The Night Everything Changed

The power outage came at the worst possible time.

February 13, 2000, started like any ordinary Sunday in Shelby, North Carolina. Nine-year-old Asha Degree had spent the afternoon at home with her ten-year-old brother O’Bryant, doing homework and playing while their mother Iquilla prepared dinner. Their father Harold was at work—he drove long-haul trucks and often worked night shifts to provide for his family.

Around dinnertime, a car accident near their modest home on Oakcrest Street knocked out power to the entire neighborhood. The evening ritual that Iquilla had planned—baths for both children before bed—would have to wait until morning. She set her alarm an hour early for 5:30 a.m. so the kids could bathe before school.

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, the way siblings in working-class families often do. The house was quiet, dark, waiting for the electricity to return.

What no one knew—what would haunt Iquilla and Harold for the next twenty-five years—was that this small disruption in routine, this ordinary power outage, would be the last normal night their family would ever have.

The Last Time Anyone Saw Her

At 12:30 a.m., the lights suddenly flickered back on throughout the house. Harold arrived home from his shift shortly after, checking on both children before settling in to watch some television. The house felt normal again—power restored, kids sleeping peacefully, another work night complete.

At 2:30 a.m., Harold made one final check on Asha and O’Bryant before heading to bed himself. Both children were sound asleep in their beds. Asha lay curled under her covers, her small frame barely making a bump under the blanket. Everything looked exactly as it should.

But sometime between 2:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., something changed.

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 and half-asleep, he assumed she was going to the bathroom—something so ordinary, so unremarkable, that he rolled over and went back to sleep without a second thought.

It was the last time anyone in the Degree family saw Asha alive.

When Iquilla’s alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. on Valentine’s Day morning, she got up to wake the children for their early baths. She opened the bedroom door expecting to see two sleeping kids.

O’Bryant was there. Asha was not.

“At first, I thought maybe she was in the bathroom,” Iquilla would later tell investigators, her voice tight with the memory. “Then I thought maybe she went to her grandmother’s house down the street—sometimes the kids would go there early in the morning.”

But even as she searched the house, room by room, a cold dread was building in her chest. Asha wasn’t the type of child to leave without permission. She was shy, cautious, obedient. She rarely even opened the front door without asking her parents first.

By 6:30 a.m., when Harold and Iquilla had checked with every family member within walking distance and found no sign of their daughter, they called 911.

Nine-year-old Asha Jaquilla Degree had vanished from her bedroom without a trace.

A Storm in the Darkness

What investigators would piece together over the following hours painted an increasingly disturbing picture.

The night Asha disappeared, a fierce storm had rolled through Cleveland County. Rain pounded the streets, wind whipped through the trees, and 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 a nine-year-old girl to walk out of her house into that storm.

And she hadn’t left unprepared.

As Iquilla and Harold frantically searched their daughter’s room for clues, they discovered several items missing: Asha’s blue jeans, a white long-sleeved shirt, white sneakers, and most tellingly, her blue and gray book bag packed with several changes of clothing, family photographs, and a few personal items.

“She planned this,” Cleveland County Sheriff Dan Crawford told reporters at an emergency press conference that afternoon. “This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. She took the time to pack a bag.”

But why? Why would a shy fourth-grader who was afraid of dogs and uncomfortable around strangers pack a bag and walk out into a storm in the middle of the night?

The answer to that question has haunted investigators for twenty-five years.

The Witnesses

As news of Asha’s disappearance spread throughout Shelby that Monday morning, the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office set up a tip line. By early afternoon, two separate callers had provided information that would become the most critical—and most mystifying—pieces of evidence in the entire case.

Both callers were truck drivers who’d been traveling south on Highway 18 around 4:00 a.m. that morning. Both described seeing the same thing: a small African American girl walking alone along the highway in the pouring rain.

One driver, whose name was never publicly released, was so concerned about the child that he turned his truck around and drove back to check on her. But when he pulled up near where he’d seen her, the girl suddenly bolted from the roadside and ran into the dense woods that lined the highway.

