CANADA - Lucas Fowler & Chynna Deese, and Leonard Dyck, all murdered, Alaska Hwy, BC, Jul 2019 #6

[scrappinkat]

The police called them missing persons, and the media reported it. No one reported them missing to police, as far as we know. In retrospect, this seems to have been a strategy.

The same day the police statement was released asking for anyone to call if they had info about the missing teens there was also the news story of the two missing men from Surrey. At the same time there was another post going around Facebook - a family member from Alberta was looking for her son and his wife, two daughters also travelling remote Canadian roads. She was concerned because they suddenly stopped responding. Those three posts originating and being shared all within a few hours around BC Facebook groups, public pages, personal shares etc it created some intense scrutiny about “what is happening in BC.” Add in the well publicized missing persons cases Ben Kilmer (recently found deceased) the two men missing and subsequently killed on the island last year, Ben Tyner who vanished into thin air despite the massive search efforts etc. The “missing teens” story took on a life of its own especially with the few details that were released about their burning truck and body found nearby.

 

[MassGuy]

The cover of the dad's "book/manuscript" (but it's really just a drunken rant/crazy thoughts) gives me the creeps . I hope he's being watched as well, this case is getting weirder and weirder. JMO

They’d want to watch him in case his son made contact.

If these guys reach out to people they know, I hope to God it’s immediately reported.

These people tend to be caught when they go back to familiar territory, or communicate with someone.

 

[SnooperDuper]

Sadly, needles used in Canada for medical purposes were recycled until sometime during the 1960s or early 1970s. Now baby boomers who had none of the risk factors for hepatitis are being urged to seek out testing, through no fault of their own. This saga may not be over. OT, sorry.

Needles were never reused in Canada. The tainted drug scandal arose because blood donors had HIV or Hep C and their blood wasn't screened before it was donated to patients. A lot of the bad blood came from the US where people are paid to donate and drug users were eager for income. (There is no payment made in Canada for giving blood).

Krever Inquiry | The Canadian Encyclopedia

 

[Deleted member 248860]

People misinterpret google maps all the time. They pull up a map of "California" and think it's the size of their state (or even the size of their county, ha). A friend of mine (from Michigan) told her parents they could go from L.A. to Sequoia to Yosemite to Tahoe in one day, without any driving after dark. She thought they "looked so close" on the map.

Map reading skills are definitely a thing and not everyone is very good at it.

I keep turning it over in my mind. Kam and Bryer are either very good map readers (and remembers), or they are average (ahem, good luck to them) or they have no skills at all.

The second issue is of course whether they think (or thought) they have skills. Many studies show that it's the people who are average, or below, who are more competent they have the skill/can pass the test, etc. They have apparently gotten themselves from BC through a very long drive - but...we don't know if it was intended and mapped out. Their frustration, if where they are and what they ended up doing was unintentional, must be exceedingly high, and they are probably completely lost at this point. Or dead.

If it turns out that they have actually managed to elude LE and are somewhere far away, then I'm going with "know how to remember maps and geography pretty well." I am not sure I can call that mere luck.

They may have left Port Alberni with an old Rand McNally or Canadian Automobile Association map book covering all of Canada.

 

[sprucetip]

My question was about the distance of 4 hours. I am unaware of anywhere in the lower 40 where a 4 hour response time is the norm.

I live in the Yukon, 1hr from Whitehorse. Minimum 1hr response time to me and there are people even farther out. 4hrs is not uncommon in the boonies.

 

[Gina20]

Police to family, possibly:

Your son is missing. His vehicle was abandoned and burnt. Would you like to file a missing persons report?

 

[LadyL]

He wasn't billed, they considered it but instead he raised money and did a video.

Snowboarder Sebastien Boucher has raised $10,000 for the search and rescue operation that saved his life after he boarded out of bounds on Cypress Mountain last year.

