Did a chilling secret force a nine-year-old girl into a pitch-black storm before she VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE on Highway 18? SO UTTERLY HEARTBREAKING!

Mystery on Highway 18: Asha Degree (Part 1)

“She’s my baby. We just want her back.” This statement seems so simple to most of us, but to the mother of nine-year-old Asha Degree, it was a simple plea made from a desperate heart.

When you wake up and find that your small daughter has vanished into thin air, there isn’t much you can say because there isn’t much that you know.

In the United States, more than 99% of children reported missing usually make it home safe. So it wasn’t illogical to have hope that Asha would have been — or could have been — one of those children. But as the years passed and no new evidence came to light, it became clear that Asha Degree was in that much smaller percentage of missing children: the ones that never do come home.

Today on Crime Weekly, we are revisiting this case and hoping that someone out there knows something that can bring peace to the family of Asha Degree. To this day, they are still searching for their daughter and have not given up hope that she might still be alive.

Hello everybody, welcome back to Crime Weekly. I’m Stephanie Harlow, and I’m Derek Levasseur. So today we are talking about the case of Asha Degree.

This has been covered by podcasts and YouTubers before, but it is a very important case to me. Any case where there is a child missing is important to me because there is such a small chance they could still be alive out there somewhere.

Either way, as a parent myself, as a mother, the not knowing — and we have talked about this in past episodes — the not knowing where your child is, what happened to them, it is a daily torture. That was our question last week for Lauren Spear: would you rather know or not know? I think the majority of people said the not knowing is the torture.

The not knowing is the worst.

So I really want to hopefully get her case out there. It has been over 20 years at this point, but there is still a chance, not only that she might still be alive, but that there is somebody out there that knows something and hopefully will come forward with that information.

Yeah, that is the goal of what we do, right? That is our purpose. It is not just to tell these stories.

We tell some cases that are solved so we can take things from it and apply it to our own lives — meaning us and our listeners and our viewers. And then with these unsolved cases, it is using our platform to do good. We are going to cover thousands of cases over the years.

If we are able to solve one, whether it is a murder or a missing child, it is success because that is one case that would not have been solved without us doing what we do.

And without you guys doing what you do. So in order to do it, even though this isn’t the funnest thing to talk about — it sucks actually, as parents like you said — it is a necessary evil. And we hope that with just one of these cases, we get an outcome that is unexpected but definitely wanted.

This case is crazy too because I am not ever going to say, “Oh, certain kids were doing things that got them kidnapped,” but there are obviously risk factors that make a child more likely to be kidnapped. Asha was in none of those risk factors. Her family was very protective.

They did everything right — maybe not right for you or right for me, but they did what they felt was right for them. They protected their children at all costs. So for her to go missing or have been abducted, it just does not really make a lot of sense.

So it is a very big mystery, and I am hoping that somebody comes forward or something breaks and it becomes less of a mystery.

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Asha Degree was a shy and quiet nine-year-old who lived at 3404 Oak Crest Street in Shelby, North Carolina. Shelby is a suburb located between the bigger cities of Charlotte and Asheville. Those who live there describe it as a quiet, community-oriented, and family-friendly place to live.

Asha lived in a two-bedroom duplex with her father Harold, who worked as a dock loader at PPG Industries, her mother Iquilla, who built pianos at Kauai American Manufacturing in nearby Lincolnton, and her ten-year-old brother O’Bryant, who attended the same middle school as his sister.

When Asha went missing in February of 2000, she was a fourth grader at Fallston Elementary School. No one could figure out how or why a seemingly normal and happy child could just vanish into thin air. As far as risk factors for abduction go, like we said earlier, Asha was on the very low end.

Some might say that Asha and her brother O’Bryant were a bit overprotected. I would not personally say that because I believe you cannot protect your children enough, especially when they are little and vulnerable like this. But I have seen comments like that made in this case from time to time, that the family was overprotective.

The Degree family was very close. They attended Mass every Sunday as a family at the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Waco, North Carolina. Asha never missed her weekly Bible study at the church.

Harold and Iquilla were very serious about education, so both Asha and O’Bryant had almost impeccable attendance records and perfect grades. Every day after school, they would come home and do their homework, knowing they would not be able to go outside and play until that was finished.

The family did not have a computer, so the children did not have access to the internet because their parents did not want them talking to strangers online. Neither Asha nor O’Bryant had a cell phone, so they would need to use the house phone if they wanted to communicate with friends. What Asha and O’Bryant watched on television was even monitored by their parents, and neither child was allowed to ride their bike outside of their neighborhood alone.

A lot of Asha’s father’s family lived in the same neighborhood. Asha’s grandmother and aunt lived right across the street, but Asha was still cautious when opening the front door of her house. Harold’s sister Patricia Banks said, “She doesn’t even open the door for me without getting her mother’s permission, and I’m her aunt.”

So like I said, Harold and Iquilla did everything right to protect their children from potentially negative external influences, but they still ended up losing their daughter. That is a truly terrifying thought as a parent. You can do everything right and still have something bad happen.

Asha’s mother Iquilla said, “I never let them out of my eyesight, and that’s why it’s so hard. I always knew where my children were except for now.”

This story really drives home what we have been saying all along. There are cases that you have probably heard or listened to and said, “Well, I would never do that,” or “I wouldn’t allow my child to do that.” Maybe you are right.

But it is good to throw these in as well because as Stephanie just said, you can do everything right and still have it happen to you. It is scary to think of, but we want you to be scared because there is a reality out there that there are people living by you right now who potentially want to cause harm to you or someone you care about.

I am not trying to scare you; that is just the reality of the situation. So if this story scares you as a parent, as a sibling, or as someone who watches a child for a loved one, it should. We want you to be more cognizant of your surroundings because even though you think you are doing everything right, if someone has an ulterior motive, they may try to capitalize on that one second where you let your guard down.

We want to tell you to try to avoid that as much as possible so that you do not end up like this family, because this appears to be a very good family who just became very unlucky in the situation.

Yes, very unlucky. And like I said, I do not even feel like they ever let their guard down really. It was just really unlucky.

It is the best way I can put it because this is devastating and it is terrifying. As terrifying as somebody who is overprotective too. It makes me think of John Walsh; it always brings me back to Adam Walsh.

We are going to cover that story at some point for sure, even though it is essentially solved now. But it is important because it is another case where this family did the right thing, and it only took one second and it changed their lives forever.

This is not an isolated incident. It happens to good families all the time. In most cases, 99% of the time, the child is returned or located.

Who wants to be in that one percent? Not me. That is why we do this.

The reason they are found and brought home so often is because it is usually some sort of family abduction or custody issue. But typically, when a child is taken by a stranger, within four hours they are usually killed. The statistics are bad.

If your child is not found and it does turn out that they were taken by someone, with each passing minute it becomes less and less likely that that child will be found alive.

That is why they have the AMBER Alert. That is why when something like that comes in, there is no delay. It immediately goes out to the surrounding area because minutes are as valuable as gold.

They have to get that information out to as many people as possible. That is why you get your alerts on the phone. Usually when we get those alerts, within a few minutes they get cancelled — the AMBER Alerts get cancelled because they found the child.

But they are basically erring on the side of caution, saying, “Hey, listen, we would rather put it out there, inconvenience you for two minutes to be on the lookout for whatever vehicle or description we put out, rather than withhold that information and have this person get outside the area we think they might still be in.”

Do you know what pisses me off? People who complain about getting AMBER Alerts. Really?

Yes, I think you can turn it off, but I am not going to tell you how. If you turn off AMBER Alerts on your phone, you are a shitty person. Period.

I am not going to say “allegedly,” and I am not going to say “don’t come for me” because that should not be controversial. You can definitely turn it off. Nobody in our audience is a terrible, shitty person like that.

You guys are not. If you are, unsubscribe — go somewhere else. We do not want you here.

