Highway of Tears- Police reveal details of E-Pana investigation

[waabzy]

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/vanished/Police%20reveal%20details%20Pana%20investigation%20into%20female%20unsolved%20cases%20along%20major%20highways%20northern/2331959/story.html

Police reveal details of E-Pana investigation into 18 female unsolved cases in northern B.C.
re is the full exclusive Vancouver Sun interview with RCMP Staff-Sgt. Bruce Hulan, the officer in charge of B.C.'s Unsolved Homicide Unit and team commander of Project E-Pana, which is conducting homicide investigations of 18 girls and women who disappeared or were found murdered along major highways in northern B.C.

It is the first extensive media interview by police to explain Project E-Pana, which began in the fall of 2005 when the Unsolved Homicide Unit was tasked with viewing three homicides that the behavioural sciences people, the profilers, had reviewed and found there was some commonalities between the files.

Hulan: We reviewed the files with the view of whether we could identify or say the homicides had been committed by the same person or whether there was a reason to believe there were three separate killers.

There was rumour, speculation and media reports in the north suggesting that a serial killer was responsible for these and other files.

So part of our mandate was to determine if there was a serial killer responsible and also trying to identify investigative strategies to move those three files forward.

The three files were Alishia Germaine, Roxanne Thiara and Ramona Wilson.

That was the birth of Project E-Pana, which used an Inuit word describing the spirit goddess that looks after the souls just before they go to heaven or were reincarnated. One of investigators our came up with the name.

Q. What did the initial review tell you?

A. The review was a bit of a slow process, to say the least. We started doing the review but very early into it we recognized that, if we are looking for this serial killer, we'll have to broaden our scope and have a look at other files, if they were out there.

So what we did, using ViCLAS [Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System] and other databases we have, missing person records, and analyzing the information contained in there, we recognized that we also had to look at six other files. We've moved now into the spring of 2006.

They [the nine cases then on the list] were essentially from the road from Prince Rupert to where Shelley Bacsu was found in Hinton, Alta.

We decided we couldn't review the files in a paper format. The size and number of boxes of file material that we have, no person can keep straight in their head - [for example] the name that appears in box number one also appears in box 200.

So we decided we would load the files into our evidence and reports database, which meant bringing the files to our officer here in Surrey, scanning them into the database and doing all the work that went with that.

We underestimated how big of a job that is, having never done it before, I thought we could get it done in three months and it took close to a year to load it in.

There were close to 200 boxes for the first nine [cases]. Just one investigation was close to 100 [boxes] - Bacsu is a big file.

Once we were at the point we had three or four files loaded in, we had teams of reviewers that we assigned files to begin the review with.

We identified three key points to include files: that the victim was involved in a high-risk activity that would expose them to danger, being hitchhiking or [involved in] street trade [prostitution]; our first search was along Highway 16 and we had to decide how far we would go off Highway 16, and we decided a mile; and, of course, that they were female.

At the time, all were girls from the 17 to 20 range.

The one-mile limit was for both last seen or a body found.

The investigators were saying to us: Have you taken a look at this file or this particular investigation? And we decided to do another search for similar files, meeting the same criteria, but extending it down to Highway 97 to Highway 5 ?- from Prince George down to Kamloops and the Merritt area.

Q. Why that particular stretch?

A. We were trying to control, to a certain degree, the volume of files we had. It was limited by resources, to a certain extent. We couldn't look at the entire province, only because we don't have the resources for this particular project to take on a significant number of files.

It's commonly referred to in the media as the Highway of Tears, but that didn't come from us....Who came up with the term, I don't know....We refer to it by the project name or the Highway 16 investigations, which is where we started out.

Q. In 2007, when the list went from nine to 18, the new nine cases, they chronologically came before the first nine. Is it because the older cases take more time to look back at them or was it just a matter of coincidence?

A. It was just coincidence that they were older. We expanded our geographical search.

Q. Did you go through about 200 unsolved cases before you decided on the 18?

It was based on the number that the ViCLAS database would have searched .... If there was a [homicide] investigation that was a mile and a half, we certainly looked at that if it was within reasonable proximity. We didn't discount it simply based on distance. And if there was one that should be brought in, we made that assessment.

Our file review began in earnest in late 2006, with investigators actually sitting at their computers reading the file, page by page. Our goal was to be able to say that this file has been meticulously reviewed and doesn't require another review.

You have to understand that these investigations, a number or a majority have all been reviewed and they've been subjected to lengthy investigations, then reviewed, then investigations conducted beyond that review. So we're kind of going over work that's been done several times.

In February of '09, the review was completed and we then moved to the investigative stage of the project.


