Montana : Ashley Loring HeavyRunner
This week’s case takes us to Montana. Just east of the Rocky Mountains lies a town named Browning, Montana. This is the only incorporated town and headquarters for the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. The Blackfeet Nation is a federally recognized indigenous tribe descending from the Siksikaitsitapi people. The reservation is huge; over 1.5 million acres. That is more than twice the size of the nearby Glacier National Park. For a frame of reference, the reservation could fit more than 2 Rhode Islands or more than 1 Delaware inside its borders. The Blackfeet tribe is Montana’s largest indigenous population and is known for being a strong and aggressive force historically. There are over 17,321 members of the Blackfeet nation. In 2009, the Blackfeet nation along with 3 other tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy started a movement called the Iinnii (eye in E eye) Initiative. This was created to spark culture preservation, and land conservation and ultimately encourage buffalo to return to the area and be able to thrive. Buffalo is a major piece of the Blackfeet nation’s history. They would once follow buffalo around the country as they were their main source of food. In the late 1800s when white settlers attempted to extinguish native tribes by slaughtering millions of buffalo, the Blackfeet tribe’s population dwindled due to forced starvation, disease, and land loss. The tribe became forced to rely on government supplies which would mostly arrive spoiled if they arrived at all. This forced tribes to raid white settlements and contributed to the aggressive stereotypes that the Blackfeet tribe would be tagged with.
The relationship with buffalo is one of the Blackfeet nation’s most known traits. In fact, the victim I am speaking about today wrote a paper and presented it at a Bozeman college, and at one point they were so impressed with her research and skills she was recognized by the chief and tribal council.
Let me tell you more about her. Ashley Loring Heavy Runner was born on November 23, 1996, she was a tiny thing at 5’2” tall and weighing under 100 lbs. Friends described her as feisty, outgoing, smart, and kind. She was never afraid to stand up for herself or help another.
Ashley and her sister Kimberly were very close. As young children, they had to spend a few months in foster care and it brought them closer. They promised to always be there for each other. The pair eventually moved to their grandparent’s ranch in Browning, Montana with their other siblings. Here is where Ashley fell in love with horses, and the rain, but also where she learned about hard work. She had chores to keep the ranch running. Chopped wood, mucked stalls, fed animals. She seemed to work a little harder and a little faster than her siblings most days. Her grandmother, Loxie, was once quoted as saying she could always count on getting a little more work out of Ashley than the others.
While in high school, Ashley was an athlete and even for her tiny frame she was incredibly strong. After high school, she was attending the Blackfeet Community College studying environmental science but had made plans to move in with her older sister Kimberly in Missoula once she had returned from her trip and she would transfer to the University of Montana. While in college, Ashley had a speech class where one of the projects she worked on was related to missing and murdered indigenous women and how their cases are rarely covered or investigated. She had told her sister that she wanted to make a difference, she wanted to raise awareness or do something to help. Kimberly was proud of how passionate Ashley was not knowing at the time that her little sister would disappear just a few months later.
Then 20-year-old Ashley enjoyed doing what most young adults enjoy doing. Hanging out with friends, partying, and like many indigenous populations drug use on reservations is much higher than in the general US population. According to American Addiction Centers.org, 10% of American Indians have a substance use disorder and Indigenous people have the highest rate of alcohol use compared to other ethnicities.
Partying was a regular activity on reservations. The Blackfeet Reservation has many many party spots. Specific houses, in the woods, I don’t blame them though… when you have 1.5 million acres of land there is not a lot you can do out there.
In June 2017, Ashley sent a few messages to a few different friends on Facebook looking for a ride from the ranch to go to a party. She secures a ride, packs a few changes of clothes into a blue cinch bag backpack and leaves.
Kimberly was away in Morocco visiting her then-fiance, but had been texting and Facebook messaging Ashley regularly. They were making plans for when Ashley was going to move in with her.
On June 5, 2017, Ashley attended a party that was held at Vernon Wagner’s house. A video would be posted on Facebook that showed Leah sitting on a couch drinking and talking with people.
That same night Ashley Facebook messaged Kimberly for some money but Kimberly said she couldn’t send her any at that time because she was in Africa. She did ask Ashley if she was okay and received the response “Always”.
