NC NC - Asha Degree, 9, Shelby, 14 Feb 2000 #2

[Megsc]

Article is from May but had not seen this and wanted to share:

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article307149186.html

‘Significant progress’ made in finding Asha Degree, NC sheriff says​

Thanks to the new technology and “tons and tons of work, tons of resources, money … hopefully it brings us closure here soon,” Bowen said.

This case has been haunting me for so long, I really want it to be solved
Hopefully 2025 will be the year that Asha is found and finally put to rest

 

[SluethinAway]

This case has been haunting me for so long, I really want it to be solved
Hopefully 2025 will be the year that Asha is found and finally put to rest

Haunts me as well.
I just keep praying for justice for her sweet soul!

 

[maamager]

Well… the Dedmons are finally speaking. I’m going to listen and share my thoughts later — needed to share this first!

169. The Asha Degree Case: The Dedmons Speak

Podcast Episode · The Prosecutors: Legal Briefs · 07/15/2025 · 1h 9m

podcasts.apple.com

 

[Aurora90]

I am listening as well on my afternoon walk. I fear the blame will be placed on the deceased male much like they did at that press conference….

 

[maamager]

i wanted to note key takeaways from this interview. as a hired crisis manager, it’s Skip Foster’s job to sew doubt and sympathy in the public. he says a lot of nothing. takeaways below (excuse the writing as it’s not as smooth as i’d like it, literally pasting my notes hehe) please remember this is SKIP’S NARRATIVE!!

Skip Foster (the family’s spokesperson) is pushing back on the current police theory, saying the evidence is cherry-picked and doesn’t hold up under real scrutiny. he’s throwing out a counter theory that the Dedmon kids were involved in a hit-and-run and their parents helped cover it up. he’s also getting hung up on inconsistencies in affidavits (like whether sarah was 15 or 16), but hosts Alice and Brett aren’t biting.

there’s also this new witness, Mickey, who came forward in sept 2024 saying he saw Asha with the Dedmons in a green continental—not a rambler. he claims he saw “everything that happened” but waited 24 years to tell anyone. Skip thinks he might just be chasing attention. alice is skeptical—she points out it’s hard to trust a car ID from the middle of the night two decades later.

then there’s Thad, who has some repressed memory about a Dedmon daughter confessing at a party, but even his ex (Kelly) doesn’t think the memory is legit. he was apparently drunk and unsure if it was real, but felt like he had to say something.

the conversation gets into dna found in asha’s bookbag—alice sees that as the fire (not just smoke), especially the link between underhill and the dedmon daughter. but skip’s downplaying it, suggesting the clothes could’ve come from goodwill and the dna might not be meaningful. it’s unclear how viable the sample even is.

they also touch on text messages, intense police interrogations, and the polygraphs (which sarah and connie dedmon both passed). skip says the dedmons feel like they’ve been tried on reddit and are terrified the state is coming for them.

at the end, brett’s basically begging for more info. skip insists he’s trying to help solve the case—but with two “new” witnesses showing up 25 years later, it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s just noise.

 

[CooperDyl]

i wanted to note key takeaways from this interview. as a hired crisis manager, it’s Skip Foster’s job to sew doubt and sympathy in the public. he says a lot of nothing. takeaways below (excuse the writing as it’s not as smooth as i’d like it, literally pasting my notes hehe) please remember this is SKIP’S NARRATIVE!!

Skip Foster (the family’s spokesperson) is pushing back on the current police theory, saying the evidence is cherry-picked and doesn’t hold up under real scrutiny. he’s throwing out a counter theory that the Dedmon kids were involved in a hit-and-run and their parents helped cover it up. he’s also getting hung up on inconsistencies in affidavits (like whether sarah was 15 or 16), but hosts Alice and Brett aren’t biting.

there’s also this new witness, Mickey, who came forward in sept 2024 saying he saw Asha with the Dedmons in a green continental—not a rambler. he claims he saw “everything that happened” but waited 24 years to tell anyone. Skip thinks he might just be chasing attention. alice is skeptical—she points out it’s hard to trust a car ID from the middle of the night two decades later.