Do not turn off AMBER Alerts, and do not complain about them. When it is your kid or your niece, you are going to wish to the high heavens that there are a million AMBER Alerts going out every five seconds. There should be more AMBER Alerts honestly.

All right, moving on.

Asha was a sweetheart. We do not know if she still is — we refer to her in the past tense because she is forever nine in our minds. She was described as the kind of person who makes friends with the kids that no one else wanted to play with.

Her brother O’Bryant and Asha were super close. They were only a year apart, they went to the same school, they walked to the school bus together every day. You could tell that he admired her.

The way he talked about her as a ten-year-old boy, he admired her and he respected her and he really, really loved her.

O’Bryant said that she just could not stand to see anyone feel bad ever. So if there was a kid getting left out at school or getting bullied, she would immediately make friends with that person. Her mother said Asha was a soft-hearted child who cried at all the sad parts in movies.

She loved watching movies, but sometimes they would not make her cry — they would give her bad dreams. After watching “Mars Attacks! ,” Asha woke up in the middle of the night terrified that aliens were going to invade the Earth.

She also had a nightmare after she saw Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Her brother O’Bryant, who shared a room with Asha, said that she had a big problem with the graveyard scene. I remember being a kid when that music video came out; it terrified me too.

Now I think it is cool, but those zombies dancing and coming out of the graves were hard for a small child to see.

Asha was scared of a couple things: thunderstorms and dogs. She did not like dogs to jump up on her. But even though she was timid, Asha excelled at everything she tried.

She handled math and science with ease. She loved to read. Her older brother had helped teach her to read using Clifford the Big Red Dog books.

Because she had taken to reading so quickly, Asha also became a talented writer, especially in creative writing. When she grew up, she wanted to write and illustrate books.

Asha also loved to sing. She would belt out gospel songs when she was in the car with her family. But when she was in front of people, she was so shy she refused to try out for a solo in her church choir.

Singing in front of a lot of people who were not her family terrified her. That is why her family was surprised when Asha said she wanted to play basketball in her fourth grade year. Her parents thought she would be afraid to play in front of watching crowds.

But when Asha started playing point guard for the Fallston Bulldogs, she excelled at that as well, averaging four to six points a game and making many new friends.

Asha was a favorite at Fallston Middle School. Her basketball coach, Chad Wilson, loved her positive attitude. She was regularly awarded Student of the Week.

She was also given the opportunity to pick from her classroom’s treasure chest, an honor reserved for students who went above and beyond. The week before she went missing, Asha picked a black Tweety Bird purse from the treasure chest. She was very happy with her selection, which is maybe why she brought it with her when she left her house in the early morning hours of February 14, 2000 — a day that also happened to be her parents’ 12th wedding anniversary.

The days leading up to Asha’s disappearance seemed fairly normal. On Thursday, February 10, Asha and O’Bryant walked to the bus stop together as they did every day. Once at Fallston Middle School, Asha and O’Bryant walked to Asha’s fourth grade classroom hand-in-hand, as they did every day.

It is so cute — they would hold hands and he would walk her to her class every day. He would drop her off at her fourth grade classroom, and then he would go on to his fifth grade classroom. Once school was done for the day, Asha and O’Bryant went home.

They both had keys to the house, so they would go inside and start their homework while they waited for their parents to get home from work.

Iquilla typically worked a nine-to-five shift, but Harold’s hours were different that Thursday and the following Friday. Harold normally worked the second shift, which would have been between 5 p. m.

and 1 a. m. , but these two days he was scheduled for the first shift — basically the same shift as his wife, a regular day shift.

The next day, Friday, February 11, school was out for the day, so the kids stayed with their aunt Keisha while their parents were at work. That evening, they both attended basketball practice in the school gym. Asha’s coach Chad Wilson said that practice was normal and she behaved as she always did.

He said, “Asha was her usual fun-filled self. She had a good practice.”

After practice, they went home. The next day, Saturday, February 12, both Asha and O’Bryant were playing in basketball games at Burns Middle School in Lawndale, North Carolina, which is right next to Shelby — just a two-minute drive away. That night, the girls team played first.

There was a lot on the line for the team because they had gone undefeated that season. But three minutes before the end of the game, Asha fouled out, and her team lost.

Asha reportedly took this loss very hard. She was seen crying on the sidelines. According to her mother Iquilla, Asha felt that the referees were 𝒸𝒽𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 and had not been fair to her.

Coach Chad Wilson said, “I don’t think the referee was trying to single out Asha. Sometimes kids don’t understand all the rules of the game. Bad calls are just a part of the game.”

So does she not understand the rules of the game, or was it a bad call? That is my question. Did she think the ref was not making a fair call, but he was making a fair call?

Or did he make a bad call, and she was supposed to accept that because it is part of the game? I could not understand that. I think it was probably a combination.

It sounds like from his quote maybe he was throwing a little bit of a dig at the ref, saying, “Hey, bad calls are part of the game, and clearly you made a bad call, so she was not wrong in complaining about it or identifying a bad call, but you have to understand that it does not help to complain about them because it is not going to change the rules. The refs are in charge.”

This sits close to home too. My daughter is eight, and we do basketball practice on Mondays. I coach my daughter Tenley’s team.

So all of this is interesting because I can see me having that conversation with Asha because I have had it with Tenley. It is amazing how these cases always find a way where you are able to put yourself in these individuals’ shoes, and it becomes personal. It is interesting how much people can be so different but still find so many commonalities.

We are all so much more alike than we think.

Especially when you are talking about kids. I think the ref should have eased up a little bit. As a basketball coach for small girls, you should not be making bad calls as a ref.

Be fair. I also think that I did not know Asha personally, but I coached my daughter’s softball team as well. We made it really far into the playoffs and we lost.

I know the girls were looking for a reason — “Oh, that was not a fair call.” They are young little kids, so sometimes there is a little bit of embellishment. That is your job as the coach or the parent to explain to them that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and that is part of the game.

Honestly, if you look at Asha, she seemed like a little bit of a perfectionist. She seemed like somebody who was young but was incredibly adept at many different things. She probably did not face failure a lot.

When it is your first time losing, when you have been so good at everything, it can hit hard. You can look for external sources to blame because you are a kid. She had this kind of adult, mature brain where she was just really good at things, but at the same time, she was still a little kid.

I know little kids like that who seem like adults — they seem to have a handle on things, they are super motivated, they are good at everything. But then you see that they can become like children again very quickly because at their heart and in their brains, that is what they are.

She was used to succeeding. Sports are great; it is part of learning about life, learning that sometimes regardless of how hard you try, you might come up a little bit short. Please do not say “everybody gets a trophy” again.

I got crushed for that remember? In the beginning, I said something about participation trophies, and people did not like that. Sorry.

Although you just brought it up, so now here it is. I am throwing you under the bus. Here is a shovel, Stephanie.

I support you, do not worry.

Chad Wilson also said that Asha was not the only one who got upset about the loss. All the girls had been disappointed, and several of them had shed a few tears. But after a few minutes, Asha was back to her normal self.

She was smiling, joking, having a good time with her other teammates. When O’Bryant played his game, Asha sat with her mother in the stands to watch. Chad Wilson said, “I sat behind her for part of the boys’ game and tossed a towel over her head and joked with her.

She didn’t show any behavior or say anything that led me to believe she was unhappy. We joked like we normally do, and she was very happy when sitting with her mother.”

After the game, Asha attended a sleepover with a dozen of her cousins. This sleepover was hosted by her 15-year-old cousin Katina. A lot of Asha’s family lived close by; she was very close with lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Everyone at this sleepover said Asha was fine. She was happy, dancing, and laughing. But they did stay up very late.

They watched “Soul Train,” learning the dances and laughing at each other. Later they watched “Showtime at the Apollo.” If anybody remembers, “Showtime at the Apollo” came on really late — I want to say midnight.

