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Speaker 1: thanks Thinking Sideways. I don't I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 1: You never know stories of things we simply don't know
Speaker 1: the answer too. Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways the podcast I Am Devin joined per Hush
Speaker 1: by Joe and Steve. Today we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: a mystery. Uh. This mystery was suggested by Shannon and
Speaker 1: Savvy Ann Bury and like probably body else in this
Speaker 1: entire world. Uh, and we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: disappearance of Asia Degree. Yeah. I've looked into this one.
Speaker 1: It's been rather intriguing. Yeah, it's pretty good. I never
Speaker 1: read on this one a couple of times as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do a quick overview first and then you know,
Speaker 1: hop into everything. That quick overview is in the early
Speaker 1: morning of Valentine's Day two thousand in the year two thousand, nine,
Speaker 1: year old Asia Degree left her house with a packed bag,
Speaker 1: apparently totally of her own volition and by early morning,
Speaker 1: we're talking like three or four am. Yeah, like very
Speaker 1: early morning when it's still dark out. By all reports,
Speaker 1: her home life was stable, it was safe, it was
Speaker 1: good and suffolks, they were close. She had no history
Speaker 1: of running away before. And spoiler alert, a lot of
Speaker 1: people think she was almost brainwashed into leaving her house.
Speaker 1: Chatter you see on the internet. It is. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and break that down a little bit.
Speaker 1: Let's dig deeper into the time. One first work for
Speaker 1: you guys. Sure absolutely. Asia lived in Selby, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: with her parents and her brother, who was older than her.
Speaker 1: The entire time I was reading it, for some reason,
Speaker 1: I kept thinking it was her younger brother. But he's
Speaker 1: older than her. Yeah, he's what a year year and
Speaker 1: a half old? I don't think it's a year and
Speaker 1: a half. He was ten when she disappeared. She was nine,
Speaker 1: almost ten, So I think it's really like rapid, Yeah,
Speaker 1: nine or ten months maybe, But as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, it's never explicitly listed. So just so you know,
Speaker 1: but he is older than her. Asha and her brother
Speaker 1: were what are what's called latch key kids. Um, if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with that term. Basically just means that
Speaker 1: both of their parents had jobs, and so they would
Speaker 1: come and let themselves in and take care of themselves
Speaker 1: for a couple hours after school. Yeah they were old enough.
Speaker 1: I mean they were Yeah, I did at that age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal. I mean, latch key has
Speaker 1: got kind of a negative, negative connotation, But then I
Speaker 1: really I think it's okay. I mean, my boyfriend was
Speaker 1: a lash key kid when he was younger, and he
Speaker 1: turned out fine. And I think most kids turn out fine.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be too worried about. I mean, actually, the
Speaker 1: only last few kids that don't turn out fine are
Speaker 1: the ones that come home and they unlashed the door
Speaker 1: and there's like a freaking murder, a kidnapper waiting for them.
Speaker 1: I mean, those guys, they become like mysteries for us.
Speaker 1: But this isn't one of those mysteries. Actually, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds like Asha's parents did shelter her and her brother,
Speaker 1: whose name is O'Bryant, from the outside world a little bit.
Speaker 1: I mean nine and ten, that's still pretty young, and
Speaker 1: they didn't have a computer at home, for instance, and
Speaker 1: they weren't really allowed to watch the news or TV
Speaker 1: very much because as Asha's mother, whose name is Aquila,
Speaker 1: she said, you know, every time you turn on the TV,
Speaker 1: it's just another like kid getting abducted or something like that.
Speaker 1: And she had heard all of the news about kids
Speaker 1: meeting predators online, and she was she was very protective.
Speaker 1: Kind of ironic in a sad way, it is, but
Speaker 1: she also really trusted her kids. And it seems like
Speaker 1: for good reason to really kind of respect the rules
Speaker 1: that she and her husband, Harold had put into place.
Speaker 1: Seemed like good kids. It seemed like you're really good kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they followed the rules, they did well. They don't seem
Speaker 1: to be troublemakers in any way, shape or form totally. Um,
Speaker 1: the Degrees were social however, they attended school functions, they
Speaker 1: attended church and church functions. Um, they had a really
Speaker 1: close knit extended family. In fact, Um, wasn't some of
Speaker 1: these dad living across the street's mom and his sister
Speaker 1: lived across the street. Yeah, sorry, you know, it was
Speaker 1: a it was a close knit community, I think, And um,
Speaker 1: I don't really I guess. I don't want to say this,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to say it anyway. Oftentimes that is
Speaker 1: not the kind of community that kids who are running
Speaker 1: away from home come from. Usually they come from more
Speaker 1: broken communities and home usually. Yeah, and where they lived
Speaker 1: was a really kind of a was it. It was
Speaker 1: a rural area. But they lived in a little three
Speaker 1: year six block section, a little a little tiny subdivision.
Speaker 1: You know, the houses, ranch houses on large lots. It
Speaker 1: seem like, yeah, we should say the Degrees still live
Speaker 1: in the house they do that they were living in
Speaker 1: in two thousands. They've they've stayed there the entire time,
Speaker 1: so that's it's not a past tense for them. They
Speaker 1: continue to live there. Asia and O'Brien, you know, both
Speaker 1: the kids. They were both active. They both played in
Speaker 1: youth basketball and um, I think she played softball as well.
Speaker 1: Apparently she was a really good athlete. She seemed to
Speaker 1: really enjoy it, and she was really good at it,
Speaker 1: at least by our reports. However, she was shy, but
Speaker 1: to remember several times she's afraid of dogs and of
Speaker 1: the dark, which isn't you know, Yeah, it's not that
Speaker 1: unusual at all. It's still I'm scared of certain kinds
Speaker 1: of dark. And I'm twenty is older than her, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm being afraid of the dark. Definitely not
Speaker 1: so much for me. Dogs. No, dogs are always my buddies. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, my brother was afraid of dogs when we
Speaker 1: were growing up, and he, I mean one of our
Speaker 1: neighbors dogs nipped at him once and he thought, oh god,
Speaker 1: it attacked me and it's awful. So he kind of
Speaker 1: had that built in fear of dogs. But overall, I
Speaker 1: think a show was she was well behaved, she seemed
Speaker 1: to really respect the boundaries that her parents were setting
Speaker 1: for her, and she was pretty shy and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So um, that's kind of the background of this one
Speaker 1: thing I will just mentioned briefly because you'll see it
Speaker 1: mentioned on the internet before we really dive into the
Speaker 1: actual timeline up events leading up to her disappearance. Asha
Speaker 1: was in fourth grade and she had recently finished reading
Speaker 1: a book called The Whipping Boy that sounds kind of kinky.
Speaker 1: It's definitely not that kind of books. Okay, it's a
Speaker 1: children's novel actually, that is, it's based about a spoiled
Speaker 1: prince that can't be punished for his actions question Mark.
Speaker 1: So his parents, who are the King and Queen. I
Speaker 1: don't know why they can't punish him. But okay, by
Speaker 1: an orphan boy named Jemmy. I can answer that question.
Speaker 1: Why why they can't punish him? Why? Because kings are
Speaker 1: considered in certain at certain times in history. The king
Speaker 1: was essentially God and could not could do no wrong
Speaker 1: because God could do no wrong. So therefore you couldn't
Speaker 1: punish the God. So that's where the idea of the
Speaker 1: whipping boy came from. Was you wanted to make their
Speaker 1: friends so they felt bad that their friend was getting beat.
Speaker 1: It didn't really work, but that's where it came from.
Speaker 1: I guess that's why they wouldn't do it for me.
