After 3 Decades an Arrest is Made in the Cold Case Murder of Joshua Harmon

The child went missing while playing near his home in 1988 and the cold case was solved in 2021 using new DNA technologies

Megan Ashley
3 min readAug 15, 2021
Joshua Harmon (image courtesy of Roswell Police Department)

On May 15, 1988, Eight-year-old Joshua Harmon was playing in the woods behind the Roswell, Georgia, apartment complex. He was still exploring the area. The family had only moved in three weeks ago. It was a warm evening, and many children were playing in the area. He loved nature, and his favorite place to play was in the woods.

Joshua was expected to come home for supper, and when he failed to show up, his mother looked for him, calling out his name in the neighborhood. Joshua had a learning disability, and he was easily frightened and wasn’t comfortable around strangers. He never strayed too far from home and certainly never out of earshot. His mother called the Roswell Police to report him missing, and though they responded quickly, it wasn’t initially thought to be concerning.

While canvassing, they discovered Joshua had last been seen around 7 PM. He had gone over to a neighbor’s house and asked if a little boy could come to play, but the family was having supper, so the boy wasn’t allowed out. Joshua told them that he would be out playing in the woods if he…

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