In the summer of 1992, a powerful hurricane was sweeping across Mississippi when 13-year-old Leigh Occhi was left alone at home for the first time.
Within an hour, she had vanished.
When her mother came back, she found a terrifying scene: fresh blood smeared across the walls and carpet, with a pool of it outside Leigh’s bedroom.
The house was otherwise silent. Leigh was nowhere to be found.
Her nightgown was discovered in a laundry basket, soaked in blood, beside a bloodstained bra.
Evidence in the bathroom suggested someone had attempted to clean up the scene.
The investigation would later produce a string of baffling clues, including Leigh’s glasses arriving inside a misaddressed envelope, a skull mistakenly identified as hers and the conviction of a church leader for rape just months after her disappearance.
Leigh’s mother, Vickie Felton, also faced intense scrutiny. She failed three polygraph examinations as investigators tried to determine what had happened to her daughter, although Felton has never been charged or officially named as a suspect.
The case became one of Tupelo’s most enduring mysteries. More than three decades later, it reached a legal milestone in 2024, when Felton filed an amended petition asking that Leigh be declared dead.
‘I just decided that I wanted to do it,’ Felton told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal at the time. ‘I felt it was time to do it.’
During a powerful hurricane in the summer of 1992, 13-year-old Leigh Occhi was home alone for the first time. Within an hour, she had disappeared
Leigh’s mother returned to find fresh blood on the walls and carpet, a pool outside her daughter’s bedroom and an empty house. More than three decades later, the cold case still troubles Tupelo
The investigation was revived last year when FBI agents appeared near the former Occhi family home, searching around a drainage ditch with shovels and K-9 units.
Yet the renewed activity created fresh questions. Authorities have not disclosed what the agents were seeking or whether the search uncovered anything.
Now, 34 years after Leigh disappeared, the questions raised on that storm-battered morning remain unanswered.
Could Leigh still be alive? Did she die? Will anyone ever face charges? And will her remains ever be recovered?
The blood has dried and the trail has gone cold. But one question continues to define the case:
What happened to the girl who disappeared during a hurricane?
On August 27, 1992, torrential rain fell across Mississippi as Hurricane Andrew battered the Southeast, leaving 23 people dead.
Inside the Occhi home, the morning had begun routinely.
Leigh and her mother shared breakfast and discussed their plans for the day. They were expected to attend an open house at Leigh’s school before stopping for dinner at Taco Bell.
Because the school year had not started, Felton left for work shortly before 8 a.m., leaving Leigh alone at the family home for what would be the first and last time.
As the Category 5 storm approached Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis Presley, and a hurricane warning remained in effect along the Gulf Coast, Felton became uneasy. Less than an hour after arriving at work, she called home.
She used the signal she and Leigh had agreed on: two rings followed by a hang-up, letting Leigh know it was safe to answer. This time, no one picked up.
Felton stayed at the office for only a few minutes before turning around and driving the roughly 1.5 miles back to 105 Honey Locust Drive.
When she arrived, the garage door was open and its automatic light was still burning, even though it was designed to switch off after five minutes.
A laundry basket held the blood-covered nightgown Leigh had been wearing when her mother left. Investigators also found wet blood and hair on a door frame
‘That was very strange because the light doesn’t turn on unless someone triggers the door,’ Felton told CNN at the time.
The evidence suggested that whatever had happened occurred only shortly before Felton returned.
‘I came in the house and there was blood on the side of the wall,’ Felton told the outlet.
‘I started calling for Leigh and going through all the rooms. Then I went into her bedroom,’ she said. ‘Her favorite blanket was crumpled up on the floor and I was very scared.’
A small pool of blood sat in the hallway outside Leigh’s bedroom, while more blood marked the nearby wall. Felton searched the bedrooms, backyard, pool and shed before calling 911.
Tupelo police arrived quickly. Captain Bart Aguirre, one of the first investigators assigned to the case, went directly to Leigh’s bedroom.
There, officers found the laundry basket containing the nightgown Leigh had worn that morning. The garment was heavily stained with blood.
‘There was some indication Leigh had sustained some kind of injury,’ Aguirre said at the time, according to The Associated Press. ‘You couldn’t tell how bad the injury was. You couldn’t tell where the injury was.’
Blood and hair were caught on a door frame, leading investigators to believe Leigh may have struck her head against it, perhaps more than once. The blood remained wet, and police said the pattern was consistent with head trauma involving someone of Leigh’s height.
Captain Bart Aguirre believed Leigh may have suffered an injury near her neck and said investigators found evidence that someone had attempted to clean the bathroom
‘It looked like the blood had dripped down onto her nightgown, you would think the injury had to be above the neck possibly,’ Aguirre said.
