This time to Prince George, from Jasper, all the way along The 16 road, everywhere is picturesque, there are not many cars, driving is quite pleasant. However, behind the beauty of this Route 16, there is also a sensational name, The Trail of Tears.
The name comes from the fact that, beginning in 1969, at least 49 young women have disappeared on the highway, the victims ranging in age from 12 to more than 30 years old, rebellious girls who have run away from home, ordinary schoolgirls who hitchhike, and prostitutes who solicit customers on the highway. So far, only 20 bodies have been recovered, while the rest are unknown.
To be precise, Route 16 from Prince George to Alberta, Route 97 to Kamloops, and Route 5 to Merritt are collectively referred to as Highway of Tears, but most of the cases occurred along Route 16, between Prince George and Prince Rupert.
Pictured above are the victims who have been identified to have died on the Tears Highway, where they mysteriously disappeared and were subsequently found killed, with bodies scattered throughout the road not far from the highway.
Above are all the missing/deceased in the past.
Police believe most of them have been killed.
It is widely believed that there is not more than one serial killer on the Tears Highway, and every five to seven years, there will be a peak of the Tears Highway Killer activity, and then they will suddenly fall silent, leaving no clues until the next cycle of activity.
The most recent case occurred in 2011, when Madison Scott, 20, disappeared on the road, and police searched for only her tent and car, leaving the victim without a trace.
The investigation into the Tears Road killer has not stopped, during which a number of people have also been arrested, including serial killers Cody Legebokoff, Bobby Jack Fowler and others.
Cody Legebokoff was only 21 years old when he was arrested in 2010. He chatted online with Leslie, a 15-year-old half-blind teenage girl, and met and drank. Police happened to stop Legebokoff's truck on a suburban road in Vanderhoof, when Legebokoff's face and hands were covered in blood, and officers immediately arrested him and launched a search operation, only to find part of Leslie's buried body in a gravel area. In a subsequent investigation, legebokoff was also found to have been murdered involving three sex workers.
In 1974, a 16-year-old woman, Colleen MacMillen, was killed while trying to hitchhike down Route 97 and has been unable to find a clue. When police re-examined the evidence in 2007, they found the DNA of a man, but could not find him in the Canadian criminal database, so they entrusted Interpol with assistance. In May 2012, U.S. police found dna consistent with that of Bobby Jack Fowler, an Oregon man, but he died in prison in 2006, making it the oldest DNA comparison success in Interpol history.
Fowler was sentenced to prison in 1996 on charges of kidnapping, assault, and attempted rape, and died of illness in prison. Why Fowler came from the United States to Prince George george to commit a crime has become an eternal mystery because of his death.
Although both were once considered tear road killers, after the two were arrested and imprisoned, there were still women who disappeared on the tear road, bodies were still found, and the modus operandi was still similar. The police investigated 1,413 suspects, collected 726 boxes of evidence, collected 750 DNA samples, conducted more than 100 polygraph tests, interviewed more than 2,500 people, and interviewed 17,984 people, but found nothing.
Many people speculate that there should be more than one murderer on the Road of Tears, because the time span is almost half a century, and the probability of the same murderer committing the crime is very low. In fact, the Mounted Police have confirmed that, although the modus operandi is very similar, the DNA found in the deceased at each stage of the Tears Highway Killer is different. So the Cody Legebokoff and Bobby Jack Fowlwer mentioned above are likely to be part of this huge killer group.
The investigation into the killers of the Tears Highway has not stopped, but the police have been unable to find more key clues for nearly five decades, and all they can do is put up one warning sign after another on the 720-kilometer highway to remind single women to stay alert on the road.