READ FULL ARTICLE/VIEW VIDEOS AT LINK

[solvy]

Thank you Waaz, an excellent read!

[waabzy]

its  part 1 of a 5 part series. I will post the others as they are published

[Sleuth]

Thanks Waabzy for posting this. And for the other four parts as they appear in print. I really hope this moves things forward for the young ladies, their families and friends and all the other Canadians who have been following this tragedy.

[waabzy]

Possible Highway of Tears suspects haunt detectives
 
There has never been an arrest in this mystery
 
By NEAL HALL, VANCOUVER SUN
PART 2- http://www.vancouversun.com/news/vanished/Possible+Highway+Tears+suspects+haunt+detectives/2336915/story.html

 
Possible Highway of Tears suspects haunt detectives
 
There has never been an arrest in this mystery
 
By NEAL HALL, VANCOUVER SUNDecember 15, 2009Be the first to post a comment
 
 

    * Story
    * Photos ( 1 )

 
An artist’s sketch showing the suspected Highway of Tears killer and his hitchhiking victim. The drawing was released in June 1981.
 
An artist’s sketch showing the suspected Highway of Tears killer and his hitchhiking victim. The drawing was released in June 1981.
Photograph by: Handout, Vancouver Sun

A former Kamloops detective got excited about a possible break in the murder of Colleen Rae MacMillen, 16, when a U.S. man confessed to killing her.

MacMillen’s body had been found on a logging road about 25 kilometres south of 100 Mile House about a month after the she went missing in 1974.

But the man changed the details of how the murder was carried out, and police later concluded it was a bogus confession, said Ken Leibel.

The suspect, Edwin Henry Foster, 19, made the confession while serving an eight-year sentence for a gas station robbery. He hanged himself in a Washington state prison in 1976.

The prospect of resolution fizzled into yet another frustrating dead end in the unsolved murder of Colleen MacMillen.

Her brutal death is just one of a grim series of disappearances and murders of women in northern B.C. that have haunted Leibel and other detectives over the years.

Leibel said he got excited again when he began investigating another likely suspect, who lived outside of 100 Mile House in the 1970s.

“Somebody came to the detachment and said a man had tried to abduct them and they took down the licence plate,” Leibel recalls today.

Police ran the plate and saw that the man, Jerry Baker, had a history of sex offences, had done time in prison and had returned to the Williams Lake area around the time MacMillen was killed — the teenager was last seen hitchhiking to a girlfriend’s house about six kilometres away in Lac la Hache.

At the time, Leibel felt the man could have been responsible for other murders as well. His name had surfaced in several other investigations, including the murders of Pamela Darlington in Kamloops in 1973 and Gail Ann Weys in Clearwater in 1974.

He tried questioning Baker about MacMillen’s murder, “but he was extremely nervous and denied it.”

Fifteen years later, Baker became the prime suspect for the murder of a young girl named Norma Tashoots, 17, whose body was found on July 10, 1989 in a wooded area near 100 Mile House. She had been shot.

She was last seen about a month earlier being dropped off near 100 Mile House while hitchhiking to Vancouver.

A local resident suggested Baker was responsible for the Tashoots murder.

Baker, who had reported his Ruger handgun stolen to police the day after Tashoots was last seen, was interviewed and denied being involved. The investigation eventually dead-ended.

But it was re-opened in 2001 after a complete file review and a decision to try an undercover operation.

Baker eventually confessed to murdering Tashoots to an undercover officer and confided where he had disposed of the murder weapon — the gun he had reported missing — which was recovered. He was convicted in 2003 of the murder.

“Is he responsible for four or five [murders] or one? I don’t know,” Leibel said of Baker.

He said police considered the possibility of a serial killer being involved in the growing number of unsolved murders that occurred along highways in B.C.’s Interior.

“If you’ve got somebody driving, you could have one guy,” Leibel said. “You can cover a lot of ground in a day.”

‘It could be anyone’

There has been criticism levelled at police and RCMP over the years for failing to solve the majority of the highway homicide cases including those of the 18 girls and women on the Highway of Tears victims’ list.

Leibel said the cases were especially difficult to investigate because they seemed to involve a killer who was a complete stranger to the murder victims, many of whom were teenage girls trying to hitch a ride.

“It could be anyone,” he said of trying to find a suspect. “It’s different than when you’re investigating a jealous husband or boyfriend.”

There has also been criticism from native communities that police didn’t properly handle cases involving some of the aboriginal victims.

But Leibel said police treat every murder the same, regardless of the race, colour or socio-economic background of the victim.

“I always looked at the victim the same: You’re my client and I’m going to get some justice for you,” Leibel said. “You investigate it as if they were your own brother, sister or parent.”

