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Casper, Wyoming. Wyoming, wow. And Sharon in 1984, she is 12 years old, but today she would be 50. No! This is about a kid? Yeah. And just as a trigger warning off the top, there is sexual assault mentioned in this case, and I'll give another warning whenever I get closer to the moments where it's discussed, but I just want to give you a heads up now in case maybe you're not in the space to listen to that today, which is fine. Thank you for that, Allie. We love
boundaries and keeping ourselves comfortable and safe. Yeah, like it's a podcast. You don't need to upset yourself with a podcast. It puts the podcast down. So Sharon Bald Eagle, she is 12 years old in 1984, and she's 5'3", 110 pounds, and she has black hair and dark brown eyes. And she is described as being bright, talented, musical, independent, and tough for her age. It's reported that she
routinely beat up boys that were in her grade. She loved to break dance, and her family lives on the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation near Eagle Butte in South Dakota. Tuesday, September 18th, 1984, Sharon is attending the Brainerd Indian School and plans to run away with a friend from the nearby Hot Springs High School in South Dakota. Sharon is running away to Idaho where her brother is and where she had lived previously with a family as part of the Indian
placement program through the Mormon Church. So what this is, if our listeners are not familiar, the Indian placement program, when it was reported, it was
talked about like a foster family. What would happen is the Church of Latter-day Saints Mormons, they offered a program where if they baptized Native American children, they would be allowed to stay with a Mormon family during the school year, and instead of attending what was called Indian schools, Indian boarding schools, they could attend a public school with their Mormon family and then
return to their, you know, their true family in the summertime. Sharon had previously participated in this program the year before, and she thought that she was going to continue on into the school year and go back to Idaho to be with her Mormon family out there. They're called the Dexter's, but Sharon is kicked out of the program super unexpectedly and on very short notice. So four days before she was set to return to Idaho, she's kicked out of this program, and this
comes as a shock to her foster family, the Dexter's as well. They were anticipating her coming and were surprised when she didn't show up with everybody else. And the reasoning for this is they said that Sharon had been kicked out because of her attitude. Oh, you would have been kicked out in two seconds? Two seconds. Missy Sue. Yeah, it was reported that she fought with her foster siblings, but her foster family was like, that was all ironed out pretty
quickly. It was just at the beginning, and we wanted her back. We loved her. We were expecting her. So that happens really unexpectedly. So then Sharon has to go to the Brainerd Indian School, which is near Hot Springs, South Dakota. So if our listeners aren't familiar with Indian schools, they were part of the US and Canada's colonization and forced assimilation of indigenous families through their children. So they would force children to go to these schools
where they were not allowed to speak their native language. They were not allowed to participate in ceremonies or practice their religions that they would have on their reservations or with their tribes. That's not right. No, it's horrible. And a lot of- Yeah, it's like fucking colonizers. Yeah, and a lot of
culture was lost. A lot of language was lost. You know, like indigenous speakers, there's generational gaps where nobody knows the language, and they're trying to re-educate and reintroduce the language so that way it's not lost whenever older folks die. So that's the Indian placement program and Indian schools very quickly in a nutshell. That Tuesday, September 18th, Sharon boards a bus for a basketball game in Hot Springs where she'll meet up
with her friend who is 15 years old. And her friend is not named because she's a minor, so I will be referring to her throughout this as the 15-year-old or the companion. And Sharon is carrying a red bag with her, and it should be noted that Sharon has never run away before, but it just seems like she genuinely wants to get out of here and go be with her brother in Idaho with this family and go to public school. So Sharon and her 15-year-old friend run away from the
basketball game and they start hitchhiking out of South Dakota. So on Wednesday, September 19th, 1984, the girls are hitchhiking through Wyoming, so they've made it into Wyoming at this point, and they are picked up by Royal Russell Long, a 49-year-old trucker who also owned a go-kart track in nearby Casper, Wyoming. Again, this is just a trigger warning that I'm going to talk about some upsetting things, including sexual assault, for the next couple minutes. Press
pause if you want to or skip on through. So the girls are picked up by Long, and he takes the girls to his home in Evansville, Wyoming, and he feeds them. Long offers the girls $100 for sex, but they refuse. He then beats them up and ties them up at gunpoint, and the 15-year-old is sexually assaulted. When Long is not paying attention, is distracted by something, there's different reports of what happens at this time, the 15-year-old manages to
escape and gets out of his house and runs to a neighbor and gets help. So the 15-year-old, she calls the police, but when she returns with the police, Long and Sharon are nowhere to be found, so they're gone. Damn, he took his moment like to move. To get out, yeah. It was fast, you know. Yeah, and I couldn't find exactly how long between this 15-year-old raising the flag and, you know, calling police and to when
they arrived there. I don't know exactly how long it was. I don't know if it was minutes or longer, because this is Wyoming, so there's a lot of land between places, you know. End of the trigger warning, just so everyone's aware, but it'll pop back up again, so I'll warn you again. So no reports exactly on what happens that next day, Thursday. I assume a search is taking place, because they know that Sharon, a 12-year-old, is missing and with somebody who had them tied up in
his home. So I assume a search is happening, but I couldn't find reports of that. On Friday, September 21st, the police search is concentrated on southeast Wyoming, and this, they'll stay there through Saturday, and they focus here because of a tip that Long's vehicle was seen, which is a 1980 or a 1981 brown Chevy pickup. He was seen near Pine Bluffs, but police searched this area.
