242. Stolen In Plain Sight - Jermain Charlo
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So why not start focusing on what's important to you with Noom's approach? Sign up for your trial today at Noom.com. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. If you're watching on YouTube, I feel like I look very corporate or like professional with this coffee in my hand. One of my legs crossed. Don't spill it. Cheers. Cheers.

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without you guys and we love that you like listening to our content you got your 10 seconds no i don't but i will think of one right now peyton and i took pictures basically for the first time together and since we got engaged eight years eight and a half years nine years something somewhere between eight and nine years we're both on the same page about that so no harm no foul

But yeah, it's been a while since we took pictures and Peyton and I went and took pictures. We just got them back. We love them. They turned out really good. I'm sure Peyton will post some of them, but it was, I know it was kind of crazy. It's crazy how fast time can go. And all of a sudden you're like, whoa, we haven't taken pictures together in X amount of years. Like the time just flies by as you start working and I don't know, real life hits you and Peyton and I don't even have kids. So I can't imagine when you have kids, like time just starts flying by.

I don't know. I guess that's my 10 seconds. It's more of a chill 10 seconds. I was just thinking about that the other day. Our sources for this episode are dailymail.com, uncovered.com, kpax.com, thesun.com, cbsnews, dailymontanan.com, greatfallstribune.com, oxygen.com, indianlaw.org, gbvlearningnetwork.ca, rollingstone.com, newyorker.com, katiekurek.com, vogue.com, and nativehope.org. In

In 2016, the National Crime Information Reporting Center released a staggering statistic. That year, there were 5,712 missing women and girls from the American Indian and Alaska Native community. However, only 116 of those cases were logged in the U.S. Department of Justice's database.

This community of women is 12 times more likely to be murdered and go missing than any other demographic in the U.S. and Canada. I mean, think about that. That is a scary number. And while we've covered murdered and missing Indigenous women's cases in the past, today's story is a perfect example of why we have a lot of progress to make as a nation.

because over 4,000 of these cases have run cold. And they manage to do so even when officials have a pretty good lead on a primary suspect, which is why Jermaine Charleau's case is one that will leave you asking.

What do we have to do to start getting justice for these MMIW women? So today we're headed to Montana to the Flathead Reservation. This is about 40 miles outside of Missoula. This is where Jermaine Charleau, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribe, grows up.

Now, on the reservation, the phrase, it takes a village, was taken pretty literally. So when Jermaine was born on April 23rd, 1995, everyone from her grandparents to her cousins, her aunts and uncles were there to lend a hand with raising her. Especially since Jermaine's parents were no longer together and she was mostly being raised by her single mother.

Now, it was clear early on that Germaine was incredibly artistic. When she wasn't drawing or knitting, she was thriving in the great outdoors, fishing or hunting, or taking care of one of her many, many pets. She had squirrels to dogs to pigs. And as she got older, Germaine had dreams of going to the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico and finding ways to blend both her heritage and culture with her incredible talent.

But life had other plans for Germaine. When she was just 14 years old, Germaine met a boy that she fell hard for. It was 16-year-old Michael de France, who was a non-tribal citizen.

So the two began a relationship, but before Jermaine even hit her 20s, she found herself pregnant with her first son and then her second son soon after. This might be a question, maybe not for you, but for any of our listeners that are Native American and part of that is that like a no-no?

Like, is that something that's looked down upon or you're not supposed to do? Yeah, I would have no idea. I think that that's like a cultural. Yeah. Well, if anyone is part of that culture and community.

Let us know because I'm actually, I'm curious. I don't know. Now, I do need to say that over the years that they were dating, things were hot and cold between Jermaine and Michael. But Jermaine always put a strong face on for her two kids. She was eager to teach them about their heritage, how to fish, how to hunt. But parenthood definitely got in the way of her art school dreams.

