transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:02] School of Humans. Hell and Gone Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness, invite witnesses to come forward, and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 2:
[00:46] It was 3.45 in the morning on February 14th, 2000, Valentine's Day, and a truck driver was barreling down Highway 18 right outside Shelby, North Carolina. It was pouring with rain. There was a huge storm hitting, the kind of rain where you have to focus hard to see. And through that heavy rain, the driver saw something outside his windshield. It was a black woman. At first, he thought that it was an adult. But as he got closer, he realized that it was a little girl and she was walking alone. So he slowed down and turned around. But when he pulled his vehicle up toward her to see if she needed help, the little girl ran off the side of the road into the woods. He didn't know that this little girl was nine-year-old Aisha Degree and that just a few miles away on Oak Crest Drive, her family was asleep, totally unaware that she was gone. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past eight years of making my True Crime podcast Hell and Gone, I've learned that there is no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country, asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. That's 678-744-6145. Or you can send us a message on Instagram at HellandGonePod. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. Aisha Degree was born on August 5th, 1990, and lived her whole life in that house on Oak Crest Drive with her parents, Harold and Iquilla Degree, and her older brother O'Brien in Shelby, North Carolina, a small city located approximately 45 miles west of Charlotte. Aisha was in fourth grade at Falston Elementary School, and she was a very good student. Aisha and her brother O'Brien would ride the bus home from school and then start doing their homework. Her parents both worked. At the time, Iquilla worked at Kauai America Corporation in Lincolnton. She worked there building pianos, and Harold was a dock worker at PPG Industries, short for Pittsburgh Plate Glass. This was a loving, happy family by pretty much all accounts, and they stuck to routines. Nothing about this family was chaotic or unstable. In fact, it was exactly the opposite. The weekend before Aisha disappeared started out on Friday, February 11th. There had been a lot of school closures following a big snowstorm in January. The schools were off that day. So while her parents worked, Aisha and her brother stayed with their Aunt Keisha degree, who lived down the street. Both kids were heavily involved in sports. They both played Pee Wee basketball, and they had practiced that afternoon. So they went to practice as usual, then went home afterwards. Saturday, February 12th was also all about sports. Aisha played basketball at a nearby elementary school. Now, something did upset Aisha that day. Her team lost the game. She ended up fouling and having to sit on the bench. This made her cry. But her mom later said, even though Aisha was understandably sad by the loss and how it affected her teammates especially, once she started crying, she actually stopped pretty quickly. She dried her tears and got over it. Aisha rejoined her friends. The sheriff told the star newspaper, all the girls were crying, not just Aisha. And they had a good cry afterward because it was the first loss. Aisha's brother O'Brien also had a game that day. So after they were both finished, they went home. Later that night, Aisha was at a slumber party with some friends. On Saturday, February 13th, the family went to their regular church, Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Waco. They do this every Sunday. And then they went to Aisha's aunt's house to have lunch. Aisha spent time with her grandmother, Joanne Jackson, on Sunday. Her grandma said later Aisha was happy because she was getting chocolates for Valentine's Day. Everything seemed completely normal that Sunday night as the family settled into their evening routine. They were wrapping up a happy weekend. Aisha's dad said Aisha was tired from the slumber party the night before, so she went to bed at around 6:30 p.m. But she woke up two hours later to the sounds of a storm. Aisha's dad said she watched TV with the family before going back to bed. Then, sometime around 9 p.m. during that storm, power went out in the neighborhood, so the entire house was dark for hours. According to Good Morning America back in 2010, Harold said he did leave the house briefly during this time at around 11:30 p.m. to buy Valentine's Day candy at the store. He said he came back to the house, and by then the power was back on, and Aisha and her brother were asleep. Harold told GMA that he watched TV for a while. Then he went to bed at around 2:30 a.m. At 6:30 a.m. after Harold and Aquila woke up, they realized that Aisha wasn't in bed, and after frantically looking around, they called the police. Aquila said that at some point, it appeared as if Aisha had woken up and packed her bag with some stuff, and then headed out on her own. North Carolina Highway 18 is about a block from that house, so Aisha would have had to walk about a mile down the road, to the place where the truck driver had seen her. Her parents said that when Aisha left, she was wearing white sneakers, white jeans, carrying a black book bag and a purse with Tweety Bird on it. She may also have been wearing a white nightgown with red trim and a Teddy Bear on the front. This nightgown, by the way, is a detail that will become very important later. There was some other clothing missing from Aisha's room, including her favorite blue jeans with a red stripe, a long-sleeved white nylon shirt, and a red vest trimmed in black. Police immediately began scouring the area, and soon some neighbors found some