then there’s Thad, who has some repressed memory about a Dedmon daughter confessing at a party, but even his ex (Kelly) doesn’t think the memory is legit. he was apparently drunk and unsure if it was real, but felt like he had to say something.

the conversation gets into dna found in asha’s bookbag—alice sees that as the fire (not just smoke), especially the link between underhill and the dedmon daughter. but skip’s downplaying it, suggesting the clothes could’ve come from goodwill and the dna might not be meaningful. it’s unclear how viable the sample even is.

they also touch on text messages, intense police interrogations, and the polygraphs (which sarah and connie dedmon both passed). skip says the dedmons feel like they’ve been tried on reddit and are terrified the state is coming for them.

at the end, brett’s basically begging for more info. skip insists he’s trying to help solve the case—but with two “new” witnesses showing up 25 years later, it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s just noise.

I found it interesting that Skip tried to downplay the validity of any of the evidence because seperate parts of it were linked to each of the three daughters. The obvious assumption would be if you’ve got evidence pointing towards all three daughters, the family is definitely the place you should be looking.

Some interesting points throughout, obviously it’s mainly Skip trying to push back against the current narrative and the hosts for the most part letting him say his piece. Looking forward to hearing what’s next from LE.

 

[lebvidox]

i wanted to note key takeaways from this interview. as a hired crisis manager, it’s Skip Foster’s job to sew doubt and sympathy in the public. he says a lot of nothing. takeaways below (excuse the writing as it’s not as smooth as i’d like it, literally pasting my notes hehe) please remember this is SKIP’S NARRATIVE!!

Skip Foster (the family’s spokesperson) is pushing back on the current police theory, saying the evidence is cherry-picked and doesn’t hold up under real scrutiny. he’s throwing out a counter theory that the Dedmon kids were involved in a hit-and-run and their parents helped cover it up. he’s also getting hung up on inconsistencies in affidavits (like whether sarah was 15 or 16), but hosts Alice and Brett aren’t biting.

there’s also this new witness, Mickey, who came forward in sept 2024 saying he saw Asha with the Dedmons in a green continental—not a rambler. he claims he saw “everything that happened” but waited 24 years to tell anyone. Skip thinks he might just be chasing attention. alice is skeptical—she points out it’s hard to trust a car ID from the middle of the night two decades later.

then there’s Thad, who has some repressed memory about a Dedmon daughter confessing at a party, but even his ex (Kelly) doesn’t think the memory is legit. he was apparently drunk and unsure if it was real, but felt like he had to say something.

the conversation gets into dna found in asha’s bookbag—alice sees that as the fire (not just smoke), especially the link between underhill and the dedmon daughter. but skip’s downplaying it, suggesting the clothes could’ve come from goodwill and the dna might not be meaningful. it’s unclear how viable the sample even is.

they also touch on text messages, intense police interrogations, and the polygraphs (which sarah and connie dedmon both passed). skip says the dedmons feel like they’ve been tried on reddit and are terrified the state is coming for them.

at the end, brett’s basically begging for more info. skip insists he’s trying to help solve the case—but with two “new” witnesses showing up 25 years later, it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s just noise.

My personal interpretation here is that investigators are doing whatever they can do at this point (not much, given this is a 25-year-old cold case with limited leads).

Based on the ‘physical’ evidence, they have a strand of hair of one of the Dedmon daughters in one of the shirts found inside the bag. There’s no other touch DNA or anything else from the family, so that’s something that could just be an innocent transfer, yet can’t yet be dismissed until you can’t make sense of the significance (like the body of a rape victim being found in a public park and there are hairs of other people in her shirt and some used condoms discarded around her body – it could be that the rapist and killer used and took his condom with him, and everything else belonged to people who had consensual sex in this public area before).

The investigators could only go for a search warrant after they were able to trace a – still unspecified – DNA sample to this older man and establish a possible link between the two samples they had in hand (there’s definitely more). The reports of a green car are completely unreliable – the FBI shared the ‘green car’ tip with the public back in 2016, and we know enough to be sure this statement didn’t come about in the early days. Anyone else who comes forward now can’t give anything meaningful.

