Hi, I'm Holly. And I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Okay, we're live.
Oh wow. That was so fast. So quick. I want a cookie.
Oh, go ahead, me. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. It is 2025.
Crazy. It is a new year, new us, except the same us, still indulging in life's simple pleasures. Cookies? Hailey had gotten that big container of cookies several weeks ago, and it's shockingly still relatively full.
Yeah, so you haven't indulged too much, but she brought it, and we're both indulging. So it's been quite delightful. She's currently got her mouth stopped full of cookie. I don't know why we decide, you know what, let's go on the air and fill our mouths with crap.
Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, I'm back now. Yeah, we're gonna get a message. We're like, the all they did was chew.
Do you want a cookie? I had to listen to them chew the whole time. Well, chew on this. No, it's okay.
Somebody don't like it. Yeah. What did you make up to? Um, you know, not a whole lot.
Did you all miss us? We were off last week. We were off last week for Christmas. How was your Christmas?
It was delightful. Yeah, lovely time with family. So did they enjoy their books? Yeah, they did.
Um, yeah. Okay. Yeah. All the things.
Yeah. What was your holiday like? It was really nice, you know, my son was really excited about all the Christmas presents he got, one of which was a right on excavator. Exciting.
Oh my gosh. Are you kidding? I haven't seen him since he is on that. Take it off constantly.
Yes. These are those like, um, you know, you plug them up. It's like a 12 volt battery. Yeah.
They write on it. And he's also got a tractor, which he loves as well. So he is always out there always doing something. Just having a good time.
Very active. And he's a very active child. Yeah. Very good.
All the things. So he's doing all the things. And yeah, I got some very practical grown up gifts. Oh, nice.
Like a brazier. Nice. Always need some of those. That's how you know that you're grown up when you're like, Oh man, I just need a good brazier.
Yeah, I got a new one recently and I don't enjoy it because it's not was worn in. Oh, I feel like we're in like the cutting in face where I'm like, and you think is this the wrong size? You do think that but then you go up a size and you're like, No, then you're like this is too big and then it goes up in the cup and you're like, I've got all this room and this doesn't make sense. Yeah.
Well, and mine is like because I have two different size. That's right. So I have to either decide do I want one to have in some spillage or do I want the gap? What do you usually do?
The spillage. Really? Yeah. I probably pick the gap.
Yeah, it just I feel like it looks a little bit weirder with the gap. Okay. It goes with the because I kind of hide this village with the underboob. Yeah, that's true.
Yeah. So that's kind of what I typically go for. Yeah. So all my ladies out there and folks that have different sizes.
Yeah, because my like one size like one is like at least a size bigger than the other. That's crazy. So, yeah. Well, I mean, it's not like you wear anything that you know.
I know I'm not a I'm not a big cleavage gal anyway. I know I know I know you for years and I've really never seen your cleavage. Yeah, I don't wear a lot of low cut things or short or short. Yeah, it's just like it's not, you know, like no harm in it.
It's just not I just don't particularly enjoy wearing that sort of item. But if that's you, go for it. You know what I would say with your wardrobe? You are conservative, not like stuffy in any way.
But I mean she's not like letting it all hang out is what I'm saying. Yeah. And comfortable. Yes.
You comfort is a big thing which you often don't see in people your age. I know. Usually, you know, youngsters are out there trying to show off their bod. I mean, I want to keep this guy as much as possible.
I appreciate that it's a guy. Yeah. Just keeping keeping him contained. Yeah.
Yeah. You don't run everywhere. I get that. Yeah.
There's a lot of spillage in a lot of places. Okay. We're two times like teens like over. I get that.
Yeah. I feel that. Yeah. So, you know, I know what would you describe my ensembles as?
I think you were you're comfortable, but put together. Like, like even now, like you're comfortable like you look comfy, but you also like you could go out and like, I have a shirt on that says cheers. It's cute though. Thank you.
You're very put together. I look like a homeless person. All right. And my fuzzy socks and my sweatpants and a giant hoodie.
For a while, your socks, the, you know, the part that goes on the heel was actually flipped around. It was. And I was like, that's bugging me. It was very uncomfortable.
And so I fixed it. So now it's fine. Now it's fine. Normal.
It's kind of slightly off. But yeah, that's kind of where I'm at with my life right now. I love that though. I mean, you know, oh, I bought a hoodie recently.
It's called comfort hoodie and it's weighted. Stop. I need this. It's amazing.
