Where Is Asha Degree?

A note on this post: this case contains a fair about of conflicting information from different sources. I have tried to use what seems to be the most accurate information. Links and further reading are at the bottom of the post. 

There was a heavy rainstorm in the early hours of the morning of 14 February, 2000, in Shelby, North Carolina. There was also a power-cut that night, apparently unrelated to the storm.

By the time Harold Degree had finished work late that night, the power was back on. Harold lived with his wife of twelve years, Iquilla, and their two children, nine year-old Asha and ten year-old O’Bryant.   

When Harold got home, Asha was still up, fully dressed and lying on the sofa.  

Asha went to bed in the room she shared with O’Bryant not long after her father got home. Harold checked in on the children twice before he went to bed at about 2.30am. 

Iquilla got up at around 5.45am the next morning. It was her and Harold’s wedding anniversary, but the kids had school and needed a bath as they had missed theirs the night before because of the power cut.  Their alarm was set for 6.30pm, but Iquilla went to wake them up before the alarm went off.

 Iquilla found Asha’s bed empty. Iquilla searched the house and the cars on the driveway.  She then phoned Asha’s grandmother, who lived across the street, but her sister-in-law, who picked up, said Asha wasn’t there. 

O’Bryant said that sometime in the night, he had heard his sister’s bed squeak, but thought it was just her moving around in her sleep.

Police arrived with scent dogs at the Degree house an hour later, at 6.40am. The dogs were not able to track Asha at all. Further information of scent dog ability can be found in previous posts about Elisa Lam (Every Contact Leaves A Trace) which will dispute the theory that the dogs weren’t able to track her because of inclement weather. 

Asha had left her home before dawn, taking a bag that contained changes of her favourite clothes, (a pair of blue jeans with a red stripe, black trainers, a red vest with black trim, black overalls with Tweety Pie on them, a long sleeved white t-shirt with purple lettering and a long sleeved black and white shirt.) her Tweety-Pie purse, her clean basketball kit, photos of her family and some sweets.

Asha kept her house key in her backpack, and she had locked the front door behind her.

She was last seen at around 3.30 – 4.15am, walking south along North Carolina Highway 18, just over a mile from her home, by several passing motorists. It was raining heavily, but Asha, who was dressed all in white, wasn’t wearing a coat. A truck driver went past her three times, but on the third time he circled round and drove past her, she ran off the road and into the woods. He said that he had turned around because he thought it was "strange such a small child would be out by herself at that hour,”

On 17 February, some sweet wrappers were found in a shed belonging to Turner’s Upholstery, located along the stretch of highway where Asha had last been seen running into the woods. With the wrappers were a pencil, a green marker pen and a Mickey Mouse shaped hair clip. The items were identified as belonging to Asha. It’s not known if these had been there since the morning of 14, or were planted there later.

The initial search for Asha covered a 2 -3 mile radius of where she had last been seen, taking 9,000 man hours of following the 300 something leads that ranged from possible sightings to tips about what places to search. After a week, the search was called off. There were no clues as to what had happened to Asha, or where she had gone.

In August 2001, construction workers on a site at Highway 18 in Burke County, 26 miles north of Shelby - the opposite direction from when Asha had last been seen - dug up her bag, which had her name and telephone number written inside it.

The bag had been wrapped in plastic rubbish sacks. The FBI took the bag for testing, but the results have never been made public. In October that year, similar rubbish sacks were found and taken for testing.

In May 2016, the FBI announced that they had a possible new lead in the case and revealed that Asha may have been seen getting into either a dark green, early 70s Lincoln Mark IV or a Ford Thunderbird with rusted wheel arches the night she disappeared from Highway 18. This was actually a tip that been given back in 2000, and was revealed when new investigators took over the case. To date, it is the only other piece in the puzzle of what might have happened to Asha.

Background

Asha (pronounced Ay-sha) Jaquilla Degree was born on 5 August, 1990.

