Ashley Loring Heavyrunner - Episode 1 (Revisited)

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Speaker 5 I know there's going to be a twist, willn't they? A massive twist. At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.

Speaker 4 I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and the New Yorker.
Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.

Speaker 2 For ad-free listening and exclusive bonuses, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2 Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun is intended for mature audiences and may include topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, rape, and murder.

Speaker 2 The names of survivors survivors have been changed for anonymity purposes. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not reflect the views of Tenderfoot TV or Odyssey.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 9 From Tinderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished. I'm your host, Payne Lindsay.

Speaker 9 There's a place in Montana where the silence doesn't feel peaceful. It feels like it's hiding something.

Speaker 9 Out here on the Blackfeet Reservation, You'll find cracks in the earth that go so deep, you can't see the bottom. Places you you could lose someone forever.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 You could hide a body across this creek and nobody'd find it.

Speaker 5 Unless the wind blew right.

Speaker 5 My crow name is white buffalo, Biche Che.

Speaker 5 White Buffalo. So you have your Christian name and then you have your human name, your tribal name.

Speaker 9 I met Carrie Lance, an elder in this community.

Speaker 5 Actually, I'm short, I gotta move it up.

Speaker 9 He's been here his whole life and he told me straight up, this place isn't safe, especially for Native women.

Speaker 5 As a result of the murders up here, we started a neighborhood watch.

Speaker 5 We'd spend four or six hours a night out here riding around looking for stuff that somebody would think was suspicious.

Speaker 9 He's not doing that because he wants to. He's doing that because nobody else will.

Speaker 6 It's my home.

Speaker 5 I grew up here. It's where I grew up, where I was raised.
This is my home.

Speaker 5 So this is a reservation right here. You've been on a reservation since the top of that hill over there.

Speaker 5 That's a res line.

Speaker 5 We've had four buildings torched in the last two weeks and one's still smoking.

Speaker 5 Torched as in arson. Somebody lit it up.

Speaker 5 This place was torched just a couple nights ago.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's the latest fire.

Speaker 6 Is this a common thing out here?

Speaker 5 Fuck yeah.

Speaker 5 It's gradually getting worse.

Speaker 6 Not only are native women disappearing, but law enforcement is doing basically nothing at all about it.

Speaker 5 You didn't see any cops. You probably won't see any cops.
They're reactionary only.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.
I'll see if I can get some gas money and we'll go do it.

Speaker 5 And we go do it because nobody's doing it.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Doesn't matter what the color of your skin is, I want to see the content of your character.

Speaker 5 The color of your heart is where it's at.

Speaker 8 Ashley Loring, who also goes by Ashley Heavyrunner, was last seen in Browning in June.

Speaker 9 Ashley Loring Heavyrunner went missing in June 2017. Her story should have shaken the entire country.
Instead, it barely made a sound.

Speaker 8 The Bureau of Indian Affairs is now offering a $5,000 reward for information into Ashley's disappearance.

Speaker 9 But for Kimberly Loring, Ashley's sister, the noise never stopped.

Speaker 8 I had to make it in my head it was not my sister and that I was searching for a girl named Ashley.

Speaker 8 Train it in my head that I'm helping this girl named Ashley.

Speaker 8 Because every time that I knew it was my baby's sister, I could not move.

Speaker 8 If Ashley is meant to be found, then there ain't anything in the world that's ever going to stop that.

Speaker 8 It will happen.

Speaker 8 The real justice is just finding her.

Speaker 1 This is Kimberly Loring Heavy Runner.

Speaker 6 Her sister Ashley went missing in June of 2017.

Speaker 12 For the last four years, Kimberly has been searching for answers to Ashley's bizarre disappearance.

Speaker 8 When she would laugh, she would laugh with her mouth open and she had these beautiful straight teeth.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 she was a very caring person

Speaker 8 just just had this big heart for everything

Speaker 6 this is one of the many marches kimberly has held for ashley since she went missing in june of 2017.

Speaker 8 So in March of 2017, I got a call from Ashley.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 And that I really want to go to Morocco and see my husband.

