WEBVTT - The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope) 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.920 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:14.280 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:16.799 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:21.040 should know. The man, this is a bummer edition. 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:26.880 Yeah, the zero laughs edition, because we're talking about the 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:32.440 Highway of Tears and there's no other way around it. 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:35.159 This is just a devastating topic. 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:38.560 Yeah, we should tell people. I mean, the Highway of 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:42.000 Tears is fairly famous. It's kind of been in the 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.000 news and in pop culture, I guess for a while. 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:48.479 I guess at least since the nineties, but really in 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:50.560 the early two thousands I think has reen it picked 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:54.440 up regardless. It is a stretch of desolate highway that 0:00:54.600 --> 0:01:00.320 runs from in British Columbia up in Canada, from the 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.920 the port city of Prince Rupert all the way into 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:08.520 the interior to Prince George. And it's I think seven 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:11.240 hundred and twenty kilometers almost four hundred and fifty miles, 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:16.200 and it's known as Highway sixteen officially. But the stretches 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:20.080 of this highway are so desolate, so remote, and so 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:26.400 sparsely populated that it is become a haven for murderers 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:30.480 who pick people up, mostly women, mostly Indigenous women, on 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:35.640 this road and either make them disappear forever or murder them. 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:38.920 And it's it's endemic in this area, so much so 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:43.240 that it's caught national attention. It's just how poorly this 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:47.240 group of women are being treated and their families as well. 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:51.480 Yeah, it's you know, as you'll see, it's and you know, 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:53.680 there are many reasons for this, but it's a heavily 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:59.360 hitched hiked road and that can be very dangerous and 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:03.000 so a lot of times these are hitchhikers, people just 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:05.880 trying to get from one place to another, and like 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:10.160 you said, they are you know, either sexually assaulted or 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:14.320 murdered or both. And these are the people that you know, 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:18.160 like they found bodies, there are you know, dozens and 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:21.960 dozens more than these dozens who have survived attacks and 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:25.679 rapes along that stretch of highway. So you know, it's 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.960 no secret why it's called the highway Tiers. Big thanks 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:33.320 to Olivia for enduring this topic and helping us out 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:36.200 with it, and big thanks to Al Jazeera, where she 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:39.160 got a lot of information from a six part series 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:40.679 they did in twenty twenty one. 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.160 Yeah, there's a lot of good sources. The CBC of 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:48.639 the Vancouver Sun's a good one. There's been a decent 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:52.640 amount of coverage, but it's it's not the kind of 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:57.200 coverage you would get when say, like like a Caucasian 0:02:57.200 --> 0:02:59.639 girl goes missing, which we'll talk about. It's the kind 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:02.200 of about how this group of people have just been 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:07.880 totally basically left on their own to deal with something 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:11.080 like this, that they don't have the resources to deal 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:13.880 with this, and it's just such a terrible story. The 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.160 story is so much larger than this collection of murders, 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:20.240 but at the core, that's what it comes down to, 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:24.960 just women who were treated like disposable beings. And the 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:29.840 whole thing starts at the very earliest, as far as 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:33.520 anyone knows. The first murder that's become part of what 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:36.760 you'd call the canon of the Highway of tears murders 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:42.560 and abductions started in nineteen sixty nine. A woman named 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:48.680 Lavinia Gloria Moody was murdered on Highway sixteen and it 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.600 went kind of went along like that for a while. 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:55.680 There was but no one had kind of put together 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.440 this whole group of people and call it the Highway 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.360 of Tears, and they wouldn't for years to come, but 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:04.320 at the time there was enough going on that they 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:07.360 could coin this term the Highway murders. And by nineteen 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.320 eighty one enough women and girls had been murdered to 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:13.440 go on missing along Highway sixteen that a group of 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:17.400 Royal Canadian Mounted Police detectives from all over British Columbia 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:20.640 and I think Alberta got together and decided to kind 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:24.760 of compare notes and see if they could solve some 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:26.440 of these unsolved cases. 