User:Emlynn18/Disappearance of Leah Roberts

On March 18, 2000, joggers along a road near the Mount Baker Highway in Whatcom County, Washington, United States, reported seeing a wrecked vehicle at the bottom of an embankment near Canyon Creek, a tributary of the North Fork of the Nooksack River. Investigating deputy sheriffs found a white 1993 Jeep Cherokee with North Carolina license plates. They traced the car to Leah Roberts (born July 23, 1976), who had abruptly left her home in Durham, North Carolina, nine days earlier. A man called police claiming that his wife had seen Leah in an Everett, Washington, gas station in a disoriented state shortly after the car was found. Her whereabouts remain unknown.

In the years preceding Leah' disappearance, both of her parents had died and she had survived serious injuries from a car accident. Her friends and siblings have said that this had left her pondering spiritual issues and questioning the direction of her life. She had dropped out of North Carolina State University only months before graduation and had begun spending much of her time in a local coffeehouse, often writing poetry in her journal. A note that Leah had left behind at her home suggested that she had taken inspiration from the works of Jack Kerouac, particularly his novel The Dharma Bums, which has scenes set at Desolation Peak, near where her car was found. She had also left money for her housemate to cover expenses while she was gone, suggesting she expected to return in the space of a month or so.

Investigators have focused on the possibly contradictory evidence found in Leah's car. Documents inside suggest she had reached Bellingham, Washington, by March 13, five days before the car was found. Early suspicions that the vehicle was unoccupied when it crashed, which might suggest that it had been wrecked intentionally, were confirmed when the car's starter motor was examined several years later and found to have been tampered with. Blankets hung across the car's windows might suggest it had been used as a shelter after the crash. Leah's personal belongings were found scattered near the scene, but robbery did not seem likely, as money and jewelry were among them.

Although the case has been featured on the television shows Unsolved Mysteries and Disappeared, few leads have emerged. In the summer of 2005, volunteers from a North Carolina missing-persons awareness group organized a caravan across the country to raise awareness for Leah's case and others; that has since become an annual event.

Background
Leah Toby Roberts was born on July 23, 1976 in the suburbs of Durham, North Carolina. She has two older siblings: an older sister named Kara, who was born on March 18, 1974, and an older brother named Heath. When Leah was seventeen, her father was diagnosed with a chronic lung condition.

Beginning in 1995, Leah attended college at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. She majored in Spanish and anthropology.

Challenges during college
When Leah was twenty years old and a sophomore in college, her mother died suddenly from heart disease. Soon after, in the fall of 1998, Leah was involved in a serious car accident that resulted in a punctured lung and a shattered femur. Her injured femur required the surgical implantation of a metal rod to correct. Leah later told her sister Kara that she felt "born again" after her recovery. In the spring of the next year, just three weeks before she was scheduled to leave for Costa Rica for a field program, Leah's father died. However, she decided to continue with the program. Since she was leaving the country, Leah granted Kara power of attorney over her bank accounts.

Leaving college
Against the wishes of her older siblings, Leah dropped out of North Carolina State University only months before completing her degree. After leaving college, Leah learned to play the guitar, took up photography, and adopted a pet kitten that she named Bea. She also began spending time in local coffeehouses, writing poetry about the meaning of life, and making new friends. With one of these new friends, Jeannine Quiller, and with her roommate, Nicole Bennett, Leah discussed the idea of emulating Beat Generation novelist Jack Kerouac and going on a road trip to the West.

Disappearance
On the morning of March 9, 2000, Leah talked on the phone with her sister, Kara, about her uncertain future plans. The conversation ended with the understanding that the two would see one another in the near future. Later, in the early afternoon, Leah and her roommate Nicole agreed to do some babysitting together the next day. Nicole left for work and returned later, at which point she noticed that Leah's 1993 white Jeep Cherokee and Leah herself were missing. Because Leah had not had a consistent schedule since she had dropped out of college, Nicole was initially not concerned about Leah's absence.

The next day, Leah missed her babysitting appointment. By the end of the following day, March 11, Leah was still absent and friends and family who had expected to see her had been calling the house in an attempt to find her. On Monday, March 13, Kara reported her sister missing to Durham police.

