I'll put young Deena Braem (17 years old) here since she has now been added to the E-Pana list for investigation.
I'm going to also put up Deena's parents and hopefully someone who knows something will tell the appropriate authorities when they see the pain of the loss of their daughter on their faces.
Teen's death a mystery, 10 years later
By LORI CULBERT, Vancouver Sun December 22, 2009
QUESNEL — It was Friday, September 24, 1999, and Deena Braem planned to celebrate her 17th birthday that weekend with her high-school friends in Quesnel.
Her father, Jim Braem, knew Deena would stay over at a friend's house, instead of returning home. His last words to his daughter were for her to enjoy her night out.
"That was the last time I saw her alive. I remember saying, 'Happy birthday. Have a good time, beautiful.' I remember seeing her hair flipping around with her backpack on her back," he recalled. The memory is still difficult.
When Deena didn't come home that Saturday, her parents thought it was unusual. She hadn't even phoned to ask for some more money.
By Sunday they began to worry, especially when one of their daughter's best friends called to speak to Deena - she should have been with her.
However, the Braems were certain that by Monday - Deena's actual birthday - they would hear from their daughter. At 10 a.m. that day, Jim phoned the school, only to learn his daughter hadn't shown up for class. He met the bus after school, and discovered none of Deena's friends had seen her that day either.
There would be no birthday celebration in the Braem house that night.
"Instead, we reported her missing on her 17th birthday," Jim said during a recent interview.
When they drove home from the police station that evening, Jim and Paula noticed their daughter's shoes weren't in their regular spot by the front door. They were overcome by an intense sense of loss, one that still haunts them today.
"I never went back to work after Monday, for a whole year," said Jim, who is employed at a local mill.
"I died," his wife Paula added bluntly, her eyes red with emotion.
Police searched the local area. Jim drove his truck to Prince George and back, but didn't even know what he was looking for.
"There's not much else you can do. You really find out how much control you have over your life at times like that. You think you are in control of your destiny, but you're not," he said.
Deena was a typical teenager with a stubborn streak and a mind of her own. She was learning to drive. She was starting to focus more on school, as she planned to moved to Victoria once she graduated. She wrote in her journal that she would like to become an actress.
She had a horse on her parent's property near Bouchie Lake on the northwest outskirts of Quesnel, a city of 10,000 people on Highway 97.
Cpl. Ray Kinloch of the Quesnel RCMP said Deena had been with a group of friends at a four-by-four track southeast of the city earlier in the evening. They then went to another party on the west end of town but Deena didn't want to stay, and decided to hitchhike home despite the pouring rain outside.
A friend she was out with that night, but who stayed at the party, last saw Deena hitchhiking about 4 a.m. Saturday morning on North Fraser Drive, which runs parallel to the Fraser River. People working the early shift at the local mill also saw her standing on the side of the road.
Deena usually phoned her parents for a lift but this time she didn't. She was less than 10 km from home.
Investigators asked the Braems if Deena might have run away, a suggestion Jim rejected outright. He didn't know where his daughter was, but he held out some hope that they would find her.
Paula was less certain their daughter was still alive. "It just wasn't like her. Everything from that Saturday on just didn't feel right," she said.
Unfortunately, Paula's worst fears were proven true.
On Dec. 10, 1999 - two and a half months after Deena disappeared - a hunter stumbled upon human remains buried under a pile of brush in a wooden area near Pinnacles Park. It is about "two miles as the crow flies" between the spot where Deena was last seen and where her body was found, Jim said, but about an eight-mile drive.
Residents in Quesnel raised reward money, and Paula was sure somebody in the community would provide some crucial evidence to police.
"I would have thought someone would have been arrested in a year. But it's been 10 years," she said. "It's exhausting. It takes your life away."
The lack of answers is so consuming, Jim said, that he starts to think of everyone he sees as a possible guilty person.
Jim is frustrated that the police search of the area stopped 50 feet short of where his daughter's body was lying because officers left the area to pursue a new tip. Had they found her months earlier, would there have been more evidence to lead to an arrest? It is those unanswerable questions that haunt Jim, who has not been entirely pleased with the police investigation into his daughter's death.
"People say you get closure," Jim said. "The only thing you get closure on is a door. Every day that goes by it gets worse, it just gets worse in a different way. It's like a bigger bag that you keep dragging around."
Deena's name was informally associated for a long time with the Highway of Tears case, as she was frequently mentioned in media stories about the unsolved cases of highway murders in northern B.C. But she was not included in the official list when the RCMP expanded it in 2007.
At first, the Braems weren't sure Deena's case was similar enough to the others, as she disappeared from a secondary road. But they now wonder about the possibility their daughter was picked up by one of the logging trucks working in that area.
The road Deena was standing on runs parallel to Highway 97 but the two routes are separated by the Fraser River; it is a several-kilometre drive back into Quesnel to get back onto Highway 97, which runs from Prince George to Kamloops.
"I can't rule that out anymore," Jim said of the possibility his daughter's case belongs on the Highway of Tears list.
At least adding Deena's name to the list, Paula said, could give the case more attention and jog someone's memory.
E-Pana, the RCMP unit investigating the Highway of Tears cases, said Deena was not included on the list because of "geography." Although her case met two pieces of criteria - she was female and involved in a high-risk activity like hitchhiking - she did not meet the third criteria: when she was last seen, she was more than a mile from a major highway.
Kinloch said the Quesnel RCMP is still actively investigating the case, but noted there have been no new solid leads in recent years. And Deena's body was very decomposed, so some evidence - such as whether she was sexually assaulted - was lost.
Police continue to search for the backpack Deena was carrying that night and to appeal for new tips.
"I firmly believe that there are people out there that know exactly what happened to Deena Braem, and it's just a matter of time here before they open their mouths and confess to friends and relatives," Kinloch said.
"As to whether it's a local person who is responsible, I don't know. It could be someone from outside the area, it's just a matter of time before that person speaks."
Officers are also still trying to find two young men wearing hoodies who were seen walking along North Fraser Drive the same time Deena was hitchhiking on the road. "They are persons of interest. We'd be interested in knowing who they are and what they know," Kinloch said.
"It's just tragic that [the Braems] don't know what happened to their daughter. I sure wish I could help them out."
Still, even if a killer is caught that won't bring justice, Jim said, it will just "take a little bit off our mind."
"And it won't bring Deena back," Paula added.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Quesnel+parents+wonder+daughter+unsolved+murder+linked+Highway/2330886/story.html
Topic: Highway of Tears- Police reveal details of E-Pana investigation (Read 905 times)
