The House on Oakcrest Street, Shelby, North Carolina
There’s a moment that happens in every parent’s life—a moment so ordinary, so forgettable, that it barely registers as it occurs. You check on your child sleeping. You see their chest rising and falling. You adjust a blanket. You close the door quietly so as not to wake them.
It’s the kind of moment that happens thousands of times a night across America. A moment of routine care. A moment of love so habitual we barely register it.
For Harold Degree, 2:30 a.m. on February 14, 2000, was one of those moments.
He’d just arrived home from his long-haul trucking shift, the kind of work that keeps a man away from his family, grinding through the dark hours to keep the bills paid and food on the table. The house was quiet—the way all houses are quiet at that hour, when the world has surrendered to sleep and even the walls seem to hold their breath.
He checked on his two children in their shared room: O’Bryant, his ten-year-old son, was sleeping soundly. And there, in the darkness, he saw Asha—his nine-year-old daughter, his baby, curled under her blankets, nothing visible but the small shape she made beneath the covers.
“She was right there,” Harold would tell investigators later, his voice hollow with the weight of what that moment meant. “I saw her. She was there.”
He had no way of knowing he was looking at his daughter for the last time.
The Night Everything Changed
It had been an ordinary Sunday, the kind that unfolds in the everyday rhythm of working families in small-town North Carolina. Asha had spent her afternoon at home with her mother Iquilla and her brother, doing homework and playing—the simple stuff of childhood.
Her father was working. Her mother was preparing dinner. It was the routine that held their lives together.
But then came the accident.
Somewhere in their neighborhood on Oakcrest Street, a car had collided with power lines. Electricity surged and died. The whole neighborhood went dark. Suddenly, the evening that Iquilla had planned—baths for the children before bed, the normal ritual of preparation for another school day—was disrupted. Plans had to be rearranged.
She’d set her alarm for 5:30 a.m., an hour earlier than usual. The kids would bathe in the morning before school instead.
“It was such a small thing,” Iquilla would say years later, her voice thick with the kind of regret that never quite leaves a parent’s chest. “Such a small, tiny thing.”
At 8:30 p.m., Asha and O’Bryant climbed into their beds in the small room they shared. They’d shared that room their entire lives—not because they were wealthy enough for separate rooms, but because they were close. Because their parents had limited space and made it work with the grace that working families do. The house was dark now, power still out, the neighborhood waiting for the electricity to return and restore things to normal.
What no one understood, what would only become clear years later, was that this small disruption—this simple power outage—was the hinge on which the door to a family’s worst nightmare would swing.
At 12:30 a.m., the power came back on. The lights flickered through the house. Harold arrived home from his shift shortly after, checking on both children before settling into the rhythm of home. He turned on the television. He sat in the quiet of his house, grateful for the work that had exhausted him, grateful to be home.
At 2:30 a.m., before heading to bed himself, he made one final check on his kids.
O’Bryant was sleeping.
Asha was sleeping.
Everything was as it should be.
The Storm That Comes in Darkness
Sometime between 2:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., something happened that would destroy everything these people believed about the safety of their home, the protection of their locked doors, the sanctity of a child’s bedroom.
O’Bryant would later tell investigators that he’d briefly woken during the night. In the darkness, he saw his sister standing in their room. Drowsy, half-asleep, still caught in the web of dreams, he assumed she was simply going to the bathroom—a thought so ordinary, so unremarkable that he didn’t even fully register it. He rolled over and went back to sleep.
It was the last time anyone in the Degree family would ever see Asha alive.
When Iquilla’s alarm went off at 5:30 a.m., she rose to wake the children. She opened their bedroom door, expecting to see two sleeping children waiting for the school day ahead.
O’Bryant was there.
Asha was not.
“At first, I thought maybe she was in the bathroom,” Iquilla told investigators, her voice carrying the ghost of that moment—that first moment before terror arrives in full force, when the mind is still trying to solve the puzzle logically. “Then I thought maybe she went down to her grandmother’s house. She does that sometimes, early in the morning.”