He retired as a Mountie in 1992 and currently works on contract with the RCMP, interviewing people who apply to become Mounties. Even today, he still thinks about the unsolved murder of MacMillen.

“The odd time I’ll be walking with my morning coffee and I’ll think: Could I have done something different?” Leibel, now 58, recalled.

“I’m a proud sucker,” he said, adding he solved dozens of murders over his 21-year career. Those were the days when a murder file was kept in boxes, before computers and modern forensic science, including DNA testing.

“Overall, I had a pretty good success rate but there were ones that got away [with murder].”

Leibel says he still has his notebooks from those days, which he keeps in his basement, hoping one day to get a phone call, asking him to to testify about the cold case if it gets solved and goes to trial.

“One day, you hope for the call,” he said.

Keith Hildebrand, the commander of the Quesnel detachment until he retired last year, also finds it frustrating that he could never find the solution to the murder of Deena Braem, 16, who was last seen alive hitchhiking on Sept. 25, 1999. Her body was recovered three months later, on Dec. 10, northwest of Quesnel near Pinnacles Provincial Park.

Hildebrand said the unsolved murder file was already gathering dust when he arrived as detachment commander. He oversaw the Braem investigation and brought in detectives with the Surrey-based Integrated Homicide Investigation Team. They thoroughly went through the file and tried to find any tips that were not probed.

“We had some good leads but they ended in another dead end,” explained the 58-year-old retired officer, who now runs the community policing office in Quesnel.

“They are investigating tips,” he added about the state of the current investigation.

Hildebrand estimated that over the years, more than $1 million has been spent investigating Braem’s murder.

It was frustrating for him, when he retired in 2008, that the case remained unsolved.

“It bugs me the most of all my [36] years of service. It was like a loose end you leave behind,” Hildebrand said.

“Usually, when I took on a file, it had a good result to it,” he added.

“It was a frustrating investigation for everybody, including her parents,” he recalls. “It still bothers me.”

Asked if he believes a serial killer is operating along the highways of B.C.’s Interior, Hildebrand said he is uncertain.

“The evidence is that there is something,” he said. “Something unusual.”

‘They never leave you’

Retired Mountie Fred Bodnaruk, who was a staff-sergeant when he headed the investigations into the murders of Colleen MacMillan and Pamela Darlington in the early 1970s, admitted that even though he retired in 1977, he still thinks about the cases.

“They never leave you,” he said. “You dream about them, especially the ones you don’t solve.”

He always thought a serial killer could have been responsible for several “highway murders,” as they were called then.

At one time, Bodnaruk suspected U.S. serial killer Ted Bundy was responsible for Darlington’s murder.

The nude body of the 19-year-old was found at the edge of the Thompson River in 1973 with bite marks on her body — a Bundy trademark in some U.S. killings. But investigators concluded that although Bundy had been known to visit Canada, there was no evidence he was in the area at the time.

Bundy, a former Seattle resident, was caught and sentenced to death in Florida for three murders. Just before Bundy was executed in 1989, he confessed to committing more than 20 murders but investigators felt he was responsible for many more.

“Bundy didn’t confess anything until the end,” Bodnaruk said. “I felt police here should have gone down to talk to Bundy.”

Bodnaruk also compared notes “all the time” with Seattle detectives investigating the serial murder case known as the Green River killer. The man eventually caught, Gary Ridgway, pleaded guilty in 2003 to killing 48 women.

Now 78, Bodnaruk recently watched a TV documentary about a man named Wayne Clifford Boden and felt he might be a suspect. Boden was a travelling salesman who killed three women in Montreal before moving to Calgary, where he killed again and got caught in 1972.

He was known as the Vampire Killer because he left bite marks on all his victims, similar to Darlington.

The TV documentary detailed how Boden travelled through Kamloops to Vancouver.

Boden, however, was arrested in Calgary in 1972, convicted of four murders and died in prison in 2006.

Surrey private investigator Ray Michalko has been investigating the Highway of Tears cases on his own time since 2006.

“I was watching the news about the second anniversary of Tamara Chipman going missing [in 2005] and I complained to my wife that nobody seemed to be doing anything, and she said ‘You’re a PI, why don’t you do something’,” he recalled.

He started investigating the initial eight mysterious disappearances and murders along Highway 16. He estimates he spends up to 40 hours a month pursuing tips he receives by e-mail or on his toll-free line, which he publicizes using letters and posters, including some posted in federal prisons and provincial jails in B.C.

He said when he receives a paying job in the north, he stays a few days longer to do follow-up on the Highway of Tears tips.

