Jarvis Butts, the 43-year-old Michigan man sentenced earlier this month for the murder of 13-year-old Na’Ziyah Harris and the sexual assault of multiple children, was found dead Today at the Charles Egeler Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson. The Michigan Department of Corrections confirmed the death and said Michigan State Police had been called to the facility to investigate. Corrections staff attempted to revive Butts after he was found but were unable to save him. Michigan State Police were brought in to conduct an investigation, and the death is currently being classified as a suicide.
Butts had been incarcerated at Charles Egeler since his sentencing on March 12, when a Wayne County judge handed down a term of 35 to 60 years for second-degree murder along with five concurrent sentences of 10 to 15 years each for sexual assault convictions. His earliest possible release date had been set for September 26, 2059.
The case against Butts
Na’Ziyah Harris, a seventh grader at J.E. Clark Preparatory Academy on Detroit’s east side, was last seen on January 9, 2024, after stepping off her school bus near Cornwell Street and Three Mile Drive. She never came home. Her body has not been recovered.
Investigators determined through text messages and witness accounts that Na’Ziyah met Butts at his auto repair shop in Detroit that afternoon. Butts had children with Na’Ziyah’s aunt and had been in a relationship with her at the time he began sexually assaulting her niece, prosecutors said. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said evidence indicated the abuse started in 2022, when Na’Ziyah was around 11 years old.
Prosecutors said Butts had gotten Na’Ziyah pregnant before killing her. Records from his phone showed searches for abortion providers, abortion pills and the effects of drinking red antifreeze in the period before her disappearance. Butts was observed the following day near the Rouge River area in Detroit, where clothing matching what Na’Ziyah was last seen wearing was later recovered.
Guilty pleas across six cases
On February 12, 2026, roughly two weeks before his trial was set to begin, Butts entered guilty pleas across six separate cases. In addition to second-degree murder, he admitted to four counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct involving five girls between the ages of 4 and 13. Several additional charges, including original first-degree murder counts, were dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
Prosecutors emphasized that one of the central goals of the plea agreement was providing Na’Ziyah’s family with some degree of closure, and securing information about where her body was located was considered a critical part of that arrangement. A source told local news outlet WDIV that Butts said he dumped her remains in the Rouge River near 7 Mile and Berg, an area where police had conducted early searches and where investigators found clothing described in court as appearing relatively undisturbed at the time of discovery.
Family and community left without closure
Na’Ziyah’s father, Murvin Jennings, died after spending months searching for his daughter in abandoned buildings and overgrown areas across Detroit. He did not live to see Butts convicted.
Tamara Liberty Smith, a family friend and former vice president of the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners, said the family’s sense of loss deepened with Butts’ death, expressing that justice felt incomplete with Na’Ziyah’s remains still unaccounted for and the likelihood that a definitive answer may now be out of reach entirely.
