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There was a time when we welcomed change, when we bounded through piles of golden leaves and relished the chill in the air.
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This is Murder, She Told. True crime stories from Maine, New England, and small town USA. I'm Kristen Sevey. You can connect with the show at MurderSheTold.com or on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. This is part two of the Tot Harriman story. If you haven't listened to part one, I suggest going back and starting with that one first.
Tahoe's mountains shrank in the rearview mirror as Clint drove his family east. Refreshed and ready to start their new life, they moved near Clint's mother in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, just south of Portland.
Their home was spacious with panoramic views of the bay. Just steps from their front door was Trundy Point, a small peninsula where they could watch waves crash against the bluffs and cast lines into the water. It was perfect for Taut. Fishing reminded her of home.
Todd and Clint married once more, this time with an American marriage certificate. Min also took on the Harriman name. He'd never gotten a chance to know his biological father, who had died when he was young, and Clint embraced him as his own.
In 1977, two years later, Todd and Clint welcomed another son. They named him Chin-si. Most Vietnamese names, they have a meaning. A lot of the times, they're designed to be a reflection on your character or a reflection on who your parents would like you to become. And there are some names, especially women's names, are just evocative of something in nature. A flower is very common. But
But my name, my dad and my mom had just come back from the war. And my dad wanted me to have a name that reflected something from their time together. So, yeah, he went home after I was born. And he looked up in a Vietnamese American dictionary something along the lines of warrior or soldier. And that's how he came up with my name. But there's no...
there's no one else really who's received the name. So when I go to Vietnam now and I tell them what my name is, they're either kind of like, "Okay, that's cool," or like, "Whoa, that's a pretty intense name." Chin-si, I think, is reflective of a Vietnamese force that existed at a time that was just known for being brave,
I mean, it's a pretty strong name, right? So I think it's kind of like you've met someone and they said, you know, hey, my name's Rambo. You go, oh, okay. I mean, you know, you have a lot to live up to around a name like that.
The kids were enrolled in school and Tot stayed busy as a mother and homemaker. She was active in her children's school and extracurricular activities and welcomed their friends into her home. Two Hums shared a memory of Tot's hospitality. "I remember coming home from high school dances at 11 at night with friends and my mom would get up and cook us a full meal. She'd do a stir fry and rice and some fruit. The whole nine yards."
Naturally, the house became the go-to hangout spot. Many of her children's friends even called her mom.
Let me put it this way. My mom was really very generous with her time, really generous with her energy. And she loved getting to know people. She loved making them feel at home. She used to do a lot of cooking for the neighborhood and she'd invite people over a lot that weren't Vietnamese, just people in our neighborhood. And we'd have these things called kitchen dinners and
And, you know, we'd sit around a little table that we had in the kitchen and we'd all, you know, my mom would make a great meal. She was always known for her cooking and how great her cooking was. And she fed a lot of people and it always felt lovely. And everyone really appreciated all of her time and all of her thoughtfulness there, you know, of her friends. And from her early life in Vietnam, the two things that she became really skilled at were cooking and sewing.
I also remember my mom giving people a lot of joy making dresses for them, especially wedding dresses. She would just get a client that would come over with just a picture of a wedding dress that a lot of times maybe was too extravagantly priced. And my mom would sort of diligently cut all the cloth and make all the patterns and build a custom wedding dress with all the brocading and
You know, I would see my mom sitting there late at night just beading, you know, one bead at a time onto these wedding dresses. And I think that gave her a lot of joy. And I think she did it really freely. Food was a central part of life. She taught cooking classes for fellow Mainers. And she even opened a Vietnamese restaurant in Portland named after her daughter, Tu Hum, where she was known to greet customers with big smiles and friendly conversation.
My mom was, it's sort of funny, like she was sort of like a cultural ambassador in a way. I mean, I don't want to like overblow it, but yeah, she, you know, she kind of was, you
It didn't matter how many people came. She would throw big parties around the Vietnamese New Year and our house would just be filled. I mean, it was like a nightclub. You couldn't even sit down. There were so many people there. Food for 100 people. I remember her praying during the times of the ceremony during the Vietnamese New Year. She was bringing all of those experiences over to Maine and everyone would watch with a lot of respect.
