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Russia’s Putin moves to annex 4 Ukraine regions despite global outcry over land grab blasted as illegal
Kyiv, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the process of annexing parts of Ukraine by saying he would sign laws to absorb them despite international condemnation and protect the newly incorporated regions using “all available means.” In a speech preceding a treaty-signing ceremony to make four Ukrainian regions part of Russia, Putin warned his country would never give up the occupied areas and would protect them as part of its sovereign territory.
He urged Ukraine to sit down for talks to end the fighting, but warned sternly that Russia would never surrender control of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. He accused the West of fueling the hostilities as part of its plan to turn Russia into a “colony” and a “crowds of slaves.”
In response to his move, Ukraine’s Presient Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that his nation was submitting an “accelerated” application to join the NATO military alliance. Ukraine has long aspired to join NATO, but the alliance has not offered an invitation, and there was no immediate indication how it would receive Zelenskyy’s bid.
Putin has long demanded that Ukraine never be allowed to join NATO, and his regime has bristled at the looing accession of Finland and Sweden — countries close to Russia’s borders — to the Western military alliance.
Friday’s annexation ceremony in Moscow came three days after the completion of Kremlin-orchestrated “referendums” on joining Russia that were dismissed by Kyiv and the West as a bare-faced land grab, held at gunpoint and based on lies.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a statement Thursday condemning the Russian move.
“The UN Charter is clear,” he said. “Any annexation of a State’s territory by another State resulting from the threat or use of force is a violation of the Principles of the UN Charter and international law.”
The event in the Kremlin’s opulent white-and-gold St. George’s Hall was organized for Putin and the heads of the four regions of Ukraine to sign treaties for the areas to join Russia, in a sharp escalation of the seven-month conflict.
The separatist Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine have been backed by Moscow since declaring independence in 2014, weeks after the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. The southern Kherson region and part of the neighboring Zaporizhzhia were captured by Russia soon after Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Both houses of the Kremlin-controlled Russian parliament will meet next week to rubber-stamp the treaties for the regions to join Russia, sending them to Putin for his approval.
Putin’s Friday speech at the Kremlin was more about “Western hegemony” and purported attempts to destroy Russia than it was about his ongoing war in Ukraine, which seemed almost an afterthought. The Russian leader rattled off a long list of Western military actions, ranging from the 19th century Opium Wars to the bombings of Germany and Japan during World War II, to assert that he was fighting an existential war in Ukraine.
“The collapse of Western hegemony is irreversible,” Putin told the audience of Russian political elites. “Fate and history called us onto the battlefield for our people, for great historical Russia!”
He then launched into a rant about “Western values,” claiming that Russia’s adversaries were seeking to offer Russian kids gender reassignment surgeries and impose “perversions on children.”
Putin and his lieutenants have bluntly warned Ukraine against pressing an offensive to reclaim the regions, saying Russia would view it as an act of aggression against its sovereign territory and wouldn’t hesitate to use “all means available” in retaliation, a reference to Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
The Kremlin-organized votes in Ukraine and the nuclear warning are an attempt by Putin to avoid more defeats in Ukraine that could threaten his 22-year rule.
Russia controls most of the Luhansk and Kherson regions, about 60% of the Donetsk region and a large chunk of the Zaporizhzhia region where it took control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
Asked about Russia’s plans, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that at the very least Moscow aims to “liberate” the entire Donetsk region.
As it prepared to celebrate the incorporation of the occupied Ukrainian regions, the Kremlin was on the verge of another stinging battlefield loss, with reports of the imminent Ukrainian encirclement of the eastern city of Lyman.
Retaking it could open the path for Ukraine to push deep into one of the regions Russia is absorbing, a move widely condemned as illegal that opens a dangerous new phase of the seven-month war.
Russia on Friday also pounded Ukrainian cities with missiles, rockets and suicide drones, with one strike reported to have killed 25 people. The salvos together amounted to the heaviest barrage that Russia has unleashed for weeks.
They followed analysts’ warnings that Putin was likely to dip more heavily into his dwindling stocks of precision weapons and step up attacks as part of a strategy to escalate the war to an extent that would shatter Western support for Ukraine.