It has been a long time since I have watched TV, and it has been a long time since “Showtime at the Apollo” was on. It came on late, and this was a sleepover with many girls, so they were staying up late, not getting a lot of sleep.

The next morning, Asha did go to church with her family at 11, and then they all went to lunch at her aunt’s house afterwards. But when they got home, Asha was tired, so she laid down in her room at 6:30 in the evening and fell asleep. Two hours later, a storm was rolling in.

There were high winds, a lot of rain, and lightning. Asha, who was scared of storms, woke up and ventured into the living room where her mother and brother were watching television. When Iquilla and O’Bryant saw Asha that night, she was wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that she had gotten from her family reunion, which had taken place the previous summer in Atlanta.

It was a white t-shirt with purple writing that said, “Sun Degrees Hot in Atlanta.”

Half an hour later, a car outside slid into an electrical pole, knocking the power out at the Degree home as well as several other surrounding neighborhoods. Asha and O’Bryant would usually take baths in the evening, but because of the power outage, their mother told them to just get into their pajamas and go to bed. They could have their bath the next morning before school.

Asha changed into a white nightgown with red trim and a teddy bear printed on the front. Both she and O’Bryant climbed into their separate beds in the same room.

It seems that this evening, Harold Degree was at work. He got out of work around 11 p. m.

and stopped at a store to buy some Valentine’s Day candy before heading home. Power was restored to the home and surrounding areas at 12:30 a. m.

, which was right around the time Harold arrived back at the house. When he got home, Harold looked in on both of his children as he usually did, and he found them sleeping soundly. He went to bed himself about two hours later, around 2:30 a.

m. When you get home from working late nights, you cannot go right to sleep; you have to wind down a little bit. I used to work at a nightclub, so I know that feeling.

But he went to bed at about 2:30.

This was about the same time that O’Bryant heard what he thought was Asha getting up to use the bathroom. A few minutes later, he heard the springs in her bed squeak, and O’Bryant assumed that Asha had gotten back into bed and gone to sleep. A few minutes later, O’Bryant heard Asha’s bed squeak again, and he figured she was just restless and moving in her sleep.

No one in the house heard anything else, and everyone slumbered on.

The next morning was February 14. Asha’s mother Iquilla woke up around 5:45 a. m.

and started drawing a bath for the kids. Iquilla would later go on to give an interview to Jet magazine, and I am going to read in her own words what she said happened that morning. She said: “I opened the bedroom door.

My son O’Bryant was under the covers as he usually slept. I called his name and he jumped up as usual. I realized that Asha was not in her bed.

I looked beside the bed because sometimes she would get up at night and lay there. I asked O’Bryant where she was. He said he didn’t know.

I checked the couch. I checked downstairs. I checked the kitchen.

I checked every closet in the house. I went in my room and put on clothes and told my husband Harold that Asha was not in the house. I checked our cars.

She was not there. My husband said maybe she was in my mother-in-law’s home; she lives across the road. We called my sister-in-law’s house.

She was not there. That’s when I went into panic mode. I heard a car next door.

I didn’t have shoes on. I put shoes on and ran outside. I called my mom and told her that Asha was not in the house.

She told me to hang up and call the police. I threw the phone at Harold and went outside.”

When she says that Harold said maybe she is at his mom’s house, and then she says she called her sister-in-law, it is a little confusing the way she words it. But the mother — Harold’s mother — and Harold’s sister-in-law lived across the street with Harold’s brother as far as I can tell. There are a lot of relatives in this case, and they all seem to live in the same area.

They called Harold’s mother and asked if Asha was there. Asha was not known to leave the house and go there without telling anybody, but at this point, this was a last resort. Iquilla says she threw the phone at Harold so that he could call 911, and then she ran outside.

Let us be clear on the time frame here. Harold checked on the kids at 12:30 a. m.

So we know as of 12:30 there is a visual confirmation that Asha is in her bed. Someone might say, “What if she had made it look like she was in her bed?” We are going off the assumption that he was able to see his daughter’s head or body clearly and said, “Okay, there is my daughter.”

O’Bryant saw her get up to go to the bathroom around 2:30 a. m. , but then he just heard her bed squeak and thought she was getting back in bed.

Then he heard it squeak again and thought she was just restless. So that is 2:30 a. m.

In the account, O’Bryant said he heard what he thought was Asha getting up to use the bathroom. He says this afterwards because he is like, “I thought she was getting up to use the bathroom, but maybe she was getting up to leave.” He did not know if she actually had to use the bathroom.

So when I heard you say “heard,” I thought maybe O’Bryant actually physically saw her get out of bed, but he never saw her return. It was just the noises he heard that he assumed were her again. The bed squeaked when she got in, and then she was moving around a little bit later, which was just her adjusting herself as she got into bed.

I do not want to draw too many conclusions from that. We have a sound that if he saw her get out of bed, we know she is out. Someone came back into the room and got onto her bed, and although he thought the second squeaking was her just adjusting herself, that probably might represent the time when she got back out of the bed.

Something to keep in mind. At 12:30 there was a visual, but then two hours later, you have Harold going to sleep and O’Bryant seeing or hearing Asha get out of bed. So we are at about 2:30 a.

m. before Iquilla gets up at 5:45. That is important — we are looking at about a three hour and 15 minute window that is in question.

Keep that in mind as we go forward.

It seems like the standard narrative is that she was there at 2:30, but shortly after O’Bryant heard her and saw her go to the bathroom is when she left, or somebody came in and took her. The general belief is that she left of her own free will. But why would she do that?

That is the bigger question. We do not want to assume anything, but if we are playing this out, if this was someone who came into the home unannounced, unexpected by Asha, and then you hear that it was not like she went to the bathroom and he never saw or heard her again. It does appear that she came back to the room and left again voluntarily.

You could make the argument that this was someone else, but it is unlikely. It is unlikely that someone else would get into her bed and then get back out. If she was abducted or grabbed by someone in the house, you would expect some type of sound that would have been heard.

How big was the house? Was it a big place? Was it smaller?

It is not like a JonBenét mansion. It is a two-story duplex. I believe they lived in half of it.

What we do know is that Asha took a book bag with her that was packed with some things — clothes and stuff like that. What O’Bryant could have been hearing at that point when she came back in from the bathroom or wherever she went was her getting her things together or grabbing her bag that she had already pre-packed. It was dark.

I do not see her packing this bag at 2:30 in the morning and finding clothes. He did not hear drawers opening or anything like that. So she probably already had this bag packed, maybe hidden under her bed.

She puts her hand on the mattress to reach under her bed, and so he hears squeaking, thinking it is her being restless or moving around in her sleep, but it is really her grabbing her bag. He is half asleep at this point, so he does not remember or recall her leaving the room after that.

Nobody in the house heard anything. It is not a big place, and all the bedrooms are pretty close together. It is a duplex, so I assume it is rented.

Those walls and these rented places can be paper thin. You would expect to hear or see some sign of struggle if there was a kidnapping. There was none.

He was in the room the entire time. They shared a room; their beds are like six feet apart. We will use the spread of the squeaking of the springs to try to establish the timeline.

We know she was not there by 5:45. For those of you taking notes, you are looking at about a three-hour window. That is not a big window at all.

Keep that in mind, keep your notes going, so we can keep this timeline in perspective as we try to figure out what happened.

Harold Degree called the police at 6:39 a. m. to report a missing child.

The transcript shows that Harold told the dispatcher that Asha was gone, and so was her book bag and her pocketbook, or her purse. She took her Tweety Bird purse with him. He said he did not know what else she had taken with her at that point or what she had been wearing when she left.

The first police officer at the Degree home arrived around 6:45 a. m. Within 15 minutes, it was as if the entire town of Shelby had congregated outside the home.

