The Disappearance of James Robert Harig: Part Two

The now-iconic photograph of James Robert Harig, which has become a symbol of the search for him. PHOTO COURTESY OF JAMES HARIG SEARCH GROUP

This is Part Two of a two-part story. Part One can be read here.

Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on February 6, 2021.

Summer, 2021. Bernadette Runkle Harig is sitting in a Middleport bar, talking to her best friend, bartender Patricia Bracey. For the past nine years, Bernadette has been searching for her missing son. 25-year-old James Robert Harig was last seen on the side of Sharp Mountain in Blythe Township on February 5, 2012. Due to her distrust of the Pottsville Police Department, Bernadette has conducted her own separate investigation. She searches remote areas of Schuylkill County, and acts on every tip she receives through Facebook and text messages. She is convinced that her son was murdered.

Two young people, who Bernadette refuses to name, enter the bar. One of them, a young man, must have overheard Bernadette talking about her son.

“I have a picture,” he told her. “Can I show it to ya?”

Bernadette says yes. The cellphone photo stuns her and Bracey. It is of a severed, skeletal leg, wearing the same Carolina black boot that James was wearing when he went missing. After nine years without any leads, clues or reliable testimony, this could be the bombshell that breaks the case wide open.

“Ever since we’ve seen this one photo of the leg,” Bernadette said, “everything’s went so fast. “It’s just a roller coaster, up and down, up and down. Every time someone talks to me, it starts all over again. Someone out there knows what happened to my son.”

Bernadette’s cousin’s girlfriend took the photo to Pottsville Police. The young man told police he was out fishing, and received the picture from another fisherman with the remark “Look what I found upstream!”

After that, the trail went cold once again. The police could not figure out where and when the photo was taken, who took it, or if it was even real in the first place.

“We could find no data on the photograph,” said Pottsville Police Chief Richard Wojciechowsky. “Our investigators could not accumulate anything to verify the authenticity of the picture.”

“I could’ve killed that kid,” Bracey said about the young man who showed her best friend the photo. “She’s just starting to forget, not forget but not stress about this stuff, and he shows her that picture. Are you kidding me? I could have died.”

Bracey knew James from birth. It was she who came up with the idea to name Bernadette's son James.

“He was a good, outgoing boy,” she said. “To me, he was very polite and nice and kind.”

Bracey begs Bernadette not to go out and search for James by herself, but she does anyway.

“I don’t go where Bernie does,” she said, “I’m a little afraid of that stuff. She goes out in woods and cricks, I don’t know how she does it.”

For most of her search, Bernadette has been met with misinformation and outright lies. Tipsters tell tales of her son being killed in a variety of brutal ways. She investigates every single story, but always finds herself back at where she started. The photograph of the skeletal leg could be yet another in a long line of cruel hoaxes.

“I believe these people are trying to drive her crazy,” Bracey said. “Look here, look there. Really, Bern? She’s gonna slip and fall and break her neck, or get shot. I think these people want her gone, so she’s not around to investigate. They’re driving my friend out of her mind. That’s her baby boy.”

Neither Bernadette nor Bracey can say whether the photograph is real, but Bernadette says that the man with the picture also claimed to have a (possibly human) bone in his possession. Bernadette told police, but nothing came of it.

“How do you know that wasn’t part of my son?” She said. “You didn’t even check to see if that was a human remain or not. You didn’t want nothin’ to do with the bone.”

Chief Wojciechowsky denied that the Pottsville Police had been uncooperative, and said that they vetted every lead that came their way. However, they too have faced a barrage of false information.

“It’s been frustrating,” he said. “It’s been very bothersome. A lot of hours out of work, thinking about it.”

Whenever he is hiking or biking on Sharp Mountain, Wojciechowsky searches for James.

“I take every case too personal,” he said, “and this is very troubling to me and to my department as well.”

Still, he has hope that someone will come forward.

The post history of the James Harig Search Group, a Facebook group with over 700 followers, is a poignant retelling of James’ disappearance, and how long his family has gone without answers.

“Please give us this closure before the holiday season,” reads a post from November 14, 2012.

On December 24 that year, James’ sister Jessica posted: “Dear Santa, the thing I want most for xmas is my brother to be found.”

Several posts reference James’ then-8-year-old son Dylan, who is now 18 and still reckoning with life without his father.

In her Tamaqua home, Bernadette and Dylan look over evidence regarding James' disappearance. PHOTO BY WES CIPOLLA

“Dylan misses u James, fishing with his daddy is what he loved to do!!!” One 2013 post reads.

In 2017, five years after the disappearance, Jessica wrote a poem dedicated to her “baby brother:”

I sure wish you were here

I never really got to say goodbye

I hope these words will reach you,

as if you’d never died.

Half a decade, 1,825 days.

Millions of whys, a trillion sighs…

So many missed moments,

countless tears wiped dry.

Songs I know you would have liked

that your ears will never hear.

I miss you calling me up saying “Hey Sis I have an awesome movie we can watch” but those

are words I’ll never hear.

Advice, never again to be given

on dilemmas I must face alone.

Stories are fading from memory,

secrets of your past unknown.

The days keep going, one at a time

but for you, no more will pass time.

Forever frozen in a grain of sand

stuck somewhere unknown to man.

My daughters keep on growing

And their memories are fading too

I have to keep reminding them

of how much they were teased but also loved by you.

I think of all the things we miss

without you in our lives.

All the things I don’t want to do

without you by my side.

In 2018, Bernadette posted “6 years missing you more than ever I love you my son.”

The most recent post on the group, from November 7 2020, simply reads “God has you,” on a field of smiley faces. The Facebook group has no updates or breakthroughs in the investigation. It only has a mother, son and sister who still do not know what happened to their “guardian angel” - and the same photo of James, shirtless, smiling and holding one of the fish he loved to catch.

“The not knowin’ is the hardest part,” said Joe Franko, Bernadette’s friend and housemate.

“It’s what’s killin’ me,” Bernadette said. “Just please anybody, just please let him come home. I want him to be laid to rest, finally. I don’t care who did what. I do care who did it, but at this point, if you bring my son home, that’s what I want the most.”