Featured Image Credit: Cold Case Detective Youtube
Topics: Basketball, NBA
Ryan Baldi
Rico Harris was once a basketball standout in his youth and went on to play for the Harlem Globetrotters, but after a life of addiction and crime, his sudden disappearance in 2014 remains a tragic mystery.
Born in 1978, Harris showed himself to be a talented basketball star in his native Los Angeles, winning a state title with LA City College before playing for Division One Cal State Northridge.
He went on to play semi-professionally before, in 2000, playing for the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters for one season.
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While playing for the Globetrotters, Harris was the victim of what has been described as a "brutal attack" that left him unable to continue his basketball career.
He fell into a life of crime and drug abuse, struggling with addictions to heroin and crack cocaine and arrested several times for public intoxication.
In the mid-2000s, Harris was able to turn his life around, overcoming his addictions and moving to Seattle with his partners.
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It was on a drive back to Seattle in 2014 after visiting his mother in California that Harris was seen for the last time, however.
At around 10.45am, he called his partner to inform her that he was going to take a nap and rest up for the remainder of the long journey. That was the last time anyone hears from him, with the case of his disappearance described as 'murky' and 'perplexing'.
His mobile phone lost reception around half an hour later and his car was discovered three days later, around 60 miles north of where he'd stopped to make the call.
A search and rescue operation began and a backpack containing his phone and charger, along with an empty plastic bottle that smelled of alcohol, were later found.
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A sighting of a man matching Harris' description was reported, but he was never found and no further trace of him was discovered beyond his car and backpack.
Rescue efforts were ramped down a couple of weeks after his initial disappearance and it was never discovered what happened to Harris, who was just 37 years old at the time he went missing.