This is from a reddit user and makes the most sense to me -
My theory on this case is probably quite unpopular; I don't think Asha was groomed and I think there's a good chance she wasn't even abducted. I also think that the buried bookbag could be a major red herring in this case.
My issues with the "groomed and abducted" theory are as follows:
Who could have groomed her? She didn't have internet access so it must have been an adult with face-to-face, one-to-one access to Asha. From what we know of Asha's life (or most 9 year olds tbf) that greatly narrows down the possibilities; family member, teacher, sports coach, maybe somebody at the church, maybe a friend's parent? I know the police aren't always geniuses but I don't think it would have been difficult for them in this case to come up with a very short list of potential suspects who may have had that kind of access to Asha. You can then narrow it down even further by establishing alibis for the night Asha went missing. We have to assume that the police have done this and (as far as we know) have not come up with anything to link anybody close to Asha to her disappearance.
The method of this supposed abduction seems "off" too. How many child abductors have you heard of who were able to persuade a young child to leave their home and meet them outside at 3am? Maybe with teenagers but a 9 year old? I've never heard of it. There's always going to be an element of risk when abducting a child but that seems too risky to me. All it takes is for one of her parents, or her brother, to hear her trying to leave the house and the game is up. What if she went to sleep and missed the "meeting time"? What if she changed her mind (quite possible after giving her more time to think things through, seeing the storm outside etc)? It just doesn't fit the usual M.O. for child abduction cases IMO, too many risks.
If the abductor WAS able to persuade her to leave her house at 3am in a storm, why was she spotted at the side of a highway over a mile away? The abductor would have wanted Asha in his car ASAP after she left her home, at most he would have made her meet him at the end of her street, not a mile away. The longer a child is walking about in the middle of the night, the more chance there is of her being seen, especially on a highway (which is exactly what happened). Also, how can you trust a 9 year old to make her way, in the middle of the night, to a meeting point over a mile away? It doesn't make sense, again far too risky.
Some have theorised that she may have met her abductor nearer to her home and then escaped and ran away. How would she have escaped? Get a 9 year old child in your car, lock the doors and start driving - what can they do to escape? Why would Asha have seemingly stopped running from her abductor to have some candy in a shed? Are we also then to assume that the abductor tracked Asha down in the woods by the highway (at 4am in a storm no less), presumably killed her and got home for his breakfast without anybody seeing anything or becoming suspicious? I just don't buy it.
So what do I think happened? I think Asha left her house that night under her own steam. We'll probably never know why but I suspect she was worried about going to school (interesting to note that she ran away on a Sunday evening, just before school on the Monday morning). Maybe she was more affected by the basketball game than her parents thought (maybe her teammates had blamed her for the loss afterwards, she was worried about getting bullied because of it, maybe she was just embarrassed about it etc). As I say, we'll probably never know her reasons but it seems to me that (for whatever reason), she desperately didn't want to go to school on Monday morning. That would explain why, in her mind, she HAD to leave that night despite the awful weather conditions.
After she left the house and ran away, I think one of two things could have happened to her:
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A random predator saw her by the highway and abducted her. The abduction was a complete fluke, the perp had no connection to her whatsoever and just happened to see her that night as he was driving by. The ultimate "wrong place, wrong time" scenario. If he had no connection to Asha and there were no witnesses, it's basically an unsolvable crime. Possible but what are the odds?
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She died of exposure somewhere in those woods and her body has never been found. There was no abduction. She ran away from home, she was under-dressed (didn't even have a coat on), it was February, cold, poor weather conditions...
The issue with scenario 2 is the bookbag. Everyone assumes she was abducted because the bookbag was found 26 miles away buried in a plastic bag. The assumption is that the abductor buried the bag but that is not the only possibility here. Somebody (with no connection to the case at all) may have found and taken the bag, at some point realised it belonged to the missing girl in the news, didn't want to get involved with the police (out of fear of being falsely implicated probably) and decided to dispose of the bag without telling anyone. It's possible, right? And if that is the case, it opens up the possibility that there was no abduction at all. One thing about the bookbag that bugs me - this supposed abductor can abduct a child without leaving a trace, dispose of the body without it ever being found and yet cannot properly dispose of a bookbag? I personally wouldn't be surpised at all if the buried bookbag was a red herring and Asha simply ran away and died of exposure. Some elaborate scenario involving someone grooming and arranging to meet a child at 3am a mile away (or her potentially escaping at some point) just doesn't seem likely to me, I think there are simpler possible explanations here.