The Game Boy Killers

I MIGHT as well mention this, because some of you know, from private correspondence: the RCMP is hunting two video game fiends from Vancouver Island, BC, suspected of murdering two people on the Alaska Highway and one on the Stewart-Cassiar.

I rode by one of the bodies a week ago today, just south of the Stikine River crossing. Yesterday the RCMP identified that man as a botany professor from the University of British Columbia. The couple shot on the Alaska Highway four days earlier were a young man from Australia and his American girlfriend.

I stopped for fuel in Dease Lake early last Friday, continued south, crossed the Stikine, then you’re on a winding gravel road that goes straight up, or so it seems. At the top, there’s a burned-out pickup in a turnout, police tape across the entrance, an officer parked there. It’s clearly a crime scene.

A mile down the road there’s a second turnout, same deal, tape across it, an RCMP officer parked out front. The professor’s body was there. I didn’t see it but I’m told that people driving by in campers did, later in the day. Maybe the police vehicle was in my line of sight and it had been moved when others drove by.  Or my POV just wasn’t as high as theirs.

A short distance later, another turnout with police tape across it. This one’s guarded by a highway worker enlisted to keep the site secure until the RCMP had an officer available. I stopped to talk to the guy, a First Nations man, he said he’d been instructed to speak to no one.

About a dozen miles later I stop for coffee in Iskut, gab with the native woman making the coffee. She said the RCMP had been in already to get a copy of the store’s security cam footage, see who’s been coming and going. Later that day I ran into RV people who said police had been going through the campgrounds asking for copies of video shot on RV dash cams.

I took the fuel-stop scuttlebutt for what it was: not the facts yet.

There was talk of three bodies in the turnouts, or one in the burned-out truck, two people walked off into the weeds and shot. But when the facts started dribbling out this week there was just the one, on this road anyway: the professor who ran into the wrong guys on the lonely Stewart-Cassiar. They’d shot him, burned their truck, and taken his car.

I had wifi that night, at a campground in Meziadin Junction, wrote to the bride, Daughters #1 through #3, their significant others, just to say you may hear something on the news, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone, it won’t be the RCMP.

Subject line: No need to freak out…

… but before you see it on the news, I might as well tell you.

The RCMP is finding bodies in the turnouts on the Stewart-Cassiar. I passed three turnouts today that had been cordoned off with police tape. This was just south of Dease Lake, BC. Saw a burned-out truck in one of the turnouts. Cops were stationed at two, they had a highway worker blocking access to the third. I stopped to talk to him, he said he’d been instructed to say nothing about what was going on.

I went into reporter mode, of course. Started talking to employees at the various fuel stops. The Mounties had already collected their surveillance camera tapes. Saw fresh RCMP vehicles speeding up the road quite often throughout the day.

No facts to go by, nothing on the news that I can see, but locals are saying the cops think it might be related to a couple of murders last weekend on the Alaska Highway. This case here:

https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/07/19/australian-man-us-woman-killed-in-double-homicide-in-northeastern-bc.html

All that said, nothing’s changed here, so don’t worry. People are still using the road. Still riding their bicycles on it, and alone, too, so…

I’m camped at a Provincial park in Meziadin Junction, BC, probably will be here tomorrow night, too. Might take a side trip into Alaska tomorrow to see the grizzlies feeding at Hyder. Big salmon run there, I’m told the bears don’t pay any attention to you. Should be fun.

T

And that was all true. Evil happens; and meanwhile, and right nearby, life goes on. This is around Lower Gnat Lake, about 15 miles north of where the professsor was murdered. Intrepid travelers on bicycles. I wave to show my respect to each and every one.

Nice and peaceful there at the lake. I walked down to the shore for a closer look.

Fireweed starting to bloom up along the road, where it gets the sunlight.

Not that day. All the peaks were in cloud cover, and many of the passes.

I’m still here in Tete Jaune Cache, at Bob and Janey’s place. Cleo the dog chased a bear out of the front yard two mornings ago and back across the property line, onto Crown land.

Blueberries are everywhere, the bears are in here hoovering them up.

Tig the cat woke me around 6 this morning, meowing at my tent.

I did some work on the piglet bike yesterday. Got my handlebars moved up and forward, that should make for better counter-steering leverage, and better control in turbulent air. Will take her out for a test ride this afternoon.

My new chain and sprockets are in transit, on their way here from FortNine, in Montreal. I should be back on the road in three or four days, I would think.

Here’s the latest on the game boys, busy running to their coffins somewhere in Manitoba now, or life in prison if they’ll be taken alive. I’m not enamored of this kind of reporting, experts sucking their thumbs and reading the wrinkles to predict the future, but it does give a good timeline if you’re interested.

Tony DePaul, July 26, 2019, Tete Jaune Cache, British Columbia, Canada