Your maps are very helpful in visualizing the area and helping outline Asha's steps on the morning she disappeared. If I'm looking at the maps correctly there seem to be a few homes on acerages along her suspected route. Were the homeowners ever interviewed by police? Any RSOs living in the area at the time? Did Asha know anybody in this area that she may have been going to meet? Is this an area where drug labs or illegal activites were common at the time?
I think the shed near the upholstry business is one key to this case, mainly because some of her belongings were found inside. If Asha entered upon her own free will, it was perhaps to take refuge from the rain and eat some of her candy. Maybe she left her home intending to run away, but quickly got scared or tired and just planned to have rest before heading home. Of course, Asha may not have gone inside the shed of her own choice. Perhaps she was lured there by a predator, or brought to that location by an abductor to be assaulted. How thoroughly was the shed and vicinity searched? Were cadaver dogs used? Who owned this shed? Would it have been locked? DNA evidence?
The location of Asha's other belongings (wrapped in plastic) is also a key clue.
Any maps of this area? I read it was about 26 miles from her home...much too far for Asha to have walked, suggesting that she and/or her things traveled in a vehicle. Was this area rural and undeveloped in 2000? Any businesses, truck stops or restaurants near by? How deep were her belongings buried? Could they have been tossed from a vehicle and covered by mother nature, or would they have been dug into the ground by human intervention? If Asha was abducted, this location being used to dump evidence could have significance for the abductor. Maybe it is an area he/she was familiar with, or close to their home or work. Any DNA, hairs or fibers lifted from the plastic bags?
So many questions...so few answers
I
hope the bolded text is not your way of asking me if I made a map of that area...
Unfortunately, I can't even make one. The best information I can find about the backpack is that it was discovered "six miles south of Morganton" along 18. That gives us a general vicinity, but doesn't narrow it down enough to make it plottable on a map. There's no mention in any of the articles I've read about whether man or nature caused the backpack to be buried - but, as it was unearthed during plans to lay a foundation to build a church(plans that fell through, it seems), I would expect it to have been intentionally buried. How deep beneath the soil it could have been would probably depend on whether or not the church was intended to have a full basement.
There is a lot of information in this case that is vague - repeated from article to article without any useful detail or explanation - and it is frustrating.
It seems most likely to me that, after picking up Asha, the perp drove with her in the direction opposite to that of the path she'd taken while walking(which means that they'd have passed right back by the neighborhood her house is in), and discarded her bag either then, or later on when he returned back along that route. This
strongly suggests to me that he was/is a trucker(as others have said), and that he regularly drove/drives back and forth along 18...at the very least, it's obvious he was traveling somewhere that night, and it's obvious which direction his destination was in.
That said, I read somewhere that it's possible that the backpack was discovered wrapped in plastic bags because the perp was just an average person(well, someone with an "average" vehicle not equipped for hauling/concealing items, I mean) who lived with a spouse/roommates/parents, and needed to hide the backpack's existence from them for a time(whether in the car or the house) before it could be disposed of. It
is pretty strange to wrap a potential piece of homicide evidence in a material that's almost certainly going to
preserve it for a very long time, yet bury it at the same time...
If the perp did indeed drive an average, everyday car/truck, it would make it a lot easier for him to drive up dirt paths and driveways(like Turner Upholstery's long and unpaved "driveway") in order to conceal himself and wait for Asha to come by(or come out of the woods) so he could abduct her...but, I'm still inclined to agree with the other posters who think the perp was a trucker. I mean, if she was abducted within the vicinity of the shed at Turner Upholstery, I'd think that a truck sitting along the property's driveway at night would probably be a typical sight and not make her suspicious of coming out of the woods or lingering in the area(but seeing Joe Schmo's car on the premises would probably creep her out, and rightfully so!).
The truck might have been there all along - all night - and it might have looked empty and "safe". I wonder if there's any record of overnight shipments coming in by truck on the night Asha disappeared. The shed itself is owned by Debbie Turner - probably the owner or owner's wife, and I think she's the one who found the hair bow and pen/pencil in the shed's doorway(I don't think Asha was ever actually inside the shed...just in the doorway). I don't want to think this is the case, but I'm wondering if the pen/pencil were dropped by Asha when she used them in an attempt to defend herself from the perp(they were the closest things to weapons that she had with her). The hair bow could have fallen off her head in the ensuing struggle. No signs of a struggle were mentioned(blood, hair, dirty footprints or dents on the shed, squashed grass, etc.), but
something has to explain her dropping those items in that place...I doubt she walked around the property and said to herself, "You know, I think I'll go drop some of my stuff in front of that shed over there for no reason."
The question about RSOs is a very good one...and I wish I knew of a way to check neighborhoods for the
history of which sex offenders may have lived in them...tons of websites are devoted to finding the sex offenders who
currently live in a given place, but I'm not seeing anything that searches for past years(though it's possible a certain RSO did something to get the cops called on him in early 2000, and someone wrote an article about it that stated his address). Does anyone know of a site or resource for us? There has to have been at least one RSO in the area at the time - they're like cockroaches. They're
everywhere.
The whole area looks pretty rural now(not sure about in 2000, but it doesn't strike me as a place that has changed much in a long time)...I'd actually think it was an extremely safe place to live in, and Asha may very well have even walked around at night
all the time with no prior issue. At the intersection of 18 and 180, there's a gas station...but, still, nobody's sure if she went as far as that, or even wanted to. I think Turner Upholstery is the
only place of business(except churches) between her house and the spot where her billboard stands. The billboard has a house on either side of it(my second map partially cuts off one of the houses, because I wasn't thinking about it when I made it). I don't know if police ever interviewed the owners/tenants of those houses, but I definitely hope they did. If Asha stood on that spot for the entire half-hour between the two witness sightings that both place her there, I'd think that someone living in one/both of those houses would have at least
heard something - especially if she really did run from there into the woods.
When I first made the maps, I looked up the sales history of one of those houses(the one that got cut off my map, which is on the corner between 18 and Ridgedale, and would have been there in 2000 as it was built in the early 1900s). It sold recently...2011? I think. I couldn't find its history before its last sale, though. If either of the houses were also sold - or renovated - soon after Asha disappeared(or if any tenants left around that time), I think that would imply suspicion/involvement.
I imagine there is a lot of information(on DNA/fibers collected, physical evidence kept, likely locations for the perp's home or workplace) that police have but don't want to release. That's just as frustrating as all the vague article content I'm finding is, but I guess they have their reasons for revealing/not revealing things.
It still seems strange to me, though, that they'd suspect Donald Ferguson based on such a shaky lead. I'm glad they're looking into every possibility, but it seems like an illogical leap to make - suspicion based solely on "maybe he was there at the time" or "he killed someone else, so he could have killed her". It is every bit as likely that the most innocent-seeming person imaginable was responsible, so I hope they don't overlook someone with stronger ties to Asha while focusing on him, simply because he seems like(and clearly is) such a bad person.
