Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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From Tinderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished. I'm your host, Payne Lindsey. Good day. I don't have time to waste, but I know where Ashley is. Contact me as soon as possible. I would like to speak to the family only. This is a message Kimberly received from a stranger on Facebook in February 2020. The name was simply Facebook user. No friends, no connections. This unknown person said the following.
I know where Ashley is. She's alive. Kimberly, where is she? How do you know this? Calm down. Because she's been with my uncle in his basement. Kimberly, I am calm. She's been going through a lot, but she's fine. Kimberly, how could I believe you? Show me proof. I'm not trying to convince you to believe me. You don't have to believe me. Kimberly, where is she?
If you don't stop doubting, later in the future you'll regret not believing me. I'm not going to give up information like that. But if you immediately accept my offer, I guarantee you, you'll be with Ashley as soon as possible. Kimberly, what is your offer? I'm putting myself in danger, and when you finally retrieve her, I don't want anything to do with it. I don't want anyone to know how you got this information. Kimberly, no one would know. I need $10,000 before I release her location.
I don't want the police involved in this until it's time to retrieve her. And once everything is done, you'll be grateful for this day. I'm not going to be here for long. It seems like I'm wasting my time, but I know you'll regret not listening to me. This is the kind of shit that Kimberly's been dealing with since 2017. From random psychics with false tips, harassment from strangers online with ransom demands. It's insane. As if losing her sister was not enough to endure, Kimberly has been fighting an uphill battle from the start.
She's fought day and night, leading a powerful campaign to find Ashley. And through her efforts, she's made waves within the media and government officials, shining a light on what is clearly a widespread epidemic: missing and murdered indigenous women. In 2018, Kimberly testified before Congress, pleading for help.
Why?
Departments of Justice and the Interior are required to investigate and prosecute homicides committed against or by Indians on tribal lands. However, it is less clear who has the responsibility for investigating cases of missing indigenous individuals. This lack of clarity has left tribes and families unsure of who to call for help and has contributed to our lack of knowledge on the scope of the problem.
Today's hearing is an important step toward fully understanding the scope and working to address the crisis in Indian country. Ms. Loring Heavy Runner. Thank you for allowing me to speak for my sister Ashley. It's exactly 18 months ago since the last time that I got to see my sister.
It was two months after she went missing. The BIA was still stating that Ashley is of age and is able to leave whenever she wants to. That is not a proper response when dealing with a woman that's been missing for two months. With working with the law enforcement at the Blackfeet Reservation and the BIA, we went weeks without even speaking with them. They did not call and they did not respond.
give us any information. One time I spoke with this officer. He stopped me and he talked to me and he said, these guys are not taking Ashley's case seriously. They are putting her as she is of age and she can leave when she wants to. I believe that if the law enforcement would have searched for my sister when she first went missing, we would have my sister killed.
And we wouldn't have to search for 18 months through the wind and three feet of snow being chased by grizzly bears, wondering, is my sister in the mountains? Knowing that there is grizzly bears all over the Rocky Mountains. Is my sister up there? If they would have taken her serious as a person, because we are important. I believe that my sister would have been here or we would have had closure.
Thank you, Ms. Loring, Heavy Runner. Okay, we'll begin five-minute rounds of questions.
It is a case Montana has been following for at least 18 months and now the nation is getting to know more about the disappearance of Ashley Loring Heavyrunner. Ashley's sister Kimberly Loring sat this afternoon in front of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee detailing her sister's case. The goal of that, hoping lawmakers in Washington, D.C. can help her and so many others who continue to search for missing and murdered indigenous women.
Today, Kimberly appeared before the United States Committee on Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. to speak about her experiences with law enforcement following Ashley's disappearance. Kimberly told senators about the links between updates from law enforcement, the evidence searchers provided to investigators themselves, and a lack of seriousness, she says, taken by officers.
On one of my trips to Montana, my team and I met with Kimberly in Missoula, where she spoke at a town hall event, furthering awareness on this crisis. So I'm going to call Ms. Kimberly Loring up here, whose sister Ashley is pretty much the reason we started the database and website, a group of students at Blackfeet Community College in 2017. We really were just supporting Kimberly and her efforts. I think a lot of the legislation that you see now is because of
her meeting with politicians. So my name is Kimberly Loring. In two weeks, it's been four years since I've got to actually speak to my sister Ashley. She went missing in June 2017 on the Blackfeet Reservation. Before she went missing, she mentioned to me about these women that are going missing. She said, "Sister, these women are going missing." I didn't know that my sister was going to be Ashley that's on the missing flyer.