And, you know, our house would get really quiet while my mom would pray. Even during those big parties, she just had a way of bringing people together and experiencing something new. The Vietnamese population in Portland was very small when Tot and her family arrived. Even today, Maine, as a whole, is 94% white.
She wasn't just a minority. She was one of the very few Vietnamese families in Greater Portland when she arrived in 1975.
My mom, with a handful of Vietnamese refugee families, started the Vietnamese community in the greater Portland area. The Vietnamese community that's there now, when I went back there a few years ago, has really grown. I think it's a testament to the people that stayed and tried to make it grow. It's really a testament to the people of Maine too for letting that flourish there.
And I think she felt really lucky in a sense that all the good things that happened to her in her life in the U.S. happened. I think she felt an indebtedness to the people of Maine.
Thot volunteered with a refugee resettlement service, helping immigrants adjust to American life. Thot even opened her own home to newly arrived refugees, introducing them to American pastimes. She would sometimes recruit Chin-si to show them how to play basketball or baseball. At Maine Medical Center, she served as an interpreter for Vietnamese patients.
Though her English wasn't perfect, she'd sometimes mispronounce and misspell words. Her expressive nature allowed her to communicate well. Teasing herself about language mistakes became a trademark of her humor. She also really liked dressing up and becoming another person and being theatrical. She loved costumes and being on stage. She actually knew how to sing some Vietnamese plays and Vietnamese operas.
She did that when we were really young, when we were first in the U.S. as part of the annual Lunar New Year festivals. In photos from this vibrant period in Todd's life, you can see her standing proudly with her family, flashing smiles that were kind and welcoming, or as Chin-C said, like a ray of sunshine that overcame a world of darkness.
For 14 years, they lived together in the house on Trundy Point. The family's life in Maine was idyllic until the summer of 1992, when Clint, at age 72, lost his battle with cancer. He'd been through a lot, right? I mean, two, three wars. You know, he lived a long, full life. And I think all the stress of those wars and smoking and, you know, it just caught up to him. You know, we found out that he had cancer and, um...
Very quickly, he got quite sick. And I think he died maybe a little over a year and a half after his initial diagnosis. And that was obviously, you know, hard on my mom, hard on all of us. The following summer, the family buoyed their spirits by taking a trip to Vietnam. It was their first time back since the 1975 evacuation, and Thot was thrilled to introduce her children to the family. They'd grown substantially since they left.
Thu Ham had graduated from the University of Maine, and Minh was working as an engineer with the Merchant Marines. Chin-Se was still in high school, but would soon move to California to attend Stanford University. Thot's roots were in Vietnam, but the United States had become home for both her and her children. We spent a month out there, mostly in the village. I mean, the village would shut down, you know, when we'd come into certain parts of the village, like everybody would want to stop and come to see us.
We were driving through the countryside. Workers that were working at rice fields would see us coming from a distance and literally stop what they were doing to watch us pass. We were true foreigners and they wanted to know, you know, just like everything about us. And they didn't know a little. The things that you hear about, you know, Mickey Mouse and Rambo, for example, like they knew, you know, some of those things.
And my mom went back to go try and give her family a better life. She was helping my uncle and my aunts buy rice patties and buy generator businesses and things like that to help give them a business before she left and went back home. In 1996, after Chin-C headed off to college, Tot was alone in her house on the bay. She was in her early 50s and wanted to find another companion.
She found John Darby and moved to Milton, a small town in the Panhandle region of Florida, to be with him.
The muggy heat near the coast was reminiscent of Vietnam's tropical climate, a welcome change after 18 frigid New England winters. She decided that she'd have to start life anew, and that's what brought her to Florida. I think she wanted to start getting closer to her Vietnamese passions, you know, just warm weather and fishing and growing mangoes, and she was really looking forward to that.
