Jermain Charlo

Case background and investigation

Jermain Austin Charlo, 23, was an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes who lived on the Flathead Indian Reservation and worked several jobs while raising her two young sons. On the night of June 15, 2018, she spent an evening out in downtown Missoula, Montana. Around midnight she was captured on surveillance video talking with people in the alley behind the Badlander bar, footage that would become the last confirmed images of her. Among those with her that night was Michael DeFrance, her ex-boyfriend and the father of her children, whom investigators describe as the last known person to see her.

Charlo's mother reported her missing to tribal police on June 17, and her aunt, Valenda Morigeau, filed a missing person report with the Missoula Police Department on June 20. Detective Guy Baker was assigned to lead the investigation on June 26. Cellphone records obtained the following day showed that Charlo's phone pinged a cell tower at Evaro Hill, a forested area about 14 miles north of Missoula on the Flathead Reservation, between roughly 2 a.m. and 10 a.m. on June 16 — the area where DeFrance was living at the time. According to investigators, DeFrance later said the phone had been left with him and that he threw it away along Highway 12 in Idaho on June 18. The phone was never recovered, and Charlo's social media activity stopped abruptly the night she disappeared.

DeFrance has never been arrested or charged in connection with Charlo's disappearance, and police did not officially name him a suspect, though Oxygen's Cold Justice program described him in 2025 as the investigation's prime focus. In 2013 he pleaded guilty to partner or family member assault against Charlo, a conviction that barred him from possessing firearms. In October 2018 officers executing a search at his Evaro Hill property seized guns, leading to a federal firearms prosecution; he was convicted, but in December 2024 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that conviction and vacated his sentence. DeFrance declined interview requests from CBS's 48 Hours.

Missoula police treat the case as a no-body homicide. Detective Baker has said the investigation never truly went cold, and searches over the years have covered Evaro Hill and surrounding terrain with drones, search dogs, volunteers, and assistance from the University of Montana's forensic anthropology department. Investigators pursued and largely ruled out a human trafficking theory, and by the five-year mark Baker said he believed Charlo was no longer alive. Her family placed a billboard with her photograph along Highway 93 in October 2018 and has continued to press for answers.

The case drew national attention as part of the broader missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis. It was the subject of journalist Connie Walker's 2021 podcast Stolen: The Search for Jermain, a 48 Hours documentary that aired never-before-seen surveillance footage, and a November 2025 episode of Oxygen's Cold Justice, after which Detective Baker reported receiving roughly two dozen tips. As of 2026 the case remains open and unsolved, and no arrest has been made. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Missoula Police Department.