Canada - Lucas Fowler, Chynna Deese, and Leonard Dyck, all murdered, Alaska Hwy, BC, Jul 2019 #13

[Link Haze]

The metal,boxes are very important to keep body fluids or odors away from those transporting bodies, especially if there is significant decomposition. They have a very heavy seal on them and are very sturdy.

This, alone, makes me think the deaths occurred some time ago, not within the last couple of days

I'm thinkin' you're right, especially if they are going to use dental records to positively identify the bodies.

 

[otto]

Canadian killer fugitives' trail of clues: Billowing smoke, sardine cans, sleeping bag helped end manhunt | Fox News
Not sure if anyone/everyone read this article. This extract is interesting:
"On July 24, RCMP announced that Schmegelsky and McLeod were suspects in the three murders after the RAV4 was found in flames near Gillam by local residents Billy and Tamara Beardy.

‘(There was) cans of sardines, small propane bottles, forks, orange peels, loose change and partially eaten pork chops’, Tamara Beardy told The Globe and Mail.

Clint Sawchuk, who owns Nelson River Adventures, told CBC he spotted what he believed to be a sleeping bag in the willows near the river which he later reported to police.

RCMP would later investigate the area and ultimately locate a damaged boat and the two teens’ bodies nearby, he claimed".

There are two stories. One is that RCMP checked the area twice and on the second round, 3-4 days later, they noticed the boat. While investigating the boat, they discovered personal items belonging to the suspects on the shore. They then searched the area and found the bodies 1km from the personal items, in the thick bush.

The other story is that a boater saw a sleeping bag on the shore, possibly near Port Nelson, and alerted police to the area.

 

[mmsshh]

I for sure agree with you about them wanting to steal the van... and then finding out it wouldn’t work. I’m not sure about them being on an illegal mission prior to that, but I do think that IF KM had stopped answering calls and texts from his parents (like BS had stopped responding to his dad) after he’d taken their truck, I think that KM’s parents might be worried enough to call the RCMP themselves to be on the lookout for the truck and KM and BS. It's possible they even texted that message to KM, that they were worried and wanted to hear back, or they'd contact the police. Maybe that prompted the desire to switch vehicles...

For this theory to make sense, KM and BS would’ve had to already have it in their minds that they were going on a one-way deadly adventure, killing along the way, as needed, to get the things they wanted.

EDITED to make it clear that this is my opinion only...

This makes sense, but why would they set their truck on fire?

 

[Link Haze]

What are the unresolved questions that we'd most like to see answered at the end of the investigation? Who owned the camper truck they were driving? Did they buy it or was on loan for someone? Did they ever follow up on their stated plan to look for work, or was that just a story for the folks back home? What were they doing between the murders of CD and LF and the subsequent murder of LD? Maybe some of this has been discussed and I just missed it.

My questions would go way deeper than that.

 

[otto]

This makes sense, but why would they set their truck on fire?

They used the camper during the murder of the tourists. It was old and very expensive on gas. On July 19, they wanted to flee the area, and they needed a better vehicle. They also couldn't take a chance that someone would place their camper with the van.

Each time they murdered, they stole the ID of the victims. Leaving their burning vehicle opened the possibility that they were victims.

 

[LadyL]

What are the unresolved questions that we'd most like to see answered at the end of the investigation? Who owned the camper truck they were driving? Did they buy it or was on loan for someone? Did they ever follow up on their stated plan to look for work, or was that just a story for the folks back home? What were they doing between the murders of CD and LF and the subsequent murder of LD? Maybe some of this has been discussed and I just missed it.

oh it's alllll been discussed
this is thread #13

 

[LadyL]

This is the thing we will probably never find out. My guess is that they had done something illegal (drugs, guns, anything) and they needed to torch their vehicle to destroy the evidance of what they had done.

well they only had to clean the truck out to get rid of evidence, unless they worried they were spotted and the truck would be on the police radar - also, I think they just enjoyed starting fires

 

[Jessthinkin]

This makes sense, but why would they set their truck on fire?

Well, IF they’d left fingerprints all over the van they thought was driveable, but it wasn’t so they had to leave it (and fingerprints) behind, maybe they burned the truck to get rid of their fingerprints(?) and maybe make it look like someone else had killed LF and CD and now had abducted KM and BS?

I think the real challenge in trying to make linear sense of this lies in the fact that they weren’t making sensical decisions themselves.

IIRC, a classmate of BS told a reporter they had seen BS snorting Adderall off of a knife, or something like that... If that is true, and either of them had access to those meds and had maybe been stockpiling them, then perhaps they were taking massive doses of that, or another stimulant, on this trip. Would explain their ability to just keep driving on and on to cover huge distances, and might also have contributed to their (non-linear) erratic, impulsive, and dreadful actions...