She disappeared into the darkness, and despite the driver’s attempts to find her, she was gone.

“Why would she run?” Detective Tim Adams of the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office would ask this question countless times over the years. “If you’re a nine-year-old girl lost in a storm, and an adult stops to help you, why would you run away?”

The question hangs in the air, unanswered, twenty-five years later.

The Community Mobilizes

Within hours of Asha’s disappearance being reported, Shelby transformed into a city united in grief and determination.

Hundreds of volunteers—neighbors, church members, strangers from surrounding counties—descended on the area to search. They combed through the woods along Highway 18. They checked abandoned buildings, searched under bridges, looked in drainage ditches and culverts. Search dogs were brought in, following scent trails that led nowhere. Helicopters circled overhead, scanning the landscape for any sign of the missing girl.

The FBI arrived, as did the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. Asha’s disappearance was no longer just a local matter—it was a federal case.

Shelby was a small town of about 20,000 people, the kind of place where everybody knew everybody, where families had lived for generations, where doors often went unlocked because crime was something that happened somewhere else. The abduction of a child from her own bedroom shattered that sense of safety.

“Suddenly, people who typically didn’t lock their doors began to do so,” journalist Brandy Beard, who grew up in a nearby county, told CNN years later. “As the years passed, the community never really forgot.”

At Fallston Elementary School, where Asha was a fourth grader, her classmates and teachers were devastated. Asha was described as a good student, quiet but engaged, a girl who loved basketball and had recently lost a game that upset her deeply. Her teacher noticed nothing unusual in the days before her disappearance. Her friends saw no warning signs.

“She wasn’t your typical runaway,” noted SBI agent Bart Burpeau during a press conference. “Most children who run away are at least twelve years old. They come from dysfunctional families, or they’re struggling in school, or they’re trying to escape something. Asha had none of those risk factors.”

So what was she running toward? Or more frighteningly—who?

The Parents’ Nightmare

For Iquilla and Harold Degree, the hours after Asha’s disappearance blurred into an endless nightmare of police interviews, search efforts, and crushing guilt.

“I should have checked on her during the night,” Iquilla told investigators, tears streaming down her face. “If I had just gotten up to check, if I had just looked in on them one more time…”

Harold carried his own burden. “I saw her at 2:30. I saw her sleeping. If I had just stayed up another hour, if I had heard something…”

But there was nothing to hear. No signs of forced entry. No sounds of struggle. No indication that anything violent had happened in that small bedroom on Oakcrest Street.

Asha had simply… left.

The FBI conducted extensive interviews with both parents. This is standard procedure in child abduction cases—statistically, family members are most often responsible. Both Harold and Iquilla submitted to polygraph tests. Both passed. Investigators found no evidence of abuse, no history of violence, no indication that Asha had any reason to flee her home.

“This is a good family,” Sheriff Crawford told reporters. “These are good parents who love their children. Whatever happened here, it wasn’t about escaping a bad home life.”

The investigation expanded to include everyone in Asha’s life: her teachers, her basketball coach Chad Wilson, family friends, extended relatives, neighbors. Sex offenders within a 50-mile radius were questioned and cleared. Every lead was pursued with exhaustive thoroughness.

And yet, as February became March and March became April, there were no answers. No body was found. No ransom was demanded. No credible sightings emerged.

It was as if nine-year-old Asha Degree had walked into that stormy night and vanished from the face of the earth.

The Items Left Behind

In Asha’s room, investigators catalogued every item, searching for clues to her state of mind.

Her basketball jersey hung in the closet—she’d been devastated after her team lost a game the previous week, but friends and family said she’d seemed to recover from the disappointment. A Valentine’s Day card she’d started making for her parents sat unfinished on her desk, red construction paper and white doilies waiting for her return.

Her favorite book, “The Whipping Boy,” was on her nightstand. Her collection of basketball trading cards was still carefully organized. Nothing suggested a child preparing to run away forever.

