Highway of Tears

There is a large proportion of indigenous women among the victims, hence the association with the missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) movement. Accounts vary as to the exact number of victims. According to the RCMP Project E-Pana, the number of victims is fewer than 18, while Indigenous organizations estimate that the number of missing and murdered women is higher than 40. The table below lists all the known women who went missing, were murdered, or died of unknown causes in the Highway of Tears. E-Pana cases are categorized in the table. == Investigation and suspects ==

The first investigation by RCMP that tried to look at Highway of Tears as linked cases was opened in December 1998. However, the list of cases as it existed back then included three additional male victims – Larry Vu, Eric Charles Coss, and Phillip Innes Fraser. To date, a number of people have been convicted in cases related to the Highway of Tears. Three serial killers are among those charged: Brian Peter Arp, Edward Dennis Isaac, and Cody Legebokoff. Although he was not publicly implicated in any Highway of Tears cases, Bobby Jack Fowler was implicated in numerous non-Highway-of-Tears E-Pana cases. Fowler died in prison and has never been charged in the deaths of any of the Highway of Tears victims. It is possible that Fowler was linked to the Highway of Tears cases because he worked for a now closed Prince George company called Happy's Roofing in 1974, which was the same year that Monica Ignas went missing in Terrace, BC. Former Vancouver police geographic profiler Kim Rossmo is on the record having said that in his opinion Fowler is not responsible for any of the crimes along Highway 16 between 1989 and 2006. In 2009, police converged on a property in Isle Pierre, in rural Prince George, to search for the remains of Nicole Hoar, a young tree planter who went missing on Highway 16 on June 21, 2002. The property was once owned by Leland "Chuggy" Vincent Switzer, who served a prison sentence for the second-degree murder of his brother and is out on day parole as of late 2016. The RCMP also searched the property for the other missing women from the Highway of Tears; however, no further actions followed the investigation. They do have persons of interest in several cases, but not enough evidence to lay charges. == B.C. government email scandal ==

In an official government report, ministerial assistant George Gretes was accused of being irresponsible for "triple deleting" all emails relating to the Highway of Tears from the email account of Tim Duncan, former executive assistant to Transportation minister Todd Stone. In her report Access Denied, Denham describes the act of "triple deleting" as transferring an email to the "deleted" folder on a computer system, deleting the email from the folder and then overriding the backup that permits the system to retrieve deleted items. By deleting these files, Denham states the government had breached the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Denham states that Gretes—who resigned from his job in October 2015—would have then lied under oath. In Access Denied, Denham called upon the RCMP to further investigate the triple deletion of government files. Gretes was convicted of one count of lying to the British Columbia privacy commissioner and fined $2,500. == Project E-Pana ==

In 2005, the RCMP launched a provincially funded project, E-Pana, which started with a focus on some of the unsolved murders and disappearances of female children and young women along Highway 16. E-Pana sought to discover if there was a single serial killer at work or a multitude of killers operating along the highway. The unit started with 3 cases in 2005, then the unit investigated 9 cases in 2006, but by 2007, its caseload had doubled to 18 and its geographical scope began spanning large parts of the province and not just the Highway of Tears. In 2013, Craig Callens, the RCMP deputy commissioner, warned that further budget reductions from the provincial government would greatly affect the Highway of Tears investigations; however, he didn't say this would affect the E-Pana cases which aren't Highway of Tears. A 2014 freedom-of-information request stated that the task force had dropped from 70 officers to 12 officers since 2010. In 2014, investigations by E-Pana and the Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit brought murder charges against Garry Taylor Handlen for the death of 12-year-old Monica Jack in 1978. He was found guilty by jury and sentenced to life in prison in early 2019, thus Monica Jack's murder becomes the first file in Project E-Pana to officially be solved with full court proceedings and sentence. E-Pana is still investigating the remaining unsolved cases, although it is unlikely that all will be solved. == Accusations of racism ==