Speaker 1: This is a bit of a diversion, but for me, like,
Speaker 1: you don't have to make it public that you're spanking
Speaker 1: your child, but if they're spoiled little brat, maybe like, well,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, most of the kings and queens weren't
Speaker 1: doing the punishing themselves of the disciplination. Back to the
Speaker 1: whipping boy. The King and queen by an orphan boy
Speaker 1: named Jemmy. Jimmy, Jemmy Jemmy, and he's meant to take
Speaker 1: the punishment for the spoiled prince. Yeah, I understand the
Speaker 1: concept there. Yeah, the prince again. You know, Steve's right
Speaker 1: on the money there. The concept was that the prince
Speaker 1: and the boy would become friends, and he would feel
Speaker 1: really bad because he was getting the boy punished, so
Speaker 1: he would stop being bad. But in the meantime he
Speaker 1: had a good old time. Right, it doesn't matter, uh,
Speaker 1: It turns out in this book, the prince runs away
Speaker 1: and demands that Jimmy come with him as his servant
Speaker 1: because princess don't do anything. There's a long, long story here. Basically,
Speaker 1: they learn a lot of things. They're joined by a
Speaker 1: girl for a little while and a dancing bear I
Speaker 1: think um. But they eventually return home safe from their adventures,
Speaker 1: having learned lessons and becoming best friends, and the prince
Speaker 1: is no longer spoiled, and it's awesome the end, right,
Speaker 1: except when he comes back home when he finds out
Speaker 1: is that after he disappeared, all the servants, afraid of
Speaker 1: the king's wrath, ran out and finally found themselves a
Speaker 1: peasant boy who was a double for him, and they
Speaker 1: replaced him. The King and Queen, having hardly ever seen
Speaker 1: their son, were totally fooled. It's a different And then
Speaker 1: when he returned with his friends like, hey, I've learned
Speaker 1: so much life adventures. And the servants went, uh, kid,
Speaker 1: you're kind of superfluous right now, and they quietly liquidated
Speaker 1: the prince and uh and yeah, and his friend Jimmy,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I guess that the lesson I
Speaker 1: learned from that book is don't bother learning any life
Speaker 1: lessons because you'll probably be killed anyway. Yeah, taway, Oh, anyway,
Speaker 1: did you want to book? Oh? Many times. I don't
Speaker 1: think the book has a whole lot to actually do
Speaker 1: with this story, but it plays in with the theories,
Speaker 1: and you will see it time and time again on
Speaker 1: almost every description of this story. So I feel like
Speaker 1: it's worth bringing up. I feel that it's a coincidence too,
Speaker 1: and that she didn't run away, but I'm pre judging it.
Speaker 1: Of course I shouldn't do that. So let's let's talk timeline.
Speaker 1: I will say this is this is how you will
Speaker 1: see it online. It turns out from some research that
Speaker 1: maybe this is not actually accurate. But in two thousand,
Speaker 1: apparently President's Day and Valentine's Day were just a few
Speaker 1: days apart. So President's Day was the Friday before Valentine's Day,
Speaker 1: which was on Monday that year, which I think actually
Speaker 1: turns out, it turns out that's not true necessarily President's
Speaker 1: Day two thousand so not so. Yeah. I talked to
Speaker 1: a local reporter about why the kids had the day off,
Speaker 1: and she wasn't really sure day. Yeah, that she was
Speaker 1: sick of. It was probably like a teacher's work day
Speaker 1: or in service day or something like that, but she
Speaker 1: wasn't totally sure, but she but it wasn't President's Day.
Speaker 1: But the kids did have the day off, That's that's
Speaker 1: the bottom line. But Asia and O'Brien had, so they
Speaker 1: had the Friday off. But you know, obviously their parents
Speaker 1: did not, So their parents were at work on Friday,
Speaker 1: so they spent the day at their aunt's house. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if the rules were different. I've never seen
Speaker 1: any elaboration on their time at the aunt's house or
Speaker 1: even like who that is related to or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but apparently spent the day there, And I don't know
Speaker 1: if the rules were different, For instance, if they had
Speaker 1: access to a computer there they were allowed to watch
Speaker 1: a different kind of TV. The difference between the rules
Speaker 1: at home and at Grandma and Graham. Yeah, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that was true. Growing up I have I have five
Speaker 1: aunts and uncles, um, and so whenever we would go visit,
Speaker 1: the rules were different at all the different houses, and
Speaker 1: so we got to, you know, play by the new rules.
Speaker 1: So it may or may not be important to know
Speaker 1: there's never been anything on it, but there's never been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think I would feel better about the case
Speaker 1: if I knew what the situation was there. But again, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's not that it is. I don't think
Speaker 1: there was enough of an influencer to actually cause her
Speaker 1: to suddenly remarkably change your behavior or anything like that. No,
Speaker 1: but we'll we'll talk more about this, I guess in
Speaker 1: the theories, a little bit after they had spent the
Speaker 1: entire day at the aunt's house, Asia and O'Brien went
Speaker 1: directly to basketball practice at school. So I guess it
Speaker 1: probably was an in service day because they were still
Speaker 1: doing basketball practice and stuff. If it had been a holiday,
Speaker 1: they probably would have canceled basketball practice kind of like
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I don't know what the
Speaker 1: pe wee leagues are like in every area, but I
Speaker 1: do know some places where coaches want to have practice
Speaker 1: no matter what. It's important stuff but it was really important.
Speaker 1: But it was taking place at school, and in my memory,
Speaker 1: at least in Portland, if the school was closed for
Speaker 1: President's Day, no one was coming in. There was no
Speaker 1: reason to unlock the school, so they would have to
Speaker 1: have somebody come in special in the whole gym up
Speaker 1: and everything. Like with the school I had, the gym
Speaker 1: was it wasn't the only way to get in the
Speaker 1: gymnasium was through the school. The gym had its own
Speaker 1: set of entrances and exits for the gym as well,
Speaker 1: you know, like where I went. But I mean there's
Speaker 1: still school because then you have access to the whole school. Probably,
Speaker 1: you know, in small towns, I'm sure it's a little
Speaker 1: more relaxed. That's probably true. Yeah, although it Selby a
Speaker 1: suburb kind of Shelby, Sorry, Shelby is kind of a
Speaker 1: suburb of Charlotte, of Charlotte, it's not necessarily a small town.
Speaker 1: But they went to basketball practice and then they went
Speaker 1: home and spent the rest of the evening with both
Speaker 1: their parents as far as I can tell. The next day,
Speaker 1: Asia's basketball team had a game which they lost. It
Speaker 1: was their first loss of the season. She was a
Speaker 1: point guard, and actually fouled out of that game. I
Speaker 1: don't know how serious the rules are, how easy it
Speaker 1: is to foul out in kids games, you know, if
Speaker 1: you have to really be being aggressive, or if a
Speaker 1: referee might say, oh, you bumped into that girl, it's
Speaker 1: a foul. I don't know. I doubt their official referees.
Speaker 1: I think they're probably volunteer referees. Yeah, for games out size,
Speaker 1: which is why it is totally subjective things. I see
Speaker 1: where you're headed. Yeah, But so I don't know if
Speaker 1: she was being abnormally aggressive or anything like that, or
Speaker 1: if some if the ref was just just a little
Speaker 1: sensitive or people without really meaning to. Absolutely, that's easy
Speaker 1: to do, absolutely, yeah, especially if you're a kid. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: she was upset about She was upset about the loss
Speaker 1: and felling out, I mean both. She cried a little
Speaker 1: about that she was going to leave and start a
Speaker 1: new life. No, that's not how it happened. She she
Speaker 1: cried a little bit, but seemed to recover because O'Brien,
Speaker 1: her brother, had a game after her, and she stayed
Speaker 1: for the whole thing and seemed to have calmed herself
Speaker 1: down and was able to get over the loss, which
Speaker 1: is a thing you are hoping that your nine year
Speaker 1: old can do is chat with her and said, you know,
Speaker 1: that's the way you. Both parents seemed to have been
Speaker 1: home on Saturday after the game. After the game, well,
Speaker 1: they both went to the game. They watched both games
Speaker 1: and then they think, say I think, but again, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know that for sure. And then
Speaker 1: on Sunday they attended church and then came home. Harold,
Speaker 1: the father of this family, was working a second shift
Speaker 1: that day, so he left kind of in the early afternoon.
Speaker 1: I quila, it sounds like was home with the kids
Speaker 1: for kind of just a normal, typical Sunday night, just
Speaker 1: hanging out, doing homework things like that. I'm not totally
Speaker 1: clear on the timeline at this point because the kids,
Speaker 1: it sounds like we're sent to their room. They shared
Speaker 1: a room. They were sent to their room at about
Speaker 1: eight to start getting ready for bed. But then at
Speaker 1: nine the power went out and apparently that affected their
Speaker 1: ability to have a bath. That seems late to me
Speaker 1: for nine and ten year old to be having a bath.
Speaker 1: So I don't really know what the situation there is.
Speaker 1: I had heard the power went out earlier and that
Speaker 1: apparently there was a car wreck not far away, and
Speaker 1: I had heard as early as six the power went out.
