0:01

Welcome to Stuff You

0:03

Should Know, a production

0:05

of I Heart Radio.

0:07

Hey and welcome to

0:09

the podcast. I'm Josh

0:11

and there's chalk and

0:13

Jerry's here too and

0:15

this is Stuff You

0:18

Should Know. The man,

0:20

this is a bummer edition.

0:22

Yeah, the Zero Laps

0:24

edition. Because we're talking about

0:27

the highway of Tears. And

0:29

there's no other way around

0:31

it. This is just a

0:34

devastating topic. Yeah, we should

0:36

tell people. I mean, the highway

0:38

of Tears is fairly famous.

0:40

It's kind of been in the

0:42

news and in pop culture, I

0:45

guess, for a while. I guess at

0:47

least since the 90s, but

0:49

really in the early 2000s,

0:51

I think, is when it

0:53

picked up. Regardless, it is

0:55

a stretch of desolate highway

0:57

that runs from, in British

0:59

Columbia, up in Canada, from

1:01

the Port City of Prince

1:03

Rupert, all the way into

1:05

the interior, to Prince George.

1:07

And it's, I think, 720

1:09

kilometers, almost 450 miles. And

1:11

it's known as Highway 16

1:13

officially. But... This stretches of

1:16

this highway are so desolate,

1:18

so remote, and so

1:20

sparsely populated, that it

1:22

has become a haven for

1:25

murderers who pick people up,

1:27

mostly women, mostly indigenous women,

1:29

on this road and either

1:31

make them disappear forever or

1:33

murder them. And it's endemic

1:36

in this area so much

1:38

so that it's caught national

1:40

attention at just how... poorly,

1:42

this group of women are

1:45

being treated and their families

1:47

as well. Yeah, it's, you know, as

1:49

you'll see, it's, and you know, there

1:51

are many reasons for this,

1:53

but it's a heavily hitched,

1:55

hiked road, and that can be

1:58

very dangerous. And so... A

2:00

lot of times these are hitchhikers,

2:02

people just trying to get from

2:04

one place to another. And like

2:07

you said, they are either sexually

2:09

assaulted or murdered or both. And

2:11

these are the people that, you

2:14

know, like they found bodies. There

2:16

are dozens and dozens more than

2:18

these dozens who have survived the

2:20

attacks and rapes along that stretch

2:23

of highway. So, you know, it's

2:25

no secret why it's called the

2:27

highway of tears. Big thanks to

2:29

Libya for enduring this topic and

2:32

helping us out with it. And

2:34

big thanks to Al Jazeera where

2:36

she got a lot of information

2:38

from a six-part series they did

2:41

in 2021. Yeah, there's a lot

2:43

of good sources. The CBC, the

2:45

Vancouver Sun's a good one. There's

2:47

been a decent amount of coverage,

2:50

but it's not the kind of

2:52

coverage you would get when say

2:54

like... Like a Caucasian girl goes

2:56

missing which we'll talk about it's

2:59

the kind of coverage about how

3:01

this group of people have just

3:03

been totally Basically left on their

3:06

own to deal with something like

3:08

this that they have they don't

3:10

have the resources to deal with

3:12

this and it's just such a

3:15

terrible story. The story is so

3:17

much larger than this collection of

3:19

murders But at the core, that's

3:21

what it comes down to, just

3:24

women who were treated like disposable

3:26

beings. And the whole thing starts,

3:28

at the very earliest, as far

3:30

as anyone knows, the first murder

3:33

that's become part of what you

3:35

call the canon of the Highway

3:37

of Tears Murders and Abductions, started

3:39

in 1969, a woman named Livinia

3:42

Gloria Moody was murdered on Highway

3:44

16. And it went, kind of

3:46

went along like that for a

3:48

while. There was, but no one

3:51

had kind of put together this

3:53

whole group of people and called

3:55

it the highway of tears and

3:58

they wouldn't for years. to come,

4:00

but at the time there was

4:02

enough going on that they had

4:04

coined this term, the highway murders,

4:07

and by 1981 enough women and

4:09

girls had been murdered or gone

4:11

missing along Highway 16, that a

4:13

group of Royal Canadian mounted police

4:16

detectives from all over British Columbia

4:18

and I think Alberta got together

4:20

and decided to kind of compare

4:22

notes and see if they could

4:25

solve some of these unsolved cases.