Michalko, 62, a former North Vancouver Mountie, said there is no shortage of theories and rumours about who is behind the murders and disappearances.

Some say it’s a cop or a long-haul trucker preying on young girls walking along the highway alone, he said.

“I have seen no evidence of that,” Michalko said of the rumours. “There’s a million places to pull off and go undetected, but not in a tractor-trailer.”

One name popping up

He’s also been told that the girls were abducted and used in some sort of sex trafficking ring. Again, he discounts that theory because he has received no solid tips of it happening.

He initially believed there was a serial killer cruising the highway “but I don’t believe that now. But until you catch somebody, you don’t know.”

Despite “one name that keeps popping up” — he wouldn’t reveal the man’s name, other than to say he is linked to a community close to Prince George — there is little to link the unsolved cases together, other than the fact the girls and young women were last seen on the highway, many of them hitchhiking.

He now believes the murders were likely crimes of opportunity committed by various men living in the local communities where the tragedies took place or passing through those communities.

“That’s scarier than having a serial killer,” Michalko explained, adding it means more than a dozen men got away with murder and are still walking free.

60 people assigned

Currently there are 60 people, including retired homicide detectives working on contract, assigned to the Project E-Pana investigation, which is conducting homicide probes of 18 female victims along Interior highways.

Investigators descended last August on a piece of property in the Isle Pierre district west of Prince George looking for evidence related to the 2002 disappearance of Nicole Hoar, 25, who was from Red Deer and working as a tree planter when she was last seen hitchhiking near a gas station west of Prince George.

At the time of Hoar’s disappearance on June 21, 2002, the property searched by police was owned by Leland Switzer, a welder who told police in 2004 that the night Hoar disappeared he and a friend stopped and urinated near the Mohawk gas station — Hoar’s vanishing point.

Switzer told police about this because he said he didn’t know if police used a “fine tooth comb” to search the scene.

During his police statement, which was obtained by Global TV and provided to The Sun, Switzer provided the name of a friend and neighbour whom Switzer claimed had broken down crying when Switzer asked if he was responsible for all the “girls” going missing along Highway 16.

“My daughter heard a gun shot that night,” Switzer added. “When Nicole Hoar went missing, right?”

He said his wife and daughter were home that night but Switzer said he was at a dance and maintained 33 people saw him there.

Two days after Hoar’s disappearance, Switzer fatally shot and killed his older brother, Irvin Switzer, at his parents' property, near his own home. He now is serving life for that murder.

Police confirmed last week that investigators seized a vehicle and other exhibits during the search related to Hoar. The exhibits now are being tested in the RCMP forensics lab.

nhall@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Murder meeting drew investigators
 
About 40 detectives turned out to compare notes on Highway Murders in B.C. and Alberta
 
By NEAL HALL, VANCOUVER SUNDecember 15, 2009

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/vanished/Murder+meeting+drew+investigators/2336912/story.html

In 1981, a Kamloops RCMP investigator named Mike Eastham organized a conference to compare notes on the growing number of unsolved female homicides along highways in the Interior of B.C. and into Alberta.

They were dubbed the Highway Murders because the bodies were found near major highways or the person was last seen along a highway, often hitchhiking.

Eastham thought the conference would attract maybe a dozen investigators. About 40 detectives showed up, including some from Alberta, making it the biggest meeting of its kind at that time.

What detectives found were similarities in cases, including reports of suspicious vehicles and even the names of persons of interest in boxes of paper files — this was well before computers, the Internet and e-mail.

Investigators then believed there were common factors in four cases, including the unsolved Alberta murder of Melissa Ann Rehorek and the B.C. case of Oanh Ngoc Ha.

Ha — a 19-year-old Vietnamese refugee — was found on Feb. 28, 1981, near Golden. She had been raped, strangled and her body mutilated after death.

The shy teen had come to Canada seven months earlier and landed a job as a chambermaid at a Banff hotel. Her body was found face down in the snow, a few metres from the Trans-Canada Highway, about 80 kilometres west of Golden, on the road to Kamloops, and 200 kilometres from Banff.

The fully-clothed body of Melissa Ann Rehorek, 20, was found Sept. 16, 1976, in a ditch along a gravel road about 20 kilometres west of Calgary near the Trans-Canada Highway. She had been strangled.

She was last seen leaving the Calgary YWCA, where she lived. She was planning on hitchhiking out of town for her two days off work from her job as a chambermaid at a local hotel.

RCMP investigators also suspected her killer might be the same man who strangled Barbara Jean MacLean five months later.

The night of Feb. 26, 1977, 19-year-old MacLean had argued with her boyfriend and decided to hitchhike home.