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:28.039 Yes. Absolutely. 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:32.760 While this was going on, you know, when the cops 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:36.039 were sort of slowly coming around to the idea that 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:40.400 there was a specific problem along this stretch, the families 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:42.960 were getting involved, the families of the missing, the families 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:46.560 of those who were found dead, and you know, they 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:50.560 organized their own efforts. One case that really kind of 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:53.480 brought everything to even more of ahead was the case 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:57.719 of Romona Wilson. This was in June of nineteen ninety four. 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.760 She was sixteen years old and she went to go 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:04.520 meet up with a friend to go to some you 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:08.440 know into the year school graduation parties. She never got there, 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:13.600 and her mom, Matilda, was like the cops don't really 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.520 seem to care much that this happened. And so the 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:19.960 locals got together and they started organizing, They started doing, 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:24.520 you know, going on search parties and looking out for her. 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:29.200 They ultimately, you know, very sadly, discovered her body about 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:33.400 ten months later at an airport. Her clothes were found 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:37.560 near her with some rope and some cabling. And so 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:41.560 her mom and her older sister Brenda, and you know, 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:44.480 other members of her family and the community got together 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:46.479 and said, all right, the least we can do is 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:48.839 try and raise some awareness since no one seems to 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:51.760 be paying attention. So they got a memorial walk together 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:55.279 in June of ninety five, which became an annual thing. 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:58.520 Yeah, there was another woman who really deserves a lot 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:01.960 of credit for bringing national attention to this. She's a 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:07.160 Wet Sudan Nation woman. And in nineteen ninety eight there 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:10.719 was a vigil where she coined the term Highway of Tears, 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:14.200 which I can't I don't think you can really calculate 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:18.080 how much that helped this case. It was like, hey, media, 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:20.680 here's a nice little tidy package for you to report on. 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:24.440 It's even got a catchy name, despite you know, the 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.880 actual obvious emotion behind calling it the Highway of Tears. 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:30.679 I think it really helped quite a bit. And Florence 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:35.920 Nezil also is credited with starting a walk that covered 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:39.400 the entire again four hundred and fifty miles stretch of 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:42.720 highway of the Highway of Tears for the first time. 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:47.159 That walk's been made scores of times by now over 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:51.560 the years by family members and community members and members 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:54.479 of other nations who've gotten involved to try to again 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:59.080 help ask for resources, ask to get the police involved more, 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:02.200 because that's another recurring theme throughout as Chuck, is that 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:07.920 the police have shown over and over again opportunity after 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:11.800 opportunity to just not really seemed to care. 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:13.320 Yeah. 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:17.440 Absolutely, she had already been working, you know, to raise 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:21.280 awareness when very tragically it hit hit home for her 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:24.000 in a more personal way when one of her family members, 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:27.160 a woman named Tamara Chipman, went missing in two thousand 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:29.880 and five. And you know, all this is going on 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.200 through the you know, I think it was nineteen eighty 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:34.480 one when the cops finally started sort of getting together 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:37.239 and comparing notes, and that was after at least twelve 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:40.680 years since the first known murder, and it took all 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:45.440 the way into the two thousands for things to really 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:49.040 take a turn. And that was when very tragically, a 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:51.080 woman named Nicole Hoher. 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:53.000 Was killed. 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:55.640 She was twenty five years old and she was white. 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.800 She disappeared in two thousand and two, and this is 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:04.400 what really brought the national attention. You've heard a journalist 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:07.240 named Gwynn Eiffel in the United States coined the term 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:09.720 missing white woman syndrome, which. 