of Aisha's items scattered nearby, including candy wrappers and a hair bow that belonged to Aisha. So police were trying to figure out exactly what went down. Had someone come into the house and kidnapped Aisha? That seemed kind of unlikely because even though the front door was unlocked, no one inside the house had heard anyone come in. So that, plus the stuff scattered around, had them leaning toward another possibility that Aisha had for some reason left the house on her own. So that would mean that sometime between 2:30 a.m. and 4 a.m., Aisha left her house. But why? Her mother insisted Aisha was afraid of storms, so she didn't believe Aisha would have gone out on her own. It wasn't until 5 p.m. on Monday that one of the motorists who saw Aisha called police. This happened after they realized there was a little girl missing when they saw the reports on the news. Of course, in a case like this, once someone comes forward after the news bulletins, it's important to ask if they could have been mistaken about the sightings. But police believe this was unlikely because there was a second sighting. In addition to the truck driver who saw Aisha walking along Highway 18 before disappearing into the woods, there was another driver. This person said they saw a girl matching Aisha's description at approximately 4:15 a.m., near where the first truck driver said he saw her. This second witness said Aisha was alone when they saw her and was carrying a backpack and walking south. So investigators went to the spot where the witnesses said they saw Aisha. The volunteers and law enforcement concentrated their search there. And while searching a shed along Highway 18, near the area where drivers had seen her walking, a few days after Aisha went missing, they found something. It was near a business called Turner's Upholstery. They found several small items that were Aisha's. They included candy wrappers, a pencil and a marker, among other small items from her backpack in an old chicken house. Now, I want to mention here there was something else that Aisha kept in her book bag, a spare key. And investigators have never released whether or not they found that spare key among her belongings. So my question is, did they find the key? And if they didn't, where was it? Could Aisha have possibly given that key to someone else? But if Aisha did run away, why? The Charlotte Observer reported the Cleveland County Sheriff, Bob Crawford, said there were no indications that there was anything wrong at home. Had Aisha wandered into that shed to get off the road on her own? Or did someone take her there? And then, the trail went cold for months. Even though they found the belongings, they didn't find any trace of Aisha. Then, on August 2, 2001, construction workers were on Highway 18 in Morganton in Burke County, which is around 26 miles from Shelby, when they found Aisha's backpack. The backpack was buried, wrapped in two sealed black plastic garbage bags. About 18 months after Aisha Degree disappeared, her backpack was discovered, buried off a highway construction site. Police confirmed they had taken items out of the backpack that were associated with Aisha, including clothing and personal belongings. But they said there were also items there that were not hers. Crucially, they never mentioned her spare key. We can deduce that whoever buried that backpack obviously went to great lengths to try to conceal it. This must have been heartbreaking for her parents to hear. One of the items that they found was a photograph. This photograph was of a young black girl, but it was not Aisha. It was a professional photograph, like one that you would have taken at a photo studio or at school. But Aisha's family didn't know who the little girl in the photo, who appeared to be around the same age as Aisha, was. Investigators weren't sure whether this had meaning. Was this some kind of a serial killer trophy? Or could Aisha have had the photo with her, with some of her stuff? Maybe she traded her photo with another friend? Or was this just another red herring, something entirely unconnected to this case? This young woman has never been publicly identified. Some online commenters claim the girl in the photo has been identified, but she doesn't want to be named publicly. Since this is an open investigation, which means police are only sharing the information they want shared, we don't know for sure. Over the years, investigators considered multiple possibilities about why Aisha would have walked out of the door that night. Was she meeting someone? Was she lured out by someone who groomed her? Or had she left her house to have some kind of adventure, and then something happened, maybe she was abducted? Or could it have been some kind of an accident? Possibly like a hit and run? And maybe a cover-up? What really happened along that remote stretch of highway that night? In 2016, the FBI released information about another possible lead, a vehicle of interest that was described as a 1970s era green vehicle. The agency said Aisha could have been seen in an early Lincoln Mark IV, or Ford Thunderbird from the 1970s, on the night she went missing. But then, the case went quiet again. One possibility investigators considered over the years was that maybe Aisha left the house to have some kind of adventure on her own, but then someone intercepted her once she was out. Maybe they just saw an opportunity and grabbed her. Or maybe on that dark stormy night, if it was a hit and run while it was raining out there, maybe the driver panicked and left the scene. In 2018, the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office came forward again. They announced that their investigative team had found two new items of interest in Aisha's case. The first one was a library book written by Dr. Seuss titled, McElligot's Pool. Investigators said that library records