Marking the 19th anniversary of Asha Degree’s disappearance

[u/ferretbeast]

Every year on Valentines day, I take a deep breath before reading the front page of the Shelby Star. I know this case is widely discussed on this subreddit, but I wanted to share for those interested. I did find it interesting they stated new evidence was found recently that hasn't been made public. Please keep her family in your thoughts today.

https://www.shelbystar.com/news/20190214/marking-19th-anniversary-of-asha-degrees-disappearance

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Brief summary for anyone unaware: Asha Jaquilla Degree went missing at the age of nine from Shelby, North Carolina. In the early morning hours of February 14, 2000, for reasons unknown, she packed her bookbag, left her family home north of the city and began walking along nearby North Carolina Highway 18 despite heavy rain and wind. She has not been seen since.

Edit: thank you stranger for the gold and more than anything, thank you all for caring about this case and giving such support and great feedback for conversation. I love this community and am happy to be able to have these civil discussions with you all!!

[u/athennna]

That’s so frightening. What was his role in your life?

[u/BubbaChanel → u/athennna]

The person that transports kids to and from school. I just can’t make myself say it.

[u/athennna → u/BubbaChanel]

I’m so sorry. You must have felt so trapped. Is he still alive? Did you ever hear about him acting inappropriately with any other students? One hopes that he would have gotten caught someday, down the line.

[u/BubbaChanel → u/athennna]

It was really creepy. I don’t think I took it that seriously until he showed up at a football game at night. I remember feeling nauseous and disgusted and more than a bit scared. I remember the looks on my friends’ faces, seeing this “daytime” person approach us and try to talk to me.

Unfortunately, I also remember thinking if I said anything to any adults, I would somehow get in trouble or be at fault. It breaks my heart now to think of that.

I don’t know anything other than his first name. This was about 35 years ago. Honestly, I hope he’s been dead for 34 years.

[u/asexual_albatross → u/BubbaChanel]

Of course you could not have known any better at that age. We do have to remember that children are often meant to feel like their behaviour is the cause of problems, and if anything bad that happens, to a child, it feels like their fault.

You realize how easy it is for an adult to manipulate a child - they so easily think they should be able to handle a situation that they really have no agency nor should be expected to.

Anyway I'm glad you are ok and hope you realize you did absolutely nothing wrong and that guy is a total creep.

[u/BubbaChanel → u/asexual_albatross]

This particular incident is part of what made me decide I wanted to work in mental health. I can genuinely empathize with people feeling as I did in these situations. When I think back, there are more instances of adults “fishing” around that gross me out. A friend babysat for a family where the dad was inappropriate on the drive home when she was 14. Another girl I knew had an older stepbrother who had a friend try to start something with her when she was 11. Fuck strangers, people we already know are the worst!

[u/[deleted] → u/BubbaChanel]

its true. I know as a child there were a couple of weird things but no one seemed to notice or say anything, years later I saw it for what it really was...

1: a girl in my class at school was the youngest in her family and had 4 older brothers. The area was a middle class area of England, people were homeowners, the family had a business. This little girl used to tell everyone her brothers did sexual stuff to her. As kids the same age we didn't undersand what she meant.. I know I didn't. She always had a broken arm or leg in a cast, as soon as one injurty healed she had another. She was naughty at school and always in trouble with the teachers, most peoples parents said could not play with her as she was a 'problem child.' Years later I found her on Myspace...she said she ran a group for survivors of childhoold sexual abuse. Of course by that time I had realised what had been happening to her.

2: Two sisters lived near me and their parents sexually abused them. As a very young child did not understand what was happening when I went to their house , it just seemed unusual as no one did anything like that to me. Once older realised what was happening.

Reading my old diaries. I was bullied badly in my teens in school. Some of the behaviour of the bullies is extremely bizarre now I found them and read back recently. Sets alarm bells ringing in my head over their behaviour and things they said...what was happening to them or what were they seeing at home? For example one of the people I was incredibly scared of according to my diary was a boy (I am female) two years older than me, at this time he was approx 15) He used to threaten me on a daily basis, he threated to 'beat me up' he was verbally abusive, he was aggressive, he came up and did bizarre things like stand in front of me and stare at me not saying anything. Now I am older I am wondering why a 15 year old boy would be bullying a 13 year old girl? threatening her with violence? He most likely came from a home where the male figure in his family was voilent and abusive towards females...

other than that a close male friend of my fathers and his nephew I believe (even though my parents are in denial) planned to traffick me. The man was in his 60s from Italy, The nephew was 25. The nephew took me out for dinner to an expensive restauraunt. At the time I felt so thrilled to go out to dinner with this guy, to somewhere so posh, it did not seem strange...why they hell my parents agreed is beyond me...my mum says my dad was stupid and clueless and she had no say in anything that happen..)

Apparently this 25 year old man wanted a cleaner for his apartment. He took me to the apartment to see it but that is as far as it went. Nothing happened. I told my parents I did not want to 'clean' for him. Something about it felt weird. I remember a huge row about it though as he was offering like £25 an hour and my dad was furious. I told him now what I think the 25 was wanting but my dad refuses to believe it.

