MS LEIGH MARINE OCCHI: Missing from Tupelo, MS - 27 Aug 1992 - Age 13

The Doe Network:
Case File 609DFMS

Left: Occhi circa 1992; Right: Age-progression to 31 years old (circa 2010)

Leigh Marine Occhi
Missing since August 27, 1992 from Tupelo, Lee County, Mississippi.
Classification: Non family Abduction

Vital Statistics

Date Of Birth: August 21, 1979
Age at Time of Disappearance: 13 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 4'10" - 147 cm, 95 lbs - 43 kg.
Distinguishing Characteristics: White female. Blonde hair; hazel eyes. She may be wearing eyeglasses.
Marks, Scars: She has a strawberry birthmark at base of skull in back. Small scratch scars on right leg. Skin bumps on knees. Lazy left eye. She has pierced ears.
Clothing: Green and yellow silk boxer shorts and a night shirt.

Circumstances of Disappearance
It is believed that Occhi was last seen at her home. Her mother arrived home and found the garage door opened. She went inside and found blood stains on the carpet, door frame, bathroom counter and walls. Blood was also found on her nightgown. Occhi was no where to be found.

The only items missing from the house were some reading glasses, shoes and underclothes. Foul play is suspected.

About one month later her mother received Leigh's glasses in the mail from Booneville, MS.

Investigators
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Tupelo Police Department
Major Sgt. Jami Harper
662-841-6546

Agency Case Number: 3590

NCMEC #: NCMC771656

NCIC Number: M-586548004
Please refer to this number when contacting any agency with information regarding this case.

Source Information:
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
The Commercial Appeal 9/2/92

609DFMS - Leigh Marine Occhi

Namus The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

edited by staff to add media link

LEIGH MARINE OCCHI: Missing from Tupelo, MS since 27 Aug 1992 - Age 13

It is believed that Occhi was last seen at her home. Her mother arrived home and found the garage door opened. She went inside and found blood stains on the carpet, door frame, bathroom counter and walls. Blood was also found on her nightgown...

www.crimewatchers.net

 

[Sllywbbt32]

How horrible, opening a package and finding your missing daughters glasses. What a sick thing for someone to do, torture her mother even more.

 

[Mel70]

How horrible, opening a package and finding your missing daughters glasses. What a sick thing for someone to do, torture her mother even more.

I wonder how much investigating they did in the town where the Package was postmarked from.

 

[Mel70]

Apparently the investigators didn't rule the blood loss was an amount to where someone could not survive. But obviously very injured and I believe killed that night. I think the biggest questions are who and where is her body?. Sickos. Sending her Glasses to her Mother is really disturbing. Did L.E. even examine the package?. Handwriting?.

 

[SheWhoMustNotBeNamed]

Tupelo Police Chief Retires After 36 Year Career In Law Enforcement - Home - WCBI TV | Telling Your Story

Tupelo Police Chief Retires After 36 Year Career In Law Enforcement from Home - WCBI TV | Telling Your Story

www.wcbi.com

Tupelo’s chief of police is retiring after a long career in law enforcement.

Chief Aguirre says his only regrets are not being able to two missing person cases. The case of Leigh Occhi and Jennifer Jackson Floyd. However, Aguirre says the cases are still open and he is hopeful they will eventually be solved.

 

[SheWhoMustNotBeNamed]

Leigh Occhi disappearance: Mother, law enforcement hope new technology will help solve case

TUPELO – Thirty years ago, 13-year-old Leigh Occhi disappeared from the Honey Locust Drive home she shared with her mother.

www.djournal.com

Leah Occhi disappearance: Mother, law enforcement hope new technology will help solve case​

Thirty years ago, 13-year-old Leigh Occhi disappeared from the Honey Locust Drive home she shared with her mother.

Questions have abounded over the last three decades. Was she abducted? Did she run away? Is she still alive? Who is responsible?

Authorities hope advances in forensic science will shed some new light on the case. Over the years, many people associated with the case have died, one potential suspect last year.

This year, the Tupelo Police Department has gone through the limited physical evidence and resubmitted items to various labs.


Using the limited evidence — which included a bloody night gown — police in the past have been able to develop a DNA profile of Occhi. But technicians at the time found no blood, bodily fluid or skin cells that were foreign to the house and could have come from a suspect.

Over the last two decades, advances in testing allow lab technicians to find minuscule amounts of genetic material that can be invisible to the naked eye. And newfound DNA has used genetic genealogy in recent years to identify and track down suspects in long cold cases.

“We submitted some of the original evidence to hopefully find something they might have missed 30 years ago,” said Tupelo police detective Sgt. Cassidy Jumper.


While the new technology is amazing, it is not fast. Tupelo police can only sit, wait and hope.

Major Jerry Davis, who heads the TPD criminal investigative division, said putting new eyes on the case and looking at things from a new perspective is another way the department is still working the case.

“There has been no further physical evidence after the glasses (were mailed to the family in September 1992)” Davis said. “We are still looking at things other than DNA.”

 

[SheWhoMustNotBeNamed]

Leigh Occhi, missing since 1992, declared legally dead

TUPELO — The parents of a Tupelo teen missing for more than three decades had her declared legally dead this month.

www.djournal.com

Leigh Occhi, missing since 1992, declared legally dead​

The parents of a Tupelo teen missing for more than three decades had her declared legally dead this month.

Vickie Felton filed an amended petition for declaratory relief in Lee County Chancery Court on Oct. 1 to have Leigh Marine Occhi declared dead according to state law. The next day, the girl’s father, Donald Occhi, signed papers to join the petition asking the court for help.

“I just decided that I wanted to do it,” Felton said. “I felt it was time to do it. It has been 32 years.”

State law says that if a person has not been heard of for seven successive years, the person shall be presumed dead.

Leigh Occhi has not been seen or heard from since August. 27, 1992, when she vanished from her Tupelo home at age 13.

“Despite exhaustive investigation by state and federal authorities, as well as private investigation, the fate of Leigh Marine Occhi remains unknown,” the petition says. “It has now been 32 years … and during that time, no evidence has come to light that she remains alive.”

On Oct. 14, Lee County Chancellor Stephen Bailey signed the two-page order formally declaring Leigh Occhi dead.

For years, held out hope that her daughter was somehow still alive.

“You hear about cases all the time where years later, something finally comes up or someone comes forward and the case is solved,” Felton said in 2022 on the 30th anniversary of the disappearance. “Maybe she had amnesia or someone abducted her.”

But as the years passed with no word and with possible suspects growing older and dying, that chance became less likely.


The case is neither closed nor cold. Police say it is still an open missing persons case.