Speaker 1: It's not that vilely important, but apparently that there was
Speaker 1: an outage and they didn't take their baths right, so
Speaker 1: they went to bed early without their baths. That's pretty
Speaker 1: solid fact. Harold comes home at about thirty midnight thirty
Speaker 1: and checks on the kids, who, he says, we're both
Speaker 1: asleep in their beds. It does sound like they tended
Speaker 1: to kind of wake up a little bit um at
Speaker 1: least O'Brien is able to say, I heard dad check
Speaker 1: on us. I heard Dad check on us, so at least,
Speaker 1: and he heard his sister moving around, but he at
Speaker 1: least was aware of it. But you know, Harold says
Speaker 1: the kids were at least in bed and seemed to sleep.
Speaker 1: He took a couple of hours fro himself. He went
Speaker 1: out to uh like a late night store and bought
Speaker 1: some candy for Valentine's Day the next day, came home
Speaker 1: and then finally decided to go to bed at about
Speaker 1: two thirty, at which time he checked on the kids again.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I've heard, I've seen a little
Speaker 1: bits here and there about people talking about well, it's
Speaker 1: so weird that he was up till two thirty, and
Speaker 1: it's like he was shift and you don't come home
Speaker 1: after work and immediately go to bed. You can wind
Speaker 1: down for a couple of hours. Yeah. And the other
Speaker 1: thing I'll add is, um, you know, he's uh, he's
Speaker 1: got two kids who are younger. It's likely these were
Speaker 1: some of the only moments he had to himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this was kind of dad's quiet time. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: what he wanted to do, hang out, go he can
Speaker 1: do something, do some errands for the family, get get
Speaker 1: candy and stuff, but kind of have a little have
Speaker 1: a couple hours of a lone time. And then he
Speaker 1: went to bed. So at two thirty, he about two thirty,
Speaker 1: he went to bed. He checked on the kids. They
Speaker 1: were both there sleeping ish um. And then so he
Speaker 1: went to bed. And then, as Joe said, O'Brien had
Speaker 1: heard a kind of rolling around in bed. He said,
Speaker 1: he said, I've heard two different I've heard it two
Speaker 1: different ways. One is that he woke up when his
Speaker 1: dad checked on him and got up to go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom and came back to bed, and she was
Speaker 1: asleep but had been adjusting the other way that I
Speaker 1: heard it is that he heard her moving around. And actually,
Speaker 1: I guess there's three way I've ways I've heard it.
Speaker 1: He heard her moving around and thought she was just readjusting,
Speaker 1: so he went back to sleep, or he heard her
Speaker 1: get up to go to the bathroom and then come
Speaker 1: back to bed. Either all three ways he accounts for
Speaker 1: her in bed around that time as well, but moving awake. Okay,
Speaker 1: At five five am, Aquila wakes up to get the
Speaker 1: kids ready for Valentine's Day. Oh, by the way, I
Speaker 1: don't think I mentioned this, but Harold and Aquila got
Speaker 1: married on Valentine's Day, so it was also their anniversary,
Speaker 1: so it was going to be kind of a big day,
Speaker 1: I mean Valentine's Day anniversary celebration family. And you will
Speaker 1: remember the kids hadn't had a bath the night before,
Speaker 1: so she drew bath for them so they can have
Speaker 1: a bath before they went to school, because keeping kids
Speaker 1: clean is actually really important. It turns out, Yeah, their
Speaker 1: alarm was set to go off at six thirty, but
Speaker 1: she says that she went in a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: before to wake them up because they need a little
Speaker 1: extra time for the bath. And when she came in.
Speaker 1: O'Brien was in bed, but a show was not. Initially,
Speaker 1: she kind of, you know, did a search of the house,
Speaker 1: checked the cars, and then thought, well, maybe she went
Speaker 1: over at Harold's mom's house. It's just across the street,
Speaker 1: and apparently that was something that she did every once
Speaker 1: in a while. So she called over to her mother
Speaker 1: in law's house, and her sister in law picked up
Speaker 1: the phone and said, Nope, she's not here, at which
Speaker 1: point a Quilla starts to get a little nervoustment. She starts,
Speaker 1: you know, she frantically searches the house again. She wakes
Speaker 1: up Harold. Harold says, well, she was there a couple
Speaker 1: of hours ago, but okay, So he gets up and
Speaker 1: O'Brien you know, gets up to and either Harold or
Speaker 1: I Quilla, I'm not totally sure, calls I Quilla's mom
Speaker 1: just to make sure that somehow. Yeah, I was gonna
Speaker 1: say I heard that I Quilla went outside and told
Speaker 1: Harold to call across the street, but I've also heard
Speaker 1: that the call was made before she went looking out.
Speaker 1: I think the person who ended up calling on when
Speaker 1: one was a Quilla's mom, not Harold's mom. So I
Speaker 1: think she was also local, and they you know, she said,
Speaker 1: Harold called my mom, and you know, is is she there? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: then call nine one one because Asia's missing. And then she,
Speaker 1: of course understandably starts yell, goes outside and starts yelling
Speaker 1: for around the neighborhood basically everybody, which again is fineable.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be I mean, i'd be a little annoyed,
Speaker 1: but as soon as I understood what was going on,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, oh, yeah, I should be awake, I
Speaker 1: help you. The whole neighborhood actually turned out and started
Speaker 1: they did. Yeah, that's actually just what I was going
Speaker 1: to say, is that everybody in the neighborhoods just like
Speaker 1: woke up and started looking. The cops Unlike a lot
Speaker 1: of stories that we cover, responded promptly and perfectly. As
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, they were. They were at
Speaker 1: the house by six forty am. By seven am, the
Speaker 1: entire neighborhood was awake and searching for Asia. Many many
Speaker 1: of the neighbors, many of the friends, many of the
Speaker 1: family members called out of work that day to help
Speaker 1: with the searches. All day they called in missing kid
Speaker 1: instead of sick. I think Yeah, they probably were like, Hey,
Speaker 1: this kid we know is missing, she's nine, I'm going
Speaker 1: to help look for And the conditions were miserable to
Speaker 1: be doing that. It was at least the previous night
Speaker 1: it had been a storm, and I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: it still was or not, but I don't think it was.
Speaker 1: Actually it was because it was like thirty or forty
Speaker 1: degrees and thirteen when the storm rolled in. It had
Speaker 1: gotten ten or fifteen degrees or warmer, but it was
Speaker 1: still raining. The winds were a little less, but it
Speaker 1: was still windy, so it was still crappy, rainy, cold weather. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's something that's that's kind of puzzled me a
Speaker 1: little bit about this, but I'll mention it more later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about the conditions in a little bit,
Speaker 1: But it was it was miserable going. They did bring
Speaker 1: search dogs in. They were unable to get a cent
Speaker 1: of any kind, which I guess is pretty understandable some conditions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by the end of the day on Valentine's Day, the fourteenth,
Speaker 1: all they found was a mitten um i quill us.
Speaker 1: It didn't it wasn't Asia's, so that there was no
Speaker 1: lead there, but a local news station was called and
Speaker 1: did cover this whole story. On the fourteenth the search
Speaker 1: and three drivers called in in response to this new
Speaker 1: segment and so that that they were driving on a
Speaker 1: stretch of Highway eighteen and saw a young girl walking
Speaker 1: along it sometime between three and four am. Ah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just a quick description if you're not on Google.
Speaker 1: Highway eighteen runs kind of north south, heads down into
Speaker 1: the actual town of is it Shelby, into the actual
Speaker 1: town of Shelby, which is about what a mile or
Speaker 1: two south of their home about to Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: aliab on christ Drive, which is a block off in
Speaker 1: parallel with Thatway eighteen and that little subdivision, just so
Speaker 1: you get an idea, okay, okay, And that she was
Speaker 1: seen in the vicinity of Highway eight Highway one eighty,
Speaker 1: which is like about halfway maybe between their home and
Speaker 1: and Shelby on the east side of a mile south
Speaker 1: of her home. Yeah, it branches off to the east
Speaker 1: and kind of goes southeast. Just as a visual description. Okay,
Speaker 1: So she was seen in that vicinity. She was seen
Speaker 1: about a mile south of her house. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: the last sighting. Yeah, two witnesses. I think we're truck drivers.