That's why I stand here today to honor that her heart was so set on helping those women. In a way, Ashley helped the women by being a beautiful example of if you let the trauma override you and you want to hide from it, this is what happens. My sister Ashley had a big heart, huge heart. She's amazing. I miss her every day. She made a big change by being that beautiful example.
Okay, back to the case. We know that Ashley had a strange encounter with her father. We know that Ashley went to a party at Vernon's house, and that Mario posted a video on Facebook that we haven't been able to find. We know that according to both Vernon and Mario, Ashley left that party, and have no idea where she went afterwards. We also know that Rosie claims to have been hacked on Facebook, and a message was sent to Ashley's cousin claiming, quote, "I had part in her murder."
If all these things are true, what we don't know is where Ashley went after the party at Vernon's house on June 5th, 2017. After my second meeting with Vernon, he introduced me to his friend Timmy, and we struck up a conversation outside the RV. If people know anything, it's just fucked up. It is fucked up. It's really fucked up. Yeah, I don't know how someone lives with himself keeping a secret like that, you know?
According to Timmy, he heard from some friends in town that after the party at Vernon's, Ashley was trying to hitch a ride. To where exactly, I'm not sure, but she never got that ride. She had that, around that period of time that she was all fucked up trying to get a ride, but she was so fucked up that they locked her out of that vehicle. Felt bad about it. Who was that? JD Bird, Chanel Bird, and Selena Olinger. They wouldn't let Ashley in her vehicle because she was all fucked up.
According to Timmy, they didn't let Ashley in the car because she was too intoxicated. Isn't that when your friends should be giving you rides anyways? - Where are they? - They're in Brandon. - Would they talk to us? - I doubt JD would. I don't know. JD said he felt bad about not letting that girl in. That's just what JD told me. They didn't care and they probably feel fucked up about not letting her in. You know, they could have saved her life. But you know, had they let her in the vehicle,
- Why'd you say that? - Can we go there? - I just know JD's gonna be pissed. It'd be great to do it, though.
You know, bring justice to the family. Yeah, see what JD says, huh? You just go inside and see if he minds talking to me outside. We'll check it out. Hey, bird. What's up, bro? Good. Just relaxing out of your day. Talking about how she's doing. If you'd be willing to talk to these guys about that night, wouldn't I? You know, when she was there, trying to get her eyes. So you don't have to.
- Yeah, they're right there. - Yeah, I'd travel with her if you think, you know. - What night was that, bro? - June 5th, 2017. - Huh? - Fucking eat it, bro. - I just told him I wanted to talk to you guys and he just shook his head no. - Did he see the microphone on your shoulder? - Oh yeah, you know it. - Did he say anything at all? - He didn't say shit. - It's annoying. - It is pretty fucking annoying, eh?
He would give her a ride and help her, yeah, no shit. Exactly. Pretty shitty of him. Yeah, I'd like to think my cousin, he'd fucking leave me for dead, you know? Yeah, my own family, my own brothers too, they don't give a fuck. Just the way it is.
Ashley tried to hitch a ride with JD Byrd and some other people, but they declined. So then what happened? It's late, it's dark, and Ashley just vanishes off the face of the earth.
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Enter Sam McDonald. It doesn't take too much poking around in this case before you start hearing this guy's name. Kimberly firmly believes that he might hold the key to what happened to Ashley.
If you follow the maddening trail of rumors in the timeline leading up to Ashley's disappearance, so far it goes like this: The weird encounter with her father, the party at Vernon's, Ashley trying to hitch a ride with JD late at night after the party, and then, sometime within the next 24 hours, she's rumored to have gone to Big Al's house. Big Al, he, may he rest in peace, had a house outside of Browning. This is the party house.
Out of all the stories surrounding Ashley in those final days, this is one we truly need to consider. And that's because it came directly from one of Kimberly's friends, who at the moment will remain unnamed. He told Kimberly that he was at Big Al's house, and he saw Ashley there with his own eyes. He told me that that morning Ashley was there and she was downstairs. And then that's when Sam McDonald showed up at the house.
According to Kimberly's friend, he was sitting in the kitchen with Ashley at Big Al's house, on what would likely be the morning of June 6th. That's when this Sam McDonald character shows up. Apparently, Ashley and Sam knew each other, but it's unclear exactly how close they really were. He alleges that Ashley got in the car with Sam, and they drove to his house, a cabin deep in the mountains about 45 minutes outside of Browning. Maybe just another crazy rumor, right? I would normally think that.