Instead, Jermaine worked a bunch of odd jobs around the reservation. The big river cantina, a tree planter with the tribal forest services. At one point, she even had an interest in becoming a firefighter. This is all to say that Jermaine was passionate about her community and her people. And she never ventured too far from home. She always stayed very connected to her roots. This is something Michael, who was definitely controlling at times,

could never take away from Jermaine. But in 2017, Michael actually seemed to move on from her. He had gotten engaged to a new girlfriend. And Jermaine, according to her Facebook status in 2017, had gone from single to in a relationship with someone new herself. But with two young boys tying them together, Michael and Jermaine continued to see each other from time to time. That was at least up until June of 2018.

So on June 14th, Jermaine and Michael attended a monster truck rally together. Then on June 15th, Jermaine woke up and spent the first half of her day doing what most 23-year-olds loved to do at this time,

making lip syncing videos for TikTok. It was a platform that she was very active on according to her friends and family. And I want you to know it's 2018. So she is active on TikTok before TikTok really became TikTok. I think it already changed from Musical.ly. Okay. I was going to ask, is it Musical.ly or is it TikTok? I think it had already changed. Okay. But just barely. Yeah. So she's

She's posting on TikTok. She was very active on it. And in the post, Jermaine seems happy. She's in great spirits, actually. And then she hits the bars in downtown Missoula later that evening. Now, she stops at the Dark Horse Bar till around 10 p.m. before heading next door to two more places. That would be the Golden Rose and then followed by the Badlander.

Now, Jermaine has a few drinks. She's having fun. She's out for the night. She plays pool. She hits the dance floor. And everyone who sees her this night says that she looks like she's having a great time.

But a bartender at the Badlander, remember this is the third place she's gone to, says that that night Jermaine was on her phone a lot. Now again, it's 2018. I think being glued to your phone as a 23-year-old is honestly not that strange. But what the bartender does find strange is that there is a guy there with Jermaine who keeps trying to get her attention at the bar. He's kind of following her around like a little puppy. And

The bartender also says neither Jermaine nor this guy she's with really seem to be too intoxicated. Imagine the amount of things. Okay, let me clarify things. Imagine the amount of crazy and unique events that bartenders see daily. Yeah. Whether people are sober, whether they're drunk, just the amount of different people and unique situations that they see is crazy.

Probably. Right. I mean, a lot. And I do think it's interesting that bartenders actually can recall pretty heavily like the people that they were serving that night. I know me too. It's probably because

They're sober. And the people probably talk a lot. Yeah. I think it's also important to note that the bartender says that Jermaine's not just hanging out with this one mystery dude who's following her around. There's groups of people that she's bopping around to. She's socializing with throughout the night. And then she leaves the bar sometime after midnight with one of these groups. And she's actually seen on security footage talking with them outside the bar and

And then she walks off, but that same guy who's kind of following her is trailing a bit behind her. So by the middle of the next day, Jermaine's family hasn't heard a peep out of her, which is scary because Jermaine always called to check in. And she was constantly posting on social media, but since the night before, Jermaine had gone dark. And now she's not answering her phone.

So Jermaine's grandmother is actually the first person to notice it, so she calls Jermaine's aunts for help. And after a few more hours with no sign of her, they start calling around hospitals, shelters, everywhere they can think of to try and track her down. But by the following day, June 17th, they are so sick with worry, because she still hasn't come home or answered, that they contact the Flathead Reservation's Tribal Police Department.

Now, here's where things start to kind of get complicated. Because the tribal police say that they can't do much because Jermaine's disappearance happened off of the reservation. It was in Missoula at the bars. So then it would have to be... Yes, family need to go to the Missoula police and file with them. Okay, so they call the Missoula police who say,

Oh, you're going to have to come down to the station in person to file this missing persons report. Is that normal?

I mean, yeah, I think they probably do want to meet with you in person. But they probably just didn't believe them. So on June 19th, the family make the hour and 15 minute drive down to Missoula to do exactly that. Okay. When they get there and actually file the missing persons report with Missoula police, they immediately get the feeling that there is zero sense of urgency. And the family doesn't know if that's because...