But even as she searched the house—room by room, closet by closet, checking under beds—a cold dread was building in her chest. Asha wasn’t the type of child who would leave without asking. She was shy, cautious, obedient. She didn’t open doors without permission. She didn’t roam the neighborhood unsupervised.
By 6:30 a.m., after checking with every family member within walking distance, after the confirmation that their daughter was nowhere to be found, Harold and Iquilla made the call that no parent ever wants to make.
What She Took With Her
What made this disappearance even more terrifying than a simple abduction was what investigators discovered as they began their work:
Asha didn’t just vanish. She had packed.
Her blue jeans were missing. Her white long-sleeved shirt was gone. Her white sneakers had disappeared. But more significantly, her blue and gray book bag was missing—and inside investigators would later learn she’d taken several changes of clothing, family photographs, and personal items.
“She planned this,” Cleveland County Sheriff Dan Crawford told reporters, his face grave. “This wasn’t a child running away impulsively. This wasn’t a kid upset about something and leaving in anger. She took the time. She packed deliberately.”
But why?
Asha was a fourth-grader at Fallston Elementary. She was described by everyone who knew her as quiet, thoughtful, engaged. She loved basketball—loved it fiercely. She wasn’t struggling in school. She came from a stable, loving home with parents who worked hard and showed her affection.
There were no signs of abuse. No reports of neglect. No indication that anything in her life was so unbearable that a nine-year-old girl would pack a bag in the middle of a February night and walk out into a storm.
And on that night, a fierce storm had rolled through Cleveland County. Rain poured from the sky. Wind whipped through the trees. Temperatures had dropped into the low 40s. It was the kind of night when sensible people stayed inside, warm and dry.
Yet someone—or something—had compelled Asha to do exactly the opposite.
The Truck Drivers Who Saw Her
As news of Asha’s disappearance spread through Shelby that Monday morning, emergency crews and volunteers began their search. The Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office set up a tip line, and by early afternoon, two separate callers provided information that would become the most critical—and most mystifying—pieces of evidence in the entire case.
Both callers were truck drivers. Both had been traveling southbound on Highway 18 around 4:00 a.m. that morning. And both described seeing the same thing: a small African American girl walking alone along the highway in the pouring rain.
One of these drivers—a man whose name was never publicly released—was so concerned about what he was seeing that he made a decision that would haunt him for the next twenty-five years.
He turned his truck around.
He drove back to where he’d seen the child walking alone on the roadside in the rain, and he pulled his truck up beside her, wanting to help, wanting to offer a ride to shelter and safety.
But what happened next defied all logic.
The girl—the same girl investigators were certain was Asha Degree—looked at him, and then she ran.
She bolted from the roadside and disappeared into the dense woods that lined Highway 18, running into the darkness, running away from an adult who was trying to help her.
The driver tried to find her. He searched the woods, looking for any sign of the child. But she was gone—vanished into the trees and the darkness as if the forest had swallowed her whole.
The Question That Haunts Everything
Detective Tim Adams of the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office would ask this question countless times over the following years, and it remains unanswered even now, a quarter-century later:
“Why would she run?”
If you are a nine-year-old girl alone in a storm, on a dark highway, in the rain—if a truck driver stops and offers you help, offers you warmth and safety and the possibility of returning home—why would you run away?
What had she been told?
Who had convinced her that an adult trying to help was actually a threat?
What lies had been wrapped around her trusting, innocent mind to make her believe that running into darkness and trees and cold was safer than accepting help from a stranger?
These questions would define the investigation. They would break the hearts of her parents. And twenty-five years later, they would finally begin to find their terrible answer.
The Community That Refused to Forget
Within hours of Asha’s disappearance being reported on that Valentine’s Day morning, the small town of Shelby transformed into something that looked like a military mobilization.
Hundreds of volunteers descended on the area. Neighbors who barely knew the Degree family put on boots and rain jackets and walked into the woods. Church members formed search parties. Strangers from surrounding counties drove in to help look for a nine-year-old girl they’d never met but whose face on the news had broken something inside them.
They combed through the dense woods along Highway 18. They checked abandoned buildings, crawled under bridges, looked in drainage ditches and culverts. Search dogs were brought in, their handlers watching as the animals picked up Asha’s scent trail—following it from her home to the highway, then losing it, then finding it again briefly before it vanished completely, as if she’d been plucked from the earth by invisible hands.