 

[fastoys]

Regarding the boys had an accident and hit LD theory....

It is possible that maybe they were driving too fast or the one without the license (Can't recall I know it's been posted)was "driving" lost control and hit him.

However if this was infact the case, you would think the investigators would have determined if LD was struck by the truck upon examination at the scene. I am also confident that the damage to the front end would also be noticed...burned or not.

Hats off to the RCMP for retrieving the remains, now loved one's can begin to seek closure to this terrible nightmare.

 

[sprucetip]

Help me understand. It was all over the news in BC on July 16 that there were two suspicious deaths on the Alaska hwy and Major Crimes was investigating. Did people ignore the information, are they not interested in local news? Why would people expect RCMP and Alaska police to do more?

I'm just saying that I feel July 16 is a day too late. The news release should have been sent out immediately after they realized the deaths were suspicious to warn people on the highway (because something like this is so RARE around here).

Someone mentioned the impact on tourism, but I think safety should be a priority. Plus, the highways are full of people right now, it's not like everyone is changing their plans and the roads are empty.

And it wasn't exactly all over the news after it was announced, but I blame the media for that. They did not pick it up like they should have (in the Yukon anyways). The first we heard of it up here was from Australian media.

 

[sprucetip]

I'm a bit torn on this, because I hate 2nd guessing the RCMP, but I don't know why the RCMP didn't do more to warn travellers in the area. I have travelled out to BC from SK many times, not up north, but through the mountains. They have roadside signs everywhere there and it would have been easy to have a warning put on them (as they did asking for dashcam footage). I don't know about everyone else or about that area, but when I'm travelling, I disconnect from SM and disconnect from news, and there are places that finding a local radio station or local news is just not something that can be done or I just don't do it. But those signs, we always make sure to slow down to read what they say... because they are there for a reason and it's usually to be informative.

I don't know if a warning would have changed what happened to Mr. Dyck, since we will probably never know the circumstances, but it could have prompted the boys to leave the area sooner so they weren't noticed or it could have prompted others to come forward sooner with sightings and/or fresher memories.

This is one thing that I hope the RCMP looks into.

100% agree. People do disconnect on the highway, often because there is no service. A couple of signs and the highway chatter takes over. That's another way people find out things, they talk to fellow travelers at rest stops, gas stations, RV parks, etc. Word of mouth would have spread the news fast and LD might have heard about it by the time he encountered these two.

 

[Seattle1]

They weren't thinking clearly and they definitely tried to avoid crowded areas. You can also tell this based on the route they took to escape. A northern remote route which eventually got them trapped.

They saw a van by the side of the road and took their chances. It could be that the owners stopped there for a break and were away at the moment, and the van could be working for all they knew.

I'm not convinced that KM/BS were not invited to join Lucas and Chynna on the roadside versus being crept up on by the teen killers.

They were close in age, both traveling in vehicle equipped campers, and the couple were very much accustomed to making friends along the journey (as one does hostelling). Also, it would never have been "dark" as one thinks of nightfall but more twilight where they were located.

If anything, I could see the couple being nurturing and helpful to the teens - perhaps sharing a cold drink, talking maps, routes, and sights, and were caught completely off guard by the teens.

Every account we've heard of the teens is that they were polite, apologetic, and honest when sharing their true names. It seems they were capable of making a good first impression before killing you. They don't look like dangerous killers!

Unfortunately we have no information about the Chev van crime scene. We only know the bodies were found dead outside the van. We don't know if the victims were in/outside their van when shot. Other than identification, we don't know what the teens stole from their victims.

So many unanswered questions.....

MOO

 

[Gina20]

For anyone who is interested, here's a story from the Alaska Highway News, Friday, July 19:

Young travellers murdered near Liard Hot Springs

 

[10ofRods]

KM/BS truck was also equipped with a "cabover camper." These campers rest on top the cab of truck. As the camper is believed to have melted in the truck fire, it makes sense that the cab would have impression. MOO

But someone also posted that fiberglass doesn't "melt," that its traces are near invisible and near weightless. Not that it matters now. I was just curious about fiberglass and its qualities.

 

[OldFarmer]

Defining generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z begins

"In order to keep the Millennial generation analytically meaningful, and to begin looking at what might be unique about the next cohort, Pew Research Center decided a year ago to use 1996 as the last birth year for Millennials for our future work. Anyone born between 1981 and 1996 (ages 23 to 38 in 2019) is considered a Millennial, and anyone born from 1997 onward is part of a new generation."

