Law&Crime Sidebar - Missing Woman's Body Found in Metal Box Hidden in the Woods

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

A Pennsylvania woman searching for her missing sister made a horrific discovery: a human body inside a large metal box. She was able to identify the victim as her loved one, Katlyn Harp, who had last been seen 10 days before, thanks to a distinctive tattoo. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber has homicide detective Aaron Benzick walk us through the investigation step by step.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If your child, under 21, has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes or fatty liver disease, visit https://forthepeople.com/food to start a claim now! HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. A Pennsylvania woman in a desperate search for her missing sister made a horrific discovery, a human body inside a metal box. And where that box was found would lead to the of the missing woman's husband. We are going to break down the critical evidence in this investigation that police say led them straight to the alleged killer.

Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber. Let me tell you about 33-year-old Caitlin Harp. She'd been living with her husband and children in Hemlock Township, Pennsylvania. She was last heard from on June 19th, 2025, and then she went radio silent. And that was very, very unusual.

Her family, specifically her sister, told police that they always heard from her every day. So they reported her missing. They launched a search, but their worry soon turned to terror, as more and more days went by with no word from Caitlin. Her remains were finally found 10 days later, and her husband, Vincent Vinnie Harp, was charged with criminal homicide, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence. So to talk about the key steps in this investigation, the critical evidence that led police to their prime suspect, even though, you know, look, he is innocent until proven guilty. We're going to get into that. I want to bring in homicide detective Aaron Benzick, who is phenomenal in these kinds of cases. Really appreciate his insight. Aaron, thank you so much for coming here on Sidebar. Appreciate it.

Good morning. Happy to be here. Now, to be clear, Aaron doesn't have any involvement in this particular case, but, you know, his insights and how investigators operate in a case like this is so valuable. First of all, Aaron, when does a missing person case turn into a criminal investigation? Yeah, you know, that's the magic question right there. And that's what's so important about missing person cases is you don't know if you have someone who is just wanting to break from their family.

They're just trying to get some space or trying to get some breathing room. Or do you have someone who has been murdered? They've been a victim of a crime and, you know, an offender trying to buy time. And that's just really challenging for detectives on these points. You've got to treat these missing person cases as criminal offenses from the get-go. You're going to do a lot of work on a missing person case that may more times and not turn out to not be needed at all. But if it does turn out to be that missing person case that is in fact a criminal case, if you didn't treat it like a criminal case at the beginning, you're missing evidence and you can't go back and find that stuff. We often hear the spouse, the partner, the boyfriend, the girlfriend is usually the first person that investigators look at.

look at in cases like this. Would you agree with that? How important is it to investigate the people closest to the missing person? What's your analysis on that? Sure. I mean, it's not just because that a person is a spouse that means they're automatically guilty of anything. Generally, it's the proximity and time. When you have someone who's missing, when you have someone who's a victim of a crime, or you're just unsure, you're working on victimology. You're building back that timeline. And the people closest to someone are generally going to be their spouses, their domestic partners or dating partners and family members. So you start with a small circle. More times than not, people are going to be connected with someone that they know as opposed to

a complete stranger. So you have to at least rule out those people who are closest to someone and take a look at them. You know, is something a little off here? Do we need to look further or do things check out and can we look at other possibilities? Hey, everybody. This is another law and crime legal alert. Do you know that children are being diagnosed with serious conditions? like type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and the research is potentially linking ultra-processed foods to all this? Yeah, well Morgan and Morgan, they're stepping in to fight to hold these food companies accountable. With decades of experience fighting large corporations, they are ready to stand up for the families who deserve justice. So if your child, under 21, has been diagnosed

with type 2 diabetes or fatty liver disease, then visit www.4thepeople.com slash food or scan the QR code on screen to learn more. Caitlin's sister, Heather, she was the first to request a welfare check. This is according to police. And you sometimes see conflicting information, you know, in TV shows and movies. When should you report red flags? When should you report something that's suspicious to police when it comes to missing people? You know, the best case scenario is somebody didn't have their phone, they left it at home, there

was a misunderstanding, but is it important to always report to law enforcement when you notice something's off? The idea that she wasn't responding was a red flag here. Yeah, and in my experience, answer that question, Jesse, is early on. The earlier you can report these things because family knows, I've learned in my career, you know, especially you start hearing from moms who say, hey, I haven't heard or this is their pattern. This is what they normally would happen. Pay attention to those timing things.

