The Mysterious Disappearance of Leah Roberts

Written By Kaelyn Moore

In March 2000, 23-year-old Leah Roberts left a note for her roommate and took off on a solo cross-country trip. Nine days later, her wrecked Jeep was found by hikers at the bottom of a ravine in upstate Washington and Leah was not inside. What initially looked like a crash started to feel more sinister as the investigation continued.  More than 25 years later the questions surrounding what happened only grow darker.

TW: Mention of suicide

Subscribe on⁠ Patreon⁠ to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society and enjoy ad-free listening, monthly bonus content, merch discounts and more. Members of our High Council on Patreon also have access to our weekly after-show, Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt.

You can also enjoy many of these same perks, including ad-free listening and bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts .

Follow on⁠ Tik Tok⁠and⁠ Instagram⁠ for a daily dose of horror.

SOURCES

Dark Road Exit: The Missing Case of Leah Roberts (2025), by Linda Davidson

Disappeared, season 3, episode 8: "Soul Searcher"

Unsolved Mysteries, season 11, episode 6

The Bellingham Herald

The News and Observer

The Herald-Sun

The Butner-Creedmoor News

Online/Archival


TRANSCRIPT

Today, I want to tell you a story about a disappearance that completely stumped the police. It was a case that had gone completely cold and it wasn’t until one investigator reprocessed some evidence years later that they found something terrifying they had completely missed. This is one of those cases where once you hear how it ends, you look back on the whole case with a different understanding.

This is heart starts pounding, I’m Kaelyn Moore and make sure you subscribe to this channel to meet me here every week. 


It was a cool spring afternoon in the mountains, in upstate Washington—just seven miles south of the Canadian border. 


That day, In March of 2000, Link Paquet and his girlfriend were jogging along a path line with evergreens and brush, on this old logging road that skirted the foothills around Mt. Baker. It was a beautiful day, they had done this jog a million times. But as they reached a sharp bend, Link spotted something. Something that was definitely not supposed to be there…


It was dangling from a twig about a foot from the ground. It looked like a dark-colored piece of women’s clothing. He approached the edge of the road and peered down into the ravine, and his heart dropped. There at the bottom, by the base of the trees, was a wrecked Jeep Cherokee with busted windows, and personal items littered everywhere. Someone must have crashed off the side.


So Link and his girlfriend jumped into action, they carefully climbed down  toward the wreckage.


and called out to see if whoever crashed was alive, but no one shouted back. So Link braced himself as he stepped toward the Jeep. Whoever was inside was probably going to be in really horrible shape, so he mentally prepared himself for what he might see. He peered through the busted driver’s side window… but there was no one inside.


Now, looking at the car, There was clothing all over the place, music CDs, baskets, laundry hampers, papers. Shattered glass, it was like the car had exploded. It would be hard to believe that someone had just walked away.


The couple scramble back up the embankment, got ahold of a phone and called 9-11 to report the mysterious scene. 

 scene. 


Welcome back to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, Hauntings and mysteries. I’m your host Kaelyn Moore


Today, we’re talking about one of the most haunting mysteries I’ve read about, 


But before we dive back in I just wanted to shout out everyone who participated in Listener appreciation month. Anyone who ordered merch, who messaged me about their small business, or who shared with me the creepy places where you listen to Heart starts pounding (ahem, even if you maybe tresspassed to get there).. I was so so so glad to hear from you all. All of you spooky creepy beautiful people. I can’t wait to do more stuff with you all in the near future so keep an eye out for that. 


Alright, I’m going to light my candle that smells like an old victorian library and get back into it. 


Around 1pm on Saturday, March 18th, Sheriff’s deputies in Whatcom County, Washington, arrived,


And right away the scene struck them as odd. the deputies noticed clothing tied to tree branches around the jeep, as well as blankets and pillows that had been used to cover the broken windows—kind of draped over them, as if someone had been using the vehicle for shelter.


The front windshield of the Jeep—like other windows—was smashed, the vehicle was badly damaged, and the keys were still in the ignition. Anyone in an accident like this would without doubt have some serious injuries, 


But not only was there no one inside of the jeep. There was also something else missing. Something huge. There was no blood.


