MS MS - Leigh Occhi, 13, Tupelo, 27 Aug 1992

Oh that's horrible about the glasses! Very creepy! You would think there would have been some sort of fingerprints somewhere. Lord knows mine are always smudged, no matter how much I clean them.

I can't believe it's been this long. So sad.
 
Poor girl... I am SURE LE would have tested those glasses for prints... It's a shame nothing was found...
I pray that her family has some answers soon.
 
I can't help but wonder what happened to this young girl. August 27th was a Thursday and likely a school day, as Mississippi schools start early to mid August. How might I find out if it was a regular school day?

This case wreaks. I've searched for more info on the case, but haven't come up with info other than what's here in this thread. It seems that I read somewhere quite a while back that this child was allowed to stay home from school because she wasn't feeling well; but I won't swear to it. I can't find where I read that.

The perp was probably not a stranger, and perhaps had been stalking Leigh as they would have had to wait for the opportunity to commit the crime. A day home from school (assuming it was a regular school day)...if Leigh didn't make it a habit to miss, why would she miss this day? Did she have a cold? A stomach bug? Was she not enjoying the new school year? Did she have a hard time with the other kids at school?

This was in the days before internet solicitation, so did Leigh know someone from the community that had targeted her? Was there a neighbor? An older kid from the neighborhood? Someone known to the family? A family member?

There was blood present at the scene. What really happened? She lived with her mother and step-father. The story only includes her mother's account of what happened. Where is the rest of the story? Her father got leave from the army and moved his family from Washington to Tupelo to help find his little girl. Where is her family now and do they still hold out hope of bringing Leigh home?

Booneville is not far at all from Tupelo. That's where her eyeglasses were mailed from. The street of her residence at that time was in town, on a dead end street, but accessible from several main thoroughfares.

Where is Leigh?
 
Yes the glasses being sent like that was very eerie indeed. It made me feel as if the person who sent them did so as if to imply that Leigh wouldnt be needing them again to her family.

Maybe Leigh arranged for someone to come over that day and thats why she wanted the day home from school but then things turned nasty? I wonder if there were any 'admirers' on the scene.
 
This reminds me of the Evelyn Harley case: http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/h/hartley_evelyn.html I am not saying the same person did both crimes -- that's highly unlikely, they were in different parts of the country and separated by decades -- but I think it might have been the same type of person. The missing undergarments strongly suggest some kind of sex crime. I wonder if there were reports of similar crimes in the area around that time. It seems like such a violent abductor (and, presumably, killer) wouldn't stop at just one time.

She was a pretty girl. Looks a lot like I did at that age.
 
Last night I was reading John Douglas's book The Anatomy of Motive which is about criminal profiling, and I found a section at the end that may be relevant in the Occhi case, regarding her eyeglasses being mailed:

Douglas was talking about another case where a mother reported her toddler had been kidnapped from their apartment. After the child's disappearance, one of the mittens she'd been wearing when she disappeared was mailed to her home. When Douglas found that out he told the police to focus on the mother. It turned out Mom had strangled her daughter, hid the body and staged the kidnapping.

"The element that really gives it away is the mitten sent through the mail. If you stop to think it through, it doesn't make any sense... [Ransom kidnappers] will have to communicate with the parents to establish demands and make arrangements for payment. [Other types of abductors] will want nothing whatever to do with the parents; only in the rarest of instances--when you have a truly insane or sadistic individual--would you see any attempt at communication. But that would be a real long shot, extremely unusual."

I deeply admire John Douglas and trust his judgment and his remarks here make me wonder now whether Leigh's abduction might been staged as well. But if so, by whom? Or perhaps her abductor was one of those "truly insane or sadistic individuals" he was referring to. Certainly it seems like a violent, vicious kidnapping.
 
I'm curious about the step father... I wish there was more about him...
 