Blood led from the hallway through the living room toward the back door. In the bathroom, investigators found wet blood on the walls, carpet and countertop.
‘It’s pretty obvious to us that someone tried to clean up the scene or the countertop,’ Aguirre said, describing a ‘light pink haze’ left on the surface. But the cloth or towel used in the effort was gone.
‘We couldn’t find the rag or towel that had been used. We couldn’t find it anywhere,’ Aguirre said.
The countertop later tested positive for blood, indicating that whoever wiped it down may have taken away a potentially important piece of evidence.
A new outfit, including a bra and underwear Leigh had received for her birthday a week earlier, was missing.
So were Leigh’s glasses and the sleeping bag she regularly kept in her room.
The missing clothing raised another troubling possibility: Leigh may have changed clothes, or someone may have removed and replaced them.
There was no evidence of forced entry. Leigh’s parents insisted she would never have voluntarily opened the door to an unfamiliar person.
Investigators found no indication that the home had been forcibly entered. Leigh’s parents said she would not have opened the door to a stranger (age regressed photo)
Bloodhounds and search teams began combing the yard before moving into nearby fields and drainage ditches. But the hurricane’s heavy rain and powerful winds made it almost impossible for the dogs to follow a scent.
‘We covered a half-mile radius from the house that morning with the dogs and could not come up with anything,’ Aguirre said, according to CNN.
‘It was raining and it was storming and blowing pretty good. Had our dogs not had that bad weather to work in, they probably could have gotten on good scent.’
Jordan Morse, Leigh’s middle-school boyfriend, attended a nearby school that was already in session. According to the AP, he called the Occhi home after school, as he did every afternoon.
‘I rushed off the bus to call her like I always did to call her soon as I got home from school and her mom picked up the phone,’ Morse told the outlet.
‘I asked where Leigh was and Vickie said she was missing. I don’t know what missing is. I’m 12 years old. What do you mean missing?’ he recalled. ‘She said, “We don’t know where she is. We can’t find her.”‘
The investigation
Police initially focused on the people closest to Leigh: her mother, father and stepfather.
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Her father, Donald Occhi, was serving in the military and stationed in Virginia. Her stepfather, Barney Yarborough, had separated from Felton and recently moved out of the family’s ranch-style house.
There were rumors that Yarborough had abused Leigh, including reports that she had arrived at school with bruises and a black eye. Those allegations were never substantiated.
Yarborough was quickly ruled out after he ‘passed’ a polygraph examination and investigators confirmed his alibi. He died in 1996. Leigh’s father was also eliminated as a suspect early in the investigation. Occhi died in his sleep in 2024.
Occhi said he did not find out Leigh was missing until the following day, when Felton told him their daughter had run away. She did not mention the blood or the disturbing condition of the house.
According to the AP, he returned to Tupelo in mid-September and spent about a month searching before his military leave ended.
‘People called me and contacted me all the time. It was mostly stuff about like she was a great little girl. Or look at her mother, look at her mother,’ Occhi told the outlet. ‘I already was doing that. I don’t know if her mother was involved.’
Detectives questioned Felton repeatedly and asked her to take a lie detector test within hours of Leigh’s disappearance. She failed that examination and two subsequent tests conducted over the following weeks.
Investigators first examined the lives of Leigh’s mother, father and stepfather. All three were eventually ruled out as suspects
Donald Occhi said he learned Leigh was missing the next day, when Felton told him she had run away without describing the blood or disturbing scene at home
Retired detective Ronny Thomas said Felton displayed signs of deception during all three tests, including the two administered by the FBI.
Felton later discussed the results in a statement to CNN. ‘I couldn’t tell you why,’ she said. ‘They measure changes in your body and when your daughter has gone missing and they strap you up to things, I can’t imagine anyone’s body not reacting.’
She said she understood why detectives questioned her so intensely.
‘But, unfortunately, they wasted a lot of time with it,’ she said.
Meanwhile, searches of the surrounding woods produced no answers. DNA testing was still in its early stages in 1992, so investigators largely relied on blood typing. Every blood sample recovered from the house matched Leigh’s blood type.
Search teams continued working across Tupelo, including an open pasture, looking for evidence that Leigh might still be alive.
They searched areas where an injured, frightened or confused child might have hidden or become lost.
‘Over the course of the first few weeks, that started to change into a concern they were looking for a body, not a live girl anymore,’ Rick Hammond, the Daily Journal crime reporter in 1992, told the AP.
Chilling clues
Eight days after Leigh disappeared, a college student believed she saw the girl sitting in a truck at a McDonald’s drive-thru in Booneville. Investigators determined that the person was someone else.