But Kimberly talked to Sam McDonald directly, in person, and these words came from his mouth. He lives up in the mountains next to St. Mary's Lake. They stayed there for a few days. He kept saying that she was outside dancing, dancing and pointing at the sky. After Sam picked up Ashley from Big Al's house, according to Sam himself, she stayed there at his cabin with him for several days. They stayed up for a while, they partied, and then it came to the day
that he wanted to bring her home. He said that I drove her up to the mountain, up by Divide. When you go back home to Browning, you can go either right, and that's going up the mountain, or you can go left and go by Duck Lake Road. He said that he went right, up to the mountain. She told him to pull over because I have a ride that's going to meet me. It's going to be V-Dog. He leaned his seat back and went to sleep, and when he woke up, she was gone. And that was his...
Let's get this straight here. Sam openly tells Kimberly that he picked her up from Big Al's house. She stays at his cabin for several days, "partying" as he described it, then eventually drives Ashley up to a divide in the mountain where she was going to be picked up by some guy named V-Dog. Then he falls asleep in the car, and when he wakes up, she's gone? Does this guy have the worst luck in the world? Or is there something extremely nefarious about this?
As if this story wasn't suspicious enough as is, the talk around town about Sam McDonald doesn't paint a pretty picture either. If you dropped somebody off there and you fell asleep, then why didn't you come search with us? Why didn't he come search ever? He never searched with us. He has cameras in his house and outside, but he never showed us them. He never wanted to show us them. After Ashley went missing, he remodeled his house.
He started to tear up the floor. He started to fix the house up. We talked to people that live next to Sam's. There was stories of these girls that would leave his house and they would have to swim out in the lake and get away from them. This girl told us that he has a secret, like the secret room in his house. "He put me in there," she said. It's disturbing.
They said that there would always be girls that would run away from his house naked and would have swinges in their bodies. People would run up to his lawn naked, wanting help. These guys that live next to him have been talking to the tribe and keep telling them there's something bad gonna happen if you let this man still stay here. Get him out of here, like something's happening over there, like these girls keep showing up on my lawn naked.
You need to do something before somebody is hurt, really hurt. And they didn't do anything about it. And then Ashley goes. Sam always stuck to the story that he dropped her off and he fell asleep. And then that V-dog came and picked her up. Right. Right. There are other characters who...
He says she was planning to meet up with, but to my understanding, he was one of the last ones to, or the last one by some reports to see her alive. - Here's Shannon Newth again, a local reporter from Great Falls who's been covering Ashley's story for the last several years. - That story is one of those gray areas, right? Where there's a lot of question marks. If you believe his story, what happened next? And if you choose not to believe his story, why is he not in custody?
Right. I'm trying to ride my like be the objective news anchor one with also my own like things because I don't want to like come back and be like, oh, she's not very objective anymore. I do think just as a person looking at that, either that it happened exactly as he said it happened.
And whatever happened to Ashley happened after she got out of that car? Or yeah, that's a convenient story. No one really knows because he's, to our knowledge, the only person who can verify that story. It's his story against what? ♪
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Do you believe Sam's story? No, I don't.
They both mentioned a mutual friend named Spoon, who was a lot closer to Sam McDonald than they are. Spoon told Vernon and Rosie that he stopped by Sam's house that same morning, the morning he claims to have fallen asleep in his car, while Ashley was waiting to be picked up by some guy named V-Dog.
I'm over the rumors in this case. I need to hear Spoon's story directly from him. Rosie offered to walk down the street to Spoon's house to see if he'd be willing to talk to us. Would you want to come over here and talk to this interview crew about the Ashley situation? I just want your information on when you met Sam. Out there, supposedly, because it burns in there, too. This little van here.
It's like a documentary crew. Spoon? Yep. How you doing, man? Hey, nice to meet you. This is being tight, so we can do it. Everybody wants to know where she's at and what happened. There's people that know something, too scared to come forward because the retributions from the family, you know, they're going to be hard when they find out.
On the same morning that Ashley seemingly evaporated in the presence of Sam McDonald,
Spoon was heading over to Sam's house to get some work done on his car. He told me to come out early that morning about 7:00. I didn't make it out there till around 11:00, I think. I get there, he wasn't there, but his son was there and I tried to walk down to his house and his son told me to just come back in a couple hours. I was like, "Alright." And I just, I drove down the road and my brakes were sticking so I started to bleed them just right on the side of the road there. I was underneath my car, car pulls up, guy says, "What are you doing?" And I looked up and it was Sam.