That couldn’t be possible. Unless… Could it be that someone had deliberately pushed the car off the edge


Deputies summoned crash investigators to analyze the accident, and what the they ultimately concluded, much to the surprise of the deputies, was that the Jeep had been traveling around 40 miles per hour when it left the road—and then it rolled over multiple times before landing in a spot where the trees and brush prevented it from going any further. The crash analysts believed that the items scattered around the vehicle likely flew out while the vehicle was rolling over.


the vehicle couldn’t have been pushed, they said. The engine was running and the keys were in the ignition when the Jeep left the road—at too great a speed to be moving without someone driving it. there was also no evidence that the steering wheel had been tied or the gas pedal had been rigged.


And yet, it seemed both impossible that someone could have jumped out of the vehicle while it was moving at 40 miles per hour, about to careen off a cliff—and impossible that anyone could have walked away from such an accident without serious injuries. But not only was there no blood found at the scene, there was also no evidence anyone had hit the windshield or steering wheel; and there was no damage to the driver’s seat. There was simply no evidence anyone inside the vehicle had suffered injuries consistent with such a crash.


So, it was a bit of a puzzle for Sheriff’s deputies, who proceeded to impound the Jeep and secure it in evidence storage, where they ran the number on Jeep’s North Carolina license plate. And that’s when they learned that the driver of the Jeep had been reported as a missing person.


5 days earlier, and 3,000 miles away in Durham North Carolina, a girl named Nicole showed up to a babysitting gig. 


The job had been booked by her roommate, 23 year old Leah Roberts, who had told her that she would help her out. But when Nicole got there, Leah was nowhere to be found.  


She waited all day for her friend to join her, like they’d previously agreed, but Leah never came. It didn’t seem like a big deal, though. Leah had a lot on her mind these days, Nicole acknowledged to herself—and she occasionally could be flaky, so… Nicole assumed she had simply forgotten.


And when she returned home that night to the house they shared to find that Leah wasn’t there, Nicole once again didn’t think anything of it.


It wasn’t until Sunday, two days later, that Nicole had grown worried—especially when she began receiving calls, throughout the day, from mutual friends who also hadn’t heard from Leah after she failed to keep plans they’d made.


Nicole anxiously picked up the phone, dialed Leah’s sister, Kara Roberts, and asked if she had seen Leah. No, Kara answered. She had not.


And now, after realizing no one had heard from Leah since last Thursday, both girls were deeply concerned. Over the next twelve hours, Nicole and Kara would phone everyone they knew in Leah’s social circle—but not one single person had seen or heard from Leah in several days.


Finally, come Monday morning, Kara met up with Nicole at the house she and Leah shared and the two young women started working out what to do next.


First things first, they decided, and they entered Leah’s room to look for clues. 


What immediately stood out was that most of Leah’s clothes were missing—and so was her cat, Bea. 


And then, Kara spotted what appeared to be a handwritten note, folded up in quadrants with a drawing, on one side, of one of Leah’s favorite literary characters, the Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—or, rather, it was just the Cheshire’ Cat’s famous grin.


Kara unfolded the paper and found a hastily scribbled note in Leah’s handwriting.


The note was addressed to Nicole, the roommate.


“This is to cover bills for while I am gone,” the note began. “Remember—everyone is together in thoughts and prayers and time passes quickly. Have faith in me, yourself, everyone.”


The note ended with Leah asking Nicole to tell Kara not to worry, followed by a postscript, referencing Jack Kerouac and his novel On the Road.


 Beside it, Leah wrote, reassuringly, 6 words that would forever haunt the investigation: “I’m not suicidal. I’m the opposite.”


And then she also wrote “Cookies in the freezer.”


Now, this statement, I’m not suicidal, really stuck out to Kara. Because Leah had a really difficult last few years. 


In February of 2000, a month earlier, she made a decision that took everyone in her orbit by surprise. With just three months left to go before completing her degree at North Carolina State University, the 23-year-old dropped out of school.


When Leah first told her brother Heath what she planned to do, he urged his sister to tough it out just a little bit longer. But Leah already had her mind made up. That was just the kind of girl she was. she resented this idea that, to go anywhere in life, you needed a college degree. She wasn’t going to let the rigid norms of society dictate how she lived her life. This was her decision to make—hers alone


But her brother couldn’t help but feel like this decision was influenced by some recent event. In fact, this wasn’t the first time she’d withdrawn from school.


back in 1997, her mom died suddenly, and unexpectedly, from heart failure. Leah dropped out of college, left her job at the local newspaper archive, and ended up taking nearly two years off before finally feeling ready to continue on the path she had started.