The theories are indeed all over the place: it could be that Asha was hit and taken by one of the daughters, but then why would she be conscious and being driven away in the family car for anyone to see her? That’s nonsense. As of now, the police have no case against this family. I doubt they ever will.

 

[lebvidox]

I found it interesting that Skip tried to downplay the validity of any of the evidence because seperate parts of it were linked to each of the three daughters. The obvious assumption would be if you’ve got evidence pointing towards all three daughters, the family is definitely the place you should be looking.

Some interesting points throughout, obviously it’s mainly Skip trying to push back against the current narrative and the hosts for the most part letting him say his piece. Looking forward to hearing what’s next from LE.

What were the separe parts of evidence? There's only a hair from one of the daughters, right? Someone saying one of the Dedmon daughters 'confessed' in a party years ago is not evidence.

 

[maamager]

What were the separe parts of evidence? There's only a hair from one of the daughters, right? Someone saying one of the Dedmon daughters 'confessed' in a party years ago is not evidence.

You’re forgetting that DNA was found from Underhill too with Asha’s belongings — inside her backpack…

 

[lebvidox]

You’re forgetting that DNA was found from Underhill too with Asha’s belongings.

His DNA was found in one of the trash bags, and we don't know what it was (touch DNA?) - that's the possible link the police could find to investigate the Dedmon parents.

 

[maamager]

The theories are indeed all over the place: it could be that Asha was hit and taken by one of the daughters, but then why would she be conscious and being driven away in the family car for anyone to see her? That’s nonsense. As of now, the police have no case against this family. I doubt they ever will.

snipped by me

while i disagree the police have nothing on the family, i can’t figure out the logic behind the hit-and-run theory. if that theory were true, why take the body? why not leave AD there and drive away? no, this has to be something else imo. LE specifically states the suspects are Roy and Connie.

 

[lebvidox]

snipped by me

while i disagree the police have nothing on the family, i can’t figure out the logic behind the hit-and-run theory. if that theory were true, why take the body? why not leave AD there and drive away? no, this has to be something else imo. LE specifically states the suspects are Roy and Connie.

Cases might have many persons of interests upgraded to 'suspect status' and then ruled out as suspects if the investigation is still fresh and you can interview those people and confirm their alibis and get footage of them being in a certain place in a certain time etc... In this case, the only chance was to submit a probable cause search warrant to a judge, and the suspects were bond to be known to the public, but that doesn't mean LE has a strong case or even a personal conviction those were the criminals, that's just what they can do at this point - they should follow-up the only investigative avenue that was presented to them.

 

[maamager]

His DNA was found in one of the trash bags, and we don't know what it was (touch DNA?) - that's the possible link the police could find to investigate the Dedmon parents.

pg 6 of affidavit: “Roy Dedmon and Connie Dedmon are the two common links between the profiles of Russell Bradley Underhill and AnnaLee Victoria Dedmon Ramrez, collected and identified, from Asha Degree’s undershirt and the trash bag which contained Asha Degree’s bookbag”.

fwiw yes, DNA was in the trash bag but there were two. they never clarified if it were the external or internal.

ETA1:
they had these two samples they were able to identify and establish a link, and used this car sighting to support their bid - they state in the document the physical condition of Underhill (he was under care in 2000) and the age of the girl don't make them suspects, however RC and CD as well as the vehicle = missing link. they could build a solid narrative to look further. that was enough to bring them to this step.

 

[lebvidox]

pg 6 of affidavit: “Roy Dedmon and Connie Dedmon are the two common links between the profiles of Russell Bradley Underhill and AnnaLee Victoria Dedmon Ramrez, collected and identified, from Asha Degree’s undershirt and the trash bag which contained Asha Degree’s bookbag”.

fwiw yes, DNA was in the trash bag but there were two. they never clarified if it were the external or internal.

