S4 Ep50: Case Update: The Disappearance of Asha Degree
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Strangers, back in Season 2, I covered the truly baffling disappearance of 9-year-old Aisha Degree. Last year, in September, police announced some new information on the case. So today, I'm bringing you the original episode plus the latest updates.

What would make a perfectly happy child leave home in the middle of the night, away from a loving family and into a wide world of dangers? And what are those dangers to be met and to be toiled over by the loved ones left behind? The living mysteries of Runaways are hard to follow and even harder to simply fathom.

Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan. I'm a writer and an actor who has a nine-year-old child and so had a very hard time getting through the research for this episode. But here we are. I've procrastinated as long as I can and I have put on my grown-up pants and will venture forth with a clenched jaw and my shoulders up at my ears. It's going to take a lot of microdose gummies and deep breathing to get through this one.

On a cold mid-February night in 2000, a little girl woke up, got dressed, took her things, and walked out of her house, never to be seen or heard from again. The search for Asha Degree continues to this day. Asha Jaquilla Degree was born on August 5, 1990, to Harold and Aquila Degree.

The Degrees, including Asha's older brother O'Brien, lived in Shelby, North Carolina, just outside Charlotte. O'Brien was a year older than Asha, and the siblings shared a bedroom in the family's small apartment. In 2000, nine-year-old Asha was in fourth grade at Falston Elementary. She loved school.

By February of that year, she had only missed one day of school back in September. She was an honors student and a competitive athlete. It was Aisha's first year on the school's basketball team, and she was already a valuable member. As point guard, she was the highest scorer on the team. Her mother, Aquila, told local paper The Shelby Star that people couldn't believe it was Aisha's first year playing.

Aisha's mom said it was mostly Aisha's brother, O'Brien, who taught her the game. The two would practice with the hoop their dad had set up for them in the driveway. So by the time Aisha joined her school team, she already had plenty of practice. Her father, Harold, told the son, I was so proud when I saw her play. I didn't know she could dribble like that.

But Asha's parents made it clear that athletics didn't come before academics. My mom tried this with me when I started acting at nine years old. Clearly, it didn't work because here we are more than 30 years later and I'm still acting and still dumb as a box of old hair. But Asha was a really good student. In first grade, the school's teachers singled out an essay Asha wrote on Abraham Lincoln because it was so good.

For those of you who don't have children, just the fact that she wrote an essay at all in first grade is cause for celebration. My son is in fourth grade, and getting him to write one sentence should be filmed and shown in sex ed classes to prevent teen pregnancy. The amount and volume of the screaming that goes on in this house when he has to write anything.

In the second semester of her fourth grade year, Aisha's grades had slipped a little, and her parents told her she would have to bring them back up if she wanted to play softball in the spring. And that was motivation enough for Aisha. She got her grades back up by February.

Aisha watched very little TV, according to her mom, and they didn't have a computer, specifically because Aquila was worried about predators. In 2013, she told Jet Magazine, Every time you turned on the TV, there was some pedophile who had lured somebody's child away.

The Degrees were a religious family attending Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church twice a week. Aisha pushed back a little on going to the Wednesday evening services because it cut into her after-school playtime. But her mom said on Sunday mornings, Aisha was the first one dressed and ready to go to church.

The week of February 7th, 2000 started out like any other. Aisha rode the bus to and from school. I assume it was a school bus, but that information isn't available. And she and her brother did their homework until their parents got home from work. Both children were required by their parents to go straight home after school. On Friday the 11th, Aisha had basketball practice, at which her coach said she was... "...a usual fun-filled self. She had a good practice."

The next day, February 12th, Aisha had a game in which she fouled out and her team ended up losing. It was their first loss and the whole team took it pretty hard, especially Aisha who felt responsible for the loss because of her fouling. The team had a good cry together, but as her coach later told the star, Just a few minutes later, she was up smiling and joking and having a good time. I sat behind her for part of the boys game and tossed a towel over her head and joked with her.

And then, on February 13th, the Degree family went to church and then to an aunt's house for lunch. Aisha's grandmother said Aisha was particularly happy that Sunday because she'd gotten Valentine's Day candy. Aisha's mother agreed that Aisha was happy all day.

