Sandy and Jesse Harper sat outside a relative’s RV at North Beach Campground in Burlington last Thursday and leafed through a thick notebook. The pages contained Sandy’s notes related to her son’s disappearance, describing things such as phone calls with a detective, a flyer she’d stapled to a community board, a visit to a Queen City homeless encampment.
“Every single thing that we have done since the beginning,” Sandy said.
The beginning dates to November 15, the last day anyone can remember seeing their 38-year-old son, Chris. He left a Burlington homeless shelter that morning carrying a hiking pack, a walking stick and a long skateboard.
A week later, he still had not contacted his family, which was unusual. So, in late November, the Harpers filed a missing person report. Since then, they have consulted with detectives assigned to the case and undertaken their own search, hanging flyers with their son’s photo, but there has been no trace of Chris. Nor have there been any tips about what may have happened to him — even after the Harpers offered a $5,000 reward. That has led police to conclude he is probably dead.
The Harpers and their two other children cling to hope even as they acknowledge the likelihood of an unhappy outcome. Yet it is the not knowing that’s the worst of all for Sandy and Jesse. Not knowing whether their son is scared or suffering. Not knowing whether they’ll ever get to truly say goodbye.
“It’s eating us up inside,” Sandy said, as she sat at the picnic table where she’d laid out “Missing” posters.
Born and raised in suburban Delaware, Chris was always drawn to the outdoors. He chose to attend Johnson State College, where he studied alternative medicine and wellness, and he quickly fell in love with rural Vermont. After graduating, Chris bounced around, working a range of jobs that included gigs at a maple syrup company and a recycling center. But his substance use became a constant challenge. He started with alcohol, his parents said, and moved on to harder drugs.
He struggled to hold a job and pay his bills. He was arrested several times for driving under the influence and in connection with domestic disputes.
His parents repeatedly intervened, taking him back to Delaware to help him get back on his feet. But he always returned to Vermont and to his struggles.
After living in the Jeffersonville area for roughly five years, Chris moved into a sober house in Colchester in 2023. Chittenden County didn’t appeal to him as much as the rest of Vermont, Sandy said, and he wanted to return to a more rural area after his life stabilized.
The sober house seemed to help Chris control his drinking. But his behavior became increasingly erratic, according to the house manager, who told police that Chris appeared to be misusing a different substance: kratom.
A powdered herbal supplement derived from the leaves of a tree in Southeast Asia, kratom is sold across the U.S. Users tout its health benefits. Many people take it to treat depression and anxiety. Others turn to it to deal with opioid withdrawal symptoms or to wean themselves off harder drugs.
Kratom is largely unregulated and little is known about its long-term effects, which is why several states, including Vermont, have banned its sale. (Chris made regular trips to Plattsburgh, N.Y., to purchase kratom.)
In small doses, it can act as a stimulant. But higher doses can produce euphoric sensations similar to an opioid high, experts say. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has reported cases of apparent psychosis resulting from prolonged heavy use.
The sober-house manager and a friend of Chris’ told police that he appeared to be suffering from hallucinations. One night, his parents said, Chris called his father at 3 a.m. saying that people were chasing him down a mountain and that he needed help.
“Someone was after him,” Jesse Harper said.
Sandy shook her head.
“That could’ve also been a paranoid state,” she said gently. “We just don’t know.”
What is known is that by November 2024, Chris was in a rough spot. Pushed out of the sober house, he was living at a homeless shelter in Burlington, where police say his continued kratom use was again causing tension. Meanwhile, his car had broken down.
His parents again stepped in. They sent him money to get his car fixed and bought him plane tickets and dress clothes for his sister’s wedding in mid-December. The efforts seemed to buoy their son, who they said sounded upbeat and hopeful in the days before his disappearance.
“He was trying so hard to get his life together,” Sandy said. “He wanted to make us proud.”
At first, when they didn’t hear from him for a few days, Sandy figured he was busy or having phone problems. By the fourth day, she’d had enough: She began calling around to Chris’ friends and, several days later, contacted the Burlington Police Department.
The case was first referred to a community service officer, one of BPD’s unarmed employees tasked with responding to quality-of-life calls. That officer learned that Chris left the homeless shelter on November 15, without intending to return.
