Chapter 1: What mysterious events surround the car fire in the Blue Mountains?
Tonight on Dateline.
Ashley was just a really special mom. Nothing came between her and her kids. She was a sister, an aunt, a friend.
He said she had been in a car accident, and I just remember screaming.
He was a fire captain. His wife died in a fiery car crash.
The single dad now raising two children.
This was a man truly grieving. The fire itself was strange.
It wasn't a crash that somebody should have died in. Was it something else? Was it murder?
None of us would have thought this was going to happen to her. A secret comes out, yes.
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Chapter 2: How did the investigation reveal Ashley's life and relationships?
There's been an affair. This takes the case in a new direction. Other possible suspects.
Right. We have a video that shows a person running from the crash. We call him Running Man.
Find this running man.
Find your killer? A picture-perfect couple. A mystery killer. What clues lie buried in the snowy blue mountains? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Andrea Canning returns to her hometown for Running Man.
In the silence of this once happy home, photos reveal a life frozen in time. Christmas lights on the banister, a stuffed animal with the tag still on.
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Chapter 3: What evidence suggested Ashley's death was not an accident?
It all looked very normal.
What they don't show is the beautiful family that lived here. James and Ashley Schwamm and their two young children. Every day was like a dance party. There was love. Laughter.
Very well-adjusted family.
But everything was not as it seemed. There were secrets behind those walls.
There were, yeah.
Absolutely.
That's like a whole new level of evil.
It's horrible.
Our story begins in the town of the Blue Mountains. a picturesque ski destination two hours northwest of Toronto.
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Chapter 4: What role did Ashley's affair play in the investigation?
It's where I grew up and where I got my start as a reporter. Doing this series, I've learned a lot about education over the last few weeks. Police are aggressively investigating the fatal collision, looking for any clues. I never expected to cover a dateline here. It was January 26th, 2023, just a few miles from my childhood home on a frigid, stormy morning.
Just before dawn, volunteer firefighter Jordan Hegerman was driving to his job as a groomer on the ski slopes.
There was not a single car on the road that morning. So as soon as I turned onto Arrowhead Road here, I noticed a glow.
What did you think?
I had a feeling that it was a fire right away.
And you had just joined the volunteer fire department here?
Yes. So as soon as I approached the bottom of the hill here, I could see the flames coming over the embankment. So as I drove up to the top of the hill, I could see down that it was a car. That's when I made my 9-1-1 call.
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Chapter 5: How did James Schwamm's actions raise suspicions?
Fire department, what was your emergency?
Hi, there's a fire on top of Arrowhead Road around the bend. It looks like a car went off the road and it seems fully engulfed.
I'm not sure if there's passengers inside. And you don't know if there's anybody around?
I have no idea.
Okay, no footprints?
Where I was standing, and the car was about 75 feet down off the road, I could feel that intense heat.
Oh, wow. These flames were high? Yeah. About 30 feet high. He knew from his training that was unusual for a car fire. Did you fear that someone could be in there?
I did, for sure.
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Chapter 6: What critical evidence was found during the forensic examination?
That's scary. Yeah. Tim Newton, a captain with the town of the Blue Mountains Fire Department, was jolted out of sleep.
The tones go off on my radio around 6 a.m. that morning.
So you arrive here. What's the first thing you see?
So as we arrive on scene, I can see over to my left-hand side coming up the hill. It was a fully involved car. It was fully engulfed in flames. Tim and his fellow firefighters race to put out the flames. We didn't have good visibility. I knew as soon as I could, I wanted to try to get a member of the crew to open at least the driver's side door and do a sweep of the seat.
We conducted that and didn't find anything.
No driver inside the charred Mitsubishi SUV.
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Chapter 7: How did detectives piece together the timeline of events?
It appeared they'd escaped the flames. But when the firefighters checked the passenger side, a different story. And that's when we found the body. Could you not even tell if it was a man or a woman?
You could not tell.
It was that bad?
Yeah.
How did it appear to you that this car had ended up down there?
Based on the condition of the guardrail not being damaged on first inspection, the only explanation was that it had made its way through this very narrow section into the gully below.
You thought it just slid off the road in these conditions?
That it was coming down the road, lost control and... Went through this opening? Yeah.
And kept going? Firefighters were perplexed. Where was the driver?
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Chapter 8: What was the outcome of James Schwamm's trial and sentencing?
Police officers now on scene were asking the same question. They notified Detective Sergeant Jason Lloyd and Detective Constable Jeremy Schiffman with the Ontario Provincial Police, also known as the OPP. I was advised from the sergeant on the scene that they had a dead body inside the vehicle.
And I just asked them to send me some digital photographs to my desk so that I could have a better idea of what it is that they were addressing at the scene. What's your first reaction when you see these photos?
That there's one person in the car and the body was in the footwell area on that passenger side.
They thought there might be an explanation for how the body got there.
We looked at the angle, gravity, and the fact that the fire department was putting the fire out and that those hoses would be pushing in that general direction.
So the force of the water from the fire hose could have pushed the body into the passenger seat.
Yeah, along with gravity.
Whose car is it? How quickly do you figure that out?
So because of it becoming a fatal collision, the OPP's traffic reconstruction team came out. They found the license plate in the snow had been clipped off the vehicle when it went down into the ditch. So we checked the license plate and it came back to James Schwamm.
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