The Kremlin preceded its scheduled annexation ceremonies Friday with another warning to Ukraine that it shouldn’t fight to take back the four regions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would view a Ukrainian attack on the taken territory as an act of aggression against Russia itself.
The annexations are Russia’s attempt to set its gains in stone, at least on paper, and scare Ukraine and its Western backers with the prospect of an increasingly escalatory conflict unless they back down — which they show no signs of doing. The Kremlin paved the way for the land-grabs with “referendums,” sometimes at gunpoint, that Ukraine and Western powers universally dismissed as rigged shams.
“It looks quite pathetic. Ukrainians are doing something, taking steps in the real material world, while the Kremlin is building some kind of a virtual reality, incapable of responding in the real world,” former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said.
“People understand that the politics is now on the battlefield,” he added. “What’s important is who advances and who retreats. In that sense, the Kremlin cannot offer anything сomforting to the Russians.”
A Ukrainian counter-offensive has deprived Moscow of mastery on the military fields of battle. Its hold of the Luhansk region appears increasingly shaky, as Ukrainian forces make inroads there, with the pincer assault on Lyman. Ukraine also still has a large foothold in the neighboring Donetsk region.
Luhansk and Donetsk — wracked by fighting since separatists there declared independence in 2014 — form the wider Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that Putin has long vowed, but so far failed, to make completely Russian. Peskov said that both Donetsk and Luhansk will be incorporated Friday into Russia in their entirety.
All of Kherson and parts of Zaporizhzhia, two other regions being prepared for annexation, were newly occupied in the invasion’s opening phase. It’s unclear whether the Kremlin will declare all, or just part, of that occupied territory as Russia’s. Peskov wouldn’t say in a call Friday with reporters.
In the Zaporizhzhia region’s capital, anti-aircraft missiles that Russia has repurposed as ground-attack weapons rained down Friday on people who were waiting in cars to cross into Russian-occupied territory so they could bring family members back across front lines, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said.
The general prosecutor’s office said 25 people were killed and 50 wounded. The strike left deep impact craters and sent shrapnel tearing through the humanitarian convoy’s lined-up vehicles, killing their passengers. Nearby buildings were demolished. Trash bags, blankets and, for one victim, a blood-soaked towel, were used to cover bodies.
Russian-installed officials in Zaporizhzhia blamed Ukrainian forces for the strike, but provided no evidence.
Russian strikes were also reported in the city of Dnipro. The regional governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, said at least one person was killed and five others were wounded.
Ukraine’s air force said the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa were also targeted with Iranian-supplied suicide drones that Russia has increasingly deployed in recent weeks, seemingly to avoid losing more pilots who don’t have control of Ukraine’s skies.
Putin was expected to give a major speech at the ceremony to fold Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia into Russia. The Kremlin planned for the region’s pro-Moscow administrators to sign annexation treaties in the ornate St. George’s Hall of the palace in Moscow that is Putin’s seat of power.
Putin also issued decrees recognizing the supposed independence of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, steps he previously took in February for Luhansk and Donetsk and earlier for Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, called an emergency meeting of his National Security and Defense Council and denounced the latest Russian strikes.
“The enemy rages and seeks revenge for our steadfastness and his failures,” he posted on his Telegram channel. “You will definitely answer. For every lost Ukrainian life!”
The U.S. and its allies have promised even more sanctions on Russia and billions of dollars in extra support for Ukraine as the Kremlin duplicates the annexation playbook used for Crimea.
With Ukraine vowing to take back all occupied territory and Russia pledging to defend its gains, threatening nuclear-weapon use and mobilizing an additional 300,000 troops despite protests, the two nations are on an increasingly escalatory collision course.
That was underscored by the fighting for Lyman, a key node for Russian military operations in the Donbas and a sought-after prize in the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in late August.
The Russian-backed separatist leader of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, said the city is now “half-encircled” by Ukrainian forces. In comments reported by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, he described the setback as “worrying news.”
“Ukraine’s armed formations,” he said, “are trying very hard to spoil our celebration.”
