A West Valley City man is heading to prison after admitting he took a missing 17-year-old North Logan girl to Oregon in 2023, in a case that unraveled only after investigators traced a gaming username back to him. Judge Spencer Walsh handed down the maximum sentence available under the law during a hearing Monday in Logan's First District Court.
Christoffer Alan Harris pleaded guilty to attempted sexual exploitation of a minor and two counts of endangerment of a child, all third-degree felonies, according to Cache Valley Daily. Walsh ordered Harris to serve three consecutive terms of zero to five years in prison, with credit for time served, and described the sentence as the maximum length he could impose under the law. The outlet reports Harris's age has been described inconsistently across its coverage, at one point as 42 and at another as 41.
Court records reviewed by KVNU News Talk show the case began when the girl's family contacted North Park police officers on Dec. 12, 2023, reporting their daughter missing after she was last seen the night before. The family told officers she had left without her cellphone or a change of clothes, a detail that underscored how abruptly she vanished.
A Gaming Username Breaks the Case Open
Investigators discovered the girl had been communicating through a gaming device with someone using the handle Pepper #3994. With help from FBI investigators, that username was tracked to Harris, according to the same Cache Valley Daily report. A court opinion posted on CourtListener adds that police also traced both an unknown phone number and a gaming-device account connected to the girl back to Harris.
Police then traced Harris's cellphone to the Salt Lake City area, but the device was powered down soon after. Five days after the girl went missing, Harris sent an email to a woman in Provo asking whether she wanted to join him and the girl in sexual activity, per the report from the same outlet. Investigators eventually tracked his cellphone again, this time to a residence near Burns, Oregon.
Traffic Stop in Oregon Ends the Search
Law enforcement initiated a traffic stop near Burns and found the North Logan girl and Harris together inside the car, according to Cache Valley Daily's reporting. The girl was reunited with her family, and Harris was booked into jail on local charges before he was extradited back to Utah in 2024, per the outlet's earlier account of his guilty plea.
The case originally carried far more weight on paper. A charging document filed against Harris and cited by CourtListener shows the state had amended its information to charge him with fifty felonies, twelve of them first-degree offenses. Under the plea agreement Harris ultimately accepted, 47 of those charges were dismissed, Cache Valley Daily reported.
Family Asked for the Longest Sentence Possible
At sentencing, the girl's parents said their daughter had been groomed by Harris and asked the court to impose the longest sentence possible. Walsh's decision to hand down three consecutive terms, rather than allowing them to run at the same time, reflected that request, and the judge said he hoped the maximum sentence would help deter others from preying on children.
The case adds to a string of Utah prosecutions in this area. In June, a former First District Court judge in Box Elder County was sentenced to three prison terms of zero to five years on multiple child-sexual-exploitation charges, according to ABC4. Separately, the Utah Attorney General's Office prosecuted more than double the number of internet crimes against children cases in 2025 compared with prior years, KUER reported.
For now, Harris is headed to prison under the terms Walsh imposed Monday, with the case closed after nearly three years of proceedings that began with a frantic missing-persons report from a North Logan family and ended with a courtroom reckoning in Logan.