So I said, "Come up to the house and do it." So I went up there and Sam asked me to walk outside with him. I walked outside with him and he was like, "I don't know where she went." I was like, "Who?" He said it again, "I don't know where she went." I was like, "What do you mean, who?" He said, "Ashley." He was like, "We were sitting up on the divide." He nodded off and when he woke up, she wasn't around. He said he walked over to the next road where she was before, she wasn't there.
He said, so he walked around for about an hour and a half, two hours, looking for her in those roads, and he couldn't find her. And about that time, that's probably about the time I was at his house when I got to his house. He's like, I don't know where she went, though. He's like, I looked up and down those roads. I drove up and down them, yelling her name. He said that never seen her again. He said, Sam figured maybe she walked to the highway, and he checked or something. But I don't know. That's as far as Sam knew, or at least what he told me.
How did he seem? He seemed confused. He was tired. It was hot that day. It was summertime June. He didn't know what to do. He's like, "I looked all over for her." He's like, "I've been up there all morning looking for her." He's like, "I don't know where she went." I don't think she really knew the area, so I don't think she really knew which direction to go. Because there's a lot of trees and roads, back roads up there. You can easily get lost. You easily get lost in those trees, you know?
when you were seeing him that day and he was looking at the ground saying, you know, I don't know where she went. - Yeah. - Did it seem to you like he was being sincere or that he was putting on a show for you? - He did seem sincere about it. Like he was confused. You could tell he was confused. He was exhausted. It was hot out, like 90 something degrees that day, you know. When he started telling me about it, it had probably been about around two, three hours maybe. - Is that long enough to be of concern?
In the mountains, yeah. There's a lot of things that could happen in the mountains. Like around here, you know, we got everything, you know, grizzlies, mountain lions, wolves, everything, you know. There's a lot of concerns when you're in the mountains. It's not just getting in and out of your car, you know. As the sun goes throughout the day, you know, all the shadows change, so it looks different in a matter of a half hour. It's easy to get lost up there. All I know is what I know, you know. I can't really say much on what I heard, but, I mean, there's a lot of people that truly believe Sam knows a lot more than he's saying.
Alright, enough of all this shit. Where does this Sam McDonald guy live? This man is a complete ghost online. No addresses, no phone numbers, nothing at all. But Vernon's been to his house before. Is there an address? I cannot find it. Like, how to get there? Probably pull it up on Google Maps. He showed me on Google Maps where his cabin is. Here's St. Mary's Lake. He kind of stays about right along. Let's see. I'm thinking right. I think pretty sure it's this one.
Miles deep into the mountains outside of Browning is Sam McDonald's cabin on St. Mary's Lake. One of my producers Cooper and I made the trip out there. As I pulled down this long gravel drive, I saw him outside in the front yard. We parked down the hill out of sight and made our way on foot up towards the cabin. I don't always get nervous, but I have no shame in saying that in this moment, I was scared as hell.
As I approached his property, he slowly appeared from around one of the cars, but his body was in a strange position. Hey, man. How you doing? His back was pressed against the passenger side window, and his left hand was fully extended behind him. And I could tell he was holding something. A gun. Seeing you guys get out of your truck, fucking got cameras just watching you guys. And I thought, what the fuck they doing? So I went and looked at my cameras, and then I grabbed this. If I'd have seen a gun in your hand, I'd have raised it.
Have you ever seen a gun come out? I just shot your ass. Up and Vanish is a production of Tenderfoot TV. Created, hosted, and edited by Payne Lindsey. Executive producers are Payne Lindsey and Donald Albright. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Ophelia by Ezra Rose. Sound design, mixing, and mastering by Cooper Skinner. Additional production by Cooper Skinner, Eric Quintana, and myself, Mike Rooney. Our cover art is by Trevor Eiler.
Special thanks to Grace Royer and Oren Rosenbaum at UTA. Ryan Nord, Jesse Nord, and Matthew Papa at The Nord Group, Station 16, Beck Media and Marketing, as well as Chris Cochran and the team at Cadence 13. Visit us on social media at Up and Vantage, or you can visit us at upandvantage.com where you can join in on our discussion board. If you're enjoying Up and Vantage, tell a friend, family member, or coworker about it. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening. ♪