There are conflicting definitions but the Pew Research Center is a pretty definitive source. Other criteria I've heard delineating millennials is whether they're old enough to have clear memories of 9/11, or old enough to remember a world where cell phones were uncommon. Personally I feel like another criteria is if they clearly remember a time when new rock music was still popular. My husband is 38 and I'm 27, and I feel like we have way more in common culturally with each other, like taste in music and so on, than I have with the current high school and college kids.

That’s one of the reasons why I find this case so interesting/unsettling: I’m really struggling to understand this upcoming generation. I have no problem with the millennials in my nuclear and extended family, they’ve had their ups and downs of course, but on the whole they’re decent human beings. But the kids in my family that are around the age of BS/KM - man, something feels off. Maybe I’m just getting too old, but I can’t seem to reach these kids, they seem so disconnected - almost to the point of disassociation, a weird flattening of affect, and I see again and again an unsettling kind of thousand yard stare. I can’t find a bridge with which to reach these kids. Again, maybe it’s me, maybe I can’t reach them because I’m just too darn old. But I'm really trying to understand, and I sure am worried.

 

[Seattle1]

What are the unresolved questions that we'd most like to see answered at the end of the investigation? Who owned the camper truck they were driving? Did they buy it or was on loan for someone? Did they ever follow up on their stated plan to look for work, or was that just a story for the folks back home? What were they doing between the murders of CD and LF and the subsequent murder of LD? Maybe some of this has been discussed and I just missed it.

Since recovering the bodies of the teen killers, various msm news have identified the truck/camper as belonging to KM, and the Rav4 belonging to LD. This was never before said until teens were located.

 

[scrappinkat]

But someone also posted that fiberglass doesn't "melt," that its traces are near invisible and near weightless. Not that it matters now. I was just curious about fiberglass and its qualities.

It will burn. Also the pictures of the truck/crime scene appear to be taken after police had swept the box of the truck and put all the ashes and remnants on the blue tarps.

Editing to add that picture was an RV. Made of the same materials the camper would have been.

 

[sprucetip]

I'm not convinced that KM/BS were not invited to join Lucas and Chynna on the roadside versus being crept up on by the teen killers.

They were close in age, both traveling in vehicle equipped campers, and the couple were very much accustomed to making friends along the journey (as one does hostelling). Also, it would never have been "dark" as one thinks of nightfall but more twilight where they were located.

If anything, I could see the couple being nurturing and helpful to the teens - perhaps sharing a cold drink, talking maps, routes, and sights, and were caught completely off guard by the teens.

Every account we've heard of the teens is that they were polite, apologetic, and honest when sharing their true names. It seems they were capable of making a good first impression before killing you. They don't look like dangerous killers!

Unfortunately we have no information about the Chev van crime scene. We only know the bodies were found dead outside the van. We don't know if the victims were in/outside their van when shot. Other than identification, we don't know what the teens stole from their victims.

So many unanswered questions.....

MOO

Wow this is a theory I've not heard before and I can totally see it happening. If it did, what went wrong!? So many unanswered questions is right.

 

[otto]

I'm just saying that I feel July 16 is a day too late. The news release should have been sent out immediately after they realized the deaths were suspicious to warn people on the highway (because something like this is so RARE around here).

Someone mentioned the impact on tourism, but I think safety should be a priority. Plus, the highways are full of people right now, it's not like everyone is changing their plans and the roads are empty.

And it wasn't exactly all over the news after it was announced, but I blame the media for that. They did not pick it up like they should have (in the Yukon anyways). The first we heard of it up here was from Australian media.

There was no evidence that the deaths were suspicious until maybe midnight on July 15 - after the medical examiner had completed autopsies. That's why the information was released on July 16. RCMP can't guess at cause of death of two unidentified victims.

7AM - report to RCMP
11AM - RCMP arrive from detachment (4 hours distance)
10PM (?) - Medical Examiner (autopsies to determine cause of death)

The Australian news picked up the story after the bodies were identified on July 18, but RCMP are not at fault for that delay.

 

[10ofRods]

I'm thinkin' you're right, especially if they are going to use dental records to positively identify the bodies.

And...really, just to avoid the smell issue while transporting and before it gets to the special room where who people are used to it...can deal with it. It's very hard on searchers and others to deal with a body that's in an advanced state of decomp and not well on the way to being a skeleton. Also, if there are two dead bodies and the bodies/their clothing aren't all together in one big piece, the recovery team can package various plastic bags of stuff in one box and not jumble it up (and that's been going on with cardboard boxes and labeling for as long as I can remember - the metal box is a definite improvement).

The people in the receiving area in Winnipeg will be grateful. I'm so used to "austerity" measures here in the States.