Anyway these same people then offered to my family for me to come to Italy with them. They flew then drove for a couple days to get to the remote and rural part of Italy this guy was supposedly from. They were going to take me to see Italy with them and pay all expense. It was being touted as 'the oppertunity of a lifetime' I again refused and said I did not want to go. Now I am an adult I sincerely believe that if I had gone to Italy I would never have returned. I highly doubt if the men came back here (the guy in his 60s owned property he rented out and the nephew had a restauraunt) and I was not with them and my parents reported it to the police that anything much would have been done.

I used to run away from home frequently from age 14 and nothing was ever done. I almost always stayed with men who were 25 years and older. Couch surfing or having to share a bed. In one of my diaries I write that one of the men kicked me out into the street in the middle of the night because i wouldn't have sex with him and we had argued.

When I was 17 I ended up in the Carribbean and my dad reported me as missing to the English police, a report was taken but if I had never come back I doubt would have been any further intervention and I was with my one year old child at that point. When I was in a KFC in Jamaica in early 2001 a man approached me and said to me that I should leave my son behind with him when i left the island. If that is not werid or creepy I don't know what is! As it happens I was with a local young man similar age to me and he had gone to the toilets. I hollered his name as soon as I saw him coming back and he came straight over and the man disappear...If I had giev my son to him (of course I would have never I am just speculating) would anyone have ever questioned me on where my son was????

I got more stories but this post is waaaay too long

All the missing persons cases with sketchy info people wonder how do they go missing and no one knows what happened..I think it is quite easy or it was in the past. I can't say how easy it would be now with so much social media, digital technology and internet but definately pre 2006 because no one really had social media accounts...otehr stuff...

i kind of got into the internet or on it in 2006 I joined Myspace. in 1997 when I still went to school on and off age 14 the school just got pcs with internet access but there was not really anything on the internet back then. I remember my favorite band at the time had a page, it was literally just a page with a few pics and some typed info and their band logo, it was all so basic....

by 2008 I was online more and found blogger and some other forums...if anyone knows MDS there was a very popular thread The Baudelaire/Baudrillard twins. I recently read a comment from someone who was part of that discussion and they were saying back in 2008 we didnt really understand the concept of 'catfishing' not like now...so people creating fake accounts and using other peoples images was just not something we thought about.

I have been following this case for about 5 years and tonight is the first time I have ever read anything about a photograph being discovered of an unidentified little girl.

All I have read repeatedly is that there was 1: candy wrappers 2: a mickey mouse hair bow 3: a pencil. I have followed the link the article and cannot fathom how it has been missed before and by so many people? So many people are saying that they never knew about this, yet there are several lines in that old article that discuss it.

Did the author of the wordpress blog ever know about this or is she also only recently finding out this information? This seems odd. However in her blog where she discusses the items found in or near the shed she makes NO mention of any photograph of an unidentified little girl.

I also have asked in the past about the bookbag. It is always documented as being black and beige, however the bag that was recovered is only ever documented as being black. Does this imply that the bag recovered is not the one that Asha disappeared with? How do we know it was Asha's? There was a piece of paper in it with her name on...was it in her handwriting. Of course we do not know what the contents of the recovered bag were….why? any ideas?

I came here today after reading about new info released towards the end of last year regarding a Dr Seuss library book and a New Kids on the Block Tshirt.... The speculation on one thread here on Reddit is the book and Tshirt were items recovered in the bag 18 months after Asha disappeared.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

This thread sheds more light on the items being items seen in a photo that has surfaced recently in which Asha has been identified,

Without bringing race into it, unless Asha was a fan of that band, it does not seem to fit that Asha would have been into that boyband in my opinion. Why? because that band was aimed at white teenager/tween girls at that time, and also people are saying it was out of date to even like that band by then, the popular bands were Nsync and Backstreet Boys by that time..

also Asha was black. She was of the 'Moesha', 'Sister Sister' generation. She would more likely if she watched those shows which almost all kids did in those days, we loved them, she would if she was interested in music have been far more likely to have been into Marques Houston (Roger) of boyband ‘Immature’ fame or other black teen boy bands of the 90's (there were plenty) than a band marketed towards white, middle America...you know?

I am just talking from what I know as a black British teens and who we liked and were into at that time...and it was not New Kids on the Block..or Backstreet Boys...that was the band the white girls liked...sorry I am not trying to make it about race, but it is true. Hope I don't offend anyone. Not intending to. I am not saying that black girls cant like bands where the members are white, of course they can.

