Hi, I am the one who compiled the AshDeg file and found a copy of the picture of the little girl that was posted earlier in the thread. I did a two-part write-up over on reddit a few months ago that goes over all of the new information. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to link to Reddit, so I’m reposting the write-up here in full.
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Who is Asha?
Asha Jaquilla Degree was born on August 5, 1990. She was the only daughter of Harold and Iquilla Degree and had a brother, O’Bryant, who was one year older than her. They lived in a rented two-bedroom duplex at 3404 Oakcrest Drive, located in a quiet residential neighborhood about five miles north of Shelby, North Carolina.
Asha is described as a happy, shy, and athletic little girl who took after her father’s quiet personality and was extremely close with her older brother. In February 2000, she was a fourth-grader at Fallston Elementary School who loved math and science and was often named Student of the Week. She was the star point guard for her school’s Little Bulldogs girls’ basketball team and also played with O’Bryant on the same softball team. When she grew up, she wanted to become an author and illustrator and study science at Winston-Salem University.
Harold worked the second shift as a dock loader at PPG Industries in Shelby, while Iquilla worked at a Kawai Piano factory in nearby Lincolntown. On school days, Iquilla would wake Asha and O’Bryant up at 6:30AM before leaving for work, and the two were expected to get dressed, eat breakfast, and catch the school bus to Fallston Elementary on their own. They were latchkey kids and were allowed to play outside so long as they finished their homework. Bedtime was 9:00PM on weekdays and 10:00PM on weekends.
Friday, February 11
There was no school on Friday. Asha and O’Bryant spent the day at their aunt Kisha’s house down the street before attending basketball practice later that afternoon.
Saturday, February 12
Asha and O’Bryant both played separate basketball games at Burns Middle School. It would be her team’s first loss of the season, with Asha fouling out with only three minutes left in the match. Realizing they has lost, she began to copy her teammates as they cried and limped around the stadium, pretending to be injured. Iquilla quickly put a stop to this, telling a sobbing Asha that she wasn’t really hurt and that somebody had to lose the game. Asha was very upset at first, but cheered up while watching her brother play, and admitted to her mom that she wasn’t really hurt before going off to play with the other kids.
That night, Asha attended a slumber party at her 15-year-old cousin Catina’s house, where they stayed up late watching Soul Train and Showtime at the Apollo.
Sunday, February 13
Harold, Iquilla, and O’Bryant picked Asha up early in the morning to go to church. Afterwards, they went to cousin Shalonda Brown’s home, where Asha’s grandma gifted her a bottle of cologne and some Valentine’s Day candies.
Back at home, Asha, who hadn’t gotten much sleep at the slumber party, dozed off at about 6:30PM. Two hours later, she was awakened by a thunderstorm that just rolled into the area and went to the living room to watch TV with her parents and brother.
Just before 9:00PM, a motorist crashed into a utility pole in Lawndale, knocking out power to swaths of northern Cleveland County. Iquilla, who was preparing a shower for the kids when the lights went out, decided to leave it for the morning and sent both of them to bed.
At 11:30PM, Harold stepped out for a last-minute trip to buy some Valentine’s Day candy. Tomorrow would be his and Iquilla’s 12th wedding anniversary, and the two planned to spend the day alone at home. He returned shortly after and fell asleep on the couch.
Monday, February 14
When the power returned at 12:30AM, Iquilla awoke Harold and asked him to move their kerosene lamp before going back to bed. Now wide awake, Harold settled on the couch to watch TV for the next two hours. At 2:30AM, he checked on Asha and O’Bryant, found them sleeping peacefully in their beds, and went to join Iquilla in their bedroom.
Sometime during the night, O’Bryant stirred and heard Asha moving around in her bed. He thought she was tossing and turning in her sleep, then heard her get up and apparently go to the bathroom. (Reports differ on whether he ever heard her return.)1
That night, unbeknownst to her family, Asha would grab her backpack, slip out of the house, and start walking south on Highway 18. They would never see her again.
Iquilla woke up at 5:45AM to start the shower, and later walked into the kids’ room to find O’Bryant asleep and Asha’s bed unmade and empty. Thinking she just got up early, Iquilla went downstairs to the kitchen expecting to see her there, but couldn’t find her. Now concerned, she began searching the house and realized that Asha’s book bag and house key were gone.
Harold suggested that she went to her grandma’s house across the street, but when Iquilla called, she said she hadn’t seen her either. Iquilla threw the phone to Harold and started running up and down the street, screaming Asha’s name.
