170. The Mysterious Disappearance of Leah Roberts

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 Show Notes: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/leahroberts Subscribe on⁠ Patreon⁠ https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding 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 Tok⁠ https://www.tiktok.com/@heartstartspounding?lang=en and⁠ Instagram⁠ https://www.instagram.com/heartstartspounding/ for a daily dose of horror.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kaelyn Moore?

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• 0:44Kaelyn Moore?

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• 1:29Kaelyn Moore?

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• 2:02Kaelyn Moore?

  It was a cool spring afternoon in the mountains of upstate Washington, just seven miles south of the Canadian border. That day, in March of 2000, a man named Link and his girlfriend were jogging along a path lined with evergreens and brush on this old logging road that skirted the foothills around Mount 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 off 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

• 2:46Kaelyn Moore?

  and personal items littered everywhere. Someone must have crashed off the side. So Link and his girlfriend jumped into action. They carefully climbed down towards the wreckage, and they called out to see if whoever had crashed was alive. But no one shouted back. So Link braced himself as he stepped towards the car. 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 was really hard to believe that someone had just walked away from the site.

• 3:31Kaelyn Moore?

  So the couple scrambled back up the embankment and got ahold of a phone and called 911 to report this incredibly mysterious scene. Welcome back to Hearts Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kayla Moore. Today, I want to tell you about one of the most haunting mysteries that I've read about. But before we dive in, I just wanted to shout out everyone who participated in Listener Appreciation Month. Anyone who ordered merch, anyone who messaged me about their small business, or who shared with me the creepy places where you listen to Hearts Starts Pounding, even if you may be trespassed to get there. I was so glad to hear from all of you, all of you spooky and creepy and beautiful people. I can't wait to do more stuff with you in the near future, so please keep an eye out for that. Okay, I'm gonna light my candle

• 4:15Kaelyn Moore?

  that smells like an old Victorian library and get back into it. Around 1:00 PM on Saturday, March 18th, sheriff's deputies in Wacom County, Washington finally 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. They were kind of draped over them as if someone had been using the vehicle for shelter. The front windshield of the Jeep, like the other windows, was smashed. The vehicle was very badly damaged and the keys were still in the ignition. Anyone in an accident like this, without a doubt, would have some very serious injuries. But not only was there no one inside of the car, there was also something else missing from the scene, something huge.

• 5:00Kaelyn Moore?

  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 they ultimately concluded, much to the surprise of the deputies, was that the vehicle 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. They ultimately ruled that it was impossible that the vehicle was pushed off the edge. The engine was running and the keys were in the ignition when it left the road,

• 5:45Kaelyn Moore?

  at too great of 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 an hour, about to careen off a cliff, and also that anyone could have walked away from such an accident without any 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 way that anyone was inside of the car when it crashed. So, this became a puzzle for sheriff's deputies, who proceeded to impound the vehicle and secure it in evidence storage, where they eventually ran the number on the Jeep Cherokee's North Carolina license plate.

• 6:30Kaelyn Moore?

  And that's when they learned that the driver of this car had already been reported as a missing person. Five 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 told her that she would join Nicole on the job to help her out. But when Nicole got there, Leah was nowhere to be found. She waited there all day for her friend to join her, like they had 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, and she occasionally could be flaky, so Nicole assumed that she had simply forgotten about this. And when she returned home that night to the house they shared to find that Leah wasn't

• 7:13Kaelyn Moore?

  there, Nicole, once again, didn't really think anything of it. It wasn't until Sunday, which was two days later, that Nicole finally started to grow 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 that they had made. Nicole anxiously picked up the phone and she called Leah's sister, Cara Roberts, and she asked if she had seen Leah. "No," Cara answered, "she had not." And now, realizing that no one had heard from Leah since Thursday, both girls grew deeply concerned. Over the next 12 hours, Nicole and Cara would phone everyone they knew in Leah's social

• 7:54Kaelyn Moore?

  circle, but not one single person had seen or heard from Leah in several days. Finally, come Monday morning, Cara met up with Nicole at the house that she and Leah shared, and the two young women started working out what they were going to do next. First things first, they decided, they were going to enter Leah's room to look for any sign of what could have happened to her. And what immediately stood out to them was that most of Leah's clothes were missing, and so was her cat, Bee. And then Cara spotted what appeared to be a handwritten note folded up in quadrants with a drawing on one side of Leah's favorite literary character, the Cheshire Cat from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

• 8:36Kaelyn Moore?