The Degrees were what some people might consider over protective of their children. There was no computer in the house, and Asha and O’Bryant’s lives centred around church, school, and family. As both Harold and Iquilla worked, the children let themselves in after school and were expected to have their homework finished by the time their mum and dad got home.

Asha was the starred point guard on her school’s basketball team. For those not familiar with basketball, this is a specialised position. The point guard players are expected to run the team's offense by controlling the ball and making sure that it gets to the right players at the right time. Above all, the point guard must totally understand and accept their coach's game plan. While the guard must understand and accept the coach's game plan, he must also be able to adapt to what the defence is allowing, and he also must control the pace of the game. (from Wikipedia)

The team played its first game of the season on 12 February, but it didn’t go well for Asha. She fouled out (Basketball foul) and they lost the game. Her parents recalled her being very upset about this, and crying with her teammates.  She seemed to recover quickly though, and watched her brother’s game.

Asha’s class were reading  ‘The Whipping Boy’ by Sid Fleischman. The story is about two boys, a prince and his servant, that run away.

Asha is African-American, and at the time of her disappearance was 9 years old,  4’6 in height, and weighed 60lbs (about 4 stone) she has brown eyes and black hair. She was last seen wearing a long sleeved white t-shirt, white jeans and white trainers. She was afraid of storms and dogs.

Timeline

Friday 11 February

School is closed for lessons because of the three day President’s Day holiday weekend.  Harold and Iquilla have to work, so the children spend the day at an aunt’s house and at basketball practice at the school. 

Saturday 12 February

Asha and her brother play in the first basketball matches of the seasons. Asha is upset when her team loses and she fouls out, but she seems to recover and watches her brother’s game.

Sunday 13 February

The children spend the day with family, going to church. Harold works a split shift, his second shift starts in the afternoon.

8pm – 9pm some reports say this is the time Asha and O’Bryant went to bed, missing their bath because of the power cut.

11.30pm: Harold comes back from work. Some reports say Asha was still up when he got home, possibly because she was cold after the power went out. It’s unclear as to whether Asha DID go to bed at 8pm and then got up again to wait for her dad to get home, or if she didn’t go to bed at all until Harold got home.

Monday 14 February

12.30: Harold leaves the house again to buy Valentine’s Day chocolates.

2.30pm: Harold checks on his children before going to bed. Both of them are sleeping.

3.30 – 4.15am: Asha is seen by several drivers walking south along Highway 18, approximately a mile from her home. The weather is very bad; it’s cold and raining heavily but Asha is not wearing a coat, hat, scarf or gloves. One concerned driver turns to go past her three times, but it seems Asha gets spooked before he can approach her and she runs into the wooded area that lines the highway.

17 February

Sweet wrappers, a pencil, a marker and a Mickey Mouse hairclip identified as belonging to Asha are found in a shed along the highway at about the same location where Asha was seen running into the woods by the driver.

August 2001

Asha’s backpack is found by construction workers on a site 26 miles north of where she had last been seen. The bag is wrapped in rubbish sacks and has her name and telephone number written inside it.

October 2001

Rubbish bags similar to the ones that were used to wrap Asha’s bag are found and sent for analysis.

2004

Acting on a tip off from a man in prison, investigators conduct an excavation search at the corner of Shelby and Rube Spangler Roads near Lawndale, South Carolina. They found bones, which turned out to belong to an animal. They also find a pair of men’s khaki trousers.

2016

New investigators looking into Asha’s case find a tip given back in 2000, a sighting of Asha getting into a 1970’s Lincoln Mark IV or a Ford Thunderbird. There were two other people in the car.

Lincoln Mark IV

Ford Thunderbird

Questions and Notes

Why was Asha dressed all in white? So she could be seen easily in the dark?

None of the drivers called the police after they saw Asha. The driver that turned round 3 times only called them after he saw news reports that she was missing.

She was seen by the drivers walking SOUTH, her bag was found NORTH, 26 miles in the opposite direction.