Speaker 8 I'm married now, but before then, it was my fiancé. I wanted to go see my fiancé.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 6 Kimberly and her sister Ashley lived in Browning, Montana, on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, just about 40 miles from the Canadian border.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Phone calls, texts, Facebook Messenger, and nothing at all seemed out of the ordinary.

Speaker 6 After around three months, Kimberly came back to Browning.

Speaker 8 I landed on June 8th at 10.25 p.m., and she never called.

Speaker 8 She didn't call.

Speaker 8 And then the next day, I saw on my phone, it said, last active 18 hours ago.

Speaker 8 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 texts, and we couldn't find her.

Speaker 9 Kimberly had been out of the country for three months. She landed back home on June 8th at 10.25 p.m.

Speaker 9 Ashley never called. She never texted.

Speaker 9 Everything seemed normal until it wasn't.

Speaker 8 I was very numb. I didn't know how to take it.
I didn't know how.

Speaker 8 All I knew was to search for her.

Speaker 8 Just go look for her, go search for her. Just go find her.

Speaker 8 Everywhere I went, I seen Ashley.

Speaker 8 She was everywhere to me.

Speaker 8 Any girl that would walk by, it was Ashley.

Speaker 8 And to me, it literally looked like her.

Speaker 8 I would look at somebody, and it would just be Ashley.

Speaker 8 And then when I would stop and look again, that girl wouldn't even look like her.

Speaker 8 I seen her everywhere.

Speaker 6 But it wasn't long before some twisted rumors began emerging.

Speaker 6 The timeline leading up to Ashley's disappearance is pretty murky, but I've tried my best to recreate her last steps.

Speaker 6 There were a few significant events that occurred right around the time she disappeared.

Speaker 6 Before Kimberly made it back home to Browning, Montana, Ashley stopped by her parents' house and had a strange encounter with her father.

Speaker 8 She ran into the house, closed all his blinds, blinds,

Speaker 8 and she was very upset, very upset.

Speaker 8 She said, I did something, I did something.

Speaker 8 He was like, like, what did you do? What did you do? Like, why are you acting like this?

Speaker 8 But she wouldn't say anything.

Speaker 8 And she just ran over to the blinds and she was just panicking. But she would never tell him what she did.

Speaker 8 And then when the car pulled up, he went to go look out who was outside and she yelled at him and said, no,

Speaker 8 not to look out

Speaker 8 don't look outside

Speaker 8 she got mad at him and so he didn't look

Speaker 8 and then she took off she left

Speaker 8 and then she never came back

Speaker 9 the last confirmed sighting of Ashley is murky but there's this haunting story her father told Ashley ran into his house shut all the blinds and said I did something.

Speaker 9 A car pulled up outside and she begged her dad not to look. Then she was gone.

Speaker 8 That's the last time that my family seen her.

Speaker 14 From there, the events become a little more convoluted.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 But then

Speaker 8 it was a week later and we still weren't able to find her.

Speaker 8 And that's when all these really awful stories all popped up.

Speaker 9 There were rumors. A video on Facebook.
Ashley's seen at a house party on June 5th.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 She was sitting there on a couch

Speaker 8 and that was the last thing that they seen her.

Speaker 5 Do Do you know who they posted that video?

Speaker 8 Yeah, his name was Mario.

Speaker 8 He posted it.

Speaker 8 It's gone. Where did it go? They took it off.

Speaker 10 Why'd he delete it?

Speaker 8 Because everybody,

Speaker 8 just all over Facebook at that time. You know, everybody was like asking about Ashley Wazad.

Speaker 9 The person who posted it? A guy named Mario.

Speaker 9 But when people started asking questions, he took it down.

Speaker 9 Why?

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 She talked to me on June 6th.

Speaker 8 June 6th, 2017 at 12.31 p.m.

Speaker 9 Kimberly showed me her last Facebook messages with Ashley.

Speaker 9 Kimberly said, are you okay?

Speaker 9 Ashley replied, always.

Speaker 8 The last message I sent to Ashley was that I asked her if she was home and she replied with no.

Speaker 8 If she needed any help, she would have told me right away.

Speaker 8 Because in the message, I asked her if she was okay and she said always.

