Ashley Loring HeavyRunner

Case background and investigation

Ashley Mariah Loring HeavyRunner was a 20-year-old member of the Blackfeet Tribe and a student at Blackfeet Community College when she disappeared from the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Browning, Montana, in June 2017. Described by relatives as intelligent, outgoing, and extremely close to her family, she had been planning to move to Missoula to live with her older sister, Kimberly. According to the Charley Project and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, she was last seen around June 5, 2017, though investigators and news reports have also cited sightings during the week of June 13, and her family has acknowledged confusion about the exact date. When Kimberly returned from a trip and could not reach Ashley by phone or text, the family reported her missing.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs initially led the investigation, conducting roughly six searches and about 60 interviews and identifying unnamed persons of interest, according to reporting by ABC News. Ashley's family, dissatisfied with the pace of the official response, organized their own extensive ground searches across the 1.5-million-acre reservation. Family searchers recovered items including a gray sweater, found in late June 2017 near U.S. Highway 89 after a tip about a young woman seen running from a vehicle, and a pair of boots. Kimberly Loring later said the family turned the sweater over to the BIA, which subsequently told them it had been lost; she said the family never received DNA testing results.

On March 2, 2018, the FBI announced it was taking over as lead agency at the request of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, citing leads that pointed outside the reservation, where federal jurisdiction applies. On December 12, 2018, Kimberly Loring testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, describing lost evidence and what she characterized as an unprofessional early investigation, and calling for scrutiny of the agencies handling cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people. Her testimony, along with national coverage, made Ashley's case one of the most prominent examples of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis and was cited in debates over legislation such as Savanna's Act.

By April 2019, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council were jointly offering a $15,000 reward, and the podcast Up and Vanished, which examined the case in 2021, pledged an additional $50,000, according to Investigation Discovery. The case remains open with the FBI and the BIA's Missing and Murdered Unit, and tips are directed to the FBI's Salt Lake City field office and Blackfeet Law Enforcement Services. Despite years of searches, interviews, and national attention, Ashley Loring HeavyRunner has never been found, no arrests have been made, and her disappearance remains unsolved.