Highway of Tears case began with three teens

Police realized a serial killer may be at work after bodies of young women found near Highway 16

By Lori Culbert and Neal Hall, Vancouver Sun

March 7, 2010

Ramona Wilson

Photograph by: Family photo, Vancouver Sun

How did the police investigation, commonly referred to as the Highway of Tears case, begin?

What was behind the RCMP's decision to create a team of officers to re-investigate unsolved cases of missing and murdered women in northern and central B.C., some of which date back decades?

Police have been tight-lipped about this high-profile operation, but its team commander, Staff Sgt. Bruce Hulan, sat down with The Vancouver Sun to explain why and how it all started.

It began with three teenage girls who were killed in the span of six months in 1994: Ramona Wilson, Roxanne Thiara and Alisha (Leah) Germaine.

In the fall of 2005, B.C.'s Unsolved Homicide Unit, which also falls under Hulan's command, was asked to examine the three cold cases because RCMP behaviour-science experts -- also known as profilers -- had looked at those files and found some similarities.

"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," Hulan said during an interview last week.

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

"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."

Ramona was 16 years old when she vanished June 11, 1994 in Smithers, after telling her mother she was going to meet some friends and attend a dance in a nearby community. The Grade 10 high school student never made it to her friend's house and her body was found near the Smithers airport, within a short distance of Highway 16, in April 1995.

Roxanne, 15, supported a drug addiction by selling sex in Prince George. She was last seen working the streets on the July long weekend in 1994. Her body was found the following month near Burns Lake along Highway 16.

Leah Germaine was also 15 and working the streets of Prince George when she disappeared on Dec. 9, 1994. Her body was found a few hours later near an elementary school on the outskirts of Prince George, close to Highway 16.

Those three cases marked the birth of Project E-Pana, which was named by one of the investigators after the mythological Inuit god Pana, who cared for souls in the afterlife until they were reincarnated. The operation is now an integrated one, including members of the RCMP and Vancouver police.

But, Hulan said, the officers soon realized that if they were looking for evidence of a possible serial killer, they would have to broaden the scope of their probe beyond three files.

The criteria for the addition of any more cases was that the victims were female and had to match at least one of the following scenarios:

- Involvement in a high-risk activity that would expose them to danger, such as hitchhiking or prostitution.

- They were either last seen or their bodies were found within a mile of Highway 16.

The officers looked through their databases, such as ViCLAS [Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System] and CPIC [Canadian Police Information Centre], and decided in the spring of 2006 to review six more files.

They were mainly unsolved murders or missing person files involving young women between 1990 and 2006, stretching from Prince Rupert to Prince George.

The public has dubbed Project E-Pana as the Highway of Tears case.

Many of the victims' families have been critical of the treatment they received from the RCMP when their loved ones first went missing, and question how thorough those original investigations were.

"That was then," Hulan said, insisting all victims are treated equally by E-Pana.

He said a modern-day investigation also has access to new technologies, such as DNA testing, that the original investigators did not.

Project E-Pana started with a whimper, rather than a roar, because officers decided all the paper files associated with the historical cases needed to be entered into the RCMP's evidence and reports database. That was necessary, Hulan said, because there were more than 200 boxes of paperwork associated with the nine cases and there was no other way to track whether a suspect's name surfaced in box No. 3 and box No. 133 unless it was all computerized.

Hulan had hoped the data input work could be done in about three months, but the tedious job took close to a year.

And then the files had to be thoroughly reviewed by investigators looking for similar suspects and other common links.

In the meantime, current and retired investigators were providing the names of other potential victims for E-Pana to check out, beyond the nine they had identified. That prompted an expansion of the review to include unsolved cases along Highway 97 and Highway 5 into communities such as Quesnel, Williams Lake, Kamloops and Merritt.

By October 2007, the RCMP had announced the list had doubled to 18 victims, spanning nearly four decades: from 1969 to 2006. The geographical scope had also expanded, into B.C.'s Interior and as far east as Hinton, Alberta.

Investigators reviewed more than 600 files and by February 2009 decided no other cases would be added to the list.

That has been a controversial decision for some family members and advocates, who believe other victims should be included in the Highway of Tears case.

Hulan said the provincial government has committed to funding the project until all the identified files are thoroughly reviewed for any new evidence and all leads are pursued, which could take another three to five years.

lculbert@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

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Possible Highway of Tears suspects haunt detective

There has never been an arrest in this mystery

By NEAL HALL, VANCOUVER SUN

March 7, 2010 12:22 AM

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

Victoria Stolen Sisters march remembers missing women

Image via Wikipedia

Marchers carry signs saying 'Lost but not forgotten'

By Katie DeRosa, Victoria Times Colonist February 14, 2010 12:26 PM

An estimated 200 Victorians took to the streets this morning as part of a national event to remember indigenous women who are missing or have been murdered.

Victoria’s Stolen Sisters march, one of 10 such events taking place across Canada, was organized by the Native Students Union at the University of Victoria. The march, accompanied by First Nations drumming and prayers, began outside the Our Place drop-in centre on Pandora Avenue near Vancouver Street and culminated at Thunderbird Park on Belleville Street near the Royal B.C. Museum.