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:11.760 Is the idea that it takes. 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:16.280 A white person to be, you know, the victim of 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:17.960 a crime for anyone to kind of sit up and 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:22.240 take notice. In members of indigenous communities or marginalized communities 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:26.920 are often overlooked and underfunded and under resourced, and you know, 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:28.640 the cases are kind of swept under the rug. And 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:31.280 that's exactly what was going on in Canada for many, 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:33.360 many years and still is to a certain degree. 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:36.240 Yeah, and again, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:38.959 called the task time and time and time again for 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:42.480 not taking this stuff seriously enough, not devoting the enough 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:46.040 resources to it. But also the media is largely responsible 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:49.000 to not just in this case, but in any case 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:52.280 of a missing or murdered woman who's not white. In 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.320 the United States or Canada, they get much less coverage, 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:58.000 and the intensity of the coverage is much less too, 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:02.320 compared to white women. It's not just anecdotal. I was 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:06.240 reading at least one study on it from two thousand 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:10.480 and sixteen, I think in the Journal of Law and Criminology, 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:13.880 and they were like, yes, we analyze this stuff and 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:17.800 it's absolutely true. So there's like a but there's a 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:21.960 bitter gratitude involved because the death of Nicole Hoer, she 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:25.960 like it did bring a lot of attention to this. Yeah, 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:29.640 and you just can't you can't deny that, and so 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:32.080 that's good. But at the same time, it's just like, man, 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:35.880 we've been having to we've been trying to deal with 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:40.240 this for decades, and now this one white girl becomes 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:44.920 part of the crowd of murdered girls, and like, now 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:47.640 now people care. It's got to be really tough to take. 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:49.560 And I know I called her a girl, and she 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:53.079 was twenty five, so she was a woman. But there's like, 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:56.080 this whole group is made up of women and girls. 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:58.920 I know it's not interchangeable, but it's important to say, 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:02.600 like some of these I mean, the youngest victim was twelve. 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:07.080 Monica Jacks I think died in the late seventies, maybe 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:10.280 nineteen seventy eight. Like, there are plenty of girls who 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:12.200 were picked up and murdered. There are also plenty of 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:16.800 women too, and not all of them were Indigenous, a 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:19.280 lot of them were white. But the cops, as they 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:23.440 started to get together, came up with some criteria that 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:29.200 they applied to these cases that kind of narrowed the search, 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:34.440 but also brought on new cases that they hadn't they 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:36.560 hadn't considered before, as we'll see. 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:39.600 Yeah, so in two thousand and five, this is just 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:43.400 a few years after Nicole Howard brought more attention to 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:48.040 the issue. The RCMP, the Royal Canadian amount of Police 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:52.679 will probably call them that RCMP maybe mounties do they 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:53.480 still go by that. 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:55.960 I think so, whether they like it or not, everybody 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:56.840 calls them mounties. 0:10:57.120 --> 0:10:58.080 Yeah. 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:03.079 They launched what was called the Unsolved Homicide Unit, launched 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:06.880 something called Project E Pana the letter E. That was 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:10.599 just the division of the rc MP, and Pana is 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.360 named after an Inuit goddess who cares for souls in 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:19.360 the afterworld. And they there, you know, their official designation was, Hey, 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:21.480 we think we have a serial killer. 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:25.040 Maybe more than one out there on this Highway of tears. 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:30.040 It's a pretty, like you said, a pretty great place 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:31.760 to get away with a crime like that, because it's 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:36.640 so desolate. Up until recently there were long, long, long, long, 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:39.360 long stretches where you had no cell phone service even 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:42.360 so you couldn't you know, call anyone if you were 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:45.400 in trouble. Not very many people around, and plenty of 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:49.800 animals around to take care of bodies and the remains. 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:54.840 So they found some common allies and three teenage girls. 