Jermaine was over 18, so legally she can disappear without telling anyone, or because she had been bar hopping that night and drinking, so police aren't taking it seriously, or probably more likely because she was an indigenous woman from the reservation. While they speak with Missoula police on June 19th, the police don't actually file the report until the 20th, and then they don't sign a detective to her case until the 21st.

Which like, if you know anything about missing persons cases, the first 48 hours are the most crucial. Just to file the report and assign a detective is insane. And then that detective goes on vacation.

So he's in charge of her case and then he leaves on vacation. So her case just sits there with no one investigating it for another five days until a different detective realizes, hey, we had this missing person report and like literally none of us have looked into it. It's interesting. I mean, I know. I don't know. I just as a detective, someone in law enforcement, wouldn't you feel? And look, I'm also aware of the amount of fluff that comes through in departments, right?

Like, I'm understanding of that. But there's also a lot of real things that is not fluff, that is serious, that needs to be taken seriously. Wouldn't you feel guilty? Like, wouldn't you be like, dang, I should probably check on this? I think the average person would, but I also think that this is an epidemic. This is something that happens often. It's so insane to me. It is insane. So it's not actually until June 26th. This is almost 10 days later.

After she has last been seen that night, that the Missoula police finally start questioning things about Jermaine. Ten days. It's too late. I mean, I know that sounds horrible, but it's too late. Like, it is too late. If there was any chance. If there's any chance, it's gone now. It's so slim now. Yeah, it's messed up. So the family...

Isn't losing hope during all of this, though. In the meantime, in those 10 days, they had taken matters into their own hands. They had put up pictures, handed out flyers, anything to get the word out around the reservation, which is devastating. They also organized volunteer searches, but the reservation is 1.3 million acres of land along a lot of mountains and flowing rivers. Plus, the last time Jermaine was seen was actually off the reservation. So the community that her family is reaching out to

is actually an hour away from where she was last seen. So where do you search? Unfortunately, this wasn't the first time a Native woman had gone missing from the Flathead Reservation, though. So presumably, a lot of these people searching had actually combed these lands before. Also, I just want to clarify, we're in 2018. Yeah. This isn't 1980s. This isn't the 1990s. 2018. Yeah.

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So the search doesn't produce any results. There is still no sign of Jermaine, but the police have already been working on some theories about what happened when they got 10 days later when they decided to start looking at it. For starters, they feel pretty confident that this wasn't a runaway situation, especially since, as we know, Jermaine is a mother. She left two little boys back at home.

So that's when they jumped to other possibilities. Either Jermaine disappeared due to some drug-related crime, someone she knows is involved in her disappearance, maybe she was trafficked. At first, police say they have good reason to investigate the human trafficking angle because Detective Guy Baker, the one who is officially now taking on Jermaine's case, says they have some information about people coming from out of state into Missoula to traffic girls. Holy crap.

Now, from what I can tell, this was something they had come across before at the Missoula police station. And it's particularly because there is a major interstate that runs through the area by downtown Missoula. And as the Missoula County deputy attorney put it, they could be, quote, swept away in an instant, which is why trafficking is a problem here.

Especially with the lack of GPS signals and cell towers in the area, it makes it easy for people to kidnap someone and get them out of state before they can even make a phone call.

Now, this is really all the information I have on the human trafficking theory. And I know that the police don't have much more than this either because they rule it out pretty early in the investigation. So it's the first thing they jump to, but they end up ruling it out, especially when they get a piece of evidence that shows what Jermaine was doing and who she was with on the night of her disappearance.

So remember how I mentioned the last bar Jermaine was at, the Badlander Bar, had security cameras set up outside. It was basically pointed in an alleyway next to the bar. And on the night Jermaine went missing, she was seen talking to a group of people out there. And obviously we know that one unidentified man that has been confirmed as the guy that was kind of following her around all night is there. And I assume, I guess we'll get to it, did the bar have cameras? Let's find out.

So in this footage, I mean, if you're just basing it kind of off body language, it's almost as if Jermaine is kind of trying to shake that man that's following her. Like she's trying to insert herself into other people, hoping that he gets the message that she's like not wanting to be with him. They are walking quickly behind her, but they can't really catch up with her pace.