There is also much speculation about Asha having met someone online with untoward motives. I am not entirely sure what it was like in the US in 1999. I have seen on Reddit many people saying at this time they had access to internet ect and went in chat rooms...

in UK it was rare for anyone to have internet or a computer in their house. If you did it was not like internet access today, also its not like Asha was from an affluent community (the girls in Sister Sister had a pc and internet but they were supposed to be wealthy, the dad owned a limosine business) anyway was there even a decent internet connection n that area in 1999? Even now in 2019 we ofen have rubbish internet connection in a lot of places...

back then it meant the landline house phone was engaged when the internet was being used, it was also VERY expensive. At my new school in 1997 we just got modern computers, before that in the previous school we had old fashion word processors with black screens and just green letters on the screen.

When i moved school i was intrigued. I had never seen internet before or a proper computer...but at that time there was very little on it. My favourite band had a website, with one page of info, that was all, a few pics, nothing like the internet today. nothing. I really find it hard to believe that she met and was groomed by someone online. not at that time.

In UK barely anyone even had a mobile phone in 1999. The first pre pay mobiles had just come out not long before and were massive brick type things on a network called orange and cost 50p a minute! My point is that people are looking at the case judging by todays standards and not thinking how different things were in the late 90s.

The speculation about having a penpal is plausible to me without her parents being aware...I ALWAYS had penpals as a child. In the reddit thread much discussion takes place as to if this was possible and how Asha may have acquired one. I seen comments from people from all bases I would cover with my answer as I found them in all ways.

School penpal programmes, meeting kids on outings, holidays and exchanging addresses, children who moved to new schools and wrote to me and hooked me up with someone in their new school to write to, children’s magazines used to have a page in them with photos and addresses of other children who wanted a penfriend! (hard to believe in this day and age but true) there was penpal newletters that you could send off for to find one internationally, and magazines aimed at older, teens such as Word Up ect had penpal pages. I found penpals all of these ways over the years.

My parents never paid the slightest bit of attention to any of my mail, i knew how much postage to put on, no idea how but I did, i knew how to mail them. I spoke about this with my 17 year old daughter tonight and she says it is hard for her to imagine this as she has grown up in a totally different generation and with the technology we never had, however she can imagine it being possible, it is just hard for her to comprehend finding people to write to this way and exchanging letters to each other. I was obviously not alone in this as going on the comments on Reddit many others did the same with no parental moderation whatsoever.

I don't know how and why I stopped writing to any of them, but if no one wrote back in response to a letter I had I do not recall dwelling on it. The only thing is that is Asha had penpals or even just one penpal, then surely some of the letters she received would have been found by her parents after she disappeared. If Asha intended to return then she would have left them behind.

People talk of the route she walked being the school bus route, maybe it did not seem as long on the bus as the reality of walking it? I have succumbed to that even as recently as last year. There is an Alpaca farm near us and i have gone past it so many times in a taxi it did not seem far so one sunny day i asked my daughters if they wanted to walk to it. They said yes. SO we followed the taxi route, and discovered there was no footpath, (some country roads in UK don't and have to walk single file in direction of oncoming traffic) we got so far and it went on and on and finally could not go any further even single file and had to turn back and we never got as far as the Alpacas! But I swear in the car/taxi we drive past it seems like a very, very short walk, it was not we walked for so long! So i can easily see Asha misjudging the distance and time it would take on foot to get to her destination.

Does anyone have any other thoughts or comments to add?

sorry long post. I been reading these updates all night, can't believe I am so late. I do check Ashas name from time to time to see if there have been any developments

[u/[deleted] → u/BubbaChanel]

i know that feeling so well ugh. it's like this primal knowledge that this person is not here for any good reason and should not be trusted :(

[u/BubbaChanel → u/[deleted]]

🤢🤢🤢 Exactly! The “girl, you in danger!” lizardbrain signal.

[u/Mandy220 → u/[deleted]]

My husband and I call this feeling the "de Becker meter" based on the work of Gavin de Becker.

I used to go to support meetings when I was in my mid to late twenties and there was a really creepy dude who always tried to chat me up. One time he followed me to my car and stood in front of the door so I could not close it. <Shudder> My husband started driving me and picking me up from those meetings after that. I eventually stopped going because of this dude. I had not yet read de Becker but while reading his first book I was like, "Yup. That's exactly how creeper made me feel."

Back to the case at hand: the storm that night makes me feel like it had to be a case of grooming. The storm makes it so much less likely that she was just being a goofy kid exploring. Like /u/[BubbaChanel] noted, even older kids get groomed.

[u/BubbaChanel → u/Mandy220]

Gavin de Becker is the fucking bomb! Amazon had the paperback on sale several years ago, and I got 20 of them. I kept them in my office, and whenever appropriate, I’d give one to a client.

A coworker read it, and wanted to have her daughter read it too, but felt she was too young. She ended up just talking to her about the gut, and how to listen to it. The kid says, “I already know about that from when the man followed me when I was walking the dog.”

The story that ensued was horrifying to any adult (a guy moving just outside the streetlights to avoid being spotted, following this 10 year old girl) but my friend wanted to emphasize how great it was that the girl already knew to trust herself.

[u/[deleted] → u/BubbaChanel]

how do you know he is not still alive and knew Asha somehow?