i had such a wonderful time. thank you. >> reporter: tonight -- the mystery on sacred ground. >> she's my baby sister and i have to find her. >> reporter: a vibrant young woman, vanished. her family on a desperate search for clues. >> reporter: one of thousands of indigenous women missing in an epidemic. families pitted against a broken justice system. >> people are getting away with these crimes. >> reporter: and forced to take matters into their own hands. >> looks like the body was here. >> reporter: all the way to the nation's capital. >> there's something seriously wrong here.

"nightline," twice disappeared will be right back.

"nightline," twice disappeared continues. here now, juju ♪

>> oh my gosh, look at this picture. this is just ashley right here. >> oh, that one, i like that one. >> reporter: kimberly and jonnilynn cling to photos of their sister ashley. >> ashley is a beautiful and amazing person. my inspiration, my protector and my angel. >> every time i think about my sister, i just think about her smile. everybody wanted to talk to her, she was so beautiful and outgoing. ashley knew no stranger. >> reporter: ashley loring heavyrunner, a loving sister. >> say his name again, what is it? >> eugene. >> reporter: a doting godmother. a star athlete in high school, known for her contagious smile. she excelled at college. >> she was also incredibly humble about it. every time she'd get a paper back and got a good grade, she'd say, "really? i got an a?" or, "really? i got a b? me?"

>> reporter: her bright future ahead of her, until the tentacles of poverty, crime, and drug abuse that plague her home, montana's vast and beautiful blackfeet nation, wrapped themselves around her. >> she told me she loved me and she tried giving me a hug. and i didn't give her a hug. and then, she left through the door. and that was the last time i saw her. >> authorities and family in glacier county are continuing to search for ashley loring, also going by ashley heavyrunner. >> reporter: ashley's case is just part of a hidden epidemic sweeping across huge swaths of north america. >> in indian country, everybody knows somebody. >> a sister, an auntie, a mother that was murdered, or went missing. this is our life. this is what we're born into. >> savanna lafontaine greywind, who is eight months pregnant, has gone missing.

>> olivia lonebear went missing october 25 in newtown, north dakota. >> the search for misty upham led family to her body. >> nearly 6,000 missing indigenous women, yet less than two hundred logged in the national missing persons database. >> there is an epidemic of violence against native women that isn't being prosecuted and investigated effectively and people are getting away with these crimes. >> there's so many bureaucratic cracks that native women and girls are not just falling through but actively pushed through. >> oh, my gosh, it's like all red! >> reporter: forcing families like ashley's to navigate a complicated, and woefully underfunded justice system plaguing native communities across the country. >> kim! oh, my gosh. >> if me and my family didn't search for ashley, i don't think anybody would be looking for her. >> reporter: taking them from remote mountain wilderness. wimt >> reporter: and bringing

re's bullets right there. >> they say that i killed ashley, but i didn't. >> i was being framed for the disappearance of ashley. and i made sure the feds knew they are covering up a murder. they all are. >> there's a phrase in indian country that when a native woman goes missing, she disappears twice. once in life and once in the news. >> i know we have to find her. i know she didn't just up and leave. we'll find out, we'll find out. anything done in darkness will appear in light. >> reporter: ashley grew up here on the remote blackfeet nation in northwest montana. once lords of the high plains, this tribe survived massive land loss, disease, starvation, and even a massacre of roughly 200 people, all at the hands of the u.s. government.

today, this proud, resilient community resembles most small towns of the west. but from the 1979 kidnapping and murder of monica still smoking to the 2016 murder of matthew grant, violent crimes often go unsolved in this windswept region. >> unsolved murders is really high here. and before she went missing, we knew that it was bad. but then, once she went missing, and we started getting involved in all this stuff, we didn't realize how bad it was. >> reporter: ashley's family last saw her here at home on june 5th, 2017. for roughly two weeks, they thought ashley was with a family friend, but after discovering that wasn't true, they filed a missing person's report with tribal police and the bureau of indian affairs, or bia, in late authorities joined the family on several early searches, but according to the senate indian affairs committee, it would be two months before the bia seriously investigated the case.

