The Mysterious Disappearance of Leigh Marine Occhi – Part IV

July 30, 2009

Part four of a four-part series - click here to read part III

Today I wrap up the four-part series that began earlier this week on the case of Leigh Marine Occhi, a 13-year-old girl from Tupelo, Miss., who mysteriously disappeared on Aug. 27, 1992. Part one of the series covered Leigh's disappearance and left off with authorities launching a large-scale search to find her. Part two provided information on who Leigh was and her relationship with her father. Part three delved into the police investigation and where it stands today. Now, in part four, we hear from Leigh's mother, boyfriend, and the diligent crime reporter who first covered the case.

According to Leigh's mother, Vickie Felton, formerly Yarborough, the most important thing is that people don't forget about her daughter.

"That is the biggest thing. That's all," she said. "Not to forget about her."

Despite the police department's belief that Leigh was murdered, Vickie said that she is unwilling to give up the hope that her daughter is still alive.

"I am not going to accept anything for sure. I am not going to do that … I have to keep focused on factual things, logical things, not emotional things, or I wouldn't be able to cope very well. I just don't want to do that again."

Vickie said she is well aware of the rumors and speculation regarding her possible involvement in the case; however, she does not let that bother her. 

"That has never been a bother to me," she said. "It's never been about me. It's about finding Leigh, and I didn't care and I [still] don't care what anyone says about any of it … I have never not cooperated with anybody because I am not going to not cooperate with anyone because of what they might think. I don't care about that. I want to find my daughter. I am not fazed by what they say. I have thicker skin than that. I am more reasonable than that. If that bothered me, I would not have been able to cope, but that is not the focus and that is not a problem."

According to Vickie, she has her own idea of who is responsible for her daughter's disappearance.

"There is an individual that is currently incarcerated in prison, and he is linked to two missing people in Tupelo," Vickie said. "[It] is quite a coincidence that one person would be linked to two cases … I believe he is the one responsible. I don't have any proof; I just have my feelings."

Vickie said that both she and Leigh knew the individual and that after Leigh went missing, he began acting strange whenever he was around Vickie.

"Things that he did after the disappearance were strange to me, and when I looked him straight in the eye, his avoidance of eye contact was very awkward," she said. "He had never been over to my house [before that], but then he stopped over to bring me a picture of her. When he first did it, I didn't think anything of it. I thought he was just concerned, but then after that, when I found out some of the things that he did to another young girl … it all fit in place pretty much in my mind that he had to have been the one responsible. He has horses, and Leigh had commented that he had asked her when she would want to go riding. She would have jumped at the chance for that. She would never ever open my door to a stranger, and she had to have opened the door. I am 100 percent sure of that."

When asked for her opinion on the investigation into her daughter's disappearance, Vickie had this to say:

"I want to believe that they did everything the best they could. I want to think that. I want to have faith in them … I know they were very diligent. I am trying to believe that everything they did was in the best interest of finding Leigh."

As for the future, Vickie hopes that the person responsible will someday step forward and reveal what happened.

"Hopefully, people will perk up and maybe if <redacted> wasn't involved - if it was someone else - maybe they are older now and maybe they have a conscience now."

Vickie's hope for a resolution is shared by Leigh's former boyfriend, Jordan Morse.

Jordan and Leigh met roughly two years before her disappearance. The time they knew each other might be considered short by some standards; however, according to Jordan, the time they spent together was priceless. The last time Jordan saw Leigh was at her 13th birthday party, which was held at an arcade inside the Tupelo mall.

"She seemed happier at that birthday party than she had on any other day that I knew her," Jordan said. "She looked like she was having a good time; she looked like she was happy, and that is a good memory for me to have. I could tell you exactly what she was wearing – that is how vividly I remember it."

Jordan says that he and Leigh attended different schools. As a result, school started for him one week before her's would go into session. The timing hindered their ability to see each other, so he would call her when he got home to chat about the day's events. August 27, 1992 would prove to be the last time Jordan would call the Yarborough residence.

"I called her house, and her mom picked up the phone," Jordan said. "I asked to speak with Leigh, and she said, 'Sorry Hon. Leigh is missing.' I thought 'missing,' what is 'missing'? I mean, at that point in time, I didn't compute missing. I had never been exposed to anything like it before. Vickie started to cry, and then my mom took the phone. [She and Vickie] spoke for a few minutes, and then my mom tried to explain it, but I didn't quite get it until I saw the news that night, and they talked about blood in the house. That is when I understood something really bad had happened."

Despite the passing of nearly two decades, Jordan says that he still remembers the pain and heartache that he felt back then. Those are emotions that he says he continues to carry with him to this day.

"My world fell apart. My childhood ended," he said. "… a couple days [don't] go by that I don't pass something and it makes me think about her. And there is still no answer. That's the worst of it."