But then, not long after Leah returned to school, she was driving on the highway when a transfer truck suddenly cut her off, leaving no time or room to brake, and so she plowed into it. The wreck left her car totaled and Leah in a hospital fighting for her life. She had a punctured lung and a shattered right femur, and she was lucky to emerge from the ordeal with no more than some scars and a metal rod in her leg.


After this, her hard luck continued. For years, Leah’s father had been living with chronic lung disease, and in April of 1999, he passed away


It was an incredibly heavy emotional toll on Leah, so Nicole and Kara were in a way relieved that Leah had included the disclaimer, but they were still incredibly concerned about her because she had not been acting like herself lately.


Now Near the note, Kara found a bundle of cash, which she picked up and began counting. There was enough there to cover a month of Leah’s share of rent, utilities, and expenses.


Kara was so concerned at this point about Leah’s mental state that  she picked up the phone and called the Durham County Sheriff Office to formally file a missing person report.


As it so happened, Kara had power of attorney over Leah’s credit and bank accounts, So she drove out to Leah’s bank and requested a statement showing all of Leah’s recent transactions.


Once Kara obtained the statement, those recent transactions told the story of Leah’s travels since the previous Thursday.


Kara first noticed that Leah had withdrawn three thousand dollars from her bank account that afternoon, and then, through all of Leah’s subsequent debit card transactions, Kara was able to track Leah’s movements in the days since. Leah seemed to be heading west along the I-40 corridor, an interstate that travels Through North carolina, tennessee, Arkansas and ends in southern california. 


Kara was able to put together On the first night of her journey, Leah had checked into a hotel outside of Memphis, Tennessee, and in the days after, she had stopped for fuel and food in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.


Suddenly, Kara had a huge realization. 


With both her parents gone, it really hit Leah how short and fragile life was. It triggered in her a sort of existential awakening, the type that you already kind of have in college, but times 100.  her parents had left her some money—enough money to be comfortable for a while, to be free. And suddenly, life as a student in Raleigh felt more constraining than it ever had before.


In the summer of 1999, Leah traveled to Costa Rica for an anthropology field study. And after returning to North Carolina, she couldn’t shake her wanderlust. She just wanted to get away again—she had an itch to be in constant motion..


In the fall of 1999, Leah’s lifestyle began to change. She spent more and more time at coffee houses, and frequenting a spot called Cup-A-Joe almost every day—spending hours there at a time, writing in her journal, penning poetry, making new friends with other regulars, and frequently discussing her newfound love of author Jack Kerouac


Kerouac was a figurehead of the beat Generation, he wrote On The Road about two men’s search for meaning on a road trip. When the book was initially released in the late 50’s, people hated the characters hedonistic lifestyle and rejection of society. Men driving around aimlessly instead of working in the factories, could you imagine?! But for someone like Leah, who was feeling crushed by trauma and expectations of her, the book became her dream life.    


Kerouac was also who Leah had quoted in the letter left behind. Was Leah now finally taking her own On The Road-Esque road trip she had always dreamed of?


Kara went back through her sister's transactions. She could see that Leah had, impressively, made it all the way to the West Coast in only three days. Just after midnight, in the wee hours of Monday, March 13th, Leah had stopped for fuel at a Pilot gas station in the city of Brooks, Oregon.


But that was the most recent transaction.


There had been no further activity on Leah’s debit card in the 30 or so hours since.  A very ominous sign.


March 19th was Kara’s 26th birthday. And all morning long, Kara waited for a ‘Happy Birthday’ call from Leah. But that call never came.


Instead, what Kara received was a note in her door from the Durham County Sheriff’s Office, urging her to contact them.


And when she did, she learned that Leah’s Jeep Cherokee had been found wrecked in the mountains of upstate Washington.


Within two days, Kara and her brother Heath were on a plane out to Bellingham, Washington, to assist with the hunt for Leah.


Sheriff’s deputies in Whatcom County, Washington took Leah’s siblings out to the crash site, where search-and-rescue teams had already begun scouring the area for any sign that Leah may have wandered away from the car. Fallen trees and debris made it challenging to search too far, and it also made it unlikely Leah would have traveled that way, because the brush and brambles were just too thick for any human to easily navigate.