Some critics argue that the lack of results arising from this investigation is the result of systemic racism. This was also reported to be an issue in the case of Vancouver's missing women and the Robert Pickton murders. Activists argue that media coverage of these cases has been limited, claiming that "media assign a lesser value to aboriginal women." Furthermore, despite the fact that these disappearances date back as far as 1970, it was not until 2005 that an RCMP task force was launched to look into similarities between the cases. Nicole Hoar, a white woman who disappeared in 2002, received a disproportionate amount of media attention at the time of her disappearance. Hers was the first of the Highway of Tears cases to be covered in The Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun, and Edmonton Journal. Gladys Radek, a native activist and the aunt of victim Tamara Chipman, "believes that if it weren't for Hoar, the police would have invested less effort in investigating cases, and the media would have done little, if anything, to inform the public about the tragedies along the road." == Recommendation reports ==

Numerous municipalities and 23 First Nations communities border the Highway of Tears. The rural region is plagued with poverty and lacks public transportation; many residents turn to hitchhiking as a form of transit or partake in high risk lifestyles to survive. Poverty and a lack of public transit has forced many disadvantaged Aboriginal women to turn to hitchhiking as a cheap means of transportation along Highway 16. Many of the Highway of Tears victims were last seen or reported to be hitchhiking before their disappearances. Oppal's public inquiry report into the Robert Pickton case demanded urgent transportation improvement along Highway 16. On 24 November 2015, the First Nations Health Authority and B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure held the Northern Transportation Symposium in Smithers, British Columbia. The symposium included Aboriginal communities and municipalities along Highway 16 and focused on the issue of medical and non-medical transportation in those regions. In June 2017, a subsidized transit service began operations on alternating days along a section between Prince George and Burns Lake. The Highway of Tears Symposium Recommendation Report also suggested improving cellular coverage along the entire length of the highway to eliminate dead zones. On December 30, 2024, Rogers installed five 5G cell towers along the highway to close a gap in cell service along a 166 kilometre stretch between Prince Rupert and Prince George. == Media and awareness efforts ==

• Highway of Tears totem pole raised by family of Tamara Chipman in Kitsumkalum, 4 September 2020. • SERIAL KILLER: Highway of Tears is a Crime Junkie podcast episode that was broadcast 15 December 2019. • Finding Dawn (2006) is a documentary film by Métis filmmaker Christine Welsh, about 16-year-old Ramona Wilson, one of the victims found alongside the highway. Welsh's documentary highlights the reality that Aboriginal women face today: in the past 30 years, an estimated 500 Aboriginal women have gone missing or have been murdered in Canada. Welsh uncovers the social, economic, and historical factors that contribute to this statistic. • Highway of Tears (March 2014), an 80-minute documentary by Canadian filmmakers Matthew Smiley and Carly Pope, narrated by Canadian actor Nathan Fillion. The documentary, which was featured in numerous film festivals, raises awareness about the stretch of highway and missing women. In a 2014 interview with CBC, Smiley said that during the editing of the film "over 400 [indigenous] women were estimated to be missing and or murdered across Canada. By the time we premiered the film, the number was over 600 in March of 2014, then the numbers increased to 900 and now over 1,200 missing and murdered indigenous women across Canada. We cannot turn a blind eye to this." • Searchers: The Highway of Tears (2015), a mini-series produced by the online newscast VICE, highlights the story of various Aboriginal women who have disappeared along the Highway of Tears and brings attention to the family, friends, and detectives fighting for justice. VICE also offers online articles pertaining to the Highway of Tears murders and disappearances. • ''Canada's Missing & Murdered Aboriginal Women'' is a series of 14 short episodes, aired on CBC's flagship news program The National. The series is accessible at ''The National's YouTube channel, under the playlist Canada's Missing & Murdered Aboriginal Women''. • That Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away (13 October 2015), is a memoir for which its author, Lorimer Shenher, was nominated for the B.C. Book Prize. Shenher writes from the perspective of a former reporter and the first police detective to be assigned to the case of the missing women. They also cover the police culture in detail. • The Stacey Dooley Investigates episode entitled "Canada’s Lost Girls", first broadcast on 7 March 2017, where Dooley met the family of Amber Tuccaro, who went missing in 2010 aged 20. ==See also==