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:59.280 Ramona Wilson, who I mentioned a woman named Roxanne Thierra, 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:03.920 fifteen years old from Prince George. This is a very 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:07.839 sad case. She was in the foster system and the 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:12.000 juvenile incarceration system and she eventually had to turn to 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:18.360 survival sex, which is a term for women who are 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:23.720 forced to resort to sex work to feed and clothe themselves, 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:26.880 and it's usually means like instead of getting money, they 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:31.679 get food and clothing and items to live and survive. 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:35.480 In nineteen ninety four, she told a friend she was 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:38.560 going to meet one of her clients. She disappeared and 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:41.800 her body was discovered off Highway sixteen, and then finally 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:46.440 Alicia Germaine was fifteen years old lasting in nineteen ninety 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:50.400 four at a Christmas dinner and she was discovered close 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:53.520 to Highway sixteen. So that's when they came up with 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:56.440 their criteria to see if they could sort of narrow 0:12:56.480 --> 0:12:57.120 this down right. 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:01.160 Yeah, and just one thing, Rock sand and Leah or 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:03.880 Alicia who also went by Leah. They were friends and 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:07.720 also colleagues. They both were sex workers who were engaged 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:12.640 in survival sex. Ramona who was not engaged in anything 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:14.480 like that. She I think she worked at a restaurant 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:19.640 or something. But Ramona, Roxanne, and Leah all were murdered 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:24.920 in the same area. Between Ramona was June, Roxanne July 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:30.839 Leah in December of nineteen ninety four. I think in 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:34.520 all their cases in this area, everybody's like there's something 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:37.120 going on. The cops are like, just give us eleven 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:40.000 more years and we'll come together and come up with 0:13:40.040 --> 0:13:42.880 this new EPANA project. And right when they did, those 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:45.480 three just stuck out immediately. It's like there's some real 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:48.440 commonalities here. They need to be investigated. But like you 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:50.720 were saying, the three criteria that they came up with 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:55.280 from this EPANA project, you had to be female, You 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:59.600 had to last be seen dead or alive within a 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:02.760 mile Highway sixteen, and then you also had to be 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:07.400 involved in high risk activities like sex work, but also hitchhiking. 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:10.400 And we should say here too for those of us 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.800 who grew up in towns with bus service and cabs 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:16.200 and you could walk places and get to where you're 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:20.720 going easily, ride your bike, like hitchhiking almost seemed like frivolous. 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:24.680 Hitchhiking is a way to live and survive and get 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:28.600 to work in this area. It has been for decades, 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:32.560 So it's not like I think you can view hitchhiking 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:34.840 as like, man, why did you hitchhike? In a lot 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:37.680 of cases, the women and girls who were picked up 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:40.520 hitchhiking were trying to get to where they were going, 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:43.160 like they weren't like just hitting the road like they 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:46.080 that was just part of daily life for them. Unfortunately. 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:50.640 Yeah, so once they narrow down this criteria, they found 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:55.240 more cases that sort of fit that and were lumped 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:59.400 into the Highway of Tears murders. Alberta Williams was twenty 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.560 four and she was celebrating at a pub at the 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:05.120 end of summer after working there seasonally with her sister. 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:08.480 This was nineteen eighty nine. Her body was found about 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:13.200 a month after her disappearance. Delphine Nikol was sixteen years old, 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:18.240 disappeared in nineteen ninety well hitch hiking. Lanta Derrek, nineteen 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:22.920 year old college student, disappeared in October of ninety five. 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:27.960 We mentioned Tamra Chipman that was the relative of Florence 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:30.720 and Aziel. She was twenty two and the mother of 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:34.480 a two year old boy, disappeared while hitchhiking in two 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:38.200 thousand and five, and then fourteen year old Aliyah Sarah 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:41.720 Auger went missing from Prince George in two thousand and 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:46.960 six and she was found deceased in a ditch right 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:50.040 beside the highway Highway sixteen and Aila. 