PABLO, Montana — It was a homemade firebomb on wheels, blasting out of the dark delusions of man on a methamphetamine bender.
In dramatic home security video shot the morning of Nov. 10, 2023, Paul Ailport is seen speeding across his neighbor’s lawn in Pablo, Montana, in a pickup he turned into a firebomb and shooting off fireworks.
“Ailport lit his pickup truck on fire, drove it into his neighbor’s house, starting a fire in the house and hurtling a 300-pound steel beam from the truck,” according to the Lake County Attorney’s Office.
Fifteen months later, a Montana judge gave Ailport 110 years in prison for attempted murder after he entered an Alford plea, not admitting guilt but that he was likely to be convicted given the evidence against him.
Some of that evidence includes home surveillance video that shows Ailport’s homemade rocket truck that resembled something from the futuristic film “Mad Max.” The truck picks up speed as it accelerates toward his neighbor’s house, then crashes into it and bursts into flames.
The Feb. 13 sentencing drew a close to a convoluted story that began decades before.
He Wanted To Die In Attack
Witnesses recall that Ailport tied a gas can to the metal bar with wire and black tape. At around 9:16 a.m. that day when Ailport’s truck hit the north side of his neighbor’s home, the steel beam went “hurtling” through a bathroom wall, “narrowly missing the head of a teenage woman who was about to step into the bathtub,” according to court documents.
Anna Schiele didn’t get hit by the harpooning steel beam, but she was suddenly threatened by advancing flames. Anna’s boyfriend, and her parents Annette and Ron Schiele, pulled her to safety.
Outside, deputies with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office arrived on the scene to find Ailport’s pickup at the center of a flaming crater on the side of Schiele’s home.
When Ron Schiele pulled Ailport out of the flames, his two prosthetic legs remained trapped under the damaged interior of the vehicle. Ailport then attempted to crawl away on the ground, his hair singed and bleeding from the face.
“The Defendant stated that they should have let him die in the fire,” according to court documents.
Eerily, Ailport wrote a poem about dying in a fiery crash when the 65-year-old was in the eighth grade back in 1973.
Titled “The Fire,” Ailport’s poem reads like an unsettling premonition for a tragic life ahead, one that included getting run over by a train and losing both legs and three fingers.
Ailport’s neighbors told Cowboy State Daily that the man terrorized their little neighborhood on Paper Trail Road. They describe 18 months of harassment and threats, including an incident when Ron Schiele’s relatives were visiting from Glendo, Wyoming.
“My aunt and my cousins live there,” said Schiele. “And actually, the Wyoming family was here the day that he showed up and threatened me with a gun. The first time. And I made them take cover on the other side of the house.”
The neighbors and Ailport’s family blame methamphetamine for Paul’s descent into psychosis and paranoia.
Those involved in this bizarre saga complain about gaps in law enforcement protection and the mental health system big enough to drive Ailport’s flaming truck through.
As neighbor Shawn Blixt told Cowboy State Daily, “You can't make this shit up.”
Troubled Life Of A Kind Father?
On May 20, 1973, The Missoulian newspaper published a page of poems and drawings by students from schools around Missoula County.
“The Fire” by Paul Ailport, an eighth grader at the time at Woodman School near Lolo, Montana, was short, dark and rhyming.
I had a little rocket which I set afire one day.
It cruised around and landed in some hay.
It set the hay ablaze and I fell back in a daze.
The fire overcame me but no one heard my plea.
I died that night — very sadly.
Ailport later moved around Montana, and according to newspaper accounts, he faced drug charges in Havre when he was 18 and trespassing charges in Glendive when he was 24.
Burlington Northern Railroad accused Ailport of trespassing in 1983 after he was hit by two trains in the Glendive railyard. A local policeman heard Ailport screaming around 3:10 a.m. The officer discovered Ailport dragging himself away from the tracks after an incident that claimed the use of both his legs.
Ailport later relocated to Lake County, where his wife Delfina said Paul proved himself as a “good businessman.” He built up Home Sweet Home assisted living, then sold it before getting into the used car business.
Paul apparently self-medicated with alcohol, according to a Missoulian story from 1996.
“He drove his car into a yard near Polson,” the newspaper reported. “It wasn’t his yard. Right behind him were police, who were alerted to his unusual driving habits by an alarmed citizen who had watched Ailport’s car leave the Diamond Horseshoe Supper Club.
Over the years, law enforcement would continue to get calls about Ailport, especially after he moved onto Paper Trail Road and irked his neighbors with bizarre behavior.
“His psychologist said he had post-traumatic stress syndrome ever since he was 24 because he got run over by two trains and he survived it, but he never really got psychological help with it,” Delfina Ailport told Cowboy State Daily.
The troubling behavior really started when, according to Delfina, “He got cut off on his prescription medications because he was on oxycodone and fentanyl prescribed through his doctor in Missoula, and then they cut him off.”
Delfina said Paul was in constant pain from the lingering injuries suffered in the Glendive railyard.
Paul’s daughter Eva McGowan echoed that message about her father’s prescription drug use, saying, “He never abused them when I was growing up.”
“I mean, I'm not condoning his actions. I don't want to downplay the whole situation,” said McGowan. “In general, he was actually really kind and he was really sweet. He just had a lot of depressive issues.”