CBS News correspondent Pamela Falk contributed to this report.
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Rare deluge floods parts of the Sahara desert for the first time in decades
A rare deluge of rainfall left blue lagoons of water amid the palm trees and sand dunes of the Sahara desert, nourishing some of its driest regions with more water than they had seen in decades.
Southeastern Morocco‘s desert is among the most arid places in the world and rarely experiences rain in late summer.
The Moroccan government said two days of rainfall in September exceeded yearly averages in several areas that see less than 10 inches annually, including Tata, one of the areas hit hardest. In Tagounite, a village about 280 miles south of the capital, Rabat, more than 3.9 inches were recorded in a 24-hour period.
The storms left striking images of water gushing through the Saharan sands amid castles and desert flora. NASA satellites showed water rushing in to fill Lake Iriqui, a famous lake bed between Zagora and Tata that had been dry for 50 years.
According to NASA, such an occurrence is so rare in the region that a lake in Algeria, Sebkha el Melah, had only been filled six times from 2000-2021.
In desert communities frequented by tourists, 4x4s motored through the puddles and residents surveyed the scene in awe.
“It’s been 30 to 50 years since we’ve had this much rain in such a short space of time,” said Houssine Youabeb of Morocco’s General Directorate of Meteorology.
Such rains, which meteorologists are calling an extratropical storm, may change the course of the region’s weather in months and years to come as the air retains more moisture, causing more evaporation and drawing more storms, Youabeb said.
Six consecutive years of drought have posed challenges for much of Morocco, forcing farmers to leave fields fallow and cities and villages to ration water.
The bounty of rainfall will likely help refill the large groundwater aquifers beneath the desert that are relied upon to supply water in desert communities. The region’s dammed reservoirs reported refilling at record rates throughout September. However, it’s unclear how far September’s rains will go toward alleviating drought.
Water gushing through the sands and oases left more than 20 dead in Morocco and Algeria and damaged farmers’ harvests, forcing the government to allocate emergency relief funds, including in some areas affected by last year’s earthquake.
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Trail cameras capture the magical and violent world of Alaska’s wildlife
Millions of people worldwide tuned in for a remote Alaska national park’s “Fat Bear Week” celebration this month, as captivating livestream camera footage caught the chubby predators chomping on salmon and fattening up for the winter.
But in the vast state known for its abundant wildlife, the magical and sometimes violent world of wild animals can be found close to home.
Within half a mile of a well-populated neighborhood in Anchorage, the state’s biggest city, several trail cameras regularly capture animals ranging in size from wolverines to moose. And a Facebook group that features the animals caught on webcams has seen its number of followers grow nearly sixfold since September, when it posted footage of a wolf pack taking down a moose yearling.
But it’s not all doom-and-gloom videos on the page, and the actual death of the moose calf was not shown. The group, named Muldoon Area Trail Photos and Videos, also features light-hearted moments such as two brown bear cubs standing on their hind legs and enthusiastically rubbing their backs against either side of a tree to mark it.
Ten cameras capture lynx, wolves, foxes, coyotes, eagles, and black and brown bears — “just whatever is out here,” said Donna Gail Shaw, a co-administrator of the Facebook group.
In addition to the 290,000 or so human residents of Anchorage, nearly 350 black bears, 65 brown bears and 1,600 moose also call it home.
Joe Cantil, a retired tribal health worker, said the idea for the page started when looking down at the vast open lands of Alaska from an airplane on a hunting trip near Fairbanks.
“You’re out in the middle of nowhere, so you see animals acting however they act whenever we’re not around,” he said.
He later met wildlife officials in the Anchorage park conducting an inventory of predators. He saw them set up a trap and three webcams where a moose had been killed.
“When I saw that, I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do that,'” he said.
Cantil set up a low-tech camera and caught his first animal on it, a wolverine, fueling a passion that led to the creation of the Facebook page in 2017.
Then, while hiking, he met Shaw, a retired science education professor and associate dean of the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Shaw was intrigued by his game cameras and began bugging him to see the footage.