Now, luckily, what the footage shows is a large group of people who saw Jermaine the night before she vanished. So these are people who might know the conversation she was having and who this mysterious guy was. So detectives head down to the Badlander and they start questioning anyone who might have seen Jermaine that night. And they find out that person that was seen following Jermaine around was

Was? Was her ex-boyfriend. Surprise. And father of her two kids. Surprise. Michael. Now, from what I can tell, they don't get much context from these witness interviews other than Michael's identity, but it's definitely enough for them to call him into the station for an interview. That's...

Now, Michael admits, yes, he was out with Jermaine that night. And after they left the bars, they got into his Dodge pickup truck. So this is more than police have learned this entire time. They now are getting from Michael where Jermaine went when she left the camera. He says he drove her three minutes down the street to a little grocery store called the Orange Street Food Farm. This is just before 1 a.m.

Jermaine apparently told him she was meeting a friend named Cassidy who lived right around the corner there and she was planning to actually spend the night at Cassidy's house. So Michael drops her off and he says she hopped out and that was the last time he saw her. But when police look into this Cassidy person,

They can't find anyone by that name that Jermaine knows, which is extremely suspicious for one very good reason. And it's because Michael and Jermaine had a pretty dark past.

So when police start looking into their relationship, they find an old report from April 14th of 2013. It was filed in Sanders County, which the reservation is on just outside of Missoula. And according to these documents, Michael had punched Jermaine three times back in 2013 on that night. Oh my gosh. So...

He pled guilty to the assault. He didn't serve any jail time. Instead, he was fined and given 40 hours of domestic violence treatment. I do have to say, domestic violence is horrible. And Peyton and I the other day were streaming on Twitch and we were watching a bunch of road rage moments. The amount of people who can't control their anger and go straight to violence or straight to hitting. Yeah.

There are so many people, they instantly, they get upset about something and it's punch, hit, violence, something along those lines. And it's just horrible. It's why teaching emotional regulation is one of the most important things you can- It's crazy. Just going straight to violence. Like, no, we don't solve problems with violence. Like, end of story. Yeah. So he's also told that he's not allowed to possess any firearms. Okay. Okay.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. With such few consequences, the abuse continues. The following year in June or July of 2014, it happens again. This time Jermaine and Michael have a fight at her aunt's house. Michael throws her on the hood of a van, hits her four times in the face and head, and then tosses her on the ground and spits on her. He's arrested again. And from what I can tell, there is no real consequences.

In November of that year, Jermaine calls the police again, says Michael has grabbed her, stole her phone, and tossed it in some water. This is actually illegal and, again, falls under the category of assault because the offender damaged the victim's phone when they were trying to call for help. Only the police say once more, eh, there's not really much we can do. It's considered civil, not criminal. Okay.

So we're obviously seeing a pattern here now, and it keeps getting worse to the point where Jermaine isn't even trying to hide it anymore. In May of 2017, she posts a YouTube video about her relationship with Michael, and she talks about how he's abusive and how he continues to pressure her to stay together or he's going to go to court and try to get full custody of their kids. She says the last time she refused a kiss from him, Michael threw her against a pull-up bar and choked her. What in the world is happening right now?

Now, the worst incident might have been the one shortly after that post. Jermaine and Michael were driving home from a concert when apparently he pushed Jermaine out of his moving vehicle on Interstate 90.

Now, Michael is arrested again and nothing happens. The charges are dismissed. Now, according to some sources, the couple does break up for good after this in 2017. But in early 2018, just a few months before Jermaine disappears, Michael follows through on an old promise and he decides to take Jermaine to court for custody of their two kids.

Now, here's Michael. He is from a white family. And honestly, he has a lot more resources than Jermaine's family. So he has a lawyer. Jermaine can't afford one, which is probably why a judge ends up ruling in his favor. He says Michael has residential custody, but Jermaine can have her kids Monday through Wednesday and then every other weekend. I'm so mind blown. So you're telling me that he has all of these charges and everything.

not charges, just history of violence on his record. They can see when the cops were called. They can see all this. The judge can see all of this and it's chosen to give him custody of the kids. Well, he's the one who has a lawyer. She showed up without one.