So the thing is they're pretty expensive. They're like $75 regularly, but you can pre-order them and they'll ship in like two months, but then they're only $35. So that's what I did. So like now if I were to order one now, it wouldn't get here until February.
Oh my gosh. But it's only $35 to do it that way. Yeah. Because I'm looking at them now.
Yeah. 90. Yeah. What in the world?
But if you do the pre-order and you're okay, waiting a couple months, they're like 35 bucks. Wow. So are they truly comfortable? Oh my god.
This is my new favorite hoodie. I have mine's in the dryer right now because I'm going to wear it when I leave my house today. There's also one that's a Hollister feel-good fleece that says it's comparable for $27.96. Maybe try that one.
Maybe. But I'm a believer in it. And so not sponsored by them at all. But if they would like to, I will record this podcast in that thing every day because I'm about to order one of like every color because I'm obsessed with it.
Oh my gosh. Yes. It is the most comfortable thing. It's comfort C-O-M-F-R-T.
Okay. So if you're looking for a solid hoodie, I'm giving them free promotion. Comfort brands. I mean, if we're already basically doing this little ad for you, I think the kind thing to do would be to say, Holly, you can have one too.
What's your favorite color? And I would say, Green. Good job. Yeah.
That was a test, alien. You passed. And I would get a green subject. Well, the one that I have, the color is green tea.
Love it. And it's gorgeous. Like a gorgeous color. It's so thick and comfortable.
Like it's so well structured. I just obsessed. Okay. I mean, done.
Yeah. This is going to be ours, baby. Yeah. That's great.
I love it. Okay. What you got for us in the new year. Well, we hope your years was amazing.
We hope you had a wonderful holiday. We're diving right in to updates. Ooh, yay. An episode.
Not only one update on a story, two updates on two different stories. Okay. Okay. So we are going to talk about some cases that we've covered in the last four years.
So we've been on the air for four plus years. And this first episode, we covered on December 10th, 2020. Wow. Four years ago.
Wow. This was episode 11. We were babies. I remember us recording that in my old townhouse.
Oh, yeah. I mean, that tells you how years my son would have been a baby. Yeah. It's crazy.
So anyway, the episode was called speaking about baby. Please find my babies. So just to recap for those that haven't heard the story or it's been a while because it has been. The story occurred in Union County, South Carolina, and describes a mother's desperate plea for help after she was carjacked at gunpoint with her two young sons in the backseat.
The mother was forced out of the vehicle and a carjacker drove off with her children still strapped in their car seats. So she's horrific, horrifically terrified. And she said that during this carjacking, her children were crying and she was trying to reassure them that it was going to be okay and that kind of thing. So horrifying.
The mother ran to the nearest house. She calls number one. The story made local news, but then quickly made national news. So both the mother and father who were separated at the time showed a unified run on TV.
They declared they're worried for their children. They pleaded with the carjacker just to bring them home safely and it touched everybody because a mother whose children were kidnapped, I mean, how horrible. So there are thousands of volunteers spanning countless man hours trying to find these two children. I recall seeing the parents on Good Morning America discussing the case.
So this happened in 1994. Yeah. Haley doesn't remember. I was not alive.
After about nine days of searching for the children, the local sheriff got in front of the media for a press conference. It was there that he announced that the mother identified as Susan Smith had confessed to letting her car go into the John D. Long Lake with her children strapped inside. Her children, three-year-old Michael and 14-year-old Alex were deceased.
14. 14 months. Okay. I'll wait a minute.
14-month-old. Yeah. Yeah. They were deceased and strapped in their car seats in the vehicle, which had sunk to the bottom of the lake.
Divers and a wrecking crew were able to pull the car and the children from the water. Susan was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Yeah. Just to know here, the father had nothing to do with this with all the mothers dying.
He had no idea. He had no idea. And he was devastated. Yeah.
Susan claimed a boyfriend broke up with her because he didn't want the response ability of children. So she planned to kill herself and the kids by driving the car into the lake. She put the vehicle into neutral at the boat dock but kept chickening out. She would like, you know, back back up and that kind of thing.
So she would do this constantly and eventually let the car roll into the lake without her in it. It just didn't stop it while the children were in there. And she actually watched as a car sunk. Oh my God.
And this was at night as well. So then she concocts a story of an African-American male who carjacked her at the some point, which as you can imagine, finding out that the story wasn't true because they had put, you know, photos out of what this man supposedly looked like. The African-American community in union were pissed. As they should be.