Iquilla Degree later told Jet magazine: “By that time every neighbor in my street was up because I was walking up and down the road screaming my child’s name. By seven o’clock we had every cop in the county here. Every news reporter had shown up.

Five or six local news channels were here. Local newspapers. By the time seven o’clock came I was plastered all over the television.”

So he calls in a missing child at 6:40, the first cop is there by 6:45, and by 7 pretty much every cop in the county was at the house. Is that a pretty good response time for a missing child? It is a really good response time.

I am sure that was based on all the things you laid out earlier. Asha was not someone who was in trouble a lot. She was not a habitual runaway.

You can walk into a home and see very quickly how tight-knit a family is and also how strict the parents are. Police realize very quickly that this girl is not a candidate for a runaway. So it is all hands on deck at that point.

I am not saying it should not be for every case, but if I am being completely candid, there are situations where a police officer shows up and realizes that this is someone who runs away every single week. The same level of response from a human level is not there. But with a case like this, where it fits all the criteria of a kidnapping, let’s get everybody here and try to establish a grid, hoping that whoever took her has only been gone for a small window, and we can box them in.

One of the cops later said that nine years old is kind of young to be a runaway. Kids do not really start running away until 12. Nine is still pretty young because nine-year-olds still get scared by stuff.

They do not want to go outside in the dark. I have a nine-year-old son. This kid is not going outside in the dark.

He cannot even fall asleep at night without me laying in bed next to him, and he is going to be ten this month. So fourth grade is young. They still have fears.

She was scared of storms. It was storming and raining when she left. She was scared of dogs, and we know dogs are outside.

Yet she still ventured out there by herself. It did not look like a runaway situation.

That is the other thing too. As an officer, one of the first questions you are going to ask is: Was there anything that transpired over the last couple days where you had an argument, something she did not agree with, that would make her want to go somewhere and do something you would not allow? For the most part, the only thing we have is this basketball game where she was a little upset.

That would not justify running away from home when the people she was upset with do not even live there. So they were looking for a reason why she would leave the house voluntarily, and they did not have that. So then you go to the worst case scenario: she was taken.

That is why I think you got the response you did.

Of course, they asked the parents that. They asked if there were fights happening, if there was something happening at home that would stress her out or make her want to get away. They answered honestly: no, everything has been normal.

These past couple of days have been completely normal. She had a little setback at the game, but as Coach Wilson said, she recovered from that within a couple of minutes. Kids do that; they get upset about things and then they start playing with their friends and they are over it.

They are not going to bring it home. She was not upset about anything. This was completely out of the blue.

That is how it happens. I am glad to see that response time because that is what you would expect in a situation like this. The police brought in canines — police dogs — to see if they could pick up Asha’s scent and figure out which way she had gone.

But they were unable to find her scent, which was strange because the canine handlers claimed that the dogs could pick up the scent of a live human for three to four days after they have been missing, depending on the weather. Moisture actually helps in this situation. In forensics, a lot of the time water and moisture do not help, but in this situation they do because scents are drawn to moisture and it kind of holds onto it for a lot longer.

On the morning Asha had gone missing, it had been raining. That is also odd — she was afraid of thunderstorms, and she left without a jacket. She was not dressed to go out in the rain.

By 8 a. m. , volunteers from fire departments and rescue squads from around Cleveland County had arrived and began searching the area around Asha’s home.

By noon, a North Carolina Highway Patrol helicopter was in the air searching the area from above. By 2 p. m.

, the State Bureau of Investigation was on the scene, and they had sealed off the house, only allowing the family members who resided there to go in and out. Almost 100 volunteers gathered at a nearby Baptist church where a command post had been set up, and they were directed to search a three-mile wide area around Asha’s house.

I want to double back for one second about the canines. From my experience as the sergeant in charge of reestablishing our K9 unit for my department, I can tell you that dogs are very good. They have about 300 receptor cells in their nose compared to us — it is super crazy.

But the dogs are only as good as their trainers, and there are a lot of elements that can affect that. I have had good handlers and bad handlers. The dogs really reflect their owner; they take on that personality as far as drive and ability to perform their job.

I will give an example. In narcotics, we would have a consent to search a car, and I would bring over the dog first — from my agency or a different agency — to do a cursory search. The dog would search around the car, not hit on anything, and we would still search it obviously.

Then I would go in there and literally under the front seat is a kilo of cocaine. A kilo is huge — about thirty thousand dollars worth of coke. I would pull it out and show the canine handler and ask, “What happened here?”

And they would say, “Oh, I didn’t get that spot” or whatever. It is like, “Dude, it’s a kilo.”

The reason I bring it up is just to look into the fact that the canine did not hit, but do not hang your hat on it. It is not the end all be all. It is an aspect you have to consider.

I am not saying this dog was not one of the best in the state. I am just saying as we talk about this case and others, do not automatically assume that because the dog did not pick up a scent, there was none. There might have been a scent, but sometimes the dog can be overstimulated where there are so many fresh scents that her scent is so strong it cannot track it because it is everywhere.

So there are so many variables. When I hear this as someone with this experience, that is what I am thinking. Now you guys will too.

Later, there is another site where she was suspected to have been, and they did not pick up her scent there either. That is another thing we will get to.

The police found no sign of forced entry in the Degree house. All the doors had been locked when the family woke up that morning. So if Asha had left, she had locked the door behind her.

There was no sign of a struggle in the bedroom or the house. Her bed looked as if it had been slept in, but it was left unmade, which was unusual for Asha because she would make her bed as soon as she woke up every morning. O’Bryant, who slept just feet away from his sister, heard nothing.

Nobody heard anything. Iquilla, O’Bryant, and Howard answered questions and cooperated fully with the police.

Chief Deputy Bob Roadcap, with the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office, announced early on that everyone was still a suspect and they were not ruling anything out. Obviously, the family — we have talked about this before — would be the first place they start. They asked questions.

They ruled the family out very early on, I think it was just a couple of days. They said the family had been completely cooperative, they had been out there searching for her every day, they had kept consistent with their stories. They would not say whether or not the family took lie detector tests, but I feel like at this point it is pretty straightforward.

The police stopped looking at them as suspects very early on.

It is interesting as we dissect this case to know how they were able to rule them out so quickly. This is nothing against the family, but in other cases like JonBenét, there were more elements involved. In cases like this, when there is no sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle, no reason for the child to have left the home, nothing tumultuous taking place leading up to the event, the first people you look at are the parents, the siblings, anyone under the roof.

The fact that they were able to rule them out so quickly — I would just like to know the specifics of that. It would have to be a lot to say definitively there is no way they could have any involvement.

There are still some people online who think the family might have had something to do with it. I am not surprised by that. I personally do not, but I am not saying they did either.

I am just not surprised that people’s minds go there. It should be something you consider if you are into true crime and you are looking at cases from a standpoint of critical thinking. Of course, there is a reason the case has not been solved yet.

But there were sightings of her after leaving the house that morning, so that is probably why they ruled them out. Again, the critical thinking aspect — looking at every possibility — you are going to come to stuff later in the story that will answer that question. But I do not want people looking at this and just saying they ruled them out because they were good people.

There is more to the story where you will say, “Okay, now I am on board.”

I am sure they had Harold’s alibi — what time he left work, what time he got back. They probably saw that their cell phones had not left the house. I do not even know if they had cell phones in 2000.

They definitely had them. It is funny because when you say 20 years ago, you think, “Oh my god, were we still using stones to create fire?” But the reality is, we are in 2021, and technology was pretty far along in 2000.

They were able to track coordinates with GPS technology.

Bob Roadcap also said that he had been with the sheriff’s office for five years, and in that time he had never seen a child who was so young go missing for so long when there was not a personal factor involved, like a custody battle between the parents. I think that is because he is in Shelby, North Carolina. This is not a big town; there is not a lot of crime.

He probably has not seen abductions like bigger cities have. These law enforcement officials were constantly stumped by how out of the norm this disappearance was. Some of them took it very personally.

