Larry Harris’ belief in witchcraft and spells started when he was in high school. His intention for studying witchcraft was to control the world so he could get away with murder.
Larry’s sister and former wife told their story in Investigation Discovery’s Evil Lives Here season 5, episode 9 entitled “I Wish I’d Turned Around.”
Looking at a childhood photo of her brother, Kat Harris notes that his eyes always looked black and “he gives a crooked smile.” However, this interpretation of his personality based on how he looked as a kid is seen from the lens of who he is now.
Her brother currently gives her the chills, but when they were children “he was just a kid” to her. Still, she noticed that he engaged in a lot of concerning behavior.
Kat says her brother was manipulative and overreateced a lot growing up, especially if he felt he was denied attention. He once trashed his room because their mother spent the day having fun with Kat.
Their parents’ punishments for his behavior had little effect over him. One day he ran away from home. He came home 24 hours later with a smirk on his face. It had seemed to be a game to him.
Larry turned violent
As he grew older, Larry’s behavior escalated from emotional manipulation and lashing out to physical violence with his sister. One day when their parents weren’t home, Kat hit him back.
Larry proceeded to beat her badly while she curled into a ball. He punched her and kicked her in the ribs.
Kat remembers another incident where she found her mother crying because Larry had raised his fist at her. She confided in her daughter that he was terrified and didn’t know what to do about Larry’s behavior.
Once he got to his teenage years, Larry’s violent tendencies lessoned. However, he took an interest in witchcraft. He spent a lot of time in the basement trying to use what he was learning to plot revenge on people. He would speak about human sacrifices and mutilating people. He bragged to his sister that he could get away with murder because he could do a spell to protect him from consequences.
Kat didn’t believe in what he was doing, but Larry seemed to full believe in his spells.
Kat was relieved when Larry went away to culinary school. Only two weeks into school, he was hospitalized for carving an upside down cross in his arm.
Larry ended up in a group home setting for mental health treatment, and had a baby with a fellow resident.
The baby was placed in foster care. Kat doesn’t know what happened to the baby’s biological mother, but Larry would visit the baby in the foster home. While doing so he met his wife, Marla, who was working as a home health aide in the foster home.
Larry wanted to get custody of his child, and stayed with the family to learn how to be a father. Marla was impressed by how caring Larry was towards his child.
Marla was going through a divorce and her romance with Larry was a whirlwind. He moved in after only a few weeks and acted as a father to Marla’s three children. He melted her heart by showing her kids attention, and she thought that her kids were “finally happy.”
Larry was acting as a caring father and got a job. He was stable. Because of these immense changes, Larry’s sister Kat moved in with them. She thought her brother had become a different person and she no longer feared him.
This was just an illusion however, and Larry’s behavior soon turned for the worse. Marla had not truly gotten to know Larry before getting in a serious relationship with him.
Larry’s spells
All of the life changes Larry had made helped him get custody of his son. Immediately after the phone call, Larry told Marla that he had cast a spell that caused this to happen.
He was ecstatic because he thought this was proof that his spells could control reality.
Marla was disturbed by learning that her husband was practicing witchcraft, and asked him to not do it in the house. Still, she wasn’t too concerned about it because she thought it was just a hobby for him.
A dark wedding premonition
“I married him and he took my world away,” Marla says about her relationship with Larry.
Marla accepted Larry’s wedding proposal, but felt a dark feeling after their rehearsal wedding. “Something almost gnawed at me,” she says that told her if she went through with the wedding something bad would happen.
Marla shook off these feelings the next day and married Larry. She says it was a happy day, but they both look unhappy in their wedding photos.
Larry’s jealousy
After their wedding, Larry became incredibly jealous. He was convinced that Marla was cheating on him with her work friends.
He also started freaking out about Marla’s daughters messy room. During a fight about this, Larry shoved Marla and threatened to hurt her in the worst way without even touching her.
Marla felt like she wasn’t looking at the person she married when he stared at her. She feared that he was capable of horrible things, but she didn’t want to leave.
Instead of divorce, she wanted to fight for their marriage and asked Larry to attend couples counseling with her.
Larry wasn’t just jealous of Marla’s male friends, he also was jealous of her attention towards her children, and this jealousy had devastating consequences.
Just like when he was a child and his mother would take his sister Kat out for a day of fun, Marla would take her kids out for day trips too. This triggered Larry.
When Marla’s daughter got her first menstrual cycle at age nine, Larry reacted by saying that she wouldn’t be “pure” anymore. He said that he wasn’t “okay” with this natural thing that was completely out of his control.
The last day
On the morning of January 6, 2008. Larry’s sister Kat was sleeping in her room and Marla’s son was at her sister’s house. Larry got up and started Marla’s car because it was cold. He also made a lunch for her and gave her a kiss goodbye. For her, it was a typical day.
Kat woke up midday at took a shower and everything was fine. Kat then walked to work. On her way, she had a feeling to turn around, but she didn’t. Now, she wishes she had
A ritual gone wrong
Marla got a call at work that day telling her that her house was on fire. She later learned that her daughters were dead, but didn’t know how they’d died. She assumed that they had succumbed to smoke inhalation.
Later, at the police station, she learned the bitter truth. The girls had been murdered, presumably by Larry.
Both girls had been without clothes and had Larry’s belts around their necks. He had sexually assaulted the girls, stabbed, and strangled them.
After she learned the truth, Marla wanted to confront Larry about his devastating actions, so they let her meet up with him in an interrogation room.
She asked him what happened, what started the fire, and he insisted that he had no idea. She asked him if he had “sacrificed” the girls.
Larry responded that he was afraid of her. Marla demanded to see his hands, where he had dried blood in his cuticles.
He later admitted to police that he was “doing a spell” that had gone wrong.
Marla thinks he was making good on his promise to hurt her in the worst way without laying his hands on her.
Marla often questions what she did to make him hurt her in this way, but Larry’s sister Kat insists that Marla did nothing wrong and shouldn’t blame herself for Larry’s horrific crimes.
In 2009, Larry Harris was convicted of two counts of first degree murder and sentenced to two life sentences.
PHOTOS via Discovery+