But the packed bag told a different story. The family photos she’d taken. The changes of clothes. The personal items carefully selected.

“She was preparing for something,” FBI behavioral analyst Dr. Susan Grover told the investigative team. “The question is: was she planning this herself, or did someone convince her to plan it?”

That question—whether Asha left of her own volition or was groomed and lured by a predator—would become the central debate in the case.

The Evidence in the Woods

The massive search efforts in those first days turned up tantalizing but ultimately inconclusive clues.

About a mile and a half from the Degree home, on a property belonging to the Turner family, searchers found several items that appeared to belong to Asha: a pencil, a marker, a Mickey Mouse-shaped hair bow, and a candy wrapper of the type Asha was known to favor.

The items were found in a shed—not hidden, but casually left, as if someone had stopped there briefly before moving on. The shed was unlocked, accessible to anyone. The Turner family had no connection to Asha and were quickly cleared of any involvement.

But the discovery raised more questions than answers: Had Asha stopped there to rest? Was she alone? The shed was more than a mile from where the truck drivers had seen her on Highway 18. How had she gotten there? And more importantly—where had she gone next?

Search dogs tracked Asha’s scent from her home to Highway 18, then lost it. They picked up the scent again briefly near the Turner property, then lost it once more. It was as if she’d disappeared and reappeared, as if someone had transported her and she’d gotten out briefly before being taken again.

Or as if she’d been picked up by someone she knew, someone she trusted enough to get into a vehicle with.

The Theories Begin to Form

As weeks stretched into months with no sign of Asha, investigators began developing theories about what might have happened.

Theory One: The Grooming Hypothesis

Some investigators believed Asha had been groomed by a predator—someone who’d spent weeks or months gaining her trust, convincing her that meeting them in the middle of the night was an adventure, a secret, something special just between them.

This would explain why she packed a bag, why she seemed to be heading toward a specific destination, why she ran when a stranger tried to help her—she’d been told that other adults would try to stop her from getting to her “friend.”

Child predators often use this tactic, framing themselves as the only person who understands the child, creating an us-versus-them mentality. They convince children that parents, teachers, and other adults are the enemy, while the predator is the only true friend.

But who? Investigators found no evidence of an adult in Asha’s life who fit this profile. Her teachers were investigated and cleared. Her basketball coach passed a polygraph. Family friends were interviewed extensively. No one raised red flags.

Theory Two: The Planned Meeting

Some theorized that Asha was planning to meet someone she knew—perhaps another child, perhaps for what she thought would be a brief adventure before returning home.

This would explain the packed bag (bringing supplies for an adventure), the late-night departure (when adults wouldn’t stop her), and the deliberate preparation (she knew where she was going).

But if she was meeting someone, who? And why didn’t they come forward after she disappeared? Why didn’t anyone at school or in the community report seeing or hearing about such plans?

Theory Three: Something at Home

Despite all evidence pointing to a loving family, some investigators couldn’t shake the possibility that something at home—something the parents didn’t know about or weren’t disclosing—had driven Asha away.

Perhaps an argument. Perhaps something that seemed minor to adults but felt insurmountable to a nine-year-old. Perhaps she overheard something that frightened her.

But this theory fell apart under scrutiny. Asha wasn’t just walking away—she’d packed carefully, walked miles in a storm, ran from people trying to help. This wasn’t a child walking to grandma’s house in a fit of anger. This was something else entirely.

The Media Spotlight

As the one-month mark approached with no answers, the Degree family made a painful decision: they would go public in a bigger way, using national media to keep Asha’s story alive.

On March 13, 2000, Harold and Iquilla appeared on “The Montel Williams Show,” a nationally syndicated talk show. Sitting side by side, hands clasped together, they made a desperate plea to anyone watching.

“If someone has her, please just let her come home,” Iquilla said, her voice breaking. “We love her. We miss her. She’s our baby. Please.”

“Asha, if you’re watching this somehow,” Harold added, his eyes red from weeks of sleepless nights, “we’re not mad. We just want you home. Whatever happened, whatever you were thinking, it’s okay. Just come home, baby girl.”