  Or rather, it was just the Cheshire Cat's famous grin. Cara unfolded the paper and found a hastily scribbled note in Leah's handwriting. The note was addressed to Nicole, a roommate. It read, quote, "This is to cover bills for when I am gone. 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. And beside it, Leah wrote reassuringly, "Six words that would forever haunt the investigation." Quote, "I'm not suicidal.

• 9:20Kaelyn Moore?

  I'm the opposite." And then she also wrote, "Cookies in the freezer." Now, that statement, "I'm not suicidal," really stuck out to Kara because Leah was having a very difficult time. In fact, the last few years had been very difficult for her. In February of 2000, a month before she disappeared, 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, Leah dropped out of school. And when she 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. This was just the kind of girl that she was.

• 10:02Kaelyn Moore?

  She resented the 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 and hers alone. But her brother couldn't help but feel like this decision was maybe influenced by some recent event. In fact, this wasn't the first time that she had withdrawn from school. Back in 1997, her mom died suddenly and unexpectedly from heart failure. Leah dropped out of college then, left her job at the local newspaper archive, and ended up taking nearly two years off before she finally felt ready to continue on the path that 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,

• 10:44Kaelyn Moore?

  leaving no time or room to break, and so she plowed into it. The wreck left her car totaled and Leah in the hospital, fighting for her life. She had a punctured lung and a shattered right femur, and she was lucky to emerge from the whole ordeal with no more than some scars and a metal rod in her leg. And then after this, her hard luck really continued. For years, Leah's father had been living with chronic lung disease, and in April of 1999, he did unfortunately pass away. It was an incredibly heavy emotional toll on Leah. So Nicole and Cara were in a way relieved that Leah had included that disclaimer, but they were still very concerned about her because she had not been acting like herself lately.

• 11:27Kaelyn Moore?

  Now, near the note, Cara found a bundle of cash, which she picked up and began counting. There was enough to cover a month of Leah's shared rent, utilities, and expenses. But Cara was so concerned at this point about Leah's mental state that she picked up the phone and she called the Durham County Sheriff's Office to formally file a missing persons report. And it so happened that Cara actually had power of attorney over Leah's credit card and bank accounts. So she drove out to Leah's bank and requested a statement showing all of her recent transactions. And once she obtained that statement, the recent transactions told the story of Leah's travels since that previous Thursday. So Cara first noticed that Leah had withdrawn $3,000 from her bank account that afternoon.

• 12:11Kaelyn Moore?

  And then through all of Leah's subsequent debit card transactions, Cara was able to track Leah's movements in the days since. She seemed to be heading west along the I-40 corridor, an interstate that travels through North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and ends in Southern California. And Cara 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. And seeing this, Cara really started putting the pieces together. See, back in 1999, with both of her parents gone, it really hit Leah how short and fragile life was, and it triggered a sort of existential awakening in her,

• 12:54Kaelyn Moore?

  the kind that you typically have in college, but this was times 100. Her parents had left her some money, enough 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. So in the summer of 1999, Leah traveled to Costa Rica for an anthropology field study. After returning to North Carolina, she just could not shake her wanderlust. She really wanted to get away again. She had this itch to be in constant motion. And then in the fall of 1999, Leah's lifestyle really began to change. She spent more and more time at coffee houses, frequenting this spot called Cuppa Joe almost every day. She would spend hours at a time there, writing in her journal, writing poetry,

• 13:38Kaelyn Moore?

  making new friends with the regulars, and frequently discussing her newfound love of author Jack Kerouac. Now, maybe some of you know, but Kerouac was a figurehead of the Beat Generation. He wrote "On the Road", about two men's search for meeting on a road trip. When the book was initially released in the late 50s, people hated the character's hedonistic lifestyle and rejection of society. They were men driving around aimlessly instead of working in the factories. I mean, could you imagine? But for someone like Leah, who was feeling crushed by the trauma and the expectations of her, this book kind of became her dream life. Kerouac was also who Leah had quoted in the letter she left behind. So Kara started wondering, was Leah now finally taking her own "on the road-esque" road trip

• 14:23Kaelyn Moore?

  that she had always dreamed of? So she started going back through her sister's transactions. She could see that Leah had, very impressively, made it all the way to the West Coast in just 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 was no further activity on Leah's debit card in the 30 or so hours since. And that was a very ominous sign.