Helicopters circled overhead, their searchlights cutting through the gray morning sky, scanning the landscape for any sign of a small girl in blue jeans and a white shirt.
The FBI arrived. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation sent their best agents. This was no longer just a local missing child case—this was a federal investigation.
Shelby had been the kind of town where doors went unlocked. Where everybody knew everybody. Where families had lived for generations and crime was something that happened on television, in big cities, to other people’s children.
The abduction of Asha Degree shattered that innocence forever.
“Suddenly, people who’d never locked their doors began doing so,” journalist Brandy Beard would recall years later. “Parents who’d let their kids walk to school alone started driving them. The community never really recovered from it”.
At Fallston Elementary School, Asha’s classmates sat in stunned silence as their teacher tried to explain why their friend wasn’t coming back to class. Fourth-graders don’t understand disappearance. They understand presence and absence, but not this terrible in-between state where someone is gone but not confirmed dead, missing but not proven taken.
Her desk remained empty. Her basketball jersey hung in her locker. Her homework sat incomplete on her teacher’s desk, waiting for a girl who would never return to finish it.
The Parents’ Living Nightmare
For Harold and Iquilla Degree, time stopped on February 14, 2000.
Every parent has imagined the nightmare—the phone call from school saying your child never arrived, the moment you realize you can’t find them in a crowded store, those three seconds of pure terror before you spot them again and your heart restarts.
But this was different. This wasn’t three seconds of terror. This was hours becoming days becoming weeks becoming months of not knowing.
Not knowing if your daughter was alive or dead.
Not knowing if she was being hurt, if she was calling for you, if she was cold or hungry or terrified.
Not knowing if she’d run away or been taken, if she’d left voluntarily or been lured by promises and lies.
“I should have checked on her,” Iquilla told investigators through tears that wouldn’t stop falling. “If I had just gotten up once more during the night. If I had just looked in on them one more time…”
Harold carried his own crushing weight of guilt. “I saw her at 2:30. I stood right there in that doorway and looked at her sleeping. If I had stayed up just one more hour. If I had heard something…”
But there had been nothing to hear. No forced entry. No sounds of struggle. No broken windows or kicked-in doors. The house had been locked. The family had been sleeping. And somewhere in those dark hours, Asha had packed her bag and walked out into a storm, and no one had heard a thing.
The FBI conducted extensive interviews with both parents—this is standard procedure because, statistically, family members are most often responsible when a child goes missing. Both Harold and Iquilla submitted to polygraph tests. Both passed. Investigators found no evidence of abuse, no history of violence, no financial problems, no indication that this was anything other than exactly what it appeared to be: good parents who loved their children and had no idea why their daughter had left.
“This is a good family,” Sheriff Dan Crawford told reporters, his voice firm. “These are good parents. Whatever happened here, it wasn’t about a child escaping a bad home”.
But if she wasn’t running away from something, that meant she was running toward something.
Or someone.
And that possibility was even more terrifying.
The Evidence That Changed Everything
In those first frantic days and weeks of searching, investigators found clues that seemed significant but remained frustratingly incomplete.
About a mile and a half from the Degree home, searchers discovered several items in an unlocked shed on property belonging to the Turner family: a pencil, a marker, a Mickey Mouse-shaped hair bow that Iquilla confirmed belonged to Asha, and a candy wrapper of the type her daughter favored.
The items weren’t hidden—they were just there, as if someone had stopped briefly to rest before moving on. The Turners had no connection to Asha and were quickly cleared of any involvement.
But the discovery raised agonizing questions: Had Asha stopped there alone? Was someone with her? How had she traveled more than a mile from where the truck drivers saw her on Highway 18? And most importantly—where had she gone next ?
Search dogs tracked her scent to the shed, then lost it. It was as if she’d vanished and reappeared, as if someone had driven her and she’d gotten out briefly before being taken again.
The investigation expanded to include everyone in Asha’s life. Her teachers. Her basketball coach Chad Wilson, who’d worked with her just days before her disappearance. Family friends. Extended relatives. Neighbors. Sex offenders within a 50-mile radius were questioned and their alibis verified.