You know, it's not always the, oh, my child would never do this. My family member would never do this. It's more of the, hey, they would call me every morning. Hey, they would reach out to me. Hey, I would hear from them by now something. is off and you know from a sister's point of view you know she's expect to have heard from her sister hasn't she might check in with the husband hey what's you know what's going on is everything okay and if something is off there I can't encourage people enough to reach out to law enforcement

early on we can't redo these things that happen during those time frames and we can miss evidence so knowing about it early on law enforcement would rather be looking at things trying to find out what's going on and find out everything's okay then to not even know about something And then we're looking, you know, two days, three days down the road, someone's missing, and something actually bad happened to them. And we're having to go back and piece that timeline together. No, I appreciate you saying that. That's a really, really important point that I think people should take to heart. I want to go through the timeline a little bit.

I want to go through the timeline that investigators were able to piece together, which was presented, by the way, to the court as part of the criminal complaint. So, Caitlin's husband, Vinnie, says that he last saw Caitlin sometime between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. on June 19th. When he woke up at 5 a.m. the next day, that Friday, she wasn't there. So Heather called Hemlock Township Police to do a welfare check at around 4 p.m. and told them that she last spoken with Caitlin just before 9 p.m. the night before. And the fact that she hadn't heard from her yet, that day, that is what was very concerning. The criminal complaint affidavit also states, quote,

she has had a conversation with Vincent Harp, and he informed Lane that they had argued after dinner the night prior. Heather also told police she had access to her sister's movements through the Life 360 app and said there had been no activity since that Thursday night. Now, Aaron, how important is that information for police to know? Oh, that's super important. You know, you've got a timeline starting to come in from the husband. He's starting to say last time he's seen him. He wakes up, she's not there. Very unusual. Add on to that, the fact that, you know, we've kind of normalized in society now, sharing our location with our friends. It's a great thing. You know, used to be something

kind of weird like, oh my gosh, you know, you're someone's tracking me. Not at all. People are very comfortable with accountability on location information. So you have husband saying, hey, this is the timeline. I wake up. My wife is gone. Well, that's unusual. Her phone is telling a story of, hey, there's, there's, we're not seeing activity on there. This is adding into these layers of something is off. And the timeline from the husband that he's saying things happen is giving law enforcement a starting point to look at and focus. But according to him, if his wife is gone, we've got family members saying we haven't heard from her, we've got an emergency. We have a real emergency situation going on right now. Where's

Kaelin? Is, are these apps reliable? Do police use them a lot, like 360? Apple's find my friends. Are those things that law enforcement use? Are they reliable? Is there glitches in it? And maybe, you know, it doesn't update in time. What's your experience in using? these kinds of new trackers we have in our life. Yeah, you know, they're absolutely reliable. They're, you know, you're looking at patterns and you don't ever want to like singular focus on one singular random point saying this one point means something. What you're looking at is you look at the pattern of location information, and then you're

looking for layers of multiple sources that help validate each other. Having a find my device, having Life 360, you know, your Apple trackers, your tile trackers, having these things are all very important data points that we can and do regularly look at. in law enforcement. And then we're going to springboard from that. We're looking to other sources of what can we find on our cellular devices in regards to talking to the cell phone companies. So having multiple different points of connection can help us understand. And we can also validate these location points by looking at things. And they give us clues. So we don't want to say this one singular point means everything. But then when you look at the pattern, we say, hey, this device

showed to be in this area, or showed this location information. We're then looking for surveillance video in that area. Can we find things that are consistent with that? and help establish the reliability of the location data from these cellular tools that we have. But absolutely game changers use them. They're helpful. I have them on my, I have them in my car, have them in different things to help keep track of.

These are data points that are helpful in law enforcement. So we go back to this, okay? And the Hemlick Township Police, they started an investigation. They were checking them with family members. They were calling surrounding jurisdictions to see if they had any information. They were checking out places,

that they knew Caitlin would go, doing all the things that you need to do to try to find a missing person. And they spoke with Vinny, who allegedly showed them a screenshot of messages from his phone to hers, but the criminal complaint states that there had been no communication from Caitlin through messaging apps or phone calls or text messages since Thursday. Sunday, the Columbia County District Attorney reached out to the Pennsylvania State Police, letting them know what was going on and asking for their help in the investigation. okay so aaron why bring in the state police at this point you know at that point you have the initial responding law enforcement agency is kind of triaging everything and they're getting the