• 15:00Kaelyn Moore?

  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 once she did, she learned that Leah's Jeep Cherokee had been found wrecked in the mountains of upstate Washington. So within two days, Kara and her brother Heath were on a plane out to Bellingham, Washington to assist with the hunt for their sister. Sheriff's deputies in Wacom County, Washington, took the siblings out to the crash site, where a search and rescue team had already begun scouring the area for any sign that Leah may have wandered away from the car.

• 15:42Kaelyn Moore?

  Fallen trees and debris made it really challenging to search too far, and it also made it really unlikely that Leah would have traveled that way by foot, because the brush and the 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 that were recovered from the scene. And what the siblings saw made this situation even more unsettling. Aside from Leah's credit cards, her checkbook, driver's license, and passport, she had left behind cat food and her cat carrier, which told them that she had taken Bee, her kitten, along with her. But again, there was no blood in the car, so it seemed unlikely that Bee was inside the car when it crashed either.

• 16:27Kaelyn Moore?

  Leah had left her guitar behind, a bunch of CDs, most of which were scattered around the underbrush around the Jeep, and a pair of pants with $2,500 in the back pocket. $2,500. Now 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 had left behind her credit cards so that her movements couldn't be tracked, there would have been no reason for her to leave behind that much cash. And without that money, she wouldn't have been able to get very far. So Kara and Heath started to fear that something really horrible and sinister had happened to Leah. But what?

• 17:12Kaelyn Moore?

  The next step in the investigation was for detectives to call local hospitals, but no one matching Leah's description had been admitted. They also examined Leah's cellphone records, but in doing so, they found that there had been no activity on her phone line since before she left North Carolina. And there were still some other items left behind at the crash site that were yet to be explored. One of those things was Leah's camera, which was found on the ground near her car with undeveloped film inside. So detectives collected the roll because maybe there were clues hidden inside the pictures that she had taken. And then there was the gas station receipt for the fuel Leah had purchased in Brooks, Oregon, 10 minutes before 1:00 a.m. on March 13th. That purchase had been the last transaction on her debit card,

• 17:55Kaelyn Moore?

  but police did find evidence of one later transaction. This was a cash transaction the following afternoon. It was a movie ticket stub tucked away inside a decorative wooden box. Apparently Leah had purchased a ticket for 2:10 p.m., a showing of American Beauty, and she had gone to see it in Bellingham, Washington, at the Bellis Fair Mall Cinema. So the gas station in Oregon and then the movie theater in Bellingham, that's where the trail ended. Detectives contacted the gas station and requested the surveillance video. At first, nothing in the video seems all that unusual. Leah appears in the video alone as she approaches the cash register. She hands the clerk her debit card and pays for her transaction.

• 18:40Kaelyn Moore?

  But while she's waiting, Leah can be seen periodically glancing outside towards where her Jeep Cherokee was parked. What was she looking at? Was someone outside waiting for her? Was someone watching her? Had someone been following her? Unfortunately, there was no way for police to know any of this because the gas station just didn't have any external cameras. So the area where the pumps were was not caught on tape. But there was still the roll of film inside of her camera, which investigators had eventually developed. They showed those pictures to Karen Heath, who looked them over and decided unfortunately that this was an old roll. It was taken the previous winter. There were no photos on it of her most recent trip.

• 19:22Kaelyn Moore?