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:51.800 I'm pretty sure that's how you say her name. She 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:55.280 was the last one to be officially added, like as 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:58.920 far as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are concerned, she's 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:03.040 the last high Way of Tears victim, although as we'll see, 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:05.760 there have been plenty more who would qualify for sure. 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:10.040 The problem is EPANA is very much underfunded and not 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.040 basically not really operational right now, so they're not adding 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:15.800 people for that reason. But when they looked into this 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:19.160 a little more, they basically went back to their credit 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:22.360 and found that there was about three hundred boxes of 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:26.600 information and paperwork on all these cases. And so they're like, 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:30.080 we can't get anywhere until we have all this stuff 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:33.360 logged in some sort of database. So they created the 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:35.160 database and they logged in, and it took them like 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:38.160 a year. But after they finally got all that stuff 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:41.720 in some of those older cases, the ones between nineteen 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:45.520 sixty nine and nineteen eighty one, they started bubbling up 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:49.440 toward the top and were eventually included, starting with that 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:53.200 first one with Gloria Moody, also including Monica Jack and 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:58.119 then there was also Micheline Pare, Gaylen Weiss, Pamela Darlington, 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:02.800 Colleen McMillan, and Monica Ingus and then Maureen Mosey and 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.240 again all of them were killed between nineteen sixty nine 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:08.159 and eighty one Paul along Highway sixteen, and a lot 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:09.760 of them were hitchhiking as well. 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:14.640 Yeah, and you know, if you look into these cases 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:17.520 and people, you know, the volunteers that are working with 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:19.879 some of these, you know a lot of them are 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:23.680 run by, you know, families of victims, they will say 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:29.560 that it's probably more like, you know, fifty people advocates 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:31.720 say that, you know, the total is way higher than 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:34.199 they're saying it is, you know, kind of for all 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:36.879 the reasons that we've mentioned so far, and that seems 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:38.120 like a good time to take. 0:17:38.000 --> 0:18:07.720 Our first break and we'll be right back, all right. 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:10.159 So when we left off, we were saying that the 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:13.840 total number is could be as high as fifty. If 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:16.400 you look at all these cases, and not a lot 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:18.880 of them have been solved, there are a few exceptions 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:23.080 here and there that definitely showed that there were serial killers, 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:27.040 a killer or killers operating. There was one big one 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:33.399 in twenty twelve with Colleen McMillan. She was murdered hitch hiking. 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:36.200 She was sixteen years old. This is nineteen seventy four, 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:39.720 but they had, you know, in some of the evidence 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:43.680 boxes had her blouse still and with the improvement in 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:46.640 DNA matching and databases and stuff like that, they were 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:49.320 able to find a match on Interpol. It was an 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:53.000 American named Bobby Jack Fowler, who had died in prison 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:55.840 in two thousand and six, where he was serving time 0:18:56.440 --> 0:19:00.439 for attempted kidnapping and attempted murder on another woman in 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:03.360 nineteen ninety five, and they found that he had been 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:07.000 working as a roofer in Canada when this murder and 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:10.960 others took place, and you know, basically we're like, it 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:13.080 was probably two other women as well on the list, 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:17.960 Pamela Darlington and Gail Weiss, and they were both murdered 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:20.360 in nineteen seventy three, but he died in prison before 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:22.400 they could officially pin that on him. 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:26.320 Yes, and from what I've read about Bobby Jack Fowler 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:28.280 is the kind of scumbag that you wish you could 0:19:28.320 --> 0:19:30.920 go dig up and reanimate so you can punish him 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:36.040 some more. He was terrible. And when the Canadian cops 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:40.040 were like, hey, you guys had somebody incarcerated in your prisons, 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:43.960 to the officials in Oregon who killed at least one 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:47.480 girl here but probably three total, you should probably look 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:51.840 around at your own files, they started finding. I think 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:56.080 they've said up to maybe twenty murders that they've pinned 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:59.240 on Bobby Jack Fowler. Nothing they can prove, but it's 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:03.240 just likely that he committed them. And he'll obviously never 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:05.919 be convicted or tried for him because he's dead. But 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:08.880 it just it goes to show you like there are 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:13.880 human beings out there who will just kidnap, rape and 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:16.800 murder and just do it over and over again. And 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:19.920 the easiest thing to do in the world is, if 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:21.440 you're going to do that kind of thing, is take 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:25.199 advantage of a very vulnerable population in a very sparsely 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:30.200 populated area, which makes Highway sixteen just like the perfect spot. 