ETA1:
they had these two samples they were able to identify and establish a link, and used this car sighting to support their bid - they state in the document the physical condition of Underhill (he was under care in 2000) and the age of the girl don't make them suspects, however RC and CD as well as the vehicle = missing link. they could build a solid narrative to look further. were able to build a solid narrative to further investigate. that was enough to bring them to this step.

You missed item 8: :”Laboratory analysis of collected DNA samples indicated the likelihood that the hair stem sample from Asha Degree’s undershirt is a person genetically identical to the DNA standard collected from AnnaLee Victoria Dedmon Ramirez”

Looking back at the probable cause search warrant: “Various items of evidence were sent for analysis. Two of those items returned evidentiary results.” > two items; the undershirt, and the trash bag.

They had previously specified that the DNA profile from Asha’s undershirt was a hair strand from the Dedmon 13-year-old daughter; they never specify what the sample from Underhill was, but they disclosed it that it was found in the trash bag. We don’t know it inside or outside the trash bag either. (If could be boiled down to a cigarette butt being discarded and the trash bag being in contact with it, and some saliva transfer was still there.)

You can bet there were multiple DNA samples in that trash bag (i.e. from the people who found it and opened it before calling the police) and the bookbag and the clothes. Even the hair in one of Asha’s undershirts could have been transferred from another item in that bookbag (i.e. the children’s book who was also inside).

Police can only hope to make sense of it and create a connection: here’s a link, maybe those weren’t innocent transfers. They hope they can search the property and find something etc. So far, it led nowhere.

 

[maamager]

You missed item 8: :”Laboratory analysis of collected DNA samples indicated the likelihood that the hair stem sample from Asha Degree’s undershirt is a person genetically identical to the DNA standard collected from AnnaLee Victoria Dedmon Ramirez”

maybe i’m missing it, that’s usually the case lol, but i’m confused on what this clarifies or differs from my posts.

 

[lebvidox]

maybe i’m missing it, that’s usually the case lol, but i’m confused on what this clarifies or differs from my posts.

You had posted "You’re forgetting that DNA was found from Underhill too with Asha’s belongings — inside her backpack…" I was saying that the only known DNA sample found inside the bookbag was the Dedmond's daughter hair attached to an undershirt. The search warrant doesn't disclose what Underhill's sample was (a hair? saliva? touch DNA? semen?), but it confirms it was found in the trashbag, not the book bag (or backpack) or any contents inside the book bag.

That's a different scenario regarding burden of proof to connect the two DNA samples they were now able to link.

 

[maamager]

You had posted "You’re forgetting that DNA was found from Underhill too with Asha’s belongings — inside her backpack…" I was saying that the only known DNA sample found inside the bookbag was the Dedmond's daughter hair attached to an undershirt. The search warrant doesn't disclose what Underhill's sample was (a hair? saliva? touch DNA? semen?), but it confirms it was found in the trashbag, not the book bag (or backpack) or any contents inside the book bag.

That's a different scenario regarding burden of proof to connect the two DNA samples they were now able to link.

lol gotcha! thanks!

 

[SluethinAway]

Well… the Dedmons are finally speaking. I’m going to listen and share my thoughts later — needed to share this first!

169. The Asha Degree Case: The Dedmons Speak

Podcast Episode · The Prosecutors: Legal Briefs · 07/15/2025 · 1h 9m

podcasts.apple.com

Thank you for sharing this!

 

[maamager]

Former Shelby newspaper publisher questions law enforcement over Asha Degree​

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article310616390.html?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwLj2ItleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHvDTrPegdVjhjwSo_mLZfuUtf2uH7UXnAIHlwuMnQDtBnUWwK5rAadTR7KSh_aem_xHOph0XSt7-bDu_o_4P5uw

 

[lebvidox]

Former Shelby newspaper publisher questions law enforcement over Asha Degree​

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article310616390.html?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwLj2ItleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHvDTrPegdVjhjwSo_mLZfuUtf2uH7UXnAIHlwuMnQDtBnUWwK5rAadTR7KSh_aem_xHOph0XSt7-bDu_o_4P5uw

The inconsistency about the daughter's age is a HUGE blunder in the search warrant that I hadn't realized before.