In part two of this two-parter, we speak again with Jason Blair about the disappearance of Ashley Loring Heavy Runner from Browning, Montana in June of 2017. And we'll return at the end of the interview for some quick final thoughts. Don't forget to follow us on social media at MissingCSM. And now we're going to break four commercial real quick, and we'll be back with Jason Blair to speak about the disappearance of Ashley Loring Heavy Runner. So for you as a reporter and an investigator, how deep do you start questioning people when it's all so new and developing? You mean early stages of the investigation or where we're at right now? I guess the whole process. How do you even kind of...
I don't know, interpret and compartmentalize the information that you're given. Well, I mean, you guys know this, right? Like when a person goes missing, what's the most important time? That first week, right? And pinning everyone down on their stories, making sure they don't have an opportunity to communicate with each other. We essentially have a situation here in the beginning where goodness knows what happened between all the players in the story in the early stages of the investigation. And when you have that foundation where law enforcement isn't really pinning people to stories in the beginning, but those people are able to communicate with each other.
you have much more, I don't know, a much more complicated mess. And I hate to complicate the story further for you, but let me add another layer. So a couple of weeks in, Ashley's family is searching for her. One day they're searching on a road. Tashina comes by.
drives in SUV, picks up Kimberly and her aunt, who I also had an awesome opportunity to meet. And they drive away in Tashina's car. And Tashina is telling them about how, even though she's not joining the family search parties, she's looking for Ashley. She's trying to figure out what happened. At some point, as the story goes, Tashina can't find her phone. And it starts ringing or she needs the phone. I can't remember which one it was. And so Kimberly starts looking for the phone at Tashina's request, reaches under and finds a loaded gun.
under the seat, right? Also finds an assortment of other things, but the loaded gun is somewhat significant. She puts it back. Right at that moment, Tashina finds her phone. The reason why Tashina was trying to get her phone was a bunch of unmarked police cars had gone flying by them. And so she puts her phone on speakerphone. She makes call to a guy. And the guy says, don't worry.
It's not about Ashley, not knowing he's on speakerphone, not knowing that Kimberly's in the car. That guy is a guy named Kenny Boudreau, who is a member, the first responding officer for the Blackfeet Law Enforcement Agency. Currently also, by the way, they're public information officer, which makes this whole thing even more complex, as you can imagine. But so you have an instance there where one of your early investigators on the case has a relationship. with one of the potential suspects who's clearly worried about it. And a couple months after that, Tashina is in the local community hospital and ends up getting in a fight. I've got documentation for this, but ends up getting in a physical fight with Kenny Boudreaux's wife over her relationship with him. So you have a real complicated situation here. And what initially happens in the investigation is I think...
The Blackfeet Nation is taking the lead. Then the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which also has a law enforcement department, gets involved. And then it becomes very clear to the FBI about eight months into the case that all these people at the BIA and Blackfeet Law Enforcement have relationships with people who are suspects in this case. And so you look at that first year of the investigation was lost, essentially. You can't make it up, I know. Now, is a lot of that like a product of this being a small town type of thing? Yeah.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I think a lot of it is everyone knows everyone. You're talking about a police department that has 17 total sworn officers. So if someone knows someone, there's a likelihood, and I think you'll see this on a lot of reservations too, one of the delicacies of being in law enforcement is it's often viewed as investigating your relatives. So you're also often, you're investigating cases that involve your relatives and also the victims are often related to you. So you're talking about a reservation, 60% of the people who live on the reservation are...
indigenous, higher than 60%, but that's only 17,000 people, right? So you start thinking about that. You're talking like 7,000 people. That's a really, really small group of people who know each other. What the family says from the family's perspective is as soon as it became clear that Tashina had a relationship with one of the officers, the FBI should have been brought in. But it took eight months after that. Yeah. And you just mentioned some of the statistics there. What are some of the other statistics of violence in this type of community? Well, if you look at the overall...