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:31.520 Yeah, there's another guy. 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:34.600 In fact, he's the only living person convicted of one 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:36.680 of these murders from someone on the E panelist. 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:38.800 His name is Gary Taylor Handlin. 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:44.640 He, you know, going back to the nineteen sixties, had 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:48.520 committed multiple rapes, been in jail multiple times for these rapes. 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:52.119 One was a hitchhiker in nineteen seventy eight and he 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:55.440 became a suspect. And the youngest victim twelve year old 0:20:55.440 --> 0:21:00.439 Monica Jack that you had mentioned earlier, and also Katherine 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:04.000 Mary Herbert eleven years old. She just was not one 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:07.200 of the E paniccases. But they caught him by setting 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:10.119 up a sting operation in which they kind of created 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:13.879 this fake crime enterprise where he was answering to an 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:18.199 undercover cought playing a crime boss who got him to 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:22.320 confess that he abducted and strangled Monica Jack. And this 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:25.480 is when he also confessed to killing Katherine Mary Herbert. 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:28.960 But that confession was ruled and admissible, but he was 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:30.960 convicted of Jack's murder in twenty nineteen. 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:34.040 Yeah, he I hadn't heard of this, but that's apparently 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:36.840 a fairly typical sting operation. They call him a mister 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:41.920 Big operation where you just introduced to successively higher up 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:48.640 criminals in some organization that they're all cops. The judge 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:52.359 was like, no, the admission to or confession to Katherine 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:55.840 Mary Herbert's murder in admissible, but he thought that he 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:59.440 was basically convincing this crime boss to get him out 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.159 of being tried convicted for Monica Jack's murder. So they're like, 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:07.440 that's totally admissible. He completely volunteered that, but yeah, I 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:09.480 mean he went down for it. But like you said, 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:13.359 he's the only living person who's ever been convicted for 0:22:13.520 --> 0:22:16.280 one of these dozens of murders. 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:17.080 Yeah. 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:19.399 So, you know, we mentioned two thousand and six is 0:22:19.400 --> 0:22:23.480 when they stopped officially tagging names onto the official epanelist. 0:22:23.800 --> 0:22:26.720 There have still been plenty of murders and sexual assaults 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:31.679 along that stretch of highway since then, Cody Lejebikov, I. 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:33.440 Believe is how you pronounced that it sounds. 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:36.800 Right killed three women and a fifteen year old girl 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:38.840 between two thousand and nine and twenty ten, So that 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:42.520 was after the official list. Two of those victims were indigenous, 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:45.600 and the cops caught him when they just pulled him 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:49.360 over for a speeding violation and found blood on him, 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:52.600 and they found the body of a fifteen year old 0:22:53.040 --> 0:22:56.679 Lauren don Leslie, and then you know, realized that they 0:22:56.680 --> 0:22:59.440 could link him to and I believe he was convicted 0:22:59.440 --> 0:23:03.360 to of killing of three other women, Jill Stacy Stachenko, 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:06.679 Cynthia Francis Moss, and Natasha Lin Montgomery. 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:10.879 Yeah, and so all three of them were from Prince George, 0:23:10.880 --> 0:23:13.800 which is the easternmost town considered part of the Highway 0:23:13.800 --> 0:23:18.480 of Tears. And Cody was nineteen when he killed the 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:23.280 first of them, Jill Stacy Stachenko. He's not the youngest 0:23:23.280 --> 0:23:27.240 serial killer in Canadian history, but he too, like the 0:23:27.320 --> 0:23:30.480 other guys, was a scumbag and still is. He was 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:34.160 sentenced to no less than twenty five years four times, 0:23:34.520 --> 0:23:38.080 but it appears that his sentences are concurrent. So he's 0:23:38.119 --> 0:23:42.240 serving twenty five years for four murders, and the judge 0:23:42.240 --> 0:23:45.600 reminded him that he could apply for parole as early 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:48.640 as fifteen years in. So that's four years from now 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:50.400 that this guy might be able to get out after 0:23:50.440 --> 0:23:54.760 being convicted of murdering for three women and a girl. 0:23:55.240 --> 0:23:56.080 I don't like that. 0:23:57.119 --> 0:24:00.800 Yeah, So you mentioned Florence Nazil earlier having organized her 0:24:00.840 --> 0:24:01.320 own walk. 0:24:01.720 --> 0:24:03.119 This was in two thousand and six. 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:07.120