Every lead was pursued with exhaustive thoroughness.
And every lead went nowhere.
As February became March and March became April, the terrible reality began to settle over Shelby like fog: Asha Degree had vanished without a trace, and no one knew if she was alive or dead.
The Backpack That Broke the Case Open
Eighteen months passed. Eighteen months of Harold and Iquilla waking up every morning to an empty bedroom. Eighteen months of birthday that went uncelebrated, of Christmas presents that went unopened, of a family frozen in grief.
Then, on August 3, 2001, construction workers were preparing land for a new home development off Highway 18 in Burke County—about twenty-six miles north of Shelby—when one of them saw something that made his blood run cold.
Partially buried in the dirt, wrapped carefully in two black plastic garbage bags, was a blue and gray book bag.
The worker knew immediately this wasn’t ordinary trash. The deliberate way it had been wrapped. The careful burial. This was evidence. This was someone hiding something.
He called the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office.
When investigators carefully opened those plastic bags, what they found inside confirmed their worst fears and opened a door to questions that would take another twenty-three years to begin answering.
Inside was Asha’s backpack.
The bag contained the items Iquilla had described as missing: changes of clothing, family photographs, personal belongings. But there were also items that didn’t belong to Asha—items that would become the key to eventually solving her case.
A white t-shirt featuring the band New Kids on the Block. Asha’s family didn’t recognize it. She’d never owned a shirt like that. She’d never expressed any interest in a band that had been popular a decade earlier.
And there was something else: DNA.
In 2001, DNA technology was still relatively limited. Investigators could extract profiles, but without matches in existing databases, the information meant little. So the evidence was catalogued, preserved, and stored—waiting for technology to catch up to the crime.
The fact that the backpack had been deliberately wrapped in plastic and buried told investigators something crucial: whoever had taken Asha knew they’d left evidence behind. They were trying to hide it, but for some reason—perhaps fear of being seen burning it, perhaps an inability to completely destroy what belonged to a child—they’d buried it instead.
Twenty-six miles from where Asha was last seen. Why that location? Was it significant? Was it close to where she was being held? Close to where her body was hidden ?
Extensive searches of the area turned up nothing else.
The Cold Years
From 2001 to 2020, Asha’s case went cold in the way that heartbreaking cases do when leads dry up and time keeps moving forward despite everyone’s desperate wish that it would stop.
The FBI kept her file open. The Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office assigned detectives to periodically review all evidence. Age-progression photos were created showing what Asha might look like at fifteen, at twenty, at twenty-five—each one a reminder of all the years she’d been gone, all the milestones she’d missed.
Her sweet sixteen never happened. Her high school graduation never came. There was no prom dress, no college acceptance letter, no first job or first apartment or wedding day. There was just absence—a Asha-shaped hole in the universe that nothing could fill.
Harold and Iquilla aged. Lines deepened on their faces. Their hair went gray. Their son O’Bryant grew up carrying the ghost of his missing sister, the memory of seeing her standing in their shared bedroom that last night, the terrible weight of wondering if he could have stopped what happened if he’d only asked where she was going.
Iquilla kept Asha’s room exactly as it had been. The bed made. The stuffed animals arranged as Asha had left them. Her clothes hanging in the closet, growing smaller each year as styles changed and seasons passed, until they looked like artifacts from another era—which, in a way, they were.
Every February 14th, on the anniversary of her disappearance, the community held a memorial walk. They would gather—family, friends, neighbors, strangers—and walk the route they believed Asha had taken from her home on Oakcrest Street to Highway 18.
They carried candles. They wore ribbons. They held signs that read “Bring Asha Home” and “We Haven’t Forgotten”.
And leading those walks every single year were Harold and Iquilla, their faces growing older but their determination never wavering, their love for their missing daughter burning as fiercely on the twenty-fourth anniversary as it had on the first.
A billboard was erected near where the truck drivers had seen Asha that night. For twenty-five years it has stood there, showing her smiling face—a nine-year-old frozen in time, eternally waiting to be found.
The Breakthrough That Changed Everything
Then came September 2024.