When and why was her bag buried in that particular location?

Theories:

Grooming for various purposes and problems with this theory

Some people have tried to discredit this theory, saying that Asha’s family didn’t have a computer, so she could not have been vulnerable to grooming. This doesn’t mean that she wasn’t groomed. Was it someone she knew through school? Through basketball? Did someone convince her to run away, or say they were going to take her somewhere special, like Disney Land/World? Was this place somewhere warm, which was the reason why she didn’t take a coat with her? Did they use her parent’s anniversary as a ruse? Or ‘romantic’ Valentine’s Day?

Why did she leave house at 3am but was seen over an hour later? Was someone supposed to pick her up? Had she walked to meet someone, realised something was wrong and run away from them, which was when the drivers saw her? If this was the case, perhaps she was scared anyone driving past might be the person she was running away from.  This would explain why she ran into the woods. But what happened to her after that?

Were the items planted in the shed? How come her bag was found so neatly wrapped, as if preserved? Did someone want it to be found? Was it buried on the site knowing someone would soon find it? Why have test results not been made public? Because there are clues as to what happened to Asha that the police can’t make public in case it jepodises the investigation?

Runaway and problems with this theory

Had Asha been inspired by The Whipping Boy and decided to run away to have adventures?  If so, why would she choose a night of terrible weather to go when she was afraid of storms? Why would she leave without a coat?  Children aged ten and under are not considered ‘runaways’ by law enforcement, and children  only truly run away when things are very bad at home, where abuse, violence and neglect are present.  It didn’t seem like any of these things were happening in the Degree home. Asha’s parents may have been protective and strict, but she seemed happy and enjoyed sports and hanging out with her family.

Sleepwalking 

There’s no real evidence for this theory. Asha did not have a history of sleepwalking, and it seems like her bag was pre-packed (before she went to sleep that night) so she was prepared to leave the house.

Hit and Run

If Asha had been struck by a car walking along the highway, there would be evidence of this; marks on the road, someone who had taken a dented car to be repaired. There were other drivers along that road on the morning of 14^th who would have witnessed a hit and run.

Asha is alive but can’t get home

It’s possible Asha was taken and has been held captive somewhere, like Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Lee Dugard and Natascha Kampusch. There’s no evidence to suggest this happened, other than a girl matching her description was seen getting into the 1970s green car.

Hypothermia 

After Asha ran into the woods, did she try and hide, but succumb to hypothermia? If this is the case, wouldn’t the scent dogs have been able to track her? Wouldn’t she have been found? 

2017

Harold and Iquilla hold a walk every year along the North Carolina Highway 18, travelling Asha’s last known route. A billboard stands at the spot where she was last seen running into the woods.  Her parents still live in the same house, and have the same telephone number in case their daughter ever comes home.

Asha's walk

Anyone with information on Asha’s case can contact the Cleveland County Sheriff’s office on 704 4844822.

Further reading and information:

The Charley Project

Dark Matters (Cayleigh Elise Youtube video)

Brainscratch Searchlight (LordanARTS youtube video)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Asha_Degree

Shelby Star

https://findingashadegree.wordpress.com/  (this is a very indepth website, but Asha's parents have said that not all the information on it is accurate)

Reddit Unresolved  One of many Reddit threads discussing what may have happened to Asha.

Bank Holiday Throwback - 'Blue Monday'

Normal blogging service should resume sometime in mid-June, with more missing persons cases and Dust Spank chapters. In the meantime, here's a deleted post from 2012. Heads up: there's quite a lot of complaining. 

Twenty-three days into 2012 and my New Year hopefulness has dissipated into a rose wine and full fat cheddar cheese blur of ‘’meh’ and ‘blah’. I can’t run. My stupid left knee has seen to that. (I refuse to accept any responsibility for my own dodgy knee. It has absolutely nothing to do with pushing it far too hard on the treadmill, but oh well, 6k in 45 minutes is ‘not very much’ according to the physio lady, who sounds like that teacher from South Park and keeps going ‘Mmmkay?’ at the end of everything she says.)

