The tragic disappearance of the Zaharias children
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Your children vanish. You come home from work one day and they are nowhere to be found. But in this case you know exactly who took them. And it helps not one bit, because the person who took them is your spouse, their other parent.
Parental kidnappings aren’t often national news. There’s no drama from the unknown there, and once someone hears a child was taken by a parent they assume the child must be okay and tune out the rest. There are exceptions to this, of course (such as Sean Goldman) but for the most part they’re cosigned to obscurity. Even writing about them is different than most of the other cases I’ll tackle, because there’s much less room for theorizing. In real long-term parental kidnapping cases there’s always a few people who speculate the kids have been murdered (and this is exclusively in cases where children are abducted by their mothers and the left-behind parent is the father), but I’ve only seen one case where this actually happened, and the murderer wasn’t the left-behind parent (the case of Aubrey Hall and Danielle Steiner).
Such is the story of the Zaharias children.
In November 1987, Christopher Zaharias was three and a half years old. His favorite toy was a My Buddy doll. Lisa Zaharias was one and a half years old and emerging out of babyhood. Their father, Louis Zaharias, was studying for the bar exam, and their mother, Susan Zaharias, was a stay-at-home parent. But this seemingly nomal family would be shattered forever on November 20, 1987, when Louis would come home to find both his wife and children gone.
There was tension in the family even before they vanished. According to her best friend at the time, Susan Zaharias was using large amounts of cocaine, which had steadily increased in the time the friend knew her (they met shortly before Lisa’s birth). Susan’s control of the day to day finances of the family meant that Louis wasn’t aware of this and the money problems that resulted. She’d even rented a post office box to rerout bills to, so he wouldn’t know they hadn’t been paid. He eventually discovered this, and agreed to give her a second chance if she stopped using the cocaine. This didn’t happen.
The friend also heard from Susan that she simply couldn’t leave the marriage. Louis had mafia connections, you see, and if she left they would track her down and kill her. When the friend rightly pointed out that was absurd and more the providence of bad movies, she did not listen. In fact, it became her most common discussion.
Compounding all of these problems was the fact Susan’s family had apparently never approved of her marriage, and the two of them had married in secret. Her parents would send her money in secret.
Everything came to a head on November 20. Louis and Susan fought before he left for work and as a result she left early to drop off Christopher at school. He called his mother, who was also at the home, and asked her if Lisa was still there. When she told him Lisa was not, he checked in at Christopher’s school and discovered that he had not been dropped off there.
He has never seen Christopher or Lisa again.
Shortly after they left, he discovered the myriad unpaid bills and that Susan was being investigated for check fraud. He called as many of her family members as he could reach. All denied knowing her whereabouts. And other than being served with divorce papers on November 30, he never heard from her again.
Most people reading this will find it rather hard to believe her family members truly had no idea where she was. And despite both her sister and brother-in-law denying they knew her whereabouts under oath in 1988, they later both admitted the truth in 1994 - Susan and the children had lived with them in Michigan for some time after she left California. They had even been there when Louis called asking about their whereabouts. However, they both insisted that after those few weeks she left and they did not know where she currently was. Whether this is credible is up to you to consider.
The trail goes cold from there. Thirty-two years later, not much more is known about their whereabouts than before. Susan has been reportedly seen in Michigan and Oklahoma. Other possible destinations are Pennsylvania, Canada, New Mexico, New Jersey, Washington state. They may even have returned to California.
Louis Zaharias’ one wish is to be reunited with his children before he dies. Take a look at the links below and see if you recognize anyone. Could you help him?
Dropbox files (where much of the information above can be found)
Facebook page for the Zaharias children
Christopher Zaharias on the Charley Project
Christopher Zaharias on the Doe Network
Christopher Zaharias on the California Missing Persons Registry
Lisa Zaharias on the Charley Project
Lisa Zaharias on the Doe Network