There's no trace. Nothing. On Saturday, so that weekend, September 22nd, Taylor Bald Eagle, that's Sharon's father, travels from Eagle Butte to Casper in order to appear in front of the media, and he says, quote, I want to know where my daughter is. She is my life, my reason for living. No. Why? Why do you put these things in here? I know you have to, and I'm just hearing it for the first time. Please continue, and thank you for all the hard work you do. Taylor also has a
message for Long. He says, quote, from father to father, from man to man, I want you to know I hope you think about this and call me or contact me soon. And then Taylor goes on to say, quote, he's 49 years old. You don't experience that much living without having some feelings, something inside, end quote. All of his media attention works, though. A tip comes in, and the tip, allegedly, is from Long
himself. And... Why allegedly? Well, originally, it said that he called, but then later it does seem like it's confirmed that he is calling the police at this time and giving them this tip. And he says that it's him when he calls, so he's not pretending to be somebody else. But a tip comes in saying, from Long, that he had put Sharon on a truck that was headed to Fort Worth, Texas. And the caller continued to say that he would turn himself in when authorities
confirmed Sharon was safe. And it was noted that Sharon has an uncle in Fort Worth, and that's Taylor's brother. So that tip comes in, and then on Sunday, September 23rd, Taylor meets with the 15-year-old who is at a hospital in Casper, Wyoming. And she tells him that Sharon has not been assaulted. Okay. While she was there. Sure. Yeah. Monday, September 24th, late at night, Taylor gets a call from an assistant district attorney that they got a reliable source and believed
Sharon to be alive and well, and that she was spotted in Casper, Wyoming. The next day, September 28th, this is Tuesday, we're coming up on a week that Sharon ran away. Police in Fort Worth have found no trace of Sharon, and Taylor, her father, keeps vigil by his phone saying, quote, that's the only thing I'm living and breathing for now. I'm spending all my time by this phone. I like can't think about this man. I know. Taylor Baldiegel is still alive and is pretty active in
bringing awareness to her case. That's amazing that he's still here. He's got to be like in his 70s now. Maybe even 80s. Yeah. That sentence of like, this is what I'm like living and breathing for, like not even like I'm living and breathing for this person, but like I'm living and breathing in like hope that they're okay and that I will find them and like that sits in me very deeply. Yeah. So I like,
so yeah, it's really heartbreaking. Yeah. So one week after Sharon has been abducted at this point, so this is Wednesday, September 26th, at 940 p.m. FBI agents arrest Long in Albuquerque, New Mexico as he was leaving a telephone booth outside of a convenience store. He did not resist arrest, but did have a nine-millimeter pistol on him and he was arrested for a warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. So that was what the FBI was arresting him on and
why they got involved because he was crossing state lines. Sharon is not with him at this point and there's no sign of her. The search for Sharon continues quote everywhere. The assistant agent in charge said, Evansville, Wyoming investigator Stephen Myrum said nothing in Long's criminal history would suggest homicide, but evidence found in Long's home indicated that Sharon might have been injured and in need of medical attention and later it comes out that
Sharon had had a nosebleed at his house. So there was some blood found in his home and it is believed that this is what Stephen Myrum is referring to. Okay. Yeah, of course she had a nosebleed. She was attacked. Yeah. Like the day after he's caught there's no news on Sharon and Long pleads the fifth every time
he's asked about it. He continues to plead the fifth which is his right to remain silent and the Natrona County DA said quote we have no information where she might be and then Taylor her father says quote Long hasn't said anything. That makes a person apprehensive, but you have to have faith. I hope she's alive somewhere. That's all I have to hang on to end quote. The next day this is a direct quote from the FBI here quote obviously we're looking hard but so far
zilch end quote. I would hate for that man to be like I don't know like if we had a baby you know I would hate for this man to be in charge of my McDonald's order. You know what I mean like we went to get we went to get your we went to get your happy meal zilch obviously we're looking but so far zilch. My god. I
was gonna say like oh we went to grab your baby from the nursery zilch. I think I don't know it seems like it should be illegal for the word zilch to be used in a criminal investigation like you should be arrested if you use that word while you investigate it straight to jail. Jail. You? Jail. Jail. Still no news in Texas and this is a quote from Taylor again quote the bad part of it is he must have got
