Still Searching for Ashley - E1: Secret Breaker (Republish)

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2:04Today, May 5th, 2023, is National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day. The crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people, or MMIP, stems from generations of violence and unfair government policies inflicted upon Native people. In season three of Up and Vanished, I covered the case of Ashley Loring Heavy Runner, a 20-year-old indigenous woman who vanished from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. Since 2017, her case remains unsolved, and the overall statistics surrounding MMIP are just plain staggering. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, indigenous women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher than the national average.

2:51and homicide alone is one of the leading causes of death for young Indigenous women. On this day, we acknowledge this harm and lend our support to break down the systemic barriers enabling this crisis. Tenderfoot TV is offering a$50 ,000 reward for any information that leads to the arrest and conviction for the persons responsible for Ashley's disappearance. If you have tips, please contact us. The number is 406-215-1543. And please visit wearenative.org to see how you can become an ally. That's we, W-E, the letter R, native.org. Here is episode one of Up and Vanish season three. Let's find Ashley and bring her home.

4:02From Tinderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished. I'm your host, Payne Lindsey.

4:17There's so many places out here and so many back roads, and there's holes in the ground, cracks that you can't even see the bottom, where you can drop somebody's body in there. You could hide a body across this creek and nobody would find it. Unless the wind blew, right?

4:36My crow name is White Buffalo. White Buffalo. So you have your Christian name, and then you have your human name, your tribal name. His Christian name is Kerry Lance. He's 58 years old, and he's lived on a reservation here in Montana his entire life. Actually, I'm short. I got to move it up. I'm meeting with Kerry to talk about a growing epidemic in this part of the country. Missing and murdered indigenous women. As a result of the murders up here, we started a neighborhood watch. We'd spend four or six hours a night out here riding around looking for stuff that somebody would think was suspicious.

5:21This is my home. I grew up here. This is where I grew up, where I was raised. This is my home. So this is a reservation right here? You've been on a reservation since the top of that hill over there. That's the res line. We've had four buildings torched in the last two weeks, and one's still smoking. Torched as in arson. Somebody lit it up.

5:53This place was torched just a couple of nights ago. Yeah, that's the latest fire. Is this a common thing out here? Fuck yeah. And it's gradually getting worse. Not only are Native women disappearing, but law enforcement is doing basically nothing at all about it. If you didn't see any cops, you probably won't see any cops. They're reactionary only. So right now we don't have enough law enforcement to where they can proactively patrol and try to deter the activity and the behavior that leads up to somebody going missing. I'm not an expert in this shit. You know, it's just when somebody's family says, Hey, Carrie, we want to go look around at this area.

6:37I'll see if I can get some gas money and we'll go do it. And we go do it because nobody's doing it. We're looking for not just one person. We might find somebody else's remains out here. I want to see the rule of law and everybody treated fairly and held accountable. Doesn't matter what the color your skin is. I want to see the content of your character. The color of your heart is where it's at.

7:08Ashley Loring, who also goes by Ashley Heavy Runner, was last seen in Browning in June. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is now offering a$5 ,000 reward for information into Ashley's disappearance. The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council is also offering a$5 ,000 reward. All we need is Ashley to come back and to let her rest somewhere. I had to make it in my head it was not my sister in that I was searching for a girl named Ashley. Train it in my head that I'm helping this girl named Ashley. Because every time that I knew it was my baby sister, I could not move. If Ashley is meant to be found, then there ain't anything in the world that's ever going to stop that.

7:58It will happen. The real justice is just finding her.

8:12Hello, how are you? I'm good, how are you doing? This is Mike. This is Kimberly Loring Heavy Runner. Her sister Ashley went missing in June of 2017. For the last four years, Kimberly has been searching for answers to Ashley's bizarre disappearance. When she would laugh, she would laugh with her mouth open and she had these beautiful straight teeth. And she would have this laugh that was like a hyena laugh. And we all laughed the same. But she had the most beautiful smile. She was a very caring person. Just had this big heart for everything.

