Chronikle #129 Leigh Marine Occhi Case

Journey back to 1992 a time when technology was in its infancy with the 2G mobile phone being launched and allowing the first sms text to be sent. Not everyone was as savvy back then as we are now with handheld devices and most kids and teens were not glued to their cell phones and instead they were living life outside enjoying the outdoors and hanging with friends at the mall rocking their new styles whether it was bright and colorful or grunge. There was a sense of freedom that came with being out cruising in your parents Ford Taurus drinking the all new Arizona Tea and cranking up your favorite tunes on the ride home to enjoy some hot pockets and catch an episode of Roseanne before tucking yourself into a slumber and getting up to start all over again in the morning. Leigh Occhi would not get to experience all this with her family or her friends as she vanished one morning during a tropical storm never to be heard from again.

Leigh Marine Occhi was born on a Honolulu, Hawaii military base on August 21,1979 to parents Donald Occhi and Vickie Felton. The pair had met in Montgomery, California at The Defense Language Institute Center where they were both stationed at the time. Vickie was there studying Korean as she was already a trained interrogator, she was highly intelligent, and the pair hit it off. They were married in 1978 the marriage would only last until 1981 when the pair divorced citing irreconcilable differences as the reason. When asked in an interview to elaborate on this Donald would not. After the divorce Donald would go overseas for the military while Vickie went back to Tupelo, Mississippi where her parents lived and set up roots with young Leigh in tow. Leigh who was growing everyday loved horses, pizza and playing. She was a friendly child and did not know a stranger. Vickie would eventually meet a man and remarry now Leigh would have a stepdad whose name was Julian Barnette Yarborough Jr. who went by Barney. They would move to a home located on a nice cul de sac on Locust Drive in Tupelo. Here Leigh would ride horses just up the road and go to the local pool daily in the summer where she would meet her first boyfriend Jordan Morris who was eleven turning twelve when Leigh turned thirteen in 1992. The kids would talk nightly on the phone and talk about what happened at school that day as Jordan attended a different school than she. He always wanted to talk to her but found it odd that her mom would only let her talk for ten minutes before she had to be off phone, however Jordan could call back, and she could talk for another ten minutes. This was odd he thought but he loved talking to her, so this was ok with him. In an interview Jordan recalled one time being on the phone with Leigh and she was crying. He asked her what was wrong and all she would tell him was she was afraid of Barney he asked why but she would never tell him. By this time teachers and classmates had noticed her coming to school with bruises and one time a black eye, Leigh would always tell them it was from the horses, and everyone knew how much she loved horses and how often she rode so they assumed she was telling the truth. This had gone on for a while and while some kids would question this nothing was ever done to find out what was really going on in the home.

Leigh would see her dad on occasions and he would ask her how things with her mom were and she would always tell him fine. However Donald knew something was not right. He would say in an interview that Leigh never told him how her mom or Barney treated her because she knew he would be in jail. He also said it was like she wanted to tell him what was going on but just wouldn’t as if she had been told not to. He knew Vickie had a temper and was an extreme neat freak on top of that she was strict with Leigh. There was not too much he could do about Vickie but he did tell his daughter if anything was wrong or she was being mistreated at home to let him know and he would take care of it. Leigh would never mention anything she was going through at home to him or anyone, it was almost like she knew not too.

Leigh would turn thirteen on August 21,1992 and to celebrate she had a party where she got new clothes and undergarments. She was happy and excited to be a teenager now. Little did she know just six days later she would vanish from her home changing the lives of everyone who knew and loved her.

Vickie and Barney had separated shortly before Leigh’s birthday, he had moved out of the family home, very little is known about Barney who is now deceased. Hurricane Andrew was making its way to land that week and by August 26th it had reached Tupelo now classified as a tropical storm. Heavy rain was coming down and Leigh hated storms so that night she slept in the bedroom with her mom. The next morning Vicki had to go to work a short 15 minutes away, so Vickie awoke at 6:45am where she saw Leigh was still asleep, she went on to get ready and by 7am she was outside getting the morning paper and waiting on Leigh to join her for breakfast. Around 7:35 am Vickie would leave for work, this was the first time she claims Leigh was ever home alone. Some neighbors would come forward and say that Leigh was left on her own a lot at home this was not the first time. Leigh had plans of her own that day even with the torrential downpour she had planned to go to the open house at school as it was almost the start of a new school year. Her grandma would be coming by later that afternoon to pick her up and attend with her and they had plans to go to Taco Bell for dinner, something Leigh was super excited about. However, those things would never happen because by 8:30 am Leigh was nowhere to be found.