I still haven’t smoked, though, so have been giving myself big pats on the back for that, for not giving in to the temptation of sweet, sweet nicotine. I just kick and punch stuff instead, or slam doors. Maybe I should ‘run it off’.  Mr. W’s, answer to everything....’I had the most awful day at work’ ‘Run it off!’ ‘Some total twat drove into the back of me this morning,,’.....‘Run it off!’ ‘The doctor says I’ve got three weeks to live,’ ......‘You know what you wanna do? Run it off!’

I have just phoned him to talk about the sudden crippling realisation that if I died on Wednesday, say on the way home from work, my contribution to the world would consist of: (includes a brief itinerary of worldly goods....lump it all in together, why not?)

·         Some appalling teenage poetry

·         Embarrassing journals in which I write down sexts from a sometime fuck buddy and whinge about everything not ever going my way, as well as slagging off a lot of people, including some I call my friends.

·         A wash bag full of vibrators – when I was going through a chronically single patch every single one of my friends thought it would be hil-arrr-riii-ous to buy me a cock shaped vibrating toy. One girl bought me a glass dildo and said, ‘the bloke in the shop reckons you can hammer nails into walls with one of these!’ So when I can’t find a hammer I’ll know what might come in useful.

·         A not very impressive collection DVDs that suggest a somewhat schizophrenic taste in films. Pretty in Pink is on the same shelf as Pan’s Labyrinth (of course it is, they are arranged alphabetically.)

·         About a thousand paperback books, mostly purchased from charity shops, which means they carry handwritten inscriptions, like: ‘Debbie – this could be you! Here’s to more Long Island Iced Tea nights, whhhoooo, love Sandra. Xx’  (in a copy of ‘He’s Just Not Into You’)

·         Photographs of myself in my underwear on my new digital camera. Because I’m monitoring how body changes with my new exercise programme. On the camera, they looked OK. I put them on the laptop, and full screen I look fat, moody and there is a mug in the back ground that says ‘I Heart My Dad’ which just looks really weird when you’re taking semi naked pictures of yourself.

·         Several drafts of terrible fiction. I might at least win the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Can you win that for something that hasn’t actually been published???

·         A few half used bottles of perfume, because my favourite ones I save for ‘special occasions’ which means I hardly ever wear them....what a waste.

·         Loads of dresses I am saving for special occasions, or when I finally achieve the body I want, which means I hardly ever wear them....what a waste!

·         Millions of buttons and beads and scraps of fabric.

·         Massive amounts of hair blocking the shower drain. It’s quite fun pulling out disgusting, slimy, clumps of ancient hair.  When I was little, me and my sister thought it would be fun to bury hair in the vegetable patch....our mother did not think it was fun and went mad.

·         About four pairs of glasses with old prescription lenses in them.

·         A pile of magazine that no-one will be able to work out why I wanted to keep, because I myself forgot why I wanted to keep them. Many, many years ago I forgot why I wanted to keep them.

The idea of taking the big nap doesn’t bother me, I didn’t know where I was before I was born, why would I care what happens after I die? So it doesn’t really make any sense that I should be so bothered about trying to find some meaning in my life. After all I’m not going to care too much when I’m dead. But it’s still there, that little wriggling, nagging feeling that wakes me in the middle of the night, tugging on my sleeve, whispering, ‘You! Hey you, thunder thighs! Whatcha gonna do, then? Same you always do! Get up too late, moan about shit and eat enough junk to negate the hour you spent working out. That’s what! You frickin’ loser!’

Some of the time I can silence the voice by having fantasies about famous men or thinking about nice things I can have for breakfast. The rest of the time, I lie awake in a paralysed, sweaty, panic until it all becomes too much and my overloaded brain shuts down and lets me get some sleep.