facts together piecing them together and they are accurately and correctly and correctly identifying a something's not right something is not okay and we need to go full court press on this we need to go and that's when you're bringing in your state resources that local uh township or local jurisdiction may not have the experience, may not have all the resources specifically in tracking location evidence to be able to put that picture together. So kudos to them for bringing in resources where experts can exist to help us figure out, hey, what is this data showing? What data should we be getting? How can we use this? But what it sounds like to me is that the initial responding officers identifying, this is not good. We have a problem. And let's bring in some larger agencies

that have some experts that can help us. And then you go to Sunday. So Sunday, June 22nd, this State Police cellular technician. You talk about resources. Did an exigency request for Caitlin's phone records from Verizon. What is that an exigency request? Sure. So that's a recognition by law enforcement that, hey, we believe there's someone is an imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death to themselves or someone else. And we need to without delay find that person. To do that, we need records quickly. Our traditional methods of getting records involved, getting a search warrant, you know, filling out an affidavit before a judge alleging that we have probable causes of criminal offenses occurred. In this point, though, we don't know any of that, and we don't have time to wait for a search one.

Wait for a judge to sign, wait for the data to go into the queue of a phone company or a data provider. No, this is an emergency. Exigent circumstances say we need this information right now without delay simply because someone's life is on the line and we need that. So great, great move by the agency, getting that information, start getting the data. Because the goal is to find Caitlin and to find her alive. Yeah, and here's what happened. According to the information they got from Verizon, Caitlin's phone was in the area of her home on Fairview Drive until around 9.20 p.m.

And something interesting to note here is that Heather apparently shared a screenshot of an alleged text message that Vinny had said Caitlin sent him at 3.49 a.m. It says, I love you so much, but I can't. I'm sorry for talking to them guys on SNAP, but I need a break. I'm going to have my friend pick me up. I'm taking a bag and I'll get a hold of you in a couple of days to get the rest of my bleep. I need my space to get out of my head. Okay.

Now, according to Caitlin's sister and other friends, this message was very unlike Caitlin. It had formatting errors, misspellings that they say Caitlin would never do. Aaron, what is a potential conclusion about that text message? Yeah, I think, again, you've got to go back to family knows. A sister knows her sister. And if her sister is in a place of crisis, she needs help. Her sister is going to understand those circumstances. She's going to be able to pick up that the circumstances text message is alleging that, oh,

I just kind of need my space or I'm doing this or that. The sister's going to be in the loop on that. And it sounds like they have that kind of relationship where they're going to know that. So her picking up and saying, hey, the formatting is off, the tone is off, I just don't, I don't understand this. I'm putting some stock in that. I believe that. And now I'm concerned. Could Vinny be buying time?

Is this a text message that could be put out there? Because Vinny's trying to put a cushion of redirecting anything, looking at him and saying, hey, you know, she sent this message. This makes sense. This is why she's gone, everybody. Everyone calm down. No big deal. Nothing to see here. And that's just a huge red flag.

You mentioned Vinny. So what happens? On Sunday, or when Sunday turned into Monday, and there is still no sign of Caitlin, State Police interviewed Vinnie. And this is from the criminal affidavit. Quote, through the course of the interview, it was revealed that Vincent Harp was in constant communication with Caitlin via his cellular phone in the days and hours leading up to her disappearance. Vincent Harp related. He received a message from Caitlin in the early morning hours of June 19, 2025, after her Life 360 application was no longer active.

Throughout the interview, Vincent Harp was inconsistent with his movements before, during, and after Caitlin's disappearance. These discrepancies include stating that he had talked to his counselor, then changing his story to say he did not speak with the counselor the morning of June 20th. He initially related that he had his phone with him Friday morning, then changed his account to say that he left his phone at the office. Now, Aaron, there's two ways to look at this, right? You could say it's, you know, maybe he was nervous, maybe people in these kinds of situations, situations if they never spoke with law enforcement before, they might get details wrong. But is there something more here? You know, even if it's just benign information, getting stuff wrong, being inconsistent, that still could be a red flag, right? Yeah.

