Up and Vanished - S3E8: Arson

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

I've been recording you To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

experience basketball like never before with bet mgm an authorized gaming partner of the nba ready to shoot your shot we've made the bet mgm experience more immersive and fun for all types of basketball fans being on the sidelines is one thing this season experience basketball on the foul line exciting state-of-the-art live tracking technology and dozens of sportsbook selections await you at BetMGM Sportsbook. Tap into every game on your mobile devices. Get up off the sideline and drive to the basket yourself. No matter which team starts popping off, you'll find out why there's truly nothing like laying up a W with the king of sportsbooks. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any

questions or concerns about your gambling or someone else close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. Hey guys, it's Payne here. Just FYI, today's episode is a little bit shorter than normal, but for good reason.

Things are starting to heat up. From Tinderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished. I'm your host, Payne Lindsey. She told me one day, it was like the fourth day, she said, Sam, do you believe women's intuition? I said, I don't know why. She said, I think you got me pregnant that first day, that first night. And I think back, you know, and I think, fuck, if they killed her, they killed a complete liar. There's no women's intuition bullshit that Ashley had to talk about. Ashley at the time knew she was pregnant, and she knew who she was pregnant by.

Kimberly, Ashley's sister. He's a complete liar. Nobody understands that Ashley knew that she was already pregnant before she even met Sam. After speaking with Sam for the second time, I shared his remarks with Kimberly. Before Ashley went missing, she had told her grandmother that she was indeed pregnant. Kimberly later spoke to her grandmother and learned all this after the fact but apparently sam was not the father i was given

another man's name he was a family friend and for right now i will not be sharing his name publicly we spoke on the phone for about a half hour and he admitted to me that about a month before ashley went missing she told him that she was pregnant and that she believed the baby was his. Obviously, this is pretty big information. From my own research, what I can tell is that this man had absolutely no contact with Ashley anywhere near the time she went missing. At this point in time, I don't believe this man is a suspect. Then again, nothing is off the table yet, and I'll continue to look down this avenue. Then again, nothing is off the table yet,

and I'll continue to look down this avenue. In this case, three names come up repeatedly. Sam McDonald, Paul Valenzuela, who is V-Dog, and Tashina Running Crane, a.k.a. T. Not once did we say that she killed Ashley. Only thing that we asked Tashina was, where is Ashley? But she kept telling us that we keep saying that she killed her. And for many years, I'd never said she killed my sister.

She was the one that put that into our words. Because it was too hard to even say she's dead or she was killed. Tashina, she never wanted to talk, but she was always close. And we would go search. She would always pop up or she would drive by. And when Ashley went missing, she would park on the road. And there was this little tree that you can see, and it was her little green car. And it was always parked really close to our house and I would be up all night and I'll smoke and cigarettes and early in the morning

you'll see her drive by and she didn't even live there anymore so why she keep driving by keep in town and see where we're going all I wanted was for her to help me find Ashley. She was the one that told on herself. Like we're family. Why are you acting so weird? In the first month after Ashley went missing, Kimberly met with T in person. We're talking about Ashley.

And she was just telling me about all these men that she's sleeping with and all these men that she's been with. And she claimed that she's been with this officer. And then right then when she was saying that, all these cop cars, like, flew by. There were all these big cop cars. They all fly by in a line. And she freaks out.

She freaks out and she wants to find her phone. And she told me to help her look for her phone in her car. And so we're helping looking for the phone and we found her phone under the seat. And the first person she called was an officer, the officer Badu. He worked for BLES, the officer Berdu he worked for BLES the Blackfeet Law Enforcement for whatever reason T discloses to Kimberly that she was in a relationship with a Blackfeet police officer

his name is Kenny Berdu according to Kim when T saw a bunch of cop cars fly by she panicked and she went for her phone to call him it was on speakerphone and it said, he reached Officer Boudou,

and then right then and there, he called back. He said, don't worry, don't worry. It's not about Ashley. Kimberly not only found this relationship odd and suspicious, but very frustrating. At that time, we weren't able to get a hold of any officer because nobody would answer our phone calls. But for them to call back a suspect right away,

there's a reason why we have all these protests with these law enforcements. In Ashley's final days, she stayed with Sam. She was eventually taken to Divide to be picked up by Paul Valenzuela. And from that point, the trail goes cold. Sam was supposedly asleep, so he didn't see Ashley get in the car with anyone. But if Sam isn't lying here, then she did leave with someone that day. But was it Paul? And where did they go?

Several rumors began surfacing in town. We were told that Paul picked Ashley up and they went out to Bridge Creek. That's where they stayed at in this trailer. That her and Paul was fixing up. Is that trailer still there? Yeah. We were told by a witness

that went to go buy drugs there. Said that T and Ashley and Ashley were over there fighting. They're fighting. I haven't been able to make contact with the person who told Kimberly this story. But if it is true, any sighting of Ashley after Sam fell asleep in his car is huge information. According to the witness, Ashley was seen fighting with Tee at a trailer her and Paul shared. and Birch Creek. And those are the two places that we searched for Ashley in. These bears are big-ass smart cars. And we went searching behind the trailer in Birch Creek. We were searching with a group.