Marchers, many of whom held signs that said “Lost but not forgotten,” stopped at two places on Government Street where indigenous women were last seen before they disappeared. They also paused to remember 20-year-old Ariana May Simpson, who was pushed in front of a bus at the corner of Pandora Avenue and Quadra Street last February.

Trish Pal of the Native Students Union said Valentine’s Day was chosen for the march because it’s “a day to show our love, so we show our love to these women.”

Fifty-five-year old Maxine Little said she brought her five grandchildren, aged four months to 10 years, to the march so they can understand some of the issues facing indigenous women.

“I’ve been telling them about the ladies who have been going missing,” she said. “We’re thinking about them today.”

Janet Rogers, a co-organizer of the event, said she hopes the march will pressure the B.C. government into taking the issue of missing women seriously, especially given the 18 cases of missing or murdered women on the so-called “Highway of Tears” between Prince George and Prince Rupert.

“For this government to not respond to this issue is an act of prejudice,” she said.

© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist

TIMES COLONIST

http://bit.ly/cs0Nnn

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Calgary's 2nd Annual Valentine's Day Memorial March, Sunday February 14, 2010.

Scarboro United Church
134 Scarboro Ave. SW, Calgary
The march starts at 2:00 pm
Please arrive by 1:30 pm
Parking is available on site. Media welcome.

For more information please email: memorialmarchcalgary@live.ca

VANISHING POINT – The Highway Murders

A Five-Part Investigative series
A Vancouver Sun investigation tells the full story, for the first time, of the Highway of Tears victims and raises questions about other similar unsolved cases.

Ramona Wilson

Ramona Wilson's family say she was known for her good looks and for being a supportive friend.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/videos/index.html#vAnrgZ3OQB327GYxqObr4brwLi_8lUrg

Gladys Radek
Tamara Chipman was 22 when she was last seen. Her aunt says the number of women who have been lost is much higher.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/videos/index.html#_zttyYzPyBErX6lE7MZtIdk_u_0uIJQu

Claudia Williams

Alberta Williams, 24, was last seen alive on Aug. 27, 1989 leaving a night spot in Prince Rupert.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/videos/index.html#c2vA5I0RV8gcrtiDYXce_seniRj64hK5

Sally Gibson
Lana Derrick's aunt says her niece was studying forestry in college and enjoyed the outdoors.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/videos/index.html#nF8RLiSYQ6ejcdILTP7RNIv03IEq1u4a

Paula and Jim Braem

The parents of Deena Braem question how police conducted the grid search for their daughter.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/videos/index.html#XEFbhRclLzvajrwK_lSf0bcu3z8nQtux

Roddy & Winnie Sampare
The siblings of murder victim Virginia Sampare would like her remains to be returned to put her spirit to rest.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/videos/index.html#DkMO_fbGbevRljTDWOwoECop13h88vAV

Connie Menton

Connie Menton shared a close bond with her niece Leah. She urges anyone with information about her death to come forward.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/videos/index.html#BnWxtBGDGPfk4T97ZebgCww_orzZBbX9

Vicki Hill
Vicki was a baby when the life of her mother Mary Jane Hill was taken. She wants to see justice for all the missing and murdered women.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/videos/index.html#wgMI9nfXeZ8Win371Lcznve_5CWJPIvU

A FIVE PART INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/vanished/photos/2280895/story.html?tab=PHOT

THE VANCOUVER SUN

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

Quesnel parents wonder if daughter’s unsolved murder linked to Highway 97

By LORI CULBERT, Vancouver Sun

December 11, 2009

Paula and Jim Braem's daughter, Deena, was 16 when she went missing in 1999 from Quesnel. She was found murdered two and a half months later.

Photograph by: Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun

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.

lculbert@vancouversun.com

These Women Are Not Forgotten

Angela Pezzotti for SooNews.ca
Friday, February 13, 2009, 9:32AM

Members of Womyn 4 Social Justice were joined by students from St. Mary’s and St. Basil’s High Schools at noon on Thursday to remember the missing and murdered women in Canada.

The group lined Queen St. in front of the Court House and waved paper hearts and carried banners to raise awareness of the missing and murdered women from across the country and in particular that 80 percent of those missing and murdered are aboriginal women.

This is the second year that the Womyn 4 Social Justice has organized the vigil; it’s the first year the students have participated.

Rose Marie Valade leader of Chaplin Services at St. Mary’s said that students from the Knights Justice League, the schools social justice organization and a number of students from the native studies and language classes came to the vigil. “We are here standing in solidarity with our native brothers and sisters in support of their search for justice for the missing native women.” said Valade.
Bonnie Baranski of Womyn for Social Justice said they hold the vigil on Valentine’s Day because it’s about love. “These women are stilled loved. They are not forgotten.” said Baranski.

Baranski says the latest incident of a native women going missing was in Saskatchewan.
A 17 year old girl went to a party December 12th and hasn’t been seen since. A Calgary Sun article about the incident says the mother of Tara Lyn Poorman feels that because her daughter is native and was at a party the “authorities are not taking the case seriously”.


In August 2008 Gladys Radek a B.C. women walked through Sault Ste Marie on her way to Ottawa to call for a public inquiry in the missing and murdered women. Radek own 22 year old niece went missing along Highway 16 in B. C.

The 720km stretch of highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert is referred to as the ‘highway of tears’ because of the number of women who go missing along this stretch.

http://www.soonews.ca/viewarticle.php?id=21143