4:27

Yes, absolutely. While this was going

4:29

on, you know, when the cops

4:31

were sort of slowly coming around

4:34

to the idea that there was

4:36

a specific problem along the stretch,

4:38

the families were getting involved, the

4:40

families of the missing, those who

4:43

were found dead, and, you know,

4:45

they organized their own efforts. One

4:47

case that really kind of brought

4:50

everything to even more of a

4:52

head was the case of Romona

4:54

Wilson. This was in June of

4:56

1994. She was 16 years old

4:59

and she went to go meet

5:01

up with a friend, to go

5:03

to some, you know, end of

5:05

the year school graduation parties. She

5:08

never got there and her mom,

5:10

Matilda, was like, the cops don't

5:12

really seem to care much that

5:14

this happened. And so the locals

5:17

got together and they started organizing,

5:19

they started doing, you know, going

5:21

on search parties and looking out

5:23

for her. They ultimately, very sadly,

5:26

discovered her body about 10 months

5:28

later at an airport. Her clothes

5:30

were found near her with some

5:33

rope and some cabling. And so

5:35

her mom and her older sister

5:37

Brenda and other members of her

5:39

family and the community got together

5:42

and said, all right, the lease

5:44

we can do is try and

5:46

raise some awareness since no one

5:48

seems to be paying attention. So

5:51

they got a memorial walk together

5:53

in June of 95. which became

5:55

an annual thing. Yeah, there was

5:57

another woman who really deserves a

6:00

lot of credit for bringing... national

6:02

attention to this. She's a wet

6:04

soadin nation woman. And in 1998,

6:06

there was a vigil where she

6:09

coined the term highway of tears,

6:11

which I can't, I don't think

6:13

you can really calculate how much

6:15

that helped this case. It was

6:18

like, hey, media, here's a nice

6:20

little tidy package for you to

6:22

report on. It's even got a

6:25

catchy name, despite, you know, the

6:27

actual obvious emotion behind calling it

6:29

the highway of tears. I think

6:31

it really helped quite a bit.

6:34

And Florence Nizil also is credited

6:36

with starting a walk that covered

6:38

the entire, again, 450 miles stretch

6:40

of the highway of tears for

6:43

the first time. That walk's been

6:45

made scores of times by now

6:47

over the years by family members

6:49

and community members and members of

6:52

other nations who've gotten involved to

6:54

try to, again, help ask for

6:56

resources, ask to get the police.

6:58

involved more because that's another recurring

7:01

theme throughout this chuck is that

7:03

the police have shown over and

7:05

over again opportunity after opportunity to

7:07

just not really seem to care.

7:10

Yeah, absolutely. She had already been

7:12

working, you know, to raise awareness

7:14

when very tragically it hit home

7:17

for her in a more personal

7:19

way when one of her family

7:21

members, a woman named Tamara Chipman.

7:23

went missing in 2005 and you

7:26

know all this is going on

7:28

through the you know I think

7:30

it was 1981 when the cops

7:32

finally started sort of getting together

7:35

and comparing notes and that was

7:37

after at least 12 years since

7:39

the first known murder and it

7:41

took all the way into the

7:44

2000s for things to really take

7:46

a turn and that was when

7:48

very tragically a woman named Nicole

7:50

Hoer was killed. She was 25

7:53

years old and she was white.

7:55

She disappeared in 2002 and this

7:57

is what What really brought the

8:00

national attention, you've heard a journalist

8:02

named Gwen Eiffel in the United

8:04

States coined the term, missing white

8:06

woman syndrome, which is the idea

8:09

that it takes a white person

8:11

to be the victim of a

8:13

crime for anyone to kind of

8:15

sit up and take notice and

8:18

members of indigenous communities or marginalized

8:20

communities are often overlooked and underfunded

8:22

and under-resourced. And, you know, the

8:24

cases are kind of swept under

8:27

the rug, and that's exactly what

8:29

was going on in Canada for

8:31

many, many years, and still is

8:33

to a certain degree. Yeah, and

8:36

again, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

8:38

have been called to task time

8:40

and time and time again for

8:43

not taking this stuff seriously, not

8:45

devoting the enough resources to it,

8:47

but also the media is largely

8:49

responsible, not just in this case,

8:52

but in any case of a

8:54

missing or murdered... a woman who's

8:56

not white in the United States

8:59

or Canada, they get much less

9:01

coverage and the intensity of the

9:03

coverage is much less too compared

9:05

to white women. And that's not

9:08

just anecdotal. I was reading at

9:10

least one study on it from

9:12

2016, I think, in the Journal

9:15

of Law and Criminology and they

9:17

were like, yes, we analyze the

9:19

stuff and it's absolutely true. So

9:21

there's like a, but there's a

9:24

bitter gratitude involved because the death

9:26

of Nicole Ho'er, she, like it

9:28

did bring a lot of attention

9:31

to this. Yeah, yeah, and you

9:33

just can't, you can't deny that

9:35

and so that's good, but at

9:37

the same time it's just like

9:40

man. Why does it take that,

9:42

you know? We've been having to,

9:44

we've been trying to deal with

9:47

this for decades and now this

9:49

one white girl. is becomes part

9:51

of the the the crowd of

9:53

murdered girls and like now it

9:56

now people care it's got to

9:58

be really tough to take and

10:00

I know I called her a

10:03

girl and she was 25 so

10:05

she was a woman but there's

10:07

like this this whole group is

10:09

made up of women and girls

10:12

yeah I know it's not interchangeable

10:14

but it's important to say like

10:16

Some of these, I mean, the

10:19

youngest victim was 12, Monica Jacks,

10:21

we think died in the late

10:23

70s and maybe 1978, like there

10:25

are plenty of girls who were

10:28

picked up and murdered, there are

10:30

also plenty of women too, but

10:32

not all of them were indigenous,

10:35

a lot of them were white,

10:37

but the cops as they started

10:39

to get together came up with

10:41

some criteria that they applied to

10:44

these cases that kind of narrowed

10:46

the search. But also brought on

10:48

new cases that they hadn't, they

10:51

hadn't considered before as we'll see.