Her new home was smaller than the one in Maine, but had the same easy access to water. It was just steps away from the Blackwater River and less than a minute's walk to a state park. Seated on a park bench, Todd enjoyed the shade of magnolia trees as she watched the river pull ducks, fish, and kayaks slowly south.
In 2001, after five years in Florida, Tott's partner passed away, and she moved again, this time to be closer to her children. That summer, she drove to Texas to visit them. Min and Thu Ham lived close to one another in the suburbs of Houston. Min was in League City, where he worked training astronauts at the United Space Alliance. Thu Ham, who married a merchant marine in 1995, was a homemaker living in the neighboring town of Clear Lake.
The siblings were growing roots in Texas, and they wanted Tot nearby to share in their lives. But Tot wasn't sold on the Houston area. She wanted to live somewhere with better views of the water and more access to the beach. She was also looking for a place where she could buy property that she could rent out as a landlord.
She'd originally argued for Brownsville, the southernmost city in Texas, right on the Mexican border. But her children told her it was further from them than her home in Florida. Corpus Christi was as far as we'd let her go, said Chinsey. It was less than a four-hour drive from Min and Tuhum, and seemed like the perfect fit for Todd. The coastal city is surrounded by islands and bays, and is a popular vacation spot that attracts millions of visitors each year.
Between permanent residences and vacation homes, there were an abundance of real estate options available. Tott made an appointment with a realtor in Corpus Christi for Friday the 13th of July.
Her children helped her prepare for her trip. Thu Ham mapped out her route down the coast. Rather than take the busy interstate, she'd head south on Highway 35, a two-lane country road that went through a series of small towns. It would take Thot all the way to Corpus if she stayed on track. She planned to leave early in the morning in order to avoid traffic.
The evening before she departed, Min checked Tot's car to make sure it was in good shape. She drove a maroon 1995 Lincoln Continental, a four-door sedan. Her Florida license plate read Totsie. The gas tank was three-fourths full, enough to get her to her destination without stopping. Tot planned to stay with some friends overnight in Corpus Christi and would be meeting with a realtor the next day.
On the morning of Thursday, July 12th, Todd woke early. Min was still sleeping when she departed between 5 and 5.30 a.m., but he briefly woke when she kissed him goodbye. At 8.30 a.m., a friend called Todd, and the phone rang four times before going to voicemail. It would be the first of many attempts to reach her. Based on the time that she left Min's house, she should have gotten to Corpus between 9 and 9.30 a.m.
But at 10:30 AM, the friend called again, and this time it went straight to voicemail, indicating that her phone was off. That evening, after not hearing from his mother all day, Minh called the friends that she was supposed to be staying with. When he learned that she'd never arrived, he immediately became worried. The next day, Thot missed her appointment with the realtor, and nobody heard from her through that weekend.
Though Min went to the League City Police on Thursday to report her missing, the date on Tott's official missing person report was Monday, July 16th, four days after she was last seen.
They really didn't allow us to file a missing person claim, you know, until maybe 72 hours after we last saw her. And that's a long time. And we got a lot of kind of civil liberties thrown at us, you know. Oh, well, you know, she's a grown lady. She can do what she wants. And we're like, you know, no, like, why would she, you know, she wouldn't do this is out of character for her. Well, you know, give it some time.
And those are the most crucial times. And I don't understand why law enforcement feels compelled to have a group of people wait long, especially for their loved ones. While these initial days of investigation and panic were unfolding, Chinsey was oblivious to the truth, having the trip of a lifetime out west, a 200-mile rafting trip through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River.
I was in the bottom of the Grand Canyon in this old two million year old rock and I
And I just, I don't know, I just started thinking about my mom a lot that day and that night. And it was just beautiful there. And I was laying there on the rock and thinking about my mom and I, you know, kind of drifted off to sleep and sort of half asleep. And it felt like something bit my back, you know, and they're telling us to be on the lookout for scorpions. So I thought, you know, that I'd been bitten by a scorpion. The image of my mom got completely squelched out and it felt like something was biting my spine, you
I had a friend with me. His name was Rob. I said, Rob, did something bite my back? He looked up and down my back with his flashlight, nothing. I just went back to bed that night, not really thinking much about it. I came out and the guide director said, hey, you need to go make a phone call. Something's happened with your family. I gave a call to my sister and my cousin picked up the phone and said, you have to come home right away because
Chin-C quickly made it to Texas and was confronted with a strange new world without his mom.
