Amberleigh Harner was a child actress and victim in a well-known murder investigation.
History
Amberleigh typically appeared in television commercials. She would often practice her lines with her mother Beth.
She was murdered on Halloween in 1992. Her body was found inside a clothes dryer. The initial investigation of her murder was botched from the beginning, with the crime scene going unsecured for an extended period of time. Much information about the investigation was leaked to the public. The extensive publicity surrounding the case resulted in many people coming forward and claiming to be involved, most of which were proven false.
One of those people was Simon Fife, who claimed to have made love with Amberleigh and that she "died inadvertently". He was apprehended in Vietnam and brought back to New York City by Detectives Robert Goren and Alexandra Eames. Goren was able to prove that Fife was not the murderer, but information that he provided did lead to the apprehension of the actual murderer, neighbor Nate Royce. Originally his son, Jamie a friend of Amberleigh confessed, thinking he accidentally suffocated her while attempting to quiet her after accidentally giving her a bloody nose, but the detectives realized that she was just unconscious and woke up as Nate was preparing to get rid of her body and he finished her off to protect his own reputation. (CI: Masquerade)