10:53

Yeah, so in 2005, this is

10:55

just a few years after Nicole

10:57

Hower brought more attention to the

11:00

issue. The RCMP, the Royal Canadian

11:02

Mounted Police, will probably call them

11:04

that RCMP, maybe Mounties. Do they

11:07

still go by that? I think

11:09

so. Whether they like it or

11:11

not, everybody calls them Mounties. Yeah,

11:13

they launched what was called the

11:16

Unsolved Homicide Unit launched something called

11:18

Project E. Pana. The letter E.

11:20

That was just the division of

11:22

the RCMP. And Pana is named

11:25

after an Inuit goddess who cares

11:27

for souls in the afterworld. And

11:29

they, you know, their official designation

11:32

was, hey, we think we have

11:34

a serial killer, maybe more than

11:36

one out there on this highway

11:38

of tears. It's a pretty, like

11:41

you said, a pretty great place

11:43

to get away with a crime

11:45

like that because it's so desolate.

11:48

Up until recently, there were long,

11:50

long, long, long, long stretches where

11:52

you had no cell phone service

11:54

even. So you couldn't, you know,

11:57

call anyone if you were in

11:59

trouble. Not very many people around

12:01

and plenty of animals around to

12:04

take care of bodies and the

12:06

remains. They found some commonalities in

12:08

three teenage girls, Romona Wilson, who

12:10

I mentioned, a woman named Roxanne

12:13

Theera. 15 years old from Prince

12:15

George. This is a very sad

12:17

case. She was in the foster

12:20

system and the juvenile incarceration system.

12:22

And she eventually had to turn

12:24

to survival sex, which is a

12:26

term for women who are forced

12:29

to resort to sex work to

12:31

feed and clothe themselves. And it

12:33

usually means like, instead of getting

12:36

money, they get... food and clothing

12:38

and you know items to live

12:40

and survive. In 1994 she told

12:42

a friend she was going to

12:45

meet one of her clients. She

12:47

disappeared and her body was discovered

12:49

off highway 16 and then finally

12:52

Alicia Germain was 15 years old

12:54

last seen in 1994 at a

12:56

Christmas dinner and she was discovered

12:58

close to highway 16. So that's

13:01

when they came up with their

13:03

criteria to see if they could

13:05

sort of narrow this down, right?

13:08

Yeah, and just one thing, Roxanne

13:10

and Leah were, or Alicia, who

13:12

also went by Leah, they were

13:14

friends and also colleagues, both were

13:17

sex workers who were engaged in

13:19

survival sex. Romona, who was not

13:21

engaged in anything like that, I

13:24

think she worked at a restaurant

13:26

or something, but Romona, Roxanne, and

13:28

Leah, all were murdered in the

13:30

same area between, Romona was June,

13:33

Roxanne, July. Leah in December of

13:35

1994, I think. In all their

13:37

cases, like, in this area, everybody's

13:40

like, there's something going on. The

13:42

cops are like, just give us

13:44

11 more years and we'll come

13:46

together and come up with this

13:49

new E-PANA project. And right when

13:51

they did, those three just stuck

13:53

out immediately. It's like there's some

13:56

real commonalities here. They need to

13:58

be investigated. But like you were

14:00

saying, those three criteria that they

14:02

came up with from this E-PANA

14:05

project, you had to be female.

14:07

You had to last be seen

14:09

dead or alive within a mile

14:12

of highway 16 and then you

14:14

also had to be involved in

14:16

high-risk activities like sex work but

14:18

also hitchhiking and we should say

14:21

here too like for those of

14:23

us who who grew up in

14:25

towns with bus service and cabs

14:28

and you could walk places and

14:30

get to where you're going easily

14:32

or ride your bike like hitchhiking

14:34

almost seems like frivolous. Hitchhiking is

14:37

a way to live and survive

14:39

and get to work in this

14:41

area. It has been for decades.

14:44

So it's not like, I think

14:46

you can view hitchhiking as like,

14:48

man, why did you hitchhike? In

14:50

a lot of cases, the women

14:53

and girls who were picked up

14:55

hitchhiking were trying to get to

14:57

where they were going. Like they

15:00

weren't just hitting the road. Like

15:02

that was just part of daily

15:04

life for them, unfortunately. fit that

15:06

and were lumped into the Highway

15:09

of Tears murders. Alberta Williams was

15:11

24 and she was celebrating at

15:13

a pub at the end of

15:16

summer after working there seasonally with

15:18

her sister. This was 1989. Her

15:20

body was found about a month

15:22

after her disappearance. Delphine Nikal was

15:25

16 years old, disappeared in 1990

15:27

while hitchhiking. Lana Derek, a 19-year-old

15:29

college student. disappeared in October of

15:32

95. We mentioned Tamara Chipman, that

15:34

was the relative of Florence and

15:36

Azil. She was 22, and the

15:38

mother of a two-year-old boy disappeared

15:41

while hitchhiking in 2005, and then

15:43

14-year-old Alia Serrick Auger went missing

15:45

from Prince George in 2006, and

15:48

she was found deceased in a

15:50

ditch right beside the highway, highway

15:52

16. And Eila, I'm pretty sure

15:54

that's how you say her name.

15:57

She was the last one to

15:59

be officially added. Like as far

16:01

as the Royal Canadian Mounted, police

16:04

are concerned. She's the last high...

16:06

way of tears victim. Although, as

16:08

we'll see, there have been plenty

16:10

more who would qualify for sure.

16:13

The problem is E-Pan is very

16:15

much underfunded and not basically not

16:17

really operational right now. So they're

16:20

not adding people for that reason.