We were getting chased by one behind us and one in front of us. They were just like huffing and puffing. And you can just hear them breaking branches behind us. And then there was one over here making a noise, and he was coming this way. and so we took off that way. These bears were out there. And are they the type to move their things that they find?

Are they the type to move what they find and what they eat? Do they move them? And so we went into the bears' places to check if they moved her. Because they find things, you know, the bears. They find things. They can move things. Because there's so many grizzly bears back there. We had an angel on our shoulder, I guess, because we didn't get ate that time.

We searched that trailer. We walked in. The walls were painted. They were just painted. Parts of the things were ripped up. In the back room, though there was no floor, it was all ripped up. It was very, it was very weird. We were searching in the back of that trailer. We found something of Ashley's. Nobody knows that we found something about Ashley. It was found in this trailer, by that trailer.

But nobody knows that. We found her shorts. Bloody shorts. bloody shorts. The bloody shorts that Kimberly found, that she believed belonged to Ashley, are still currently being tested by law enforcement. Whether this trailer is significant or not,

something else very odd occurred here. So we were searching with this officer from Ponderay County. He went to search with us in this one area, and he got a phone call. He's like, I just got a call. This T is burning up the trailer there. And he took off. They called the cops and said that she was burning the trailer down.

She tried to burn the trailer down. T put the house on fire. And that was supposedly where Ashley might have made it. She made it out there. This incident is completely and 100% verifiable. Multiple witnesses have corroborated that T attempted to burn down that trailer. The plot here continues to thicken. And this back and forth is driving me nuts.

This is a, it's a very crazy story, but I believe that we can, we can get into it. We can crack it, you know, they will all fall on each other. I'm going to go. You can earn cash back on just about anything you buy from over 750 stores. If you've ever bought electronics, home decor, fashion and beauty, or booked a trip, well, you could have got cash back. But don't worry, it's not too late. It's free and easy to use, and you get cash back deposited into your PayPal account or sent to you as a check. Earn cash back at stores like Sephora, Old Navy, and Expedia.

It's the smartest way to shop, plain and simple. Start your shopping at Rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. For just $4.99, you can get a Subway 6-inch Black Forest ham sub made with our new fresh sliced deli. But the fresh slicing doesn't stop at beautiful Black Forest ham. We're talking tantalizing turkey, perfectly piled pepperoni, sensationally sliced salami, so you can lunch legendary, dinner deliciously, breakfast brilliantly. We're talking friggin' fresh slicing, and I'm yelling yes way! Get a six-inch Black Forest ham for only $4.99.

Only at Subway. Price and participation may vary. Extras, taxes, and delivery additional. Expires April 8th. After my first phone call with T, we continued to chat for several weeks. She seemed very willing to talk to me, but she was hesitant about doing an official interview.

In order to really get the facts straight here, this has to happen. So I made my plea for a sit-down interview. What part of Montana are you staying in these days? Uh, I don't want to happen. So I made my plea for a sit-down interview. I mean, look. You can say whatever you want. What you guys, what those ABC News people did to me, no. I'm not ABC News, though. I don't work for any sort of news organization. I'm fully independent. If you really had nothing to do with this,

this is your chance to let everybody know that that's the fact. I will meet with you. Excellent. We agreed to meet the next day in the parking lot of a casino. I made the drive, parked the car, and I waited. Oh my goodness. And waited. Hurry up.

It had been about 30 minutes, and I was starting to think that maybe this wasn't going to happen. Then she texted me. Change of plans. A new location. Hello? Hey, what's up? I'm not giving you an address. Go to 7th. Google it. Um, okay. And so when I get to 7th, do i go left or right you go right okay where the hell am i going here i don't like this at all

okay i'm pulling up here in a second going here. I don't like this at all. Okay, I'm pulling up here in a second. Okay, take a right. Okay. Keep going. Okay. All the way down the bridge. Pull up and park there and then come in. I was quickly relieved to find that I was meeting T in a local park, out in public.

She had one of her friends with her, but the first thing she told me was not to record this. So I didn't. Off-the-record conversations at this point are useless, so I was a little frustrated. I'm really trying to help here, and I can't help anyone if you're not talking on record with me. So my investigation continued. During my second meeting with Sam McDonald, he told me that I needed to speak to a lady named Wendy, and that she had some valuable information regarding Ashley. In the call here, Wendy is referring to T. He came down to where we live. It's like way off of Mountain Road.

She said that her boyfriend was harassing her. She just said that she was having trouble with her boyfriend and basically that she wanted to scare him away. She was high and she was just saying that, you know,

she was having trouble with her boyfriend, that he keeps harassing her and kicking in the door. And she borrowed a gun. She was going to have the gun for safety. That was just before all of this happened. Did T pick up that gun in person or did you leave it out for her? She picked it up in person.