Initial efforts of family and friends
On March 14, Leah's sister Kara and roommate Nicole searched Leah's room. A significant amount of Leah's clothes were missing, as was her kitten Bea. Kara and Nicole also found a note reading, "I'm not suicidal. I'm the opposite" that mentioned Jack Kerouac. The note also included a drawing of the Cheshire Cat's grin. Along with the note, the two women found a bundle of cash totaling approximately a month's worth of Leah's share of rent and expenses.

Since Kara still had power of attorney over Leah's bank accounts, she was able to access her sister's financial records. Kara discovered that Leah had withdrawn several thousand dollars on the afternoon of March 9, and that her debit card had been used to pay for a motel room near Memphis, Tennessee. Later transactions were purchases of gas or food, their locations suggesting Leah was traveling west along Interstate 40, and then north on Interstate 5 after she reached I-40's western end in California. The last activity on Leah's bank accounts was a gas purchase shortly after midnight on the morning of March 13 in Brooks, Oregon.

To understand why her sister was heading to the Pacific Northwest, Kara and Leah's best friend, Susie Smith, went to the coffee shops in Durham that Leah had been frequenting. There they found Jeannine Quiller, with whom Leah had discussed Kerouac's work. The two had been particularly struck by Kerouac's 1958 novel The Dharma Bums, a sequel to the better-known On the Road, in which he had for a time worked as a U.S. Forest Service fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the northern Cascade Mountains of Washington, where he was profoundly affected by the beauty of the landscape. Leah had expressed interest in seeing that area for herself. Kara was relieved to have discovered her sister's probable objective.

Discovery of vehicle
Early on the morning of March 18, 2000 in Washington State, a couple jogging along Canyon Creek Road, a side route of the Mount Baker Highway, noticed articles of clothing on the side of the road next to a slight curve at the top of a slope. Some pieces of clothing had been tied to the trees and branches at roadside. In the woods below, at the bottom of a steep embankment, the couple discovered Leah's severely-damaged Jeep. Leah was not present at the scene.

Upon learning of this discovery, the Durham County sheriff's office contacted Kara and instructed her to call the Whatcom County sheriff's office in Bellingham, Washington. She was informed that Leah's Jeep had been discovered in a remote forest, but Leah herself was absent.

From the path that the car had taken through the trees and the extent to which the car and trees had been damaged, investigators from the Washington State Patrol determined that the Jeep had been traveling at nearly 40 mph when it went off the road and down the slope. The contents of the vehicle were tossed around inside, consistent with a multiple rollover, yet there was no blood or other signs of injury to an occupant, such as shatter marks on the glass or stretching of the seatbelt, that would have probably occurred if there had been a driver and/or passenger. It seemed possible that no one had been inside the Jeep when it crashed, suggesting that the accident might have been staged or planned.

Blankets and pillows were hung inside the windows of the Jeep, suggesting that it may have been used as a shelter after being wrecked. Leah's passport, checkbook, driver's license, clothes, guitar, CDs and other belongings were found scattered in the surrounding woods. Bits of cat food and a small cat carrier were found in the vehicle, confirming that Leah had taken Bea on the trip with her, although the cat has never been found. Valuables, such as $2,500 in cash in a pants pocket and jewelry, were also left behind, suggesting that robbery had not been the reason for the accident.

Investigation in Bellingham, Washington
Leah's sister Kara and brother Heath flew to Bellingham to assist investigators. They visited the crash site, and, with the assistance of the sheriff's office, created a flyer that they posted around town in Bellingham. They also went into businesses that Leah may have visited and queried owners and customers. Among Leah's belongings, her siblings found a box of mementos from the trip that established more clearly when Leah had arrived in Whatcom County: a ticket stub from a March 13 afternoon showing of American Beauty at the theaters in Bellingham's Bellis Fair shopping mall. This suggested that Leah might have spent a few hours in the city after having arrived at the beginning of the day following the five-to-six-hour drive from where she had bought gas in Oregon.