That night, Asha went to bed around 8 p.m. Sometime just before 9 p.m., a car accident nearby caused a power outage. When the power came back on around 12.30 a.m., Asha's father, Harold, checked in on the kids and found them both sleeping in their beds. Harold went to bed around 2.30 a.m. and later said he'd heard Asha get out of bed a little after 2.30 a.m. and assumed she was going to the bathroom, so he rolled over and went to sleep.

At 5.45 a.m. on Monday the 14th, Aquila ran a bath for the kids. In 2011, she told Jet Magazine, I went to the bathroom two feet away from the door to start the bathwater because they could not take a bath the night before since we had a power outage. I opened their bedroom door. My son, O'Brien, was under the covers as he usually slept. I called his name and he jumped up as usual. I realized that Asha was not in her bed.

I have to say, what stood out to me in this statement was that Aquila said the kids couldn't bathe the night before because of the power outage, but Aisha was in bed before the power outage happened.

It probably doesn't mean anything, and it's most likely that after years went by, details got fuzzy. As we all know by now, memories of traumatic events especially can get warped and changed. And Lord knows there have been plenty of times I haven't been able to get Monty to bathe for one reason or another. But it is sort of my job to point these kinds of things out. Anyway, Aquila continued, "'I looked for Saddlebrand's bed because sometimes she would get up at night and lay there.'

I asked him where she was and he didn't know. I checked the couch. I checked downstairs. I checked the kitchen. I checked every closet in the house. I went in my room and put on clothes and told my husband Harold that Asha was not in the house. I checked our cars. She was not there. My husband said maybe she was in my mother-in-law's home. She lives across the road. We called my sister-in-law's house. She was not there. That's when I went into panic mode.

Harold called 911 at 6.39 a.m., and according to dispatch transcripts, the call went like this.

911. Yes, I'd like to report a child missing. From where? From my house. What's your name? Harold Degree. What's the child's name? Asia Degree. What's her full name? Asia Jaquilla Degree. How old is she? Uh, nine. White or black? Black. When did you last see her, Harold? Last time I went to bed, she was in the bed. We got up this morning, called her to get her to go to school, and she wasn't in there. And her book bag's missing in her pocketbook.

At this point in the transcript, a note says that crying can continue to be heard in the background. So you don't know if she got dressed or if she still got on her bedclothes or what? We don't know. Was the door open or anything? No. Her brother sleeps in there with her. And when he was in there, he didn't hear when she got up.

In other words, we have no idea what the hell happened to our kid. Help, please. I can't even imagine having this conversation and having to try to explain the circumstances of my child's recent disappearance. But there you have it.

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Aquila told Jet Magazine that the first police officers arrived at 6.40 a.m. and that two to three minutes after that, the sheriff and more officers arrived, and that by 7 a.m., every cop in the county was at the Degrees home. By the time the local news outlets arrived, the whole neighborhood had been awoken by the family screaming Aisha's name up and down the streets.

The next day, February 15th, the Shelby Star reported, quote, more than 80 police and volunteers held a manhunt throughout the day Monday through fields and forests and neighborhoods for Asha Degree, end quote.

The only information anyone seemed to have about Asha's disappearance was that there appeared to be no forced entry into the apartment. Asha had apparently gotten dressed, or at least had put on pants and sneakers, as those were the only items of her clothing that seemed to be missing. She picked up her Tweety Bird pocketbook and her school backpack and left her coat, and then left out of one of two doors, seemingly of her own free will, and locked whichever door she used behind her.

The initial assumption was that Asha had run away. The year before, in 1999, there had been 6,361 children reported missing in North Carolina. Almost all of them were runaways, and not a single one of them had been abducted by a stranger.

But Aisha, by all accounts, was a happy kid. Her parents may have been a little more strict than most, but there was no indication by anyone in Aisha's life that she was experiencing anything that might have prompted her to run away.

I know that a lot of kids fantasize about running away sometimes. I used to. Something minor happens, like you're told to clean your room or you have to eat your broccoli, and off you go in your head hopping onto moving train cars with a little bandana with your stuff in it tied to a stick.

