Disappearance of Asha Degree

On February 14, 2000, nine-year-old Asha Jaquilla Degree disappeared from her family's home on Oakcrest Drive in a rural subdivision north of Shelby, North Carolina. Her parents, Harold and Iquilla Degree, had checked on her twice overnight following a brief power outage and last saw her asleep at around 2:30 a.m. Sometime after that, Asha got out of bed, took a bookbag she had apparently packed in advance with clothing and personal items, and left the house unnoticed by her sleeping brother, O'Bryant, then age 10.

Between 3:45 and 4:15 a.m., a truck driver and a separate motorist reported seeing a small girl matching Asha's description walking south along North Carolina Highway 18 during heavy rain and wind. One driver, suspicious of a child being out alone at that hour, circled back several times; he reported that the girl ran into a wooded area and disappeared. Iquilla Degree discovered her daughter missing around 5:45 a.m. when she went to wake the children for school. Police were notified, and an extensive search began within the hour, though tracking dogs could not pick up Asha's scent.

Searchers recovered some of Asha's belongings — including candy wrappers, a pencil, a green marker, and a yellow hairbow — in a shed near where she was last seen, along with an unidentified photograph of a girl later reported to be a friend of Asha's. No further trace was found during the initial search, which involved roughly 9,000 hours of effort and 300 tips before being scaled back about a week later. In August 2001, construction workers found Asha's bookbag buried in trash bags at a site off Highway 18 near Morganton, about 26 miles from her home. FBI forensic examination later revealed the bag contained a library book, McElligot's Pool, and a New Kids on the Block T-shirt, neither of which had apparently belonged to Asha before her disappearance.

Investigators initially considered that Asha might have run away, but noted the absence of any clear precipitating cause and her atypical profile for a runaway (most runaways are 12 or older, according to a cited expert). Authorities came to believe she had been abducted after leaving home. The case drew sustained national media attention, including appearances on The Montel Williams Show, America's Most Wanted, and The Oprah Winfrey Show, as well as public awareness campaigns using billboards, a stock car livery, and branded company vehicles.

In 2015, the FBI joined North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation and the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office in a renewed investigation and offered a reward of up to $25,000, later supplemented by a community group's additional $20,000 reward. A possible sighting of Asha entering a vintage car was disclosed in 2016. The FBI's Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team assisted investigators in 2017, and hundreds of additional interviews were conducted in subsequent years. A 2020 tip from an incarcerated individual convicted of sex crimes against children led to another dead end. In September 2024 and February 2025, search warrants tied to physical evidence resulted in the seizure of items including a vehicle and cellphones, and in February 2025 the case was reclassified as a homicide investigation, with suspects publicly identified. A further property search occurred in April 2025.