Speaker 1: Maybe not, but I think they were truck drivers. And
Speaker 1: then one of the witnesses said that he or she
Speaker 1: they had been kind of surprised that there was a
Speaker 1: young child at that time in that weather walking, So
Speaker 1: they circled a couple of times, actually three times to
Speaker 1: be exact, circled three times to kind of see if
Speaker 1: they could figure out what was going on, and witnessed
Speaker 1: Asha she like jetted off into there's like little forested pockets,
Speaker 1: So she just took off into one of those forested areas.
Speaker 1: It's kind of kind of against sadly ironic that somebody
Speaker 1: who actually wanted to help Asia probably thought they were
Speaker 1: pervs and ran away well in the stands of trees
Speaker 1: that she could have run into, because I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time looking at the aerials and some of
Speaker 1: them were very small. So it's when they say she
Speaker 1: ran off into the woods, like either she crossed the
Speaker 1: road and went east into the big stands of trees
Speaker 1: where she was running into small clumps of trees. It
Speaker 1: was a small clump. There's a there's a news cast.
Speaker 1: There's actually on ABC. They did a vanished episode on her.
Speaker 1: It was like five minutes it's just the one where
Speaker 1: they were. They were highlighting the trees and like a
Speaker 1: green glow to indicate where she had been seen or something. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but you can see she would have been walking down
Speaker 1: and then there's a small strand of trees. She would
Speaker 1: have just passed either way. The motorists decided, you know what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought, Yeah, I think that he probably thought. And
Speaker 1: back in the year two thousand, not probably quite everybody
Speaker 1: had a cell phone. I mean they were pretty ubiquitous
Speaker 1: by that time. It's not like today where everybody has one,
Speaker 1: so definitely not. I mean I didn't have one, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was in like seventh grade, I didn't have one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so these people maybe didn't ever mean to call
Speaker 1: the cops. Say maybe you know, if you're especially if
Speaker 1: you're a guy, you don't want to go grab a
Speaker 1: little girl and drag her into your car, even if
Speaker 1: you mean, well, because you know, I got I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you. Is that. Well, are we going to talk
Speaker 1: about the bystanders at all in this? Are these folks
Speaker 1: anymore later on? Or is this the only time to witnesses, sorry,
Speaker 1: not the bystanders, Because I don't understand why the guy
Speaker 1: circled three times before stopping, if you know what I mean, like,
Speaker 1: if you're that concerned or that like this does something
Speaker 1: seems smells off here? You why did he wait three
Speaker 1: times before pulling over? Which is weird to me? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, although circling might not circling might have been
Speaker 1: made a U turn three times, so it wasn't three
Speaker 1: three sixties and maybe three eighties. Yeah, but it's just
Speaker 1: it's still to me, it's just weird. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you think he would have just gone back, turned around
Speaker 1: once and gone back and rolled out his window and says, hey,
Speaker 1: what's going on? Why are you here? It's five in
Speaker 1: the morning. What are you doing in? Yeah? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think there's definitely only some room for if
Speaker 1: it was a U turn and then going back the
Speaker 1: other way, and then a U turn, and then passing
Speaker 1: her a second time, and then doing a U turn
Speaker 1: because the first time you're blasting down a highway it's
Speaker 1: bad weather. You think, did I really just see that
Speaker 1: you flip a U turn? That was not you turn around,
Speaker 1: You turn around and then turn around again, and you know,
Speaker 1: pass her again and say that is exactly what I thought,
Speaker 1: And then and then you turn original direction and then
Speaker 1: if that's the way it was, it's not so weird
Speaker 1: to me. When I read it in the descriptions, it
Speaker 1: made me think that this person had made three full
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't think so. I think that
Speaker 1: was some imprecise language that all right, Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: agree with that, but yeah, that would be a little
Speaker 1: weird if I would have run away to Yeah. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: it does seem that Asha packed her backpack of stuff
Speaker 1: of her backpack of things, probably before or the night
Speaker 1: that she left. That's up to some speculation, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that in a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: But to pack in a lighter grooen rather than a
Speaker 1: dark room where you're trying to like not wake up
Speaker 1: your brother next to you in the bed. Yeah, So reportedly,
Speaker 1: and we're going to stay reportedly here because most of
Speaker 1: this is not actually confirmed. She packed a few changes
Speaker 1: of clothes, her basketball uniform uniform sorry, a purse with
Speaker 1: tweety bird on it, and pencil case, and just some
Speaker 1: other kind of random school bag. Yeah, and it sounds
Speaker 1: like she took more than one pair More than one
Speaker 1: of her pairs of shoes were missing, so she would
Speaker 1: have packed a pair and worn a pair at least,
Speaker 1: so it sounds like she packed. Since the witnesses were
Speaker 1: able to kind of place the last a better last
Speaker 1: sighting of Asia on Highway eighteen instead of near her house,
Speaker 1: a mile away from her house. Basically the search kind
Speaker 1: of centered around that area, and on February sevent so,
Speaker 1: three days later, some candy rappers, a pencil, a marker,
Speaker 1: and a Mickey Mouse hair bow were found in a
Speaker 1: tool shed at Turner's Upholstery, This company that, according to
Speaker 1: their website, is still in business. There's still a sign
Speaker 1: up if you drive by in street view. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean even when you google it. Their Google business
Speaker 1: profile pops up and tells you yeah. Yeah. Although they
Speaker 1: don't answer their phone. I call them twice. They didn't answer.
Speaker 1: That's okay. I won't blame them too much. They probably
Speaker 1: got it. Yeah, some stupid podcast want me to fix
Speaker 1: their chair. I don't think that they have any connection
Speaker 1: to the case. But their tool shed did have some
Speaker 1: stuff in it, and tool shed isn't is a bit
Speaker 1: of a junt off of the road. It is two
Speaker 1: feet off of the road. Had to take a hoof
Speaker 1: to get to that place too. I'm assuming she's seeking
Speaker 1: shelter from the weather. That's my assumption as well. That's
Speaker 1: but you know, that's the thing that it is still
Speaker 1: a big headscrasher for me, because you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: it's long ways off the road, a long you know,
Speaker 1: at least couple hundred feet, and it's an old building
Speaker 1: that you know, it looks a little creepy. Frankly, even
Speaker 1: in daylight. To a nine year old kid on a
Speaker 1: dark and stormy night going into a building like that,
Speaker 1: that sounds a little bit much. Yeah, so we'll talk
Speaker 1: I'd be a little I'd be a little leary about
Speaker 1: going into a place like that as an adult, frankly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we'll talk a little more about why maybe, um
Speaker 1: in theories, let's keep going with this timeline, which is
Speaker 1: that that was all they found for like eighteen months,
Speaker 1: so they had an idea of where she was last sighted,
Speaker 1: some stuff was found there, and then everything just went cold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just went really cold until eighteen months later, a
Speaker 1: contractor was doing some digging twenty six miles north of
Speaker 1: Asia's house of the Degrees House on Highway eighteen and
Speaker 1: found Asha's book bag backpack that had her stuff in it,
Speaker 1: reportedly probably had her stuff in it. Again, I'll reinforce
Speaker 1: the fact that Asia was last seen a mile south
Speaker 1: of her house, walking south, walking south south of her house,
Speaker 1: and then her stuff was found eighteen months later, twenty
Speaker 1: six miles north. I don't see what's problem is she
Speaker 1: obviously walked six miles worth, buried it, walked back. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe not within an hour. Yeah, I know the maximum
Speaker 1: of an hour. It does sort of point in one direction,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. It does. Yeah, and we we know the
Speaker 1: bag was hers though, because it had her name was written. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll just say that the FBI is in charge of
Speaker 1: this case, as this should be, and it is an
Speaker 1: ongoing investigation that they are actively pursuing leads in. So
Speaker 1: they have confirmed that the was hers. They have not
Speaker 1: confirmed any of the contents. That's one of the places
Speaker 1: that we hear a lot about the basketball uniform was
Speaker 1: in that bag. But realistically we're pretty sure due to
Speaker 1: some like calls that one of us placed. I bet
Speaker 1: you can guess who um that sorry that the basketball
Speaker 1: uniform is just an app an internet add on appears
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, but that same reporter that I talked
Speaker 1: to you with The Shelby Star said, yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: no evidence whatsoever. There might be a basketball uniform, but
Speaker 1: but there might not be. And since it is an
Speaker 1: active investigation, the only thing that authorities have said is yes,
Speaker 1: this this bag did belong to Asia. They haven't confirmed
Speaker 1: anything surrounding it, what was in it, what wasn't in it,
Speaker 1: if there was any forensic evidence on it, et cetera. Oh, anyway,
Speaker 1: by the way, by the way, I wanted to give
Speaker 1: a shout out to Joyce. Joyce Atally I know with
Speaker 1: the Shelby Star if you're listening, because I gave Joyce
Speaker 1: the name of our podcast and so maybe she is
Speaker 1: when Yeah, yeah she did. She was very generous with
Speaker 1: her time. So thanks again. I hope you're enjoying the podcast. Joyce,
Speaker 1: back to not plugging other people. Yeah, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the mystery again. Reportedly, Asha's bag had had her name
Speaker 1: and phone number on a piece of paper written on it. Again,
Speaker 1: the Internet will say, scrawled in childlike handwriting in pencil,
Speaker 1: But like, how do you know that? Literally? How they
Speaker 1: like scrawled help me? Help me? They would, I'm sure
Speaker 1: the Internet would add that. Yet, also in her backpack,
Speaker 1: were several sets of clothes, the basketball uniform that we
Speaker 1: mentioned before, her pencil case, and photos of her family. Again, literally,
Speaker 1: there's no way to confirm any of that stuff. The
Speaker 1: FBI has never released that, and I have I've seen
Speaker 1: interviews with a Quila where she says, this is what
Speaker 1: was missing from our house. There was no mention of
Speaker 1: family pictures missing, and there was no mention of her
Speaker 1: basketball uniform missing. So yeah, and again that was really
Speaker 1: hard to say. If if you know, if you took
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff out of my house and just said, Joe,
Speaker 1: is there anything missing? I would look around and probably say,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, you know, a few things,
Speaker 1: but not You probably wouldn't notice all of it right away.