My best friend and I were at the park one day back in the 80s when parenting was a lot different than it is now. We were basically free to roam the entire park by ourselves, which was massive and I cannot imagine a universe in which I would let my son do that, even though, statistically speaking, I know he would be fine. But anyway, we were wandering around the park and we decided, spur of the moment, to run away and we just took off.

We walked farther through that park that day than I ever had before. I saw parts of that park I had never seen before or since. But at some point we realized we were hungry and SNL was on that night, followed by Showtime and the Apollo and then the Late Late movie. Also, we had a book report due on Monday. By the time we got back to the field where we'd left her parents, they hadn't even noticed we'd gone.

My point is, unless there are clear problems, most kids don't actually follow through on those fantasies. And if they do, they certainly don't do it in the middle of the night in winter with no coat on. After the news reports came out on Monday the 14th, two motorists came forward to say they'd seen a little girl walking alone along Highway 18 just north of the intersection of Highway 180 around 4 a.m. the night before. The descriptions they gave matched Asha.

One of the motorists thought it was strange that a little kid should be out walking alone along a highway at that time of night because, duh, and he turned his car around.

He said he circled three times and then she apparently ran off into the woods. Now look, I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you see something like this, please don't just drive away or circle suspiciously like a creep and then do nothing. If I saw a car keep turning around to look at me, I'd run off too. There is indeed no reason for a child of that age to be out at that time of day alone. Anywhere.

My God. The FBI and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation were brought on to assist in the search and set up a checkpoint.

Of course, if she'd been taken in a car, Asha would have been long past a checkpoint by then. By Wednesday, authorities had pretty much decided she had run away, mostly because she had clearly left the house of her own accord. But no one could figure out why in the world this happy little girl with a loving family would just up and leave in the middle of the night. Sheriff Dan Crawford told the Star...

She comes from a loving family with excellent parents who care deeply for her and encourage her to succeed. A real, true, painful mystery is what it is.

The only sliver of a possibility of an explanation lay between the pages of a book Aisha had been reading at school with her class. The book, The Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleischman, was about a prince and a common boy whose job it is to take the punishment whenever the prince misbehaves, who both decide to run away. The prince because he's bored, and the common boy because, you know, of all the whipping.

According to the Shelby Star, Asha's teacher Susan Beam confirmed that this was the book her class had been reading, but somewhat mysteriously apparently, quote, wouldn't give any other details about the book, end quote. Uh, Susan, that's not a good look. Like, just tell the nice newspaper man what happens in the book. The nice newspaper man went ahead and got the answers himself and found these passages in the book.

Jemmy pointed to the window. It's night out, he protested. The best time, replied the prince. But ain't you afraid of the dark? Everyone knows that. You won't even sleep without a lit candle. Lies. Anyway, the moon's up, good and bright. And this. The great sewers, that's the place to hide. And this. Don't leave footprints in the mud, he warned.

So it held some tips and tricks for running away without getting caught. Aisha's family wondered if maybe the book inspired Aisha to run away. But of course, that didn't answer the question as to why she would have run away. Aisha's teacher Susan told the star, "Aisha's a happy child, a great student who comes from a great family. We're all puzzled.

Everyone was truly baffled. Sheriff Crawford, with 25 years of experience with investigations, the FBI and SBI, local law enforcement and detectives from two different counties, were absolutely stumped. Meanwhile, the possibility that she was abducted was also quite real. The only silver lining there, I suppose, is that perhaps whoever took her might slip up at some point and reveal themselves.

And then, on Thursday, the 17th of February, 2000, police discovered a pencil, a green marker, and a Mickey Mouse hair bow that belonged to Asha inside a tool shed not more than 100 yards from where she'd last been seen by the motorist along Highway 18.

Oddly, though, the woman who had found the items, the woman who shed the items were found in, Debbie Turner, found those items on the morning of the 15th, just hours after Asha had presumably walked out of the house. But she didn't think to alert anyone until the 17th when police came by asking to search her property for any signs of Asha. She told the Shelby Star...

She also said she'd found a wallet-sized photo of a little girl near the other items. That photo she apparently took inside, leaving the rest of the things lying there in the barn.