One guy said he could not sleep at night thinking about it. They went days without sleeping because they could not put two and two together. They thought, “None of this makes sense.

She has to be somewhere, just hiding, and she is going to come out and be okay.”

Investigators also announced that they believed Asha had left the house of her own free will, but once she left the house, she encountered trouble. This was mainly due to the eyewitness accounts from several truckers who had been out on the morning of February 14, driving through the early morning darkness to whatever destination they were headed.

I want to talk about the effect this has on law enforcement officers. I was in a smaller department as well, and we were fortunate enough not to have many child abductions or kidnappings. So I talked about Michelle Norris before, and I will probably talk about her a thousand more times as we do the show.

I literally lose sleep about it. I can honestly tell you, this case happened before I was even a police officer, and I still think about it all the time. I have the file to my left in a safe.

I pull it out and constantly go over my own notes. Cases like this stick with you because as human beings, we do not like having a lack of resolution. It is like having a puzzle with all the pieces but not figuring it out.

These officers, whether you like officers or not, it becomes personal because a lot of them are fathers, brothers, cousins, and they have experienced things like this. In a small town, everyone knows everyone. They are relying on you to find this young girl, and when you cannot, it can take a mental toll.

The eyewitness accounts are extremely important because they saw Asha not with her parents. If you were to think that they were involved, you would expect that these unbiased, objective witnesses would say they also saw a man or woman that would match the description of one of the parents or O’Bryant. They did not.

So that is why it is important as we go forward to understand how they were able to rule the parents out. But I do not want to steal the thunder. We are going to go over the eyewitness accounts, and it will give you an even deeper understanding of why these officers came to the conclusion of ruling out the family, or at least the immediate relatives.

The first person to see Asha that morning was 25-year-old Jeff Rupp, a truck driver for Sundrop Bottling Company. He was driving northbound on Highway 18 at around 3:45 a. m.

when he spotted a little girl walking southbound with a book bag on her back. Highway 18 is a rural two-lane highway that starts at the South Carolina state line and travels north into Shelby, then connects Shelby to the towns of Fallston, Bellwood, Morganton, and Wilkesboro. This stretch of highway where Asha was seen was located about a mile from her house.

Jeff Rupp said, “I seen a little girl walking down the road with her book bag. She had on a little dress and white tennis shoes, and her hair was in pigtails.” Asha had been seen going to bed wearing a white nightgown, and she always wore her hair in pigtails.

Jeff was worried about this little girl walking in the dark through the rain completely alone, so he turned his truck around and drove back towards her to see if she needed help. When he drove by her for the second time, Jeff claimed that she ignored him. He said, “I went back but she never did look up at me.

She looked like she knew where she was going. She was walking at a pretty good pace.”

Jeff Rupp passed by Asha one more time when he turned around to go back the way he had originally been traveling. It was at this point that he noticed, as he watched her in his rearview mirror, that Asha was veering off the highway and going into the fog and darkness, like off into a field.

About half an hour later, Roy Blanton Senior and his son Roy Jr. were also driving on Highway 18, finishing up a trucking run for Porter’s Transport. They were also heading north when they saw a small figure walking on the highway.

Roy Blanton said, “It was a small figure wearing light-colored clothing. I thought it was a woman. I couldn’t tell if it was a child.

I thought maybe it was a domestic violence thing where a woman left the house and was out walking.” Roy was worried because it was still dark and foggy, and the rain was causing low visibility. So he sent out a warning on his CB radio to warn other nearby truckers that there was a person walking on the highway, and they should keep a lookout so that person would not accidentally get hit.

The clothes she was wearing are reported differently depending on what you read. Jeff Rupp definitely said she was wearing a little dress, which leads us to believe she was still wearing her nightgown when she left the house. But some sites and sources say that Roy Blanton Senior saw a figure wearing a long-sleeved white shirt, white pants, and white shoes — dressed all in white.

So I wonder: was this the same figure? Jeff Rupp definitely said this was a little girl; he drove back to see her because he was worried. Roy Blanton said it was a figure, probably a woman, and he could not tell if it was a child.

He thought it was some sort of domestic violence thing and sent out a call on the CB radio to warn others. Was this the same figure? How could it have been if Asha had veered off the road off the highway?

Would she have been back on the highway half an hour later for Roy Blanton to see her? This gets a little confusing.

When I hear it, a couple thoughts come to mind. When I was a kid, if I was walking and saw a suspicious person or a vehicle passing me multiple times, I would not make eye contact with them. I would usually veer off into a driveway or a parking lot to make it look like I had arrived at my destination.

What we are hearing initially — Asha veering off the highway — Jeff Rupp passed her multiple times, three to be exact. She could have looked at that as suspicious, that this person was going to try to hurt her. So she veered off the highway to try to avoid this person because the truck is not going to come off the highway with her.

By going into the woods, maybe standing by for a couple minutes, and then coming back, that could potentially explain that behavior — she was in fear.

Do I believe Roy Blanton saw her? I would want to know exactly the distance between the two sightings. But it would be a very big coincidence to have someone else.

Let us be honest, it is not normal to see someone walking along the highway. Every time you do, it is an anomaly. To have Roy Blanton see this figure 30 minutes later in an area where she would have been if she had stayed on the highway is either a huge coincidence or it was in fact Asha.

The description of clothing — he did not have a good eye on it, he was partially guessing. I always tell witnesses, “Don’t guess, only tell me what you know, not what you think.” So I would think that he did see her.

I think it is too much of a coincidence to see someone who somewhat matches the description of our victim.

As far as the dress versus a nightgown, it is possible that she was wearing something else similar. I do not take too much into that. It could have been the nightgown, but I do not know why she would be wearing a nightgown out.

It is possible she was wearing something else that was in fact a dress and not the nightgown. As far as the discrepancy in the two descriptions of clothing, Roy said he did not have a good look at her and could not even tell. He was really trying to fill in the blanks to be helpful.

Based on the timing and location, I think it is too big of a coincidence not to be her. But that is just where I am coming from based on the time frame between the two. I am going to ask you this question again after I tell you more information.

Okay, please do. I know it is coming.

During the first day of searching for Asha, the State Bureau of Investigation questioned Asha’s family, her friends at school, her teachers, her coaches. They also interviewed employees at convenience stores along Highway 18, trying to find someone who knew where Asha may have been heading, or if she had told anyone she was talking to someone she was going to meet. They talked to her friends, and her friends said no, she never said anything.

They did not think she was talking to anybody. But I have always thought maybe they just did not want to get in trouble. These are young girls.

Maybe they did not want to get her in trouble. Maybe they thought whoever she was with could be trusted because Asha had told them that. But as they got older, if she had told them something, it would eventually come out, would not you think?

You would think so. Once she was missing for multiple days, even a young child would realize that whatever they thought was the case was not, and she was in trouble if she was even still alive. You would think they would come forward.

But there is that element of dealing with young people; they feel that now so much time has passed, the fact that they never said nothing initially, they are kind of stuck. That is an element of it. But they would be in their 30s now after 20 years.

Guilt can be a powerful thing.

When night fell on February 14, the volunteers had to pause the search. But the sheriff’s office said, “Don’t worry, we are still sending officers out on patrol in the area. We are going to continue looking for her.”

The searchers could not keep looking through neighborhoods and woods at night. The next morning, February 15, volunteers went back out at first light to look for Asha. This search effort was truly something to be proud of for Shelby.

People who knew the family were out looking, but there were so many others who had never met Asha or her family, and they came out in droves. They could not stand the thought that this little nine-year-old girl could be out there alone for another minute.

There was one guy in his 20s who said, “I have a four-year-old daughter. I don’t know the family, but I am going out to look.” He actually took unpaid time off from work and was out there every single day looking for her.