Speaker 1: You would probably notice if family pictures were missing them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in one single basketball uniform, you might notice that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But and this is where it helps
Speaker 1: to be poor. You like you're gonna have less stuff,
Speaker 1: so that helps. Yeah, or being a parent, because you
Speaker 1: know what your kid has. Usually it's not like they've
Speaker 1: acquired things on their own, usually at that age. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the bags, so the bag her backpack was actually
Speaker 1: found double bagged in trash bags trash bag is just
Speaker 1: kind of spine tingling on this. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: little strange because obviously you buried it because you wanted
Speaker 1: to get rid of it, So why do you try
Speaker 1: to preserve it by double rapping and trash bags? Is
Speaker 1: what I don't get. Why why for that manage? By
Speaker 1: the way, do you keep it all together rather than
Speaker 1: just you know, taking the tanse out and throwing random
Speaker 1: trash cans? Yeah, why don't you like put a brick
Speaker 1: in that bag and throw it in the river? There's
Speaker 1: that too. I mean, I will destroy things real quick.
Speaker 1: What do you think about the highest profile way, you know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: to me, checking it all in a in a trash
Speaker 1: can is a lot lower profile than going out in
Speaker 1: the field and digging a hole. Yeah, and trash cans
Speaker 1: that's going to go to the dump. It's probably never
Speaker 1: gonna get found. Yeah. Reportedly nearby where they found the
Speaker 1: bags bag, the double bag bag, Yeah, there were a
Speaker 1: pair of men's khaki pants and some animal bones there
Speaker 1: were it was initially reported bones, and then they since
Speaker 1: have said no, they were animal bones. Calmed down. It
Speaker 1: is the side of the highway, though, it is, and
Speaker 1: people throw things. I mean it's a couple of times.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like a couple hundred feet off the highway.
Speaker 1: It's not just like the shoulder of the highway. It's
Speaker 1: a little far. It's they were developing it for stuff,
Speaker 1: with all the developments. Yeah, but again, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's just barren land. Animals die, no big deal. The
Speaker 1: khaki pants, I don't know that. It's not that I've
Speaker 1: stumbled across items of clothing, you know, outdoors and all
Speaker 1: kinds of woods and stuff and one shock. Yeah all
Speaker 1: the time. That's not at all unusual. Yeah. Again, the
Speaker 1: FBI did take custody of all of this stuff and
Speaker 1: have apparently done friends of testing, but again, since it's
Speaker 1: an ongoing investigation, they haven't at least any of the results.
Speaker 1: And you'll also see it said that later um that year,
Speaker 1: in October. So in October of two thousand one, the
Speaker 1: same that a bag similar to the bag that Asia's
Speaker 1: bag was found in garbage black garbage bag was found
Speaker 1: near the site where her bag was. Well those things,
Speaker 1: I know, and they said they said it was the same,
Speaker 1: and they found it was a garbage Yeah. Anyway, they
Speaker 1: apparently they've sent it to the FBI, and they've done
Speaker 1: some testing on that as well. Again, it's weird, it's reaching,
Speaker 1: but okay, yeah, they're desperate. Yeah. In two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: the FBI decided to re examine the case in earnest,
Speaker 1: which included re interviewing all of the witnesses. They put
Speaker 1: forth a twenty five thousands dollar reward, and then the
Speaker 1: community has added an additional twenty tho dollar rewards, so
Speaker 1: that the total reward for information leading to the discovery
Speaker 1: of what happened to Asia is forty five dollars, which
Speaker 1: is not nothing. However, out of the reinterviewing process, it
Speaker 1: does seem that somebody thought they remembered seeing Asia get
Speaker 1: into a car that was a dark green either Lincoln
Speaker 1: Continental or for Thunderbird from the early nineteen seventies. And
Speaker 1: that's a distinctive car because they're big old boat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The FBI released this information in a of this year.
Speaker 1: So two thousand and sixteen, for those of you who
Speaker 1: are not listening, is this year when this will come out? Dang? Okay,
Speaker 1: See that's that's hard. Um. May of two thousand and
Speaker 1: sixteen is when they release this information. And they said
Speaker 1: they were planning The FBI said they were planning to
Speaker 1: run registrations on cars of similar make, model, and color,
Speaker 1: but they weren't super optimistic because it's unlikely that that
Speaker 1: car still registered, and it sounded like they could only
Speaker 1: run registrations within a certain Frankly, in the early seventies,
Speaker 1: a lot of cars that were not dissimilar to those
Speaker 1: were out there, So they gotta run a lot of cars. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, but they have to know they need to
Speaker 1: run registration from two thousand, when she has appeared, not
Speaker 1: the seventies, right hands. Yeah, cars moved to different states,
Speaker 1: might not have been from North Carolina to begin with.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like, yeah, so that's a that's a
Speaker 1: needle in a hastae, is it really is? That's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing where you gotta, like, you know, you
Speaker 1: gotta put it out there with photographs and hope somebody
Speaker 1: out there sees a story and recognize does occur. Well,
Speaker 1: but there's no photographs the photographs of it's similar similar
Speaker 1: cars of two cars of that make that may be similar,
Speaker 1: but also may not be the car at all. The
Speaker 1: other thing people you'll see this on the internet is
Speaker 1: that apparently there was some rust in the wheel wheels
Speaker 1: of this car, which I have a huge problem with.
Speaker 1: I heard it also said that there was rust around
Speaker 1: the wheel wells, which would be like on the outside,
Speaker 1: because either way inside the wheel well it's kind of hard.
Speaker 1: I doubt that it's describing the interior of the wheel well.
Speaker 1: That's not what they're describing, and that's not what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say they're describing. But that's not why I
Speaker 1: have a problem with it. I have a problem with
Speaker 1: it because it's a dark and stormy, horrible night. Woody,
Speaker 1: how how are you seeing this? And how how did this?
Speaker 1: So here's my problem with the whole she got into
Speaker 1: this green giant car thing, is how the hell did
Speaker 1: that suddenly get remembered fifteen years later? Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I don't want to to say anything negative about any
Speaker 1: of the people who were re interviewed, but I feel
Speaker 1: like maybe somebody invented a detail unintentionally. Yeah, the memory
Speaker 1: is a funny thing, uh you know. I mean, so
Speaker 1: I wouldn't take it too terribly seriously. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, they're grasping at straws. I mean, everybody's pretty
Speaker 1: desperate here. Yeah, so we're in the theories now, okay,
Speaker 1: you und really excited about theory to devil. I don't
Speaker 1: like this the theories on this one. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: your list and I don't see aliens anywhere. Sorry, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that could have been aliens. On the worst,
Speaker 1: since there's no sign of forced entry. The external doors
Speaker 1: on the Degree house we're all locked, so presumably she
Speaker 1: used your key to lock the house after she left.