Twenty-four years after Asha disappeared—a lifetime for some, an eternity for her family—the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office made an announcement that sent shockwaves through Shelby and beyond.
Advanced DNA technology had been used to analyze evidence from Asha’s backpack. Methods that didn’t exist in 2000, genealogical databases that had grown exponentially in recent years, new techniques for extracting and analyzing degraded genetic material.
And they had matches.
DNA from a hair found on Asha’s undershirt matched AnnaLee Victoria Dedmon Ramirez—who had been just thirteen years old when Asha disappeared.
Additional DNA on items in the backpack matched Russell Bradley Underhill, a Vietnam veteran who had lived in homes operated by the Dedmon family in 2000 and who had died in 2004, taking whatever secrets he knew to his grave.
For the first time in twenty-four years, investigators had names. They had suspects. They had a direction to look.
Search warrants were executed at eight properties associated with Roy Lee Dedmon and his wife Connie Dedmon. Law enforcement descended on their Cleveland County home with forensic teams, cadaver dogs, and ground-penetrating radar.
They seized vehicles, including a green car from the 1960s—eerily similar to the “1970 green Lincoln or Thunderbird” that a witness had reported seeing Asha being put into that night in 2000.
They collected DNA samples from the Dedmon family members.
And they made a statement that shattered whatever fragile hope Iquilla and Harold had clung to for nearly a quarter-century:
Asha Degree was now officially being investigated as a homicide victim, with her body believed to be concealed.
The Shirt That Held Secrets
Of all the evidence in Asha’s backpack, one item became the obsession for investigators: the New Kids on the Block t-shirt.
Asha had never owned it. Her family didn’t recognize it. She had never expressed any interest in the boy band that had dominated the late 1980s and early 1990s but had faded from popularity by 2000. This wasn’t a shirt a nine-year-old in the year 2000 would typically wear.
Where had it come from?
When search warrants were finally unsealed in February 2025—twenty-five years after Asha’s disappearance—they revealed something that made investigators lean forward in their seats. In the early days of the investigation, a witness had reported seeing Asha being placed into a vehicle that matched the description of a 1970s green Lincoln or Thunderbird.
That same type of vehicle had been towed from the Dedmon property during the September 2024 searches.
But the real breakthrough came from something far more modern than 1970s vehicles or handwritten evidence: text messages.
In October 2024, law enforcement obtained access to the iCloud account of one of the Dedmon daughters. What they found were messages of interest—communications between sisters that revealed something investigators had suspected for years: people in that family knew what had happened to Asha.
On October 15, 2024—the same day police were searching the Dedmon properties—Sarah Dedmon texted her sister Lizzie about the shirt. The message was stark. Raw. Revealing:
“They think it’s our shirt. It’s not Asha’s shirt. Her mom said it wasn’t hers. I don’t remember that shirt. I’m concerned though. This is probably going to be huge suspect”.
Why would someone worry about a shirt that wasn’t even Asha’s? Why would that specific item concern them so greatly? Why would they discuss whether their mother recognized it ?
Two days later, another exchange: Lizzie texted Sarah following a conversation with their attorney. The message was haunting in its implications: “The problem is I think it… Covered up”.
Sarah’s response: “No, why would it be you ?”
These weren’t the casual conversations of people with nothing to hide. These were the messages of people who understood that the walls were closing in, that the truth—whatever it was—was about to be exposed after a quarter-century of silence.
The Witnesses Who Finally Spoke
For twenty-five years, the Dedmon family maintained their innocence. Roy Dedmon and his wife Connie lived their lives in Cleveland County, operating nursing homes, raising their children, maintaining their place in the community.
But the weight of secrets is a heavy thing. And eventually, cracks always appear.
In 2024, an individual came forward with a story he’d been carrying for more than two decades. He told investigators about attending a party at the Dedmon home in the mid-2000s—years after Asha’s disappearance, but during a time when the case was still fresh in community memory.
At that party, he’d witnessed something that disturbed him deeply. Lizzie Dedmon, one of Roy and Connie’s daughters, had been “sobbing and extremely intoxicated.” While in this emotional state, she had made a statement that investigators would eventually document in search warrants:
“I know Asha.”