Sheriff’s deputies later escorted Kara and Heath to the evidence locker, where they were allowed to look over the items recovered from the scene


And what the siblings saw made this situation even more unsettling.


Aside from Leah’s credit cards, checkbook, driver’s license, and passport, she had left behind cat food and a cat carrier—which told them that she had taken Bea, her kitten, along with her, though Bea was also missing. But again, there was no blood in the car so it seemed unlikely that Bea was inside when it crashed either…


Leah also left her guitar behind, a bunch of compact discs—most of which were scattered in the underbrush around the Jeep—and a pair of pants with twenty-five hundred dollars in the back pocket.


Twenty-five hundred dollars—that was most of what she had withdrawn from the bank. This sent chills up and down Kara’s spine, because it really made it less likely that Leah had disappeared willingly. Even if she’d left behind her credit cards so that her movements couldn’t be tracked, there would’ve been no reason for her to leave that much cash behind. And without money, she wouldn’t be able to get very far.


Kara and Heath feared that something horrible had happened to Leah. But what?


Detectives began calling local hospitals, but no one matching Leah’s description had been admitted. They also examined Leah’s cell phone records, but in doing so, they found that there had been no activity on her phone line since before she left North Caroline.


But, there were still other items left behind at the crash site, yet to be explored.


One was Leah’s camera, which was found on the ground near Leah’s car, with undeveloped film inside. Detectives collected the roll, maybe there were clues hidden inside the pictures she had taken. 


And then there was the gas station receipt for the fuel Leah purchased in Brooks, Oregon, ten minutes before 1am on March 13th. That purchase had been the last transaction on her debit card


But—police found evidence of one later transaction—a cash transaction—the following afternoon.  a movie ticket stub tucked away inside a decorative wooden box. Apparently, Leah had purchased a ticket for a 2:10pm showing of American Beauty. And Leah had gone to see it in Bellingham, Washington, at the Bellis Fair Mall cinema.


So, the gas station in Oregon, and then the cinema in Bellingham. That’s where the trail ended.


Detectives contacted the gas station and requested the surveillance video 


At first, nothing seemed all that unusual. Leah appeared to be alone as she approached the register, handed the clerk her debit card, and paid for her transaction.


But while she was waiting, Leah could be seen periodically glancing outside toward the where the Jeep was parked. What was she looking at? 


Was someone outside waiting for her in the Jeep? Was someone there watching her?


Unfortunately, there was no way to know, because the gas station didn’t have external cameras, so the area with the pumps was not caught on tape.


But there was still the roll of film inside Leah’s camera, which investigators had developed. They showed those pictures to Kara and Heath, who looked them over and grew increasingly dispirited until finally, they handed them back to the investigators and concluded that it was an old roll—taken the previous winter. There were no photos from her most recent trip


Kara and Heath were starting to feel frustrated by the lack of leads, so they launched their own grassroots investigation. And it began at the Bellis Fair Mall movie theatre, the last place Leah was known to have been. They passed out missing persons fliers, with Leah’s picture on them, to the theater employees, but none of them remembered seeing her.


The two siblings then considered that Leah’s movie would have ended right around dinnertime, They wondered if Leah didn’t leave the theater and then head into the mall for a bite to eat.


Knowing their sister as they did, they couldn’t see her eating fast food in a mall food court. Leah preferred relaxed sit-down restaurants with bars because she liked sitting at the bar and making friends


The only restaurant that wasn’t in the food court, and actually seemed like the kind of place Leah would eat, was a place called the Elephant & Castle Pub & Grill


They took their stack of fliers into the restaurant, sat down at the bar, and just began talking to the staff. No one else they had talked to had seen Leah, even at the places they KNEW she had been, so what were the chances someone here would recognize her. 


But sure enough, after seeing Leah’s picture, the staff did remember seeing Leah there—on the night of March 13th, sitting at the bar. They remembered that Leah was there by herself, but that there were other patrons seated on either side of her.


That was as much information as they were able to gather, though. No one had seen if she had talked to someone or where she went after. Later that evening, they called and shared it with the investigators at Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office and, on March 24th, they had to  board a plane and fly back home to North Carolina.