So please, please, please can someone not let me get what I want, but just tell me???

Who Killed Dorothy Jane Scott?

The man had called thirty-two year old Dorothy Jane Scott’s workplace before and she had told her mother, Vera, that she thought she recognised his voice. The caller would tell her that he loved her and that he would kill her, that he would get her alone and cut her up into pieces and that no-one would ever find her. He told her that he knew what she was doing day-to-day, and he was right, accurately recounting her activities and whereabouts.  On this day he called to tell Dorothy she should go outside, because there was something there for her. Dorothy went outside and found a dead, red rose on the windshield of her car.

Dorothy started taking karate lessons.

She was a single mother, living in Anaheim, California, with her four-year old son and her aunt. She worked two jobs as a secretary for jointly owned stores that sold things like lava lamps, hippie jewellery and weed paraphernalia. Her parents looked after her son while she was at work. Dorothy was a devout Christian, and her friends and colleagues said she preferred quiet nights in to going out, and that she did not drink alcohol or take drugs. She didn’t have a steady boyfriend that any of them knew about, though her father Jacob said she dated occasionally. She was a person that stuck to her well-worn routine; going to work, going home and looking after her son. She was even described by some who knew her as dull and boring as the phone book.

On May 28^th, 1980, Dorothy had a late meeting at work. During the meeting, she noticed that her colleague Conrad Bostron didn’t look well, and had a red mark on his arm. Dorothy and another colleague, Pam Head, took Conrad to the A & E department (ER) at UC Irvine Medical Centre. On the way to the hospital, they stopped at Dorothy’s house so she could check in on her son and tell her parents she was taking Conrad to the hospital.

Dorothy and Pam stayed with Conrad while he waited to be seen, and then Dorothy and Pam waited while he was being examined. Pam said that she was with Dorothy for this whole period, and that they read magazines and chatted to other people in the waiting room to pass the time. At 11pm, Conrad was discharged. He had been treated for black widow spider bite, and was given a prescription.  

Dorothy went to use the toilet before they left, and said she would bring the car round to the front as she didn’t feel that Conrad was well enough to walk the distance to the car park.

While Dorothy went to get the car, Pam went with Conrad to collect the prescription and complete his medical insurance forms. They then returned to the entrance to wait for Dorothy. They were just starting to wonder where she was when Pam saw Dorothy’s 1973 white Toyota station wagon (an estate type car to British readers) driving towards the hospital at speed. It’s unclear if Pam was already outside the hospital by this point, or if she went outside when she saw the car, but it had its full beams on and she couldn’t see who was driving. Pam waved, trying to attract Dorothy’s attention, but the car went past her, and drove out of the hospital grounds, exiting right.

Pam and Conrad assumed that Dorothy had driven off because there was an emergency with her son, and waited at the hospital for another two hours. When Dorothy didn’t come back, they alerted hospital security and Dorothy was reported as missing to the police.

Dorothy’s burning car was found in an alleyway in the early hours of 29^th May, about 10 miles away from the hospital.

On 12 June, 1980, a man called the Orange County Register newspaper. The editor told the police that the man had said he’d killed Dorothy because she was his love and she’d been unfaithful. The caller knew about Conrad’s spider bite, and that Dorothy had swapped a black scarf for a red one after the team meeting. The caller said that Dorothy had phoned him from the hospital on the night of 28^th May. Pam said this wasn’t true. She had been with Dorothy the whole time, and she had never left her to make a phone call. There’s no mention of Dorothy potentially making the call before she went to get the car, but it seems unlikely she would have called anyone that night apart from perhaps her parents to let them know she was leaving the hospital.

✴✴✴✴

‘Are you related to Dorothy Scott?’ the caller asked. 

‘Yes,’ Vera replied.

‘I’ve got her,’ the man said.

