Asha Jaquilla Degree (AY-shə; born August 5, 1990)[1] went missing at the age of nine from Shelby, North Carolina, United States.
Several passing motorists saw her; when one turned around at a point 1.3 miles (2.1 km) from her home and began to approach her, she left the roadside and ran into a wooded area.
A year and a half later, her bookbag, still packed, was unearthed from a construction site along Highway 18 north of Shelby in Morganton.
While the circumstances of Degree's disappearance at first seemed to suggest she was running away from home, investigators could not find a clear reason as to why she might have done so; she was also younger than most children who choose to do so.
"[E]very 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.
[9] Iquilla said Asha handled this well; she was cautious, shy, and content mostly to stay within the limits her parents set.
"[10] Asha was in fourth grade at nearby Fallston Elementary School,[5] going into a three-day weekend on the second week of February 2000.
Apparently around this time, Asha got out of bed, taking a bookbag she had previously packed with several sets of clothes and personal items, and left the house.
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.
Iquilla went through the neighborhood calling Asha's name, which she said had awakened everyone by 7 a.m.[9] Friends, family, and neighbors canceled their plans for the day to assist police in searching the vicinity while the pastor of their church, along with other area clergymen, came to the Degrees' home to support them.
By day's end, all that had been found was a mitten, which Iquilla Degree said did not belong to her daughter, noting that no winter clothing had been taken from the house.
[8] On February 15, candy wrappers were found in a shed at a nearby business along the highway, near where Asha had been seen running into the woods.
On February 16, Iquilla realized that Asha's bedroom was missing her favorite clothing, including a pair of blue jeans with a red stripe.
[21] From Iquilla's account of what Asha had taken with her, investigators believed she had planned and prepared for this departure over the several days preceding her disappearance.
A month after Asha's disappearance, the Degree family appeared on The Montel Williams Show to call attention to the case.
"[25][26] On August 3, 2001, Asha's bookbag and other items were discovered during a construction project off Highway 18 in Burke County, near Morganton, about 26 miles (42 km) north of Shelby.
[34] 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.
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.
[7][4] Pictures of Asha, both real and those showing her as she might appear in later years created by investigators to help the search, still decorate the Degree house.
[4] Iquilla Degree lamented in a 2013 interview with Jet that her daughter's disappearance had not gotten as much media attention over the years as some subsequent cases of missing children because Asha was Black.
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.
[42] In October 2018, the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office 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.
[43][44] 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 knows where to find her.
In February 2021, Cleveland County Sheriff Alan Norman announced that Mellon's claims had led to another dead end.
[45] In September 2024, a search warrant was executed by the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office and the FBI in relation to the disappearance of Asha Degree.