In the absence of prescription drugs, Paul’s family said he turned to methamphetamine. And then he turned on his neighbors.
Neighborhood Feud Escalates
When the Ailports moved onto Paper Trail Road, Paul initially annoyed his neighbors by turning his yard into a used car lot. Then there was some miscommunication and hard feelings over a new well Ailport drilled, according to Ailport’s daughter Eva.
Gradually, run-of-the-mill conflict between neighbors escalated in Ailport’s mind as he turned Ron Schiele into a target for his drug-fueled rage.
Schiele said Ailport started making threats, and all summer in 2023, Schiele carried a firearm just in case.
“I'd be up there mowing, and I would just wait for that gun shot,” remembered Schiele, who felt vulnerable mowing the big lawn between his home and Ailport’s property.
In June 2023, according to court documents, Ailport approached another neighbor and asked which bedroom Ron Schiele slept in. Ailport then told the neighbor he was going to load up his truck with propane and gasoline and, “Blow them up and kill them all.”
When Schiele called the Lake County Sheriff’s Office to report Ailport’s threats, he told police, “‘I'm telling you, this guy is off his hinges, man.’ And they're like, ‘Well, if you're going to defend yourself, you have to defend yourself. Just call us and we'll come out.’”
Schiele said he filed a restraining order against Ailport, but “that’s just a piece of paper.”
“A lot of sleepless nights,” said Schiele. “Every little sound. Is that him? Is he coming here now? At two in the morning.”
Schiele’s neighbor, Shawn Blixt, said his wife became an insomniac while Ailport terrorized the neighborhood by firing gunshots toward nearby homes, shining spotlights and revving car engines late into the night.
“He'd drive in my yard and drive over to the neighbor's house and drive through their yard and drive through their place,” Blixt told Cowboy State Daily.
Blixt and Schiele said they started to notice a pattern in Ailport’s behavior, which they attributed to his frequent meth binges. He’d stay up for days and a psychosis eventually set in, followed by threats and paranoid declarations about his neighbors.
Schiele grew frustrated because he said the Lake County Sheriff’s Office refused to take action.
“It's just mind blowing that they couldn't do anything prior to, basically waiting until the incident happens, hoping that everybody lives through it, and then they'll do something about it,” recalled Schiele in a phone call with Cowboy State Daily.
Paul Ailport’s fiery truck assault caused extensive damage inside the home, costing more than $250,000 to repair. Ailport’s car insurance did not pay for any of the repairs because, said homeowner Ron Schiele, Ailport intentionally caused the crash. (Lake County Sheriff’s Office) 
The steel beam harpoon that nearly killed Anna Schiele. (Lake County Sheriff’s Office) 
A screengrab from home security video captures Paul Ailport’s pickup truck on fire and speeding toward his neighbor’s home. (Ron Schiele) 
Point of impact: The aftermath of Paul Ailport’s fiery truck assault on his neighbor’s home. (Lake County Sheriff’s Office) 
A satellite view of the route Paul Ailport followed when he loaded his truck with propane, gasoline, fireworks and a steel beam turned harpoon, then crashed into his neighbor’s home. (Google Earth) 
Paul Ailport was an eighth grader when he wrote his poem in 1973 titled “The Fire.” Here it appears in the Sunday Missoulian alongside poems and illustrations from other local school kids. (The Missoulian)
Boils Over
On Nov. 10, 2023, the incident finally happened. Neighbors keeping an eye on Ailport figured he’d been up for three days straight on a meth bender when he finally got behind the wheel of his truck and set it ablaze before speeding across Schiele’s lawn and crashing into his house.
Bleeding, burned and totally delusional, Ailport tried to explain his actions to a deputy on the scene by insisting Schiele was “selling his wife.”
While Ailport spun unhinged theories about prostitution and sexual affairs, Schiele and Blixt said they witnessed domestic violence at the Ailport home. Defina Ailport denied this in a phone call with Cowboy State Daily.
“I still live there,” said Delfina. “I just mind my own business. I don't have anything against those neighbors at all. That was really frightening what Paul did to them. But it just shows how mental illness just gets thrown in the back corner again like usual. That's what's really sad. He’s sick.
“Paul was one of the victims that fell through the cracks of the system, you know, of mental illness.”
A judge sentenced Ailport to 100 years in the Montana State Prison and tacked on another 10 years as a “weapons enhancement.”
The weapon in this case was Ailport’s pickup-turned-explosive-rocket-ship-on-wheels, which he armed with a 228-shot “triple cannon” firework.
“Burn marks in the grass were documented, which appeared to be caused by the exploding fireworks which apparently fell out of the Defendant's truck,” according to court documents.
The court file details what is plain to see in the video as Ailport’s truck “careened across the neighbor's yard toward their home.”
It set the hay ablaze and I fell back in a daze.
That’s what Ailport wrote in his poem “The Fire” as a child. Ailport’s daughter Eva said she didn’t know if there was any hidden meaning in her father’s poetry, but she agreed it was interesting “given the circumstances.”
Cowboy State Daily passed a message to Ailport through Eva and Delfina requesting an interview. Ailport did not respond from the Lake County Jail, where he awaits transport for a long stay at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge.
When speaking with her father, Eva said, “We don't mention the neighbor. When you bring up the neighbor, he tends to still get kind of like a little psychotic over it.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
