The missing woman

A related unrelated case

Note: If this is the first time you’ve come across this story, you may also want to read Chapters 1, 2 and 3.

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Like a lot of idyllic small towns in California, Los Gatos is not a place where murder happens often. When Mark Achilli was killed on March 13, 2008, it had been more than five years since the community’s homicide cops had a high profile case involving a resident.

For the cops, that case also started in a bar, just up the road in the town of Campbell. There, on July 27, 2001, they say Jeanine Harms, an attractive recent divorcee, hooked up with a guy who killed her in her Los Gatos apartment. The killer rolled up Harms’ corpse in a Persian rug and probably dumped the body somewhere in the heavily wooded Santa Cruz Mountains.

Jeanine Sanchez Harms went missing from her Los Gatos home in 2001, her body has never been found (Photos: charleyproject.org)

Two plus years later, Los Gatos cops arrested Maurice Nasmeh on suspicion of killing Harms. Like Paul Garcia, the man accused of masterminding the Achilli murder, Nasmeh said they had the wrong guy.