Speaker 1: They're all dead bolt locked, so she and she did
Speaker 1: have a key to lock it from the outside, so
Speaker 1: she locked it from the outside. It appears that she
Speaker 1: also left with a well packed and planned bag. Pretty
Speaker 1: Much everyone assumes that Asha walked out of the house
Speaker 1: of her own volition. She must have, because I mean,
Speaker 1: somebody couldn't have broken in and overpowered her without waking
Speaker 1: up her brother right next to her in the room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and her parents, I mean, they were only save her
Speaker 1: a couple hours, and you know, it sounds like it
Speaker 1: was a pretty small house. And I think overwhelmingly I
Speaker 1: agree that she did get up and walk out herself,
Speaker 1: which is strange because three or so in the morning
Speaker 1: and it's a really foul night out. The reasoning doesn't
Speaker 1: there's no good logic here. Yeah, but again, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a nine year old girl, and sometimes
Speaker 1: kids do weird things. But one of the issues here is,
Speaker 1: of course, like why would she run away, right, because
Speaker 1: that would be the first theory is that she just
Speaker 1: ran away. As previously mentioned, her home life was stable,
Speaker 1: it was safe, She had a really good social network
Speaker 1: of people. She there was no reports of her having
Speaker 1: bad academics. She had lost that one game, the one
Speaker 1: basketball game but they had that was the first game
Speaker 1: of the season they had lost. Do you did? You
Speaker 1: find out a lot about issues. So, because one of
Speaker 1: the things I was wondering about that was never not
Speaker 1: able to get answers was just how obsessed with basketball
Speaker 1: was she? I don't think she was that obsessed. She wasn't.
Speaker 1: It's well, I remember listening to an interview from her dad,
Speaker 1: and her dad was all about sports, and so she,
Speaker 1: because she was an athlete, was all about sports, and
Speaker 1: so she took sports seriously. But she played several sports
Speaker 1: and she was nine. So I don't think that she was,
Speaker 1: you know, the fanatical, die hard for it, she's going
Speaker 1: to make it to the big leagues or anything. I
Speaker 1: think early for that, Other than the typical kid day dream, right.
Speaker 1: But additional to that, if you know, I see the
Speaker 1: train of thought here is maybe she was so upset
Speaker 1: that she decided to leave, but she was not upset.
Speaker 1: There are no reports of her continuing to be upset
Speaker 1: the weekend. Additional you all of that according to people
Speaker 1: who research this sort of stuff and because sometimes you
Speaker 1: think about this, Ben Erminy, who's the director of the
Speaker 1: National Center for Missing and Exploiting Children's Missing Children to Vision,
Speaker 1: and John Goad, who is the director of the North
Speaker 1: Carolina Center for Missing Persons. Those are two of the
Speaker 1: people that I read their research on citing my sources.
Speaker 1: Kids don't really run away, like seriously runaway until about twelve,
Speaker 1: and state officials almost never, like less than one percent
Speaker 1: of the time will state official classified children under ten
Speaker 1: as runaways. They're always missing persons or abducted children. Because
Speaker 1: at that age, if there is a quote unquote runaway situation,
Speaker 1: it's a ran and hit under the stairs all day,
Speaker 1: I'm out of here and I'm for good for good,
Speaker 1: I mean, definitely, there are kids who younger than twelve
Speaker 1: who do that where you know, they run until they
Speaker 1: get to the end of the block and then suddenly
Speaker 1: there they realize that this come home, or even runaway
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours, but they come home. But
Speaker 1: I gotta say, the other thing that to that strictly
Speaker 1: being a runaway is that I I you know, I
Speaker 1: don't remember what I was doing at age nine and
Speaker 1: what I was thinking that I really don't remember at all.
Speaker 1: I didn't run away that I can recall. But if
Speaker 1: I were going to run away at that age or
Speaker 1: any other age, I would do it a nice on
Speaker 1: a nice Sunday afternoon, or at least I would do
Speaker 1: it during the daylight. I wouldn't leave at three in
Speaker 1: the morning. But okay, but I I do remember some
Speaker 1: of the things that I did and thought at that age.
Speaker 1: And honestly, you live in a fantasy land. You really
Speaker 1: think that everything is sunshine and roses, and just like
Speaker 1: that that the Whipping Boy the book. You're gonna go
Speaker 1: on these things and it's gonna be great, and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be fine. It's just that, you know, most kids
Speaker 1: get out and they go, oh crap, I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm doing well. And the other reason I don't
Speaker 1: think it was strictly a runaway sad situation is she
Speaker 1: didn't really dress for the weather. From what I've seen
Speaker 1: in the descriptions of people that saw her out of
Speaker 1: Highway A team, she didn't appear that she was wearing
Speaker 1: a coat. Yeah, that's true. But um, just today I
Speaker 1: was getting gas. It's cold here. We should mention it's
Speaker 1: like it was in the thirties today and yeahs at times.
Speaker 1: And I was sitting getting gas, freezing in my car
Speaker 1: with my mittens on, and passed me walks a kid
Speaker 1: who's probably eleven, boy wearing athletic shorts and a T
Speaker 1: shirt and a Santa hat. I watched the kids in
Speaker 1: my neighborhood do that all the time, and I forget
Speaker 1: that at that age, and they were immune to the
Speaker 1: cold longer than us adults. And that's people. That's just
Speaker 1: something about Portland's too. Do you see tons of people
Speaker 1: wearing shorts in the wintertime here and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It's not just Portland's, yeah, but it's usually shorts in
Speaker 1: like a parka. But all of that aside, you know,
Speaker 1: she did had recently read The Whipping Boy, so people
Speaker 1: will cite that as oh, she thought she was going
Speaker 1: on an adventure. But again, I've read the whipping boy,
Speaker 1: and it is not it's not glorified. Everything works out
Speaker 1: in the end, that's fine, but some really bad stuff
Speaker 1: happens to them while they're traveling. And I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, as a nine year old, if you read
Speaker 1: that and think, oh, running away it sounds like fun.
Speaker 1: Getting kidnapped and beat up, that sounds like fun, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. Yeah. Yeah, I think just running away randomly,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I'm not buying that at all. No,
Speaker 1: I agree with that. But there's a sub theory to this,
Speaker 1: and that is that somebody could have influenced her to
Speaker 1: run away. Yeah, coached her. And that's why, if you will,
Speaker 1: And that's why I was wondering about how into basketball
Speaker 1: she was, and that's why I tried to find out
Speaker 1: if her basketball uniform was packed in her bag. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because supposing she was feeling frustrated on Saturday after and
Speaker 1: like fouling out and everything like that, supposing she had
Speaker 1: fallen into the influences. So some adults, he said something like,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, I know about this special camp for
Speaker 1: basketball camp for pre pubescent girls, and if you go
Speaker 1: attend the school for a week or two, you'll be
Speaker 1: a freaking star. But the important thing is you can't
Speaker 1: tell your parents. It's got to be a surprise. Just
Speaker 1: meet me, you know, at the intersection of Highway eighteen
Speaker 1: and Highway one, idiot, three thirty in the morning on
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day and bring a bag and you know, we'll
Speaker 1: make you a star. That's tew Lebron James got started.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it is. Yeah, that's kind of And that's
Speaker 1: why I was wondering about the basketball angle. Because she
Speaker 1: had to be to do what she did. It wasn't
Speaker 1: some random names. She had to be highly motivated to
Speaker 1: go out in the dark of a stormy night a
Speaker 1: nine year old kid, and yeah, it was scared of
Speaker 1: the dark. And something really motivated that girl. And God
Speaker 1: knows what it was. She wanted something really bad. She did.
Speaker 1: She wanted to get away from something really bad. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't I'm not saying there's anything
Speaker 1: going on at her home because her parents, from everything
Speaker 1: I can tell, we're loving and doing everything right. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean something around her, in her neighborhood, relative
Speaker 1: relative neighbor something put the fear of God into her
Speaker 1: and she decided had to go. I mean, things happen
Speaker 1: to kids, and kids don't tell right away. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that's what happened. But you can't rule it out
Speaker 1: because now it's so inexplicable that she did what she did.
