Asha Degree: The Bookbag on Highway 18 (2026)

Shelby, North Carolina, February 2000: a nine-year-old girl left her home in the middle of a stormy night. Two drivers saw her walking along a two-lane highway in the rain. She has never been seen again. Seventeen months later her bookbag was dug up thirty miles north, along the same road, wrapped in two sealed black plastic bags, holding a concert T-shirt and a library book that were not hers.

This episode follows the case from the house on Oakcrest Drive through the first search and the items it left behind. It covers the bookbag, the green car the FBI spent years asking about, and the search warrants served in 2024 and 2025 that named a Cleveland County family as suspects. The question is not only who may have been involved. It is what the evidence in this file can actually establish, and where the record still stops.

The case in brief

Asha Jaquilla Degree was nine years old, a fourth-grader at Fallston Elementary School in Cleveland County, North Carolina. She was last seen by her parents at about 2:30 a.m. on February 14, 2000, asleep in the bedroom she shared with her brother. Her mother went in to wake the children at about 5:45 a.m. and found her bed empty and her bookbag gone. 1
The last confirmed sighting: two drivers reported seeing a small girl walking along North Carolina Highway 18, away from her home, between roughly 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. She was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt and white trousers. One driver turned back and watched her leave the roadside and run into the woods, about a mile from her home. Published accounts differ by as much as an hour on the time. 2 3
The first search: it covered a two-to-three-mile radius and amounted to about 9,000 hours of work and 300 tips. It was called off on February 23, 2000, nine days after she disappeared. The only items found near her route were candy wrappers, a pencil, a green marker, a yellow hair bow and a wallet-sized photograph of a girl her family did not recognise, recovered from a shed along the highway. 4
The bookbag: on August 3, 2001, construction workers cutting an access road in Burke County, about 30 miles north of the last sighting, found her bookbag buried along Highway 18, wrapped in two sealed black plastic garbage bags. Inside were a New Kids on the Block concert T-shirt and a copy of Dr. Seuss's McElligot's Pool — the book from her own school library, neither item hers. 1
The vehicle: the FBI announced in May 2016 that someone matching Asha's description may have been seen getting into a dark green early-1970s Lincoln Continental Mark IV or Ford Thunderbird with rust around the wheel wells. 2
The 2024 warrants: executed on September 10, 2024, at properties on Cherryville Road and elsewhere. They said for the first time that investigators believed Asha was a homicide victim whose body had been concealed, and named Roy and Connie Dedmon and their three daughters as suspects. Two items from the bookbag produced DNA results. One linked to AnnaLee Dedmon Ramirez, who was 13 at the time; the other to Russell Bradley Underhill, who lived in facilities the Dedmons operated and died in 2004. No remains were found and no one was arrested. 5
The 2025 warrants: executed on February 13, 2025, they seized phones belonging to Roy Dedmon and two daughters, Lizzie Foster and Sarah Caple. The probable cause was felony obstruction of justice, and the warrants set out text messages between the sisters. None of the family has been charged, and their lawyer says they had no involvement in or knowledge of the disappearance. 6 7
Where it stands: the last search was on April 4, 2025, at the grounds of an abandoned school near Vale. A year later, in April 2026, the case was publicly quiet: no new searches, no updates and no arrests. The reward for information stands at $100,000. 3 8

What the evidence can and cannot say

The case supports a documented core. Asha Degree left her home on Oakcrest Drive in the early hours of February 14, 2000, carrying a bag she had packed in advance. Two drivers reported seeing her walking along Highway 18 between roughly 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. Her parents reported her missing by 6:30 a.m. In August 2001 her bookbag was recovered, double-bagged, along the same highway about 30 miles north of the last sighting. Forensic work on items from that bag produced DNA results that, in 2024, gave investigators enough for search warrants naming the Dedmon family as suspects.