And they weren’t the only on hitting another dead end. That same day, the Sheriff’s Office sent planes and helicopters over the area around the crash site for a sweeping aerial search. The end result, unfortunately, was the same as the ground searches: nothing. Nada. Fruitless.


But then, a day later, the phone rang at the Sheriff’s headquarters. The caller was a man who frequented the Elephant & Castle Pub & Grill. He explained to the detective that restaurant staff had told him about Leah’s siblings and the disappearance, because they had seen Leah talking to him at the bar on the night she dined there.


The man remembered Leah as warm and talkative—open about her life and the fact that she was on a soul-searching journey, and he remembered her talking about Jack Kerouac and how his writing had inspired her to visit upstate Washington, where some of his novels were set.


He also remembered that there was another guy at the bar, sitting on the opposite side of her, and she was talking with that dude as well. The detective asked if Leah had left the bar with that man, and the caller said that no—Leah had, in fact, left the restaurant by herself, just as she had arrived. The detective asked if he knew the second man’s name—which he did, because both were regulars at this particular restaurant.


And so, after the caller hung up, the investigator reached out to that second man.


this second man acknowledged meeting Leah at the Elephant & Castle, and just like the first man, he remembered Leah talking about Jack Kerouac, and how she had been inspired by On the Road to travel out west.


And that, the man said, was the last time he saw her. However, contrary to what the previous guy had told the investigator, this man claimed that Leah had not left the restaurant alone.


The detective’s ears perked up, because the other man said she had left by herself. So, did he knew who Leah had left with.


The man said he did. Leah had left the bar with a man who said his name was “Barry.” The detective asked if he could describe what Barry looked like, and the man said he could—and then proceeded to give a description so vividly detailed that, after the phone call, investigators brought in a sketch artist to meet with the man and create a composite based on what he recalled.


They were left with a sketch of a man in his 30’s or 40s with thick, light colored hair and an erring in one ear. He has thin lips and hooded eyes and a wide bridged nose. The description was so vivid, it almost didn’t make sense. How could one patron have sworn she left by herself, and the other give such a detailed description of the man she supposedly DID leave with…


Police tried to find this Barry guy, but he was like a ghost. No last name, no other sightings of him even being at the bar that night, let alone leaving with a woman that was missing. Something about this wasn’t adding up…


With nothing else besides this strange description of Barry, the investigation started cooling off, though police did follow a few other leads. 


On March 28th, the Sheriff’s Office received a call to its tip line from a man who claimed that his wife had interacted with a woman fitting Leah’s description at a gas station in Everett, Washington—thirty miles north of Seattle.


The caller said that, according to his wife, the woman seemed disoriented and didn’t know her own name or where she lived.


It was an intriguing potential lead. But unfortunately, the caller did not leave his name or a callback number. So there was no way the investigators could follow up, and this clue almost immediately became a dead end.


But— was it possible, after all, that Leah had walked away from the accident dazed and confused? Or maybe still with enough of her wits about her to head toward one of the places, like Desolation Peak, that Kerouac had written about in his novels?


Investigators began poring through Kerouac’s writing—specifically, Desolation Angels and The Dharma Bums, the two books set in Whatcom County. They took note of landmarks that Kerouac had mentioned and considered checking them for signs of Leah. But at this point, they needed some help.


And on March 30th, the FBI joined the investigation—and technically, they had jurisdiction anyway, since the Jeep was found on National Forest land.


Together, the two agencies performed a massive grid search of the entire dense forest area around the crash site, fanning out into the dense forest as far as they could feasibly go. But, the end result, once again, was the same. Nothing turned up. Not even the tiniest speck of a clue as to where Leah was


The FBI then sent a forensics team out to more thoroughly examine the Jeep Cherokee. The forensics techs sprayed luminol inside, to look for blood that may have been wiped clean, and they dusted for fingerprints and did lifts for hairs and fibers. But, the Jeep, as it turns out, was absolutely spotless.


However—they did find something that had been previously overlooked, hidden beneath the floorboards of the vehicle.


It was a small cache of jewelry—which investigators photographed, and then shared with Leah’s roommate, Nicole, and her two siblings.


And all three immediately recognized Leah’s mom’s diamond engagement ring.


This ring, they said, was Leah’s most treasured possession. For her, it was a sacred item that she wore on her finger at all times and would never, ever (truly ever) leave behind.