And I walked into the offices of Texas EquiSearch. And I remember seeing flyers, pictures of my mom, pictures of the car, and just thinking, this is surreal.
It wasn't until the following Thursday, July 19th, that Tott's description was shared publicly in the newspaper. It read, Harriman is described as being of Asian ancestry, standing 4 feet 11 inches tall and weighing 100 pounds. She has light brown eyes and wears gold-framed eyeglasses. She has black hair streaked with gray and wears seven gold bracelets on her right arm.
The report also included a description of Tott's car and urged anyone with information to contact the League City Police Department. The weekend of July 21st and 22nd, over a week after Tott's disappearance, volunteers retraced her route down the 75 miles of highway between League City and Bay City, as well as Port Lavaca and Palacios, areas closer to Tott's planned destination in Corpus Christi.
The search was organized by Texas EquiSearch, an equestrian search and rescue group founded in response to another tragic disappearance out of Leak City.
In 1984, a 16-year-old girl named Laura Miller vanished after using a payphone at a convenience store. Seventeen months later, two children biking in fields outside the city came across the remains of another woman. When authorities came and searched the area, Laura Miller's body was discovered. Had the first accidental discovery not been made, Laura's body may never have been found.
It was clear to her father, Tim, that police efforts alone could never cover the state's vast open spaces when searching for missing persons. He started EquiSearch as a way to honor his daughter's memory and help other families find answers to their loved one's disappearance. While no official connections have been made by authorities, League City is home to an area known as the Texas Killing Fields.
Since the 1970s, several women's bodies have been found in and around a 25-acre patch of land, while 30 additional bodies matching similar descriptions have been found throughout the wider region of southeast Texas.
It is evident that foul play was a factor in the majority of these cases, leading many to believe that several serial killers could be behind the unsolved murders. Although some believe that Todd has a connection to the killing fields, she would be an outlier. All of the other victims were women between the ages of 12 and 35, but Todd was 57.
With Tim Miller leading them, EquiSearch volunteers spent the weekend scouring the fields outside of League City under the blazing Texas sun, hoping to find some trace of Todd or her car. They searched for miles on those routes every day.
body of water that they could think of. They tried to plumb every possible route they drove looking for guardrails or something that looked like a car had gone off the road. They flew multiple versions of the route using state police airplanes. We would put horses on trailers and search for miles and miles along different routes where we thought maybe there was a chance she could have gone off the road.
On July 24th, about two weeks after Tott's disappearance, League City Police Detective Richard Renneson told reporters that they had gotten several tips of sightings of the vehicle, including claims that it had been driven erratically on I-45, the large highway Tott planned to avoid. One woman claimed to have seen a man driving Tott's maroon sedan three days after she disappeared. In her account, he was alone.
A composite sketch depicting a slim black man in his early 20s was released following her report. The amount of detail she was able to recall is surprising, considering the fact that she only caught a brief glimpse of him while driving on a major highway, and a week had elapsed before she reported the sighting.
Another caller said the car was parked at a grocery store 10 minutes away from League City, in Dickinson. Unfortunately, since the reports came in over a week after the sightings, there was little that officials could do. Where do we go look? questioned a lieutenant with the Sheriff's Department. Following the July 24th updates, more reported sightings came in to Tott's family and the police.
A lot of leads turned out to not be true, said Detective Renneson. We had hundreds of sightings, but none we could substantiate. Two weeks passed, and Tott's children were losing faith in the ability of the police to locate their mother. They hired a private investigator, and Chin-Z, who was 24, uprooted his life, moving from California to Texas.
