LEWISTON, IDAHO — When Jolene Cliffe heard that Bessie Blackeagle was dead, her "blood ran cold."

Then she sat on her living-room floor and had "a mental breakdown."

"I just knew," Cliffe said. "I just knew what he'd done."

He was Travis Ellenwood. And what he’d done was beat, strangle and murder Blackeagle — who was then his live-in girlfriend — on Oct. 31, 2020, on the Nez Perce Tribe’s reservation in central Idaho.

Ellenwood pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2021 and was sentenced to almost 20 years in federal prison.

Cliffe said she knew what Ellenwood had done without being told because of what she says Ellenwood did to her when she was his live-in girlfriend less than two years before.

It was a narrative she had provided to tribal police more than once with little or no

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