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From Tinderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished. I'm your host, Payne Lindsey. There'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 could drop somebody's body in there. You could hide a body across this creek and nobody would find it.
That's the wind blue, right? My crow name is White Buffalo, Bishaytia. 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. This 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 still smoking. Torched as in? Arson. Somebody lit it up.
This place was torched just a couple of nights ago. Yeah, that's the latest fire. Is this a common thing out here? Fuck yeah. It's gradually getting worse. Not only are native women disappearing, but law enforcement is doing basically nothing at all about it. 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, Kerry, we want to go look around at this area. I'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 of your skin is. I want to see the content of your character.
The color of your heart is where it's at. Ashley 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 and 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. It will happen. The real justice is just finding her. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing?
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 this beautiful smile. She was a very caring person. Just had this big heart for everything.
This is one of the many marches Kimberly has held for Ashley since she went missing in June of 2017. So 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." Kimberly 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 10:25 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."
I 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. I 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. I said, "Go find her." Everywhere 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 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. Before 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, "What did you do? What did you do? 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, "No, not to look out. Don'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's seen her.
He listened and he didn't do it. It was 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. From 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 and that was the last thing that they seen her. Do you know who posted that video?
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. But 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.
Kimberly showed me these Facebook messages. On 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. So 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. When 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. It'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. And 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.
Let'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 thin ice. Does that make 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 gonna change. Them 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. 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? Just 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. I 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 gotta 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 him out somewhere and say, all right, you're going to talk or else. The problem is criminals don't fear cops. They 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, out of the blue, showed up at a particular search is because they're being nosy. They want to know what we know. There'll be people that, they wear two faces. We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to, or the succulents that adorn our homes, nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it.
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More than four out of five women have experienced violence. More than half have experienced sexual violence. What the hell is going on here? The statistics are horrifying. Not only that, but these numbers have only even existed for a few years now, meaning before that, no one was even collecting this information at all. Part of the problem is that these stories have been largely suppressed from the spotlight. Ashley's story, it's not unique. It's the same story as so many other people that we've met.
The same thing happened to them. Their loved one went missing. They're searching. They had no help from the law enforcement. But people like Desi Lone Bear Rodriguez are working tirelessly to bring these statistics to light, addressing this issue head on and fighting for justice. I'm the one that tells these kids, "Stay away from that uncle. Stay away from that auntie. Stay away from that grandpa." I'm the one that they say, "Oh, Desi's a crazy bitch." I'm the one that they attack for hanging up the truth.
And I'm used to it. As a native woman herself and a professor at UCLA, she's co-founded the U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network, which ensures that this horrific data is not lost and that it's used to help solve this problem instead. Desi is arguably one of the most powerful voices behind the missing and murdered indigenous women's movement, MMIW. Secrets run deep. Secrets run so deep. Secrets run generations. We're very good at keeping secrets.
You grow up knowing who are the secret keepers. You grow up knowing who are the secret breakers. I'm a secret breaker. I always have been. I talk. It roots from a place of shame. It roots from a place of hurt. It roots from a place of trauma. Generations of it. Our reservations were established out of bloodshed, out of rape and violence, out of the killing of babies and mothers and elders.
That blood is still there on our lands. We grow up there. It becomes a part of us. It's rooted in the fact that we have generations of our people who were taken and sent to boarding schools and violently abused physically and sexually and traumatized and then came back home into their communities and did what was done to them. Learned behaviors.
How do you reconcile, right, the abuse and the trauma and the violence that previous generations endured? I don't really think you can reconcile it. You have to heal from it. And that healing has not happened. And so that's where that silence, that's where that secret keeping comes from. It's so deep. And we pass it on generation to generation. At what point do we break it?
I grew up with a Cheyenne mom telling me, "Desi, whatever you do, do not drive anywhere by yourself off the reservation. Wear a baseball hat. Put your hair up. Don't wear earrings. Don't look like an Indian woman driving around in Montana by yourself. Wear Target. Targets for the police. Targets for just passersby, the thousands of truckers that drive through rural America every day. There's a lot of violence.