Initially, Cypress Mountain said it would charge Boucher the $10,000 for rescue costs, after three helicopters and dozens of volunteers were used to find him,

They had a change of heart, CBC reports, when Boucher volunteered to make an educational safety video about his experience.

Neverthless, Boucher wanted to give back to the people who organized the search and airlifted him down from the mountain after three days of no food or sleep. Boucher lost 18 pounds during his ordeal.


It was also a private company that was going to bill him (link found in the original link), and they were going to donate the money to a SAR organization.

Rescued Snowboarder Gives Back

The private company that operates the Cypress Mountain ski area on Vancouver’s North Shore says it plans to present a bill for $10,000 to a snowboarder who became lost after he went out of bounds Sunday, triggering a three-day search that ended with his rescue Tuesday night.

That is not government SAR. As has been explained, it is a privately owned ski hill and a privately handled incident. The company that owns the ski hill and sent the bill dropped it when the individual proposed to make a safety video.

For what SAR is and isn’t, see the links in post 1034.

yes got it thank you both

 

[SnooperDuper]

They may have left Port Alberni with an old Rand McNally or Canadian Automobile Association map book covering all of Canada.

Why not a new MapArt road atlas? They are sold everywhere: grocery stores, gas stations, CAA, etc.

 

[afitzy]

CBC footage of the train from Churchill shows a slow moving VIA passenger trail with no freight cars. That takes us back to the question of frequency of freight trains from Churchill to Winnipeg.

@otto, I have spent a fair amt of time trying to research exactly how many cars are typically on this route. On the passenger side as well as the commercial side of things there is clearly a seasonal component to determine the train size.

From the cbc.ca video below it looks like 10-12 cars leaving but it might be possible to add commercial or even more passenger cars along the way. I wasn't able to find a video of the train arriving in Churchill to see if more cars were added.

The cbc.ca video does show video of the 1000km route to get an idea of the terrain.

Winnipeg–Churchill train - Wikipedia
Winnipeg-Churchill train – Overview
How to get to Churchill | Churchill Manitoba Canada
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/churchill-passenger-rail-departs-winnipeg-1.4929478

We know there were VIA security bulletins in place and probably can assume RCMP were checking the trains and the line. But from you tube videos detailing the trip to Churchill and looking at the history of the challenges and huge loss of life it took to build the line I am not sure how 2 determined people could be stopped from jumping on the train?

 

[Deleted member 158085]

DBM

I was fully expecting to feel terrible as an American - that another American had gone up to Canada and done these murders. If it wasn’t for the fugitive who allegedly killed someone in TX possibly crossing into Canada, I probably would have suspected these two young men sooner.

 

[otto]

Sadly, needles used in Canada for medical purposes were recycled until sometime during the 1960s or early 1970s. Now baby boomers who had none of the risk factors for hepatitis are being urged to seek out testing, through no fault of their own. This saga may not be over. OT, sorry.

The problem was blood transfusions, not needles. Hemophiliacs were the first to pinpoint the problem.

"In the early 1980s, about 2,000 Canadians were infected with HIV from tainted blood products. Many thousand more, perhaps as many as 30,000, were infected with hepatitis C.
...

That lack of a clear policy, he found, resulted in a series of disastrous decisions, including importing plasma collected from high-risk prison populations in the U.S.; not using a test that may have caught as many as 90 per cent of hepatitis C cases; delaying the purchase of safer, heat-treated blood products for hemophiliacs out of a desire to use up the potentially contaminated products; and a failure to track down all those who might have been infected."​

https://www.cbc.ca/strombo/news/canadas-tainted-blood-scandal

 

[LadyL]

I live in the Yukon, 1hr from Whitehorse. Minimum 1hr response time to me and there are people even farther out. 4hrs is not uncommon in the boonies.

yes people often have to make the decision if it's faster to transport patient to the hospital themselves rather than wait for help - I've had to make that decision even only being 10 minutes from a city because the services that would've been dispatched were rural

 

[Gardenista]

Since LE is going back today and checking areas they have already checked, they must be REALLY convinced they are still in Gillam. I hope they are right.