The photo wasn't of Aisha, though, and no one knew who she was. Not Aisha's family or anyone at Aisha's school. Whether they posted the photo on the local news, I don't know, but that seems like a common sense thing to do. Maybe try to figure out who the girl in the picture was? Maybe she was missing too? And not for nothing, but why did this lady keep the picture of the little girl but not the other items?

Plus, the only way we know that she found them in the shed near the other items is because she told us she did. Knowing my luck, she's still alive and listening to this and will be sending me a very angry DM any minute now. I guess police didn't find this as fishy as I do because that is Debbie Turner's only appearance in this whole story.

The only thing these items served to do was confirm the motorist's claim that she had run off toward the woods. But it didn't bring anyone closer to finding Aisha. And where she went from the shed was anyone's guess. On February 20th, after a week of extensive searches by foot and by air that totaled more than 9,000 collective hours, the search was called off.

Several square miles had been searched three or four times with nothing found. But law enforcement was still chasing down any lead that came their way. More than 200 calls had come in with tips, and according to Sheriff Crawford, every single one had been followed up on. And Asha's photo began circulating nationally because by then, if she had been abducted, she could have been anywhere.

Sheriff Crawford believed something scared her off the road, possibly the motorist who was just circling around without getting out to see if he could help her, and she ran off to hide or tried to get back home and possibly got turned around. But then, if she wasn't abducted, they should have found more signs of her by then. On her own, she couldn't have gotten very far.

As the days rolled by with no new information about Aisha, her family did what they could to keep her name in the news and get national attention. By spring of 2000, they appeared on the Montel Williams show, and Aisha was featured on America's Most Wanted. Oprah Winfrey even featured Aisha's picture and her information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on her show.

With no sign of forced entry and no signs of Aisha anywhere to be found, inevitably rumors began to spread that her parents had something to do with her disappearance. Aquila and Harold both passed polygraph tests about a month after Aisha went missing. It's interesting they weren't given the test sooner. Then again, I suppose any parent who just lost a child wouldn't be in any condition to take a polygraph for a while. Their blood pressure would be through the roof.

The only reason her family could come up with for what would have prompted Aisha to run off was that she'd been so upset about fouling out in the last three minutes of her basketball game on Friday. Apparently, even though she'd bounced back pretty quickly right after the game, she couldn't let it go. She talked about it all weekend and complained that the refs had cheated.

But that, I'm sure they knew, was a pretty thin theory. It's not like anyone ever said Aisha was one to blow things out of proportion. But even after the national attention from the Montel Williams show, America's Most Wanted, and Oprah, not a single credible clue came in. And then in August 2001, a year and a half after Aisha disappeared, about 25 miles south of where she'd last been spotted along Highway 18...

A man named Terry Fleming was bulldozing some land in preparation for a new building when he unearthed a black and beige book bag inside a plastic bag. Apparently, law enforcement asked him not to share any more details about what else he found. But he did say he saw a name and phone number written on the inside of the backpack. He wrote the information down and brought it to his wife, who instantly recognized the name. Asha Degree.

Apparently, the FBI would not tell Asha's family what else was discovered inside the book bag or the plastic bag it was in. Why? I have no idea. In November of 2004, an inmate at a local jail led investigators to a site about six miles from Asha's home where he said her remains would be found. But the remains turned out to be animal remains. Whether or not the inmate knew they would only find animal bones where he sent them, I don't know.

And then, in January 2014, law enforcement believed they had a solid lead when a man named Donald Preston Ferguson was arrested in South Carolina. He was charged with the sexual assault and murder of a seven-year-old girl named Shonda S. Poole, who was found dead behind her school in 1990. It was completely plausible that Ferguson could have had something to do with Asha's disappearance. But that lead also led nowhere.

Dan Crawford, who by then was the former sheriff, tragically died by suicide a year and a half later. His colleagues say Asha's case was never far from his thoughts, even 15 years later.

On May 25th, 2016, the FBI and the sheriff's office from the county where Asha had disappeared asked for information on a vehicle Asha may have been seen getting into on Highway 18 the night she went missing. At this, everyone was like, what in the literal fuck are you talking about? And they were like, uh, so this has been in the case file the whole time, but it took a fresh set of eyes to see it.