Last night I was reading John Douglas's book The Anatomy of Motive which is about criminal profiling, and I found a section at the end that may be relevant in the Occhi case, regarding her eyeglasses being mailed:

Douglas was talking about another case where a mother reported her toddler had been kidnapped from their apartment. After the child's disappearance, one of the mittens she'd been wearing when she disappeared was mailed to her home. When Douglas found that out he told the police to focus on the mother. It turned out Mom had strangled her daughter, hid the body and staged the kidnapping.

"The element that really gives it away is the mitten sent through the mail. If you stop to think it through, it doesn't make any sense... [Ransom kidnappers] will have to communicate with the parents to establish demands and make arrangements for payment. [Other types of abductors] will want nothing whatever to do with the parents; only in the rarest of instances--when you have a truly insane or sadistic individual--would you see any attempt at communication. But that would be a real long shot, extremely unusual."

I deeply admire John Douglas and trust his judgment and his remarks here make me wonder now whether Leigh's abduction might been staged as well. But if so, by whom? Or perhaps her abductor was one of those "truly insane or sadistic individuals" he was referring to. Certainly it seems like a violent, vicious kidnapping.

I was thinking the same thing. Mailing an object in the mail from such a nearby location suggests to me that someone was trying to make it look like someone else did it. I suspect that with the lack of information out there regarding this crime, the police know who did it, but lack the evidence to convict. fwiw.
 
Very interesting stuff, thanks. I suppose the step father has been checked?
 
I know absolutely nothing about the stepfather, and whether he's been cleared or not. If Leigh's kidnapping was staged, though, he's the first guy I'd look at. Since the bio-father was all the way across the country, it probably wasn't him.

Yahoo Maps says Tupelo and Booneville are 31.93 miles apart.
 
You might mean Rachel Mellon: http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/mellon_rachel.html

Monique Santiago also stayed home from school, but that was cause she missed the bus:
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/s/santiago_monique.html

Hi Meggilyweggily. Thanks! I was thinking I had read an article specifically about Leigh Occhi, but I can't find it now. It was quite a while back. The daily journal archive search is useless now, but I think it was there that I read it.

I really wish there was more information on this case. Does anyone have any clue how to search old newspaper articles when the paper website doesn't work? Thanks in advance.
 
I really wish there was more information on this case. Does anyone have any clue how to search old newspaper articles when the paper website doesn't work? Thanks in advance.

There are several websites that archive old newspaper articles, but you have to pay for them. One of the best is Newslibrary, www.newslibrary.com. You can get 50 articles for $19.95 or single articles for $3.50 each. You get to search keywords for free, and read the first 100 or so words of each article for free. Other similar sites include Newspaperarchive.com (a flat monthly fee of like $17 for unlimited searches, this includes many very old papers) and highbeam.com.

I bought several Newslibrary articles about the Occhi case. I can't remember any that said she was home sick, but it's been awhile.
 
http://montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071104/NEWS02/711040321/1009
That letdown came in March. Now, Berry is waiting for DNA from the mother of a missing Tupelo, Miss., girl named Leigh Marine Occhi.
The 13-year-old girl has been missing since 1992, when she was possibly abducted from her home in her nightshirt and green-and-yellow boxer shorts.

More information at the link above.

Read the aricle first then check out this link, read the second message in the forum this is scary,
http://www.tupelovoice.com/joomla/i...reboard&Itemid=26&func=view&catid=25&id=11293

I do not know how long the first link has been up and the message was posted on the forum just two weeks ago so the person posting could have read the same article I found, but its still wierd.
 
Thank you Meggilyweggily and C2cd208 for the info!

C2cd208, that article looks to be dated February 22. With the proximity of the discovery to the town of Tupelo, one would think that the connection to Occhi would have been one of the first to be excluded. It's a crying shame it's taken this long. :mad: Huntsville is less than 150 miles from Tupelo as the crow flies. This makes me angry. It's been over 10 years since the bones were found! Why on earth wouldn't they investigate the closest missing persons first??????????????!!!!!!!!!
 
P. S. I saw that comment at that particular forum the other day and chalked it up to a silly teenager or a kook. jmo
 
Actually, I think that the article is from Oct. or Nov. of last year. Am searching the links at newslibrary now.
 

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