The following morning, a man walking his dog discovered Barbara’s fully-clothed, strangled body beside a gravel road near 80th Avenue and 6th Street N.E. in Calgary.

Police traced her movements the night before to the Highlander Hotel tavern, where she and her boyfriend had argued after closing time.

The daughter of a retired physician, MacLean was originally from Nova Scotia and had moved to Calgary, where she worked at the Royal Bank, the Calgary Herald newspaper reported after the murder.

A person of interest in MacLean’s murder was sex offender Gary McAstocker, 34. McAstocker hanged himself in 1994 in his Edmonton home hours before he was to be questioned by police in the suspected murder of a 14-year-old Edmonton girl, Tina McPhee, who disappeared a month earlier while walking to school.

He had just been released from prison after serving his full 11-year sentence for a 1982 rape and a subsequent 1988 sexual assault committed while on parole.

McAstocker was also reportedly the prime suspect in the 1976 murder of an Edmonton teenager, Marie Judy Goudreau, 17, who disappeared Aug. 2, 1976 on the way home to her family’s farm on the edge of Edmonton. Her body was found two days later near Devon, southwest of Edmonton.

MacLean and Goudreau were both strangled and sexually assaulted. McAstocker had been working for an Edmonton-based moving company and was in Calgary at the time MacLean was killed.

The firm’s employees often stayed at the Highlander while on Calgary business, the Herald reported.

Another similar Alberta case police looked at during the 1981 homicide conference was the murder of Pauline Brazeau, 16, who had moved to Calgary from Yorkton, Sask., in search of a new life for her nine-month-old daughter.

A month after her move, she and a friend visited a nearby pizza restaurant, departing about 2:30 a.m. But Brazeau returned alone to the restaurant 15 minutes later to retrieve a pair of gloves she left behind.

Her partially clothed body was found about five hours later on a forestry road near the Jumping Pound Airstrip, about 40 kilometres southwest of Cochrane. She had been stabbed to death.

Police believed she had either hitchhiked or was picked up by someone after leaving the restaurant.

The other Alberta case probed as having possible links with B.C. cases was that of Tara Jane White, 18, who was last seen July 1, 1976 in Calgary. White was heading to Lake Louise, where she had a summer job as a dining room waitress. She was a second-year science student at the University of Calgary.

Her skeletal remains were found almost five years later, on Mar. 24, 1981, in a shallow grave in a wooded area about 60 kilometres west of Calgary. Police believe White either accepted a ride to Banff/Lake Louise at the bus depot or she was picked up hitchhiking.

At the time, Golden RCMP Cpl. Blair Schaufele suggested the same person who killed White might be responsible for the death of Ha and other “highway murders.”

“There’s a possibility we’re dealing with an individual that may be a bad guy that’s in prison for a while, then gets out,” he said.

Serial killer Clifford Olson at one time claimed to have “personal knowledge and information” about the unsolved murders of Ha, Pamela Darlington of Kamloops and others, but police dismissed the claims as bogus.

“At one time, he [Olson] was confessing to everything,” recalled retired senior Mountie Fred Bodnaruk, who initially headed the Darlington investigation. “He was playing games.”

nhall@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

[waabzy]

pART 3
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/vanished/index3.html

[waabzy]

prt 4
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/vanished/There+hitchhiking+warnings+northern+everyone+hears+message/2340459/story.html

There are warnings, but not everyone hears
 
Hitchhiking, once considered a normal means of transportation, is blamed for many disappearances
 
By LORI CULBERT, Vancouver SunDecember 15, 2009

NEAR STELLAKO, B.C. - The slight figure has pulled the hood of her white sweater over her head, for some feeble protection from the cold late-November wind, and nearly blends anonymously into the snowy background of this barren stretch of Highway 16.

Liza Nooski, 19, trudges along the tarmac where it turns due north to curve around the west end of Fraser Lake, the bottom of her pants covered in the brown sludge that lines the road after sanding trucks cover the previous night’s snowfall.

A Vancouver Sun reporter and photographer pull over to offer Nooski a ride. It’s nippy outside. She’s happy to accept.

Earlier that morning, Nooski tells us, she hitchhiked more than 20 km from her home on the Nadleh Whut’En reserve on the east end of the lake to the town of Fraser Lake, situated between Vanderhoof and Burns Lake on Highway 16.

She lucked out this day, as her cousin picked her up and drove her to town, where Nooski took her 15-year-old sister out for a meal during the high school lunch break.

Then, to kill some time before her sister got off school, Nooski decided to walk the 4.5 km to Stellako, a nearby native community, where she can save money on taxes by buying minutes for her cellphone at the native-run store.