These calls to Dorothy’s parent’s house would continue until the spring of 1984, every Wednesday for four years. They would usually come when Vera was in the house alone. The caller would say different things; that he had Dorothy and she was alive; that he had killed her, asking if she was there. He was obviously disguising his voice, and despite police installing call monitoring equipment, the calls were too short to be traced. One day Jacob answered the phone. The calls stopped for a while after that.

On 14 August, 1984, a pelvis, two arms, two thighs and skull were found on the Santa Ana Canyon Road (approximately 7 miles from UC Irvine) by a construction worker. With the bones were a watch, a turquoise ring, and canine bones.

An autopsy (post mortem) confirmed that the remains were those of Dorothy, but it wasn’t possible to determine a cause of death.  Her mother Vera later said that the watch had stopped at 12.30am, about an hour after Pam and Conrad had last seen Dorothy’s car.

When the local paper ran the story that Dorothy’s remains had been found, the man called Vera and Jacob again.

He asked them, ‘Is Dorothy home?’

Questions and Notes:

1)      Dorothy’s remains were found about 7 miles from the hospital, and her car ten miles away, meaning the killer had dumped her body and then the car. Where did he go after that, and how did he get there? Did he live close to where he ditched the car? If this is the case, how did he get to the hospital in the first place? Had he taken a taxi, or a bus? Was this ever explored by the police? Where was she killed?

Map showing the approximate distance between UC Irvine and the road where Dorothy's remains were found

2) We have to assume the car was burnt to destroy any contact evidence left by the killer, but the first use of DNA in a criminal case in the States didn’t happen until 1987, 7 years after Dorothy was murdered and 3 years after her remains were found. Despite this, it seems like the killer knew he could be traced to Dorothy’s car, and burnt it to destroy evidence. Was she killed in the car? If so, how? Was the interior of the car covered in her blood? His fingerprints would have been left on the car, were his fingerprints on file?

3)      Where did the dog bones come from? Dorothy didn’t have a dog.  Was the dog used in some way to entice or coerce Dorothy?

4)      Not all of her remains were recovered. Had her killer taken trophies, or did wild animals carry some of the remains away?  

5)      Did the change in Dorothy’s routine give the killer the chance he needed to get her alone? He told the newspaper he’d killed her because she was with another man – was he talking about Conrad? Did the stalker see Dorothy with Conrad and assume that he was her boyfriend? Did this push him over the line of threatening violence to actually carrying it out?

6)      Was Dorothy this killer’s only victim?

Conclusion:

US department of justice homicide trends more here

I don't think a stranger murdered Dorothy. Women are more likely than men to be murdered by someone they know; a husband, an ex, a friend, a colleague, a neighbour. I believe that Dorothy knew her killer. She recognised the voice of the man that called her at work. I think it was someone she had met briefly before, had perhaps dated and then rejected or didn’t want to see again. He became obsessed with her, and stalked her.

Perhaps it was someone that had come into one of the shops while she had been there.  it is possible it was someone she knew from church?

I think he either followed her from the team meeting to the hospital and took the chance of her being on her own (the car park was some distance from the hospital building) to abduct her, or had been waiting outside her house when he saw her stop by with Pam and Conrad.

 As no one around the hospital heard her scream, I am guessing that he was either already in her car when she got there, or he subdued her in some way. Either that or the car park was too far away and isolated for anyone to have heard her. There’s no mention of a blunt force injury to her skull, so perhaps he punched her, rendering her unconscious, and then put her in the car. Pam and Conrad couldn’t tell who was driving the car, because the full beams were on. I am going to assume that it was either Dorothy’s killer behind the wheel, or that she was driving with perhaps a gun to her head.

What happened to Dorothy after that is something I’d rather not know. She must have been terrified. I can’t imagine how she would have felt if she was conscious when they drove past her friends, and she was unable to ask them for help.

 Her son would be in his early 40s now, and grew up without his mother, who sounded like a caring, gentle person. 

Jacob died in 1994 and Vera in 2002.

 Thirty-seven years after her death, it is unlikely that Dorothy’s killer will ever be brought to justice. 