“Well, he finally got tired of me pestering him and one day he said, ‘You know, you can get your own camera,’ and so that started my hobby,” said Shaw, a native of Texas.
She started by strapping a single $60 camera to a tree. Now she has nine cameras, seven of which are active in Far North Bicentennial Park, a 4,000-acre park stretching for miles along the front range of the Chugach Mountains on the east side of Anchorage.
Her cameras are set up anywhere between a quarter-mile to a half-mile of the Chugach Foothills neighborhood and she frequently posts to the Facebook group page. Cantil also posts videos from his three cameras.
“I knew there was wildlife out here because I would occasionally run into a moose or a bear on the trail, but I didn’t know how much wildlife was out here until I put the cameras on it,” Shaw said.
She replaces batteries and storage cards about once a week, walking into the woods to do so armed with an air horn to announce her presence, two cans of bear spray and a .44-caliber handgun for protection.
Many of the page’s followers are Anchorage residents looking for information about which animals may currently be roaming around the popular trail system. Other users join to see what the cameras capture, including people from other states who “enjoy looking at the wildlife that we have here,” she said.
Shaw said that every few years, her cameras catch a wolf or two — and sometimes even a pack. This year she was surprised when a pack of five wolves came by, walking quietly in a single file.
Last month, while she collected memory cards, she saw moose fur on the ground across the creek from two of her cameras. After she spotted what looked like a roughed-up patch of dirt where a bear might bury its kill, she assumed it was another moose attacked by a black bear, similar to what happened earlier not too far away.
But when she checked the memory card, it instead showed the wolves taking down the moose yearling as the moose’s mother attempted to protect her offspring by trying to kick the wolves away with her long legs.
Now, the demand for the page is growing, but Shaw said she’s done adding cameras.
“I think I’m at my camera max,” she said. “Nine is enough!”
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The investigation into Montana mom Jermain Charlo’s disappearance
When Jermain Charlo‘s cellphone went silent in June 2018, her family suspected something was wrong. “She was very active on social media … she posted about everything,” Valenda Morigeau, Charlo’s aunt, told “48 Hours.” “So for her to not be active on social media, then I knew something was not right.” When Charlo didn’t respond to calls or texts, Morigeau, sick with worry, reported her missing to the Missoula Police Department. Six years later, Charlo still has not been found.
During that time, the Missoula Police Department and other agencies have been hard at work. What have investigators discovered about what may have happened to Charlo? And will she ever be found?
The story begins on the night Charlo was last seen.
June 15, 2018: Last night out at The Badlander bar
On the night she disappeared, Jermain Charlo was at The Badlander bar in Missoula, Montana, around midnight. She’s captured in the alley behind the bar on security camera footage excerpt, shared exclusively with “48 Hours.” Charlo, second from left, is highlighted.
Detectives spoke to multiple people who were in the alley, including the man standing behind Charlo. He’s Michael DeFrance, Charlo’s ex-boyfriend and the father of her two children. Charlo and DeFrance had plans together that night, though it’s not clear why they met up or what they discussed.
June 15, 2018, just before midnight: Disappearing into the night
Just before midnight on June 15, Charlo and DeFrance walked away in the alley behind The Badlander bar, as seen in this screenshot from security footage.
Where did they go next? When investigators asked Michael DeFrance that question, he told them the same thing he told Charlo’s family when they asked: that he and Charlo had gotten into his truck and then he’d dropped her off at the Orange Street Food Farm, a supermarket about a five-minute drive from The Badlander.
In a subsequent police interview, however, DeFrance amended his story. He said that in fact he’d dropped Charlo off not at the Orange Street Food Farm itself, but in a residential area eight blocks west of the store. He said he dropped her off there because Charlo told him she was staying with a friend named “Cassidy” who lived nearby.
Detectives found the change in DeFrance’s stories interesting. They also were unable to find anyone in Charlo’s life named “Cassidy.” It turned out that Charlo didn’t really intend to stay at a friend’s place that night, but at the apartment of her then-boyfriend Jacob, who lived in the area. Jacob was out of town but had told Charlo she could stay at his place.