 

[KR72]

I was fully expecting to feel terrible as an American - that another American had gone up to Canada and done these murders. If it wasn’t for the fugitive who allegedly killed someone in TX possibly crossing into Canada, I probably would have suspected these two young men sooner.

Even if that had been the case, it's not a reflection on Americans, imo. People from everywhere do horrible things.

 

[Herat]

So...when they went into the Co-op, where could their stuff have been? Did they still have the RAV4 at that point?

The Meadow Lake, SK Co-op is about 800 miles from Gillam, MB, so yes, they would definitely have had the RAV4 at that point. Its about a 14 hour drive. And likely something like 4 tanks of gas = possibly 4 gas stops along the way.

Interestingly, the directions seem a bit complicated. I'm thinking they had internet access for a Google search, or they had some good local maps to do this route. Did they buy maps in a gas station? Why is there no footage of that.
Google Maps

 

[afitzy]

Thank you. So, in this report, Dyck's body is over a mile away (from the burning camper and truck.) But not far from where they grabbed the Rav4, right?

The pair must have carried quite a few things (in backpacks?) away from their burning truck. If Dyck was shot (which we don't know), then one of those things was a gun. LE hasn't mentioned whether they left behind their airsoft, but I bet they didn't. And I don't think Chynna and Lucas were shot with the airsoft, personally.

So...when they went into the Co-op, where could their stuff have been? Did they still have the RAV4 at that point?

Good question. We haven't seen any outside video from the co-op. How typical is outside video of parking lots in this area? If it existed the video could clearly answer the question of what vehicle was being used and if a second vehicle had already been acquired by the 2 suspects.

 

[Deleted member 158085]

Some people are saying the grandmother or family of one of the teens reported them missing? I don't think so, I was under the impression they were only considered missing after their burned out truck was located without them anywhere to found... LE probably traced the truck back to it's owner which we can assume was one of their families, likely Kams, and then learned that they hadn't heard from the teens and the truck they were travelling in shouldn't be burned without them nearby, and in an area where murders had recently taken place... and so they became "missing".

And if they had not burned their truck, would they even be on LE’s radar for the first two murders? Or would we still be looking for a guy who matches the sketch?

I just can’t comprehend why they did this.

 

[otto]

@otto, I have spent a fair amt of time trying to research exactly how many cars are typically on this route. On the passenger side as well as the commercial side of things there is clearly a seasonal component to determine the train size.

From the cbc.ca video below it looks like 10-12 cars leaving but it might be possible to add commercial or even more passenger cars along the way. I wasn't able to find a video of the train arriving in Churchill to see if more cars were added.

The cbc.ca video does show video of the 1000km route to get an idea of the terrain.

Winnipeg–Churchill train - Wikipedia
Winnipeg-Churchill train – Overview
How to get to Churchill | Churchill Manitoba Canada
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/churchill-passenger-rail-departs-winnipeg-1.4929478

We know there were VIA security bulletins in place and probably can assume RCMP were checking the trains and the line. But from you tube videos detailing the trip to Churchill and looking at the history of the challenges and huge loss of life it took to build the line I am not sure how 2 determined people could be stopped from jumping on the train?

It sounds like it is a slow moving train on a stretch of rail track that has problems. The passenger train goes North on Tuesday and South on Thursday, but if there were freight trains heading South between Monday and Wednesday, my guess is that they hopped a train.

 

[Gina20]

Thank you. So, in this report, Dyck's body is over a mile away (from the burning camper and truck.) But not far from where they grabbed the Rav4, right?

The pair must have carried quite a few things (in backpacks?) away from their burning truck. If Dyck was shot (which we don't know), then one of those things was a gun. LE hasn't mentioned whether they left behind their airsoft, but I bet they didn't. And I don't think Chynna and Lucas were shot with the airsoft, personally.

So...when they went into the Co-op, where could their stuff have been? Did they still have the RAV4 at that point?