Uh-oh, things aren't going good for Vinnie. And like you said, you know, you can make mistakes. You can make mistakes of fact. And your memory, not remember everything perfect. And you kind of got to walk through it and things. but they're starting to be too many of these and we're starting to have too many layers of these things and so what that's going to do is it's not going to be law enforcement

saying all right vanny you have to be lying because you said this and then changed it no that's that's not what we're doing it's pushing law enforcement now to let's check let's see what he's saying is this true let's start looking what can we show about viny did he stay at home did he leave and we find any surveillance video showing activity around the area what does his phone records say what does his digital

data say so it's definitely got law enforcement's attention. You know, it doesn't mean that he's lying or that he's guilty of anything, but it absolutely is going to be something that we're going to verify. Let's go to the next stage of this. According to the affidavit, the morning after Caitlin was last seen, Vinny is spotted on surveillance video at a gas station at around 5.30 a.m. He apparently asked the store clerk if they sell gloves, which they don't. So he asks if he can have one of the pairs the store workers use. And when he walks back outside, he goes. He goes, goes to a Silverado truck.

The harp family is known to have the truck in a GMC Yukon. The criminal complaint states that the Silverado was later seen on a rural mountain road that's rarely used called Shade Mountain Road. And according to police, he was also out in that area in the Yukon on that Friday between 10 and 11 a.m. and got stuck in the mud at one point. There's reportedly video circulating on social media right now that purports the show Vinny having to get the Yukon pulled out of the woods a along the road by another truck.

Then cell phone data shows he went back out to that same area between 420 and 450 that day. The court document states during examination of this heavily wooded desolate location, evidence of drag marks into and out of the wooded area were observed. These drag marks appear to originate from the location that Vincent Harp's phone communicated with the network.

Aaron, drag marks got to be a huge, piece of evidence all this idea of putting them in this this specific location at these points in time you know they don't find a body or anything like that but yet this is telling right this is interesting for investigators yeah absolutely you know you've got the story of any staying home all morning we're starting to fact check a little bit great job by law enforcement getting to that clerk finding the story about the gloves piecing the time together these movements we're not finding drag marks in the woods

Vinnie is up to no good. This is a person of interest now. And law enforcement is going to be wanting to figure out all of their movements. We're getting Vinny into an area. They're able to search. They're finding these drag marks. What is Vinny doing? What is he dragging into the woods?

Why can't they find anything there? And, you know, this is really ramping up things to local law enforcement with this kind of information. We've now gone from Vinny possibly making a few mistakes of timeline in an interview talking to police because he's nervous. We're now getting to the facts. And the facts are that Vinny is making specific moves that aren't consistent with how he's describing things. And they are consistent with somebody, in reality, covering their tracks, actually covering tracks and having physical behaviors consistent with something's gone wrong.

We've got to figure this out. Surveillance video was a critical investigative tool in this case. And according to state police, as Vinny was traveling or apparently traveling from Shade Mountain Road, to the home on Fairview Drive, he drove past security cameras, so police were able to confirm not only his route, but the condition of the truck. Around 5.40 p.m. on that Friday, the Silverado passed by the VFW in Bloomsburg, and officers were able to see a large green box in the back of the truck. Ten minutes later, 5.50 p.m., security video apparently shows him passing the Middleburg Police Department, and again, police confirmed there was a large,

box in the bed of the truck. So based on that, Aaron, it sounds to me like maybe Vinny was trying to, I don't know, maybe dispose of this large metal box on Shade Mountain Road, changed his mind, dragged it back out of the woods, was seen driving it back toward his home. There could be a benign explanation for it, but your take? Yeah, you're looking for, if we can't find Caitlin, we're looking for what is this object that's causing these drag marks? And so you're studying that surveillance video looking, hey, we've got a truck driving by. We know it's connected to Vinny. There's a large object in the back, this green box. This is likely the source of your drag marks. So now the hunt is to find Caitlin. It's concerning that we think we have to find the

green box now. And then another interesting piece of evidence. You have this ATV that Vinnie apparently sold after Caitlin went missing and after his interview with police. So according to the affidavit on June 25th, 2025, a recently sold 2022 Kawasaki UTV was brought to PSP Bloomberg. Members of PSP troop and forensic service unit conducted a field test that showed a presumptive positive for human blood. The test area was the driver and passenger seat of the UTV. The UTV was known to be utilized by Vincent Harp as recent as June 18th, 2025 via trail cam footage provided by a neighbor. This UTV was sold by Vincent Harp on June 24th, 2025. And then from there, we go to the most heartbreaking part of this case. The discovery of

Caitlin's remains. As police were doing their investigation, Caitlin's family and Freds had launched their own search. Now, Vinny even shared Caitlin's missing person flyer on his Facebook page. Heather kept people updated online. Their searches were fruitless for more than a week, but 10 days after Caitlin was reported missing, Heather and other searchers found her on property that Vinny used to own, but apparently sold in 2023. This is according to property records. The criminal complaint states on June 29, 2025, at approximately 1229 hours, PSP Bloomsburg received a call from the victim's sister, Heather Lane, notifying that she and search party believed they had located Caitlin at 86 Harp Lane. This property was formerly owned by Vincent Harp.