16:22

But when they looked into this

16:24

a little more, they basically went

16:26

back. to their credit and found

16:29

that there was about 300 boxes

16:31

of information and paperwork on all

16:33

these cases. And so they're like,

16:36

we can't get anywhere until we

16:38

have all this stuff logged in

16:40

some sort of database. So they

16:42

created the database and they logged

16:45

it and it took them like

16:47

a year. But after they finally

16:49

got all that stuff in, Some

16:52

of those older cases, the ones

16:54

between 1969 and 1981, they started

16:56

bubbling up toward the top and

16:58

were eventually included, starting with that

17:01

first one with Gloria Moody, also

17:03

including Monica Jack, and then there

17:05

was also Michelin Paray, Galen Weiss,

17:07

Pamela Darlington, Colleen McMillan, and Monica

17:10

Engis, and then Maureen Mosey. And

17:12

again, all of them were killed

17:14

between 1969 and 81. all along

17:17

Highway 16 and a lot of

17:19

them were hitchhiking as well. Yeah,

17:21

and you know, if you look

17:23

into these cases and people, you

17:26

know, the volunteers that are working

17:28

with some of these, you know,

17:30

a lot of them are run

17:33

by, you know, families of victims,

17:35

they will say that it's probably

17:37

more like, you know, 50 people.

17:39

Advocates say that, you know, the

17:42

total is way higher than they're

17:44

saying it is, you know, kind

17:46

of for all the reasons that

17:49

we've mentioned so far that we've

17:51

mentioned so far. And that seems

17:53

like a good time to take

17:55

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All right, so when we left off we

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were saying that the the you know total

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if you look at all these cases

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and not a lot of them have

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There was one big one

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in 2012 with Colleen McMillan.

21:34

She was murdered hitchhiking. She

21:37

was 16 years old. This is 1974.

21:39

But they had, you know, in some

21:41

of the evidence boxes, had her blouse

21:43

still, and with the improvement in

21:46

DNA matching and databases

21:48

and stuff like that, they were

21:50

able to find a match on Interpol.

21:52

It was an American named

21:54

Bobby Jack Fowler, who had died in

21:56

prison in 2006, where he was serving

21:59

time for... attempted kidnapping and

22:01

attempted murder on another woman in

22:03

1995 and they found that he

22:05

had been working as a roofer

22:08

in Canada when this murder and

22:10

others took place and You know

22:12

basically were like it was probably

22:14

two other women as well on

22:16

the list Pamela Darlington and Gail

22:19

Weiss and They were both murdered

22:21

in 1973, but he died in

22:23

prison before they could officially pin

22:25

that on him Yes, and from

22:27

what I've read about him, Bobby

22:30

Jack Fowler is the kind of

22:32

scumbag that you wish you could

22:34

go dig up and reanimate so

22:36

you can punish him some more.

22:38

He was terrible. And when the

22:41

Canadian cops were like, hey, you

22:43

guys had somebody incarcerated in your

22:45

prisons to the officials in Oregon

22:47

who killed at least one girl

22:49

here, but probably three total. You

22:51

should probably look around at your

22:54

own files. They started... finding, I

22:56

think they've said up to maybe

22:58

20 murders that they've pinned on

23:00

Bobby Jack Fowler. Nothing they can

23:02

prove, but it's just likely that

23:05

he committed them. And he'll obviously

23:07

never be convicted or tried for

23:09

him because he's dead. But it

23:11

just, it goes to show you

23:13

like there are human beings out

23:16

there who will just kidnap. rape

23:18

and murder and just do it

23:20

over and over again and the

23:22

easiest thing to do in the

23:24

world is if you're going to

23:27

do that kind of thing is

23:29

take advantage of a very vulnerable

23:31

population in a very sparsely populated

23:33

area which makes highway 16 just

23:35

like the perfect spot. Yeah there's

23:38

another guy in fact he's the

23:40

only living person convicted of one

23:42

of these murders from someone on

23:44

the e-panelist his name is Gary

23:46

Taylor Handlin. He you know Going

23:49

back to the 1960s, had committed

23:51

multiple rapes, been in jail multiple

23:53

times for these rapes, one was

23:55

a hitchhiker in 1978, and he

23:57

became a suspect, and the youngest

24:00

victim, 12-year-old Monica Jack, that you

24:02

had mentioned earlier. And also, Catherine

24:04

Mary Herbert, 11 years old, she

24:06

just was not one of the

24:08

E-Panna cases. But they caught him

24:10

by setting up a sting operation

24:13

in which they kind of created

24:15

this fake crime enterprise where he

24:17

was answering to an undercover cop

24:19

playing a crime boss who got

24:21

him to confess that he abducted

24:24

and strangled Monica Jack. And this

24:26

is when he also confessed to

24:28

killing Catherine Mary Herbert. But that

24:30

confession was ruled admissible, but he

24:32

was convicted of Jack's murder in

24:35

2019. Yeah, he hadn't heard of

24:37

this, but that's apparently a fairly

24:39

typical sting operation. They call him

24:41

a Mr. Big operation, where you're

24:43

just introduced to successively hire up

24:46

criminals in some organization, but they're

24:48

all cops. The judge was like,

24:50

no, the admission to, or confession

24:52

to Catherine Mary Herbert's murder, inadmissible,

24:54

but he thought that he was

24:57

basically convincing this crime boss to

24:59

get him out of the, out

25:01

of being tried or convicted for

25:03

Monica Jack's murder, so they're like,

25:05

that's totally admissible. He completely volunteered

25:08

that. But yeah, I mean, he

25:10

went down for it, but like

25:12

he said, he's the only living

25:14

person who's ever been convicted for

25:16

one of these dozens of murders.