Nooski is a polite, soft-spoken young woman, who admits to hitchhiking from time to time. There’s no public transit from her reserve to Fraser Lake. She has no money to buy a car.

Some local communities have shuttle bus services, such as from Stony Creek into Vanderhoof. But there are none in the area where Nooski lives, she says.

She is careful, she insists, to only get into vehicles with people she knows or who do not look dangerous. She doesn’t feel nervous, she tells us.

“Usually I take care of myself on the highway. I usually don’t get in unless it’s my friend or my cousin [who is driving],” she says. “If it’s a guy I don’t know, I don’t usually get in the car.”

Nooski has read in the newspaper about the so-called Highway of Tears investigation, a police probe looking into the disappearances or deaths of 18 girls and women along major B.C. arteries, including Highway 16. She has also seen posters about the case in her community.

Nooski says her friends have changed the way they thumb rides because of the high-profile case, but she is worried her younger sister’s friends still feel invincible while hitchhiking to Vanderhoof or Prince George.

“They’ve seen the posters up, but they don’t really listen. I tried to tell them,” Nooski says.

Improved bus service is one of the more than 30 recommendations made in a 2006 report following the first symposium held in Prince George for relatives of the girls and women on the Highway of Tears list.

It is the first recommendation in the report, and it reads: “That a shuttle bus transportation system be established between each town and city located along the entire length of Highway 16, defined as ‘The Highway of Tears.’ ”

“I’m frustrated because I don’t feel like any of those recommendations have been followed up on,” said Grainne Barthe, with the North Coast Transition Society in Prince Rupert.

She said it is common in northern communities to try to catch rides to rural towns, as there are few other ways to get around.

There is semi-regular bus service from Prince Rupert to Terrace, but nothing to places like Kitimat or Hazelton. The bus will also take you to Smithers, but won’t stop to drop you off at Moricetown along the way, Barthe said.

“I don’t get the feeling that anything is safer for women today. I think one of the biggest problems for the north is that we are disregarded by the Lower Mainland,” said Barthe, who is originally from Montreal.

“I’ve never heard any government official or RCMP say there is a killer on the loose. You can create some safety just by saying that because right now, it is so abstract.”

Another key recommendation from the symposium was to erect billboards along the highway to increase public awareness of the case, as part of a “victim prevention program.”

While driving along Highway 16 last month, The Vancouver Sun passed four of these billboards in communities like Gitwangak, Thornhill and Moricetown.

Two of them read “Hitchhiking: Is it worth the risk?” There is an eerie image of a teenaged girl hitchhiking on a road lined with tomb stones, as two mournful ghosts hug her legs and cry on her shoulder. A caption says, “Ain’t worth the risk, sister.”

The billboards indicate they are often sponsored by local governments and reserves, and occasionally by businesses and the provincial government.

Prince Rupert city council approved putting up a billboard, but no action has yet been taken there. Prince George tried to erect a sign, but ran into trouble because the city doesn’t own the land along the highway.

Many people in the north, including Highway of Tears coordinator Mavis Erickson, hate the tone of the billboards, arguing they suggest the victim is at fault for agreeing to get into a vehicle.

“I resent that as first nations women they kind of consented to their own death, that they somehow consented to what happened,” Erickson said with exasperation during a recent interview in Prince George.

“The media and RCMP portrayal, throughout the years, referred to the women and girls as high-risk so immediately people think they were doing something they shouldn’t have done, and somehow they deserved it.”

The reality is, Erickson argued, that the majority of the victims are teenagers and if you miss your school bus in a town like Smithers, there aren’t a lot of other ways to get home if your family can’t come to pick you up.

“They are not women, they are girls. They are missing girls. They are school children,” she added.

Erickson is a Harvard-educated lawyer who last spring took over the position of Highway of Tears coordinator. The job was created after families at the symposium demanded better communication with police and other authorities.

Erickson has met with the solicitor-general to try to secure funding to get some of the recommendations implemented, she said, but right now her office is run on a “shoestring budget” on a year-to-year contract that expired Dec. 1.

Carrier Sekani Family Services in Prince George, where her office is located, has provided some bridge financing as she tries to line-up future funding, she said last week.

The previous coordinator held youth forums and produced safety tool kits for the communities. Erickson argues one of the greatest needs is to increase safety and security for women.

If the Lower Mainland can have campaigns to keep boys out of gangs, she asked, why can’t there be something similar in the north to remind girls and women to stay safe on the highways? That could include poster campaigns to tell girls, for example, to travel in pairs after dark or to pre-arrange a driver.

“The province and Canada has a long way to go to improve safety and security for First Nations women. We need an educational campaign and transportation,” Erickson said.