Consent was obtained from the current homeowner and investigators and other emergency personnel responded to the area. A large green metal box consistent with surveillance viewed in the bed of Harp Silverado was discovered along the mountainside north of Vince Harp's former property. The box had a strong odor of decomposition emitting from it. The box was retrieved from the mountainside approximately 180 yards from the edge of the cliff. The box lid was locked with a key master lock upon cutting the lock and opening the lock. the box, human remains were discovered. Caitlin Harp was identified via tattoo as the human remains. And the coroner later referred to the box as a military-type storage locker. This is according to news outlet W&E Pace. So, Aaron, you have blood, you have the location, you have the box.

Is that everything that prosecutors are going to eventually need, or do you still see some openings here that we don't have the full story? No, they've got a pretty complete picture. And unfortunately, it's a picture that this is no longer a missing person. Caitlin's been found and it isn't the results that we've all been wanting for her family searching diligently law enforcement's working through the information that they have and you know what we have here is a just absolute case of domestic violence and we have all of the indicators of this we have the spouse saying oh we last saw our our spouse tonight before they woke up they're missing we have this ominous text message oh I need my space now we have

inconsistencies in the story we have vehicles being sold afterwards here huge red flag. Why are vehicles being sold immediately after someone go missing? And they stay diligent on it. They stay working. And the sister, you know, just heartbreaking for her. But she didn't give up. She kept working. She kept following all those things. And we find that Caitlin is in a place, you know, not a place that Vinny owns and controls anymore, but it's a place that Vinny's familiar with. So, you know, we have the drag marks in the one place. The drag marks come out. And we find that green box. He goes back to a place. Lacey's familiar with. These checkboxes all cross the list for Vinny being having probable

cause for committing an offense against Caitlin. And you know, that's exactly what we see law enforcement get to. Just heart wrenching to see the sister's work finds her sister and these are the results that we get. But it's just something to be proud of her hard work and what she did to find her sister and bring her home. And Vinnie was arrested. Vinnie was arrested. He was held without bail on charges of criminal homicide, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence. A forensic pathologist did an autopsy on Caitlin, but couldn't really determine how exactly she died, according to WNEP. Dr. Christopher Sullivan reported that he found no evidence that Caitlin had been shot or stabbed,

didn't find any broken bones. The coroner still waiting on a toxicology report. Aaron, is that strange to you? No, it's not strange. I mean, it's just indicating that there's no direct thing, you know, firearm, wasn't used, a knife wasn't used, but there's still an indication of that, you know, there's ways that people can harm others and cause their death without leaving marks that are going to be found after, you know, a week or so of a body being out there. So not surprising, just sad

circumstances, and it does give a little bit of an indicator into how Kaelin died. And again, he's innocent until proven guilty. We'll see what the defense does. We'll see. where the evidence all leads. But a little interesting side note I just have to mention here is that Vinnie's first wife, Steph, dead. Yeah, she apparently died several years ago from what investigators say was a drug overdose. And suspicion is rampant online right now that Vinny may have been involved in her death as well. But to be clear, there's never been any evidence to support that. I will say this. Heather posted a message on her Facebook page after Caitlin's body was found saying, I know everyone is waiting to hear Caitlin in our story. We need to first get some

more answers and send her away in the biggest way possible. I will let everyone know. Once that is over, our story will be told. It was a good group of about 15 or so family best friends reading comments, messages out in the trenches, searching, marking maps, following the signs, determining what leads, tips are true or false, doing our own investigation because we were supposed to find her. And she went on to remind people that Vinny's side of the family knew and loved Caitlin for years as well. And it's just sad for them as it is for. for her side. As for Vinny, he's due back in court for a preliminary hearing on July 14th, where we may find out more details as to exactly what law enforcement found during their

investigation, why they believe they got their men. Remember, that's the opportunity for the prosecution to put forward evidence of probable cause. Is there sufficient evidence to move this forward towards a trial? So we'll wait and see what happens there. Aaron Benzick, thank you so much for taking the time and breaking all this down for us. Really, really appreciate it. You're up, Jessica. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcasts.

I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.