8:52Ashley!

8:56This is one of the many marches Kimberly has held for Ashley since she went missing in June of 2017. Ashley!

9:09So in March of 2017, I got a call from Ashley. And she wanted to come and stay with me. But I told her I'm going to go on a trip for three months. And if she can please wait for me. And that I really want to go to Morocco and see my husband. I'm married now, but before then, it was my fiancé. I wanted to go see my fiancé. And she said, yes, of course. She said, go. She said, go. But you're going to be back. And I said, of course, I'm going to be back, sis.

9:42Kimberly and her sister Ashley lived in Browning, Montana, on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, just about 40 miles from the Canadian border. Kimberly got engaged in 2017 to her now husband, and she went on a trip to Morocco, while Ashley stayed behind with the rest of her family. They kept in touch throughout the whole time, Phone calls, texts, Facebook Messenger, and nothing at all seemed out of the ordinary. After around three months, Kimberly came back to Browning. I landed on June 8th at 1025 p.m. and she never called. She didn't call. And then the next day, I saw on my phone, it said, last active 18 hours ago.

10:28I don't know what happened to her, but she waited until I got here. And then when I got back, there was no phone call, there was no text, and we couldn't find her. Ashley had been in touch with Kimberly up until hours before she landed back home in Montana. But when she got there, Ashley was simply gone. No red messages on Facebook, phone straight to voicemail, no trace whatsoever.

10:59I was very numb. I didn't know how to take it. I didn't know how. All I knew was to search for her. Just go look for her, go search for her. Just go find her.

11:14Everywhere I went, I seen Ashley. She was everywhere to me. Any girl that would walk by, it was Ashley. And to me, it literally looked like her. I would look at somebody and it would just be Ashley. And then when I would stop and look again, that girl wouldn't even look like her. I've seen her everywhere. It's been over four years now, and no one has seen or heard from Ashley Loring Heavy Runner. But it wasn't long before some twisted rumors began emerging. The timeline leading up to Ashley's disappearance is pretty murky, but I've tried my best to recreate her last steps. There were a few significant events that occurred right around the time she disappeared.

12:00Before Kimberly made it back home to Browning, Montana, Ashley stopped by her parents' house and had a strange encounter with her father. She ran into the house, closed all his blinds, and she was very upset, very upset. She said, I did something, I did something. He was like, like, what did you do? What did you do? Like, why are you acting like this? But she wouldn't say anything. And she just ran over to the blinds and she was just panicking. But she would never tell him what she did. And then when the car pulled up, he went to go look out who was outside. And she yelled at him and said, not to look out.

12:44Don't look outside. She got mad at him, and so he didn't look. And then she took off. She left. and then she never came back. That's the last time that my family seen her. He listened, and he didn't do it. Somebody, somebody out there. And that's what hurt him. All these years that when she went missing was that he didn't never look.

13:22From there, the events become a little more convoluted. We were told that she went to a friend's and that she might have lost her cell phone. We went searching for her up in the mountains alongside the road. But then it was a week later and we still weren't able to find her. And that's when all these really awful stories all popped up. There were several eyewitness accounts of people who allegedly saw Ashley after she left her dad's house that night. We were told that she was at this house and there was this video on Facebook. It was a party. She was sitting at a party. She was sitting there on a couch.

14:08And that was the last thing that they seen her. Do you know who posted that video? Yeah, his name was Mario. He posted it. It's gone. Where did it go? They took it off. Why did you delete it? Because everybody, just all over Facebook at that time, everybody was asking if Ashley was at. All the stories said that we saw her at the party on June 5th. it became significant because it was the last time that anybody was able to see Ashley. Let's break this down. Ashley has this unusual encounter with her dad late at night. She seems paranoid, fearful of someone or something, and then a car pulls up and Ashley runs outside and leaves.