25:19

Yeah, so you know we mentioned

25:21

2006 is when they stopped officially

25:23

tagging names onto the official e-panelist.

25:25

There have still been plenty of

25:27

murders and sexual assaults along that

25:29

stretch of highway since then. Cody

25:32

Ligebikov, I believe is how you

25:34

pronounce that. Sounds right. Killed three

25:36

women and a 15-year-old girl between

25:38

2009 and 2010, so that was

25:40

after the official list. Two of

25:43

those victims were indigenous. And the

25:45

cops caught him when they just

25:47

pulled him over for a speeding

25:49

violation and found blood on him

25:51

and they found the body of

25:54

a 15-year-old Lauren Don Leslie and

25:56

then realized that they could link

25:58

him. to, and I believe he

26:00

was convicted too of killings of

26:02

three other women, Jill Stacey Stacinko,

26:05

Cynthia Francis Moss, and Natasha Lynn

26:07

Montgomery. Yeah, and so all three

26:09

of them were from Prince George,

26:11

which is the easternmost town considered

26:13

part of the highway of Tears.

26:16

And Cody was 19 when he

26:18

killed the first of them, Jill

26:20

Stacey Stacinko. He's not the youngest

26:22

serial killer in Canadian history, but

26:24

he too, like the other guys,

26:27

was a scumbag and still is,

26:29

he was sentenced to no less

26:31

than 25 years, four times, but

26:33

it appears that his sentences are

26:35

concurrent, so he's serving 25 years

26:38

for four murders, and the judge

26:40

reminded him that he could... apply

26:42

for parole as early as 15

26:44

years in. So that's four years

26:46

from now that this guy might

26:48

be able to get out after

26:51

being convicted of murdering four three

26:53

women and a girl. I don't

26:55

like that. Yeah, so you mentioned

26:57

Florence Nizil earlier having organized her

26:59

own walk. This was in 2006.

27:02

They called it the Highway of

27:04

Tears Awareness Walk, and they walked

27:06

two weeks. They walked through snowstorms.

27:08

They walked through some, you know,

27:10

terrible weather and conditions. and eventually

27:13

ended at the highway of tier

27:15

symposium in Prince George. And again,

27:17

this wasn't something organized by the

27:19

cops or anything, it was organized

27:21

by indigenous groups and victims' families

27:24

themselves, but they did have 500

27:26

delegates from the Mounties there, as

27:28

well as some representative from the

27:30

Canadian government there. And it was

27:32

basically a symposium where they had

27:35

recommendations on what they could do.

27:37

you know, not only to help

27:39

solve these crimes, but to prevent

27:41

more of this from happening. We'll

27:43

get to, you know, what's happened

27:46

since then because they have done

27:48

some things that seem like they

27:50

should probably help. But also, you

27:52

know, how to support these families,

27:54

how to support these communities a

27:57

little better because it was, you

27:59

know, not well funded in the...

28:01

any kind of work was very

28:03

sparse up until that point. Yeah,

28:05

so Brenda Wilson, Romona Wilson's sister,

28:07

she works for Karya Sakani Family

28:10

Services, and she's the one employee

28:12

of the Highway of Tears Initiative,

28:14

and she frequently has to work

28:16

for free, because they just are

28:18

like, we're out of money again,

28:21

wait till next quarter. for the

28:23

check to come in. And obviously

28:25

she's extremely dedicated, but that's a

28:27

kind of a par for the

28:29

course thing, like just the funding

28:32

is just not there. And if

28:34

you follow like government funding, it

28:36

usually goes to stuff that people

28:38

care about, or like a lot

28:40

of people care about. So if

28:43

you don't get funding, it's kind

28:45

of a big slap in the

28:47

face in addition to, you know,

28:49

really tying your hands from doing

28:51

the work you're trying to do.

28:54

Yeah, and you know, there's a

28:56

lot of distrust for the for

28:58

the Mounties there and for good

29:00

reasons. In a lot of cases,

29:02

we'll see, there's a woman named

29:05

Gladys Ratic, who was an aunt

29:07

of Tamara Chipman, one of the

29:09

victims, and she leads a cause

29:11

called Tears for Justice, the number

29:13

four. She has a lot of

29:16

distrust of the police because as

29:18

a teenager, she ran away and

29:20

was hitchhiking. and was picked up

29:22

two different times by RCMP officers

29:24

who raped her. So, I mean,

29:26

as far as the RCMP is

29:29

concerned, they're like, we're going to

29:31

investigate this stuff and we're going

29:33

to treat anyone within our ranks

29:35

who does something like this just

29:37

like we would any common criminal.

29:40

But the fact that that stuff

29:42

happens, period, and that... There's a

29:44

human rights watch report that came

29:46

out in 2012 that documented police

29:48

abuse against indigenous women and girls.