It's crazy though, as a judge. Yeah. Let's look at the dang paperwork, man. And also the judge says, and because he's getting majority of custody, you also have to pay child support. Oh my gosh. $800 a month is what she's ordered to pay. The one who showed up without a lawyer because she couldn't afford it. I'm so pissed right now. So all this to say. But I'm not going to be violent and I'm not going to hate anything. The police are looking at all this and they're like, ooh, sheesh.

The last person to be seen with Jermaine is Michael. And there's an ugly history between the two of them. There's a lot of domestic abuse. But here's what police find after speaking with Michael. That Cassidy person that Michael said Jermaine brought up, that might have been a name that Jermaine really did give Michael at some point because she didn't want him to know where she was really going later that evening.

which was to her new boyfriend's house, the one who lived just a few blocks from that Orange Street food farm. This is the same guy she seemingly changed her relationship status on Facebook for, and his name was Jacob, who Jermaine was texting at the bar in the hours before she disappeared. Okay.

So naturally, when police learn about Jacob, they question him as well. And he says he met Jermaine on a dating app. The two of them had a pretty strong connection. Things were going really well. But he says he was actually out of town on the night Jermaine disappeared and he can prove it. He says, yeah, Jermaine and I were texting that evening. She asked if she could go stay at my apartment, even though I was

gone and he said it was fine but around 1 a.m he called Jermaine to check on her presumably to see if she got inside his apartment okay he said the line rang a few times then it seemed like someone purposely ignored the call and sent it to voicemail and he never heard from her again

So with Jacob's alibi, they're able to rule him out as a suspect pretty quickly. But he offers up something that puts the spotlight back on Michael. Jacob says Jermaine told her the day before she vanished, she and Michael had been fighting again. He was yelling at her, asking about who she was dating, said he wanted to get back together, which would make sense why Jermaine could have lied to Michael that night and said she was staying with a person named Cassidy.

Only police learn Jermaine, or at least Jermaine's cell phone, actually never made it into Jacob's apartment that night. When police start collecting data from Jermaine's cell phone, they find that the call Jacob made to her on the night she disappeared was silenced, just like he thought. And they also learned that between the hours of 2 a.m. and 10 a.m. that morning, her cell phone actually traveled back to the area near the Flathead Reservation, specifically to a place called Ivaro Hill.

And the cell was pinging towers around there. Crazy. And you know who else's phone was pinging those same towers at that same time in the middle of the night? Who else's phone, babe? Michael's. Surprise. And that's because he lives in this area.

So Michael finds himself back in front of detectives because he says, I dropped her off and she went to sleep at Cassidy's, but really her cell phone silenced a call from her boyfriend and then traveled back basically to where Michael lives. I love technology. I just love that everyone can get caught now with cell phones pinging and it's amazing. So they're like, hey, Michael, why did her phone ping at your house basically later that night? And he's like,

He's like, oh, she left her phone in my car. And he's like, I actually tried to go through her text messages when she left it, but I couldn't crack the code.

When that happened, he said he decided to toss it out of his truck on highway 12. Okay. So he's like, she leaves it in my car. I try to open it up. I can't figure out the password. So I decided to just throw it out. Okay. He says he even remembers the mile marker. He says it was 94. Now you got to think this is pretty suspicious for this young woman to forget her cell phone and her ex-boyfriend's car on the night she vanished. But to offer up where he left it down to the mile mark,

That seems almost too good to be true, which it is, because when the police go to that mile marker, there's no cell phone. So in late June, officers pay a visit to Michael DeFrance's home in Ivaro Hill, where he presumably still lives with his parents. Because while Michael's not there, they do speak with his mother. And she says Jermaine has never been to their house, which feels kind of unlikely considering they dated for years and share two kids together.