15:00But she was seen somewhere else after that, at a house party in town on June 5th, 2017. There were several eyewitness accounts of her being there, but more importantly, a Facebook video that actually puts her there. Then Kimberly talked to Ashley on Facebook the next day, after the party. She talked to me on June 6th, June 6th, 2017 at 12.31pm. The last message I sent to Ashley was that I asked her if she was home and she replied with no. If she needed any help, she would have told me right away. Because in the message I asked her if she was okay, and she said always. Kimberly showed me these Facebook messages.

15:45On June 5th, 2017, Kimberly messaged Ashley and asked, Are you okay? Ashley said, Always. What about you? Kimberly, just packing. Ashley, when are you going to be home? Kimberly, tomorrow night at 10, are you home? Ashley, no. I don't know where she was at the time. I don't know where she was at. I believe wherever she was held a key.

16:20So the first key is clearly where she went after her encounter with her father that night, and after that party. Where was Ashley when she was messaging Kimberly that morning? From there, the trail gets pretty cold. It took law enforcement weeks to even consider Ashley an actual missing person. They missed crucial time for a proper investigation. But in Indian country, this is par for the course. A complex issue that's plagued this community now for generations.

16:53When the cops get called, the cops come out here and say, well, we need a statement. Well, I don't want to do that. Well, if I don't get a statement from you, I can't investigate and I can't arrest anybody. Why won't they fill out a statement? Because they're afraid of retaliation.

17:13It's sad because back in the day it wasn't like that. The village was the village. We were all together for the mutual benefit of everybody that lives here. I don't try to badmouth law enforcement. I support law enforcement, all law enforcement. but if you don't like your job, you should find a different job, you know. When shit happens out here, they don't put any effort into solving it and holding anybody accountable. I don't know if it's because of nepotism. You know, a lot of times people appear before a tribal judge and the judge will be related to them. And if that judge puts their ass in jail and does what needs to be done, then the criminal's family turns on that person.

17:57and that's the way it is out here. It's a cat chasing its tail round and round and round. We're not getting anywhere. When they try to utilize tribal courts to hold people accountable, it's not working because of the nepotism, favoritism, and they're not teaching the lessons that need to be learned. Until the community decides that, well, I'm willing to give the cops a statement and go testify in court if needed, it's not going to stop. It's not going to change. And it's just it's been like that for years out here round and round and round and round

18:36Let's just talk about someone like myself Trying to infiltrate the community and figure out what happened to Ashley. How safe is somebody that's out snooping around? All I could say is you need to stay on your toes It's it's it's thin ice that makes sense. You're treading on thin ice out here, I've received threats, and I've been told to back off on some stuff, but if we do that, they win. You know, what are you willing to do for your community? How far are you willing to go? If the truth don't get out, nothing's going to change. And people know where she's at. They know that if they hold out long enough and they don't find her, everything will kind of dissipate, Calm down and one of the problems is law enforcement doesn't put enough pressure on Suspects when they're interrogating them trying to figure out a crime And why don't they do that?

19:37Just another dead Indian That's why just another dead Indian It's one less pain in the ass I Feel that's how they look at it There's not a fucking thing you can do about it. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's clusterfuck.

19:59I don't know what the solution is other than they need to put more pressure on people who are suspected of being involved. So with Ashley and them, they got to put more pressure on the people that they think are involved. You need to take that motherfucker out and waterboard him until he talks. I mean, that's how I feel about it, but you can't portray that to the people because then you're going to become the bad guy. That's what they need to do, though. A couple of the guys need to take them out somewhere and say, all right, you're going to talk or else. The problem is criminals don't fear cops.

20:33They don't fear the law. They don't fear judges or courts. And they're not scared of prison anymore. Rumors come in, gossip. My opinion is law enforcement need to pay more attention to the rumors, gossip and hearsay. Why? Because there's truth to it. People don't want the truth to get out. If you're going to go up there and get involved in that, always be careful. If they think you know something, there will be people that pop up to try to discredit you. And there's going to be people, I've had people show up and help out on my searches that we suspect are involved. And the reason why they all of a sudden, I was a blue, showed up at a particular search is because they're being nosy.

21:28They want to know what we know. there'll be people that they wear two faces

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