UPDATE Saturday August 3 (noon) ~ Ontario Provincial Police have assigned a team of investigators to look into a spike in tips regarding the two young men wanted in multiple murders in British Columbia.
UPDATE Monday July 29 (4 pm) ~ Police are now pulling out of York Landing; they could not confirm the reported sighting of the two suspects at that location.
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UPDATE Sunday July 28, 2019 (10 pm) ~ Two men apparently with enough of a match to the two suspects to shift the focus of police efforts, were apparently sighted in York Landing today — a small island in northern Manitoba accessible only by ferry (or possibly through the trailways of the hydro transmission network or the train rails) . People in the local area saw two tall slim men in the landfill area of York Landing and contacted police. York Landing is southwest of Gillam where they were last seen.
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Saturday, July 27, 2019 ~ NATIONAL
~ West Shore Voice News
The entire country is watching as police continue their search for two BC teens who are now wanted for murder.
Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, of Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, BC were at first considered missing by RCMP, after it was said they had been heading to the Yukon to look for work.
But the two were soon connected to the death of UBC botany professor Leonard Dyck, 64 (with a charge of 2nd degree murder which indicates intent) whose body was found at a roadside pullout on Highway 37 near Dease Lake on July 19.
Police soon then connected the two suspects to the deaths of tourists Chynna Deese, 24 (from North Carolina) and Lucas Fowler, 23 (from Australia) who were found shot on July 15 on the roadside of the Alaska Highway about 20 km south of Liard Hot Springs which is northeast of Dease Lake.
McLeod and Schmegelsky were last seen in the remote northern area of Manitoba near the small town of Gillam (population 1,265, northeast of Thompson near Hudson Bay).
The suspects are considered dangerous. Anyone who sees them is asked to not make contact with the suspects but to call 911 or their local police.
Police are suggesting the possibility that McLeod and Schmegelsky may have been helped to escape the Gillam area by a motorist who may not have recognized them or would not have seen any media coverage in such a remote area. They are encouraging any such person to come forward (presumably without being blamed for anything the suspects themselves have done).
This series of events including now this massive search by police and military has caught the public’s imagination for its unusual aspects — age and apparently normalcy of the suspects, remote location, human interest aspects of the victims, and sheer geographical scope.
The time span of events relating to the current search now spans 12 days (presently July 15 to 27).
“Over the next 72 hours, investigators will conduct door to door canvasses in the town of Gillam and Fox Lake Cree Nation in hopes of generating new tips and information,” said RCMP Cpl Julie Courchaine on Friday afternoon.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale tweeted on Friday evening July 26 that investigators had asked for air support from the Canadian Armed Forces, which was promptly granted.
The first victims (Deese and Fowler) were considered to have been shot on July 14 or 15 according to police. They were found on Monday July 15, with their blue 1986 Chevy van found intact nearby on the Alaska Highway.
Fowler and Deese had been travelling together as a couple. They were seen on gas station video footage in Fort Nelson, BC (provided later to police) looking relaxed, just filling up their van and washing the vehicle windows.
On July 21 a roadworker in BC told Australian media that she saw the two travellers (Fowler and Deese) about two hours before they were killed, and that they were in a heated exchange with an unidentified bearded man. That man is asked to come forward but is not considered a suspect (a sketch of that man has been released by police — he was wearing a flat-topped hat and appeared to have a large build).
Dyck’s body was found on July 19 about 2km from the burnt-out truck used by McLeod and Schmegelsky that was found on Hwy 37 near Dease Lake on northern Vancouver Island. The truck and Dyck’s body (at that point unidentified) were discovered over 470 km southwest of Liard Hot Springs where the tourist couple was found.
The suspects were next found to have been driving a grey 2011 Toyota Rav4 which was found burned out in northern Saskatchewan on Wednesday July 24.
There is high-resolution CCTV footage of the two suspects as seen in a Co-op retail store in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan from July 24 (not released by RCMP until July 26). The pair of suspects looked calm as they made their way through the store. They didn’t buy anything or appear to interact with anyone.
The RCMP are now being assisted by Canadian military. They are doing aerial searches and ground searches in the Gillam area, and this weekend are going door to door in the Gillam area and on Fox Lake First Nation, aiming to dig up clues.
Various police and investigative experts who have been interviewed on regional and national TV suggest that the suspects may no longer be in the area, or if they are still in the northern Manitoba woods they will soon be struggling for basic survival in wet swampy bug-infested summer conditions of Canada’s north.
Family members of the suspects who have been interviewed by police and media on Vancouver Island give a varying range of accounts about McLeod and Schmegelsky. McLeod has had a relatively normal reputation, while Schmegelsky over the last few years was considered odd or unusual by friends or parents of friends. Schmegelsky apparently played a lot of video games with a violent component, as learned from his social media accounts. People who knew him in the community said he spoke with unusual interest in the violence of those games, and was heard to wonder aloud about what if the violence could be real.
Schmegelsky’s father who (according to The Globe and Mail) has an extensive criminal record told TV media that he feared his son would be killed in a shoot-out with police. Schmegelsky had been living between his mother’s home (shared with a boyfriend) and his grandmother’s home in the Port Alberni area.
No one has yet remarked on the eerie coincidence of the female victim’s last name (Deese) and the name of the nearby town of Dease Lake; the romantically-inclined couple may have wanted to travel there along their journey, to experience the name coincidence.
Active media coverage continues across Canada, and is being seen around the world, particularly in the USA and Australia given the origins of the two tourists.
========== LINKS:
Surveillance video images of the two suspects (CTV Vancouver Island news clip, July 25, 2019)
More background on the suspects (Globe & Mail article, July 27, 2019)