Lengthy article. rbbm.
August 26 2022 By
Kieran Leavitt
The hunt is still on to get answers about 70-year-old Stephanie Stewart, after she disappeared abruptly from her wildfire lookout tower.
www.thestar.com
''HINTON, ALTA.—A valley of trees, an old railroad, and peaceful mountain ranges splay out for hikers who summit the tranquil William Switzer Fire Tower Trail near Hinton.
But pieces of an old murder mystery also lie scattered there for visitors who take a closer look — a cabin, a wildfire watchtower and RCMP missing-person poster asking for information with an offer of a $20,000 reward.
Stephanie Stewart, 70, vanished 16 years ago this week.''
''To this day, her disappearance has confounded Albertans; police are still investigating.
It’s believed that Stewart disappeared sometime between the evening of Friday, Aug. 25, 2006 and the next morning. She failed to do a regular check-in on the Saturday morning, prompting another employee to travel out to her cabin 25 kilometres northwest of the town of Hinton, itself about three hours west of Edmonton.''
''The search for Stewart hasn’t stopped, either. In 2018, about 100 people, including search and rescue volunteers and RCMP officers, set out to look for clues in an area of nearly 8,000 hectares around the tower.
It’s not clear what, if any, progress has been made on the file recently.
Halvorson, speaking generally about the work his unit does in Alberta, says much of it involves reviewing exhibits to see what kind of forensic analysis was done, and then seeing if there are new kinds of technology that can be used. From genealogy and DNA analysis to ground-penetrating radar, police tool boxes have expanded over the years.
These days, DNA is usually behind a break on a historic case, says Halvorson, as over the last 10 years labs have significantly reduced how much material is needed to create a profile, using picograms (a trillionth of a gram) of DNA now instead of nanograms (a billionth).''