Diana Lynn Harris

• Missing Since 07/15/1981
• Missing From Big Pine Key, Florida
• Classification Endangered Missing
• Sex Female
• Race White
• Date of Birth 10/06/1953 (71)
• Age 27 years old
• Height and Weight 5'4 - 5'8, 120 - 135 pounds
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian female. Red/blonde hair, blue eyes. Harris wore eyeglasses and dentures at the time of her disappearance. She is fair-skinned and, at the time she vanished, was known to occasionally wear wigs. Some agencies give her name as "Diane."

Details of Disappearance

Harris was last seen at Big Pine Key in the Florida Keys in Monroe County, Florida in the summer of 1981. She has never been heard from again. Foul play is suspected in her disappearance.

On June 7, 1981, her children flew to Michigan to spend the summer with their father. Harris kept in regular touch with her loved ones by telephone. The last time her daughter spoke to her on the phone was on July 15. Harris was supposed to go to Michigan and pick up the children on August 15 so they could attend her sister's wedding in Illinois, but she never arrived. Her mother reported her missing after she missed the wedding. All of her belongings, including family photographs, were left behind.

Harris is originally from Owosso, Michigan, and moved to Florida in 1980 after she lost her job in Michigan. At the time of her disappearance, she worked two jobs, one at the No Name Pub and one at the Sugarloaf Lounge, and lived with Gary Vincent Argenzio in a house on Tortuga Lane on Big Pine Key. The house had a reputation as a "party house" and Harris had told a friend she feared there was going to be a drug bust there.

Argenzio was considered a suspect in Harris's case. Approximately one week after she went missing, he disappeared as well, stealing a fishing boat and sailing to Mexico. Argenzio was arrested in Mexico in 1982, extradited to Florida, convicted of theft and sentenced to prison. He died in 1992. He was never charged in Harris's disappearance.

An informant told police they believed Argenzio had murdered Harris and dumped her body in the ocean. This informant owned the house where they lived in 1981. The witness said he and a friend had gone to the residence and saw a hole in the wall there, with blood around it, and Argenzio stated he had driven Harris's head through the wall during an argument. The friend corroborated the informant's story.

Harris's family and the family of Thomas Stump, who disappeared from Florida in 1995, believe their disappearances may be connected; police have interviewed several of the same people with regards to both. Authorities have not conclusively established a link between the two cases, however. Both remain unsolved.

Some agencies give the date of Harris's disappearance as August 1981.