Law enforcement also set up a roadblock on Highway 18 starting at 3 a. m. on February 15, continuing for three hours.

They were hoping to find a motorist who had seen something that Monday morning on their commute to work. But no new clues came from this roadblock.

The reason they set it up at three o’clock is never said, but I assume it is because that is about the time she was seen on Highway 18. They hoped that anyone who normally drives that route, even if they were going to work super early, may have spotted her as well. They talked to a lot of people who said they were driving that way on Monday but did not see anything.

That has always stuck out to me too. It is these truckers who saw her, but nobody else did. It is possible that she was trying to avoid being seen.

If the plan was to run away from home and not be brought back, she would do minor things to make sure she was seen by as few people as possible. That would explain why she veered off the road — she noticed that the trucker had taken notice and was probably going to stop her. So it would explain the lack of sightings if she was doing that intentionally.

But here is the thing: she was wearing all white. If you are trying not to be spotted, you do not wear all white. But she was nine; she was not thinking it out all the way.

She clearly chose to wear all white for a reason.

Was she wearing all white because she knew she would be walking on a dark road and did not want to get hit by a car? Was she wearing all white because she had been communicating with someone and they said, “Walk down Highway 18, wear all white so I can see you, and I will pick you up”? What was the reason?

If you are trying not to be seen, you would dress in dark clothing. Even a nine-year-old would know that. But you cannot always explain the mind of a child.

To think that you are going to execute a plan to run away from home without being detected is a lot.

One thing I want to bring up: I looked up information about the highway in relation to their home on Oak Crest Drive. Highway 18 is right near the house, about a mile away. To get to the highway, it is about a 20-minute walk.

That brings into consideration where on Highway 18, because it runs a long way. If she was heading south — the trucks were going north — there was something in that direction that might explain why she was going that way. I do not know if you are going to bring that up, but I do not want to get too far ahead.

She was heading south. The trucks were going north. If you are heading towards 182, you have Fallston Elementary School up that way.

This is the exact same route she would take to walk to her bus stop with O’Bryant every morning. There was a theory that she was sleepwalking — that she got up, grabbed her book bag, and started walking the normal route. I do not believe it.

Her normal route to the school bus would not bring her to Highway 18. Sleepwalking for 20 minutes is possible, but she did not have a history of sleepwalking. She had never sleepwalked before.

It is one of those theories that comes out when you have exhausted every other possibility. I think it is a strong theory, but I just do not think a sleepwalking nine-year-old would have gotten herself a mile away to Highway 18, and she was cognizant enough to veer off the road for whatever reason.

For the YouTube version, we will definitely throw up a map. If you are not familiar with the area, you will not know, but it was not that far from her house to the highway. With the time window of the sightings in relation to when they believed she left the home — around 3 a.

m. — it lines up. That is important when trying to establish credibility and validity of the witness testimony.

It all lines up. This person is telling information about this young girl, what she was wearing, the time they saw her. It would line up with the theory that she left home around 3 a.

m. So that is important when you are trying to establish which witnesses are worth listening to and which you might want to put aside for now.

A spotter plane from the SBI was sent into the air, equipped with heat sensors and infrared equipment. They were looking through more dense areas of forest to see if there were any heat signatures that might show a little girl hiding. The search was expanded to the area of Highway 18 where Asha had been spotted by the truckers.

One of the residences in this area belonged to the Turner family, the home and business of Charles Turner, who owned Turner’s Upholstery at 2953 Fallston Road in Shelby.

Charles’s wife Raleigh and her daughter Debbie were approached by a couple of searchers on horseback. The searchers said, “Hey, this little nine-year-old girl is missing. Can you check any of the buildings on your property for signs of Asha?”

Raleigh and Debbie proceeded to look through their three outbuildings and a rundown barn or shed — depending on the source, some call it a barn, some call it a shed. To me it looks more barn-like, with high ceilings and kind of big. Usually this barn was used to store old discarded pieces of furniture because this was a furniture business, and it also stored a pretty large farming tractor.

In this barn, the Turners found several items that they claimed had not been there before. There was a white pencil from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, a green marker, and some candy wrappers near the tractor. There was also a wallet-sized photo of a young black girl and a yellow hair bow.

Charles Turner would later tell the media, “There was a little picture next to the tractor. The hair bow was an inch and a half long and it had a little teddy bear on it. It was solid yellow.”

The next day, the Turners brought the photo of the little girl they found into the police. They did not bring the other items, just the photo. When law enforcement showed this photo to Asha’s parents, they said not only was this not a picture of Asha, but they did not even know who the girl in the photo was.

When the Turners were told that the picture was not Asha, they assumed the other items they found in the barn were unrelated as well. So they put them in a pile and stored them on their enclosed porch, not bringing them to the police.

Investigators continued to search for Asha, extending the search to 25 miles from her house. Flyers were passed out, APBs were put out, but they were finding nothing. Each search party returned empty-handed and heavy-hearted.

The police purchased a pair of shoes the exact same size and brand as Asha’s so they could compare them to any footprints found. They even made photocopies of the bottoms of the shoes so searchers could carry a physical copy to compare to any footprints. This is actually really great; I was impressed.

I had never heard of this happening in cases before. I think it was brilliant.

Jeff Rupp, the trucker who first saw Asha on the highway, was brought to point out to law enforcement the exact place he believed Asha had veered off the road. Cleveland County Sheriff Dan Crawford believed that Asha may have gotten spooked while walking and gone to search for shelter. Maybe Jeff himself spooked her by driving by repeatedly, and she thought, “This dude is trying to kidnap me.

I am not going to make eye contact, and I am going to get out of here.” She may have been trying to get out of the rain because she did not like storms. Jeff pointed to an area of Highway 18 near a field owned by the Turner family of Turner’s Upholstery.

He was also given a polygraph, which he passed.

The next day, Thursday, February 17, the search was refocused to this area, bringing them back to the Turner property. There were a lot of law enforcement agencies working — SBI, FBI, sheriff’s office — along with volunteer firefighters, fire departments, and search and rescue teams. They were not all aware that the little photograph had been found in the Turner barn and that the Turners had brought it to the police, only for Asha’s family to say they did not recognize the girl.

When the searchers went to the Turner property again, they looked around and found some candy wrappers on the ground. Kids like candy, so they approached the Turners one more time and asked if they had seen anything odd within the past few days. The Turners said, “We have already had people here asking about this little girl.

We did find some stuff in a barn, but the police said it was not affiliated with Asha.” This was a rickety old barn that did not even have a door; it was not locked or closed. Asha could have easily slipped in and gotten out of the rain.

Law enforcement came in and asked for the rest of the objects that the Turners had found. They presented these other articles to Harold and Iquilla and found out that even though the picture had not rung a bell, the other items did. Harold and Iquilla said that the pencil, hair bow, and marker were Asha’s.

The candy wrappers most likely came from a bag of candy she had been given at school during a Valentine’s Day party held in her classroom a few days before she vanished.

A massive team of searchers was sent to the Turner property, and they began an inch-by-inch search. They concentrated on finding anything that looked as if it had dropped out of the book bag they believed Asha had with her, anything overlooked during previous searches. The smallest thing would not matter.

At this point, most of the law enforcement officials had not slept in days. There were stories of police officers getting a little cranky. One fireman said, “Listen, they are cranky, but they have not slept in four days since this started, so just bear with us.”

This new evidence found in the Turner barn gave everyone renewed hope. Before sending the volunteers out for their inch-by-inch search, Detective Wayne Thomas announced, “I don’t know about y’all, but I’m not giving up until I find this child.”

A canine dog was brought in again to see if Asha’s scent could be picked up on the Turner property. But once again, no scent was found. The disappointed volunteers packed it up at nightfall after finding nothing more than a few more candy wrappers.

Some of the candy wrappers were from Asha’s favorite candy, so they figured she had been there. Her stuff was there. They just did not pick up her scent.