Speaker 9 That was on June 6th,

Speaker 9 just a day after the party. But no one knows where she was texting from.

Speaker 8 I don't know where she was at the time.

Speaker 8 I don't know where she was at.

Speaker 8 I believe wherever she was held a key.

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Speaker 9 By the time police officially declared Ashley missing, it had been weeks. Crucial time was lost.
But this isn't new. In Indian country, justice moves slow, if at all.

Speaker 5 When the cops get called, the cops come out here and say, well, we need a statement.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Why won't they fill out a statement?

Speaker 5 Because they're afraid of retaliation.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 When shit happens out here, They don't put any effort into solving it and holding anybody accountable.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 It's a cat chasing its tail round and round and round. We're not getting anywhere.

Speaker 5 When they try to utilize tribal courts to hold people accountable, it's not working because of the nepotism, nepotism, the favoritism, and they're not teaching the lessons that need to be learned.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And it's just, it's been like that for years out here, round and round and round and round.

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 5 All I could say is you need to stay on your toes.

Speaker 5 It's thin ice. Does that make sense? You're treading on thin ice.

Speaker 5 Out here, I've received threats and I've been told to back off on some stuff, but

Speaker 5 if we do that, they win.

Speaker 5 You know, what are you willing to do for your community? How far are you willing to go?

Speaker 5 If a truth don't don't get out, nothing's going to change.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And why don't they do that?

Speaker 5 Just another dead Indian.

Speaker 5 That's why. Just another dead Indian.

Speaker 5 It's one less pain in the ass.

Speaker 5 I feel that's how they look at it.

Speaker 5 There's not a fucking thing you can do about it. Nothing.
Absolutely nothing. It's

Speaker 18 cluster fucked.

Speaker 5 I don't know what the solution is other than they need to put more pressure on people who are suspected of being involved.

Speaker 5 So with Ashley and them, they got to put more pressure on the people that they think are involved.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 That's what they need to do, though. A couple of the guys need to take them out somewhere and say, All right,

Speaker 5 you're going to talk or else.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Rumors come in, gossip.

Speaker 5 My opinion is law enforcement need to pay more attention to the rumors, gossip, and hearsay.

Speaker 5 Why?

Speaker 5 Because

Speaker 5 there's truth to it.

Speaker 5 People don't want the truth to get out.

Speaker 5 If you're going to go up there and get involved in that, always be careful.

Speaker 5 If they think you know something, there will be people that pop up to try to discredit you,

Speaker 5 and there's going to be people. I've had people show up and help out on my searches that we suspect are involved.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 There will be people that they wear two faces.

Speaker 6 Indigenous women are murdered 10 times more often than all other ethnicities.

Speaker 14 Murder is the third leading cause of death for Indigenous women.

Speaker 6 More than 4 out of 5 women have experienced violence. More than half have experienced sexual violence.

Speaker 14 What the hell is going on here?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 14 Part of the problem is that these stories have been largely suppressed from the spotlight.

Speaker 8 Ashley's story, it's not unique.

Speaker 8 It's the same story as so many other people that we've met. The same thing happened to them.

Speaker 8 Their loved one went missing. They're searching.

Speaker 8 They had no help from the law enforcement.

Speaker 9 Desi Lone Bear Rodriguez, a professor, mother, and secret breaker, put it bluntly.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 I'm the one that they attack for hanging up the truth. And I'm used to it.

Speaker 13 Secrets run deep.

Speaker 13 Secrets run so deep. Secrets run generations.

Speaker 13 We're very good at keeping secrets.

Speaker 9 That silence is not just cultural, it's survival.

Speaker 13 You grow up knowing who are the secret keepers. You grow up knowing who are the secret breakers.

Speaker 13 I'm a secret breaker.

Speaker 5 I always have been.

Speaker 5 I talk.

Speaker 13 It roots from a place of shame. It roots from a place of hurt.
It roots from a place of trauma, generations of it.

Speaker 13 Our reservations were established out of bloodshed, out of rape and violence, out of the killing of babies and mothers and elders.

Speaker 13 That blood is still there on our lands. We grow up there.

