It’s July 28 in 1999 and a disaster is being predicted. The countdown to a new era is on and newspapers are full of stories about the Millennium computer bug. It’s believed the glitch will bring the modern world to the brink of collapse.
Now we know that didn’t really happen. Planes never fell from the sky and there were no hospital blackouts. For most of us, life carried on as normal.
But tucked away in a corner of Birmingham, a real-life disaster was brewing. It was on that hot summer’s day that 15-year-old Phillip Harris vanished into thin air.
The teenager spent around eight years living in Greater Manchester before he went missing. His longest stay was on Heys Avenue in Wythenshawe where he attended local schools, before moving to the West Midlands.
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Two decades on, his disappearance remains a mystery. But following an investigation by Birmingham Live , startling new details have emerged about the tragic and tortured life of the troubled schoolboy whose image survives in only two family photographs.
For the first time, our sister title has revealed a 'person of interest' to the modern-day police investigation into Phillip's disappearance. A lost gold chain may have also been one of several reasons police carried out a dig at Phillip's former home in Smethwick, four miles west of Birmingham, in April.
The police are candid about the situation: "As a force we are still keeping an open mind. Homicide have fully reviewed the investigation but it remains owned at this time by Locate (our missing people team), but we have said that there has been no proof of life since Phillip went missing."
The disappearance of the schoolboy still mystifies and haunts elder sister Claire, who was 17 when he vanished. She says she and Phillip were brought up in an allegedly abusive household which was devoid of love, but full of secrets and lies.
Detectives now reinvestigating the case have looked at Phillip's home life. It was dysfunctional at best, terrifying and dangerous at worst, according to Claire.
The siblings and another younger brother were brought up by a 'step-mum' who had once been married to the father of Philip's younger brother. He had allegedly abandoned them when they were young and never returned, his whereabouts long unknown.
The step-mum lived with her own mother. Claire claims the women, who have both since died, were cruel and abusive. Neither were ever convicted of any child abuse or neglect crimes.
Claire claims they were often hit and verbally tormented by the two women they lived with and were even goaded into fighting each other at times in the filthy property.
She said: "The place was a mess, we'd stick to the carpets when we walked in. They'd make us clean floors with toothbrushes. We were made to beat each other up. It really hurts me.... I can't get that out of my head. We were all petrified, we didn't know what to do. We were scared to say no."
Claire vividly recalled one incident which she says shows the mental torment Phillip was going through before he vanished. "There was a stage where I remember him screaming, you could not control him," she recalled. "He went into the garden, literally screaming. I'd never heard anyone scream in my life. It was scary, it really was. We had to literally hold him and pin him down to calm him down."
During their turbulent childhood, social services were sometimes involved, but they were never permanently taken into care. This was despite Claire and Phillip being constant runaways during their teens. "We all ran away so many times. But we always got returned back to them," she said.
In Claire's mind, being classed as a 'runaway' may have led to a seeming lack of initial police urgency in Phillip's 1999 disappearance. But that claim is denied by West Midlands Police.
Phillip left his temporary foster home in St Eleanor's Close, West Bromwich, at 9.30am on July 28, 1999. He was wearing navy tracksuit bottoms with a white stripe, an orange long-sleeved shirt and a green combat-style jacket. At 1pm he called the foster home to say he planned to stay overnight with a friend in Northfield, Birmingham. For years it seemed that nothing more was seen of Phillip after that.
However, police have recently learned that Phillip was spotted in Great Arthur Street, Smethwick, a couple of streets away from the St Paul's Road property where he had lived with his siblings and 'step' relatives. This sighting was either on the day he went missing or in the weeks afterwards.
A few appeals were issued by police in the year Phillip vanished, but there were no further press releases for 20 years - although the force insists his case was subject to annual internal reviews.
In January 2020 police began re-examining Phillip's disappearance, which led to a forensics dig at the former family home in St Paul's Road in April.
Claire said of the lack of police action at the time: "They didn't do enough. He was put down as a child with problems and went to a special school when there was really nothing wrong."
Yet she claims there was one person who had showered vulnerable Phillip with attention. A transgender nurse who was living at the family's home at that time in St Paul's Road, Smethwick, had allegedly begun an illegal 'relationship' with the then under-age schoolboy.
The nurse - whose name we are not revealing - has since died. It is understood her family has been contacted by detectives during the up-to-date investigation.
Claire said: "She was in her 30s then and was in the process of becoming a woman. When we moved to Smethwick, that person moved with us and moved into the house.
"I think Phillip was OK with the idea at first because he was getting love and attention. He didn't understand. It wasn't a relationship - Phillip was a child.
"The police have been in contact with the parents of (the woman) and they said she has now passed away. So nothing can be done about it. All the people to do with that family, the Harris family, all passed away."
It's been discovered that around the time Phillip was last seen - Friday, July 30, 1999 - a Ford Sierra parked outside the St Paul's Road home was broken into and some items stolen. All four tyres were also slashed, something an opportunist car thief might have been unlikely to do. The car belonged to the nurse. The crime was reported to police two days later, on Monday August 2, 1999.
