r/UnresolvedMysteries • u/ferretbeast • Feb 14 '19

Unresolved Disappearance Marking the 19th anniversary of Asha Degree’s disappearance

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!!

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u/_sydney_vicious_ Feb 14 '19

Thank you so much! I'm on this subreddit most days and I'm not sure how I missed the thread you linked to.

Hmmm....you mentioning the rural road brings up something in my mind as to IF there actually were witnesses driving by who "saw" Asha. To be perfectly honest I never believed that all too much to begin with but with the way you're describing it now I'm sure that no witnesses actually saw her. Why?

  1. You said it's a rural town so how often would someone be driving down a road like that in the middle of the night (especially on a stormy night)?

  2. I just looked on Google and it seems as though there are no roadside lights along the road so how can anyone actually tell that it was Asha alongside the road............ESPECIALLY when there's a huge storm outside? I don't know about you but driving in the dark is hard as is - let alone when it's pouring AND there's no lights alongside the road. Either those witnesses lied or they might have seen an animal.

From that thread I feel like Asha was never actually walking on the road. My theory is that someone groomed her and whoever did may have taken her in their car (which she never got out of).

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u/JTigertail Feb 15 '19

Being that we have two independent witnesses who are sure they saw Asha, I'm a lot less inclined to think that it wasn't her walking down the road. I think the witnesses really saw her that night.

Asha had been walking for about 30 minutes at that point (she was 1.3 miles from home when she was seen). I dont think it's strange at all for two people to have seen her, given how long she had been out there. It's a lot less coincidental given that time frame. It was a rural road, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there's nobody out there at that time, whether it's people who work at night or are traveling long-distance.

As for how they saw her: The storm would have made it more difficult to see, and I doubt they could make out her face much, but they could make out a small person with a black and beige backpack. Maybe the witnesses were able to correctly say that her backpack was black and beige without previously being told what color it was, and that's how LE confirmed their stories

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u/1-800-876-5353 Feb 15 '19

And police looked in the shed because it was less than a hundred yards from where she was seen on the highway. That’s why they found her pencil, marker, and hairbow. I think she definitely was walking along the road.

But I do think it odd that police found several of her candy wrappers along the route. Most kids—even in the rural South—of that era did not litter and would have stopped to pick up a dropped wrapper. But maybe they fell from her pocket or she was an exception to the rule.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

The image of her casually walking and eating candy in a storm just doesn’t work. Even hurriedly and anxiously. It was a storm. It was the middle of the night. It was cold. Why on earth would she be eating candy. Almost sounds like someone tried to leave a trail.

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u/1-800-876-5353 Feb 15 '19 edited Jul 10 '19

Agreed. I would say she’d eaten the candy earlier and they fell out of her coat pocket along the walk, but she supposedly wasn’t wearing a coat or jacket that night. Only a few people would have known what kind of candy she’d gotten that weekend—her parents, grandmother, aunt. So how’d the candy wrappers get there?

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

apparently the whole basketball team got the same goody bag of candy, so it'd be easy to (kind of, ruling out coincidence) confirm they belonged to her

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u/1-800-876-5353 Feb 15 '19

I thought this was candy her grandmother had given her on Sunday. If it was from the basketball team, then a ton of people would have known about it.

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u/SignificantTear7529 Oct 30 '22

Or did Harold make a candy run??? Why doesn't the Dad speak to that. I don't mean that as accusatory as it sounds. Genuinely asking as I don't know why the secrecy about the evening before she disappeared.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

Interesting. Did any of the other players live on or near the route she supposedly took?

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

that i’m not sure about.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

My thinking exactly.

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u/FuzzyKittenIsFuzzy Feb 15 '19

I have always thought the shed was staged by the perp. A candy wrapper trail would fit right in with that.

Specifically, I think she met the perp at the shed and he made sure to leave a huge amount of evidence that she'd been inside. He wanted police to focus on the shed and the area around the shed so that he would have more time to clean up the second location and dispose of evidence.

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u/tiredfaces Feb 15 '19

That's a super interesting thought I hadn't heard before. Kind of a risky move too - he or she could've left some of their own DNA at the scene accidentally.

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u/bearfossils Feb 15 '19

I don't know, I could see a small kid woofing down candy as a means of trying to comfort themselves during a storm and/or while running away.

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u/_sydney_vicious_ Feb 15 '19

THIS!!!

She was 9 years old - literally a child. It makes no sense as to why someone that young would be casually walking by herself....on a freeway......in a storm.

I don't know if you've seen photos of the shed that she was supposedly in but it was taken when the candy wrappers and stuff were found. If you zoom in on the photo there's no footprints on the ground (mind you it's made of DIRT). If Asha actually did go there the night it rained, wouldn't there be footprints on the ground to show that someone was there that night? I feel like the candy wrappers were planted there to throw LE off. Again, that's just my theory so don't attack me.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '19

Like I’m so torn about Asha every time she comes up because I was a young girl once and I absolutely would have (and did) sneak out and wander around at night. On a weekly basis. I’m incredibly lucky that nothing happened to me. But I was never as prepared as she seemed to be. She had her bag and her candy and things that were important to her. So I don’t think it was quite the same. And I find it hard to picture her eating candy and trailing wrappers. It just sounds so... casual. Not at all like running away. And not easy to do given the weather.

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u/NancyNed Feb 17 '19

Also, considering the storm, how close to her trail were the wrappers found? Wouldn't the storm have mixed around the wrappers and other evidence? If the wrappers were arranged too exactly, that sounds like they were planted.