Harms met her friends at Bucca di Beppo's in the Pruneyard Shopping Center in Campbell, California on July 27, 2001. She said that she had a date at 7:00 p.m. and was just passing time until then. Harms and her date went to Court's Lounge with a group of people during the evening. They returned to Rock Bottom Brewery in the shopping center later and smoked marijuana in the parking lot with Maurice Xavier Nasmeh and a friend of Nasmeh's. A photograph of Nasmeh is posted below this case summary. He is an architect from San Jose, California. Harms went to her home with him later that evening. He told authorities that he followed her to her residence on Chirco Drive in Los Gatos. Harms was driving her black 2000 Ford Mustang with silver stripes.

Nasmeh stated that he departed from Harms's home between approximately 12:30 and 1:00 a.m. He said that she was nearly asleep on her sofa at the time. Nasmeh said that he did not observe any unusual activity around Harms's residence. She has never been heard from again.

Harms's friends and family became concerned when they failed to reach her over the following weekend. Her cellular phone had been turned off. Her loved ones said it is uncharacteristic of Harms to not contact anyone regarding her plans. The authorities were summoned to her home to file a missing person's report on July 30, three days after she disappeared.

A neighbor of Harms told authorities that he heard a "loud, percussive sound" in the vicinity of her apartment after midnight the day she disappeared. He said he saw a bald man, about 40 years old and with a mustache, drive away from the apartment afterwards.

There was no sign of a struggle inside Harms's residence. Her car was parked outside, but her cellular phone, a brightly colored Nokia model, and her purse, which is described as black in color with a short handle, and her keys were missing. A red and blue Persian-style five foot by seven foot area rug with white fringe, slipcover and cushions from her sofa were missing. Photographs of items similar to the ones missing from Harms's apartment are posted below this case summary. The couch cushions that are missing are approximately 22 inches long, 22 inches wide, and 6 inches thick.

In December 2004, three and a half years after Harms vanished, police arrested Nasmeh and charged him with her murder. He has been a suspect in the case since it started, but had hired an attorney and refused to cooperate with police. Investigators say they got a break in the case when a woman came forward and said she had found Harms's Persian rug rolled up in a dumpster at a construction site half a mile from Nasmeh's home. (The other missing items have not been located.) Unique fibers from the rug were found in Harms's apartment, and in the bed of Nasmeh's 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee. This was the evidence used to link Nasmeh to Harms's presumed murder. Nasmeh also matches the description of the man seen driving away from her apartment the day she disappeared.

In June 2007, a judge dismissed the case against Nasmeh because, he ruled, prosecutors had violated Nasmeh's right to a speedy trial. Nasmeh had been incarcerated since his 2004 arrest and had yet to be tried for Harms's murder. He had a right to request a trial within 60 days and he did so, but the prosecution was not ready because they needed to retest some of their evidence. Prosecutors stated they would refile murder charges against Nasmeh after all their forensic testing was completed. This may take as long as a year.

Harms was employed at the Amdahl Corporation in Sunnyvale, California in 2001. She is described as a responsible and dependable individual. Her family believes that foul play was involved in Harms's disappearance. She was in the process of a divorce in 2001, but it was described as amicable and Harms and her estranged husband remained friends. Foul play is suspected in her case due to the circumstances involved.

Top Row: Couch similar to Harms's;
Bottom Left: Cellular phone similar to Harms's;
Bottom Right: Slipcover similar to Harms's

Above: Nasmeh, circa 2004