The rates in, I can give you Montana as an example, sexual assault, indigenous women, seven times more likely than the general population. You've heard that saying one in four women experience sexual assault is one in two. The vast majority experience some form of, you know, when you look at the lifetime surveys, it's something like 70 plus percent experience some kind of lifetime physical violence from an intimate partner or a stranger. It's pretty intense from. from that perspective. And also take that point I was making about 17 officers, divide 5 million square acres by 17 officers, 24 seven, right? So they're working multiple shifts. There is not a lot of, if you look at it as you could fit parts of our country in the year. There's not a lot of, you know, it's bigger than Delaware and Delaware has something more than 17 officers, I think. So that's kind of what you're dealing with in that kind of environment. I mentioned the thing before about free and reduced lunches. That's a hundred percent of the students.
100% of the students are eligible. The numbers that you got for the abuse, where does that come from? Because those are obviously reported, right? Because I'm sure there are many more that aren't reported. That's the other thing, right? So a lot of this comes from, this is a mix of BIA data. The best data out there actually comes from the state of Montana because about four years ago, five years ago, they began to make a real hard push to collect both the crime data.
And then also do work outside of the crime data through going through hospitals and going through other organizations that could also get reports. So a good chunk of that data really comes from the work of the state of Montana. So what do you think happened to her? Like, where could she be? Is this like a trafficking, human trafficking, sex trafficking situation? Or is this just kind of like a situation where there's one person who, you know, has been caught in some lies and is a known drug user who was, you know, seen with her last?
Yeah. So I think you have to consider in all of these cases, you have to consider, and I think we don't always think of this, but you have to consider that the person just walked off, right? That's always a possibility that the person just walked on their own. I kind of lean against that because of the closeness of her relationships with her family, her frequent communication with people. There were no signs of sort of like depression. She was maintaining relationships with people, even though she was having problems. You know, it's not a non-zero possibility that she walked off, but...
But I would consider it relative low. The second possibility you have to consider, and this was really important to me in going out on my trip, you have to consider the possibility that, you know, she was tired. It was actually, they had been up all night. So it was really an early morning drop off, according to Sam's story. And you have to consider the part, even though it's beautiful there on the top of the mountain, you could walk out into nature and something terrible could happen to you. So that's part of the reason why I wanted to go out there and see what kind of ground was there.
Are there trails? Are there pathways? Can you see from different spots? You know, a great example of this too, I think is more Murray's case. You could think like, how could somebody go disappear? How could somebody walk off potentially into the woods and never be seen? But when you put your feet on the ground, as opposed to looking at it on the Google Maps, you're like, okay, maybe this is a possibility. But what I found was the exact opposite of what I thought, that there were not a lot of, as I hiked around the trails and went different places, there were not a lot of places at the particular spot that Sam said.
where she could have easily disappeared. Further down the road, yes. Other places, yes. There's also something else about Sam's story that really bothered me boots on the ground because I drove up from his house to the spot where he said he dropped her off. And when you come up from his house at the bottom end of the lake, you can either go up the mountain and then back down to get into Browning. Or you can go around it.
and get there faster. So it did raise a question for me, like, why would you possibly go the longer way and up a mountain and then back down the mountain? So that physically being there and taking that drive led me to have some more questions. And another thing, I looked, there were a hundred better drop-off spots. And it really makes me wonder whether Sam's elaborate story about six days with Ashley is meant to explain to someone why he was either seen with Ashley or why he was seen at that spot.
And that really, I tend to believe that the ponderance of what I've heard makes me think that Ashley Loring Heavy Runner really did not disappear on June 13th. It's more likely, and all the experts tell me this, pay attention to when the electronic communication stops. And that would put you at Montana time, June 6th. And so I tend to think that Ashley probably disappeared in close proximity. And I don't want to discount Sam and Doug's story entirely, but in close proximity to when she was last seen by her father and when she was last seen at that party. And hey, it's always possible I could be completely wrong about Sam and it could be true that it was on June 13th. But another part of the story that doesn't really gel for me is that if she had her cell phone, if she had access to someone else's cell phone, knowing how communicative she was with people, how much she talked to them, how frequently, even when she was struggling with drugs.