Speaker 13 It becomes a part of us.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Learned behaviors. How do you reconcile, right, the abuse and the trauma and the violence that previous generations endured?

Speaker 13 I don't really think you can reconcile it. You have to heal from it.
And that healing has not happened.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 At what point do we break it?

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Don't look like an Indian woman driving around in Montana by yourself.

Speaker 13 We're a target. Targets for the police, targets for just passersby, the thousands of truckers that drive through rural America every day.

Speaker 13 There's a lot of violence. Our women are the easiest victims of it all.

Speaker 13 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 Cheyen kids?

Speaker 13 It's a crisis that has only just come to the forefront for the mainstream, the rest of the world, the non-Indigenous world.

Speaker 13 For those of us who are Indigenous peoples, for those of us who especially are Indigenous women, this is nothing new.

Speaker 13 It's important to know that as an Indigenous woman living in such a place, that we have never been safe.

Speaker 1 We are a people

Speaker 13 still in the middle of trauma, still in the middle of violence, still trying to figure out how do we just survive.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 The rates of sexual violence, physical abuse, all of it is so high.

Speaker 13 I have a four-year-old. Every day

Speaker 13 I wake up scared for my son.

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 It's the same question my parents asked themselves almost 40 years ago. It's the same question my grandparents asked themselves.

Speaker 13 At what point do we break these cycles?

Speaker 13 Sex trafficking is a huge, huge crisis in Montana.

Speaker 13 Particularly because we have Interstate 90 that runs through the state that connects East and West.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 We also know that there is a significant amount of violence in our communities.

Speaker 9 Sex trafficking runs along Interstate 90 from Montana to Seattle. Ashley could have been taken.
But Desi offers another chilling theory.

Speaker 13 It wouldn't surprise me if Ashley was hanging out with some folks,

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 But violence, you're never, ever far away from violence.

Speaker 13 That's something that is always a threat and always a risk.

Speaker 13 It 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 9 Kimberly has never stopped searching. She told me about a dream she had.
It felt real.

Speaker 9 A dream where Ashley, led her to a lake.

Speaker 8 Our dreams are very powerful.

Speaker 8 And there's some dreams that you can tell that are real and mean something.

Speaker 8 There was one dream that when I woke up, I literally felt her.

Speaker 8 It was this dream. I was up in the mountains.

Speaker 8 I seen Ashley. And she was so excited to see me.
And she was just like, heck, you guys, look at

Speaker 8 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 arm around me.

Speaker 8 She brought me up to the mountains. And there was this lake.
And the water was just calm.

Speaker 8 Just beautiful sky, which I'd never seen before.

Speaker 8 And it was so clear. And I felt like I was literally there with her.

Speaker 8 And when we walked away, it just turned dark.

Speaker 8 And we can see stars.

Speaker 8 And there was a shooting star. And she told me to make a wish.

Speaker 8 And I wished that that she would come home. She looked at me and she said, that's a beautiful wish sis.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 9 Kimberly believes that this lake is a clue and honestly so do I.

Speaker 1 And when I woke up I could feel her.

Speaker 8 I could literally like smell her. It was so real to me that dream.
I've never had a real dream like that.

Speaker 8 And to remember every detail,

Speaker 8 I believe it was Ashley.

Speaker 8 And she wanted me to look at that lake for a reason.

Speaker 8 I was trying to find her.

Speaker 8 If we are meant to find her, then there ain't anybody able to stop that.

Speaker 9 I've said this before, and I'll say it again.

Speaker 9 I struggle with this. Imposter syndrome is real.

Speaker 9 I'm not a cop. I'm not an investigator.
God, how many times have I said this? I'm just a guy with a mic and a gut feeling that I can't shake.

Speaker 9 But I've learned something over the years.

Speaker 9 Sometimes empathy can be your best tool. And I care more about solving this case than I do about making the podcast.

Speaker 9 I'm not afraid to say this anymore. I want to find out what happened to Ashley.
And I'm going to do everything within the law and my own conscience to make that happen.

Speaker 9 Before Kimberly's father died, people kept whispering a name to her: a guy named Big Al.

Speaker 8 My dad, he passed away last year on the 18th of January.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 These screws always gave him headaches and he would tie it real tight.