As they should be. Absolutely. Because so many people were investigated. Yeah.
Like just that matched the description. Exactly. Exactly. So the police finally got her to confess.
After they told her there was no way she was carjacked at this red light, which is what she claims. She stopped at a red light. A guy got in and pulled a gun on her. They told her during that time frame, the light would have been green.
So she changed her story and said, well, you know what? Actually, it wasn't there. It was maybe more down the road that this happened. And they're like, okay, cool.
So they let her go home and said, well, you like write some of the things that you're starting to remember now down and come back. And so she kind of took the bait. She's like, okay, so she comes back. The murder took place on October 25th, 1994.
And so she gives out all the details about what happens and then finally confesses. Like, hey, no, I did this. Her trial began in 1995. So due to the publicity going on with O.J.
Simpson trial at the time in Los Angeles, the judge was like, nope, no media allowed in the courtroom. You know, O.J. Simpson is like, that's chaos. We're not going to do that.
Susan did not testify in her own defense, but a psychiatrist got on the stand and claimed that she had schizophrenia and heard voices. Of course. Of course. That she had been sexually abused, starting the age of 16 by her stepfather, who also got on the stand and admitted that, yep, he had an ongoing relationship with her from the time she was 16 until two months before she murdered her children.
Oh, my God. She was a sexual relationship. Oh, my God. Her birth dad died when she was, I think, six.
And then she tried to commit suicide when she was 13. So she did have a hisry of mental health skills. The jury heard emotional testimony from David, the children's father. And the jury also got to see a video of police recreating what it was like inside the car as it sunk to the bottom of the lake.
And this would have been from the children's P.O.D. The jury was horrified at what the children experienced in their last moments, which was nothing, you know, water was just rushing in. And you know, they were probably so scared. I can't even imagine.
I can't imagine. So Susan was found guilty and given a life sentence, but would be eligible for her role after 30 years. And that dear listeners is where we pick up just a few months ago. Yeah, I saw that she was up for parole.
But I haven't like, I didn't really like, I knew you were going to do this. So I was like, I'm not going to look into it too too much. Yeah. So Susan has been in prison since the fall of 1994.
She was 23 at the time of her incarceration and is currently 53 years of age. She has spent more time in prison than she ever did as a free woman. Susan has not been a model prisoner. In fact, she has had many infractions, including sleeping with prison employees, not great.
Now drug charges, not right. And many other offenses. Her last infraction was in 2015. And that was until several months ago, when she got in trouble for having a cell phone and contacting a filmmaker who intended to do a documentary with her.
This filmmaker was putting money on her commissary account in exchange for her interview. Yeah. Oh, that all leads us to November 20th, 2024, the date of Susan's parole hearing. Okay.
Via Zoom, the board gathered along with a set of supporters for Susan's release. Susan also joined the meeting. Okay. This was the first time that Susan had been seen and heard by media in over 30 years.
Wow. Susan shared that she loved Michael and Alex. She cried. She stated that she felt rehabilitated and that she would continue to seek mental health support once she was let out.
When asked about her past infractions in prison, she stated that she used to have a drug problem. And when she was young, she was just really stupid and did stupid things early on in her prison career. She stated that she hasn't had any infractions since 2015. And the parole board very quickly said, uh, wait a minute, what about your recent infraction, Susan?
And she said, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not accurate. That charge is being appealed because that didn't really happen. Okay. So I watched the video of her parole hearing and I encourage you to as well.
From my perspective, Susan did not actually look like she was crying. I actually it's hard to tell in a video and I didn't really see any tears. She was constantly like trying to like wipe her eyes. She was wearing glasses, trying to wipe under her glasses and like her face, but it didn't really look like she was crying at all.
It kind of appeared to be an act. No, Susan is obviously older now. She's got some grain hair, but overall she doesn't look like a beaten down semblance of a woman that you would expect someone who like has done 30 years for killing her kids. Right.
You know, so like in my opinion, it's just mine. She'd appear too remorseful. Right. I mean, for killing her own children.
Yeah. It appeared that she cared a little bit more about herself and her and the prospect of being released. Yeah. So her ex husband David Smith, who had gone on to remarry and have other children, he spoke to the parole board and asked them not to release her.
I saw it was parts of his statement. He felt that 15 years per child was not enough and I have to agree with him. That's ridiculous. He feels that she should spend the rest of her natural life in prison faced with realities of what she took from him and everyone else.