Our women are the easiest victims of it all. It's like, why are we here? Why are we here on this earth? Why was I born a Cheyenne woman if not to figure out how to protect the next generation of Cheyenne kids? It's a crisis that has only just come to the forefront for the mainstream, the rest of the world, the non-Indigenous world. For those of us who are Indigenous peoples, for those of us who especially are Indigenous women, this is nothing new.
It's important to know that as an Indigenous woman living in such a place that we have never been safe. We are a people still in the middle of trauma, still in the middle of violence, still trying to figure out how do we just survive? I've experienced it my whole life. I've lived under the threat of it my entire life. You know, it is not safe in our homes.
It is not safe for these young kids. The rates of sexual violence, physical abuse, all of it is so high. I have a four-year-old. Every day, I wake up scared for my son. And I think, "What the hell am I going to do? Where am I going to raise him? How am I going to keep him safe?" I want him to be on the reservation with our family, to grow up in our culture and in our language. But how do I keep him safe?
It's the same question my parents asked themselves almost 40 years ago. It's the same question my grandparents asked themselves. At what point do we break these cycles? Sex trafficking is a huge, huge crisis in Montana, particularly because we have Interstate 90 that runs through the state that connects East and West. Ashley was over on the Western side of Montana.
We know that there is a sex trafficking ring that's taking young girls, Native women, over to Seattle. We also know that there is a significant amount of violence in our communities. It wouldn't surprise me if Ashley was hanging out with some folks, was at a party, was out in the woods, in the hills somewhere. That happens all the time. We party in the woods. We party in the woods in 20 below zero weather. But violence, you're never, ever far away from violence.
That's something that is always a threat and always a risk. Wouldn't surprise me if she was murdered by one of her friends, one of her relatives, one of the community, and people have just been silent about it. It is not at all a shocker to me to think that there are people in Ashley's community who are keeping that secret. And it is likely a much larger group than one could even ever imagine. — Kimberly has been a leader of dozens of searches for Ashley.
She's held vigils, organized marches, and plastered missing person signs all over Browning. In the years following her disappearance, Ashley has never once for a moment left her mind. - Our dreams are very powerful. And there's some dreams that you can tell that are real and mean something. There is one dream that when I woke up, I literally felt her. It was this dream. I was up in the mountains. I seen Ashley.
And she was so excited to see me. And she was just like, "Hey, can you guys look at... This is my sister. This is my sister right here. This is my sister." And she was very proud and she had like her arm around me. She brought me up to the mountains and there was this lake and the water was just calm. Just beautiful sky, which I'd never seen before. And it was so clear and I felt like I was literally there with her. And when we walked away, it just turned dark and we can see stars.
and there was a shooting star and she told me to make a wish and I wished that she would come home. She looked at me and she said, "That's a beautiful wish, sis." She's like, "That is a beautiful wish. It's going to come true. It's going to come true." And then I woke up and when I woke up, I could feel her. I could literally like smell her. It was so real to me, that dream. I've never had a real dream like that and to remember every detail
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Okay, you can do this. I know, I know. Carvana makes it so convenient to sell your car. It's just hard to let go. My car and I have been through so much together. But look, you already have a great offer from Carvana. That was fast. Well, I know my license plate and Vin by heart, and those questions were easy. You're almost there. Now to just accept the offer and schedule a pickup or drop-off. How'd you do it? How are you so strong in letting go of your car? Well, I already made up my mind, and Carvana's so easy. Yeah, true.
And sold.
That destructive pattern of thinking where you doubt your own skills or accomplishments, out of fear of being exposed as a fraud. Over the years, through all my personal experiences with Up and Vanished, something changed in me. Just making another true crime show doesn't sit well with me. We can all agree we have enough of those now, right? To me, just talking about a horrific unsolved murder for hours on end, only to leave a big question mark at the end, does not sit well with me.