The fact that she didn't communicate at all makes me think that either one, she was already gone, or she was in some position where she could not communicate at all. And so I really believe that something happened in that window right around there. And I don't want to get too deep into her drug usage, but when did she become, I guess... more of a addicted drug user as opposed to a recreational drug user. So I'll tell you a little story about me that will, you know, it's a good caveat to why it's really difficult. I was sitting at a bar in New York when I was a reporter at one point. One of my colleagues was like, you know, I used to think you didn't drink that much. And he was like, until I realized that you just take a different one of us to the bar every day. And I was like, hey, right, I'm here six days a week. And so in looking back at the timeline of drug use, you have to look at it through the lens of the family was probably told less. They were aware. They were told less.
And they were probably told somewhat late in the game. So the family sort of like sets the date where they became aware of it, not necessarily what they believe started it, but like four or five months before. Some of the friends put it about six, seven months before, but just that she had not opened up to her family about it. And so I think that's the nexus of sort of being connected to this older crowd is really that it was a drug and party crowd. And she was really just looking to mentally disconnect from the pain of her loss. And, you know, a lot of people go through those phases without.
anything really bad happening to them. Yeah, it's a tough age. It's an impressionable age. But was it characteristic of her to spend that much time, like six days, I believe? No one's ever heard of it. No one has ever heard of, yeah. Sounds out there, you know. Yep, yep. Hard to believe. Yeah, it's the six days part of it. It's the lack of communication with other people. It's the wild romance piece of it. A lot of it just does not.
track with the direction that she was headed in in that particular time. And we all know, like we can't possibly know everything about people while things happen. But if Sam's story is untrue, it does beg an important question for me. You know, if I exclude the potential that you were just some nosy dude sticking your nose in a case and you went in too deep, or some guy who made up some story and now had to tell it to the police because other people are going to tell you, it raised a question. You know, why did you need to say she was at the cabin? Why did you need to say that you were at this drop-off spot?
Why did you need to say it was a romance? Why, you know, it makes me question every element and whether that's because Sam's involved or... Tashina and Sam are involved, or Sam knows something about somebody else being involved, I do think that a lot of the answers are going to be unlocked through Sam's story. There's a reason why. I tend to believe him when he says the FBI has been there six times. I think there's a reason why. Because if I have to guess, having worked with FBI agents, and one of the things that hampers this case is nobody joins the FBI to go work in Montana, so they're usually there for about two years. Great thing is we've got some agents right now there who want to be there.
So hopefully they'll be there a little longer. But I think the reason why there's so much focus on Sam's story is Sam's story is the one that smells of so much crap. And if it smells of this much crap to me and you, it smells of this much crap to law enforcement. And they either want to knock it down completely so they can take it off the table and investigate what they have left, or they think he's the key to unlocking it, or it could be both. We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsor. And a thank you to our sponsors. Back to the program.
You kind of like summed up like a lot of the stories that we talk about, whether it's Maura or Brianna or Ashley, because there's this like crucial moment that happens in these investigations where even if you're like you said, even if even if you're not law enforcement, you know, it smells wrong. You know that something's a little too elaborate of a story to be. People don't explain things like that. So if that rings untrue, if that feels weird to like podcasters, that definitely is going to feel weird to law enforcement. Well, and it also, like, I'm glad you brought up Brianna and Maura because I think it's also, it's another connection. There's another connection here. Just if Sam's story is untrue, just because it's untrue doesn't necessarily mean it has anything ultimately to do with the disappearance. You know, I think the great example from Maura's case recently was the cadet whose fingerprints were found in her car. Okay, that's cool. We got the answer to the fingerprints. May have nothing to do with it. May have something to do with it. I tend to lean toward, my belief is that there...
probably is a little bit stronger connection to Sam because he's made up this elaborate story. It's a little too detailed, like you're saying. It doesn't match the timeline in a lot of different ways. He's not being exactly honest about what his relationships with other players in this situation are. And all that, going back to Tim's previous question, it really leads me to believe that there's foul play because why are people pointing fingers at each other out of the gate? Why are people so clearly lying? And I suspect...
Over time, as I've learned more about the case, I've really begun to understand why the FBI's focus is where it is and why they're leveraging these particular people. And I'd be remiss to say, if you want to add some more craziness to this whole story, Tashina has done some things that are pretty wild and out there. On TikTok, she... put up this TikTok post where she was talking about how she couldn't help it if you were pregnant and she stabbed you multiple times. She couldn't help it if you weren't able to call 911. And there are people who believe that there was a chance that Ashley was pregnant at the time. So Tashina has done nothing to point attention away from her. And I mean, that is not the only thing that she's done that sort of like pointed the direction at her. But again, it could just be her inserting herself into the middle of some kind of drama. Yeah, I think...