her to talk because he found out I have a brother at Fort Worth. I want to think he might have her somewhere in custody with other people maybe tied up or something because in order for him to have that information from her he must
have had some communication with her end quote. So Taylor's really holding on to the idea that Long said he put her on a truck going to Fort Worth and this quote makes me believe that maybe there was something about like sending her to a relative down there because Taylor seems very convinced that like that information Fort Worth came from Sharon and like that's why she was being sent
there based off of this quote. So then we roll into October this is October 1st Taylor hears from a well-respected medicine woman in New York that Sharon is in the company of another girl he said quote she said Sharon is in a 10-story building but doesn't know where she said she's not a captive and is planning to continue to run and run here being like Sharon is trying to escape okay and on October 1st Long is returned from New Mexico to Wyoming and charged
with first-degree sexual assaults in Wyoming. Okay fuck her. Yes and then the next day he appears in court where he has six new charges so three counts of kidnapping two counts aggravated kidnapping for the purpose of committing sexual assaults one count for the purpose of holding a hostage so to count for both Sharon and the 15 year old girl but then also account for Sharon being
held hostage kind of at this point. Triple them up. Triple them up. One count of attempted sexual assaults one count of assault with a deadly weapon and then one count of delivery of marijuana and then this is also he also did a delivery of marijuana while he was assaulting people and holding them hostage. Well apparently delivery of marijuana he just had it in his home when police searched
it. It's not mine. That's all that's my brother's. Okay and this I wasn't gonna include this because it was so like but it's a long worked as a police informant at one time where he was told to buy drugs like work as like a drug dealer like that thing you know what I'm talking about like an informant sure undercover yeah street whatever. Isn't it crazy that like police forces will be like this civilian can be an informant. Yes here's government money to go buy
drugs. That's bananas. Which is what they did they gave him money to go buy drugs. But they also do it for other stuff too. They'll like send like young people to be like yeah just like see how much you can get well why are you yeah like what I'm
not a professional sir. So these additional charges come from the 15 year olds testimony and cooperating evidence long corroborating yeah I can't say that word oh it's okay honey wait say it for me corroborating co-op oh my speech impediment that I had as a kid was ours no it also sounds like cooperating so you're saying cora but you're you're saying you're like starting to say cooperating because I can't say corroborating yeah so I have to say like another word that's close by but I can't
do it that's okay you have hot girl brain you don't need to know how to say it but you said corroborating evidence it's fine long continues to plead the fifth so the judge is like asking him questions in court because he also has two prior convictions for escaping while in jail so the judges like asking him questions and he just continues to plead the fact plead the fact plead the fact plead the fact he is not talking and his lawyer maintains that Sharon was put on
a truck and Taylor says quote his story of putting her on a truck really does seem more likely than anything I'm positive she's going to be home and quote so October 18 so this is one month since Sharon has been missing again this is her father quote I am willing not to press charges if the whereabouts of my daughter is revealed I believe long knows where she is at he's playing his waiting game he's being pampered by his rights and quote and Taylor really has
an issue and I think a lot of people will that he can continue to plead the fifth and then that means investigators can't ask him any more questions about where Sharon is the next day October 19th Albert Johnson from Glendale Wyoming wrote a letter to a newspaper claiming he saw Sharon on September 20th so this would have been the day after she was abducted he saw her around 8 p.m. at a Glendale truck stop sitting in a truck and a man matching longs description was
seen walking into the truck stop and this is kind of the first clue that we get for Sharon of her whereabouts after she goes missing besides this clue that long gives of he put her on a truck to go to Fort Worth Texas and then October 21st the search comes to a halt for the winter it's pretty rugged terrain and there's a lot of snow already by October 21st so they really stopped searching in the wilderness for Sharon at this point on November 8th long pleads not guilty to