But she also says her son loved Jermaine. He wanted to get back together with her, which I suppose was her reason for thinking that he was innocent. Dude, I get it. I mean, I guess I get being a parent and trying to defend your kid, but there's no way she's never been in the house. Like she's lying. She's lying. Yeah.

So police actually decide to come back a week later with a search warrant. And while they comb the house for any sign of foul play or other personal property belonging to Jermaine, they don't find anything. And over the next few months, though, police believe they know the area. But they just can't find the body. Yeah, they're like, we think that this is probably where the evidence or the body is hidden.

It's a pretty heavily forested area where Michael lives. There's a lot of wildlife. It's a place that covers hundreds of square miles where an animal might get to the remains before any human would even come across them. Actually using helicopters and aerial surveillance would be a waste of time because of how dense the brush is in this area. And while searching, they do find a lot of bones, but none of them are human. And police are like, listen, this is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

But after hearing the evidence, Jermaine's family feels confident that this is probably her final resting place, which is why they put up a billboard in the area. It's one with Jermaine in a baseball cap. It's a screen grab from one of her last social media posts that she made on the day she disappeared. And while police haven't officially ruled Michael DeFranza suspect, they keep a close eye on him over the next few months. And in October, they actually returned to his house with another search warrant.

And this time, they find something that's a bit problematic for Michael. They discover a large collection of guns. Now, I don't know if they missed this the first time or if this was some kind of strategy, because if you remember, ever since that 2013 charge for domestic abuse, Michael is not allowed to own any firearms and cops pull a lot out of his house.

I mean, seven different weapons, tons of ammunition. And when they asked Michael if he knew that this was part of his probation, he's like, oh, I didn't really know that. I didn't know I was not supposed to have guns. It also seems during this search, they find something else. With a team of cadaver dogs, they located several items that appeared to be bloodstained and those were sent to the crime lab. The problem is none of that DNA could be conclusively tied to Jermaine and

And they don't arrest Michael that day. From what I can tell, they just take away his weapons. I don't know. I don't know. I'm surprised that they haven't been able to find anything yet, like more concrete. And with all of this happening, I mean, they could have arrested Michael for those guns. For sure. They chose not to. Maybe because they're thinking we'll just arrest him.

I guess I'm pointing at the murder or whatever happened here. Yeah. You guys, we are getting into an ad and I need you to think about businesses with mind blowing sales like Death Wish Coffee or Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty. Sure, epic products and fire marketing come to mind, but the real game changer, it's

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So because of this, Jermaine's case runs cold and her family and her community are left to continue the investigation pretty much on their own. More billboards are put up all over Montana calling for any information on Jermaine. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council increased the reward for that information to $10,000.

And just when it seems like Jermaine's story might be another MMIW case that falls into obscurity, an Indigenous Cree reporter from the Okenese First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada, swoops in to make sure that that doesn't happen. And her name is Connie Walker, and she creates a podcast called

called Stolen, The Search for Jermaine. Now, Connie roots herself in Montana, traveling between the Flathead Reservation and Missoula, trying to unravel the mystery behind Jermaine's disappearance. And after the eight-episode series airs in March of 2021, it brings a lot of national exposure to the case, which also means a lot of pressure on local authorities because she's like, hey...

What's going on? What's going on? We're pretty confident we have a suspect. So in July 2021, after this podcast has gained a lot of eyes on it. Everyone starts going hard. Police finally just arrest Michael. Oh. I'm just like, it took this journalist to come in, which like, yes, we've seen happen before. When you put pressure on a case, police are going to be more likely to try and do something about it.

But it's just, it's sucky. That's interesting. They arrest him because no evidence has really changed? Well, they don't arrest him for anything related to Jermaine. They decide to arrest him for possession of those firearms. That was three years after the fact. Gosh, can you even do that? I mean, I guess so. It's just insane. They're like, we'll just try to make everyone happy and arrest him for the firearms. And I'm not saying they need to arrest him for Jermaine's disappearance. Because like you said, there's not much evidence. But just maybe, you know, fire.

