of what happened to the mom and kids remains unsolved.
- Agency:
- Independence Police Department
- Source Links:
This person was missing Missing Since 11/01/1974