Near the theater was the mall's only sit-down restaurant, where Heath and Kara believed that Leah might have gone for a meal. In the restaurant, police interviews with two customers yielded information about Leah. Both men indicated they had met Leah that day in the restaurant, where they had sat on each side of her at the restaurant's counter. They recalled talking with Leah about Kerouac and her planned road trip. One of the men claimed that she had left with a third man, whom he heard her call Barry, and provided a description for a police sketch of the man. However, neither the other man nor any other customer who had been in the restaurant at the time could corroborate the third man's existence.

Further examination of vehicle
At a police garage to which it had been towed, investigators continued to examine the Jeep, joined by the FBI, who had become involved because Leah had crossed state lines. Two pieces of newly discovered evidence suggested that Leah had been the victim of a crime. First, the amount of money found in her pants pocket suggested that she had spent very little money in Bellingham, less than could be expected if she had been in the city for several days. Secondly, investigators found Leah's mother's engagement ring, which Leah wore constantly, under a floor mat. Leah's friends in North Carolina said that she treasured it for the connection it offered to her late mother and that she would never have taken it off voluntarily unless she had completely forgotten who she was.

Search efforts and examination of security camera footage
Heath and Kara returned to North Carolina after four days. Working on the theory that Leah might have been injured in the accident and wandered off, police spent two weeks in April searching, with help from dogs and helicopters, the area that Leah may have possibly covered if she had left the scene of the crash. They found no trace of her. Security camera footage from the gas station at which Leah had stopped at in Oregon showed her alone and apparently in good condition, although several times she peered out into the parking lot (an area not covered by the cameras) while waiting for her transaction to be completed. This could suggest a traveling companion, perhaps the "Barry" with whom her dining companion at Bellis Fair had claimed she had left, but had a man indeed been with her, investigators believe that he did not travel in her car.

Repeated searches of the area where Leah's car was found, with involved both dogs trained to sniff for corpses and metal detectors that could detect the metal rod in Leah's leg, found no new evidence.

Later leads and developments
A few days after the Jeep was discovered, a man called the sheriff's office to report a sighting of Leah. He claimed that his wife had seen Leah, disoriented and confused, wandering around a gas station in Everett, close to Seattle. After disclosing this information, he seemed to panic and hung up before identifying himself. Police nevertheless consider the tip credible and consider it to be the last known sighting of Leah.

In 2006, Mark Joseph of the Whatcom County police department, the detective who had originally investigated the case, passed his files on to two younger detectives. While reviewing the case, one of the detectives noticed that the car and its contents had not been fully processed for evidence when it was originally brought in, so the two decided to finish that job. As no one had looked under the Jeep's hood during the initial investigation, the detectives pried it open and found that a wire had been cut, allowing the car to accelerate without anyone having depressed the gas pedal. This discovery confirmed early suspicions that no one had been in the car when it left the road, and thus it had been purposely wrecked. The detectives also found a fingerprint under the hood and male DNA on an article of Leah's clothing.

These new leads led investigators back to the man who had claimed Leah left the Bellis Fair restaurant with a man she called "Barry." As no other witnesses could corroborate the man's statements, police wanted to fingerprint and DNA test this witness to rule out his involvement. The witness's fingerprint was not a match for the one discovered under the hood of Leah's car, but the results of the DNA sample have not been disclosed to the public.

Case coverage and awareness
In 2001, the Lifetime television series Unsolved Mysteries ran a segment on Leah's disappearance. The segment generated new tips for investigators and reports that Leah had been sighted across the U.S., but none of the tips proved credible.

In 2005, Monica Caison, a Wilmington woman who had helped other families find missing loved ones after cases had gone officially cold, became involved in Leah's case. Caison, with the help of a network of volunteers called Community United Effort, specializes in keeping cases alive in the media for which official efforts have exhausted all leads. In 2005, on the fourth anniversary of Leah's disappearance, Caison organized a caravan across the country, following Leah's route west to Bellingham, to raise awareness about Leah's unsolved case and those of other missing persons. This caravan has since become an annual event.

Caison and Kara appeared on CNN's Larry King Live in 2005. "I really don't know how I would have made it through the past five years without her," Kara told the host. "We're just trying to, you know, keep Leah's face out there as much as possible."

Investigation Discovery aired an episode on the case in 2011. The case of Leah Roberts' disappearance remains unsolved.