That is telling as far as the dog not picking up a scent. You have items that were identified as Asha’s by her parents, yet no scent pickup. That does not compute.

To go back to what we were talking about earlier, you said you were going to ask me the question again. It still holds true. I would love to know where the second individual, Roy, saw her in relation to the Turner home.

It could explain the theory that the trucker driving by multiple times spooks her, she goes off to find shelter, she is in there, has a quick bite to eat, maybe rummages through her backpack. Her pencil falls out — it is probably dark inside the barn at that time, so she does not see that she is dropping these items. She has the candies.

Then she continues on her way, maybe back on Highway 18, where she is seen again about 30 minutes after the first sighting.

That was the question I had: How did Jeff see her veer off the road? We are assuming she veered off to go to the Turner barn because this is a spot right by their field. Then she does not spend much time there before getting back on Highway 18 to be seen by Roy Blanton Senior.

If you think that this young girl was leaving to go on an adventure or going wherever, you would assume that the Turner place, if there was no evidence that she knew about this shelter prior, was an unexpected stop. She stopped there because something threw her off her path, which was from point A to point B down Highway 18 to somewhere familiar from her bus route. Her veering off to the Turner shelter in my opinion is nothing more than her being spooked.

She stopped there to get some shelter — maybe the storm was still going, maybe she thought the trucker was going to come after her. She had the candies, and then she got back on the highway. So I think it gives some credibility to Roy seeing her again because if Highway 18 is what she knows, she will leave the shelter and go back onto the highway and continue down her route.

This case drives me crazy. There is a little spoiler here. A lot of people feel that Asha was never in that barn.

Not only because the dogs did not pick up her scent, but because there was another guy who lived pretty close by. He said he did not hear anything. The police talked to him.

There was another guy who kept a bunch of dogs behind the barn — he stored his dogs there. He said, “I have 12 dogs back there. They bark at everything.

Anytime somebody walks up, they bark. They did not make a sound that night.” So some people believe that whoever took Asha planted those things there.

That leads me to talk about that picture found in the Turner barn. To me, it is one of the strangest parts of this case. That picture has never been identified.

It has been posted online. The police have asked, “Anyone know who this little girl is? Are you this little girl?

Did you know this little girl? Is this your child?” Still, to this day, no one has come forward with any information.

Many people online have theories about what this picture means. It is really hard to believe that the photo is not connected to Asha in some way. It was found along with her belongings after she went missing.

Her family did not recognize the girl in the picture, nor did the Turners. Some people think this might not even be a real girl. It does kind of look as if it could be computer-edited, like someone took a composite of two or more pictures and edited them together to make it look like a girl but it was not a real girl.

It is kind of crazy.

Maybe it was used by some sort of predator to lure Asha away. Maybe someone was pretending to be this little girl. Or maybe someone was grooming Asha and communicating with her, and they said, “Look, you know, I have this little girl with me.

You guys can be friends.” There are even theories that this little girl may be another victim of the same person who took Asha, and he or she left this picture behind on purpose, like some sadistic Zodiac killer breadcrumb trail, playing a game with law enforcement. But like I said, to this day, the little girl in that picture has not been identified.

It looks like the kind of picture a school photographer would take — posed with one of those interchangeable backdrops. It is not great quality to begin with. Around the neck of this little girl, it is super blurry.

It is just very creepy. For anyone watching on YouTube, pay close attention to this picture. Let us know: have you ever known a little girl who looks like this?

Or maybe you were the little girl in the picture? I know it is a long shot, but it is a shot nonetheless. I personally have heard of this case before, and until I dove deep into it, I did not even know about this picture.

I am hoping that we get this in front of more eyes and figure out if maybe this is a real little girl. We can figure out who she is.

There are some online users who believe that photo could be of another missing girl named Lenora Jones, who went missing from Tacoma, Washington in July of 1995. Lenora was three years old. She was known to wear her hair in braids.

She went missing and has never been seen again. The little girl in this picture looks a bit older than four, though. But what if she was kidnapped and this creep is taking school pictures of her and leaving them in barns where he takes other victims?

Who knows? It is just super creepy.

What do you think about this picture? It could be everything. It could be nothing.

How could it be nothing? It could be nothing in relation to the case. When you go to a crime scene, whether it is for larceny, robbery, or murder, you want to collect every piece of evidence.

Unfortunately, in some cases, you may have pieces of evidence that are of value mixed with pieces that are not. Having said that, to find a photo of a little girl who resembles Asha in the area where her belongings were found is completely mind-boggling. To think that photo could have been left there by someone else at an earlier time is a stretch.

Listen, that photo could have been something as simple as Asha cutting it out or grabbing it because it looked kind of like her and she liked the dress the girl was wearing. Or it could have been a wallet-sized picture that she found and kept. We do not know.

I will say this about the candy and stuff. I know there are people who believe someone could have planted it there, and the dogs not picking up a scent backs that up. But again, if it were someone leaving a signature or wanting to be found, this person would have had to know that a trucker was going to see her at that very moment to inform police that she veered off the highway, leading them to the area where he or she was going to plant evidence.

That would either mislead police or give them some type of signature. I think if they were going to leave something behind to say they had Asha or did something to her, it would have been left in a more obvious place where it would undoubtedly be found.

Sometimes the most simple answer is the right answer. It sounds to me like the girl was eating candy. She was very tiny.

She maybe got in there without the dogs noticing, ate the candy, and left. She was rummaging through her backpack. If you believe this was planted by her offender, why not just leave the whole bag?

Why leave little things here and there? I am asking these questions, but I am saying why not leave it all there? It is a breadcrumb trail, but a breadcrumb in such an obscure location — you are really giving law enforcement a lot of credit that they are going to find that without knowing that there is going to be a witness who sees her veer off at that very moment.

They are basically relying on someone they do not even know exists when they are planting it.

So you think it is possible that she had that picture and it just fell out of her bag? I do. But where did she get it from?

This is Shelby, a small town. They showed this picture around. Nobody at the school knew this girl.

Nobody knew where it came from. If I knew that answer, we would be getting somewhere. But if you think it is possible, you have to figure out why it is possible.

It is not only that I think it is possible; I cannot find evidence to say it is not possible. But you cannot find evidence to say it is, right? No, exactly.

So I am not saying it is, but I am not going to say it is not, because there is a real possibility.

Little girls hang photos of celebrities on their walls — things they aspire to be, hairstyles they want. In this particular situation, the girl had braids, so that could be the case. You do not know.

I am looking at it as a father myself. I see what my daughters collect. I could go to Tenley’s desk right now, and half the stuff on there I could not explain why she has it.

Sometimes it is a sticker that makes no sense. If Asha were here, we could ask her. Is it possible she kept this photo for some reason?

It is possible. I do not know why she would. But so is the possibility that someone gave it to her as a ploy, mailed it to her, or handed it off at some point, because I cannot imagine where she would get it from if nobody in her area is that little girl.

You bring up something worth diving into. When we talk about if she was going to meet someone, based on cases I have looked into and cases I have worked, if this was an adult or someone older taking advantage of a situation, they would more than likely have her meet them at a location close to where she was living. They would not have her walking down a highway where she could be seen or where they could be seen.

They would not have them meeting in an area of a field that was not a place of familiarity for Asha. She knew about the school and the bus stop, so that would be a location. But it would not explain why she would stop at that midpoint or why an offender would stop there.

That is why I am having a problem with it.

These conversations you and I are having right now guarantee you law enforcement was having those conversations as well. They are still having them when they do their cold case investigations and go through the case again, bringing in new detectives to try to give new insight. This is why this case is so fascinating and a major reason why it has not been solved.

These little things could mean a lot; they could be the answer to the question, or they could be something intended to throw law enforcement off, which is exactly what it has done and why you and I are discussing it today.