There is also a need for following up on another recommendation: placing emergency phone booths in well-lit rest areas along the highway, she added, as there is no cellphone service during the long treks between communities.

Craig Benjamin, of Amnesty International Canada, questions if police need to be more forthcoming about their investigation, and if they need to warn the community about any other risk that links these 18 victims together. “I really wonder when police have their 18 names and they’re not taking the effort to be really clear about the numbers,” he said, “are they aware of the consequences of that uncertainty?”

Barthe took part in organizing “Take Back the Highway” rallies in the north a few years ago, as a twist on the “Take Back the Night” events that call for more safety for women. They had T-shirts made up for the Prince Rupert demonstration that said: “There’s a killer on the road.”

Quoting reports done by advocacy organizations like Amnesty International Canada, Barthe’s organization argues the number of missing and murdered women who belong on the Highway of Tears list is double the existing number.

“There are women who are missing who are not counted. My question is: Why not?”

Others in the north reference the Native Women’s Association of Canada, which in a recent report said there are 520 “known” cases of native women going missing or being murdered. B.C. leads all provinces by a wide margin, with 137 cases.

Police say their list was composed based on criteria the cases need to meet, and a geographical boundary that does not include all of B.C. Police argue there is no proof a serial killer is on B.C. highways.

But even the 2006 symposium report acknowledges the total number of victims is constantly questioned. “There is much community speculation and debate on the exact number of women that have disappeared along Highway 16 over a longer 35-year period; many are saying the number of missing women, combined with the number of confirmed murdered women, exceeds 30,” the report says.

Some family members of those on the Highway of Tears list argue they don’t see significant improvements for women in the north since their loved ones went missing or were murdered.

Sally Gibson, the aunt of Lana Derrick, who disappeared near Thornhill in 1995, said the symposium brought some improvements — such as police keeping in better contact with families — but she doesn’t think it is any safer today for young women to travel between communities.

“If girls want to get somewhere and if they have no money or vehicle, then hitchhiking is often their method of transportation... Everyone believes it will never happen to me,” Gibson said.

“If we pick up hitchhikers we give them heck all the way to wherever they are going. They get a lecture the whole way.”

Cory Millwater, whose daughter Tamara Chipman vanished on Highway 16 just outside Prince Rupert on Sept. 21, 2005, believes schools could do a better job of talking to students about safety on the highways and hitchhiking — especially for rebellious teens.

“Somehow these young girls — maybe in the schools they have to be made to understand how dangerous it is,” Millwater said.

One day not long ago, Millwater picked up a hitchhiker she thought was about 12 or 13 years old, and told her about the devastation of losing her daughter.

Millwater dropped the girl off in nearby Port Edward, and then later that day saw the same girl hitchhiking again. “I hitchhiked across Canada when I was 16, and I never believed anything would happen to me. When you’re young, you think you’re invincible,” Millwater said, tears welling in her eyes.

lculbert@vancouversun.com

[Desespere]

This post can be deleted if it's a huge deal for copyright purposes
However, the sketch was released July 1981 and I think it's important for the picture to be on the web
the suspect at the time of this sketch was said to be about 33 year old white male.
date of birth would be 1947 or so
he appears to have dark hair and dark mustache and beard.
He was wearing a light dress shirt with rolled up sleeves and a dark vest

I have no clue how to describe the car. Can anyone add to this description in the sketch, particularly the car?
Particularly the year or about year of car.




Unsolved prior to June 1981
May 8, 1981 - Maureen Mosie - age 33 - Kamloops - http://www.unsolvedcanada.ca/index.php/topic,954.0.html
May 2, 1981 - Vera Bjerky - age 17 - Hope - missing - (no link on unsolved found)
Apr 22, 1981 - Kelly Cook - age 15 - Taber - http://www.unsolvedcanada.ca/index.php/topic,53.0.html
Feb ??, 1981 - Oaha Ha - age 19 - Golden/Banff? - http://www.unsolvedcanada.ca/index.php/topic,1059.0.html
Aug 7, 1981 - Mary Jaimieson - age 17 - Davis Bay - http://www.unsolvedcanada.ca/index.php/topic,1058.0.html
Mar 23, 1978 - Mary Hill - age 31 - Prince Rupert - http://www.unsolvedcanada.ca/index.php/topic,1093.0.html
May 16, 1976 - Katherine Mary Kliewer - age 26 - Vernon - murdered - link ??
Interesting from 1978 back to May 1976 there are many cases in Calgary unsolved.