In late July, he launched a website, FindTot.org, to expand the case's reach. The site contained photos of Tot, details of the case, and contact information. He asked readers to reach out to major news outlets and TV stations to spread the word about her disappearance. It is clear from Chinsey's words that he believed exposure was the best way to move the case forward. The bottom of his first post read,
Please help me find her. Contact me and tell me your thoughts. Or download flyers, because we really have no idea where she is. Any assistance could help. Take them to your local hangouts and post them. This is what the internet is for, isn't it? It gets people from everywhere involved. Chinsey also used the site to tell the story of his mother's life.
He posted pictures of Tott with her family, including one of her standing next to him at his graduation from Stanford the previous summer. Though she is an entire head shorter than her son, Tott stands tall in the photo, beaming with pride at Chin-si's accomplishments. He wrote, Hello everyone. This is my mother's sight.
I've tried to put into it everything that I could find. This is my dedication to her memory and all for which she stood. I don't know where she is right now, and I miss her. She was an incredible woman, beyond words at times, whose life spoke for the good we all hope for, but sometimes let slip away. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union.
She's the self-proclaimed bingo queen of Manila. And I know better to interrupt her on bingo night, even to pick up cash. Sending money direct to her bank account is super fast, and Aunt Tina gets more time to be the bingo queen. Western Union, send money in-store directly to their bank accounts in the Philippines. Services offered by Western Union Financial Services, Inc., NMLS number 906983, or Western Union International Services, LLC, NMLS number 906985. Licensed as money transmitters by the New York State Department of Financial Services. See terms for details.
As July turned into August, hopes of finding Tot dimmed. Flyers with pictures of her car were faxed to police stations all along the coast, though Chinsey didn't feel like they were doing much to help. I personally called up many precincts across Houston and up and down the coast, Galveston, Victoria, all along the way. And I asked them each individually whether they knew of my mom's case. And in many cases, they said no.
And so it really became a bit of a, not a bit of, it became a personal crusade to just get my mom's image, get her case in front of people. And I spent a year of my life just doing that pretty much nonstop. Jensee turned 25 in early August. It was the first birthday in his life where he hadn't heard from his mother. He wrote, if I knew how my mom disappeared, I could accept that, but I don't.
Instead, I search every day to find clues that will bring her back to me. I live now with only an imagination that runs wild with ideas, still blind to the truth. On August 11th, a local newspaper confirmed that police had gone through Todd's phone records and credit card statements, which showed that she hadn't made any calls or purchases since her disappearance. The lack of activity, Detective Renneset admitted, was very unusual.
The only thing they were able to confirm was that her phone must have lost power or been turned off between 8 and 10.30 a.m. the day of her disappearance, as the first call that went through rang four times, and the second call didn't ring at all. He said, we've got a big pile of nothing.
Jin-si said in the same article, It's been really tough. You want to get everything done as fast as you can, and you want a million people out looking for her. But it just doesn't happen that way. It's the helplessness. That's what's hardest for me.
you realize just how fractured the system is and how human it is and how everyone just is mostly just reacting to whatever's in front of them and just prioritizing whatever's first at hand. There's not this coordinated effort to find missing people.
On August 15th, a sergeant from the state police summarized the efforts put forth so far, saying, We started at the residence and followed the route she planned to take all the way to Palacios, which was the halfway point on her trip to Corpus.
We stopped at every ravine, every bar ditch, every body of water. There were three or four places that she might have run off the road. We weren't satisfied with what we found, so we used a plane on Friday. We're going back in a helicopter. There are a couple of areas of water we're going to check with a john boat. The family is doing a lot of legwork. We'll help the family and League City Police in any way we can. We are willing to do whatever it takes.
The Victoria Advocate, a local newspaper, printed two theories on the case in mid-August. The first was that Tott was involved in an automobile accident that resulted in her car becoming hidden, for example, a deep section of one of the area's wetlands.
Houston's nickname is Bayou City, and bayous are basically swamps that contain murky, stagnant water. And since bayous typically have poorly defined shorelines, it could be hard to spot them from the road in a search.