>> law enforcement did not handle ashley's case the way they should have. just kind of blew it off as she was of age, she was just out there, she can do what she wanted. >> reporter: frank goings is one of just 17 tribal police officers tasked with patrolling the 1.5 million acre reservation. >> 10-4. >> we should be staffed up to 50 officers, but unfortunately, money is a big issue. >> reporter: but chronic underfunding from congress isn't the only obstacle. investigators must also navigate a complex jurisdictional maze. >> fundamentally, you have three different governments who are responsible for protecting public citizens in indian country -- the federal government, state governments, and tribal governments. and anytime you get three governments together, to try and do anything, it becomes challenging. >> reporter: here's how it works. most tribes can only charge their own members with a crime, meaning they can't arrest anybody else who commits a crimd

outside help. >> like if i was to stop a non-member right now, i'd have to sit here and wait for that deputy to get here. >> reporter: what's more, most tribes are barred from charging anyone, even their own members with major crimes. those cases can only be handled by federal agencies like the bia and fbi. >> i'll be honest. it is frustrating, but it's just the way it is here. >> reporter: for a missing rsoncaseike hley, where time is precious, confusion over jurisdiction can hinder an investigation. >> that can lead to either a lack of investigative resources committed by the part of the federal government, for example, or just further delay. >> reporter: facing a justice system seemingly designed to fail, ashley's family, led by her older sister kimberly, scoured the immense reservation on the hoping to retrace ashley's last known steps. >> yeah, there's a lot of rumors going around. they said that they could have tied her, that they could have tied ashley to a tree and let the animals get her.

it's really hard to deal with. >> if it wasn't for kim, we friend discovered potential evidence near the desolate town of babb -- a pair of red stained boots and a tattered sweater. >> it was the last thing she was wearing i guess. we turned that over to the police. it was just put in a room for months. >> reporter: kimberly found that sweater and boots not far from this remote lake house, owned by sam mcdonald. >> sam mcdonald is supposed to be the last person that ashley was with that people know of. we heard a lot of bad things about sam mcdonald. >> reporter: so how did a 20-year-old woman end up here at a lake house like this with an older man like sam? two devastating losses had changed ashley. first, her beloved granddad who had helped raise her passed away. video e h this ey found >> she lost two of her support systems. after that, she was just a whole different person.

>> reporter: in pain, kimberly says ashley began using drugs and started hanging out with an older crowd. >> yeah, his house is just right up there. >> reporter: we went to talk to sam about the six days he says he spent with ashley around the time she disappeared. >> this is what the cops done to my door. they searched my house and my property maybe six times. >> reporter: law enforcement questioned sam multiple times about ashley's disappearance. sam admits he partied with ashley and has been battling addiction for years. >> i get on the meth, which brought me to the point of being at the bottom. it was a lot of fun. i partied. i had a blast. i met with lot of women. it just came down to where ashley come up missing and it's time to quit and find her. somebody asked me one time, "sam, why?" what's wrong with you? why do you go out with these young girls? is there something wrong with me? why would a 20-year-old want to go out with a 55-year-old?

>> meth? >> party? like dwight yoakam says, "pretty little girl and a jug of wine. what's the difference? >> reporter: sam claims the last time he saw ashley was on the morning of june 11th after she asked him to take her to this pulloff so that someone named "v-dog" could pick her up. >> at that time, i leaned my chair back.t, i t hto sleep and when i woke up, she was gone. >> reporter: he claims he looked for ashley but couldn't find her. >> i thought, "well, she must have got her ride, v-dog." >> reporter: sam says he was later told that v-dog is a nickname for this man, paul valenzuela, shown here being arrested on an illegal firearms charge in 2016. the family says paul was seeing ashley shortly before she disappeared while he wasti

in a rocky marriage with this woman, tashina running crane, also known as "tee." >> first, it's sam, then it's tee, then it's paul. it's back and forth. it's like they're playing with us. >> reporter: paul filed for divorce from tee roughly a month after ashley disappeared. >> i wanted to know if it was possible about the bill, that paul. >> reporter: weeks later, this 14 minute recording of tee was posted online under the title "set up." >> basically, he has ashley. and everybody in this town knows it. >> reporter: in the recording, tee claims she's being framed for ashley's disappearance by paul. the post was later taken down. >> paul is trying to set me up. >> so you recorded that video? >> i did. >> i was blaming paul. i was very upset with him, because everybody was telling me it was paul. when i finally sat him down and found out the truth, i told him i was sorry, and everything, for even thinking like that. >> reporter: tee agreed to meet us in the fall of 2017 at a cafe. she claimed she had been searching for ashley, which the family denies, but she left the

reservation to escape what she says are false accusations. >> they said that i killed her. husband and her, but i didn't. >> reporter: tee claims she had nothing to do with the disappearance, didn't even know about the affair until after ashley vanished. however, during the early stages of the search for ashley, tee's husband sent text messages to ashley's sister alleging that his wife knew more than what she was saying. >> he said to talk to tashina, that she's not telling you everything. oh, my god. well, that's shocking. i have no idea why he would say something like that. >> is there something that you're not telling us about paul? >> i don't know, no. i told you guys everything. i didn't even think he would say anything like that about me. i thought he was helping me on this. that's horrible. >> reporter: while serving time for that firearms conviction, paul wrote us, promising he could bring us to who "did all this to ashley. trust me, i am the only one who can."

