Leah has been on my mind a lot lately after coincidentally catching the Unsolved Mysteries segment about her watching reruns on Lifetime after recently re-watching her Disappeared episode.
My mind is swimming. On one hand, her talk of Bellingham, Desolation Peak, On the Road, and Dharma Bums, etc. makes me almost certain she was heading to the lookout on Desolation Peak Jack Kerouac spent the summer of 1956 in. Her car was found near the intersection of Canyon Creek Road and Wa-542/ Mount Baker Highway. This is roughly 80-100 miles west of Desolation Peak. However, there is no direct route there on a major highway; I am assuming one would need to use forest service roads to get there unless they wanted to do some major backtracking. I had an inkling that maybe Leah had set off to find herself in Desolation Peak. Here's an article with more info about the location:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/travel/climbing-a-peak-that-stirred-kerouac.html?_r=0
I also thought that perhaps she had set off with Bea to commit suicide after the loss of her parents. However, I cannot for the life of me see any way she could have traveled those 100 or so miles without have leaving a trace somewhere. I am fairly certain someone would have noticed a woman with a cat flagging a ride.
Another idea I had was that perhaps she decided to camp out at the Douglas Fir Campground just south of Canyon Creek Road and north of the Nooksack River and maybe she ran into the wrong person/people. Canyon creek road is a small offshoot of the larger highway, is unmarked, and would be very easy to miss by someone unfamiliar with the area who happened to be driving by. However, it's in walking distance to the campground.
One last theory I have been pondering is that she somehow met with James Allen Kinney, who murdered Keri Lynn Sherlock in Bellingham 1998. While he was eventually caught in North Carolina in March of 2001, it's possible he was still in the area in March of 2000. He is also suspected in the murder of Mandy Stavik (
http://www.whatcomcounty.us/301/Unsolved-Homicide-Mandy-Stavik ) who disappeared while jogging about 30 miles south of where Leah's Jeep was found and whose body was found in the Nooksack river in 1989.
I feel like there are so many ways to go with this...so many red herrings leading me in so many different directions, however, I can't deny the string of dead girls and women in the Bellingham area that all lead back to one man. My bet is that James Allen Kinney had something to do with the disappearance of Leah Roberts.
Leah, I hope one day you're found.