Vickie was apprehensive according to her about leaving Leigh especially in the storm. Vickie would arrive at work around 7:50 am and by 8 am she heard on the radio there were tornado watches which prompted her to call home to check on her daughter. Vickie would call, let the phone ring twice, hang up and call back. This was their special ring to know it was Vickie calling, many think it seems odd to have a special ring if this was the first time she was ever left alone. Vickie got no answer, this worried her. She would then leave work and go home to check on Leigh arriving around 8:30 am some accounts say 8:45am. Many have claimed this to be an odd behavior many would say why go back home to check on your daughter so soon after you left or why even go to work if you are that worried, but if she was strict she was probably overprotective as well and wanted to make sure Leigh was ok and the storm had not frightened her to much.

When Vickie arrived home, she noticed the garage door was open and the light on meaning someone would have just opened it prior to her arriving, although Vickie has said she is not certain if she shut the garage door that day she just could not remember. Vickie would head to the front door to find it was unlocked. She would go inside and call out her daughter’s name, there was no response then she saw blood on the walls and on the carpet, she looked around for her daughter everywhere but found no sign of Leigh. It would be around nine am when Vickie called the police to report Leigh missing.

The police would arrive on scene fairly quickly and discover no sign of forced entry and that there was blood on the hallway carpet that was pooling and still wet, they would discover Leigh’s nightgown with blood on the upper half in the laundry hamper and the master bathroom appeared to have blood on the sink but it looked as though someone tried to clean that up with a rag, the rag was never located. The police would also locate blood and hair on the door frame by the kitchen. The blood was O positive the same as Leigh’s. The police stated it looked as though someone had sustained an injury and it was more than likely Leigh. As extensive of a search that could be done during a tropical storm took place with bloodhounds being brought in to try and track Leigh but because of the storm they were unable to pick up anything. What had happened to Leigh police wanted to find out but that would prove more daunting than they first thought.

When Donald got the call from Vickie two days after Leigh was reported missing she downplayed the situation not telling him of the blood found in the home she just said Leigh was missing, he would tell her she will be back thinking maybe she had run away because of her mom. The next time Donald heard from Vickie he would realize the severity of the situation when he was told about the blood being found. This would prompt him to take emergency leave from the military and leave Virginia where he was stationed and rush to Tupelo to aid in the search for Leigh.

Home where Liegh and her mom lived at the time of her disappearance.

Donald was questioned at the station when he arrived and took a polygraph passed and was easily cleared as he was in Virginia at the time. Barney would also talk to police and take a polygraph and he would pass thus being cleared of any involvement in Leigh’s disappearance. Vickie was asked to take a polygraph and she agreed she would fail; the FBI would administer two more polygraphs to her; she would also fail these. Vickie was now a person of interest.

Donald Occhi Leigh’s dad.

Vicki Felton Leigh’s mother.

When the police talked to Vickie, she would tell them that Leigh’s things were missing which included her new undergarments she had got for her birthday, her glasses and in some reports an old sleeping bag. Vickie also told them what she thought Leigh could be wearing based on what was in her closet, police thought this was odd as they had teens and would not be able to tell what was missing from their closets, this and the fact that both police and Donald have said Vickie showed little to no emotion about Leigh being missing really made her look like she knew more than she was telling. Donald would say she did not participate in any of the searches for Leigh which is odd. Was this because she had something to do with her daughter vanishing or was this just a mother who did not know how to show emotions because she was trained not to. We may never have the answer to that question.