Speaker 1: You're right, I can't. You can't rule it out. I
Speaker 1: One of the big question marks for me on that
Speaker 1: idea is that she and O'Briant were of similar age,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like did most everything together. And I
Speaker 1: think that he would have if something had happened. He
Speaker 1: might not have mentioned to his parents right away, but
Speaker 1: once she went missing, I trust that he would have said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this kid was being mean to her. You probably would
Speaker 1: have known. Yeah, that's my I don't know that. That's
Speaker 1: we're all making resumptions here. I have no idea. I
Speaker 1: mean as a rabbit hole. Yeah, it really is. It's
Speaker 1: unlikely to me, at least that she met a predator online.
Speaker 1: I think it was would have been in person. It
Speaker 1: would have been somebody or school, like a coach or
Speaker 1: maybe somebody. Yeah, and I also think that if she
Speaker 1: was influenced to leave, they instructed her to go to
Speaker 1: the tool shed at the upholstery place. Because I agree
Speaker 1: with you that it's creepy, and it seems like she
Speaker 1: was kind of hanging out there for a little while,
Speaker 1: and she had to have passed a lot of shelters
Speaker 1: potentially could have ducked into to take shelves from the weather,
Speaker 1: and there were houses if she could have gone to
Speaker 1: and knocked on the door, right, So I think I
Speaker 1: think probably she was instructed to go there. It seems
Speaker 1: like she was hanging out there for a little while.
Speaker 1: And then also, you know, it's it's kind of the
Speaker 1: fact that her hair bow was found there makes me
Speaker 1: think that something happened there, struggled just even a little
Speaker 1: bit of something. I don't think there was any sign
Speaker 1: of a struggle, but you know, her pencil and her
Speaker 1: marker were there, so she I think she was probably
Speaker 1: bored there for a while. That's to me, at least
Speaker 1: they were like out, you know, she was just kind
Speaker 1: of hanging out due to for dueling and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and then whoever was supposed to pick up picked her up.
Speaker 1: I don't know, that's my theory. There's one Internet suspect
Speaker 1: that I'm not ready to rule out, but I'm not
Speaker 1: ready to say was him, mostly because I think the
Speaker 1: police are pretty sure that it's not him, but that's okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about him anyway. He is currently
Speaker 1: serving two consecutive life sentences for the murder of seven
Speaker 1: year old Salanda Pool. It didn't murder, but we're not
Speaker 1: going to talk about it. He did very very bad things.
Speaker 1: He apparently was actually a family friend of the Pools
Speaker 1: for a few months prior, but initially, and know the degrees,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I haven't been able to show
Speaker 1: the Internet has linked this guy to the case, but
Speaker 1: that seems the Internet is the only one who has
Speaker 1: made that link. Yeah, I think the police. When the
Speaker 1: Internet linked at the police thought okay, fine, we'll check
Speaker 1: it out. And there's no connection. Really. But somebody else
Speaker 1: was arrested for Shalanda's murder initially, but it turns out
Speaker 1: that person didn't do it. It was this guy. His
Speaker 1: name is Donald Ferguson, and he participated in the search.
Speaker 1: It's a creepy thing when you hear these kind of
Speaker 1: stories and you're friendly, Oh oh god, he was actually
Speaker 1: taking part. Because there's some that's a weird game there
Speaker 1: that's not I know that. That's why I look at
Speaker 1: the people who volunteer. They do, they do, and they
Speaker 1: look for you to like lead them to the body
Speaker 1: because often that's what they do. Yeah, we talked about that,
Speaker 1: and yeah, well I don't think that there's actually connection
Speaker 1: to the Degree family. But Asia and Silanda were both
Speaker 1: young black girls, and they do kind of look alike
Speaker 1: from all the pictures I can see that. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe he stumbled upon her Highway eighteen. That's possible. That's
Speaker 1: counter to what Devin's theory is here that she was
Speaker 1: lured away though, if he just stumbled upon her, right,
Speaker 1: But you know the reason that people have made this
Speaker 1: connection is that Ferguson and Salonda Pool before she was murdered,
Speaker 1: the Pools lived in South Carolina, and um, the Degrees
Speaker 1: lived in North Carolina, so people are, you know, they're
Speaker 1: close kind of. So maybe he was just kind of
Speaker 1: traveling around and I don't know, it sounds like he
Speaker 1: was kind of an odd job, handyman kind of guy,
Speaker 1: which is a great cover if you're a horrible human being.
Speaker 1: Not I'm not saying that all handyman people are just
Speaker 1: like the guy that we talked about in the Beaumont
Speaker 1: Children episode, the spider who was traveling around same scenario. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is close, and it's kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: Salondo was murdered in the inn and then ten years
Speaker 1: later a shad went missing from a similar area, so
Speaker 1: people are thinking maybe there's a connection, but again, the
Speaker 1: police seem to have rulled that out. Yeah, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of guessing substantial. Yeah. Well, Ferguson pleaded guilty to the
Speaker 1: charges and returning for not getting the death penalty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's starving too consecutive life sentence there, and so
Speaker 1: I got to presume right now the police are fairly
Speaker 1: secure in the knowledge that he's not ever going to
Speaker 1: get out of prison. So I'm assuming they went to
Speaker 1: him and said, dude, we'll give you immunity, just tell
Speaker 1: us what happened. They do that a lot to solve
Speaker 1: They do that a lot. In this case, you're not
Speaker 1: losing out because the guy's already locked up for good.
Speaker 1: So I mean, why not get anything out of charging
Speaker 1: him and giving him five more sentences. Yeah, So and
Speaker 1: they've got nothing out of him. That doesn't mean he's
Speaker 1: not the killer, but yeah, son, But even if it
Speaker 1: wasn't Ferguson, I think it's more than likely that somebody
Speaker 1: got to Asia and really just convinced her that she
Speaker 1: should leave her life for a better life. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's not even necessarily that. It could have been like
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, leave for a week. For a week,
Speaker 1: go to my special basketball camp and will make you
Speaker 1: a star. It could have been something like that too,
Speaker 1: or hey we got this princess that looks just like you,
Speaker 1: or tweety bird wants you to come visit. I mean
Speaker 1: could go. Ye, there's one another theory here. Well, there's
Speaker 1: more than this theory, but it's hard to one theory
Speaker 1: you will see out there. This is from Web sleuths,
Speaker 1: is that is show was sleepwalking. It's a bad theory
Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons. Yeah, so um on Web
Speaker 1: sleuths they say, well, you know, Asha's mom says that
Speaker 1: she had a history of sleepwalking, which is just a bunk.
Speaker 1: I've never seen Aquila quoted as saying that. When people say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: can you link me to that, there's obviously like radio silence,
Speaker 1: nobody can never link to that. It's totally unfounded. As
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, Asia had no history of sleepwalking.
Speaker 1: Well she did get you know, she gets up, she
Speaker 1: either pack her bag or she picks up the bag
Speaker 1: she had packed previously because she somehow knew she was
Speaker 1: going to go sleep walking right there access to the the house,
Speaker 1: sleep walking, dead bolts the door from the outside, and
Speaker 1: while still sleep walking and heads on down. Like so,
Speaker 1: I've heard of people who were taking ambien do that
Speaker 1: kind of behavior, but not nine year old kids. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: in fairness, I um. We had a childhood friend that
Speaker 1: sleep walked and he his family said, okay, you know
Speaker 1: what'll keep you from sleepwalking is if we put you
Speaker 1: on the top bunk. But he managed to. I think
Speaker 1: he was like twelve when he did this, so a
Speaker 1: little older. But he managed to climb out of the
Speaker 1: top bunk. And this was his sister was sleeping on
Speaker 1: the bunk below. She didn't wake up, and she was
Speaker 1: my friend. She was not a particularly heavy sleeper. But
Speaker 1: he climbed out of that, walked down two flights of stairs,
Speaker 1: unlocked the door, walked out. There was a knob handle locked,
Speaker 1: but he unlocked the dead bolt, walked out, closed the door,
Speaker 1: didn't slam it because his parents would have heard if
Speaker 1: he'd slammed the door, closed it quietly behind him, walked
Speaker 1: out and woke up in the middle of the street
Speaker 1: when someone was honking at him at twelve. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's possible, but there are a lot of other steps
Speaker 1: here right again, packed a bag that or packed the
Speaker 1: bag that night. I think it's it's possible. I think
Speaker 1: I said earlier than I thought she prepacked it, but
Speaker 1: now I think she didn't pre pack it. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know what packing situation. Either way,
Speaker 1: I don't that's dumb. And if O'Brien was sensitive enough
Speaker 1: to hear her get up and go back to bed,
Speaker 1: he would have heard her leave again and not come back.