Speaker 8 The fifth screw, it grew something on it.

Speaker 8 My father, he passed away because he had a seizure.

Speaker 8 When I went to his funeral, people kept telling me that Big Al knows something and that we need to talk to Big Al.

Speaker 8 All I kept hearing was something about Big Al, Big Owl.

Speaker 8 That was the last tip that I kept getting.

Speaker 8 I thought that maybe that Big Al knew something about Ashley.

Speaker 5 What's Big Al's real name?

Speaker 8 His name's Alvin. Dog taking gun.

Speaker 8 A short time after I got home from the funeral,

Speaker 8 they found Big Al's torso.

Speaker 8 He was murdered, and they found his torso.

Speaker 8 His torso was found just out of town.

Speaker 8 They can't find his head.

Speaker 8 His family had to bury him without his head.

Speaker 8 When Big Al was killed, that made everything real.

Speaker 8 They said that it was the Madsen boys that was a part of Big Al's murder.

Speaker 8 They said it was the Madsen boys.

Speaker 8 Ashley, she had to go to court one time, long time ago, because those Madsen boys shot at her and her boyfriend at the time.

Speaker 8 And the Madsen boys just got out of prison around that time that Ashley went missing.

Speaker 9 They say that the Matson boys were involved, the same guys who years ago shot at Ashley and her boyfriend.

Speaker 9 The Matson boys had just gotten out of prison. Then Ashley vanished.

Speaker 8 I don't want anybody to die anymore.

Speaker 8 To have anybody else be hurt while we're looking for Ashley.

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Speaker 9 Looking back, this has been one of the most intense seasons of Up and Vanish we've ever done. There were so many twists and turns in Ashley's case.

Speaker 9 Leads that opened doors, and others that led us deeper into the dark.

Speaker 9 We weren't just chasing rumors, we were chasing people.

Speaker 9 There were multiple suspects.

Speaker 5 I had nothing to do with if she was...

Speaker 22 If I had do that day over, I'd have kept going, you know, because I was bringing her to the badger creek.

Speaker 22 And she told me to pull over up on top there because she had a ride coming V dog

Speaker 9 Sam the man who allegedly fell asleep in his car with Ashley in it on the day she vanished we conducted extensive ground searches even flying in cadaver dogs combing miles of this area

Speaker 20 There is a lot of wind here, so we're going to use that to our advantage as much as we can, but it is quite strong.

Speaker 20 You guys are welcome to follow me if you'd like, but I am going to go into some pretty probably rough areas.

Speaker 9 And I've had long difficult conversations with people whose stories change so many times, you start to wonder what they're hiding or who they're protecting. Let me get rid of that.

Speaker 9 You didn't discover something about her, him and Ashley right there?

Speaker 24 I remember seeing earrings, but he told me, and perfume, but he always told me that they were his sisters.

Speaker 9 And through it all, one name kept resurfacing. A man with a reputation.
A man with a nickname v-dog

Speaker 23 his real name is Paul Valenzuela and out of everyone we spoke to he had the most to answer for you may remember this intense moment from season three where I showed up randomly at his door any of this is written down what I'm telling you right now I'm gonna come find you okay because I'm telling you right now I'm just a podcaster it doesn't matter I'm not trying to point fingers at anybody check this out man I know the routine I know all this little this little talk I don't work for the big people i don't work for the news i'm just independent it doesn't matter everybody's always going to blame the bad guy okay everybody does it for every fucking reason so i'm going to tell you right now i ain't got nothing to do with that fucking loring girl okay never did never will kimberly loring is a piece of crap for what the fuck she's been doing my family what's she done in my family name it don't bother that shit don't bother me at all bro i don't give a fuck where you come from man there's other people in the case it's not like it's just you like there's sam

Speaker 11 go for it man go go do no i've talked to sam i've talked to t i only haven't talked to you

Speaker 25 about t the t is a fucking piece of crap too they're all pieces of crap okay give you to write that down they're all pieces of crap

Speaker 23 dude five minutes man please

Speaker 9 that moment was raw and real and since then everything has shifted Several people were detained overnight in Great Falls after law enforcement officers executed a search warrant.