29:51

And that's like literal abuse and

29:53

sexual assault the cops are taking

29:55

part in at the worst, then

29:57

all the way down to just

29:59

being hostile or uninterested in what

30:02

happened to these crime victims and

30:04

families. As the Canadian government has

30:06

said many times and has recognized

30:08

and apologized for Canada's history of

30:10

how they've treated their indigenous populations

30:13

like putting them in residential schools,

30:15

apparently in the 60s there was

30:17

a second wave of that kind

30:19

of thing, but rather than residential

30:21

schools they took kids from their

30:24

family homes and put them in

30:26

with foster. families. And so there

30:28

was a lot of breakup of

30:30

the culture and families in the

30:32

indigenous tribes in the area. And

30:34

as a result, like poverty began,

30:37

violence really set in, deaths of

30:39

despair like suicide and alcoholism and

30:41

drug overdoses, and just an inability

30:43

to take care of themselves. And

30:45

then you couple that. reality with

30:48

somebody coming to the police and

30:50

saying my daughter hasn't come home

30:52

since Friday and they're like Friday,

30:54

huh? What was she doing last

30:56

while she went to a party?

30:59

Then she's probably just on a

31:01

week-long bender, just give her a

31:03

few days. From all the stories

31:05

I've read, I would say 90%

31:07

of the family said that that

31:10

was the first response they got

31:12

from police. Yeah, and not only

31:14

that, but they've been shown to...

31:16

get rid of information. So in

31:18

2015 Elizabeth Denham, she is the

31:21

commissioner for the information and privacy

31:23

for British Columbia. She put out

31:25

a report that said officials removed

31:27

like 150 emails about the Highway

31:29

of Tears from their database, which

31:32

was a violation of the Freedom

31:34

of Information and Protection of Privacy

31:36

Act. Right. Which was obviously didn't.

31:38

and foster any further trust with

31:40

the Royal Canadian Mountain Police. And

31:42

I guess in response in 2018,

31:44

the commissioner of the Mauiines, Brenda

31:46

Lucky, actually issued like a formal

31:48

heartfelt apology for the problems that

31:50

the families have been facing and

31:52

the lack of support they've been

31:54

getting from the Royal Canadian Mounted

31:57

Police. Which has been few and

31:59

far between but I think when

32:01

it does when it is something

32:03

like that does happen it goes

32:05

a long way And I think

32:07

the families are kind of like

32:09

okay. Let's let's get back to

32:11

work with the mountains again Yeah,

32:13

so what this represents though is

32:15

a larger population scene not only

32:17

in Canada but the United States

32:19

and all over the world where

32:21

minority communities are Although they represent,

32:23

you know, sometimes a small part

32:25

of the population they make up

32:27

a much larger part of people

32:30

in prison of people who were

32:32

killed by police. And that's certainly

32:34

the case in Canada. I think

32:36

part of the reason that Epana

32:38

has gotten mixed, not only results,

32:40

but mixed reviews over the year

32:42

for their work is because they've

32:44

just been, you know, they came

32:46

out with a bang and then

32:48

they've sort of been slowly waning

32:50

over the years. I think they

32:52

went from 60 assigned officers down

32:54

to six by 2022. Yeah. And

32:56

there's a guy, a staff sergeant

32:58

named Wayne Clary, who said, you

33:00

know, we probably aren't going to

33:03

be able to make any more

33:05

arrests in these cases, that most

33:07

of them are stranger on stranger

33:09

violence. So there's basically no motive

33:11

other than to... sexually assault and

33:13

kill. It's really hard to track

33:15

somebody down, especially when you don't

33:17

have many leads. So we're probably

33:19

going to have to get used

33:21

to the fact that these murders

33:23

are going to go unsolved. But

33:25

from what I was reading, there's

33:27

a lot of families who are

33:29

like, this wasn't a stranger. We

33:31

know the guy who did it.

33:33

He lives over there. And they're

33:35

not getting listened to. And then

33:38

also there's a report from a

33:40

report from 2016, an analysis of

33:42

32 cases. Did you see this

33:44

part about where the police had

33:46

said that there was no foul

33:48

play in these murders of indigenous

33:50

women? And this analysis is like,

33:52

that's kind of a weird thing

33:54

to say because some of them

33:56

were found nude, some of them

33:58

had unexplained injuries. In some cases,

34:00

the coroner contradicted the idea that

34:02

there is no foul play, and

34:04

yet they have been logged as no

34:07

foul play, and therefore they're not

34:09

being investigated because they're not

34:11

considered murders. Yeah, and you know, along

34:13

the lines of what I was talking

34:15

about before, this is not just a

34:17

Canada problem. There's an official name

34:20

for something like this, missing and

34:22

murdered indigenous women and girls, M-M-M-I-W-G.

34:24

And that has happened all over

34:26

North America and other places in

34:29

the world. There's some estimates that

34:31

say indigenous women and girls

34:33

are 12 times more likely than the

34:35

general population to go missing or to

34:37

be murdered. In Canada and 10 times

34:40

more likely in the US and there

34:42

have been people trying to bring

34:44

attention to this as well. There's

34:46

an artist named Jamie Black who

34:48

made these really powerful installations.