all charges I didn't assault this girl even though even though she escaped from my home he says not guilty November 16th the police say that they are completely out of leads and that Texas is a dead end there was no sign that Sharon was ever there and then we roll into the new year 1985 on January 3rd long defense attorney request a change of venue but this is ultimately denied but the judge will drop the marijuana charge so that's no longer he puffed past it he puffed past the marijuana charge
fuck I know and then January 23rd 1985 long changes his plea to guilty to avoid the death penalty and a sentence to two life sentences plus six to eight years which I love when they give somebody to life sentences and then they're like plus 10 years I'm like okay like here's three big scoops here's a couple jimmies on top yeah just to make sure yeah it's like just in case your ghost wants to be back your ghost is still in jail sorry ghost jail
so long pleads the fifth while being questioned by the judge again ultimately he pleads guilty to two counts of kidnapping for the purpose of taking indecent liberties with a minor and one count of aggravated assaults and then the police said quote we have no leads at all obviously the next step is to wait and see they really love obviously obviously obviously the next step is to wait and see we are checking out any and every lead we can we all hope she is still alive somewhere if she is why
hasn't she called you can speculate a hundred reasons on that and quote and I'm like do your fucking job speculate obviously the next step is wait and see I think there's some other things you could do and they say that new charges can still be added to him in regards to Sharon if and when they find out things ok so on February 4th 1985 long breaks his silence and has an interview with a newspaper so again here's a trigger warning I'm going to talk about sexual
assault here so this is what long claims happen this is his side of the story and this is going to piss you off I'm just warning you now so he claims that he picks the girls up and they said they were 18 and 19 and quote they looked the part and quote no you can tell when someone is 12 yeah you can tell when someone is 12 and also you're 49 so 18 and 19 is still a little young a little young the girls accepted his offer for a ride to his home to eat bathe and wash
their clothes he then claims he offered the older girl $25 for sex and she agreed after she demanded $200 and threatened him since she was underage and he thought the accusations would hurt his go-kart business quote oh so sad I know his go-kart business oh fuck owning a go-kart business would be dope like we should open one come to A&E's go-karts yeah go-karts drive to thrive this guy get fucked get fucked he says quote I talked with them I tried to reason with them I told them this is
not how you do business I should have given them the money unquote so he was I hate him then long quote scuffles he calls it a scuffle with them and ties the girls up but claims no one was seriously hurt just like casually tying up two teenagers in your home but nobody was seriously hurt like he's really trying to like downplay it as much as he can he's like we got in a scuffle and then I tied them up no big deal nobody was hurt he then says he took a nap and
when he woke up he found the 15 year old had escaped he took a nap in the middle of his hostage situation yeah I'm like I am a man of rest I'm tired from my thievery of people yeah he's like and what I'm just like so you have two people tied up in your house and you're like I'm gonna go take a nap what what no you didn't you're a liar no you don't so after he realizes that the 15 year old girl is gone he says quote I carried the other one to my truck I stopped once
for gas and drove to Cheyenne over the back roads she was a hot potato I just wanted her out of my hands end quote he finds a trucker headed for Dallas he says it's Dallas not Fort Worth so this is the first time that that detail has changed and he hands Sharon off long then drives to Denver to think for a couple of days and when he drives back to Wyoming he learns about the manhunt against him so once he finds out about the manhunt he heads to Amarillo Texas
to look for Sharon at truck stops quote my thinking was that I needed to remain free until she showed up and the whole thing calmed down end quote so that is what he says happened so that's the end of the trigger warning for our listeners out there on May 30th the district attorney Scott Evans believes that Sharon is dead and is looking to file murder charges without a body this guy royal Russell long he sucks and just to give a little tangent about this guy so
after he's arrested he becomes the lead suspect in another investigation in Oklahoma into the disappearance of two 13 year olds from the Oklahoma State Fair in 1981 their names are Charlotte Kinsey and Cinda pallet and charges are ultimately brought against him in this case in Oklahoma these girls they go missing at the state fair I just read briefly about their story they called their parents and said that a man offered them a job to unload stuffed