The record is much weaker on the questions people ask first. No one has been charged, and there has been no trial, no plea, and no in-court testing of the accounts described in the warrants. A DNA profile on an object does not establish how the object came to be where it was, who carried it, or when it was left — those are separate questions the public record does not answer. Probable cause in a search warrant is a belief strong enough for a judge to authorise a search. It is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and the people named in those warrants are entitled to the presumption of innocence. Through their lawyer, the Dedmon family has denied any involvement in or knowledge of Asha's disappearance, and the warrants themselves record that Roy Dedmon did not appear to have any ties to Asha or to her family.

Two further points are disputed or unresolved in the record and are presented as such. The published times of the last sighting differ between the FBI's account, which places it around 4 a.m., and later local summaries that place it near 3:15 a.m. And reporting on the green AMC Rambler seized in 2024 has differed over which of the Dedmon daughters drove it; what the warrants support is only that detectives considered it very similar to the vehicle the FBI had described.

What remains is a family still waiting. Harold and Iquilla Degree married on Valentine's Day. They have now spent twenty-six anniversaries on the other side of that morning, and they still hold an annual walk from their front door to a billboard for their daughter on Highway 18.

Information

Anyone with information about the disappearance of Asha Degree is asked to contact the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office in North Carolina at 704-484-4788, or the FBI Charlotte field office. Asha has been missing since February 14, 2000, and the case remains open.

References

The case in brief

Asha Jaquilla Degree was nine years old, a fourth-grader at Fallston Elementary School in Cleveland County, North Carolina. She was last seen by her parents at about 2:30 a.m. on February 14, 2000, asleep in the bedroom she shared with her brother. Her mother went in to wake the children at about 5:45 a.m. and found her bed empty and her bookbag gone. 1

The last confirmed sighting: two drivers reported seeing a small girl walking along North Carolina Highway 18, away from her home, between roughly 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. She was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt and white trousers. One driver turned back and watched her leave the roadside and run into the woods, about a mile from her home. Published accounts differ by as much as an hour on the time. 2 3

The first search: it covered a two-to-three-mile radius and amounted to about 9,000 hours of work and 300 tips. It was called off on February 23, 2000, nine days after she disappeared. The only items found near her route were candy wrappers, a pencil, a green marker, a yellow hair bow and a wallet-sized photograph of a girl her family did not recognise, recovered from a shed along the highway. 4

The bookbag: on August 3, 2001, construction workers cutting an access road in Burke County, about 30 miles north of the last sighting, found her bookbag buried along Highway 18, wrapped in two sealed black plastic garbage bags. Inside were a New Kids on the Block concert T-shirt and a copy of Dr. Seuss's McElligot's Pool — the book from her own school library, neither item hers. 1

The vehicle: the FBI announced in May 2016 that someone matching Asha's description may have been seen getting into a dark green early-1970s Lincoln Continental Mark IV or Ford Thunderbird with rust around the wheel wells. 2

The 2024 warrants: executed on September 10, 2024, at properties on Cherryville Road and elsewhere. They said for the first time that investigators believed Asha was a homicide victim whose body had been concealed, and named Roy and Connie Dedmon and their three daughters as suspects. Two items from the bookbag produced DNA results. One linked to AnnaLee Dedmon Ramirez, who was 13 at the time; the other to Russell Bradley Underhill, who lived in facilities the Dedmons operated and died in 2004. No remains were found and no one was arrested. 5

The 2025 warrants: executed on February 13, 2025, they seized phones belonging to Roy Dedmon and two daughters, Lizzie Foster and Sarah Caple. The probable cause was felony obstruction of justice, and the warrants set out text messages between the sisters. None of the family has been charged, and their lawyer says they had no involvement in or knowledge of the disappearance. 6 7

Where it stands: the last search was on April 4, 2025, at the grounds of an abandoned school near Vale. A year later, in April 2026, the case was publicly quiet: no new searches, no updates and no arrests. The reward for information stands at $100,000. 3 8

What the evidence can and cannot say

Asha Degree: The Bookbag on Highway 18

The case in brief

What the evidence can and cannot say

Information

References

Related content

Asha Degree: The Bookbag on Highway 18

The case in brief

What the evidence can and cannot say

Information

References

Related content