Fifty Shades Darker Film Review

I saw the first Fifty Shades of Grey film when I’d had a few drinks. (They didn’t help make it any better) I thought that the film-makers had done a not too bad a job, given the source material and the fact that EL James apparently hung around the set like David Brent at the Wernham Hogg Christmas party after he’d been sacked.

This week, on a appropriately windy afternoon, I went to see Fifty Shades Darker.

James’ husband Niall Leonard takes the reins on the Fifty Shades Darker screenplay (I am sure there is a BDSM related joke in there somewhere, but alas today I feel like a bear shat in my head and can’t think of one. Who says that booze kills brain cells?) and James Foley (Glengarry Glen Ross) takes Sam Taylor-Johnson’s still warm spot in the director’s chair.

The film naturally follows the ‘plot’ of the book closely, and opens straight in to the aftermath of Ana’s break-up from Christian. Luckily the film spares us the book’s over-the-top grief fest and we’re not subjected to Ana moping around in PJs and snot-crying because she broke up with an abusive fucktard that she’d only been seeing for a couple of weeks.

Ana goes to Jose’s photography exhibition (remember him? The token ethnic guy from the first book that tries to kiss Ana?) and she finds out he’s creepily taken black and white circa 1992 Calvin Klein advert style snapshots of her. (Because everyone loves Ana!) Christian BUYS ALL OF THEM and instead of thinking, ‘fuck this shit, the next step is waking up in a box with all my limbs removed,’ like a normal person would, Ana agrees to go for dinner with him.

Then they get back together, the end. NO WAIT I’M FUCKING WITH YOU, THERE’S STILL AN HOUR AND A HALF TO GO.

Ana gets a job at a publishing company, SIP, as assistant to Fiction Editor Jack Hyde. Mawah ha ha haaaa. I did the Mawah ha ha’s as Jack Hyde is such an obviously villainous name and EL James likes to smack you about the head with FORESHADOWING. At the end of the film, we see Jack in a leather jacket, smoking and looking moody.  Ooohh, do you think he might be a baddie? Props to Eric Johnson, though, for not going totally OTT with the villainy and playing Jack Hyde as that creepy guy that seems kind of off in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. Like all the other characters in this hot mess, he has some truly bad lines to say and that’s not his fault.

After Jack attempts to sexually assault Ana, he’s fired.  While Christian’s bid to buy SIP is still not finalised, he ‘knows the CEO’ and so he’s able to get Jack sacked without so much as a formal investigation by HR.

'I'm a baddie. Case you couldn't tell.'

In a story that’s already stretching plausibility to snapping point, Ana is given Jack’s job, and her own assistant, who is confusingly called Hannah. In the book, Ana likes Hannah  because she’s black and not a threat to her relationship with Christ-pain, and because EL James has to inelegantly shoe-horn in efnics to prove she’s all up on her equality and diversity stuff. (she still hates blonde haired gals, though. Was she wronged by a blonde woman once? I need to know.)

We also meet Mrs Robinson (Kim Basinger – blonde!) the woman who groomed a 15-year-old Christian and introduced him to ‘BDSM’ (it’s going in the quote marks because it’s not BDSM) She has an issue with Ana, because all blonde women hate Ana. Despite Mrs R (her name’s actually Elena) being pivotal to Christian’s backstory, she’s a bit of a McGuffin in this story, essentially appearing solely for the purpose of a Dynasty style show-down between her and Ana before she vanishes, like a cougar performing a magic trick.

This is also true of Christian’s mad, sad, ex Leila. It’s kind of confusing when whole the plot hangs on characters that appear, do their thing, then disappear. Poor Leila is driven mad by Christian’s rejection and her husband’s death and she follows Ana around, waving her bloodied and bandaged wrists at her, calling Christian ‘Master’, in the manner of Dobby from Harry Potter.