did not go back to 2000, which presumably meant they weren't sure whether Aisha or someone else checked out that particular book. Police said they wanted to find anyone who may have had this book around the time she went missing. The second item of interest they released was a New Kids on the Block concert t-shirt. It was white with a photo of the band on the front, and it said Main Arena 7 p.m. But there was no city name. The Sheriff's Office also asked that anyone who owned this t-shirt or knew someone who may have owned one to reach out to law enforcement. We're going to be sharing photos of this t-shirt on Instagram at Hell and Gone Pod, but I want to say I did a deep dive on this t-shirt and spent way too much time investigating New Kids on the Block. The timeline of the shirt is super interesting to me though because by 2000, New Kids on the Block were not together anymore. They broke up in 1994. Asha was nine years old in 2000, so she was way too young, in my opinion, to be an OG New Kids fan. Was this shirt a hand-me-down from an older relative? That seemed unlikely since Asha's parents didn't mention it being hers. From the information that law enforcement has released, this shirt did not belong to Asha. So if it wasn't hers, where did this t-shirt come from? When I asked ChatGPT, and I mention this because a lot of people always say, how do you use ChatGPT in investigations? I think that it is a reasonable question. I do sometimes use ChatGPT, but it's not as useful as you would think. And this is going to kind of illustrate why. When I asked Chat, it said, this t-shirt was almost certainly from one of their two most massive tours, the Magic Summer No More Games Tour from 1988 to 1990, or the one that immediately followed from 1990 to 1992. The 90 to 92 tour was the massive global tour that had dates all over the world. So this was peak New Kids fame. But it told me that the shirt was almost certainly a bootlegged concert t-shirt sold by an unofficial vendor who had a pop-up stand outside of a concert. I thought that Chat was wrong, and it turned out I was right. I found out the t-shirt was actually a nightgown made to look like a t-shirt. It was made by a company called Rock Knights. They made nightgowns for girls. There are several similar ones on eBay advertised as Vintage 90s. This Rock Knights company designed fantasy concert shirts so kids could feel like they went to the concert even when they didn't. That's why their labeling was more generic with no city names. I found this the old school way by going through old eBay listings and calling people. Side note, when I asked Chat why it got it wrong, Chat explained it's predictive, so not great at picking up anomalies. Again, Chat has a lot of uses in investigations, and I think it's important to try every avenue. But in cases like this, there are a lot of strange things happening that in my opinion are better investigated by a human staying up late fueled only by matcha lattes and an obsession. So if the new kid's shirt wasn't Asha's, how did it end up buried with her stuff? Could it have belonged to her killer? Or could it have been in a house or the trunk of a car and been something they grabbed while getting rid of a body? Another thing that I noted, according to her mom, Asha was wearing a white nightgown with red trim when she went missing. It had a teddy bear on the front. The new kid's nightgown also was white with bright colors and red trim. So I was thinking maybe someone grabbed it when they were getting rid of Asha's stuff. Maybe they grabbed the wrong piece of clothing. These are all just theories, but in an open investigation, it is important to consider all possibilities. As the years ticked by behind the scenes, police were investigating multiple leads, including a local family, the Deadmans. It's important to emphasize before we go into this, these details come from search warrants and investigative materials which reflect suspicion and theories, not proven facts. No one has been charged in connection with Asha Degree's disappearance, and all individuals mentioned are presumed innocent. With that said, the Deadman family was Roy Deadman and his wife, Connie, and their three daughters, Lizzie, Sarah, and Anna Lee. Lizzie would have been 16 years old in 2000 when Asha disappeared. Sarah was about 15 and Anna Lee was 13. Roy and Connie operated two assisted living facilities in the area. And one of the things that they did was patient transport, driving patients from point A to point B. In 2023, an employee with Cleveland County Social Services told police that back in 2000, Roy would send his oldest daughter Lizzie to take patients to and from Broughton Hospital in Morganton, quote, in an unreliable car, end quote. Now this town, Broughton, is located just off Highway 18 in Burke County. This is the same road that Asha was last seen on, and the same road where searchers found the evidence in black trash bags. One of the items that investigators found in Asha's book bag was an undershirt. It belonged to Asha, and on that undershirt, law enforcement found a piece of hair attached that matched the DNA of the third Deadman's sister, Anna Lee. In 2024, investigators executed search warrants connected to the Deadman's, and specifically mentioned Roy and Connie as potential people of investigative interest in Asha's case. Since, at the time of the disappearance, all of their daughters were minors. Law enforcement executed these search warrants at a house in Shelby, an assisted living facility in Vale, and a home in Charlotte. Several items were seized from Roy Deadman's home on Cherryville Road. The locations were all described as being, quote, owned and lived in by members of the Deadman family, end quote. Roy Deadman's house on Cherryville Road is about 3.7 miles from where Asha was last seen by the drivers on North Carolina Highway 18. But there was also someone else named in the investigation, a man named Russell Underhill, whose DNA was also found on items belonging to Asha. So who was Russell Underhill and what was his connection to Asha? There was no known connection between Russell Underhill and Asha or her family, but there was a connection between Russell Underhill and the Deadmans. Back in 2000, Russell Bradley Underhill was a patient in one of the assisted living facilities operated by the Deadman family. Russell was a Vietnam vet who struggled with depression and substance abuse. So one question that I had was, how incapacitated was Russell Underhill in 2000? Could he drive? Or could he have been one of the patients who was transported by the Deadmans? And I haven't been able to find a definitive answer to that question so far. At what point, if at all, could Russell have had contact with Asha? Police did have physical evidence, including the backpack and items found in and around it. Among that evidence, they identified DNA belonging to Russell Underhill, as well as DNA from Annaleigh Dedman. So let's talk about Aisha's undershirt. According to search warrants, investigators recovered a hair from that shirt complete with a root that allowed them to obtain a DNA profile. This DNA did not match Russell Underhill. Instead, it was linked to Annaleigh Dedman, now Annaleigh Ramirez. This was the youngest daughter of the Dedman family. She would have been 13 years old at the time when Aisha went missing in 2000. Now, importantly, we know DNA evidence alone does not establish involvement in a crime. We know that transfer can happen in a lot of ways, through indirect contact, shared environments, or other types of situations, all of which can have an innocent explanation. The search warrant read, Due to the ages of Roy Dedman and Connie Dedman's three daughters in the year 2000, investigators believe adult assistance from Roy Dedman and Connie Dedman would have been necessary in the execution and or concealment of the crime. Roy and Connie Dedman are the two common links between the profiles of Russell Bradley Underhill and Annali Victoria Dedman Ramirez, collected and identified from Aisha Degree's undershirt, and the trash bag which contained Aisha Degree's book bag. So you have the hair on Aisha's undershirt that matched Annali and other DNA evidence that matched Russell. So what was the link between them? The initial search warrants named Roy, Connie and all three daughters. And investigators did indicate they believed that juveniles may have been involved in what happened to Aisha with help from adults. This is all according to the search warrant. In September of 2024, authorities finally said publicly they believed that Aisha was dead and that her killing was a homicide. And then more people started coming forward. The week after law enforcement searched the dead man's properties, a man went to the sheriff's office for an interview with investigators, according to court documents. This person, according to police records, said that he partied with the dead man's three daughters in the mid 2000s. He claimed he was at a house party with Anna Lee and Sarah, when Anna Lee allegedly got upset and told him while she was intoxicated, quote, I killed Aisha DeGreet, end quote. The witness claimed Sarah then told her sister to, quote, shut the fuck up. The man told investigators he was 100% positive of these moments and was later given a lie detector test. He reportedly passed that test, though law enforcement has not confirmed that, in any case, the results would not be admissible in court. This account is unverified. It's based on a single witness and it is not led to charges. And statements like these made in social settings, especially when someone's under the influence of alcohol or something else, are not considered reliable evidence. Months passed. Then there was more news. On February 13th, 2025, a day before the 25th anniversary of Aisha going missing, police executed search warrants that focused on daughters Lizzie and Sarah Dedman-Capel. They were later made public by WBTV. In those search warrants, the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office stated, they believed Lizzie, Sarah, and Roy Dedman had, quote, engaged in obstruction of justice in connection with Aisha's disappearance, end quote. Now it's important to note no one has been arrested or charged in connection with Aisha's disappearance and there are many ways, as we said, DNA can get from one place to another or be transferred. A lot of them do not involve foul play. Authorities took a variety of computers, laptops, cell phones, and records from Roy Dedman's home. There was also a human tooth that was retrieved in a plastic bag. Roy Dedman also had a DNA sample taken from him during that time. And authorities have said they want to run it through CODIS. But since last year, there has been no word on if that testing has been done and what the result was. There's something else. On September 10, 2024, before the search warrants were executed, a woman told investigators that several years ago, she saw Roy Dedman digging a chest-deep hole at his property located on Cherryville Road. The next day, a detective who searched the area noted he had, quote, observed a six to eight inch dent in the ground, where it was obvious the ground had been disturbed, end quote. But police scoured that area for days, and the Cleveland County Sheriff, Alan Norman, later stated detectives found no remains. The Dedman family has maintained their innocence and they have started to speak out through a spokesperson. They have completely denied any role in Aisha's disappearance or demise. At this point, despite years of investigation and search warrants, there is still no confirmed theory about what actually happened to Aisha, and no charges have been filed against anyone. After issuing the search warrants in 2025, police took cell phones from Lizzie, Sarah, and Roy Dedman. They also reviewed messages from Lizzie's iCloud account, and they have made many of these messages public. The ones that police have released focused on conversations between Lizzie, her ex-husband, and Annalee. Lizzie sent a message on September 12th, 2024, saying she had spoken to the family lawyer, and that quote, the theory is I did it, accident covered it up, end quote. Sarah texted Lizzie quote, they think it's our shirt, it's not her shirt. Her mom said it wasn't hers. I don't remember that shirt. I'm scared though. Dad is probably going to be a huge suspect, end quote. The meaning of these messages is unclear, and it's important to stay here. She could have been talking about anything, blowing off steam, stress, or just talking about investigators' theories rather than actual events. There was also more activity around the green car, the one that police said Aisha May had been pulled into back in 2016, the older green vehicle. Investigators said an AMC Rambler, an older green one, was seized from a property belonging to Roy Dedman in September of 2024, and that it had very similar features to the vehicle of interest that they were looking for back in 2016. There are reportedly 29 vehicles registered to the Dedman family, which presumably makes any search a little bit more complicated. And according to search warrants, at the time Aisha went missing, Sarah drove the AMC Rambler. As we said before, it has also been reported that Lizzie, the oldest daughter, who was around 16 at the time, would sometimes help her parents in transporting people between different care facilities. One of those places was a hospital in Morganton. To get there, one would have to travel via Highway 18, the highway where Aisha was last seen. So again, one of the biggest mysteries in this case was how the DNA from Anna Lee and Russell got mixed up with Aisha's things. Was it just transfer DNA, meaning something was near Anna Lee at some point and Russell maybe in the same vehicle? But through their family lawyer, the Dedman family held a press conference on September 13th, 2024, and they stated they have zero knowledge of or involvement in what happened to Aisha. There's no way to question Russell Underhill because he passed away back in 2004. His cause of death was never determined. The reason that police issued the search warrants was because there was no connection between Aisha Degree and the Dedmans. So naturally, police wondered how her DNA ended up mixed with Annalise and with Russell's. Roy Dedman's attorney said he hoped people would let law enforcement do their job and to not assume his clients were guilty based on the search warrants. The sheriff's office did the same thing. They made a public plea for people not to spread false information. People were going online and saying things like a body had been found. And so law enforcement was trying to calm everyone down, but that was hard because things were happening fast and people wanted answers. The Deadman's attorney also addressed the issue of the AMC Rambler that had been taken from the Deadman's property along Cherryville Road in Shelby. When the car was seized, pictures were released, and it was obvious it had been wrecked. It had damage to the front left fender. But the Deadman family attorney has stated that registration records show the vehicle wasn't in the possession of the Deadman family until a month after Asha disappeared. He told WCNC that the Deadman family is scared, that they have been receiving threats from people living in the community, who believe, he says incorrectly, that they were somehow involved in what happened to Asha. There was no trace of Asha found during any of these searches of properties belonging to the Deadmans, which span Cleveland County and two other counties. Roy Deadman's attorney also addressed Russell Underhill, saying that he believed the search would sadly link a person to Asha's disappearance, who is no longer living. So where does that leave the investigation? Police say they have questioned every member of the Deadman family numerous times. Police say the green AMC Rambler continues to be a vehicle of interest. The Sheriff's Office, the FBI, and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation have all been involved in the search for Asha Degree. As Asha's family navigates the highs and the lows of search warrants being executed and the years of nothing happening, they are still asking anyone out there who has any information to contact the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office. There is still a $100,000 reward active for this case, for anyone who provides information that could lead to the arrest of the person who was responsible for Asha's death. To this day, Asha's body has not been found. Asha's mom said she wants justice for her daughter, and she said she hasn't been able to look at people in her safe little small town in quite the same way again. She told the Charlotte Observer, I can't trust anyone. My biggest fear is that the person who took her is someone we know, that the same people who tried to help us at the beginning, are the ones who took her. I'm Catherine Townsend, this is Hell and Gone Murder Line. Hell and Gone Murder Line is the production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me, Catherine Townsend, and produced by Edelise Perez. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and Sarah Burns for legal review. Know a camera mixed in score this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Salih, executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr and LC. Crowley. Listen to Hell and Gone ad-free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at hellandgonpod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. That's 678-744-6145.