(NewsNation) — Police now believe Asha Degree, who disappeared from Shelby, North Carolina, in 2000, was killed and her body concealed, according to court documents.
Last week, authorities in Cleveland County, North Carolina, executed a search warrant on multiple properties in the area and were seen towing a car that resembled one possibly connected to Degree’s disappearance.
Authorities confirmed Friday that the search was connected to Degree’s case and said no human remains were found during the search. Now, search warrant documents released Monday indicate the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office believes Degree was a homicide victim and the crime is possibly linked to a family in the area.
Law enforcement executed search warrants on multiple properties, including one in Shelby, North Carolina, one in Charlotte, North Carolina, and an assisted living facility in Vale, North Carolina.
The properties are all connected to the Dedmon family. An attorney for the family denied Friday that there was a connection between the Dedmons and Degree’s disappearance, but the documents indicate police consider some members of the family to be suspects in the case.
Search warrants were requested after DNA samples linked Degree with a woman named AnnaLee Dedmon Ramirez and a man named Russell Underhill, according to the court records.
Degree disappeared on Feb. 14, 2000, when she was 9 years old. Degree is believed to have left her home in the early hours of the morning carrying a backpack with some of her belongings. Witnesses saw a girl resembling Degree walking alongside a highway in stormy weather.
A year after she disappeared, Degree’s backpack was found wrapped in plastic at a construction site around 30 miles from where she was last seen. The backpack also included two items, a library book and a New Kids on the Block tee shirt, that her parents said did not belong to the girl.
The search warrant documents say DNA found on items in the backpack linked it to Dedmon Ramirez, who was 13 at the time, and Underhill. The documents say a DNA sample of a hair stem from Degree’s undershirt appeared to match Dedmon Ramirez’s DNA.
Dedmon Ramirez, along with two other teenage Dedmon sisters, lived on the property in 2000.
In the search warrant application, investigators stated they believed Degree had been killed and her body concealed. Because of the ages of the Dedmon sisters, authorities also said they believed they needed “adult assistance” from their father and mother, Roy and Connie Dedmon.
Roy Dedmon’s home, located 3.7 miles from Degree’s last known whereabouts, was searched by a drone earlier in the year.
Underhill lived in at least two locations owned by the Dedmons at the time Degree disappeared, and Roy Dedmon was listed as his emergency contact, the application says. Underhill died in 2004.
Items seized during the searches include an older green vehicle that is similar in appearance to one Degree may have been seen getting into on the night she disappeared. Electronics, including laptops, computers, cellphones, tablets, flash and hard drives, CDs and SD cards, a Blackberry cellphone and records were also seized along with a human tooth in a plastic bag.
Investigators said in the search warrants that Roy Dedmon used to send one of his daughters, who was not Dedmon Ramirez, to transport patients to and from Broughton Hospital in Morganton, North Carolina, at the time Degree disappeared. They noted Highway 18 would have been the “most logical” route to travel between there and the Northbrook rest home or Brighton Hospital.
Anyone with information on Degree’s case should contact the FBI’s Charlotte office by calling 704-672-6100.