Rick Hammond, a former crime reporter for the Daily Journal, also continues to wonder what happened to Leigh.

"I lived only a few blocks from Leigh's house, and when it came across the scanner that there was a call for a missing person at her house, I beat some of the police there. Gosh, it seems like I wrote about it every day for months. I, frankly, always suspected 10 years later or something that a body would be found and they would figure out it was her. There were a couple of false alarms in the few years after that. They would find a body, and people would wonder if it was her, and it wasn't her. I think she is still out there in the country somewhere in some grave waiting to be found."

Leigh Occhi touched a lot of people in her short life and she continues to do so today. There are a number of possibilities in the case – plenty of maybes and what ifs – but the complete portrait of the crime remains blurred. A lot of blank canvas remains, but with it there is also the hope that the final brush strokes will someday appear so that Leigh Occhi can finally be put to rest.

Leigh Marine Occhi is described as a Caucasian female, 4'10" and 95 lbs. She has blonde hair and hazel eyes. Click here to view an age progressed photo. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Tupelo Police Department at 662-841-6491.

Photo Credits: Clippings: Daily Journal; Leigh Occhi (2): Contributed; Tupelo Mall Arcade: David Lohr; Daily Journal: David Lohr

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission from Discovery Communications. All quotes must include a link back.

David Lohr on Investigation Discovery Tonight

In January, M2Pictures - producers of the ID show Wicked Attraction - flew me to Hampton, Va., where they interviewed me on camera about the Theresa Cross case. That episode is set to debut tonight on Investigation Discovery. Click here to view the TV schedule.

Be sure to check back here again later today, as the forth and final installment of the Mysterious Disappearance of Leigh Marine Occhi will be going up. In the mean time, be sure to read Gary C. King's new article on Otty Sanchez, a Texas woman who allegedly murdered her baby because the "devil made her do it."

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leigh Marine Occhi – Part III

July 29, 2009

Part three of a four-part series - click here to read part II

Yesterday, I continued the four-part series on the case of Leigh Marine Occhi, a 13-year-old girl from Tupelo, Miss., who mysteriously disappeared on Aug. 27, 1992. Part one of the series covered Leigh's disappearance and left off with authorities launching a large-scale search to find her. Part two provided information on who Leigh was and her relationship with her father. Now, in part three, we go back to the time of her disappearance and learn what police think of the unsolved case.

One of the Tupelo police investigators who was originally a part of the Leigh Occhi case and who also continues to work it today is Captain Bart Aguirre. He remembers vividly the day Leigh went missing and has been an active participant in the investigation to find the person responsible.

"I remember we had Hurricane [Andrew] coming through and it was just a stormy day that day," Aguirre said. "I think we received a phone call from the mother [at about] 9 a.m. It was pretty early, and our detectives responded out there, and at the scene, we found blood splatter on the interior door facing the kitchen area and a pool of blood on the carpet in the hallway leading to her bedroom … [the blood] wasn't hard. It didn't have what I call a 'skin' over the top of it. It was fresh … When we started looking at the bathroom area, [we could] actually see where somebody had attempted to clean up the crime scene. The mother, she wasn't hysterical. She had her own mother and father at the scene when we arrived, and they tried to comfort her and to figure out what events took place in the house."

According to Aguirre, one of the first places Leigh's mother, Vickie Yarborough, took police was to Leigh's bedroom.

"There was a bloody nightgown [on] the floor in Leigh Occhi's room. That nightgown was collected for further use. If we are ever able to find a suspect, we could use that nightgown to trace hair fibers and determine [whether] the blood on it is actually Leigh Occhi's or the suspect's."

Based upon the evidence found at the scene, Aguirre said it is likely that Leigh was killed inside the house and then transported elsewhere. In addition, Aguirre said that elements of the crime scene were not typical of what his department would expect to find in this type of case.

"There [was] no sign of any kind of forced entry to the house or anything like that. The house was not torn up or in disarray. There was evidence there that would lead [one] to believe that Leigh Occhi's head struck that door frame, received an injury, and laid there on that carpet and bled. There was quite a bit of pooling of blood, not a huge pooling of blood, but it was probably about the size of my fist. An area about that big, and it was still wet, very wet … A [random] criminal would not take the time trying to clean up and wipe down the bathroom countertop and the sink to make sure all the blood was washed out of there. There was definitely blood on the countertop – a very light pink haze was on the sink countertop and down in the bowl, and there was a swab that was taken and tested and proved to be blood, so it makes me very suspicious. The child was awake and had eaten breakfast with her mother before [the latter] went to work. Now, if you look at that timeline, from the time she left and went to work and the time she started calling and getting no answer – probably an hour, hour and a half – our perpetrator, whoever it may be, is going to come in that house, assault Leigh Occhi, and clean up that crime scene in that hour, hour and a half time frame?" 

