Prelude
Almost two years ago, Ella-Brooke Morgan, then junior writer for the Zephyr, had an idea, sparked by the infamous Pazuzu Algarad case right here in Clemmons, North Carolina. Pazuzu’s case was one that was far “too close to home,” a Titan who took a turn for the worse. And so “Too Close To Home” was born, a series of deep dives into North Carolina murders and criminal cases that seem all too visceral to have happened so close.
This year, I am proud to be following in Morgan’s footsteps by continuing the series, with a new twist: profiling cases so cold that they have almost been written off as hopeless.
Almost.
As the weather gets colder, so do these cases, still without rhyme or reason. I can only hope that by keeping their stories alive, we can keep hope alive for justice as well.
Flowers, chocolate and other symbols of love are what you would typically expect on Valentine’s Day. It’s certainly what the Degree family was expecting on Feb. 14, since couple Iquilla and Harold were celebrating their 11th anniversary that very same day in 2000. All that would follow, however, was grief, uncertainty and heartache.
After going to their usual church service and visiting with family on Feb. 13, the Degree family headed home: mother Iquilla, father Harold and the children, O’Bryant, age 10 and Asha, age 9. Upon their arrival around 8 p.m., they discovered their house without power due to a car running into power lines. So, Iquilla and Harold tucked their children into bed in the kids’ shared room, hoping the power would be back in the morning. The power came back on only a few short hours later, around 12:30 a.m. according to Harold, who saw both his kids tucked tightly into bed around the same time. Harold checked on O’Bryant and Asha again before he went to sleep around 2:30 a.m., with the same result: both children resting peacefully.
Around 5:45 a.m. on Feb. 14, Iquilla went into her children’s bedroom to wake them for the day and give them the baths they had missed because of the outage, only to find Asha missing from bed. Shock quickly melted into panic as Iquilla searched the whole house for her daughter, contacted family members across the street and double checked every nook and cranny, to no avail. Between 2:30 and 5:45 a.m., Asha had simply disappeared.
Later, there would be signs that seemed to have forewarned Asha’s disappearance, which was determined a runaway. Both Degree parents had to work, but the kids were heading into a long weekend. So that Iquilla and Harold didn’t have to stay home, O’Bryant and Asha were staying with their aunt the few days before in their same neighborhood. Both children attended Fallston Elementary School, where they were on their respective basketball teams, and the kids went to practice everyday from their aunt’s house. Asha, who was the point guard for her team, fouled out in her team’s first loss of the season on Feb. 12; she was reportedly quite upset about it along with the rest of her team, but seemed to have recovered by the end of the night. A seemingly normal disappointment, made world-shattering in the mind of a 9-year-old girl? No one knows for sure.
But there are some things we do know. After Asha’s disappearance, O’Bryant reported that not too long after his father came and checked on them the second time, around 2:30 a.m., he heard Asha’s bed creak, but didn’t think anything of it, assuming she was just rolling over in her sleep. Little did O’Bryant realize that it was his little sister, slipping away with a backpack she had packed earlier into the night. The only two reports from that night were from a truck driver and motorist traveling along Highway 18, barely north of where it met Highway 180 between 3:45 and 4:15 a.m, in the midst of a vicious thunderstorm. Both reported seeing a small child in a long-sleeved white shirt and white pants, walking along the side of the highway. The motorist turned back, thinking it was “strange such a small child would be out by herself at that hour,” but the clearly frightened Asha ran into the woods and away from the motorist. That was the last time Asha Degree was reported seen.
To this day, no suspect has been arrested for Asha’s disappearance, despite the strong inkling that there was foul play involved. Bits of evidence have been uncovered along the way — a pencil, a marker, a hair bow and a photograph of another unidentified young girl were foundthe day after Asha’s disappearance and her backpack with a book and shirt inside, neither of which belonged to Asha, over a year later. Many tips have come in over the years from sightings to reports of where Asha’s body may be buried, but none have proved fruitful. After all this time, Iquilla and Harold just want answers: answers to where their daughter is.
“This is worse than death because, at least with death, you have closure,” Iquilla told WBTV back in 2018. “You can go to a gravesite, or if you have the urn at home, but for us, we can’t mourn, we can’t give up. The only thing we got is hope.”
If you know anything about the disappearance of Asha Degree, please call the Charlotte FBI branch at (704) 672-6100 or submit an anonymous tip at https://tips.fbi.gov/.