Fire up the investigation again. Push a little harder, yeah, yeah. So he finally gets his day in court in April of 2023, and he is found guilty on four counts of firearms-related felony charges. And in September 2023, he is sentenced to 21 months in prison. He files an appeal that same day. And as far as I'm aware, Michael has yet to serve any real jail time as he awaits the results of his appeal. Holy... I want to say bad words. This is going to end.

And there's going to be, no one's going to be charged for this. Even though she was last seen with Michael, a very domestic, abusive relationship. They just don't want to. His phone was still pinging in his car. He said he threw it out. They've never found the phone. They've never found the body. It was pinging back at his house. So I think at this point, the reason they're not going to is because one, it has national news. So it'd be hard to find a jury. Two,

Honestly, I don't think he'd be convicted, which is horrible and sad because I, personal Garrett's opinion, I think he did it. Allegedly. Allegedly. Come sue me. I don't give a sh- Anyways, that sucks.

And meanwhile, those billboards of Jermaine, they remain along the roads and highways throughout parts of Montana, just waiting for the moment that someone comes forward with more evidence, maybe a smoking gun in Jermaine's case, a weapon, DNA, a body. None of it has been found yet, which is why Michael DeFrance, or anyone else for that matter, has yet to even be named a suspect in Jermaine's disappearance. Wow. And also, if her case had been taken more seriously...

before 10 days had passed, if they had found the evidence of this peeing within those first couple days, could the body have actually been on the property? Did he move it during those 10 days? I was going to say he had 10 days to move, do whatever, hide. Get rid of evidence. 10 days is a long time to clean and hide and get rid of any evidence. But these are the devastating realities behind a lot of cases involving missing and murdered indigenous women.

Jermaine's aunt, Valinda, hinted in an interview that she isn't exactly surprised by how the case has been handled. She said, quote, MMIW isn't something that just started. It honestly has happened since colonization and we've all kept so quiet about it. I think the world is finally realizing what Native American go through. She vows to continue the fight for Jermaine and be the voice she no longer has.

But really, I think that voice can be amplified. We might not be able to be boots on the ground. We might not be able to find Jermaine or solve any of these MMIW cases, but we can still draw attention to them. We can pass them on. We can put pressure on authorities. And honestly,

That is probably our biggest responsibility. My biggest responsibility as a storyteller, a journalist, a podcaster, that is how I can help make a difference. And you guys listening and talking about these cases make a difference just doing that as well. However, if you do have any information regarding Jermaine's case, you could provide the missing piece by calling the Missoula Police Department at 406-396-3217. And that

is the unsolved missing case of germaine wow i it's crazy i mean he's gonna be out of prison soon he's not even in prison yet he appealed he appealed that gun charge and they're still waiting for results so he hasn't even served a day which is oh my gosh i don't know i mean i it sucks that more evidence hasn't been found because i think at this point he wouldn't be convicted which is horrible i'm not saying that's okay i'm just saying if i think about it logically from the justice system standpoint

I don't know if he'd be convicted. Do you? I guess it depends on the jury. It just depends. Well, also, I think that if we could get some attention, some larger scale searches going on in the area by his house, because unless he moved her during those 10 days,

The phones were last pinging in that area. The problem is he's had years now to change it, to move, to do whatever. I mean. And again, there's so much wildlife there. The body could be scattered. And if there's no other evidence outside of that, which doesn't sound like there is, that's horrible. Unless they find some DNA evidence of her blood.

in the house which it sounds like they didn't and at this point you had years it would have to probably oh that mom yeah oh i hope she's listening to this what a what maybe she doesn't know but she was living there i don't give i'm pissed i'm pissed honestly i obviously don't have kids but like if my son's girlfriend and baby mama and i mean that in not a derogatory way like legitimate baby mama

went missing and her phone was last pinging with my son's phone on or near my property I will be sitting his little booty down and saying talk yeah no it's not talk because like I still love you but this is the right thing to do yeah all right you guys thank you for listening to this case today and we will see you next time with another episode I love it and I hate it goodbye extreme cold weather advisory in effect

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