And it's not like the vehicle was some generic Honda Civic. According to the case file, it was, quote, Are you kidding me? How could this information have not been shared with the public immediately? Someone knew who the fuck that car belonged to. Oh, my good golly.

About a year after that bombshell was dropped, the FBI casually released this nugget. Duh. Fuck.

And then in 2018, a full 17 years after Terry Fleming found Asha's backpack along with other secret items he, for some reason, wasn't allowed to talk about inside a plastic bag, investigators on the case were like, hmm, maybe we should let people know what was in the backpack. Maybe that might, I don't know, spark something? You think? According to the FBI report,

Inside was a concert T-shirt featuring boy band New Kids on the Block and a children's book, McElligot's Pool, by Dr. Seuss. Neither belonged to Asha, though the book was from the library at Asha's school, Falston Elementary. The Cleveland County Sheriff's Office released a Facebook video asking anyone who had the Dr. Seuss book, McElligot's Pool, and lost track of it to call the sheriff's office.

The book was checked out from Falston Middle School Library around early 2000 when Asha attended the school. Library records do not go back that far, so the Sheriff's Office needs the public's help. Authorities are also looking for information about a New Kids on the Block concert t-shirt. If you had a t-shirt like this one or know someone who did, please call the Sheriff's Office. I mean, everyone had an NKOTB t-shirt at one point or another.

But 2000 was a little past their freshness date. It's not unreasonable that like that very distinct car, if someone had seen the shirt way back in 2001, they might have been like, oh yeah, my cousin Bob has a t-shirt just like that one.

Two more years went by without any credible leads, and then in November 2020, a convicted sex offender serving time in the same county where Asha lived sent a letter to the Shelby Star saying he knew what happened to Asha and where her body could be found. But the information given to investigators by two inmates came third or fourth hand and once again led nowhere.

To this day, no one knows why Asha walked out of her house that night or where she ended up. Some theorize that she may have sleepwalked out and by the time she woke up was so disoriented that she couldn't get back home. But there were no reports of her ever sleepwalking before, and one would think the cold night air would have woken her up immediately.

It also seems unlikely that someone who's sleepwalking would dress, grab their stuff on the way out, and lock the door. And don't forget, Aisha shared a room with her brother. How did she manage to get dressed and get her things without waking him?

In my humble opinion, as a podcaster who has sadly researched many stories like this one, it's most likely Aisha was abducted by a terrible person who saw an opportunity when they spotted a child alone on the highway in the middle of the night.

it's also likely she's no longer alive. If she is, she almost definitely doesn't go by Aisha anymore, and it's possible she doesn't really remember much of her life before leaving her home in Shelby, North Carolina. Aisha's family holds a march every year on Valentine's Day to keep Aisha's name in the community's mind. They even arranged for a billboard in town to display information about her and how to report information on the case.

Aisha's mother, Aquila, told Jet Magazine in 2013 that the news coverage of Aisha's disappearance was local only, whereas white girls tend to get national attention when they go missing. Maybe if Aisha's disappearance had gotten more coverage, someone somewhere would have seen her and been able to help. Statistically, while missing children are disproportionately black, they are also disproportionately undercovered in the media as opposed to white children.

Aisha's parents have never given up hope. As far as I know, they still live in the same apartment. Aquila told Jet Magazine that she fully expected Aisha to walk back through their front door any day. She said, We're hoping and we're praying that she's had a halfway decent life, even though we didn't get to raise her. She was nine years old, so we missed everything, but I don't care. If she walked in the door right now, I wouldn't care what I missed. All I want to do is see her.

In February of this year, 2022, the FBI released an episode of its podcast Inside the FBI dedicated to this case. Detective Tim Adams, who has taken over Asha's case, said, I believe somebody has those answers that can help us. And I believe there's somebody out there that can tell us. We've appealed to the public many times and we're doing it again on the 22nd anniversary of her being missing. I think it's critical now that people need to come forward if they have something.

Like so many of these cases, at this point, the only hope seems to be that someone will either suddenly grow a conscience and come forward, or someone will need to offload some guilt on their deathbed. For Aisha's parents' sake, let's hope that happens sooner rather than later, so they can possibly finally close this chapter and get some peace.

