Canadian teen fugitives: police find two bodies believed to be murder suspects Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky
- Duo charged with killing a university lecturer are also suspected of murders of two tourists in British Columbia
- Bodies were discovered near Nelson River, not far from where police found items linked to the suspects
Canadian police said on Wednesday they had found two bodies they said were of the teenage boys charged with killing a university lecturer and suspected of the murders of two tourists in British Columbia.
Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, both from Port Alberni, British Columbia, had been on the run for nearly three weeks, which sparked an intense manhunt.
Police declined to discuss how the two had died, saying that they would wait for the autopsy to confirm their identities and cause of death.
The pair was charged with second-degree murder of Leonard Dyck, 64, a botany lecturer at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
They are also suspects in the murders of Chynna Deese, 24, of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Lucas Fowler, 23, from Sydney, Australia.
The bodies were found near the Nelson River, 1km (0.6 miles) from where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said “significant evidence” was discovered on Friday, and 8km (five miles) from where McLeod and Schmegelsky’s burning car was found on July 22, police said.
The significant evidence, which the RCMP continues to decline to describe, proved to be “critical” in finding the bodies, Jane MacLatchy, assistant commissioner with the RCMP in Manitoba, told a news conference in Winnipeg.
“The manhunt in Manitoba is over,” Ralph Goodale, federal minister of public safety, tweeted on Wednesday.
The difficulty of the terrain was cited as a reason for the delay in finding the bodies. The forest was so thick that linking arms and traversing ground, as is normally done in search operations, was out of the question, MacLatchy said.
“There’s obviously a certain amount of relief that we were able to locate these people and hopefully bring some closure not only to the families of the victims but also to the people of Gillam, Fox Lake and York Landing,” MacLatchy said, referring to the three Manitoba communities at the centre of the manhunt for McLeod and Schmegelsky.
“It’s huge to be able to hopefully give some people the opportunity to exhale and to hopefully go back to being normal and not be afraid of who is out in the woods,” she said.
The separate discoveries of three bodies shook rural northern British Columbia and Manitoba. Dyck’s body was found on July 19, days after tourists Fowler and Deese were found shot dead 500km (310 miles) away along the same highway near Liard Hot Springs, British Columbia.
Fowler, the son of a chief inspector with the New South Wales Police Department, was living in British Columbia and Deese was visiting him.
Deese’s brother, British Deese, said the family needed time to process the news that the suspects’ bodies had apparently been found.
“We are speechless,” British Deese said in a text message, declining further comment.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