I agree. It's important to know that Michael Smith would be 33 years old and his younger brother Alex would have been 31. They may have been married. They may have had careers families.
I mean, it's just a possibility that was taken from them. So in order to have a parole approval, the board has to have at least four members agree. So in Susan's case, all board members agreed that parole should be denied. Good.
Susan's next parole hearing will be in November of 2026. And if denied again, she will continue to come up for parole every two years until she dies. David Smith states that he will be at everyone of her parole hearings, petitioning the board to keep her locked up. Yeah.
According to the New York Post, insiders from the prison stated that after hearing her parole was denied, Susan started yelling and angry crying. She apparently threw an all-out temper tantrum. She truly believed that they would release her. Wow.
So that just kind of goes to validate for me that this was like an act. Yeah. This was just like, she just thought she was, yeah. Like, yeah.
There doesn't, it all seems like, oh, poor's that me versus like, oh my god, I killed my children. Yeah. You know, it's just weird. And even in a video of her saying, I love my Goudon.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm glad she got denied.
Me too. I just didn't buy that. So anyway, so we'll bring you more in November of 2026. Yeah.
If she gets denied parole or, you know, approved, God, I hope not. Yeah. It'd be a lot of a lot of work done there for me to feel any different. Me too.
Yeah. Me too. And I think, you know, a lot goes to, she's got some significant mental health issues. Yeah.
You would have to do something like this. So anyway, I'll keep you posted on that story. Please do. I've got one more update for you.
Real new year, new updates. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
So this time, we're going to talk about an episode we did called the disappearance of Asha degree. I've also heard her name pronounced Asha. So I'm not really sure. I think it's Asha.
I think it's Asha, but I've heard Asha as well. Yeah. But so on October 5th, 2023, we ran this episode. Yeah.
You know, a little over a year ago. Yeah. This was a story of a nine year old girl from Shelby, North Carolina, who went missing from her home on Valentine's Day in 2000. Asha shared a room with her brother, O'Brien, and when their mother came to wake the children for school, Asha and her backpack were gone.
Her family and friends searched the neighborhood, but she was nowhere to be found. Once the story made local news, if UI witnesses came forward, stating they had seen a young girl matching her description walking in the rain along Dixon Boulevard. One person tried to talk to her and she ran behind a building. Over a year later, Asha's backpack was found in Burke County, which was the county over at a construction site inside the backpack where items not belonging to Asha, including a book and a new kids on the block t-shirt.
Very strange. Very weird. Yeah. It is believed that Asha was abducted.
Her parents have continued to hold out hope that she's alive somewhere. So that brings us to our most recent update. We are going to September of 2024. So that backpack that belonged to Asha was DNA tested and it was discovered that two strands of DNA were present and that did not belong to Asha.
They belong to two individuals, a male and a female. Using genetic genealogy, they were able to make a match to those two individuals who were identified as Russell Bradley Underhill and Annalie Devman. At the time of Asha's disappearance in the year 2000, Russell Underhill was living in a nursing facility and Annalie Devman was 13 years old. Oh wow.
Yeah. So this begs the question. That's weird. How does the DNA of a man in a nursing home and a 13 year old girl come to be found on a missing elementary school or backpack?
Yeah. That's bizarre. Is it they found this backpack somehow? Yeah.
This is weird. So the nursing facility that Mr. Underhill was living in was owned and run by Annalie Devman's parents. Okay.
So their names are Roy and Connie. So that's a link between Annalie and Mr. Underhill. Okay.
In fact, Roy, the dad was listed as Mr. Underhill's emergency contact. So not only was this man living in his friend's nursing home, living in this nursing home, but he was also friends with an owner. Okay.
Back in the early 2000s, Roy and Connie's three daughters, which included a 16 year old who would drive the nursing home patients to and from appointments. Okay. So the daughters usually would like go together. They would take a patient to like a doctor's appointment and then they would drive them back.
That was kind of, you know, it's a family business. Yeah. Police feel that Annalie, the 13 year old and Mr. Underhill most likely had help in either taking or harming Asha, concealing her body.
Yeah. This is where the parents Roy and Connie come in. Okay. According to warrants, police believe Asha is deceased and has been since she went missing 24 years ago.
Police were able to get a judge to sign off on a warrant to search all properties owned by the dead man family and they have multiple properties. Wow. While police did not find a body, they did take many items that may help them solve the case, including a green 1964 GMC Ramblar. I don't know if that was the car.
