It was a risky night to be on the water in Suisun Bay when Charles Johnathen Harris mysteriously vanished during his pending child pornography case — there were reported winds of about 20 miles per hours and a chilly water temperature in the low 50s.

But that’s not why Harris’ boat sank. Instead, when investigators located his 15-foot fishing vessel from the water, they noticed something far more questionable: a missing boat plug, according to a federal prosecutor. Harris has not been heard from since, but the only witness to the unsolved disappearance — his brother — managed to swim to safety.

Now, three years after Harris ostensibly died in a Solano County waterway, the FBI has floated another possibility — that the whole thing was a hoax, fabricated by Harris so that he could avoid his pending charges of allegedly possessing lewd images of young children on his phone. Harris, am Alameda County firefighter, was on pretrial release with a $100,000 bond when he went on the fateful April 4, 2023 fishing trip.

“Law enforcement officials believe the circumstances warrant further scrutiny, including the possibility that his death was staged,” says a news release by the FBI, issued this week. Federal authorities are asking the public for help locating him.

Harris has an active warrant for failing to appear in court weeks after he disappeared. His attorney told this news organization that’s because Harris “died innocent” before prosecutors could prove their case. But that year, the U.S. Attorney’s office convinced a federal judge to keep the arrest warrant active just in case there was more to the story. That’s where things have stayed before the FBI openly cast doubt on the whole thing.

The mystery centers on Dutton Island, a remote swampland in unincorporated Solano County where Suisun Bay meets Honker Bay and Grizzly Bay. It was there, at 7:30 a.m. April 4, 2023, that a man swam to a dock at one of the few inhabited structures for miles around, and said he was in desperate need of help, the U.S. Coast Guard reported.

The man was Harris’ brother. He told a homeowner the two had been fishing in a 15-foot vessel the night before and had capsized around 11 p.m; he’d spent the last eight hours in the water, and he hadn’t seen Harris for seven of them.

The U.S. Coast Guard searched the area for two days. Harris’ body was never recovered, but when the boat was, the capsizing theory was called into question.

“It’s missing a boat plug,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Volkar told a judge at an April 19, 2023 court hearing. “I say all that, Your Honor, just to say that there are a lot of questions, and I do believe that the local authorities have been working very hard to get answers to those questions to find Mr. Harris or his body.”

Harris, a resident of Coulterville in Mariposa County, worked for the Alameda County Fire Department at a fire station in San Leandro. On March 2, a federal grand jury issued an indictment charging him with a felony count of possession of child pornography. A news release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office alleges Harris was caught with “images of child pornography on his iPhone, including images of prepubescent children.”

If Harris is still alive, he’s 46 years old. He has red hair, blue eyes, and at the last known sighting weighed 220 pounds. He is white, 5′ 10″ and has light burn scars on his hands, the FBI says.

The FBI is encouraging tipsters to contact the nearest American Embassy or Consulate, or to submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov.

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