Deborah L. Harris was a 31-year-old Black woman whose body was found in the Menomonee River in Milwaukee on October 10, 1986. Investigators determined she had been strangled and believed the killing occurred elsewhere before her body was placed in the water. Friends remembered Harris as generous and loving; she had moved to Milwaukee seeking a better life.

Harris’s homicide was the earliest known death in a string of murders on Milwaukee’s north side. A second woman, Tanya L. Miller, was found strangled the day after Harris’s body was recovered, and over the following years additional women were found murdered and left in isolated locations. Cold-case DNA work eventually linked evidence from multiple homicides to a single genetic profile. By 2009 investigators focused on Walter Earl Ellis and later charged him in seven deaths, including Harris’s. Ellis entered no-contest pleas to all seven murders on February 18, 2011, and was convicted and sentenced to seven consecutive life terms; family members spoke at sentencing remembering Harris.

If anyone knew Deborah Harris or has information about her life in Milwaukee before October 1986, please share what can help complete her story.