Right. That maybe there's DNA. I don't know. Roy and Connie Deadman are obvious suspects in the case, including their daughter Annalie.
No one has been arrested at the moment. However, Mr. Underhill unfortunately passed away in 2004. But according to Deadman's attorney, only Mr.
Underhill is responsible for Asha's disappearance already. We're getting some like, yeah, we're kind of confessing this, but oh no, we're not like we're not involved. But we are. But we are.
I mean, because you're still concealing a crime. Yeah. Even if you know about it, you should have gone to the police. Right.
So well, like if he was being driven around by these daughters, are they involved? Well, and I'm going to get to that in a second. I got some some possible theory. Okay.
So this is what we have right now. So but I feel like more and more is going to come out about this case and I'll be right here to bring it to you as an enfold. But the biggest thing I really want for Asha's parents at least is peace. Yeah.
So they've been feeling like she's alive all this time. So knowing she said must be horrible, but also at the same time kind of comforting to know like, no, she's she's actually gone. You know, she's deceased. So as much as I don't want to speculate because this is like an ongoing case, it did hit a theory in me.
Right. So makes me wonder, if you listen to the story, it almost seemed like either Asha was coaxed to come out of her house for some reason or she chose to run away. Right. So either she was a victim of circumstance, she was going to run away or go to a friend's house or something and got kidnapped or she was lured out.
I don't know which is which. However, it could be that you got a maybe a 16 year old driver or maybe the 13 year old was driving. Could be. And maybe she hit the young girl.
And so maybe maybe Underwood was driving and hit the young girl or maybe he up. I don't know. Maybe he abducted her and you know, they were like, Oh, crap, what are we going to do? And the parents help conceal it maybe or why would they be driving to an appointment at night?
This was early in the morning. Oh, okay. Early in the morning. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. I went and says, so that's a piece of the case there that we talked about in the original episode. I went and saw her about four o'clock in the morning and it was raining.
Yeah. So is it maybe they hit her? It was raining they couldn't see maybe they early in the morning. It was still dark.
They hit her. You know, this was February. Panics concealed body. Yeah.
Maybe it could have been something like that. Maybe Mr. Underhill did something because you know, the lawyer for the family is saying, Oh, it was Underhill's fault. But that's also easy to say when the man's dead.
Right. But you know, maybe he did something horrible and you know, the girls were driving. I don't know. Or he borrowed the car.
Maybe. And the girls aren't there at all. Maybe. Or use the girls to lure her.
Maybe. Because we've got to think about like, there were things that probably belong to a girl older than Asha. Because as I mentioned in the original episode, New Kids on the Block was not popular in 2000. Right.
New Kids on the Block was popular in the early 90s. So you would think about someone probably a little bit older. So let's imagine if you're 16 years old in 2000, that means that you were born in 1984. Yeah.
That means that you would probably have much more of a connection to new kids on the block than somebody who's nine would. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know.
It's just there's some things that don't make sense. And I promise, I'm not accusing anybody. I'm not laying blame on anybody here. That we're just kind of.
Right. I mean, there's so many different possibilities. Yeah. So if Annalie was involved, she's 13 years old.
She was 13 years old at the time. She's 37 years old now. So that begs the question. If she was involved as a 13 year old, right, if she is suspect, can she be charged as a 37 year old woman at this point for a crime that happened when she was a minor?
That's a good question. I don't know. I mean, like what I'm curious to see what's going to come out. And we haven't found a body.
Right. There's nobody yet. I hope I hope they find some resolution. But police are near certain that she is deceased.
Wow. Yeah. That's what I got for you. That's pretty crazy.
Right. Filed. So I'll keep you posted and we'll keep you posted on any episodes we end up getting updates on. Absolutely.
And we'll let you know how they unfold. So whoa, new year, new episodes. New episodes. Yeah.
All right. Well, if you want more new episodes, send us money. I'm kidding. No, send us an email.
You can do that at mountain mysteries.apple action at gmail.com. Find us on our Facebook, Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Find us on Instagram, mountain mysteries.apple action. And check us out on our Patreon, patreon.com slash mountain mysteries.
Yes. And I want to give a big shout out to Logan West Virginia. Okay. Thank you for listening.
Yeah. And we hope you all have a wonderful new year. Yeah. And we hope it's great for all of you.
Yeah. And we'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.