The appearance generated hundreds of tips—most of which led nowhere. People reported seeing girls who looked like Asha in neighboring states, in other countries, in places that made no geographical sense. Each tip was investigated. Each one ended in disappointment.

“America’s Most Wanted” featured Asha’s case. “The Oprah Winfrey Show” devoted a segment to it. Her face appeared on missing children posters in every state. Billboards went up along major highways throughout the Southeast.

America knew Asha’s name. America knew her face—those bright eyes, that beautiful smile captured in school photos.

But America didn’t know where she was.

The Waiting

For Harold and Iquilla, life became an unbearable cycle of hope and despair.

Every phone call might be the one. Every knock at the door might bring news. Every day Asha didn’t come home was another day of not knowing whether their daughter was alive or dead, safe or suffering.

Iquilla kept Asha’s room exactly as it was. The bed made the way Asha had left it that last morning. Her stuffed animals arranged as she’d arranged them. Her clothes hanging in the closet. A shrine to a missing child, frozen in time, waiting for a return that might never come.

O’Bryant, only ten years old when his sister disappeared, carried his own unique grief. He’d seen her that night. He’d watched her standing in their room. He’d assumed she was just going to the bathroom.

What if he’d asked where she was going? What if he’d followed her? What if he’d called out to their parents?

“Don’t think like that,” therapists told the family. “There’s no way you could have known.”

But how do you not think like that? How do you not replay every moment, every decision, every seemingly insignificant detail of that last night?

The Investigation Continues

Despite the lack of breakthroughs, investigators never gave up.

The FBI assigned the case to their Behavioral Analysis Unit, bringing in experts in child abduction and missing persons cases. They analyzed every piece of evidence, every witness statement, every possible scenario.

They looked at statistical patterns: most abducted children are killed within hours of being taken. If a predator had grabbed Asha, she was likely already dead.

But those witnesses had seen her walking alone at 4 a.m.—two hours after she’d left home. If she’d been taken, why was she still free at that point? Why was she walking along a highway instead of hidden away somewhere?

The timeline didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense.

Sheriff Crawford told reporters he was going “long-range” with the investigation. This wasn’t a case that would be solved in weeks or months. This was a long game, a patient accumulation of evidence and leads that might take years to pay off.

“We’re following everything,” Crawford insisted. “Every tip, every piece of evidence, every possibility. We will not stop until we find answers.”

The Town That Wouldn’t Forget

While media attention eventually faded, Shelby never forgot.

Every February 14th, on the anniversary of Asha’s disappearance, the community held a walk. Family, friends, neighbors, and strangers would gather and walk the route investigators believed Asha had taken—from her home on Oakcrest Street to Highway 18.

They carried candles. They wore ribbons in Asha’s favorite colors. They held signs that said “Bring Asha Home” and “We Haven’t Forgotten.”

Iquilla and Harold led these walks every single year, their faces growing older but their determination never wavering.

“Some people ask us why we keep doing this,” Iquilla told a local reporter at the tenth-anniversary walk. “They say maybe it’s time to accept that she’s gone, time to have some kind of closure and move on. But how can we move on? She’s our daughter. Until we know what happened to her, until we can bring her home, there is no moving on.”

A billboard was erected near where the truck drivers had seen Asha on Highway 18. It showed her smiling face, her vital statistics, and a phone number for tips. For twenty-five years, that billboard has stood sentinel on that highway, Asha’s eyes watching every passing car, silently pleading for someone to come forward with information.

Local businesses kept flyers posted. Schools held assemblies about child safety using Asha’s case as a cautionary tale. Churches prayed for the Degree family during Sunday services.

Shelby had been forever changed by the loss of their sweetheart.

The Backpack and the New Investigation

Eighteen months after Asha disappeared, on August 3, 2001, construction workers were preparing land for a new home off Highway 18 in Burke County—about twenty-six miles north of Shelby—when one of them saw something partially buried in the dirt.