Jermain’s family suspects that she did not want to tell DeFrance about her relationship with Jacob and may have lied to him about “Cassidy.”
June 16, 2018, just before 1 a.m.: Jacob tries to call Jermain Charlo
Shortly before 1 a.m. that night, Charlo’s boyfriend Jacob attempted to call her cell. She never picked up the phone — instead, it rang several times before going to voicemail. Jacob told police he suspected that somebody purposely ended the call.
Though detectives never considered Jacob a suspect — he was out of the state that night — they did talk to him further to see what else he might know. He told them that the day before Charlo disappeared, she told him “that Michael had been yelling at her, asking if she was dating anyone and wanted to get back together with her.”
DeFrance has also never been named a suspect in Charlo’s disappearance.
June 17, 2018: Jermain Charlo reported missing
On June 17, 2018, Charlo’s mother reported her missing to the Tribal Police Department on the Flathead Reservation, but because Jermain went missing in Missoula, it would have to be reported to the Missoula Police Department.
Family called Missoula police but learned that the report had to be made at the station in person, not over the phone. So on June 20, 2018, Valenda Morigeau, Charlo’s aunt, made the drive to Missoula and spoke with an officer to file an official report.
Late June 2018: The community searches
After Charlo disappeared, her family took matters into their own hands and contacted local organization The Lifeguard Group for help. Volunteers came out in support to search for Charlo. This was just the first of many searches the community would hold over the months and years to come.
“We’ve told the family that we’re not going to stop no matter what. And we will search for Jermain as if she’s alive, until we find her,” said Lowell Hochhalter, president and co-founder of The Lifeguard Group.
June 26, 2018: The lead detective
The Missoula Police Department’s investigation began the day Morigeau reported her niece missing. However, the first detective assigned only worked the case briefly before he had scheduled time off. It wasn’t until June 26, 10 days after Charlo disappeared, that Det. Guy Baker was assigned to the case. He would doggedly lead the investigation for the next six years, determined to find Charlo.
“I’m very much committed to finding her,” Baker told “48 Hours.” “I wanna bring justice to Jermain and hold accountable who’s responsible.”
June 27, 2018: The cellphone data
On June 27, 2018, detectives obtained data linked to Charlo’s cellphone. The data indicated that between the hours of 2 a.m. and 10 a.m. in the early morning hours of June 16, 2018, after she disappeared, Charlo’s cell was pinging off a cell tower in the area known as Evaro Hill.
Evaro Hill is a rugged, heavily forested area north of Missoula, and it’s where DeFrance, Charlo’s ex-boyfriend, was living at the time. DeFrance told investigators that he’d dropped Charlo off in Missoula around 1 a.m. So, why was her phone pinging north of the city hours later? DeFrance changed his story and told investigators that Charlo’s phone was with him.
Missoula County Deputy Attorney Brittany Williams told “48 Hours,” “In a subsequent interview, [DeFrance] provided a statement that she left her cellphone and he attempted to go through her cellphone and he was unable to get into her cellphone.”
Then DeFrance told authorities that two days later on June 18 — while Charlo’s family was desperately calling law enforcement for help — he discarded Charlo’s phone in Idaho at mile marker 94 on Highway 12. Law enforcement searched the area but never found the phone.
“The phone’s never been recovered,” confirms Baker. Charlo’s family wonders why DeFrance would throw Jermain’s phone away. Baker declined to comment on a possible motive for disposing of the phone. “48 Hours” requested an interview with DeFrance through his attorney. He declined our request.
June 27, 2018: Michael DeFrance’s mother speaks to police
On the same day that the cellphone data was obtained, officers from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office went to DeFrance’s property and spoke with his mother Jennifer DeFrance. According to police documents, Jennifer DeFrance told an officer that Charlo had never been to the residence. She also reported that “Michael was still in love with Jermain and wanted to get back together with her.”
Summer 2018: “Swept away in an instant”
Over the remainder of the summer, detectives investigated the idea that Charlo may have been a victim of human trafficking.
“We had some information early on that there might have been some people in Missoula from out of state that were trying to buy a girl,” Baker told “48 Hours.” “And I was thinking there was a connection there.”