In 2011, Texas EquiSearch released sonar pictures from three of the city's bayous, which revealed 127 vehicles sunken beneath the surface, possibly with bodies trapped inside. In one interview, Houston police insisted that even if they attempted to extract the vehicles, they would fall apart.
EquiSearch disagreed, insisting that it would be possible to remove them intact. At the very least, they could recover license plates to connect the cars to missing persons cases.
Tim Miller, the founder, spoke to the Houston Chronicle in 2011 about police resistance to move forward with the sunken vehicles. He said, I went to the detective and told him, we've got a problem. We've found all these cars. And he said, you need to shut up. The city doesn't have the money and the public will go crazy about this.
The Houston police disagreed with Tim's version of events, but can see that there are still hundreds of submerged vehicles. They remain unidentified in the bayous today. If Tots is among them, it rests silently, waiting to be recovered. The second theory was that Tots was abducted and the car was stolen. This was supported by the sightings of Tots' vehicle being driven erratically, as well as the family's instincts about her disappearance.
My brothers and I believe there was foul play involved, said Thu Ham in an interview with the Bangor Daily News. Chin-si also expressed his inclination to believe that she was abducted, telling a reporter, We have 30 or more sightings of the car. I bet my life that one of them is true, which lends more credence to the kidnapping theory.
Tot's children knew their mother had strong survival instincts. But in the same breath, Chin-si acknowledged his mother's outgoing tendencies, saying, She'd easily strike up a conversation. She always wanted to get a sense for where she was and what type of people lived there.
My mom was fearless, just a fearless person. She had this habit and some people thought it was just crazy. But when she would go to other cities in the US, she would just look up the names of Vietnamese people in the phone book. She would just find last names that were Vietnamese. And she would just call them up out of the blue and say, hey, are you from Vietnam? Yeah, I'm from Vietnam too. You want to go hang out? She was just a really good person.
But the theories were merely speculation, and Detective Renneson expressed doubt that they would get any further finding taught. We don't have any promising leads at this point. Numerous people claim to have seen the car. We've searched ground, air, water, and basically found nothing. Cincy continued posting updates on the website daily, at times revealing his cynicism about human nature.
I can't believe that she's gone. That someone took her. What is wrong with people? Couldn't they see her beauty or her kindness? Why is it that all they could see was the weakness of a small and frail woman?
On August 9th, an elderly man named Edgar Findeson went missing in Yoakum, an inland city that was about an hour away from the closest city on Tott's route. Texas Equisurge looked for Edgar and kept their eyes out for any clues that might lead them to Tott. They searched around both Yoakum and a city closer to Tott's route called Victoria, where police had received a tip that Tott may have been seen on Main Street.
Todd's children went to Yoakum and Victoria to distribute flyers. On August 17th, a month after her disappearance, a helicopter from the state covered 35 miles of small highway going through Yoakum, and planes searched the area the following day. It was still summer, and the trees were thick with leaves, obstructing their view from the sky.
By January, the trees lining the highways of southeast Texas had shed their leaves, and for a moment, there was renewed hope that increased visibility might bring new discoveries. The children had already settled their mother's finances. They had removed her things from the Florida house in order to lease it and pay the mortgage. After taking several months off to aid in the searches, men returned to work. They were learning to live with their confusion and their grief.
In February 2002, Chinsey wrote the world again, saying, "For anyone out there who doesn't think that this is real, it is. My mother has been missing for seven months now." And then he addressed his mom directly, "I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry that I haven't been able to find you. I don't know where you are. I hope that you're okay. No one will help me, Mom.
I've tried calling news programs. They don't respond. I put your story in the newspaper again and again. Only a few good people ever reply. The police aren't doing anything for you anymore. They think that you're dead, but I don't know what to believe. Sometimes, I think that I'm going to die on the inside. I miss you so much. I was going to take care of you, and I feel like I've let you down.
I'm sorry, Mom. Please, God, forgive me. I have never felt so helpless in my life. I love you, Mom. And I miss you very much. We all do.