  Kara and Heath were starting to feel really frustrated by the lack of leads. So they launched their own grassroots investigation. And it began at the Bellas Fair Mall Movie Theater, the last place that Leah was known to have been. They passed out missing persons flyers with Leah's pictures on them to the movie theater employees, but none of them remembered seeing her. The two siblings then considered that Leah's movie would have ended right around dinnertime. And they started wondering, maybe she left the theater and then walked into the mall for a bite to eat. And knowing their sister as they did, they couldn't really 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 of the mall

• 20:05Kaelyn Moore?

  and actually seemed like a place she would eat at was a place called The Elephant and Castle Pub and Grill. They took their stack of flyers to the restaurant, sat down at the bar, and just began talking to the staff. Now, no one else they had talked to that day had seen Leah, even at the places they knew she had been. So what were the chances that someone here would recognize her when they didn't even know if that's where she had eaten? But sure enough, after seeing Leah's picture, the staff did remember seeing her there. On the night of March 13th, she was sitting at the bar, they said. They remembered that Leah was sitting 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.

• 20:49Kaelyn Moore?

  No one had seen if she had talked to someone or where she went after. Later that evening, the siblings called and shared the information with the investigators at Wacoom County Sheriff's Office. And then on March 24th, they boarded a plane and had to fly back home to North Carolina. And the siblings weren't the only ones hitting another dead end. That same day, the sheriff's office sent planes and helicopters over the area around the crash site to do a sweeping aerial search. And the end result, unfortunately, was the same as the ground searches has been: nothing. There was no trace of her. But then, a day later, the phone rang at the sheriff's headquarters. The caller was a man who frequented the Elephant and Castle Pub and Grill.

• 21:31Kaelyn Moore?

  He explained to the detective that the restaurant staff had told him about Leah's disappearance, and he wanted to contact them because he had talked to Leah the night that she dined there. The man remembered her as being warm and talkative. She was really open about her life and the fact that she was on this soul-searching journey. And he remembered talking to her about Jack Kerouac, and how his writing had inspired her to visit upstate Washington where some of his novels were set. And he also remembered that there was another guy at the bar, sitting on the opposite side of her, and that she was talking to him as well. The detective asked if Leah had left the bar with that man, and the caller said, "No." Leah had, in fact, left the restaurant by herself, just as she had arrived.

• 22:16Kaelyn Moore?

  But still, the detective asked if he knew what the second man's name was, which he did, because they were both regulars at this particular restaurant. And so, after this caller hung up, the investigator reached out to that second man. And that second man acknowledged meeting Leah at the Elephant and Castle, just like the first man had. And he remembered Leah talking about Jack Kerouac, and how she had been inspired by "On the Road to Travel Out West." "And that was the last time he saw her," the man said. However, contrary to what the previous guy had told the investigator, this man claimed that Leah did not leave the restaurant alone. The detective's ears perked up, because the other man said she had left by herself.

• 23:01Kaelyn Moore?

  So did this guy know who Leah had left with? And the man said he did. Leah had left the bar with a man who said his name was Barry. The detectives asked if he could describe what Barry looked like. And the man gave them a description that was so vividly detailed that after the phone call, investigators actually brought in a sketch artist to meet with the man and create a composite based on what he recalled. And they were left with a sketch of a man in his 30s or 40s with thick, light-colored hair and an earring in one ear. He had thin lips and hooded eyes and a wide-bringed nose. The description was so vivid, it almost didn't

• 23:43Kaelyn Moore?

  make sense. How could one patron have sworn that she left by herself and the other one gave such a detailed description of the man she supposedly did leave with? Police tried everything 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 just was not 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 28, 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

• 24:26Kaelyn Moore?

  a gas station in Everett, Washington, 30 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 just no way the investigators could follow up, and his 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 towards one of the places like Desolation Peak that Kerouac had written about in his novels? Investigators began poring through Kerouac's

• 25:07Kaelyn Moore?

  writing, specifically "Desolation Angels" and "The Dharma Bums," two books that were set in Watcomb County. They took note of landmarks that Kerouac had mentioned and considered checking them for any signs of Leah, but at this point, they needed some help. So on March 30th, the FBI joined the investigation. And technically, they did have jurisdiction anyways, since the Jeep Cherokee 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. They fanned out into the 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.

• 25:49Kaelyn Moore?

  The FBI then sent a forensics team out to more thoroughly examine the Jeep Cherokee. And the techs sprayed luminol inside to look for any blood that may have been wiped clean. They also dusted for fingerprints and did lifts for hairs and fibers. But the Jeep, as it turns out, was absolutely spotless. However, when they lifted up the floorboards of the vehicle, they found something that had been previously overlooked.

• 26:17Kaelyn Moore?

