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On March 18, 2000, joggers along a road near the Mount Baker Highway in Whatcom County, Washington, United States, reported a wrecked vehicle at the bottom of an embankment near Canyon Creek, a tributary of the North Fork of the Nooksack River. Deputy sheriffs found a white 1993 Jeep Cherokee with North Carolina license plates. They traced the car to Leah Roberts (born July 23, 1976), who had abruptly left her home in Durham, North Carolina, nine days earlier. A gas station attendant in nearby Everett, Washington, called police claiming to have seen her there, disoriented, shortly after the car was found; she has otherwise remained missing. In the years preceding Roberts' disappearance, both of her parents had died, and she herself had survived serious injury from a car accident. Her friends and siblings say this had left her pondering spiritual issues and questioning the direction of her life. She had dropped out of North Carolina State University on the verge of graduation and had begun spending much of her time in a local coffeehouse, writing poetry in her journal that dealt with the issues she was pondering. A note she left behind suggested that she had taken inspiration from the works of Jack Kerouac, particularly his novel ''The Dharma Bums'', which has scenes set at Desolation Peak, near where her car was found. She also left money to cover expenses while she was gone, suggesting she expected to return in the space of a month. Investigators have focused on the possibly contradictory evidence in her car. Documents inside suggest she had reached Bellingham, Washington, by March 13, five days before the car was found. Early suspicions that the vehicle was unoccupied when it was wrecked, suggesting it was done intentionally, were confirmed when the car's internal workings were examined several years later and found to have been sabotaged in such a way as to make this possible. Blankets hung in the windows suggest it might have been used as shelter afterwards. Roberts' personal belongings were found scattered near the scene; however, robbery did not seem likely as money and jewelry were among them. Though the case has been featured on the television shows ''Unsolved Mysteries'' and ''Disappeared'', few leads have emerged. In the summer of 2005 volunteers from a North Carolina missing-persons awareness group organized a caravan across the country to raise awareness of her case and others. It has since become an annual event. ==Background== Leah Toby Roberts was born in 1976, the youngest of three children in a family living in the suburbs of Durham, North Carolina. When she was 17, her father was diagnosed with a chronic lung illness. This put a great deal of strain on the family as Leah began her studies at North Carolina State University in nearby Raleigh in 1995. Roberts' mother died in 1996. The next year, Roberts herself was hospitalized after a serious car accident. Surgeons had to insert a metal rod next to her femur to help it heal. She told her sister Kara later that, when she saw the truck that she hit pull out in front of her, she was certain she would die and felt "born again" after her recovery. She took some time off from college.〔 In 1997, her father died. Roberts decided to continue with a plan to spend the summer studying in Costa Rica. Since she was leaving the country, and no longer had living parents, Kara was granted power of attorney over Roberts' bank accounts, where some money she inherited from her parents had been deposited.〔 Two years later, at the end of 1999, with her degree in Spanish and anthropology almost complete, Roberts dropped out of school. Kara and her brother Heath tried to persuade her to "stick it out" for six more months, but she would not change her mind. In lieu of her studies, she learned to play the guitar and took up photography as a hobby. She got a pet kitten she named Bea. She began hanging out in local coffeehouses, writing poetry about the meaning of life in her journals and making new friends in the process. With one of them, Jeannine Quiller,〔 and with her roommate, Nicole Bennett,〔 she discussed the idea of emulating Beat Generation novelist Jack Kerouac and going on a road trip to the West.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Disappearance of Leah Roberts」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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