animals from a semi truck so he drives the two girls and two boys to a truck stop kicks the boys out and then drives off with the two girls and charges are brought against him but ultimately they're dropped for not enough evidence but he is the main suspect in this case and it's believed that he had started attacking people 30 years prior in 1955 and he's also suspected for the disappearance of Deborah Meyer and Carlene Brown so this guy sucks so on
the heels of like this Oklahoma case and I think if he had been indicted on those charges they would have gone forward with the murder charges of Sharon but since ultimately the charges in Oklahoma was dropped they never bring the murder charges against him for Sharon in Wyoming in June of 1985 the search resumes in rugged terrain along the county lines and the search lasts for about one week and this is based off of all of the leads that they've had but ultimately
nothing turns up no clues are found on June 12th the police say quote every bit of evidence we've obtained at this point indicates she's dead end quote but her father Taylor believes that she is alive and in 2020 he believes that she's alive November 3rd 1993 long dies of a heart attack behind bars in prison farewell good riddance and then there's really no leads for Sharon after this because the person who most likely knows has died June of 2019 and into 2020 a
skull is found near a power plant and a podcast actually begins to say that this is possibly Sharon and I believe they say that somebody within the police department tells them this or confirms that there's a good likelihood that it's Sharon but the police are like this person is a volunteer and they would know nothing about that I don't know why but so the media picks up the story that this is possibly Sharon but it is a prehistoric skeletons that had just been
very well preserved so not Sharon in the media Taylor says that you know the skull couldn't be Sharon because she's still alive somewhere and he's believes that and really advocates for her return but that this whole experience was painful like having her name be brought up in the media and people saying that they were so sorry like giving him condolences and assuming that he would be mourning once these were remains were found and he said like that was really
painful like that misplaced morning and like people just stopping him and like that constant reminder of what he is missing but that's ultimately it's for Sharon bald eagle that's all we know like I said long died behind bars so he really knew what happened to her and I don't I don't know if she was put on a truck somewhere else or if he killed her before that she was she would have this girl was very very smart I think she would have like been able to contact her
family I yeah I would agree with you I think that royal Russell long ultimately caused her death I really just want Taylor bald eagle to have closure in this like he deserves it so much if you know anything about Sharon's disappearance or her whereabouts today again she'd be 50 years old please call the Fall River County police and their number is 605-745-4444 and the sources for today's podcast come from the West River Eagle the Charlie
Projects oil City News Rapid City Journal the Bismarck Tribune the Jackson Hole guide Argus leader the billing Gazette the daily Oklahoma in Casper Star Tribune and the Lincoln Journal Star that's the story of Sharon bald eagle is her case like actively spoken about currently well the last updates really were 2020-2021 when those remains were found and there have been bulk stories over the years because there's a lot of missing indigenous women specifically in
Wyoming there's a lot of missing indigenous women that whole highway that's called the highway of tears right it runs a big span of where there's a lot of indigenous land where like it's like hundreds of women do you know what I'm talking about I do yes okay yeah but yeah so Sharon's story is brought up kind of with those reports of like trying to bring light to this big problem but otherwise there's really been no leads and nothing on her case truly damn
and it's so frustrating that they like caught the guy the guy died in jail but it's like where Sharon like how it's like that he escaped justice in that you know like he escaped responsibility in a lot of ways yeah for sure even though you know based off of my research and you know he suspected in these four other disappearances like guys dirtbag like I'm glad he was off the streets and that they did ultimately put him in jail for the rest of his life when they did
but where Sharon and like he never had to answer for that but that's it if you are enjoying our podcast we'd love it if you followed us on Instagram at cold and missing where we promise we're gonna get better about our tick-tock and posting stories on there we also upload all of our episodes onto YouTube so maybe that's where you like to listen you can subscribe there as well on our Instagram page you can email us cold and missing at gmail.com if you have thoughts
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