From Vernon’s, Ashley then goes to another party at Big Al’s and then left with Sam Macdonald. Sam’s cabin is approximately 30 miles away from Browning near Saint Mary’s Lake. According to Sam, Ashley stayed with him for a few days both of them in alcohol and even drug-induced haze. He admits to not sleeping for several of these days to the point he was hallucinating and blacking out.
Kimberly arrives back from her trip abroad a couple of days later and she didn’t hear from Ashley right away was the first red flag. Ashley’s silence was easily explained away because she was known for losing her phone or for it not being charged… I feel this is a common issue with late teens and early 20-year-olds… Heck, Melissa, your phone is regularly at the low battery and you are a responsible adult.
The family even stated thought maybe she was visiting a friend as she had done in the past.
When Ashley’s father was hospitalized for liver failure a few days after that, the family grew increasingly worried. Ashley cared about her family, she would not have ignored this health scare or not talked to anyone for this long. They decide to head to the Blackfeet Law Enforcement agency to report her missing. As we see with many of these cases, receiving law enforcement help on reservations can be a jurisdictional nightmare. There are limited resources on the reservation, to begin with. Severe understaffing, lack of training, and the fact that Ashley is an adult did not expedite her missing person report to be properly filed. There are only 18 officers covering the entire reservation.
Like so many we have seen before, the family was left to lead the way. A search ensued after the family involved the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The search lasted just three days. They found nothing. The BIA held to the fact that Ashley was an adult and could leave of her own volition. Even though the family was adamant that she would not have just up and walked away. She had plans with Kimberly. She was waiting for her sister to return, why would she run off?
Seeking answers from Ashley’s friends and the public, Kimberly received a tip that a woman, potentially Ashley, was seen running from a vehicle on Highway 89.
On June 30, 2017, Kimberly and family friends set out on foot in the area searching for anything they could find. Along the edge of the reservation, they found a torn grey sweater and a pair of red-stained boots that were the same size Ashley wore. The tip they had received about her running away matched the description of this sweater and boots. The family recovered these items and turned them over to law enforcement where they set them in an evidence storage room for several months. Law enforcement would later mention that these boots weren’t Ashley’s size, that they were a child’s size, and the sweater was misplaced and never tested.
Interestingly enough, these items were found not far from Sam MacDonald’s cabin. Sam claimed he and Ashley had partied for 6 days together. Sam claimed that Ashley came and went some during this bender and that the morning of June 11, 2017, around 1 am she was acting strange as if she was on some sort of drugs. Sam decided to take her home because he didn’t want to be responsible for her and on Sunday she agreed for Sam to take her home. On the way, she was texting and she told him to pull over at a roadside spot because V-dog was almost to get her. He pulled off the road and parked. They spoke about a cabin on top of a hill and then Sam dozed off in his car while they were waiting. In the 30-40 minutes he had dozed off Ashley disappeared. Sam believed that Ashley had gotten her ride from whoever this V-dog was. He originally thought it would be a relative maybe a cousin. Remembering the conversation they had had, he told law enforcement about the cabin and helped search with them up the hill to the cabin to see if she was just being curious. Sam was later told that V-dog was the nickname for Paul Valenzuela. Interestingly enough, V-dogs wife Tashina is Kimberly’s cousin.
On July 29, 2017, 10 volunteers on ATVs search all over the area where the sweater and boots were found. No other evidence was seen.
In September 2017, Tashina posted a 14-minute recording on Youtube saying that Vdog was framing her for Ashley’s disappearance. “Basically, he has Ashley and everybody in this town knows it” is what she is heard saying in this video. I searched for it but it was taken down. She also later recanted that she was saying these things just to make Vdog mad. Rumors started running across the reservation that Tashina had walked in on Vdog and Ashley and that Tashina killed her. Court documents later show that Vdog and Tashina were in the Seattle area in early June of 2017 but there was a report from a corrections officer that said V-dog was planning on returning to the Blackfeet nation reserve to gather his belongings just 2 days before Ashley vanished. Kimberly remembers reaching out to Tashina in those first few days of Ashley going missing to see if she had seen Ashley and she had told Kimberly, call V-dog he gave her a ride.