Dobby loves Harry Potter

We also finally get to meet Mrs Jones, Christian’s housekeeper. Mrs Jones is probably my favourite 50 Shades character. That woman is a SAINT, cleaning the Red Room of pain, washing ben wa balls and turning a blind eye to the kinky fuckery that’s going on the bedroom while she’s doing the dishes. I’m hoping someone out there is writing Mrs Jones / Taylor fan-fic, because that I’d like to read.

The editing on this film is all over the place. I don’t know if this is because the film follows the book so tightly, and the editing on the book is also a shitty mess, but it’s honestly terrible. We cut from a late-night text conversation between Ana and Christian to a plane crash. I’ll repeat in case you didn’t hear the first time. A plane crash.  The shift in tone – from romance to high peril is so swift, it’s jarring.

Hilariously, Christian’s plane crash is on the news, because everyone worries about where rich business men are when they go missing for a few hours, and there’s a tense few minutes (just kidding, it’s about as tense an episode of Peppa Pig. That bit with the little baby lizards and the racing snakes in Planet Earth II was tenser) when we wait  - and hope - to find out if Christian has died in the plane crash. Sadly, no he hasn’t.

I expect you want to know about the sex. Tell us about the sex, Parker, I hear you say. Was that at least good? Er….. those who know me well, will know I am the sort of perv that likes watching Youtube videos of Jake Gyllenhaal working out. The sex scenes in this film left my lady-boner as flat as a month old glass of Coke.

1)     Christian keeps his trousers on for 95% of the sex scenes. That’s not only unrealistic, but also an appalling waste of Jamie Dornan’s fine booty and spectacular back. We see him naked when he’s working out, which is a lot, but not when he’s boffing Ana.

2)     They are tame, tame, tame. They might start off in a more adventurous position, but just when it’s getting interesting, he turns Ana onto her back and it’s good old missionary, fish pie for supper and Newsnight before bed (thanks Peep Show)

3)     The spreader bar. I am assuming that’s what this contraption is called. It’s basically an adjustable bar with ankle straps at either end. Christian is using it on Ana  - she’s face down – and then he flips her over. The other 8 people in the cinema collectively went, ‘Eeeee!’ probably imagining, like we were, that Christian had just snapped Ana’s spine in several places. On the way out of the cinema, the first thing my friend said was, ‘I wonder how many times they had to rehearse that scene with the bar? Do you think they had to do it a lot?’

There are some intentionally funny moments, but I think this is largely down to the charm of Dakota Johnson, who makes James’ simpering half-wit a little feistier and funnier.

Despite Dornan and Johnson both being fine actors, there is almost no chemistry between them. It seems unfair to compare them to the second most famous on-screen couple of 2017 so far, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in La La Land, but thems real sparks flying there, and you’re deeply engaged with Seb and Mia’s relationship in a way you aren’t with Christian and Ana’s.

So that was Fifty Shades Darker, and it actually wasn’t that bad. My ticket was free thanks to my friend having vouchers, so I don’t feel like I stuffed any fivers into the tops of EL James’ stockings. I am just left with the slightest sense of unease that I enjoyed it far more than I was expecting to.

Dishonourable Mentions

Consumerist Porn

Boats! Massive apartments! STUFF!

Ana’s magically disappearing bra straps

In the scene where Christian inserts the ben wa balls into Ana’s down there (‘Those are NOT going in my butt!’) Ana is wearing a black basque with straps. Cut to masked ball scene, Ana is in a slinky dress and the bra straps have disappeared. Did they go the same way as the ben wa balls? I don’t know why this bothers me, but it does. She could have just been wearing strapless underwear to start with.

Now You See Them....

....Now you don't. Ana wonders where her bra straps have gone

Lift Fingering

This is just gross, and weird, and seems like something teenagers do, not sensible adult men. Noping the fuck right out of that one. 

I think Christian may be fingering the wrong woman in this photo...that blonde lady looks a little startled to me

Dusk Spank - Chapter 9

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