BILLINGS, Mont. — A gifted, hard-working student, mature beyond her years. A talented athlete who played three sports in high school. A popular, high-spirited girl whose impersonations and rowdy singing cracked up friends.
Now, USC student Holly Ashcraft, 21, also is a young woman charged with murder, alleged to have left her newborn son in a trash container near her Los Angeles apartment. The baby's body was discovered just after midnight Oct. 10.
In Billings, a city of 100,000 where Ashcraft grew up in a tidy, white farmhouse set among sugar beet and grain fields, news of her arrest has gripped and shocked many. The local newspaper has run stories on her case, the details of her alleged crime printed next to a glossy yearbook photo of the clean-cut high school senior.
A popular Billings radio station urged listeners to call in with opinions. The callers, most of whom said they did not know her, said she should have given the baby up for adoption.
But for her friends, and even her parents, the case is not that simple.
Although Ashcraft excelled in academics and sports, she also got into trouble for partying toward the end of high school.
For much of her senior year, Ashcraft lived at a friend's home because of tensions with her mother, a junior high school and college teacher.
Her parents separated when she was about 15, and Ashcraft had not been in close contact with her father since.
"I love her," said her father, Terry Ashcraft, a metal tradesman, standing in the doorway of his modest house on the west side of Billings. "I'm puzzled. Other than that, I'll just leave it alone."
Several friends and former neighbors interviewed last week said they were having trouble reconciling the bright, outgoing young woman they know with the unsettling picture painted by authorities in Los Angeles.
Some friends said they worry that Ashcraft's tendency to be strong and independent -- and, sometimes, to bottle up her feelings -- may have contributed to a bad decision.
"She'd never ask for help for anything," said Candice Tesinsky, 20, who has known Ashcraft since grade school. Tesinsky's voice caught as she spoke of Ashcraft and her situation: "I think she probably went through a moment of shock."
Alina Stefek, 20, who was close to Ashcraft in elementary school and also hung out with her a bit in high school, said the news of the arrest seemed surreal. "I felt a lot of empathy for her. I wondered how she could feel so alone," Stefek said. "I think she has a very strong character, and it surprised me that out of anyone it was Holly."