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• 27:00Kaelyn Moore?

  To learn more about Prenewvo and get $300 off your whole-body MRI, go to prenewvo.com/hsp and use code HSP. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com slash HSP. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Primally Pure. I feel like every time I run out of a product in my bathroom, I have this moment where I go, okay, do I just order the same thing? Or do I finally make a better swap? And that thinking is exactly what got me into Primally Pure. They're a female founded brand that keeps it really simple. Fewer, better ingredients, and nothing you can't pronounce. I just got an order from Primally Pure and I am obsessed with their lip oil. I also got Eucalyptus and Lavender Body Butter,

• 27:44Kaelyn Moore?

  which has spa vibes for sure. If you want an easy starting point, their Clean Start Bundle is a great place to start. For under $50, you get three everyday essentials. Their best selling aluminum free deodorant, a mini body butter, and the lip oil that I love. It's also a really thoughtful gift if you know someone who's been wanting to clean up their routine. Use code HSP to get 15% off your Primally Pure purchase. That's www.p r i m a l l y p u r e dot com and use code HSP at checkout for 15% off your order.

• 28:18Kaelyn Moore?

  It was a small cache of jewelry, which investigators then photographed and shared with Leah's roommate Nicole and her two siblings. And all three of them immediately recognized Leah's mom's diamond engagement ring. And 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 mean, I'm wearing my grandmother's ring right now. But I remember being told from a young age that if you're ever held up in a robbery, you should place your hands behind your back, slide off your ring, and let it fall to the floor.

• 29:02Kaelyn Moore?

  That way, it won't be taken. Essentially, if you have a sacred piece of jewelry on you, you should do whatever possible to make sure it's not on you when something really bad happens. But if Leah did take her ring off and hid it in the car because she was being robbed, then why were her credit cards and most of her money left behind? This became even more confusing to the investigators, but they did start to feel like foul play must have been involved. But if it wasn't so someone could rob Leah, was it just so someone could kill her or take her or something else completely nefarious? And where else could they look, though? All they had was a sketch of Barry, who might not even exist.

• 29:44Kaelyn Moore?

  Sheriff's investigators in Watcomb County decided that 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, 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

• 30:27Kaelyn Moore?

  News and Observer about what the process of moving on was like. 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. Then eventually, and tragically, you get used to the new normal." But the siblings had not grown complacent, even though this had become their new normal, and they would not stop their efforts to find out what had happened to their sister. They continued making trips up to Bellingham, meeting with detectives, putting up missing persons posters, and what had begun as a $5,000 reward increased to $10,000 with the help of a benefit concert and community fundraising

• 31:08Kaelyn Moore?

  efforts back home in Raleigh. In September of 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 20 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 to meet with two different women, both of whom had been identified as tipsters as possibly being Leah. And although they could understand how the women could be mistaken for their sister, neither one was her. As Leah's case had grown ice cold, the Watcomb County Sheriff's Office eventually reached out to Kara and asked what she wanted them to do with her sister's car. And what do

• 31:53Kaelyn Moore?

  you do in that situation? Do you take it back? Do you drive it? Do you tell them to hold on to it? Do you discard it and try to move on? Well, Kara told them to hold on to 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 car 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. Wacom County Detectives Jamie Collins and Alan Smith, who inherited the case from the original investigators.

• 32:37Kaelyn Moore?

  And in reviewing the case file, Collins and Smith realized that parts of Leah's car had never been examined. Despite the thorough forensic examinations the FBI had conducted in 2000, the two detectives realized that no one had ever looked under the hood of the car. So, they got together and they opened the front of the vehicle. They had every square inch under the hood scanned, trying to separate what was damaged from the crash versus what could have been human intervention. And that is when they made a horrifying discovery. Leah's vehicle had been tampered with. The cover to the starter relay had been removed, and doing so would have allowed the Jeep Cherokee

• 33:21Kaelyn Moore?