Now if you wear rings that are expensive or sentimental, maybe your heart just dropped. I remember from a young age being told that if you're held up in a robbery, put your hands behind your back, take off your ring, and let it fall to the floor. That way it wont be taken. 


But if Leah took her ring off and hid it in the car because she was being robbed, why were her credit cards and most of her money left behind? This was becoming even more confusing for investigators, but they really started to feel like foul play must have been involved. 


Where else could they look, though? they had the sketch of Barry who might not even exist


Sheriff’s investigators in Whatcom County, decided it was finally time to turn to the media and the public for help.


They disclosed to the press that the last place Leah had been seen was the Bellis Fair Mall, where she had been seen talking to an unknown male, possibly named “Barry.” Even though, privately, police had doubts about this story, they circulated the composite sketch of “Barry” just in case it might generate a new lead.


And in the meantime, the man who had provided the description of “Barry” had hired a lawyer and stopped cooperating with investigators.


So with that, the police waited for tips to come in from the public. And they waited, and they waited, and they waited. 


On the one-year anniversary of Leah’s disappearance Leah’s brother, Heath, talked to the Raleigh News and Observer about the process of moving on. When a loved one disappears, he said, it’s always in the back of your mind, but it’s not much different from how, when someone dies, it affects you profoundly at first, but then you eventually, and tragically, get used to the new normal


But Heath and Kara had not grown complacent—and would not stop in their efforts to find out what happened to their sister.


They continued making trips up to Bellingham, meeting with detectives, putting up Missing Person posters.


What had begun as a five-thousand-dollar reward increased to ten thousand dollars, with the help of a benefit concert and community fundraising efforts back home in Raleigh.


In September 2002, after Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment on Leah’s disappearance, a flood of calls rained into the show’s tip hotline, and more than twenty of those calls all described the same person, whom callers believed might be Leah. And that person was a homeless woman in Wilmington, Delaware, of all places..


Kara and Heath made the drive up to Delaware and met with two different women, both of whom had been identified by tipsters as possibly being Leah. And although they could understand how both women could be mistaken for Leah—there was a strong resembance—neither one was her.


As Leah’s case had grown ice-cold, the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office eventually reached out to Kara and asked her what she wanted them to do with her sister’s Jeep.


Kara told them to hold onto it.


Just in case


Because Kara knew that sometimes a decade or more could pass before a cold case might suddenly see a significant break. And Kara had a hunch that the Jeep might hold more information yet to be discovered. Especially with all of the strange circumstantial evidence that foul play had been involved


And it turned out—Kara’s instinct was right.


In 2006, Leah’s case was given a fresh look by two new sets of eyes: Whatcom County detectives Jamie Collins and Alan Smith, who inherited the case from the original investigators.


And in reviewing the case file, Collins and Smith realized that parts of Leah’s car had never been examined. Despite the thorough forensic examination the FBI had conducted in 2000, the two detectives realized that no one had ever looked under the hood.


So, the detectives got together and opened up the front of the vehicle. They scanned every square inch under the hood, trying to separate what was damage from the crash vs what would have been human intervention. And that’s when they made a shocking discovery:


The vehicle had been tampered with.


The cover to the starter relay had been removed, and doing so would have allowed the Jeep to accelerate without the gas pedal being pushed. So, the vehicle could have maintained a speed of 40 miles per hour, careening off that cliff, without anyone behind the steering wheel.


But it probably wasn’t just anyone who had done this. The detectives believed that  only someone with a working knowledge of cars, like a mechanic, would have known to remove it.


The investigators wondered who may have had this kind of mechanical knowledge of cars.


Leah, they learned, did not. She would likely not have had the know-how to pull off such a thing, or even think of it.


But—as they poured back through the case file, they saw that there was one person police had previously spoke to who did. 


It was the patron at the Elephant & Castle who claimed Leah had left with a man named “Barry.” The guy who lawyered up and stopped cooperating with the investigation. He had been a mechanic for years


And there were a few more strange things from around the time that he was spoken to by investigators. First off, the description he gave was so vivid that the police thought it was suspicious. It was way more information than most witnesses ever gave about a stranger. Did he know this man personally, or had he invented the whole thing?