Anyone with information in the Cleveland County, North Carolina area specifically can call the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office at 704-484-4822 and anyone elsewhere can call the FBI at 704-672-6100.

That is where Asha's case sat until September of last year, when search warrants were executed on the property of the Dedman family based on new DNA evidence, which, of course, was not new, but had indeed been sitting in Asha's file for over two decades. The Dedman family consists of father Roy Dedman, daughters Lizzie Dedman-Foster, Sarah Dedman-Capel, Annalie Dedman-Ramirez, and Roy's ex-wife and the girl's mother, Connie Dedman.

The DNA evidence linked the Deadmans' youngest daughter, Anna Lee, who was 13 at the time of Asha's disappearance, and a man named Russell Underhill to Asha's belongings found inside her backpack in 2001. Underhill was a patient at some of the nursing homes run by the Deadman family.

In September, while the Dedmans' property was being searched, a former employee stated that Roy Dedman, the family's father, would often send Lizzie, using an unreliable car, to drive patients to Broughton Hospital in Morgantown. Highway 18 would have been the most logical route to take. The search produced a green 1964 AMC Rambler with rust around the wheel wells.

After that search, a friend of the Deadman sisters, Lizzie and Sarah, Thad Melantine, told detectives that he remembered being at a house party with Lizzie and Sarah in the mid-2000s. Lizzie was drunk and crying and was saying she killed Asha. Sarah, noticeably upset, then grabbed Lizzie by the head and told her to shut the fuck up. When given a polygraph, Thad passed, for whatever that's worth.

Lizzie refused to take a polygraph. It was Thad's information that provided the support for new warrants issued in February for the Deadmans' phones. Lizzie was asked again to take a polygraph, this time agreeing and failing. When asked if she was concealing information about Asha's disappearance, Lizzie's polygraph showed deception.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think polygraph tests are utter horseshit, and most respectable scientists agree. I feel instantly guilty whenever I see a cop. I can't imagine what my heart rate would show if I were asked to take a polygraph, even if I were 100% innocent.

That said, one would think that 25 years after an incident, if one were actually innocent, it would be relatively easy to prove that in a polygraph. Then again, what do I know? That's a trick question. Anyway, the search of the Deadman's phone certainly hasn't helped the Deadman's case for innocence. Text messages, primarily between Lizzie and her sisters, indicate that they're all extremely worried and seem to have good reason to be.

The texts reveal concern over who the New Kids on the Block t-shirt belonged to, as well as new theories as to what might have happened to Aisha.

On September 12th of 2024, Lizzie texted Sarah that their father's lawyer, David Teddy, told her the theory was that it was an accident and that she or someone covered it up. To which Sarah replied, quote, no, why would it be you? End quote. Lizzie didn't seem to have an answer to that, though if I had to guess from my armchair, it might have been the incriminating statements Lizzie made at the party a few years after Asha disappeared.

That or the allegation that she would shuttle patients to and from the hospital, likely along Route 18. The text messages also show conversations between Lizzie and her ex-husband Kelly Foster in which Lizzie worries the whole thing can only get worse. Not usually something one says when one has nothing to worry about.

Lizzie also told Kelly she feels, quote, so, so horrible. IDK what to do. I caused this, end quote. To which Kelly replied that she didn't. Lizzie also asked her sister Sarah if everyone was mad at her. A nine-year-old girl went missing in the middle of the night 25 years ago. Her parents have never given up hope that she might still be alive. The evidence is not looking good for you and you're worried that people are mad at you?

For what it's worth, Sarah replied that this was not Lizzie's fault. The rest of that exchange goes like this. The first voice you'll hear is Ellen Marsh playing Lizzie, and the second is me playing Sarah. I'm just so anxious about, like, what's going on behind the scenes. Like, what are they doing now? What's going to happen to me since I wouldn't talk to them? I'm afraid it's going to get worse.

Well, he told me it's going to. I know, girl. I'm a disaster. I think if they come at you again, you just go and be compliant. That's what I'm planning on doing. I think so, too. Honestly, I mean, I want to do what Dad says, but damn. And maybe we should have let you do what you originally wanted to do. IDK. I really don't know. Right. You don't want something we do or say to impact him, but we also can't be living like this either.