It was a blue and gray book bag, wrapped carefully in two plastic garbage bags.

The worker immediately recognized that this wasn’t ordinary trash. The deliberate way it had been wrapped, the location it had been buried—this was evidence. He called the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office.

When investigators opened the bags, their hearts sank.

Inside was Asha’s backpack.

The bag contained several items: changes of clothing, family photos, a few personal belongings—the same items Iquilla had described as missing from Asha’s room. But there were also items that didn’t belong to Asha, items that would become central to the investigation:

A white t-shirt featuring the band New Kids on the Block—a band Asha had never expressed any interest in, a shirt her family didn’t recognize.

A children’s book, “McElligot’s Pool” by Dr. Seuss, checked out from the library at Fallston Elementary School—but not by Asha. The book had been borrowed by another student, and investigators frantically tried to trace who had it and how it ended up in Asha’s bag.

The fact that the backpack had been deliberately wrapped in plastic bags and buried suggested someone was trying to hide evidence. But why bury it twenty-six miles from where Asha was last seen? Why not destroy it completely?

Some investigators theorized that the perpetrator had been worried about DNA evidence and wanted to preserve the items while hiding them. Others thought the location itself might be significant—perhaps near where Asha was being held, or where her body was hidden.

Extensive searches of the area where the backpack was found turned up nothing else.

The New Kids on the Block Connection

The t-shirt became an obsession for investigators.

New Kids on the Block had been hugely popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but by 2000, the band had largely faded from mainstream popularity. This wasn’t a shirt a nine-year-old in 2000 would typically own or wear.

The FBI released photos of the shirt to the public in 2018, hoping someone would recognize it and come forward. Where had it come from? Who had owned it? How did it end up in Asha’s backpack?

The theory was that if they could trace the shirt, they might trace it back to whoever had taken Asha.

Hundreds of tips came in. People thought they recognized the shirt from their own childhood, from thrift stores, from hand-me-down boxes. Each lead was investigated. Each one led nowhere.

But the shirt represented something crucial: evidence that Asha had been with someone else. She hadn’t packed that shirt. She’d never owned it. Someone had given it to her, or put it in her bag, or it had somehow ended up with her belongings.

She had been with someone. And that someone was still out there.

The Cold Case Years

From 2001 to 2020, Asha’s case went cold.

Not forgotten—never forgotten—but without new leads, without breakthroughs, the active investigation slowed. The FBI kept the case 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 as a teenager, as a young adult.

But years passed without answers.

Harold and Iquilla aged. Their son O’Bryant grew up, graduated high school, started a life of his own—all while carrying the ghost of his missing sister. Asha’s bedroom remained untouched, a museum to a childhood cut short.

“People ask me all the time if I think she’s still alive,” Iquilla told a reporter on the twentieth anniversary of Asha’s disappearance. “After twenty years, most people would say no. The statistics say no. But I’m her mother. Until someone proves to me otherwise, I believe my baby is still out there somewhere. I believe she’s waiting to come home.”

It was that unshakeable faith that would ultimately help crack the case wide open.

The 2024-2025 Breakthroughs

In September 2024, twenty-four years after Asha disappeared, the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office made a stunning announcement:

DNA evidence had been found on items recovered with Asha’s backpack.

Advanced DNA technology—methods that didn’t exist in 2000—had been used to analyze the undershirt found in the backpack. The DNA belonged to a close blood relative of two persons of interest.

Two persons of interest. After decades of dead ends, investigators finally had suspects.

The sheriff’s office didn’t release names, citing the ongoing investigation. But the announcement sent shockwaves through Shelby and beyond. After all these years, after all the false starts and disappointments, there was finally real hope.

In February 2025, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Asha’s disappearance, Sheriff Alan Norman made another announcement:

The case was now being investigated as a homicide.

“It will always be our desire to bring Asha home and to bring the individuals to justice, because it’s going to happen,” Norman said in a statement. “We’re closer than we’ve ever been with the modern technology that we have.”