On July 12, 2002, a year to the day after Tot's disappearance, mourners filed through the front doors of Spurwink Church in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Leaves swayed in a faint breeze against the clear summer sky, the trees its only neighbors on a quiet country road. As people walked inside the lonesome white chapel, Tot's face smiled at them from picture frames, bringing them warmth and companionship.
It had been one year since she kissed her son goodbye and departed on a journey from which she'd never return. People listened from sunlit pews as Min, Tu-hum, and Chin-si took turns speaking about her life. Chin-si considered the service to be a chance for people to pay tribute to his mom. They had traveled back to Maine for the occasion, the place where Thot spent the most time building a community and raising her family.
The service was attended by loved ones from every corner of Todd's life. Friends who'd sat around her kitchen table, indulging in Vietnamese dishes and laughing at her jokes. Fellow immigrants who she'd welcomed to America with her kindness and hospitality. And of course, her family.
They placed a memorial marker for her in the cemetery behind the church, the same place their father, Clint, was buried. Fresh cut grass cushioned their steps as they went to place flowers at the modest headstone. Taught Tran Harriman was engraved in the flat gray granite marker that was buried level with the ground. It was inscribed simply in all caps, military style, with one line devoted to a single word, MISSING.
Despite their pain, Thot's relentless optimism lived on in her children. To Hum said, "'Aside from the nightmare, I actually feel pretty blessed. I have a family and friends surrounding me. In a way, it's allowed me to realize what I do have, and not to dwell so much on what I don't.' It's been 20 years since Thot's funeral. I asked Chin-si what he thought happened to his mom.'
Maybe worst case scenario. And I mean, probably what happened is she drove into one of these towns in Texas. And like I said, she's very friendly, you know, very fearless person.
and maybe even sort of charmed a little bit you know we didn't really know how rough and violent texas could be and it's possible that she just walked into a cafe or you know got some coffee and she left very early that morning and she was just stopping somewhere and she said hey how are you and some guys like you know looking at her car and she wore gold jewelry and
And, uh, they got into a conversation and she said, yeah, I'm looking for property. And, uh, maybe someone was like, oh, I've got property right down the road. You know, you want to go see it? And, uh, you know, just some mix of maybe just some evil person crossed paths with her. Maybe he was even racially motivated and her life ended and, uh, you know, car was chopped up for parts and the
The stones were taken out of the rings and sold at pawn shops. I don't think it could be worse than that. He spoke to me about the pain of losing his mom. You know, I've had a lot of time to heal. I've had a lot of time to think about it. I've had a lot of ways to make my peace with it. But it doesn't really make it that much easier. I think all of us are still looking for an answer.
It doesn't change how much we love our mom or love our father. It doesn't change any of those things. It's just sort of an open wound that you just have to walk over. Losing my mom, she was obviously one of the most important people in my life. We were very close. I live my life every day as if it's my last.
He has a soft spot in his heart for other families who have lost someone as a missing person, a fate he says he doesn't wish on anyone. I think it's an awful way for a person's life to end. I wouldn't wish it on anybody. To have someone like that, you know, someone who's the light of the world like that, to go like that without being able to pay respect to that person in the right way, you know, it...
Following the funeral service, people gathered at Cape Elizabeth Middle School to trade stories about Tot, her infectious laughter, and her boundless energy. Chin-C imagined what Tot would have said if she had been there. I know that she feels lucky for having gotten the time to spend with all of us. I think she would say, thank you. Thank you.
If you have any information about the disappearance of Tot Harriman, I encourage you to contact the League City Police Department at 281-332-2566.
I want to thank you so much for listening. I am so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you. Thank you. If you would like to support the show, there's a link in the show notes with options. Another way to support is telling a friend, sharing on social media, or leaving a review. A very special thanks to Chin-C for sharing his memories with us. A detailed list of sources and photos can be found at MurderSheTold.com. This episode was written by Zoe Arts.
Thank you to Samantha Coulthart for her research support and to Byron Willis for his research and writing support. If you have a story that needs to be told or a correction, I would love to hear from you. My only hope is that I've kept the memories of your loved ones alive. I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder, She Told. Thank you for listening.