Speaker 1: That's just my two cents. You think you would think. Also,
Speaker 1: it was a super crappy night out, like thirty four
Speaker 1: degrees freezing cold, pouring rain that would wake you up.
Speaker 1: There's no way that you're going to sleep walk for
Speaker 1: a mile. That's a good hour probably for a nine
Speaker 1: year old. Yeah, it is possible that she, you know,
Speaker 1: got a little bit and then woke up and was
Speaker 1: turned around. But I think she would have had to
Speaker 1: been out of her a little the little subdivision whatever
Speaker 1: area that we're calling their neighborhood for her to have
Speaker 1: gotten that turned around, so she would have had to
Speaker 1: made it all the way out to Highway eighteen in
Speaker 1: really crappy weather. I don't think I don't think that's possible.
Speaker 1: I just don't think it's possible. There's there's one component
Speaker 1: of this theory that says, okay, so she was sleepwalking,
Speaker 1: but like, what happened? How did you put it? She
Speaker 1: was sleepwalking and then somebody hit her with the car
Speaker 1: and freaked out and tried to cover it up. First
Speaker 1: of all, I will grant you that on a night
Speaker 1: like that, when it's raining that much and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: it's possible that any evidence could have washed away. But
Speaker 1: that ignores the fact that they found some of her
Speaker 1: stuff in the tool shed. To take sleep walking out
Speaker 1: of this equation, because sleepwalking is silliness, and I think
Speaker 1: we can stop beating on it. Okay, So, but there
Speaker 1: is there are ways that this that what you're talking
Speaker 1: about could have gone down, which is, she did decide
Speaker 1: to leave, she walked, she took shelter, she was dinking around,
Speaker 1: playing with stuff in her bag, and then went back
Speaker 1: out on the road to continue her hike, at which
Speaker 1: point she gets hit by a car. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's completely possible. I mean when I read this, I
Speaker 1: initially thought I had to go looking on the map
Speaker 1: to find where her school was, because I thought, I
Speaker 1: wonder if she's got some some screwball idea that she's
Speaker 1: got to go to school early to do something. Except
Speaker 1: the school is like five miles north of where she
Speaker 1: lives in Fallston rather than two or seven miles south
Speaker 1: in Shelby, So that doesn't work. Clothes but okay, well
Speaker 1: she a change or two of clothes. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense, but you know what does. I
Speaker 1: did notice and I did think about that falls in
Speaker 1: line with the it's an accident that somebody decides to
Speaker 1: hide it weirdly, you know what. I found several loves
Speaker 1: in the area that she disappeared. Ground level pools, I
Speaker 1: mean like swimming pools, swimming pools that are in the
Speaker 1: ground or that are sitting on top of the ground,
Speaker 1: in the ground, in ground swimming pools. And I was
Speaker 1: looking through the satellite footage and one of them, eventually
Speaker 1: in the wintertime images had a cover, but they were uncovered,
Speaker 1: so she would have had to go trekking to get
Speaker 1: to one of them. If she were to do a
Speaker 1: what's the kid who disappeared on the phone? Brandon Swanson? Yeah,
Speaker 1: she could have pulled a Swanson and decided to take
Speaker 1: a short cut from the shed to the road, and
Speaker 1: that would have run her through if she took the
Speaker 1: right vector through a yard that had a pool and
Speaker 1: did not have a fence around it. No, not that
Speaker 1: I could tell in that that. I didn't see hardly
Speaker 1: any fences when you looked at it. You know, you
Speaker 1: get the right daylight and you can see in the shadows,
Speaker 1: and I didn't see hardly any fences. So I can
Speaker 1: see that. You know, they wake up and you find
Speaker 1: a kid floating in your pool and you think, lawsuit
Speaker 1: unless I get rid of the body. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's scandalous, but people do it. So this is a
Speaker 1: total outlier, and I totally get it. But it's things
Speaker 1: I started deciding, Okay, what has not been talked about,
Speaker 1: and being the things I started looking at when I
Speaker 1: looked at her environment, I guess and again I have
Speaker 1: no way of knowing this, but it seems like there
Speaker 1: would have been a significant water damage to her backpack
Speaker 1: and the contents of it if she had drowned in
Speaker 1: a pool, but we don't know. If that it was
Speaker 1: a rainy night, that's everything may have been sunked. The
Speaker 1: other thing is she was at an upholstery shop, and
Speaker 1: you know, if they had answered their phone, we could
Speaker 1: find out if they tanned any of their own leather,
Speaker 1: because if they tanned leather, that that's caustic material, and
Speaker 1: that means you can chuck a body into it. It
Speaker 1: disappears pretty easily. I mean again, and things, and I
Speaker 1: don't think they're right, but I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: anybody suspects the upholstery guys. Oh no, I don't think
Speaker 1: that they did anything. But I'm just saying they want
Speaker 1: to take a good look. Could that leather thing and
Speaker 1: had recovered by them probably yeah, okay, well yeah, And anyway,
Speaker 1: nobody seems to suspect the le other people I don't see. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't mean leather, I mean the upholstery, right.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying that, you know, if if if
Speaker 1: there's so few things here, I'm just looking for another one.
Speaker 1: As far as getting run over by a car that
Speaker 1: I want to say that I really really really doubt
Speaker 1: that because even though it totally could easily have happened
Speaker 1: if it were me, I just look around and see
Speaker 1: if there was no witnesses, and I would just drive away.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't like load the body into the trunk of
Speaker 1: my car and go dispose of it. I just get
Speaker 1: out of it. It's a hit and run exactly, just
Speaker 1: take off, you know, and you know, and so the
Speaker 1: whole it just makes no sense. I really hope that's
Speaker 1: not the case. Oh yeah, I do you have any
Speaker 1: other do you have any things you want to talk about? No?
Speaker 1: I mean I could say, is that Asia, Whatever her
Speaker 1: motivation was, obviously she was highly motivated for some strange treason.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that we're ever going to know
Speaker 1: what that reasonably agree with that. Yeah, I'll just mention.
Speaker 1: I've seen on some Reddit threads people saying, well, like,
Speaker 1: obviously the parents had something to do with it. It's
Speaker 1: super suspicious that the dad said that they really are
Speaker 1: doubting Harold's story that he checked on her and they
Speaker 1: were in both the kids were asleep, and then like
Speaker 1: they said, and then an hour later she was seen
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. No stop like just stop stop, Like
Speaker 1: if if there was any suspicion on the family at all,
Speaker 1: it would have been exposed. But you're talking about that
Speaker 1: you read unreaddit is the same inflammatory reaction that we
Speaker 1: get emails about sometimes when people hear one thing and
Speaker 1: they block everything else and they react. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what that is. Yeah, And I just I want to
Speaker 1: just go ahead and go on the record and saying
Speaker 1: like you if you think that, you're a horrible human beings,
Speaker 1: so stopped, Like just stop. Even if the dad for
Speaker 1: some reason, even if you forgot to check him at
Speaker 1: two thirty or whatever, so what you know, it doesn't no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they're saying that he's lying about it, and he did
Speaker 1: something nefarious and he's the reason that she disappeared. That
Speaker 1: seems rather unlikely, you know, don't do that. Took her
Speaker 1: out of the he got her out of bed, and
Speaker 1: then when they went for a quote unquote to get
Speaker 1: candy something else. Okay, Yeah, that's whatever. Yeah, Now her brother,
Speaker 1: her brother heard her rustling around the bed way later
Speaker 1: than that. I've seen him on the tube, see interviews
Speaker 1: with him. He seems like a nice enough guy. He
Speaker 1: doesn't look like a murderer to me. But many of
Speaker 1: them are just I think really sad, which should well
Speaker 1: they should be. Yeah, it's expected for christ takes to
Speaker 1: saying happened on the wedding anniversary too, and you know,
Speaker 1: and so that kind of like Sully is the whole
Speaker 1: thing for them. Yeah yeah. So, um, that's all we
Speaker 1: have on this, frustratingly, if you out there has something
Speaker 1: more for us, we'd like to hear from you. This
Speaker 1: episode in um, some of the links that we used
Speaker 1: for research will be on our website. The website is
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Speaker 1: I'm I don't I don't want to make fun of anything,
Speaker 1: so I'm just gonna say I'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 1: We're done with this one. We'll talk to you guys
Speaker 1: to week. Yeah. Yeah, Bye