It's not like a handgun, it was like a gun gun. Like a long gun? Yeah, and I never did see the gun again. I've never seen it again. You know, I was naive at the time. I didn't really think anything of it until when I started going through the scenarios

of how weird she was acting. She was high and she was dealing drugs. I don't know if she used that gun and I don't know what happened, but I do believe that she has something to do with it. My husband lives at Star School. That's where he used to live, and we were at his mom's a lot. His stepdad's place, it's about a mile from Star School.

I noticed that her mother's car had been parked there. She said it broke down, but it was a really nice, fancy Cadillac car. It was new. It was a Cadillac. it was new it was a cadillac it was nice and she said oh yeah i'm gonna get it moving it broke down my friend he hauls cars and crushes them she was determined to have him get that car out of there and crush it that's what he did is he just kind of went around and picked up cars and crushed him and got paid for it he got the car and crushed it and i don't know where he took it to he got the car he picked it up and had it crushed and she paid him through drugs why do you think she'd want to crush a car that was in good shape

because she probably did something wrong in it i i don't know I don't know. I don't know. Like, why would you crush it? Hey, how's it going? I'm Nelly Furtado, and I'm bringing the party to the 2024 Juno Awards. Join me in Halifax for Canada's biggest night in music, with performances by my friends, The Beaches, Maestro Fresh West,

Charlotte Carden, and me. It's a party you're never going to forget. Don't miss the 2024 Juno Awards live from Halifax. Sunday, March 24th at 8 Eastern on CBC and CBC Gem. I'm Samantha Cole, host of the new season of Understood, the Pornhub Empire. Over the course of four episodes, I'll tell you how a horny YouTube knockoff in Canada came to dominate the porn world, only to shatter their cheeky reputation in a massive scandal. The Pornhub Empire is a new season of Understood from the CBC. The Pornhub Empire.

Understood. Available now on CBC Listen and everywhere you get your podcasts. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone.

Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. One of the most unique things about this podcast is that towards the end of it, what you're hearing starts to catch up with real time. A few nights ago, I was hanging

out with a friend when I got a video message from T. Hey, Payne, it's Tashina. So why don't you go ahead and put this video on your podcast? Because I'm going to put what you told me and everything like that when we first met, because guess what? I recorded our whole conversations from day one. And you could actually put that on there too and mention how you believed me and how you coaxed me into it and all this and that and all that good stuff. And just post that so I could post about you so nobody can actually be interviewed by you anymore because you lie like ABC News.

You're a liar. You lied. I seen it tonight. Fuck you, Payne. You've lost my respect. I'm going to make sure that nobody fucking ever talks to you again. Well, that's not good. I immediately called her back.

You said that you were just going with it. You sat there and told me that you believed me, and then you're like, I'm going to roll with it. I mean, I am rolling with it. Well, be honest and tell the people the truth,

what you told me. i said that i believed something that i did it doesn't mean that my opinion can't evolve well mine either but can i sit there and post what you said whatever you want sure i don't care not really sure what she's talking about here but i can understand her frustration. It's not my job to be anyone's friend here, but I treat everyone with the same respect. If I discover valuable information about her disappearance, it's going in this podcast.

For the record, I don't think T did it. I don't think Paul did it. Or Sam did it. But being as objective as possible here, their names are synonymous with Ashley's case. Everyone will get their chance to share their side of the story. The only way to clear things up for good is to sit down with T on record and go over everything. So I did that.

Can't record on the other. Is this recording? Let's go. Okay. Cool. Okay. Let's go. You want to take this? No. recording here where do i just anywhere yeah Here, of course. Where do I put it? Just anywhere? Yeah. Then you can just put this wherever's comfortable.

Or like clip it if it's easier. Cool. Well thank you for meeting me, obviously. Your name is just central in this. I know. For whatever reason. And I think that by telling your story in its entirety, it can help us find out what happened. Mm-hmm.

Next time on Up and Vanished. Up and Vanished is a production of Tenderfoot TV. Created, hosted, and edited by Payne Lindsey. Executive producers are Payne Lindsey and Donald Albright. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Ophelia by Ezra Rose. Sound design, mixing, and mastering by Cooper Skinner. Additional production by Cooper Skinner, Eric Quintana, and myself, Mike Rooney.

Our cover art is by Trevor Eiler. Special thanks to Grace Royer and Oren Rosenbaum at UTA. Ryan Nord, Jesse Nord, and Matthew Papa at The Nord Group. Station 16, Beck Media and Marketing, as well as Chris Cochran and the team at Cadence 13. Visit us on social media at Up and Vantage, or you can visit us at upandvantage.com, where you can join in on our discussion board. If you're enjoying Up and Vantage,

tell a friend, family member, or coworker about it. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening. you