Disappearance of Leah Roberts

Leah Toby Roberts was born on July 23, 1976, in Durham, North Carolina. She has a sister, Kara, and a brother, Heath. When Leah was aged 17, her father was diagnosed with a chronic lung illness. Roberts began college at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in nearby Raleigh, majoring in Spanish and anthropology. Roberts also began spending time in local coffeehouses, writing poetry about the meaning of life and making new friends. With one, Jeannine Quiller, and with her roommate, Nicole Bennett, Roberts discussed the idea of emulating Beat Generation novelist Jack Kerouac and going on a road trip to the Western United States. ==Disappearance==

On the morning of March 9, 2000, Roberts talked on the phone with Kara about her uncertain future plans. The conversation ended with the understanding that the two would see each other soon. Later, in the early afternoon, Roberts and her roommate Nicole agreed to do some babysitting together the next day. Nicole left for work and returned later, at which point she noticed that Roberts and her white 1993 Jeep Cherokee were missing. Because she had not maintained a consistent schedule since she dropped out of school, Nicole was not initially concerned about Roberts's absence. The next day, Roberts missed the babysitting appointment. By the end of March 11, she was still absent, and her friends and family had been attempting to contact her. On March 13, Kara reported her sister missing to the Durham Police Department. ==Investigation==

Note, bank records, and security camera footage On March 14, Kara and Nicole searched Roberts's room. Many of her clothes and her kitten, Bea, were missing. Kara and Nicole also found a note reading, "I'm not suicidal. I'm the opposite," that mentioned Jack Kerouac and included a drawing of the Cheshire Cat's grin. Along with the note, Kara and Nicole found a bundle of cash totaling approximately a month's worth of Roberts's share of rent and expenses. They visited the crash site, and, with the assistance of the sheriff's office, created a flyer that they posted around the city. They also went into local businesses to ask if business owners and customers had seen Roberts. Among her belongings, her siblings found a box of mementos from the trip that established more clearly when she had arrived in Bellingham: a ticket stub from a March 13 afternoon screening of American Beauty (1999) at the theaters in the Bellis Fair Mall. This ticket suggested that Roberts may have spent a few hours in the city after arriving at the beginning of the day following the five-to-six-hour drive from where she had bought gas in Oregon. For two weeks in April 2000, police searched for Roberts near her Jeep's crash site. Dogs trained to sniff for corpses, metal detectors that could find the metal rod in her leg and helicopters were used in the search, but no new evidence was discovered. While reviewing the case, one of them noticed that the car and its contents had not been fully processed for evidence when it was originally brought in. After deciding to re-examine the vehicle, investigators opened the Jeep's hood and found that a wire had been cut, allowing the car to accelerate without anyone having depressed the gas pedal. This discovery confirmed early suspicions that no one had been in the car when it left the road, and thus it had been purposely wrecked. The detectives also found a fingerprint under the hood of the Jeep and male DNA on an article of Roberts's clothing. These new leads led investigators back to the man who had claimed Roberts left the Bellis Fair restaurant with the third man she called "Barry." As no one could corroborate this witness's statements, police fingerprinted and DNA tested him to rule out his involvement in her disappearance. The witness's fingerprint did not match the one discovered under the hood of the Jeep, but the results of the DNA sample have not been disclosed. == Case coverage and awareness ==

In 2001, the Lifetime television series Unsolved Mysteries ran a segment on the case that generated some new tips for investigators and reports that Roberts had been sighted elsewhere in the U.S., but nothing that proved credible. Caison, with the help of a network of volunteers called Community United Effort, specializes in keeping cases alive in the media after official efforts have exhausted all leads. On the fourth anniversary of Roberts's disappearance, Caison organized a caravan across the country, following her route west to Bellingham, to raise awareness about not only the Roberts case but other disappearances. It has become an annual event. Caison and Kara appeared on CNN's Larry King Live in 2005. "I really don't know how I would have made it through the past five years without her," Kara stated. "We're just trying to, you know, keep Leah's face out there as much as possible." Investigation Discovery Disappeared aired an episode on the case in 2011. ==See also==