Kimberly also remembers coming home from Morocco and seeing that Tashina was in Seattle/Kent Washington area and that she remembers hearing that Vdog left Tashina there. Kimberly remembered it being strange but was focused on Ashley at the time.
Vdog who was later incarcerated on gun charges for 20 months told a media outlet that he was the only one who could tell them what happened to Ashley but was demanding a change of prisons which the media has no power to do. So he refused to share any information he had.
February 2018 rolls around and the FBI is finally getting involved with the investigation after the BIA requested their assistance.
Kimberly was not giving up. She quit her job in Missoula and moved back to the reservation to search for her sister. She has gathered volunteers for many many searches and followed every single lead.
In June of 2018, the family was granted permission to search a trailer where Ashley had been partying at that previous summer and the family learned that not only had Ashley been there… so had Vdog and Tashina. While searching the trailer, they found a maroon stain under some shag carpeting that resembled blood. Taking a utility knife and latex gloves, the family attempted to preserve the evidence the best of their ability and turned over the carpets to investigators. The family didn’t hold their breath on this being tested, the grey sweater they once thought was misplaced had been found but over a year later still hadn’t been tested for DNA.
Growing increasingly frustrated with law enforcement and their lack of help, Kimberly spoke before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in December of 2018. Imploring them to fix the issues that come from the lack of involvement with MMIP cases.
The day after Kimberly spoke, she received a call that human remains had been found on the reservation not far from one of the areas they searched. Unfortunately for Ashley’s family, it turned out to be that of a middle-aged man and the remains had been out in the elements for decades.
Kimberly and her family continue to look for Ashley and hope to find out what happened to her. They still receive tips, including Facebook messages from various people stating they know what happened or that she was murdered.
Ashley’s case is one of the hundreds of indigenous people’s cases that go uninvestigated, uncovered, and forgotten in the system. In fact, Leo Wagner, cousin of Vernon Wagner (the man who hosted the party where Ashley was last seen) has now gone missing. Are they connected?
There is currently a reward available for information regarding the disappearance of Ashley Loring Heavy Runner. Payne Lindsey’s podcast Up and Vanished did a deep dive in Season 3 and pledged $50,000 to be added to the $15,000 already raised.
If you have any information regarding Ashley’s disappearance, please contact the Bureau of Indian Affairs at 833.778.4758.
Kimberly’s advocacy is making waves. She was part of a new Missing and Murdered Indigenous People database and reporting system named MMIP Montana.
While researching this case, I found a statement from Kimberly Heavy Runner in an interview that stood out to me.
“Speak the truth even if it makes your voice crack”
Sources:
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/kidnap/ashley-loring-heavyrunner
https://uncovered.com/cases/ashley-loring-heavy-runner#timeline
https://abcnews.go.com/US/answers-years-20-year-student-vanishes-case-epidemic/story?id=65344265
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/kidnap/ashley-loring-heavyrunner
nbcnews.com/dateline/family-friends-hold-annual-walk-ashley-loring-heavyrunner-raising-awareness-n1270579
https://www.mtpr.org/montana-news/2018-12-14/human-remains-found-on-blackfeet-reservation
https://people.com/crime/ashley-loring-heavyrunner-indigenous-woman-vanished-2017/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064588456823
https://www.gofundme.com/f/ashley-loring-heavyrunner-seach-fund
https://www.krtv.com/news/mmip/mmip-reporting-portal-now-includes-the-confederated-salish-kootenai-tribes
https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/video/zAxHSJr6R1mrxm8BOd6EXrcXb7GVkUFp/
https://people.com/crime/ashley-loring-heavyrunner-indigenous-woman-vanished-2017/
https://www.krtv.com/news/mmip/dressmaker-works-to-raise-awareness-of-mmip
https://www.mtpr.org/montana-news/2018-12-14/human-remains-found-on-blackfeet-reservation
https://www.bia.gov/missing-murdered-cases/ashley-loring-heavy-runner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNMZEzlBbYo
https://thehueandcry.com/ashley-loring-heavyrunner
Up & Vanished
