Kaelyn Moore

She had flying squirrels and lizards.

There was like a pair of pigs that she looked after.

And when she wasn't taking care of them, she would go down to the river where she would fish or she would be in her bedroom creating art.

She used whatever she found around the house for her projects, like nail polish and grocery bags her family described.

Germaine even dreamed of going to school at the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico and becoming a professional artist.

But in February of 2010, when she was just 14 years old, she met 16-year-old Michael DeFrance, who moved in down the street from her, and that changed everything about her life.

Now, there's something about Michael that is important to explain because it's actually going to play a really big role in the investigation later on.

But Michael's dad is an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes, but Michael's mother is white.

And so Michael was not tribally enrolled at the time, even though his father was.

Now, one thing that I was interested to learn about was

That a lot of people who live on the Flathead Reservation are actually either non-native, like Michael's mom, or they're tribal descendants who don't have enough native ancestry to qualify for enrollment, which was Michael's case.

And this created a very weird dynamic on the reservation, which Jermaine's family talked about, and actually her friends talk about a lot, where...

It seems like a lot of the Native women on the reservation understand that most of the crimes that are committed against Indigenous women on the reservation are actually the perpetrators are not Native men.

So when Michael moves in and he's a non-Native man, her friends immediately are kind of like, hey, be careful of this guy.

Like, we're just like looking out for each other.

We know that this is the whole history here.

Like, kind of be wary of this guy.

Within a month of knowing each other, they become an official couple.

Jermaine started skipping school and sneaking out of her house to go see him.

And almost overnight, she was spending more time at Michael's place than she was at her own home.