Sam's story is sort of the linchpin here. Yeah, you've got to figure that one out before you can get anywhere else. And one thing I want to say, just like you were talking about, Maura and Brianna to this point, there are these crucial moments in the case where it fell apart, but it was so heartening to find those court documents, whether I was supposed to find them or not. But it was so heartening to find those court documents and seeing how... These FBI agents were working this case in every angle they could, and they were working it hard. And I think that gave me, and probably when I brought them to the family to say, hey, guys, they really are, look here, here's how they're working the case. It was very heartening to me to see that in the background, they are working this case hard. I'll give you an example. When we went up there, we searched the site.
It was a really cool search because it was with Kimberly. It was with Haley Omiso, who was a classmate of Ashley's, who graduated a couple years before. Haley went off to the University of Montana, has created, inspired by Ashley's disappearance, created this firm called Okami Forensics. University of Montana sponsors it. A bunch of University of Montana PhD anthropology students were with us. And we were doing this really cool search. And one of the sad things, hearing Haley tell it when I had her on the podcast, she's 27 years old.
And since she graduated from high school, so about 10 years, she has had 10 classmates go missing, be murdered, or die. 10, in a school, in a very small school, in a very small school. But we were out there and we found something that could be evidence. Who knows whether it's evidence. Kimberly picked up the phone, called the local sheriff's office. I can't say exactly where we were, but it was in a neighboring county. And the sheriff said, oh, you know, the FBI has her sister's case. We can't come out and collect this evidence, which you guys know is insane, right? They should come out and collect it for the FBI. And so then we called the Blackfeet Reservation. They're three hours away from where we are.
So they can't get there to get the evidence. We call the FBI, can get no one at the Montana office. We finally call Washington headquarters and get on with their command center, their emergency command center that routes us to Salt Lake. And eventually we get the FBI agent to call us back. FBI agents spent a ton of time on the phone with us, figuring out like their closest agent was four hours away. So it's going to be really hard to give us. They got us an alternative solution to do it. It was a Saturday evening. The prosecutor called them back.
to help one of the U S attorneys called them back. So I do want to say that's an awesome example of how cross-shore sectional issues on these cases can create absolute madness. But I do want to say that these FBI agents, these prosecutors are dedicated to closing this case. Oh my God. That's amazing. Cause we hear, and you know, that's like, you hear so many stories where it's just like, nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. Family's calling, you know, they're saying nothing's happening. They're, they're getting annoyed with the family. You know, it's so refreshing to hear that these people in authority who are in charge of trying to figure this out are actually trying to figure it out. So.
Yep. What a, what a wonderful, I guess not, Oh, silver lining, but what a wonderful, what a wonderful, you know, thing to know that like, okay, things are actually being done. Yeah. Yeah. There's a beautiful story Kimberly tells about, and this was before I went on this trip where one day she was out in Vancouver, Washington state, where she was living. And she went into church and she was speaking at this event and she had a shirt for her sister. And she gave her talk and it involved her sister and she came down and a man stopped her in the crowd and said, I'm a BIA agent.
from another part of the country. I know some of the BIA investigators who worked her sister's case, and we all care about it. And they prayed together. And so one of the things, and I don't know why this has captured the hearts of people. I don't know if it's Ashley's personality and her backstory.
I don't know if one of the advantages in this case, which is going to sound kind of crazy, is that you don't have the same egos sometimes on the law enforcement side that you get, because you have the small Blackfeet group and you have the FBI, but you don't have those same sort of ego issues that you might get in other cases. But for some reason, people have taken this case. And I knew I was, ever since I heard Brett and Alice from the prosecutors talk about this case, I knew I was going to follow it deeply. But I found the opposite of what I thought I would find when it came to law enforcement. Well, that's, that is great to hear because yeah, it's so often we hear the opposite. So great to hear that. And Jason, this is a, this is a wonderful, wonderful conversation that, that we had here tonight. And you're welcome back on, on the podcast anytime, certainly any updates in this case, but other cases as well. This has been a lot of fun chatting with you tonight. Yeah. And I appreciate both you guys having me on and the chance to talk about this case, you know, any opportunity I can get to like advocate for someone like Ashley, for somebody like Kimberly, for justice. I want to take advantage of, I also want to.