34:51

that is sometimes the most

34:53

powerful ones are very simple

34:55

and that's the case here where

34:57

it would hang empty red dresses

34:59

in public places and it

35:01

really caught on and since 2010

35:04

Canada has recognized May 5th as

35:06

red dress day. Yep. Let's take

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37:37

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37:44

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Academy Award winner Rami Malek, Rachel

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38:25

PG. Okay Chuck, so you said

38:27

the magic word missing in murdered

38:29

indigenous women and girls. It's a

38:31

thing. And Canada launched an inquiry

38:33

into that group, and some people

38:36

in the Highway of Tears community

38:38

gave testimony for it. They released

38:40

a report in 2019, and they

38:42

said, look, let's just cut to

38:44

the chase here. It's not like

38:46

Native American tribes were living in

38:49

poverty and destitution and engaged in

38:51

sex work and alcoholism and drug

38:53

addiction before... we euro canadians came

38:55

along and just completely disrupted their

38:57

culture so this is actually this

39:00

this problem of missing and murdered

39:02

indigenous women and girls it's it's

39:04

part of a larger bigger picture

39:06

a history of being exploited and

39:08

left vulnerable and not protected by

39:11

the people who were supposed to

39:13

protect them this is not new

39:15

Yeah, and I mean this is

39:17

horrific to look at but one

39:19

of the One of the problems

39:21

is they found that whenever They

39:24

have a very large group of

39:26

only men around in a desolate

39:28

area for one reason or another

39:30

Sexual assaults and murders happen and

39:32

that is the case in these

39:35

isolated parts of Canada where their

39:37

fossil fuel industry is. So what'll

39:39

happen is they'll go to work

39:41

on a pipeline or something and

39:43

they have what's called a man

39:45

camp with like a thousand dudes

39:48

on site working out in the

39:50

middle of nowhere together and historically

39:52

speaking not just here but kind

39:54

of everywhere this has happened dating

39:56

back to the 1800s when this

39:59

happens they're going to be sexual

40:01

assaults and murdered and disappeared women

40:03

and girls nearby. Yeah, there's reports

40:05

that show like an actual correlation,

40:07

like a man camp shows up,

40:09

sexual assaults of indigenous women goes

40:12

up in the area too. And

40:14

unfortunately this part of Northern British

40:16

Columbia that the highway of Tears

40:18

runs through, that's like... the central

40:20

area for Canada's resource extraction. So

40:23

there are a lot of man

40:25

camps there and there's plenty more

40:27

coming. So that in and of

40:29

itself is a problem. And it's

40:31

not just in Canada, apparently North

40:33

Dakota underwent an oil boom back

40:36

in the 2000 Aunts. And as

40:38

more and more people were brought

40:40

in as laborers, sexual assault of

40:42

indigenous women there went up too.

40:44

Because they're also pretty vulnerable here

40:47

in the United States as well.

40:49

Yeah, I mean, this happens everywhere

40:51

all over the world that that

40:53

is the case. It's not just

40:55

North America. They've taken some steps,

40:58

I mentioned earlier, some of the

41:00

things that they're doing that seem

41:02

like they would help out. One

41:04

is... We've got to stop people

41:06

from hitchhiking, or at least reduce

41:08

the rate of hitchhikers. They don't

41:11

have any other way to get

41:13

around sometimes, like you mentioned. So

41:15

in 2017, British Columbia Transit moved

41:17

forward on something that came out

41:19

of that 2006 summit. So 11

41:22

years later, that launched three new

41:24

bus routes along. Highway 16, but

41:26

that didn't work for very long

41:28

because that worked in conjunction with

41:30

Greyhound and just two years after

41:32

that and like 5,000 people were

41:35

now using the service. Grayhound cut

41:37

back on the routes there because

41:39

they weren't turning a profit and

41:41

so all of a sudden hitchhiking

41:43

was back on the map again.

41:46

Yeah, and just a lot of

41:48

people just don't have cars and

41:50

if you do have a car

41:52

it's probably being used by somebody

41:54

else or remember. What was the

41:56

movie Smoke Signals, I think? They

41:59

talk about the Res car, where

42:01

it's like a car everybody just

42:03

kind of shares and it just

42:05

gets handed from person to person

42:07

when you need it. So yeah,

42:10

hitchhiking is going to be a

42:12

lot more convenient in some cases.

42:14

Cell phone, you said also cell

42:16

phone service is a big deal

42:18

too, right? Yeah, I mean, just

42:21

not being able to call 911

42:23

very simply is a problem. So

42:25

in 2021, I mean, just... four

42:27

years ago. It's astounding that it

42:29

took this long. The provincial and

42:31

federal governments said, all right, we'll

42:34

chip in four and a half

42:36

million bucks out of what will

42:38

eventually cost 11 and a half

42:40

million total to get Roger's communications

42:42

to get coverage all along this

42:45

highway with cell phone towers. And

42:47

I think by the end of

42:49

last year, the good news is

42:51

nine of those 11 towers were

42:53

up. And hopefully soon, the entire

42:55

450-ish-mile stretch, you'll at least be

42:58

able to call the cops. Yeah,

43:00

and that was a big one

43:02

of the 231 calls for justice

43:04

that came out of that symposium

43:06

in 2015. And for, I mean,

43:09

that's lightning fast, if, like, for

43:11

this kind of stuff that happened

43:13

that fast. So, just two more

43:15

to go, everybody. Let's get it

43:17

done in 2025. Yeah. Absolutely. There's

43:19

also like a little bit of

43:22

a certainly I wouldn't call it

43:24

a tussle or anything but there's

43:26

a growing kind of disagreement on

43:28

how to approach this up to

43:30

basically, I guess, 2023, the approach

43:33

was exclusively, this is a horrific

43:35

situation, this is tragic, this is

43:37

super sad, and it doesn't need

43:39

to portray it any other way.