I mean, I told him I'm not going to do that. Right. Oh, you did? What did he say? It's not, like, worth our mental health. Right. He was just like, I will call Teddy. We can go get a polygraph with the honest people. Oh. Okay. I really just don't have it in me to go through what you have been through. It's been hell. Just hearing about your situation has made me a disaster. Just hearing about it. Oh, I'm sorry. I just can't even imagine going through that.

But y'all have dealt with other stuff that I haven't. I suppose we should hand it to these women for not explicitly saying anything incriminating in these exchanges. But what they are saying doesn't look great. And it certainly seems to imply that at the very least, Lizzie, Sarah, and their father, Roy, know what happened to Asha.

As former FBI agent M. Quinton Williams told local news outlet WCNC, quote, End quote. Same girl. Roy Dedman's lawyer, David Terry, denies that the family is in any way involved or knows anything.

On the 13th of September, 2024, in a press conference, Teddy suggested that Russell Underhill is the one to blame for what happened to Asha. But given what Lizzie is saying, that doesn't seem to be the case. And this is where the case stands now. The investigation is ongoing. So here's what I think might have happened.

I think one or more of the Dedman sisters were out driving that green 1964 AMC Rambler on February 14, 2000, either without a license or on a very new license, given how young the three girls were at the time. I think whoever was driving that car hit Asha on Highway 18, either by accident or not.

I think they then drove home and told their father, Roy, what happened, and he advised them to go get Asha's body and bring it back, at which point they somehow disposed of her and went on with their lives.

That's this layperson's opinion. I could be wrong. This could all just be a weird coincidence. It could have been a totally different late model green car that looked like an AMC Rambler with rust around the wheel wells that someone said they saw Asha getting into on Highway 18 that night.

It could have not been Asha that mysterious witness saw get into that totally different car. It could have been a complete fluke that the New Kids on the Block t-shirt with Annalise DNA on it ended up in Asha's backpack. Lizzie might have been talking about a totally different girl named Asha that she said she killed. Or Thad might have been lying when he said he saw her crying about it at the party. And I could win the lottery.

So it seems we may be close to some kind of answer about what happened to Aisha that night. Her parents can finally move on from a life of not knowing. I suppose it's cold comfort, but it has to be some kind of comfort. Whatever the answer is, we'll likely never know what prompted Aisha to leave her happy home in the middle of the night, underdressed for the weather. As far as anyone knows, she had never crossed paths with the Deadmans before, so I can't imagine they somehow lured her out.

Some theorized that maybe she was pen pals with the little girl whose photo was found in her backpack, and maybe she was going to visit her or had somehow been prompted by a letter from her to leave that night. But that girl was never identified. As far as anyone knows, she didn't have a pen pal, and if she did, it wasn't that little girl. Who was that girl? Could it be she thought she was going to get in trouble for having a school library book that she didn't check out?

No one has ever described Aisha's family as being abusive or particularly punitive, so it's hard to believe she would have been so scared about the consequences of having a library book that wasn't hers that she would run away in the middle of the night. Whatever it was that drove a seemingly happy girl from her loving home in the middle of the night is a mystery. What happened to her next may soon no longer be. ♪

Next time on Strange and Unexplained. In a bonus episode later this week, I'm bringing you an interview I did with writer and podcaster Brandon Morgan. You might know Brandon from one of his many podcasts, including X Marks the Spot and The Devil Inside. Join us for a fun conversation about podcasting and true crime.

Strange and Unexplained is a production of Three Goose Entertainment with help from Grab Bag Collab. This update was written by me, Daisy Egan, with research by Keely Hise. Our voice actor for the update was Ellen Marsh. Sound design and engineering by Jeff Devine. Music by Epidemic and Blue Dot Sessions. The original episode was written by me with research by Jess McKillop. It was produced by Becca DiGregorio and engineered by Jennifer Swatek.

The voice actors in the original episode were Ryan Garcia, Marquise Valson, and Andrea Jones Sojola. If you have an idea for an episode, head to our website, strangeandunexplainedpod.com, and fill out the contact form. I will write back.

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