A hospital bed confession from a man charged with killing two Pennsylvania women has led investigators to call him a person of interest in a third case: the disappearance of a young woman in Michigan in 2005.
And now, a prosecutor says the trail of death linked to Harold Haulman may lead overseas.
Haulman is currently incarcerated, having confessed to the brutal murders of two young women in 2018 and 2020. During an interrogation in early January, he mentioned a new name, Ashley Parlier, and indicated that he knows where her body is, authorities said.
Investigators in Michigan are now dusting off the cold case of the 21-year-old who vanished after storming out of her home during an argument with her parents over an apparent pregnancy.
Haulman first came to the attention of law enforcement in 2020, after Erica Shultz’ sister reported her missing, according to court records obtained by the Times Leader. FBI investigators used cellphone records and a dating website where Haulman and Shultz had met to show that Haulman had turned up unexpectedly on the 26-year-old’s doorstep and then convinced her to go on a walk in the woods. The last messages sent from his phone to hers, District Attorney Stephanie Salavantis said at a December 2020 press conference, were “surprise” and “knock-knock.”
After the FBI zeroed in on Haulman, he began acting erratically—skipping out on an FBI interview and then resurfacing days later, when he tried to kill himself with a box cutter on a railroad track. As investigators interviewed Haulman in his hospital room, he allegedly confessed to killing Shultz with a mallet and a knife, and then used Google Maps to show investigators where he had left her body, the Daily Item reported.
Authorities say Haulman also confessed to the killing of another woman, 25-year-old Tianna Philips, who had been missing since 2018. According to court records obtained by the Times Leader, when investigators interviewed his wife, Anne Haulman, she told law enforcement officers that Haulman confessed to her about Philips’ murder—and even drove her to the area where he said Philips’ body was hidden and showed her a black garbage bag filled with human remains. The couple later disposed of the body in a dumpster in a nearby theater, police say.
In the interview in early January, Haulman made a spontaneous reference to Parlier, asking if the charge for her murder would be combined with Philips and Shultz’s, as he wanted to avoid a trial.
Parlier’s sister, Nicole Campen, told WNEP that her sister went missing after storming out of the house following an argument with their parents, who had noticed she looked pregnant. While Camden says she doesn’t know if her sister knew Haulman, police say he lived in the same county as Parlier’s family from 2002 to 2005.
There are also marked similarities between Parlier and Shultz. A Facebook post from a desperate family member describes Shultz as a low-functioning person on the autism spectrum who wasn’t able to drive. According to Parlier’s sister, Parlier had the mental function of about a 12- to 14-year-old. “If you were nice to her, she just assumed you were a nice person,” said Camden. “She didn’t really get that there could be evil.”
Luzerne County Deputy District Attorney Dan Zola said there may be other victims as far away as Europe. According to the Daily Item, Zola said Haulman was convicted of a murder in Germany in the ’90s. “If these situations don’t match the definition of what a serial killer is, then nothing does,” the prosecutor said.