This is my job, but inside, who I feel like I'm really working for is Ashley's family, Crystal's family, and Tara's family. I can't imagine the pain that Ashley's sister Kimberly is experiencing, but I promise you I've actually tried. It's impossible. I could never truly understand what it feels like to have your best friend disappear without a trace, and for no one to be held responsible for it. My job is to give Kimberly a platform to tell her story.
to share her pain with the world, in hopes that something good can come out of this. That someone finally talks. That someone finally has the courage to come forward and say what they know. I've also realized that it truly bothers me to my core that there's people out there in the world getting away with doing fucked up shit, killing an innocent young woman, and discarding her somewhere like a piece of trash. There's a monster out there that's never been held accountable. This does not sit well with me.
The bottom line is, I care more about solving this case than I do about making this podcast. As Ashley's story unfolds this season, I want you to remember, as a listener, these are real people. And these are people that I really care about. People that you need to care about too. If we all share that same passion for Ashley's story, and the thousands of other cases out there, if we can just keep her story alive, I feel like we're bound to find her. What's going on in Browning, Montana is fucked up. And it's genuinely bothered me.
And the treatment of Native American people in our country is also completely deplorable. It's time to change that. And no, I'm no cop, I'm not an investigator, or even a real journalist in my eyes. But what I've come to realize is, it doesn't matter. What a case like Ashley's is missing is more people that genuinely care. And so even though I find it hard sometimes to shake that imposter syndrome inside me, what actually keeps me going every day is my empathy for her story. Nothing about what I do is going to be by the book.
I'm going to do everything within the confines of the law and my own moral standards to find out who did this. To create disruption, shake the trees, and truly get better at something that I feel like I shouldn't be doing in the first place. And one thing I've learned though is that you have to believe you can make a difference, as corny as that sounds. That this can create that magic scenario that forces the truth to come to the surface. Otherwise, what the hell is even the point of all this? I'm putting that pressure on myself.
I'm going to lose sleep over it. I'm going to befriend people who've experienced earth-shattering trauma. And I'm also going to befriend people who might have killed somebody. This season of Up and Vanished, you're going to get everything I've got. Ashley's family is going to get everything I've got. And I don't care what it takes. I'm going to find out what happened to Ashley Loring Heavyrunner. As with any unsolved missing persons case, it's only a matter of time before the rumors start.
But in a place like Browning, Montana, the rumor mill works differently. It's cliche to say, but literally everybody knows each other. And there is most certainly a handful of people in this town that know exactly what happened to Ashley. But I need names, a list of all of her friends, who she was hanging out with in her final days, who was at that party, where'd she go after. Somebody saw and somebody knows. We gotta break the secrets.
During my first interview with Ashley's sister Kimberly, she told me a story that sent me chasing a lead. To my knowledge, law enforcement has never explored. My dad, he passed away last year on the 18th of January. It turns out that my father, he got in a car wreck years ago and he had to get screws in his head. They put a fifth screw in his skull and he would wear these bandanas on his head. These screws always gave him headaches and he would tie it real tight.
The fist grew, it grew something on it. My father, he passed away because he had a seizure. When I went to his funeral, people kept telling me that Big Al knows something and that we need to talk to Big Al. All I kept hearing was something about Big Al, Big Al. That was the last tip that I kept getting. I thought that maybe that Big Al knew something about Ashley. What's Big Al's real name? His name's Alvin, dog taking gun.
A short time after I got home from the funeral, they found Big Al's torso. He was murdered and they found his torso. His torso was found just out of town. They can't find his head. His family had to bury him without his head. When Big Al was killed, that made everything real. They said that it was the Madsen boys that was a part of Big Al's murder. They said it was the Madsen boys.
Ashley, she had to go to court one time a long time ago because those Madsen boys shot at her and her boyfriend at the time. And the Madsen boys just got out of prison around that time that Ashley went missing. I don't want anybody to die anymore. To have anybody else be hurt over looking for Ashley.
Starting route to Browning, Montana for 82 miles. Continue on US Highway 2.
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. This episode features the song Riot.
by Camino. You can hear more by visiting CaminoMusic.com. Visit us on social media at Up and Vanish, or you can visit us at UpandVanish.com where you can join in on our discussion board. If you're enjoying Up and Vanish, tell a friend, family member, or coworker about it. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening. Every day we rise, challenging ourselves to work for what we believe in.
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