There were two sets of tires tracks where LD was found. Someone posted an image yesterday. On TV, the tire tracks were overlapping, as if one vehicle parked directly on top of the other's tracks. They didn't walk, IMO.

 

[Satchie]

Going back to the beginning of this whole tragedy, we have discussed whether this is all a large, planned thrill kill for these suspects or something else. Here are my thoughts/theories:

7/15 I believe the murders of LF and CD were unplanned. KM and BS may have come upon the van and believed it to be abandoned on the side of the road, but unoccupied. They were short of cash and may have thought they could break in and steal something that they could use. Is it possible that the suspects planned to steal the van not realizing it was broken down?
I believe they may have awakened Lucas and Chynna when they opened the side door to the van. I would guess the victims were sleeping towards the back and when they woke up, they startled the 2 suspects. A shot was fired towards them causing the glass to spray outside the van as indicated in some reports. One of them may have been hit. At some point the victims were murdered. We don’t know if they were murdered in or out of the van. They may have been led outside and executed there or dragged out after being shot. LE have not indicated if there was blood inside the van or if the bodies had been moved.
Is there any chance that the “argument” described by a witness could have been KM and BS arguing with each other because one had fired the shots that killed the victims?
At any rate, they were now on the run.

The killers then made they way over 7 hours away to the vicinity of Dease Lake where they laid low for a few days.
7/18 they were spotted at Dease Lake around 3:15. They were probably listening to radio reports and knew neither the victims nor the suspects had been identified.
On 7/19, suspect’s truck/camper was found burning about 12 miles south of Dease Lake, LD’s body was found about a mile away from the burning vehicle. A few people had come forward by this time who were witnesses at the double homicide site before the murders. Perhaps KM and BS thought a witness might come forward who had seen their camper at the scene. This propelled them to burn their camper, kill LD, and steal his vehicle. This was a panicky move and not well thought out. They were probably very happy to hear later on that LD was unidentified at the time and so there was no bolo for the vehicle in which they were traveling.
By 7/21, they had made their way about 22 hours east to Cold Lake where they were assisted after being stuck, (maybe they had camped in there), and an hour and a half further to Meadow Lake where they were picked up on the video camera. I believe they took Route 16 to Cold Lake.
By 7/22, they had driven an additional 14 hours to Gillam where they eventually burned the RAV4. They may have realized they were at a dead end and would have to double back and couldn’t risk being seen in the dead man’s vehicle.
It wasn’t until 7/23 that they were named suspects in the murders. By that time they very well could have found a way out of Gillam. If that was the case and they were able to get far enough east, all they have to do is stay out of sight by keeping to backwoods hunting and fishing cabins spread over hundreds and thousands of acres until the search is scaled back. Hopefully, they have not harmed anyone else.
I do not think we have any genius killers here. We have 2 boys on the run who have always been one step ahead of LE, not because of their smarts and cunning, but because of pure luck i.e. not being connected with the double homicide and then being thought to be missing themselves as victims, not perpetrators. They were running because they knew what they had done, but LE initially did not.

MOO trying to put together a scenario based on what we do know.

I agree that the motive for the sequence of events is confusing.

To me, a van parked by the side of a highway, especially a highway used by transport trucks, means it's broken down or run out of gas. So there's no way to steal it, plus it was an obviously crappy van anyway.

If the goal was to see if there was anything to steal, why would they bring a gun along? If someone was inside, you could just run back to your vehicle and drive off. Or maybe panic, injure one person and run away. Shooting two people dead is way too much violence if your goal is to steal some money and continue on with your life. Killing two people doesn't just happen accidentally, it is a very deliberate, massive transgression against our social values.

I think they wanted to see what it was like to kill someone. The van was in the most remote, unobserved place the suspects had ever been, no one could hear it, no one would see it, no one knew the suspects were there, it had easy access to their vehicle to escape and go so far away no one would ever suspect them.