For twenty-five years, Iquilla and Harold had clung to hope that Asha was alive somewhere, perhaps with no memory of her real family, perhaps being held against her will but still breathing, still existing.

The homicide designation was devastating—but it was also, in a terrible way, a kind of answer. Closure after a quarter-century of not knowing.

The Questions That Remain

Even with these breakthroughs, so many questions remain unanswered:

Why did Asha leave her home that night? Was she groomed by someone she trusted? Did she think she was going on an adventure?

Who were the two persons of interest identified through DNA? Why had they never been identified before? How close were they to the Degree family?

Where is Asha? The homicide investigation suggests she’s no longer alive, but where is her body? Will her family finally be able to bring her home and lay her to rest?

And perhaps most haunting of all: Why did she run into the woods when someone tried to help her?

That image—of a nine-year-old girl in a storm, alone and frightened, running away from an adult who wanted to help—haunts everyone who has followed this case.

What had she been told that made her so afraid? Who had convinced her that other adults were the enemy? What promises had been made to her, what lies had been told?

The FBI’s Continued Search

Today, the FBI continues to treat Asha’s case as one of their priority investigations. Special Agent Janette Grover, who has worked the case for years, holds out hope that someone in the community knows something.

“In a case like this, someone always knows something,” Grover said in a 2022 video released by the FBI. “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 of those responsible for her disappearance. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children continues to feature her case prominently.

Detective Tim Adams from the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office, who has dedicated much of his career to finding answers for the Degree family, refuses to give up.

“Asha deserves justice,” Adams said. “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 Legacy of Shelby’s Sweetheart

Asha Degree’s disappearance changed more than just her family—it changed an entire community and influenced how law enforcement approaches cases of missing children.

The billboard on Highway 18 remains, updated periodically with age-progression photos. The annual Valentine’s Day walk continues, with hundreds of participants each year. Asha’s case is taught in criminal justice programs as an example of a perfect mystery—a disappearance with no clear motive, no obvious suspect, no simple explanation.

Her story has been featured on countless true crime podcasts, documentary series, and cold case television shows. Each retelling brings new attention, new tips, new possibilities.

But beyond the true crime fascination, Asha’s case serves as a reminder of something crucial: child predators are often people we know and trust. They don’t always fit the stereotype of the creepy stranger lurking in shadows. Sometimes they’re community members, family friends, people with access and opportunity.

Iquilla Degree, now in her mid-sixties, continues to speak publicly about her daughter’s case. She attends every press conference, participates in every media interview, walks every anniversary walk.

“I made a promise to Asha the day she disappeared,” Iquilla said at the 2025 walk. “I promised her I would never stop looking, never stop fighting, never give up hope. Twenty-five years later, I’m still keeping that promise. And I’ll keep keeping it until the day I die, or until she comes home. Whichever comes first.”

Harold stands beside her, as he has for twenty-five years, their hands clasped together, a united front against an unimaginable loss.

What Happens Next?

As of 2025, the investigation continues. The two persons of interest identified through DNA evidence are being actively investigated. Authorities are following leads that, they insist, are the most promising they’ve had in twenty-five years.

Will there be arrests? Will Asha’s body be recovered? Will the Degree family finally get the answers they’ve been seeking for a quarter of a century?

Only time will tell.

But one thing is certain: Shelby, North Carolina, will never forget the nine-year-old girl who walked into a storm on Valentine’s Day in 2000 and never came home.

Her face watches from that billboard on Highway 18, frozen in time, eternally nine years old, eternally waiting to be found.

And somewhere, someone knows what happened to her. Someone knows why she ran into those woods. Someone knows where Shelby’s Sweetheart is resting.

The FBI is waiting for that person to come forward. Iquilla and Harold are waiting for that person to give them peace.

And Asha—wherever she is—is waiting to finally come home.

EPILOGUE: A Message to Readers

If you have any information about the disappearance of Asha Jaquilla Degree, please contact:

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.