Speaker 27 The situation developed between midnight and 1 a.m. on Monday, August 14th.

Speaker 9 In the years since the podcast, we've received dozens of credible tips on our tip line.

Speaker 24 She's asking for a ride to Tumedicine.

Speaker 24 She's looking at me and I

Speaker 24 she's trying to tell me something, but I don't, I can't believe what she's saying to me, but I don't know what she's saying. because there's nothing coming out of her mouth.

Speaker 21 It seemed like she was alive, but had to go into hiding.

Speaker 21 And she was with people that she knew.

Speaker 9 We've been sent disturbing videos, shocking photos, and cryptic messages from people who've stayed quiet for far too long. And now, V-Dog, Paul Valenzuela, is sitting in federal prison.
Why?

Speaker 9 For nearly beating a man to death with a baseball bat.

Speaker 9 And just like with Crystal's case, sometimes time itself can can work in your favor. And I can confidently say today, we're closer than ever to getting the answers we've been looking for.

Speaker 9 This story isn't over yet. In the next episode, we're going to break down everything we've learned since season 3 ended.
I'm going to share with you all the tips, all the new information.

Speaker 9 And we're going to stitch this together piece by piece until we finally get the truth. For Ashley, for Kimberly, and for every family still searching.

Speaker 9 Stay tuned next Friday to hear everything new we've learned over the past several years in the disappearance of Ashley Loring Heavy Runner and find out how you can help us solve this.

Speaker 9 And as a reminder, this means we're one week closer to diving headfirst back in to season four in the Midnight Sun.

Speaker 9 Stay tuned, thanks for your patience, and I can't wait to share with you what we got.

Speaker 9 You really don't think that we're gonna survive.

Speaker 9 You seem smart like you know my time, but I I hope you're not around when I draw my gun.

Speaker 9 You see the fire from my wind chest, I've been holding my tongue too long.

Speaker 9 All you see is the lights in the road. You're running things, you're running home, yeah.

Speaker 30 Starting route to Browning, Montana for 82 miles. Continue on US Highway 2.

Speaker 30 Start a ride in the middle of the night.

Speaker 18 Up and Vanish is a production of Tenderfoot TV, created, hosted, and edited by Payne Lindsay. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright.
Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set.

Speaker 18 Our theme song is Ophelia by Ezza Rose. Sound design, mixing, and mastering by Cooper Skinner.
Additional production by Cooper Skinner, Eric Quintana, and myself, Mike Rooney.

Speaker 18 Our cover art is by Trevor Eiler.

Speaker 18 Special thanks to Grace Royer and Orin Rosenbaum at UTA, Ryan Nord, Jesse Nord, and Matthew Papa at the Nord Group, Station 16, Beck Media and Marketing, as well as Chris Cochrane and the team at Cadence 13.

Speaker 18 This episode features the song Riot by Kamino. You can hear more by visiting Kaminomusic.com.

Speaker 18 Visit us on social media at Up and Vanished, or you can visit us at upandvanished.com where you can join in on our discussion board.

Speaker 18 If you're enjoying Up and Vanished, tell a friend, family member, or co-worker about it, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 7 Heather is a nurse practitioner from United Healthcare.

Speaker 8 We meet patients wherever they live.

Speaker 7 During a house call, she found Jack had an issue.

Speaker 8 Jack's blood pressure was dangerously high.

Speaker 27 It was 217 over 110.

Speaker 7 So they got Jack to the hospital and got him the help he needed.

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Speaker 27 If it wasn't for my guardian angel, I wouldn't be here.

Speaker 7 Hear more stories like Jack's at unitedhealthcare.com. Benefits, features, and/or devices vary by plan, area, limitation, and exclusions apply.

Speaker 10 Every story has layers, and sometimes the truth hides in plain sight. I'm Josh Dean, host of Chameleon, the podcast about people who transform, deceive, and survive.

Speaker 10 From con artists to unbelievable yet true occurrences, we dive into stories stories where nothing is ever quite as it seems.

Speaker 10 Because to understand the world, you sometimes have to change the way you see it.

Speaker 28 Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.