The police believed they got a break in the case when in early September 1992 Vickie called the police and told them she just received a package in the mail containing Leigh’s glasses. When police got the package there were six, twenty-nine cent stamps on the envelope more than there needed to be, the envelope was addressed to B. Yarborough and the address was spelled 105 Hony Locust Drive with Honey being spelled wrong. B. Yarborough was how Barney was listed in the phone book and this package had been sent from Booneville, Mississippi, a town thirty miles north of Tupelo. Police would send the envelope off and find out that the stamps were put on using water, no DNA was found, and handwriting was block style that could not be linked to anyone at the time. Years later police would resend in the envelope hoping with the advancements in DNA technology something would be found but there was nothing. The police have said they believe the glasses were sent to throw them off as Barney was cleared and no longer living at the address; it was as if someone was trying to make it look as though he had something to do with Leigh’s case.

Vickie believes a man by the name of Oscar McKinley “Mike” Kearns was responsible for Leigh’s disappearance as he attended the same church as Leigh, and he was a Sunday school teacher who would also help with Vacation Bible school. This is not the only place Oscar saw Leigh as he rode horses and frequented the same stables as Leigh did. Oscar would be incarcerated on a similar crime. In May of 1993 Oscar would drive to Memphis, Tennessee and kidnap a ninth-grade girl he had met through the Tupelo church; he had told her parents he would drive her to school that morning. He instead took her to a motel room and sexually assaulted her. After he was done, he then drove the fifteen-year-old to school. Where she immediately reported what had just happened. He was arrested and would plead guilty to rape and was sentenced to eight years in prison however he would serve less than half of this. When he was released, he kidnapped a married couple and raped the wife in front of her husband thus sending him back to prison for twenty years, he was released in 2019 and passed away in May of 2021. Police did try and question him in Leigh’s case both times he was incarcerated. He refused to say anything about Leigh. Now that he has passed there is no chance of him giving any information, Vickie still believes he was involved someway. She is also well aware that people believe she was involved and to that she lets people believe what they want as she has always maintained her innocence in the case. Donald believes Vickie killed his daughter the night before she vanished and buried her body although he has no clue where that might be. He holds onto the feeling Vickie has the answers, as he has said when he was searching for Leigh people came forward and said she was seen at a car wash the night before and cleaning the front door the morning Leigh vanished although that is not confirmed he is entitled to his own opinion on what happened.

Years later the Open Podcast would cover this case and interview a woman by the name of Joanne who had actually called police with a tip that she possibly saw Leigh on the morning she vanished, that tip was never followed up on in 1992. On the podcast she stated she was on her way to work as she and her husband owned a local Garden Center nearby. Around 8am is when she would have seen Leigh, which would have been before Vickie returned home or alerted police Leigh was missing. Joanne stated she saw a young lady and a man walking in the rain. Being the good-natured woman she was she was going to give them a ride and as she drove up North Frost drive and got beside them, she had a bad feeling and kept driving. She recalled the female did not appear to be injured in any way, as she drove by slowly the man wrapped his arm around the female and pulled her close to him. Joanne was able to get a look at the man whom she described as a shorter man not heavy set but thick wearing an army type jacket which was not camouflage with a hood on it, he had grayish brown hair and looked as though he had not shaved in a few days. After the podcast the information was passed along to the police department. The police did contact Joanne so she could finally tell what she saw that morning, it has not been released what if anything came of this. It should be noted that the description of Barney did not match the man Joanne saw that morning as he was five foot seven, one hundred and thirty to one hundred and forty pounds with brown hair. Oscar’s description could possibly match as he was five foot ten inches weighing one hundred and eighty pounds who was usually wearing a military type of jacket and had graying brown hair. It does make you wonder if he was involved in Leigh’s case. If he was, did he kill her? Even though it seems that was not his modus operandi as he released his victims or were there far more that are unknown. With him passing the answers will more than likely remain a mystery.

Leigh’s mom and dad hope one day they learn what happened to Leigh. She was a bright young lady with her whole future ahead of her. Hopefully one day soon they will have the answers they so desperately seek.

At the time Leigh Vanished she was thirteen years old, standing four foot ten inches and weighing ninety-five pounds, she was wearing a nightshirt and green/yellow silk boxers. Leigh has blonde hair and hazel eyes with a strawberry birthmark at the base of her skull, with some scratch scars on her right leg and bumps on the skin on both knees. Her ears are pierced, and she has a left lazy eye, she wears glasses. If you have any information on Leigh’s case, please contact the Tupelo Police Department 662-841-6491 or the Federal Bureau of Investigation 202-324-3000.