Five days later, 13 days after Leigh vanished, an envelope arrived at the family home addressed to her stepfather. Both his name and the street name were misspelled.
The envelope had six stamps, twice the required postage, and had been mailed from Booneville, about 30 miles north of Tupelo.
Inside were Leigh’s glasses.
Police initially hoped the package would lead them to Leigh or whoever had taken her. But the stamps had been moistened with water rather than saliva, and forensic testing found no useful evidence on the envelope.
Aguirre eventually suspected that the glasses had been planted to mislead investigators.
There was no ransom request, letter or explanation.
‘It was just those glasses,’ he said, according to the AP. ‘You would think if it was an actual kidnapping, you would have expected a little more to come along with that.’
The cold case was revisited last year when FBI agents searched near the former Occhi home, including an area around a drainage ditch
The purpose of the renewed search has not been explained. Authorities have not said what investigators hoped to find or whether anything was recovered
He later told CNN that the envelope represented the last significant lead in the case.
A little more than a year after Leigh disappeared, a farmer found a human skull in a ditch beside a soybean field in Monroe County. Two days later, a coroner used dental records to identify it as Leigh’s remains.
The identification was quickly withdrawn. The skull belonged to 27-year-old Pollyanna Sue Keith, who had disappeared from Shannon in March 1993.
Theories
With other leads disappearing, Felton’s failed polygraph tests and what some viewed as her detached demeanor fueled speculation that she knew more than she had revealed.
In a 2017 interview with true-crime blogger Anthony Wayne, Occhi said he had met Felton while she was studying Korean and interrogation methods in California. He said she had trained as an interrogator.
‘I had my concerns,’ he said about the handling of Leigh’s case. ‘I don’t think they had dealt with someone with Vickie’s intelligence before.’
‘She was a trained interrogator. She knew how to act regarding questioning. She had interrogated Koreans while in the army. She failed three polygraphs. I mean, how many did she have to fail?’
Occhi characterized Leigh’s relationship with her mother as ‘strained at best.’ Asked whether Felton had a temper, he replied: ‘Yes, a very bad temper.’
He also questioned why an abductor would place Leigh’s bloodstained clothes in a laundry basket, calling it the behavior of a ‘neat freak.’
‘I told them Vickie was a neat freak,’ he said in the interview.
Occhi maintained that Leigh was attacked inside the home during the early morning hours and never left Tupelo.
Vickie Felton failed three polygraph examinations, and police said each showed signs of deception. Two of the tests were conducted by the FBI
‘There wouldn’t be enough time for someone to come to the house when Vickie left, kill Leigh and attempt a clean up and leave before Vickie came back home at 845,’ Occhi said.
‘This is all while a hurricane is going on,’ he added. ‘Who comes into a house, kills someone, then attempts to clean up the scene? Why clean it up?’
Felton has consistently denied having any role in Leigh’s disappearance. On the 25th anniversary, she told the Daily Journal: ‘That has been discussed over and over before, and I won’t go through it again.’
Instead, Felton has spent decades identifying another possible suspect: Oscar ‘Mike’ McKinley Kearns.
Kearns taught Sunday school and Vacation Bible School at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Tupelo, where Leigh and Felton attended. He and Leigh both loved horses, although accounts differ about the nature of their relationship.
Fewer than nine months after Leigh vanished, Kearns drove to Memphis and abducted a 15-year-old girl he knew through the church. He had lured her with the promise of driving her to school.
He took her into the woods, threatened her with a knife and raped her. The girl told police she had known Kearns all her life and had never seen anything that made her suspect him.
She said Kearns seized her by the neck and held a knife against her, details that some investigators viewed as similar to the way Leigh’s attacker may have controlled her. Kearns also had the same blood type as the blood found in Leigh’s home.
Felton suspected Oscar ‘Mike’ McKinley Kearns, a Sunday school teacher known to her and Leigh. Months after Leigh disappeared, Kearns kidnapped and raped a 15-year-old girl
Kearns pleaded guilty to rape and received a 24-year sentence, with 16 years suspended. He was released in October 1997 after serving less than half of the eight years he was required to serve.
Eighteen months later, he was arrested again. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to kidnapping a Union County couple and raping the woman, offenses that kept him incarcerated until 2019.
Investigators attempted several times to question Kearns about Leigh’s disappearance, but he refused. He agreed to take a polygraph on one occasion, then withdrew after consulting his attorney.
Kearns never answered questions about Leigh. He died in 2021, two years after his final release from prison.
The Daily Mail has contacted the Tupelo Police Department and the FBI for comment.