Williams described the trafficking situation in the state. “I think people have an idea that Montana is rural and undeveloped, and we don’t have major crimes that occur here,” she said. “But the fact of the matter is, we have one of the largest interstates that runs through our state right here through Missoula, Montana … there are people who can be swept away in an instant.”
Eventually, investigators were able to rule out the idea that Charlo was a victim of human trafficking. Williams told “48 Hours” in 2024, “I think that we have enough evidence through this investigation that lends itself to believe something else has happened to her.”
August 2, 2018: A warrant for Michael DeFrance’s property
An officer with the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department filed a search warrant application on August 2, 2018, that stated the officer had reason to believe that a crime had been committed in Missoula.
The application asked a judge to approve a search of DeFrance’s property on Evaro Hill. The officer hoped to “visually observe and simultaneously video record by ground or air, at any time of the day or night, the outside of the premises including all grounds.” It also asked for thermal imaging of the property.
Documents show that the search warrant application was approved by a judge, but officers declined to comment on the results of any of their searches of the DeFrance property. They do confirm that Charlo has not been found, and Michael DeFrance has never been named a suspect or charged with anything in relation to her disappearance.
Oct. 2, 2018: Firearms seized
In October 2018, police conducted another search of DeFrance’s Evaro Hill property. At this point, Charlo had been missing for more than three months.
On the property officers found and seized guns including the ones pictured. DeFrance had a prior conviction that prohibited him from owning firearms. In May 2013, DeFrance had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of Partner or Family Member Assault against Charlo, his then-girlfriend. When DeFrance was sentenced for this incident, part of his sentence was a loss of his firearm rights.
According to a 2013 police report, DeFrance admitted to hitting Charlo with an open hand, then twice more with his fist. Charlo reported that DeFrance had shoved her onto the hood of his van, punched her in the ear, the temple, and the cheekbone, and then spit in her face and told her she was horrible.
In October 2018 Baker asked DeFrance if he was aware he wasn’t supposed to have firearms because of his previous conviction. According to court documents, DeFrance replied, “I was never clear on that.”
2019-2021: The trail goes cold
In October 2018, Charlo’s family and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes put her information on a billboard. They hoped that someone would drive by and recognize Jermain. For six years, her gaze has haunted drivers as they travel down that road.
Baker wouldn’t tell “48 Hours” much about his investigation, as it is ongoing and many of the documents are sealed. But he insists the case never truly went cold. He has been consistently searching for Charlo over the years, and the investigation has never stopped. He is committed to finding Jermain.
“I guess when I see that billboard, I’m frustrated,” he said. “I’ve never worked a case like this before. We’ve tried to uncover and turn over every rock possible.”
July 28, 2021: Michael DeFrance arrested on firearms possession charges
In July 2021, Michael DeFrance was arrested for possession of the firearms police had confiscated in 2018. The case was investigated by the FBI. In October 2021, an indictment charged DeFrance with one count of prohibited person in possession of firearms and ammunition, and three counts of false statement during a firearms transaction.
April 26, 2023: Michael DeFrance goes on trial for firearms violations
DeFrance was found guilty of all four counts of firearms-related violations after his two-day trial in federal court. Charlo’s mother and her aunt Valenda Morigeau both testified to the nature of Charlo and DeFrance’s relationship around the time of the 2013 partner or family member assault conviction, and Baker spoke about finding the guns at DeFrance’s residence.
DeFrance was sentenced in September 2023 to 21 months in prison and was given a lifetime ban on firearms and ammunition. On the same day, DeFrance filed an appeal. He has not served any time pending that appeal.
Today: hoping for justice
Jermain Charlo’s family still hopes that one day she might be found, though they no longer believe she is alive. For Charlo’s aunt Dani Matt, justice for Charlo means “bringing her home, and letting her rest with our family up on the hill.”
“I will never stop looking for her,” said Morigeau. “I’ve met so many families that have had a loved one disappear. And I want other families to know that, like, it’s OK to keep pushing and it’s OK to keep their name out there. We have to fight for justice for our loved ones.”
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