By  Seamus McGraw

November 27, 2006

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WISCONSIN RAPIDS, Wis. (Crime Library) —  For nearly five months, the friends and family of Deidre Harm, a 21-year-old single mother who vanished after an evening of partying at two downtown Wisconsin Rapids bars, held out hope that someday she would return home, battered, perhaps, but alive.

Those hopes were dashed late last week when police positively identified the skeletal remains found by hunters in a remote patch of woods some seven to ten miles from downtown Wisconsin Rapids as those of Deidre.

Now, investigators from the Wisconsin Rapids Police, the Wood County Sheriff's Department and the state bureau of criminal investigation, are trading notes, and reviewing scores of tips, trying to answer the last remaining question about Deidre's fate, was she the victim of some kind of tragic mishap or a suicide, or did she fall victim to some predator?

For now, authorities are keeping their hunches to themselves. But they note that they are intrigued by the fact that her remains — decomposed and scattered across several acres, perhaps by animals or other natural events — were found so far from the bright lights of downtown where she was last seen. At least part of the investigation is now focusing on how Diedre got to the secluded spot where she was found, authorities say, as well as the question of whether she met her end in those woods, or whether she died elsewhere and was perhaps transported there.

A perky young woman with an infant daughter whom she was raising essentially alone, Deidre had been, according to all accounts, brimming with excitement after having just signed the lease on a new apartment in downtown Wisconsin Rapids, and decided to celebrate when she vanished on June 10.

That night, she had hired a babysitter for her four-month-old daughter, Vegas, and, together with a close friend, a young man, she hit a two of her regular haunts, an upscale strip club called the Finish Line and later, a place across the street known as the Body Shop.

During the course of the evening, authorities said at the time, she and her friend became separated, and she was seen in the company of one, and perhaps two other men later that night at the Body Shop, authorities reported. Then she disappeared.

It was not immediately clear whether police have identified and interviewed the other man or men.

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