When the case was first covered in the media, reports surfaced that a pair of scissors with a reddish stain on them had been found on top of a refrigerator inside the home. According to Aguirre, the substance was later found to be irrelevant to the case.

"We took a look at that [and] there [was] some rust on them," Aguirre said. "We did a presumptive test on them and it wasn't blood."

In addition to the Yarborough home, authorities also searched the family car.

"We took the liner out of [the] car - out of the trunk of her car," Aguirre said. "I don't know why we took that but I think that we felt like it may hold some evidence of some sort, and I know that was sent to the state crime lab and it was gone over, but nothing to my knowledge came of that. Even if they found blood or hair in the trunk - unless it was fresh blood or something like that - [we] wouldn't have been able to do a whole lot with it. Even if we found some traces of hair or fibers from some of her clothing, unless, I mean, why wouldn't her hair be there? She [could have] threw her clothes and her other gear in the trunk of the car, there could have been a transfer, and some of that stuff could have fallen off in there; and if it was in there, so what? That is quite normal for people, for hair to be in their car. So, unless [we] found big knots of hair with the roots pulled out, it wouldn't be too suspicious."

As the investigation continued, police conducted both ground and aerial searches in an attempt to locate Leigh. In addition, some 130 citizen volunteers searched large areas of undeveloped land in the surrounding area. Despite everyone's best efforts, no sign of Leigh was found during any of the searches. The case was coming to an abrupt standstill, but all that seemed to change on Sept. 9, 1992, when Leigh's mother contacted police and informed them that she had received a mysterious package in the mail that contained Leigh's missing eye glasses. Nothing else was included in the package. The glasses had arrived in an 8-inch envelope, addressed in block letters to "B Yarborough." The return address was listed as the same. The address contained one misspelling; instead of 105 Honey Locust, it read, "105 Hony Locust."

"Her glasses were mailed from a city about 30 miles north of here," Aguirre said. "[The package] had a postage stamp on it from Booneville, Miss."

The envelope was sent to the state crime lab in Jackson for handwriting analysis and DNA testing; however, Aguirre says, "nothing of evidentiary value" was found. Despite this, investigators began to shift the focus of the case.

"We polygraphed the mother. The mother was the last one to see her alive," Aguirre said. "She was polygraphed three different times, once by a local polygraph examiner and twice by the FBI. She failed it 3 times."

According to Aguirre, Vickie Yarborough's husband, Barney Yarborough, was also given a polygraph, but he passed the examination.

"He was very cooperative. He was not living with Leigh and her mother at the time," Aguirre said. "He lived in an apartment complex here in Tupelo and he was very forthcoming and tried to assist us in any way to try to help locate her. He would join us anytime we went out to search fields and woods or whatever. [He] was always willing to assist and to help, but he later died."

Despite the passage of time, Aguirre said that his department continues to receive tips from time to time.

"I believe the last tip we may have gotten was back last year sometime," he said. "We have departments that call and want us to check and make sure that our files are up to date, especially our NCIC (National Crime Information Center) files about our missing persons. We get people calling, wanting to know if Leigh Occhi is still missing, and the last tip we got is from a psychic … So we have been told to look under a storage shed at a certain address, but it's hard to go out there and convince a circuit court judge to give us a search warrant for a piece of property based on conjecture or a psychic's tip. The best thing we can do is go to that property, knock on the door, and say, 'We are investigating a cold case file. Would you give us permission to go over there and look under that shed?' Once they give us permission, we can go over there and look under dog houses, sheds, and everything else."

Today, the case is cold because investigators have been unable to obtain enough information to make an arrest or name an official suspect; however, Aguirre said his department has evidence it has not made public, as well as a person of interest in the case.

"There are still some things that we know that we are not releasing or talking about to the public, which could possibly tie a suspect to her death," Aguirre said. In regard to a possible person of interest, he said, "I don't think it would be wrong to call Vickie a person of interest, [but] we definitely don't want to call her a suspect at this time … Until Leigh's body is found, and until we know exactly the cause and manner of death, [the case] will always remain open."

To be continued...

Click here to read Part 4 of this in-depth four-part series on the mysterious disappearance of Leigh Marine Occhi

Check back tomorrow to read the fourth and final part of this in-depth series on the mysterious disappearance of Leigh Marine Occhi, and find out what Vickie Yarborough thinks about the case and what could have happened to her daughter.

Photo Credits: Clippings: Daily Journal; Bart Aguirre: David Lohr; Tupelo Police Department: David Lohr; Tupelo Police car: David Lohr

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission from Discovery Communications. All quotes must include a link back.