Disappearance of Asha Degree

Harold and Iquilla Degree married on Valentine's Day in 1988. Their son, O'Bryant, was born a year later; Asha was born on August 5, 1990. The Degrees raised both children in their house on Oakcrest Drive in a residential subdivision amidst a generally rural area north of Shelby, North Carolina, on the western edge of the Charlotte metropolitan area. Both worked regular jobs nearby; Harold was a dock loader at Pittsburgh Plate Glass The children let themselves in after school, where their parents expected that they would either be doing their homework or finished with it by the time they returned. They made sure their children were insulated from outside influences and had a life centered around their extended family, church, and school. The Degrees did not have a computer in the house. time you turned on the TV there was some pedophile who had lured somebody's child away, via the Internet," Iquilla recalled in a 2013 Jet interview. Iquilla said Asha handled this well; she was cautious, shy, and content mostly to stay within the limits her parents set. "She was scared to death of dogs," she recalled years later. "I never thought she would go out of the house." Asha was in fourth grade at nearby Fallston Elementary School, going into a three-day weekend on the second week of February 2000. The Cleveland County Schools were closed on Friday, February 11, while the Degrees still had to work; the children spent the day at their aunt's house in the same neighborhood, from which they went to their youth basketball practices at their school. The following day, Asha's basketball team, on which she was a star point guard, lost its first game of the season. Asha had fouled out. Her parents recalled that she was somewhat upset about this, crying along with her teammates afterwards, but seemed to have gotten over it and watched her brother's game later that day. == Disappearance ==

On February 13, a Sunday, the children went to church from a relative's house and then returned home. Around 8 p.m. that night, both children went to bed in the room they shared. Almost an hour later, the power went out in the neighborhood after a nearby car accident. The power came back on at 12:30 a.m., at which time Harold checked on his children and saw both Asha and O'Bryant asleep in their beds. He checked again shortly before he went to bed at 2:30 a.m. on February 14 and again saw them both. They reported this to police after seeing a TV report about her disappearance. County sheriff Dan Crawford said, "We're pretty sure it was her because the descriptions they gave are consistent with what we know she was wearing." He added that they also saw her at the same place, heading the same direction. Iquilla awoke at 5:45 a.m. to get the children ready for school that morning. This involved drawing a bath for them because they had not been able to take one the night before due to the power outage. When she opened the children's room to wake them up before their 6:30 alarm and call them to the bath, O'Bryant was in his bed; Asha was not, and Iquilla was unable to find her in the house or in the family cars. She told Harold she could not find their daughter. He suggested Asha might have gone over to his mother's house across the street; when Iquilla called there, her sister-in-law said Asha was not there. "That's when I went into panic mode. I heard a car next door ... I put shoes on and ran outside." Iquilla called her mother, who told her to call the police. == Search ==

By 6:40 a.m., the first police officers had arrived on the scene. Police dogs called to the scene could not pick up Asha's scent. Local news coverage prompted the two drivers who had seen Asha walking along the road early that morning, including the one whose attempt to approach her apparently prompted Asha to flee into the woods, to report the sightings to police. Along with them were a pencil, a green marker, and a yellow hairbow that were identified by her parents as belonging to her. Also found was a wallet-size photograph of a girl the Degrees did not recognize; in 2001, the Charlotte Observer reported the photo depicted a friend of Asha's. These materials were the only trace of her found during the initial search. On February 16, Iquilla realized that Asha's bedroom was missing her favorite clothing, including a pair of blue jeans with a red stripe. flyers had been posted all over the area, and 300 leads had been submitted that ranged from possible sightings to tips about abandoned houses and wells where Asha might have ended up. "We have never really had that first good, substantial lead," said county sheriff Dan Crawford at a news conference. He urged the media to keep the story alive. == Later developments ==

At the news conference on February 22, 2000, Crawford said he was going "long-range" with the search for Asha. Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) got involved and put her on their respective databases of missing children. While the agencies were done searching in the area of her home and route, "we're following everything," Crawford insisted. An FBI agent also pointed to the lack of an issue she might have been running away from, such as a dysfunctional family or poor academic performance. Still, investigators believed that was the most likely explanation for her departure, but that for some reason, she either got off track or was abducted. In May 2001, stock car racing driver Travis Kittleson featured an image of Degree on the hood of his car for an event in Concord, North Carolina, which was broadcast live on TNN. Kittleson said, "We've got a perfect opportunity to put Asha's picture on our car and maybe, with any luck, we can help bring her home." In August 2001, Asha's bookbag and other items were discovered during a construction project off Highway 18 in Burke County, near Morganton, about north of Shelby. It was wrapped in two black trash bags. The worker who found it said the bookbag contained Asha's name and phone number. In February 2020, on the 20th anniversary of Asha's disappearance, the FBI confirmed that the bookbag contained a copy of Dr. Seuss's ''McElligot's Pool'' and a T-shirt depicting the band New Kids on the Block. Neither appeared to have been her property before they were found in her bag; the book was from the library at her elementary school. For many years afterward, leads turned out to be dead ends. In 2004, acting on a tip reportedly received from an inmate at the county jail, the sheriff's office began digging at an intersection in Lawndale. The bones that were found turned out to be from an animal. The Degrees took steps to keep Asha's memory, and the case, alive in the public's mind. In 2008, they established a scholarship in her name for a deserving local student. They host an annual walk to raise awareness and money to fund their search. The walk starts at their home and ends at a missing person's billboard for Asha along Highway 18, near where she was last seen. A community group is offering an additional $20,000 reward. The FBI announced 15 months later, in May 2016, that their reinvestigation of the case had turned up a possible new lead. They disclosed that Asha may have been seen getting into a dark green early 1970s Lincoln Continental Mark IV, or possibly a Ford Thunderbird from the same era, along Route 18 near where she was last seen later that night. It was described as having rust around its wheel wells. In September 2017, the FBI announced that its Child Abduction Rapid Deployment (CARD) team was in Cleveland County to assist in the investigation and "provide on-the-ground investigative, technical, behavioral analysis, and analytical support to find out more about what happened to Asha". The team worked alongside FBI Charlotte employees, CCSO investigators, and North Carolina SBI agents for ten days. The agencies also meet "several times a month to go over the latest on the investigation." Since September 2017, local agents and investigators have conducted approximately 300 interviews. In October 2018, the CCSO detectives appealed for information from the public about two items of interest that were found in Degree's bookbag: ''McElligot's Pool'', a children's book by Dr. Seuss, which was borrowed from the Fallston Elementary School library in early 2000, and a New Kids on the Block concert T-shirt. In November 2020, an inmate named Marcus Mellon, who had been convicted of sex crimes against children six years earlier, wrote a letter to The Shelby Star, claiming that Degree was murdered and he knew where to find her. Two months later, Cleveland County Sheriff Alan Norman announced that Mellon's claims had led to another dead end. In September 2024, a search warrant was executed by the CCSO and the FBI in relation to the case. A news release from the sheriff's office said the warrant was issued based on physical evidence. No human remains were recovered, but multiple items of interest, including a green 1964 AMC Rambler, were taken from the site. The search warrant indicates that authorities believe Degree was a homicide victim and that her body has been concealed. On February 13, 2025, the CCSO executed three search warrants, seizing cellphones from a local man and two of his children. Five days later, the warrants were made public and included text message exchanges between the suspects that were obtained from a search warrant the previous October. On April 4, a property "once owned by a prominent figure in the investigation" was searched by investigators. == See also ==