On the night of February 14, 2000 — Valentine’s Day, technically, though the family was sound asleep — a 9-year-old girl in a small North Carolina town packed a backpack, put on her white sneakers, opened her front door, and walked out into a cold rain.

Several drivers on Highway 18 in Cleveland County saw her. They saw a small Black girl in white shoes, walking along the shoulder of the road in the dark, in the rain. Most slowed down to look. None stopped.

By morning, she was gone. Her parents would spend the next twenty-four years — nearly a quarter century — not knowing what happened to her. In May 2024, the FBI finally announced charges in the case. The answers, when they came, were as devastating as her parents had feared.

A Family in Shelby

Iquilla and Harold Degree lived in Shelby, North Carolina, a town of about 20,000 in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They had two children: Asha, the younger, and her older brother O’Bryant. They were a working-class Black family, both parents employed at local businesses, both deeply involved in their community church.

Asha was 9 years old, in third grade. By every account from her teachers and family, she was thoughtful, quiet, devoted to her mother, and remarkably well-behaved. She was not the kind of child who ran away from home.

She had, however, been struggling that month. Her basketball team had lost a recent game and she had blamed herself. She had recently watched a movie in which a young protagonist ran away to solve a problem. Her mother would later remember Asha being quieter than usual in the days before Valentine’s Day, though nothing struck Iquilla as out of the ordinary at the time.

The Night Before Valentine’s Day

On the night of February 13, 2000, the family went to bed as usual. A heavy rainstorm had moved into the area. Sometime in the early hours of February 14, between approximately 2:30 and 4:00 AM, Asha got out of bed, dressed herself, packed a backpack with a few items, and left the house.

She was not abducted from inside the home. She walked out on her own. Whether she did so willingly, or whether someone outside had persuaded or arranged for her to come, has been one of the central mysteries of the case for twenty-five years.

Asha’s brother O’Bryant later told investigators he heard the bedroom door creak around 2:30 AM. He thought it was their mother and went back to sleep.

The Drivers Who Saw Her

At approximately 3:45 AM, the first of several motorists reported seeing a small Black girl walking south along Highway 18, a rural state road that ran near the Degree home. The witnesses agreed on the basic details: she was wearing a white shirt, white pants, and a white jacket. She carried a backpack. She was walking purposefully, as if she had a destination in mind.

At least one driver turned around to go back and check on her. By the time he returned to where he had seen her, she was no longer there.

The final sighting was near a shed off Highway 18, around 4:00 AM. After that, Asha Degree vanished.

The Search That Wasn’t Enough

When Iquilla went to wake Asha for school the next morning, her bed was empty. By 6:30 AM, Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office was at the house. Within hours, hundreds of volunteers were searching the woods around Highway 18.

The search lasted weeks. Helicopters, search dogs, FBI agents joined the effort. National media coverage brought Asha’s face to millions of American homes. Tip lines rang constantly.

Nothing surfaced.

The Backpack on Highway 18

About a month after Asha disappeared, on March 15, 2000, a contractor working on a wooded property along Highway 18 — approximately 26 miles from the spot where Asha had last been seen — found a backpack in the underbrush.

It was Asha’s. Inside were her books, her favorite hair barrettes, and several other items she had taken with her that night. The backpack appeared to have been deliberately placed — not dropped, not torn open by an animal — in the spot where it was found.

The discovery raised a chilling implication. Whoever had Asha had moved her at least 26 miles from the area where she was last seen, then deliberately discarded her belongings. This was not a random misadventure. This was a person, or persons, with the means and the intention to hide what they were doing.

24 Years of Silence

The case went cold. Cleveland County Sheriff, the FBI, and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation maintained an active file. Tips trickled in over the years. None led to an arrest.

The Degree family, refusing to accept the silence, organized annual prayer vigils. Iquilla became a public advocate for missing children. She gave interview after interview. She returned to the spots along Highway 18 every Valentine’s Day. She wrote letters to officials demanding the case be kept active.

In 2015, the FBI publicly released a fuller forensic profile of items linked to the case. In 2020, on the 20th anniversary, the case was profiled by national media outlets, with the FBI offering a $25,000 reward for information.

And then, on May 22, 2024 — twenty-four years after Asha walked out of her home — the FBI announced charges.

The 2024 Breakthrough

The man charged in connection with Asha Degree’s disappearance was Roy Lee Dedmon, age 73. The FBI also charged his wife, Connie Dedmon, age 65, with crimes related to the case.

The Dedmons had no obvious connection to the Degree family. They were a white couple who lived in the area. The FBI has not, as of this writing, released the full evidence used to build the case — that will come at trial — but according to court documents, advances in forensic technology, including new DNA evidence found on items associated with the case, were central to identifying the Dedmons.

The Dedmons have pleaded not guilty. Their trial is ongoing as of 2026.

Asha’s body has not been recovered.

A Family’s Long Wait

Iquilla Degree was 33 years old when her daughter walked out into the rain. She is now in her late 50s. Harold Degree, Asha’s father, never gave up. Neither did O’Bryant, Asha’s brother — now an adult who has spent his entire life as the older brother of a missing child.

The Degrees have responded to the charges with cautious words. “We’ve waited a long time,” Iquilla said in a public statement. “We are grateful that the FBI never stopped working this case. We want answers. We want our daughter brought home.”

The full story of what happened to Asha Degree on the night of February 14, 2000 — why she walked out of her home in the rain, who she may have been going to meet, and what was done to her after the last driver saw her on Highway 18 — may finally be answered in a courtroom in Cleveland County, North Carolina.

Twenty-six years after a small girl in white walked into the dark, her family is, finally, on the verge of knowing.

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