  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 being behind the steering wheel. But it probably wasn't just anyone who could have done this. The detectives believed that only someone with a working knowledge of cars, like a mechanic, would have known how to remove it. And the investigators wondered, who may have had that kind of mechanical knowledge of cars? Leah, they learned, definitely did not. She likely would not have the know-how to pull off such a thing, or even think to do it. But as they poured back through the case file, they saw that there was one person who police

• 34:03Kaelyn Moore?

  had previously spoken to, who did have this very specific kind of knowledge. And it was the patron at the Elephant and Castle who claimed Leah had left with a man named Barry, the guy who had 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 police did think it was suspicious. It was way more information than most witnesses ever give 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 police didn't feel right either.

• 34:46Kaelyn Moore?

  No one else at the restaurant, not the first patron who had called in, nor the staff, were called seeing that Barry guy. And everyone who remembered seeing Leah at the restaurant that night recalled that she had left the establishment by herself, completely unaccompanied. And then there was also a note in the file about how his behavior had seemed a bit odd. He was nervous and stilted when he was talked to by the officers. Police suspected that this phantom Barry person might just have been a fabrication. But why? Why would this guy lie? Why was he trying to throw police off of a trail? Why was he trying to derail the investigation? 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.

• 35:32Kaelyn Moore?

  But officers still had their key piece of evidence, the one thing that they almost destroyed. So this triggered a brand-new forensic examination of the Jeep Cherokee. The vehicle was turned inside out. Every square inch was dusted for fingerprints and reprocessed. Investigators slowly scanned the outside of the vehicle for any forensic evidence that someone else, someone that they had 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 pieces of clothing...

• 36:15Kaelyn Moore?

  Did have unidentified male DNA on them. This was obviously a huge bombshell. Whose DNA was it? Detectives wanted to know if it matched their restaurant suspect who provided the possible bogus story. Well, the first step was to track him down and detectives learned that he had moved out of the country right after the investigation started and was now living in Canada. So they submitted a request to Canadian authorities in June of 2007 for his fingerprints and his DNA. This could be the final piece of the puzzle. Was this guy under their noses the entire time, just hidden in plain sight in the case file? They were so close, yet so far. But they knew that this wasn't going to be a quick conclusion.

• 36:56Kaelyn Moore?

  This had now become an international investigation and it could take years to get an answer. So in the meantime, Leah's siblings returned to Bellingham to keep attention on Leah. And in talking to the press, Cara 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," Cara said, "only spread out over seven years and counting." But investigators were confident that they soon would have some resolution. In January of 2010, nearly three years after the request was issued, investigators got the call. The restaurant suspect's fingerprints finally came in and they rushed to compare those results to the prints that were found underneath the Jeep Cherokee's hood.

• 37:39Kaelyn Moore?

  And they found that 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, so we can only assume. This was a horrible, horrible letdown 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 break really haunts me. At that time, a mummified human body was found in the North Cascades National Park, not far from where Leah's Jeep Cherokee was found.

• 38:23Kaelyn Moore?

  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 the remains were male between the ages of 33 and 55. And in 2022, that case was removed from the National Unidentified Persons Database, which does indicate that the person was ultimately identified, but that their name was withheld for privacy reasons. The key takeaway is, though, this wasn't Leah. But it is so haunting because what are the odds that someone was found near her car

• 39:08Kaelyn Moore?

  with the same metal rod on the same side of their body? More than a quarter of a century has now passed since Leah Roberts' disappearance, and we're not really any 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, and that tends to point towards something really sinister happening to her. Leah's family remains adamant that she would not 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 were experiencing. And if she did, she wouldn't have left behind her mother's diamond engagement ring.

• 39:52Kaelyn Moore?

  So for these reasons and more, they just don't believe that 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 just run away and start a new life? Did she die due to misadventure at some point? Or was someone else involved? And what pieces of the case do you seem the most evident that someone else was involved? What are the most sinister parts? You can leave me a comment wherever you listen. I'm always curious what you guys have to say about these cases. This one, I really think, will haunt me for a very long time. Now, I'm going to be back here in the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters next week with another story for you all. This time, another spooky True Urban Legends episode.

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  I cannot wait to share that one with you. And until then, stay curious.

• 40:47Kaelyn Moore?

  Hearts, Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Hearts, Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Sound design and mix by Red Room Creative. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grace Jernigan, and the team at WME. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartsarts pounding dot com.

• 41:05Kaelyn Moore?

  Do you want more Darkly Curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon dot com backslash heart starts pounding. Well, whatever you do, stay curious.