Claire said detectives have considered if Phillip had been involved with the attack on the car. She also claimed the nurse was 'violent' and had previously physically attacked her.
"She used to have a red car but apparently all the windows had got smashed in and the tyres slashed and they (police) were wondering if Phillip may have gone back and done that," said Claire.
"She (the nurse) was a big person, strongly built. I don't have anything against transgender people, but this person I do as they had hit me quite a few times."
The nurse is said to have given Phillip a gold necklace at some point before he vanished. This 'missing' piece of jewellery may have been among the reasons that led police to carry out an extensive dig at St Paul's Road. Nothing was found.
Claire says a gold chain was found in the St Paul's Road garden years ago - by the children of a family who had moved into the property after Phillip's siblings and the step-mum and her mother had moved out. A completely unrelated family now lives at the address.
"My youngest brother said Phillip had a gold chain because (the nurse) bought it for him," recalled Claire. "I think that's part of what made the police want to go back to that address, because of this chain."
Claire also claims her younger brother remembers the garden being renovated with slabs. "They had it re-slabbed for no reason at all," she said. "I think this is what was making them (the police) think, 'Hang on, we need to go and check this garden'."
The lengthy search resulted in no new evidence. Police later put out a new photo image of what Phillip could look like now and appealed for fresh information.
The new investigation has been led by Detective Sergeant Andy Padmore. He confirmed the nurse was "a person of interest'. He said: "But it is one of many and I haven't enough evidence as it stands at this moment to point the finger at (the nurse) or anyone else.
"That's one of the difficulties with a missing person because we don't absolutely convincingly know what's happened to this child."
But he added: "I am satisfied that a thorough and diligent investigation has been done which has not come back with any proof of the life of Phillip."
The car attack outside the St Paul's Road address was of particular interest to officers. DS Padmore said: "It's very much a line of inquiry that we've got in relation to the whole circumstance.
"There is a recorded criminal offence of damage to a vehicle relating to that address. The individual who committed that damage has never been identified but it remains of interest to myself.
"The damage occurred over the days when the missing episode occurred. The vehicle links back to somebody who at that point in time was residing at the address that we've shown interest in in the last few months. The owner of that vehicle was living at St Paul's Road at that time."
In terms of the missing gold chain and subsequent search of St Paul's Road property, he said: "There are a number of circumstances that came together that meant we were able to approach a magistrate and obtain a search warrant for the premises.
"There was an individual, when we traced back who'd lived there, who mentioned that a gold chain had been found but in that intervening period of time we don't know where that chain is at this moment. If I could find it, I'd still be interested in it actually, but at the moment we don't have that chain."
DS Padmore said the case remains open and encouraged anyone with information to come forward. He said the unresolved mystery had left him with a sense of sadness.
"A sadness that there is a child here that we don't know what's happened to and has missed significant things in his family's life. And some sadness on behalf of the family that miss him and don't know what's happened to him. To solve this case and provide some closure would be of enormous benefit to those concerned."
The force added: "The investigation which began in 2020 has been wide -ranging and thorough, covering all aspects of the case. We remain committed to understanding the circumstances of what has happened to Phillip, whilst supporting his sister and all those affected by the case."
For Claire, the disappearance of her brother is a scar she carries. She says police have also apologised for any early failings she perceived in their initial handling of the case. She said: "I said, 'There's no point in you saying sorry, is there? Nothing was done.'
"We were the kids nobody cared about because we never had a real family and no money. We looked like little tramps, brought up in a s***hole, excuse my language - we were non-existent to anybody.
"I'd love to go see the social workers (from the past) to be honest because we were let down by the system. They didn't care. They knew what we lived in and they left us there."
Incredibly, despite the alleged physical and mental abuse endured during childhood, Claire says she reconnected with her step-mum before she died. She only later found out that she had been lied to by her about the circumstances of Phillip's disappearance, having been told, all those years ago, that he had run away to London.
In fact, he had been secretly moved away from his siblings, out to the foster home in West Bromwich, from where he would disappear.
Claire said: "I took care of her for the year she became ill and passed away. I still paid for the fricking funeral out of my own pocket.
"And then I find out all these lies after she's gone. The one where she told us he ran off and he didn't, she actually signed him over to social services and that's how he ended up in another home in St Eleanor's Close. So we were made to believe that he never returned, that he just ran off."
Her own last memory of her brother was months before he actually vanished, but even that is shrouded in confusion and mystery.
"I remember him being there (the family home at St Paul's Road) and they asked him to go to the shop or something like that and he never returned," she whispered.
"But that's not the case, so I don't know what happened, how they managed to sign him over, how he went to the foster family. I'm told that they took him to social services to sign him back over, and said they couldn't cope with him. But I just don't know.
"I have spent years posting missing appeals for Phillip on social media. I want him to know he is loved and missed. I want to see him again."
*Do you have any information on the disappearance of Phillip Harris? If so contact West Midlands Police on 101 quoting reference PID33326. If you want to speak to a journalist, email Jeanette Oldham at jeanette.oldham@reachplc.
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