But it wasn’t just this one admission. Her sister Sarah had immediately told her to shut up. The man said this reaction seemed completely out of character for Sarah—a sharp rebuke designed to silence her sister, to keep her from saying anything more.
Why would someone need to be silenced for saying they knew a girl who’d disappeared five years earlier ?
Investigators gave this witness a polygraph test. He passed. His credibility was established.
But the polygraph evidence, while corroborating the witness’s account, would never be admissible in a North Carolina courtroom. Polygraphs are inadmissible evidence in most U.S. states—their reliability too questionable, their basis too contested. But for investigators trying to piece together what happened to Asha, it was confirmation that someone in that family knew something.
The Two People Named
For the first time in public, investigators identified the individuals whose DNA had been found on Asha’s clothing:
Russell Bradley Underhill: A Vietnam veteran who lived in at least two homes operated by the Dedmon family when Asha disappeared. His DNA was found on items recovered from her backpack. He died in 2004, carrying whatever secrets he knew to his grave.
AnnaLee Victoria Dedmon Ramirez: One of Roy and Connie’s three daughters. She was a child when Asha disappeared—just thirteen years old. DNA from Asha’s undershirt matched her genetic profile. But investigators suspect she did not act alone. Court documents stated that “adult assistance from Roy Lee Dedmon and Connie Dedmon would have been necessary in the execution and/or concealment” of the crime.
The warrants were careful not to accuse. They carefully stated what they suspected, what the evidence suggested, what the DNA indicated. But they also made something abundantly clear: law enforcement believed that Asha Degree had been murdered, and they believed they knew who was involved.
What they still didn’t know was where.
The Question That Haunts Everything—Finally Answered
That image of Asha running into the woods from the truck driver who wanted to help her had haunted investigators and the public for twenty-five years.
Why would she run?
Now, finally, the warrants provided a terrible answer.
She wasn’t running from someone she didn’t know. She was running to someone she did know. Someone she trusted. Someone she believed was helping her, not harming her.
The evidence suggests Asha had been groomed. Someone in that household—perhaps Russell Underhill, perhaps one of the Dedmon family members—had spent time with her before that night. Had built trust. Had created a situation where a nine-year-old girl believed that packing a bag and leaving home in the middle of a storm was an adventure, a secret, something special.
When she saw the truck driver approaching, she wasn’t a lost child looking for rescue. She was a child who’d been convinced that other adults were dangerous, that she needed to hide, that she couldn’t trust anyone but the person who’d brought her to that location.
She ran because she’d been told to run.
She ran because she believed the adults trying to help her were the ones she needed to fear.
She ran straight into the darkness, straight into the arms—metaphorical or physical—of whoever had orchestrated this nightmare.
And she was never seen alive again.
A Community Seeking Answers
In the months following the September 2024 searches, Shelby held its breath.
The Dedmons’ attorney held a press conference in September 2024, forcefully denying his clients’ involvement. “Roy Dedmon and his family are just like everyone else,” he stated. “They don’t know what happened to Asha”.
But the DNA didn’t lie. The text messages didn’t lie. The witness testimony didn’t lie.
“The connection to Roy Dedmon and his family is tenuous at best,” the attorney insisted. But tenuous and innocent are not the same thing. Denial and innocence are not the same thing.
By February 2025, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Asha’s disappearance, Sheriff Alan Norman made an emotional statement to the gathered media:
“It will always be our desire to bring Asha home and to bring the individuals to justice, because it’s going to happen. We’re closer than we’ve ever been with the modern technology that we have”.
The words were careful. No arrests had been made. No formal charges had been filed. But the message was clear: investigators knew who was responsible, and they were building a case that would, eventually, lead to justice.
As of November 2025, no suspects have been arrested or charged. The investigation continues.
The Legacy of a Girl Who Never Grew Old
The billboard on Highway 18 has been updated multiple times over the years. The original photo of nine-year-old Asha—bright, smiling, full of potential—has been supplemented with age-progression images showing what she might look like at fifteen, at twenty, at twenty-five.
Each updated image serves as a reminder of not what Asha became, but what she was denied the opportunity to become.