That is our question this week. As far as the picture goes: do you think it is connected to Asha’s disappearance, or do you think it was just an innocent thing she had in her bag that dropped out along with the candy wrappers and the pencil when she was rummaging through trying to find her favorite candy? Let us know in the comments if you are watching on YouTube.

If you are listening on Spotify or Apple, let us know through social media or our website. You can leave us a SpeakPipe. We would love to hear from you.

I also found it very strange that the canine dogs were brought to Asha’s house and the Turner property — two places she was assumed to be on that rainy Monday morning — yet the dogs could never pick up her scent at either location. I always have found that strange. But like you said, it could be more about the handler.

I feel like at the Turner property, if she had been there in that barn, they should have picked up something, been able to follow her path if she went back to the highway, or at least been able to pick up her path from the highway to the Turner barn. What is going on with these canine dogs? Are they the worst canine dogs ever?

I prefaced it at the beginning. The fact that the dog was not able to find a scent for Asha around her home — even if it is the wrong scent, just not leading to where she went — the fact that there was no scent detected is not promising that they would find a scent at a location a few miles away. So that is why I bring it up.

I do not think the police were hanging their hat on this, but it might add a mystery that does not actually exist. The answer could be as simple as the dog just was not that good. Do you think they used the same dog?

I do not know. I looked, but I do not have the answer. I am assuming it was the same dog because dogs are very expensive.

They are not in every single department. A lot of times, one dog for a police department will be leased out or used in surrounding communities because of the cost. I would think it is the same dog, but I can tell you that we have purposely brought in multiple dogs for this exact reason because one dog might have a better pickup on a scent than another.

The discovery of these items in the shed or barn was the first tangible evidence in Asha’s case. When the searchers went back out the morning after the Turner property search, even though they had not found anything before, they were a bit more hopeful that at least they had gotten on the right track, maybe figured out where the path was. They now had over 500 people combing through the area looking for any sign of Asha.

Sheriff Dan Crawford said, “My gut tells me at this point that foul play is involved. I think she left on her own. My biggest fear is that she is somewhere hurt, not able to get help.

What if she is only a tenth of a mile further from where we looked?”

Crawford also said that Asha’s parents had been totally ruled out as suspects. They cooperated fully, answered all the questions, never changed their stories. He also mentioned how quickly they called 911 to report her missing.

There was not an extensive gap of time. In some missing child cases where parents are suspected, you have a kid going missing and then the parents do not call the police for like six hours. That is obviously suspicious.

So they basically said they do not suspect the parents.

On Friday, February 19, Iquilla was rushed to the hospital after experiencing shortness of breath. She was obviously stressed out and going through a lot. The sheriff’s department had received a tip that a young girl had been seen walking near some railroad tracks near Highway 18.

Even though this tip produced nothing substantial, it was obviously stressful enough that Iquilla had a stressed-out reaction. Being delivered a scrap of hope and then having it ripped away happens quite a bit. We will get more into that in part two.

There are more things to discover. Asha’s book bag gets found not shortly after she goes missing, but over a year later in a very strange place. There are suspects, persons of interest, a vehicle she was possibly seen getting into.

There is a lot more evidence to come and a lot more to talk about.

Overall, what do you think of what we have covered so far, not taking into consideration what you are going to cover next week, but taking it at what we have covered so far?

I think Sheriff Crawford nailed it. At this point in the investigation, you have a scenario where his gut tells him foul play is involved, but there is a reality where he is literally feet away from finding her in the woods. It goes back to the Delphi case where the night before they searched for those girls, they just missed them because of the elements.

They were fortunate enough to find them the next day. But there are cases we do not even know about where a body was probably within feet from where the search was conducted, and due to conditions of the weather and animals, the body decomposed and was taken away by animals and will never be found.

Is that possible in this scenario up to this point? Yes. In the case we are talking about right now, yes.

I can only imagine the effect that has on her family, the law enforcement community, and everyone else involved because they all want the same thing: to find her. It is a fascinating case. What we can take away from it at this point is that it does appear to be a voluntary departure — not an abduction or a kidnapping from the home.

She left voluntarily. There are two scenarios: either she was going to a destination where she really did not know where she would end up, just wanted to get away, and someone encountered her and took advantage of the situation; or she was going to meet someone who had malicious intentions from the beginning. She was groomed, they were able to get her out of the house, she was able to get to that location even if she made a pit stop, and ultimately that is why we have not found her to this day.

But I think those are the two real scenarios we are left with.

I agree. That is very intuitive of you, especially not knowing the full case. What we come to find, especially after the book bag is found the way it is found, there is no way she put that book bag there herself.

Somebody hid it there. So somebody encountered her at some point, whether they lured her out. If she was groomed and lured out, how would that have happened?

She did not have a phone. She did not have access to the internet. Her parents made sure of that.

She was sheltered. So it would have had to have been a trusted adult in her life. There have been many times since this case went cold where law enforcement has made statements like, “Someone in Shelby knows something.”

That is not a benign statement in my opinion. To say “someone in Shelby knows something” — the police must have some kind of information that points to something happening closer to home. So she may have been lured away or groomed, or she left on her own.

Even though I know that is the most common theory, I just cannot get my head around why this very meek, shy nine-year-old girl would leave her house all alone in the middle of the night in the middle of a storm. It is raining, it is cold, she does not have a coat on, it is dark, and she just starts walking on the highway for an adventure. You do not go out for an adventure in the middle of the night.

I am 37 years old, and you will not catch me leaving my house at 3:30 in the morning to go out for any kind of damn adventure. I am terrified of the dark. I am not wandering around outside in the dark.

She was scared too. She would not even let her aunt in without getting permission from her mother. So why would she leave if not with a destination in mind?

Asha does not seem to me like the kind of girl who is just going to say, “Let’s go on an adventure tonight and see where the road takes us.” She had to have had a destination in mind. We will talk more about that next time.

There is definitely something to me that says there is more to the story as far as what was going on at home than we know. It could be as simple as Asha felt her parents were too controlling. It could be that simple.

There were some disagreements about the amount of control they had over her life — who she could hang out with, what she could watch. Or it could be more. There was obviously something that caused her to leave.

She was getting older, she was nine. Maybe she wanted attention in the home. Maybe they found out she was watching “Soul Train” at a sleepover and got upset because she was not allowed to watch that at home.

For me, it was “The Simpsons.” My mom did not want me to watch “The Simpsons,” but every time I went over to my friend’s house, that is exactly what I watched. So you are right.

I never considered that. You see a happy family, especially like Asha and O’Bryant — they were such cuties, so close. I have a son and a daughter, and they hate each other.

They want to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 each other every single day. So to see that sweet relationship, you kind of do not pry further because they are devastated. But they did not have to be abusive or horrible to her for her, as a nine-year-old girl getting older, to want more freedom and maybe exercise that and be upset.

Maybe she wanted a computer at home. This is the year 2000.

I would even go as far as saying that if I were a fly on the wall, there was a conversation between law enforcement and the family. There might have even been a discussion where they said, “Yeah, a day ago, she wanted to watch a show or go on the computer for something, we said no, and she was upset.” It could be something as simple as that triggered it.

She thought, “I’m leaving. I don’t want to be here anymore.” Kids overreact.

But she did not leave a note. When I pretended to run away at nine, I would leave a note: “I’m leaving. You’re so mean.

You’re the worst mother. You’re never going to see me again. This is what you get.”

Because you really want to drive that home. You do not really want to run away; you just want your parents to know you are hurt. So it was nothing like that.

It is just strange.

It is definitely one that makes you stay up at night, even though we are not directly connected to it, because you want closure for the family. You want some type of resolution. I want to know where she is and what happened.

I am sure the family does too. Come back and join us next week. We will dive more into the evidence.

There is a lot more to come. We will see you then. Thank you so much for being here.

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Until next week, guys. Thank you so much for being here. Bye.

Later.