And beyond that… something about the story he gave the police didn’t feel right either. no one else at the restaurant—not the first patron who called in, nor the staff—recalled seeing this Barry guy. And everyone who remembered seeing Leah at the restaurant that night recalled that she had left the establishment by herself, unaccompanied.


Then, there was the note about how his behavior was a bit odd. He seemed nervous and stilted when he spoke to the officers.


Police suspected that this phantom “Barry” person might just be a fabrication. But why? Why would this guy lie? Did he know more about Leah’s disappearance than he was letting on?


Well, the man had gotten a lawyer and wasn’t speaking anymore. BUT, officers still had their key piece of evidence. The one thing they almost destroyed. 


So This triggered a brand new forensic examination of the Jeep Cherokee


The vehicle was turned inside out, ever square inch was dusted for fingerprints and reprocessed. Investigators slowly scanned the outside of the vehicle for any forensic evidence that someone else, someone they overlooked had their hands on the car. 


And there, on the underside of the hood, was exactly that. a previously undetected set of fingerprints 


And not only that, but they had all of Leah’s items, including her clothes, reprocessed for DNA. They were alerted by the lab that one of Leah’s items of clothing had a male DNA profile on them. 


This was obviously a huge bombshell. Whom did the DNA belong to? Detectives wanted to know if it matched their restaurant suspect who provided the possibly bogus story about “Barry.”


The first step was to track him down. Detectives learned that he had moved out of the country and was now living in Canada. 


So, they submitted a request to Canadian authorities, in June 2007, for his fingerprints and DNA. This could be the final piece of the puzzle. Was this guy under their noses the entire time, hidden in plain sight in the case file? They were so close, yet so far. See, they knew that this wasn’t going to be a quick conclusion. Investigators were now dealing across country boarders, it could take years to get an answer. 


In the meantime, Leah’s siblings returned to Bellingham to keep attention on Leah.


In talking to the press, Kara compared the feeling of having a missing loved one to losing sight of your child in a crowded store, and the panic that sets in during those moments. It was like that, Kara said—only spread out across seven years and counting.


But, investigators were confident they soon would have some.


In January 2010, nearly three years after the request was issued, investigators got the call. the restaurant suspect’s fingerprints finally came in.


They rushed to the results to compare those prints to the prints from the underside of the Jeep’s hood.


And…They weren’t a match. It was not that witness who had touched Leah’s car


Insofar as the DNA, the results of that comparison have never been publicly disclosed, but no arrest has been made in the case. 


This was a horrible, horrible let down for Leah’s family, and the new investigators on her case, I’m sure. Since Barry and this witness were the only suspects they had. There was one more potential break in the case, though, Four years later, in January 2014. And this one really haunts me.


At that time, A mummified human body was found in North Cascades National Park, not far from where Leah’s Jeep was found.


The person had apparently died by hanging. But most significantly, this person—just like Leah—had a metal rod in their right femur.


But what’s even stranger is that the rod was traced to the same batch that produced Leah’s—made specifically in the fall of 1998.


Unfortunately, the medical examiner determined that these were the remains of a male—between the ages of 33 and 55. 


in 2022, that case was removed from the national unidentified persons database, which indicates that this person was ultimately identified and their name was withheld for privacy reasons. the key takeaway is: it wasn’t Leah. But it’s so haunting because what are the odds that someone was found near her car with the same metal rod in the same right femur?


More than a quarter of a century has now passed since Leah Roberts disappeared. And we’re no closer now than investigators were in March of 2000 to knowing what happened to her.


The most significant detail is that her vehicle was tampered with. That tends to point toward something really sinister happening to her. 


Leah’s family remains adamant that she wouldn’t have intentionally disappeared and walked away from her friends and family without ever reaching out; no way she could continue to exist in the world and be aware of the pain and torment her loved ones have experienced, not knowing of her fate, without setting them at ease. And even if she did, she wouldn’t have left behind her mother’s diamond engagement ring.


So for these reasons and more, they do not believe Leah disappeared voluntarily.


And the more I turn over this case in my head, the more I tend to agree with them. But what do you guys think? Did Leah run away and start a new life? Did she die due to misadventure? Or was someone else involved?





Kaelyn Moore
Previous

Three Real Imposter Nightmares: Fake Uber Drivers, The Tourist From Hell, and more
Next

Something’s Lurking In The Woods: Terrifying Tales of Crawlers