give people an opportunity to, like we were talking about philosophically in the beginning, expose themselves to something different. You know, I grew up black in America and that's a unique experience. And I think until I started covering these cases and doing these interviews, even as somebody who grew up black in America, you know, both my parents from very poor Southern cities, a lot of poverty and struggle in my family. I knew nothing about the indigenous experience. I thought I knew something about the indigenous experience. So I just want to encourage people to just open themselves up. And it doesn't necessarily need to be about the indigenous experience, but open yourself up to something that's not like you. You will grow from it. You will become stronger by it. And you will be able to be more compassionate and contribute more through it. So I told you, Tim, I'd tie it back. Well done. We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsor.
And a thank you to our sponsors. Back to the program. Okay, we're back here after the interview with Jason Blair for some final thoughts. Lance. This case is pretty mysterious, but I think we really kind of isolated the biggest part of this mystery at the end of the conversation with Jason. And it seems to lie with this fellow Sam who was, you know, claims to be with her last. He claims that she was at his house for several days. Again, this is an older guy. Ashley was, I think, 20 when she went missing. Just the idea that she's spending that much time with this guy, it doesn't ring true to me at all. Yeah, I would agree with you on that.
I just get there's such a heaviness with these stories, with these stories of how these communities will become a victim to their circumstances. And, you know, it's really such a multifaceted problem when you're exploring these communities. And Jason was there. You know, we talked about that, like how he went into the community and was trying to find answers on his own right there in person and seeing how people function in this environment. And it's really tragic. I mean, we hear it all the time. We hear the stories about minorities and how drugs and these other influences and crime just sort of overtake and then snowball.
And it's terrible to have to talk about someone like Ashley who was, like you said, she was 20 years old at the time of her disappearance, was described as being smart and funny and feisty. And from the pictures that you see and people's descriptions of her, she seems like she at one point had a good head on her shoulders and maybe she made some bad decisions. Maybe some of the circumstances of the environment got the best of her. But you don't know what this person could have been. And so frustrating when like all of those dots can kind of easily be connected. But for whatever reason, things get held up in the red tape and the bureaucracy of investigating a situation like this. Yeah. You know, I was a little inspired to hear the end of this conversation because Jason mentions that they found something that could have been evidence.
And they were contacting the agencies and trying to give it over. But he really did give props to them for working together in this case. And it seems like they're inspired to solve this case. To me, it comes back to the person who was last seen with her is likely not being open, is likely not telling the truth. And that's just my opinion on this. But this seems like a case that should not be as mysterious as it is. It seems very clear to me that the person last seen with her is not telling the truth. I'm not calling him a murderer. I don't know what happened. But...
I don't believe his story about her spending that time with her and then him letting her go where he did. It doesn't sound true. No, it doesn't sort of gel together. It's not cohesive of a story, and it's a very convenient story, too, for him. And again, I'm just going to go back to Ashley herself and her family. Her sister, Kimberly, has been a very outspoken advocate for her sister, Ashley, and they apparently had plans to start a new life and get out of the reservation. And again, it's just so frustrating, especially when we're talking about this individual who we're not calling a murderer, but what we're saying is that his story doesn't stick and it's just too convenient. Somebody like that who has the potential to...
do harm on someone who is just trying to make themselves better. Sucks. It does suck. And, you know, I think his story needs to be taken with a grain of salt and that includes places to search because if he's telling authorities that he let Ashley out of the car in a certain place and we're saying he's probably lying about all this, then I'm guessing he's probably sending the authorities in the opposite direction or something to that effect. So, if anyone has any tips in this case, you can call 1-833-560-2065.
And that is the BIA, the Bureau of Indian Affairs under the U.S. Department of the Interior. And you could also submit a tip to the FBI as well or text BIAMMU to 847-411. And there's also the number to the Salt Lake City FBI Division that you can call at 801-579-1400. All right. Thanks a lot for listening to this two-part episode. We really appreciate it. We will be back with more new episodes this week.