Harold called the police at 6:39AM. By 6:45, Sheriff Dan Crawford and officers from the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office had converged on the Degree home and were scouring the neighborhood. Over the next few hours, dozens of volunteers, search and rescue personnel, bloodhounds, and investigators from the Sheriff’s Office and State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) poured in to comb the surrounding area.
The SBI taped off the Degree home at 2:00PM. They found no signs of forced entry at the scene and were unable to tell if she had left through the front or back door, both of which could be opened from the inside without a key. There was no evidence of foul play inside the home.
Asha is believed to have been wearing a white shirt2, white jeans, and white Nike tennis shoes. She did not bring a coat or hat with her, but an inventory of her belongings found that she had taken the following items:
- A black Tweety Bird pocketbook
- Candies she received at her basketball game on Saturday night
- Her house key
- Clothing: a red vest with black trim, blue jeans with a red stripe on each side, a white nylon long-sleeved shirt, a black and white long-sleeved shirt, and black overalls with Tweety Bird on it
- Possible: The white nightgown she wore to bed that night3
- Possible: Her basketball uniform
That afternoon, Jeff R., a 25-year-old trucker for Sun Drop Bottling Co., was eating lunch when he saw Asha’s face on the TV. He instantly recognized her as the child he had seen walking in the rain along Highway 18 at 3:30 that morning, about a mile south of Asha’s home.
“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. 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.”
Realizing it was a child, Jeff stopped and turned his 10-wheeler around. In total, he circled around three times before the girl ran into the woods and out of sight.
At 4:15AM, Roy B., a former deputy at the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office, was trucking northbound on Highway 18 with his son when they saw a small person walking down the road.
“It was a small figure wearing light-colored clothing. I thought it was a woman. I couldn’t tell it was a child. I thought that maybe it was a domestic violence thing where a woman left the house and was out walking.”
Roy placed the sighting 1.3 miles south of Asha’s home, just before the intersection of Highways 18 and 180. Concerned that she would get run over, they sent a message over the CB radio for other truckers to be on the lookout, but they didn’t stop for her. Instead, they made a stop in Fallston before driving up to Chicago, where he learned about Asha’s disappearance during a phone call with his wife. The next day, the men returned to Shelby and went straight to the command post at Mull’s Memorial Baptist Church to report the sighting in person.4
The SBI and FBI have always believed these sightings to be legitimate. Armed with this new information, they began combing a five-mile radius around the intersection of Highways 18 and 180. An air search by Highway Patrol and the SBI turned up empty. There were no signs of a struggle or hit-and-run. Driver checkpoints set up on February 15 and 21 failed to turn up any leads. Bloodhounds began to scour the area within 1 ½ hours of Harold’s 911 call but never caught her scent, likely due to the inclement weather.
That night, Iquilla and Harold were interviewed by the SBI and quickly ruled out as suspects. Detectives say that the Degrees have always been cooperative with the investigation and have “bent over backwards” to help find their daughter. They allowed authorities to search their home and insisted on a polygraph, which they passed. As Sheriff Crawford put it, “There was no — and is no — evidence whatsoever to indicate this mother or father or child are responsible for this child’s disappearance.”
On February 15, some volunteers approached Rallie and Debbie Turner, who lived almost exactly one mile south of the Degree home, and asked them to check their property for any sign of Asha. They owned an old, doorless outbuilding that stood about 300 feet from the road, which they used to store furniture and supplies for their upholstery business. When they checked the shed, they found an odd assortment of items: a green marker, a 1996 Atlanta Olympics pencil, a yellow hair bow, some cellophane candy wrappers, and a wallet-sized photo of a little girl.
https://i.imgur.com/lIFToZy.jpg
On February 16, after being questioned and polygraphed by the FBI, Jeff went back to the scene with investigators and pointed out a spot 600 feet from the Turners’ field. Rallie and Debbie handed over the photograph but kept the other items neatly piled on their porch, assuming that they lived too far away for them to belong to Asha.
Reverend Mackie Turner, a neighbor who kept his six beagles in a dog lot behind the shed, said that his dogs normally barked if anyone approached but that he didn’t hear anything that night. Another neighbor reported nothing suspicious, either.
On February 17, volunteers asked the Turners about some candy wrappers found on the road near their home. At that point, they turned the other items over to police. No one in Asha’s family or at school knew the girl in the photo, but they quickly identified the other items as hers. Her friends stated that the candies came from a treat bag they received at the basketball game on Saturday night.
Investigators would find no further evidence after this. On February 20, after three days of unsuccessful searching, they suspended the official search.
Part 2 will discuss the investigation after February 20, and explore some possible reasons why Asha would want to run away.