but he'd only talk if we got him transferred to a different prison. we couldn't and he refused to be interviewed. >> the fbi said the bureau of indian affairs requested their help to find ashley. >> reporter: the fbi took the lead on ashley's case in february 2018, nearly nine months since she first disappeared. >> i'm not racist or anything, but why do they jump all over trying to find a white person when a native goes missing, they just look the other way, blow it off. >> reporter: when we come back, the family takes their cause to our nation's halls of power. >> there's something is seriously wrong here.y ts a surprise call from the fbi. >> i think they found the body surprise call from the fbi. >> i think they found the body rightw,he skyrizis hingyetting i ♪ to bare my skin ♪ yeah that's all me. ♪ nothing and me go hand in hand ♪ ♪ nothing on my skin ♪ that's my new plan. ♪ nothing is everything.

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>> reporter: "nightline," twice disappeared continues. >> reporter: the disappearance of 20-year-old ashley loring heavyrunner shattered her younger sister jonnilynn. >> this was my sister ashley's room. after my sister went missing, i moved into her room. that's her graduation picture. that's her necklace right here. it feels really weird being in there by myself, sometimes. i stay up all night. and when i do fall asleep, i'll wake up and wait for her to come through the door, but she never does. >> reporter: for ashley's older sister, kimberly, her life has been consumed by a desperate search for answers. >> sometimes, i wish there was two of me, cause i don't know what i'm doing sometimes, i don't know. >> reporter: the family would celebrate ashley's 21st birthday without her.

and march to mark the year anniversary of her disappearance. >> bring ashley home! >> reporter: but then, they got permission to search a trailer ashley had reportedly visited the summer she vanished. law enforcement had already gone through it, but the skeptical family wanted a look for themselves. >> it felt really weird to be in that house. >> yeah, its pretty thick, almost too thick to be hair. >> right there, see how discolored it is? you think it might be blood? >> yeah. >> does it look like it could be dried blood? oh, my gosh. oh, my gosh, it's all red. >> don't know how well i'm preserving it, but getting something. >> reporter: the family bags the carpet for law enforcement, just like they did with the tattered sweater and the boots they found from last summer's searches. >> i don't know if its ever going to get tested because we also tried to do that with the sweater and we are still waiting a whole year for that sweater to

be tested. >> reporter: despite it all, kimberly's determination never wavers, even testifying before the senate indian affairs committee. >> reporter: just days before her testimony, ashley's name appeared publicly on the national missing person's database for the first time in 18 months. >> please look into the law enforcement that do deal with missing and murdered indigenous women because there is something seriously wrong here because our girls are people and our men are important. >> reporter: the day after kimberly's testimony, she got a surprise call. >> she was just hysterical. and she said the fbi called. they found human remains. >> it is too early to tell whether or not this body they oj the site of where the remains were found. you don't want it to be her, but then, you want it to be her because you know you want you want peace. we just want her home. we want it to end. it's literally a nightmare that we have to live.

every day, every single day, you know. >> reporter: but the lead was false. the body turned out to be decades old. yet another crushing moment for this family desperate for answers. >> it was a very hard day that day and i hope that they laid that man to rest. and i hope that we will get our closure soon even if it's ashley being laid to rest. but what we really want is for her to open that door and come through it. >> reporter: six months later, the family approaches two years without ashley, her absence still painfully raw for this family on the front lines of a hidden crisis. >> even though it's been two years, it's still new to us. and we will not get used to it because this is not our life. this is not normal to us. no matter what it takes, we're going to keep looking for ashley.

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>> reporter: no one has ever been arrested or charged in relation to ashley loring heavyrunner's disappearance. the bia and fbi both declined to be interviewed for this report, but a bia spokesperson wrote to abc news claiming the agency had conducted 60 interviews and

6 searches for ashley, stating their personnel "take all of their investigations seriously." an fbi spokesperson wrote, "it investigates 'all appropriate matters regardless of age, race, and gender.'" if you have any information regarding ashley's case, please contact this number.