Her case has been featured on every major true crime platform—podcasts, documentary series, television specials. Criminal justice programs use her disappearance as a teaching tool, an example of a perfect mystery, a reminder that sometimes the most dangerous predators are people we know, people we trust, people embedded in our communities.
Her mother, Iquilla Degree, now in her mid-sixties, has never stopped fighting. Every February 14th, she leads the community walk. Every press conference, she’s there. Every plea for information, she participates in. She has given interviews to national media, traveled to speaking engagements, dedicated her life to ensuring that the world never forgets her daughter’s name.
At the twenty-fifth anniversary walk in February 2025, as hundreds gathered to commemorate the quarter-century of Asha’s absence, Iquilla spoke with the unshakeable faith of a mother who refuses to accept that hope is foolish:
“I believe she’s still alive, and until someone proves otherwise, I will continue to believe that. Because all I have is hope”.
Her voice broke. But her determination did not.
Harold stands beside her, as he has for twenty-five years, the weight of seeing his daughter that last time at 2:30 a.m.—the last person in the world to see her alive—etched into every line of his face.
The Questions That Remain
Even with the breakthrough in DNA technology, even with the identification of suspects, even with the search warrants and text messages, so many questions remain unanswered:
Where is Asha? The homicide designation suggests she’s no longer alive, but where is her body? Will her family ever be able to bring her home for a proper burial? Will they have a grave to visit, a place to lay flowers, a physical location to mourn ?
What exactly happened that night? Was it a crime of opportunity or a planned abduction? Did Russell Underhill act alone or with the Dedmons? How was Asha lured out of her house? What did she believe was happening ?
Why has no one been charged? What evidence is investigators still building? What pieces of the puzzle are still missing? Is there physical evidence that could directly tie the suspects to her death, or are they still searching for Asha’s remains ?
And perhaps most painfully: Will the case ever truly be solved? Will there ever be a day when Iquilla and Harold Degree can finally have closure, can finally lay their daughter to rest, can finally stop the endless cycle of hope and heartbreak that has defined the past twenty-five years of their lives ?
The Waiting Continues
Today, the FBI continues to treat Asha’s case as one of their priority investigations. Special Agent Janette Grover has dedicated years of her career to finding answers for the Degree family. In a 2022 video released to the public, she made a direct appeal:
“In a case like this, someone always knows something. Maybe they didn’t realize what they knew was significant. Maybe they were afraid to come forward. Maybe they’ve been protecting someone all these years. But we’re asking anyone who has any information—no matter how small it might seem—to please contact us”.
The FBI has offered a $60,000 reward for information leading to Asha’s location and the arrest and conviction of those responsible.
Detective Tim Adams, who has dedicated much of his career to finding answers for the Degree family, refuses to give up:
“Asha deserves justice. Her family deserves answers. This community deserves to know what happened to their sweetheart. And we’re not stopping until we get those answers”.
The Final Truth
On a quiet street in Shelby, North Carolina, there’s a bedroom that has remained untouched for twenty-five years. The bed is made. The stuffed animals are arranged. Her clothes hang in the closet, a time capsule of a childhood cut short.
On a highway just outside of town, a billboard shows a girl frozen in time at nine years old, her bright eyes and beautiful smile eternally urging passersby to remember her name, to remember her story, to remember that somewhere, someone knows what happened to her.
And somewhere in those twenty-five years of investigation—of search warrants and DNA tests and text messages and witness testimony—lies the truth about why a nine-year-old girl packed a bag and walked out into a storm.
She was running toward someone she trusted.
She was running toward a nightmare.
She was running toward a fate that her parents could never have imagined, could never have prevented, can never fully understand.
Her name was Asha Jaquilla Degree.
She disappeared on Valentine’s Day 2000.
She is still waiting to come home.
And somewhere, someone knows exactly why she ran.
A Message to Those Who Know
If you have any information about the disappearance of Asha Jaquilla Degree:
FBI Charlotte Division: 704-672-6100
Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office: 704-484-4822
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children: 1-800-THE-LOST
No piece of information is too small. No detail is insignificant.
After twenty-five years, one phone call could be the key that finally brings Asha home.