Never before had Det. Kratochvil worked a case where someone was, suddenly, “just gone.”
The case eventually landed with Det. Eric Kratochvil. Over time, he came to view it as highly unusual.
That’s because missing persons cases are usually resolved quickly. Often, people are found at or near home, dead either of natural or accidental causes or by their own hand. The few cases that drag out usually involve people who don’t want to be found but eventually turn up.
Never before had Kratochvil worked a case where someone was, suddenly, “just gone,” he said.
Kratochvil figured Chris’ phone records, bank statements and email accounts might produce leads. He had a problem, though: Judges only sign off on search warrants when police can show that they have reason to believe a crime has occurred.
So Kratochvil leveraged the fact that after disappearing, Chris had failed to check in with his probation officer, which had led to a warrant for his arrest. Checking his accounts would determine whether he had absconded, the detective argued.
“It was kind of a stretch,” Kratochvil conceded. “But the judge recognized what we were trying to accomplish.”
The search warrants allowed police to examine Chris’ Gmail account, including his search history. His inbox turned up nothing useful. But Google searches performed on November 15 — the day he left the shelter — offered some clues to his state of mind.
He had looked up a few car repair shops, two of which confirmed for Kratochvil that Chris had subsequently called. He looked up a roofing company, perhaps in pursuit of employment. And he googled whether disconnecting his phone battery would prevent it from running out of juice, suggesting to Kratochvil that Chris’ phone was dying.
The final stop on his digital trail was on November 18, when he used his debit card to make a $7 purchase from a store in the Old North End that no longer had surveillance footage from that day.
He hasn’t touched what remains in his checking account — about $500.
Kratochvil concluded that Chris likely hadn’t left town. The detective spoke to old friends, former roommates and Chris’ girlfriend, all of whom said they had no idea where Chris might be. He also followed up on a series of leads that trickled in: a man walking a bike along the road in rural Vermont, another living under a bridge in New Hampshire, a Chris P. Harper who was involved in a car crash in the state of Georgia. None panned out.
Kratochvil spoke with Sandy weekly, walking her through what he’d done and what else he could try, while listening to the results of the Harpers’ own search.
The retired couple — Sandy, 65, was a paraeducator, while Jesse, 69, a proud union man, installed sprinkler systems for more than 40 years — first came to look for Chris in late November. They grew even more concerned when Chris missed his sister’s wedding the following month. They returned in January and April, spending a week each time scouring Vermont for clues.
They visited every town in which Chris had spent time during his 20 years in the state. They delivered flyers and visited homeless encampments, where some people recognized Chris but didn’t know what had become of him. Sandy called the coroner’s office in Plattsburgh to see if they had any John Does. She hiked along the Winooski River in search of abandoned campsites. The visits left the Harpers exhausted, and they returned home each time feeling discouraged. Yet anything was better than waiting for the phone to ring.
Sandy briefly entertained far-fetched theories that could explain someone surviving off-grid this long. She suggested to Kratochvil that Chris could have gotten hurt in the woods, and someone has been nursing him back to health in a cabin somewhere. The detective gently pointed out the improbability of such a scenario.
Last week, Kratochvil asked Chris’ parents to provide a DNA sample that could be compared with any unidentified human remains. It was a “sad moment,” Kratochvil said, a recognition that they had exhausted just about every lead.
The reward remains the best hope for finding Chris, Kratochvil said. Either someone will finally come forward with information, or they will go looking for Chris in hopes of obtaining the $5,000 reward.
The Harpers are considering whether to increase the amount offered, even though they can barely afford to pay the current reward. They would have to ask for help to increase it, perhaps through a GoFundMe campaign, an idea that makes Sandy feel uneasy.
In the absence of answers, the grieving parents have formed their own differing conclusions about what happened to their son.
Jesse is adamant that someone made Chris disappear, while Sandy believes it is just as likely that he suffered some accident, such as a fall while hiking. Kratochvil, meanwhile, suspects that Chris’ remains may eventually be discovered at some abandoned campsite in the woods.
The Harpers returned to Delaware last Friday no closer to the truth. They will likely be back in the fall, they said, and again after that — however long it takes.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Without a Trace | Chris Harper vanished from the streets of Burlington. Nine months later, his parents are desperate for answers.”
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