I'm very curious about Katherine Mary Kliewer murder. This was a strangulation by ligature (her own pantyhose)
would her murder be considered high risk? the criteria for E-Pana is high risk
I believe brand new to a city and a motel room might be opportunity for a killer.
The mo for Katherine appears in somewhat similar forms with children and young women between 1955 and 1969 in eastern Canada, pretty much all around London/Toronto area.

The first occurrence is Katheine Kliewer in the west. I do not have MOs for all victims, less than half fact so this cannot be stated as fact that it does not occur in western Canada until 1976.

This series so far is great, I think police are being very open about the investigation so far. It is important public understands. I think the public can't hurt forensic evidence and it's mostly forensic's that are used to charge and convict so what harm is there in the public knowing how an investigation is conducted, what the numbers are and the scope, depth and breadth of the investigation.

Just a thought: $6 million a year to input data is kind of expensive. I had no idea. Hopefully the manpower to investigate now will see some good results. The links in the 18 cases are primarily the women were between ages 17-22, female, and in high risk circumstances at the time of their abduction. The other criteria expanded to within 1-1.5 miles of highway 16, then 97 and 5 were added.

All evidence was summarized into 100 page reports per case. This type of summary writing I believe is called gyst writing.
That is good progress.

[D1]

The car in the sketch appears to be about a 1967 belair or similar chevrolet.
Interesting that it is similar to another reported sighting from around the same area.
from- http://www.unsolvedcanada.ca/index.php/topic,23.msg14973.html#msg14973

The car was a stock green four door Chevrolet. There was a name of the model of vehicle on the dash on the passenger side in front of me. It was a name spelled in quite fancy chrome letters in a sort of italic writing. I believe it said ?chevelle?  although the car did not have the appearance of a performance auto in that year. I believe it was about a 1967 model.

Years later I saw a man on the T.V. news whom I believe was the driver of this vehicle. He was Clifford Olsen. I have no means of knowing what Olsen drove in those years but I am sending this along in case it may be of some importance to someone.

[Desespere]

Thank you D1.
This is a photo described only as a 1967 Chevy (it is a two door model)



I can't seem to find a case prior to 1981 when this sketch was released that occurred at or near Salmon Arm as the sketch states

[D1]

I could not find any missing person or abduction cases at or near Salmon Arm prior to 81 either. There were the Gale Weis and Pam Darlington murders back in 74 and a poster placed Gale near Salmon Arm at that time. Would like to hear more details or the story about how this sketch came about.
Below is a picture of a 66 chevelle, many of the chevrolet products were quite similar in those years, the belair, the biscayne, even the malibu and chevelle looked alike from a distance.

[Desespere]

The sketch shows a two door car and it appears (in the sketch) to be a battered up car, dented.

David Ennis (David Shearing) drove a 1965 Bel Air and a 1968 Chevy (model not stated)
Here's the link to Ennis' thread here
http://www.unsolvedcanada.ca/index.php/topic,2117.0.html

he had the kind of look as the person in the sketch above.
here's a photo of him taken from the link above


I'm pretty sure, or I will speculate, Shearing is in the list of persons of interest Project E-Pana has compiled.
Lots of strange coincidences though.

[debbiec]

I believe that David Shearing was around twenty two years old in 1982 when he committed the Wells Grey Park murders. Gale Weys went missing on October 19,1973. He would have been very young at the time of her disappearance.

[D1]

Many believe Ennis had a partner or is still covering for someone else. This is a link to a pic of a 65 belair..The roof line is slightly different from the one in the 1981 sketch at least in the two door model.
http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3062/2594936727_5bbbf54cb4.jpg%3Fv%3D0&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/8781061%40N06/2594936727/&usg=__eHE7kI9rSpEzuVTJEziHvNUjQU0=&h=193&w=500&sz=93&hl=en&start=9&um=1&tbnid=DguqT2MZAprE1M:&tbnh=50&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3D1965%2Bbelair%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1

Shearing would appear too young to have been the person described in the Gale Weis or Pam Darlington murders. We still don't really have a good understanding about  that sketch, why was it even produced? In association to what?

[D1]

The roofline of the vehicle in the sketch is a way closer match to the 4 door 66 chevrolet than most of the others. There are some very subtle differences between models..The sketch is quite detailed and does show enough distinquishing features that should be able to be narrowed down to a particular year and make.
this is a link to a picture of the standard 66 in a two door chevrolet,
http://www.performancecoatings.com/Hanek66.jpg

the 66 2 door belair is a close match..
http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3652/3646013722_185fb09e5c.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobsdcg/3646013722/&usg=__n8tItGuMPMjQhYeGaQ6wxEBrrt8=&h=375&w=500&sz=61&hl=en&start=7&tbnid=1lK2wspwfKnXSM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3D66%2Bchevrolet%2Bbelair%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN