I live in Southern Mississippi, and my grandmother (and other family) lived in the Tupelo area for decades, and my father grew up there. She also now lives in Booneville in the house her parents built. I did a bunch of amateur research on this case a year or so ago. My grandmother isn't a huge fan of this type of thing, so I sadly haven't gotten any information about it from her, but I came to the conclusion that Kearns had done it and that the mother had shut down (possibly related to her military training) her emotions so she came off cold to media.
From what I remember, Kearns and Leigh shared a love of horses and he possibly talked to her about it at church or the ranch they both rode at. He had been convicted of a kidnapping and rape of a girl around her age that he had met through church within a year of Leigh's disappearance. He went on (1 year after getting out of jail for the first conviction, crazy) to kidnap a couple and rape the woman. Some theories say he might have buried her under the church's new (at the time) foundation. There was also something about Leigh's boyfriend saying that she stated she was scared of Barney (stepfather) and often showed up with marks at school, which she brushed off.
There was a body found at one point during the investigation that was mistakenly identified as hers through dental records, only to be redacted days later and identified as another missing woman who was 27. The confusion of that has always felt very off to me, considering the age difference and means of identification, but maybe it's easier to mix up than I'd think.
Also, when their house was searched, Leigh's bloody nightgown was found in her laundry, and other clothes were missing, which seems like something she would have done herself IMO. Honestly, this makes the theory that she could have injured herself a bit more believable, but there's not a lot of evidence pointing toward it.
The detective states that Vicki can still be considered a POI since she can't be ruled out.
“I would consider her a person of interest,” Aguirre said. “You still can’t eliminate her. There are still too many unanswered questions for Vickie, and I don’t know if that is unusual for somebody to go off to work and say, well I just left Leigh but I’m going to call and check on her. Why check on her that soon after she just left her?” (djournal article)
This case feels similar to the Jonelle Matthews case that happened eight years prior, though that has recently been solved. Preteen, missing in a short time span, garage door open, a fellow church member is a POI, etc. Her thread is below, along with some articles I looked through a while back during my research and found most of the information above.
Missing Since: December 20, 1984 from Greeley, Colorado Classification: Non-Family Abduction Date Of Birth: February 9, 1972 Age: 12 years old Height and Weight: 5'3, 115 pounds Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Brown hair, brown eyes. Jonelle has a scar on her chin. She wore a...
www.websleuths.com
25 years later, Leigh Occhi case remains a mystery
Disappearance of Leigh Occhi - Wikipedia
The Disappearance of Leigh Occhi
These are all JMO or things I haven't seen in this thread yet and wanted to mention, and thought were interesting! I'm relatively new to WS so I apologize if anything is wrong with this post.
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