43:41

That's just what it is. And

43:43

the carrier Sakani Center, remember they

43:46

run the highway of Tears Initiative,

43:48

they're like, what if we just

43:50

kind of alter this a little

43:52

bit? What if we make this

43:54

more of a hopeful thing? For

43:57

a very long time there's some

43:59

famous billboards along the highway of

44:01

Tears. It had pictures of three

44:03

of the victims, Romona, Delphine, and

44:05

Cecilia, who isn't included in the

44:08

canonical victims, but she was Delphine's

44:10

cousin. They went missing within six

44:12

months of each other. And I

44:14

think Cecilia's never been found again.

44:16

Their pictures around this billboard and

44:18

on the billboard it said, girls

44:21

don't hitchhike on the highway of

44:23

tears. Kill her on the loose.

44:25

Well, that was... helpful for years

44:27

and years and years but carrier

44:29

to counties like you know there's

44:32

a way that some people who

44:34

don't understand our way of hitchhiking

44:36

why we do it could possibly

44:38

see that as like there's some

44:40

sort of victim blaming in there

44:42

so what if we just kind

44:45

of remove that and make this

44:47

whole more hopeful message and they

44:49

unveiled I think four billboards that

44:51

kind of changed things a little

44:53

bit right? Yeah they say we

44:56

are hope we are strength keep

44:58

highway 16 safe. And, you know,

45:00

they're obviously critics of that messaging

45:02

because they're saying, we don't want

45:04

to say that there's hope because

45:06

right now, with the way things

45:09

are going with the Mounties and

45:11

the investigations, like, there is no

45:13

hope. So why say that if

45:15

it's not hopeful? Right. Yeah, and

45:17

I think the billboards coexist and

45:20

the critics of that were like,

45:22

okay, these billboards can coexist. That's

45:24

a great billboard. We're fine. But

45:26

it was when they proposed, I

45:28

think, yeah, carrier Sakani. proposed, hey,

45:31

let's rename the highway of Tears

45:33

officially the highway of Hope when

45:35

activists and supporters like Gladys Ratic,

45:37

we're like, no, we are definitely

45:39

not there yet. A lot of

45:41

these cases are not solved. There's

45:44

not much traction still, like that's

45:46

ridiculous and we're not going to

45:48

do that. But hopefully someday it

45:50

will reach that status, you know?

45:52

Yeah. So until then that's the

45:55

highway of Tears. Here at Step

45:57

You Should Know, we say rest

45:59

and peace to all the victims

46:01

and we hope peace can come

46:03

to all their families who have

46:05

to live with this and the

46:08

ongoing frustration of not getting the

46:10

help they need. And since I

46:12

said all that, it's time for

46:14

a listener, ma'am. I'm going to

46:16

call this mushroom fruit. This is

46:19

from Mike. Hey guys, I'm a

46:21

mushroom farmer from St. Louis. I

46:23

thought I needed to write in

46:25

and give Josh some bad news.

46:27

Listening to the Catacomb's episode. and

46:29

the mushroom guys is the fruit

46:32

of its organism. The plant that

46:34

is grown from is called mycelium.

46:36

Furthermore, not all fungi produce fruit,

46:38

aka mushrooms. If you or your

46:40

family use mushrooms in supplement form,

46:43

like mushroom powder or something like

46:45

that, be sure to look for

46:47

made with fruiting bodies only on

46:49

the packaging or something of that

46:51

nature. A lot of manufacturers are

46:53

using myceliated... grain without any mushrooms

46:56

to make these products. That's like

46:58

going to the grocery store for

47:00

apples and leaving with most of

47:02

an apple tree. There's a lot

47:04

more to that discussion, but at

47:07

the moment and with the current

47:09

data, I say that if it

47:11

advertises mushrooms, then it needs to

47:13

have mushrooms. I've included some picks

47:15

of the farm. and my fur

47:18

babies. If you come to St.

47:20

Louis, please come to the farm

47:22

for a tour. And there are

47:24

some great pictures of these beautiful

47:26

fruiting mushrooms, one terribly lazy.

47:28

Looks like golden -haired

47:31

golden retriever type retriever

47:33

with a with a

47:35

candy cane and a

47:37

terrible tabby cat laying on a

47:39

box on a

47:42

box as cats

47:44

do. was a nice. mean

47:46

email That was

47:48

a very mean that's

47:50

Who is that,

47:52

Mike? get your That's

47:55

Mike. and I appreciate

47:57

get your point,

47:59

Mike, and I

48:01

appreciate that because

48:03

I've been studiously

48:06

avoiding any mushroom

48:08

supplement that has

48:10

the word fruiting

48:12

on it. So so

48:14

I should just

48:16

bite the bullet.

48:19

You know, I

48:21

can put a

48:23

piece of like

48:25

know, tape over

48:27

that part a take

48:30

the like needed. tape

48:32

mushroom. that If you and to be like

48:34

Mike and get in touch with us and

48:37

turn my stomach, you can do that. Yeah,

48:39

Send us an email to If

48:41

you .com. like Mike and get in

48:43

touch with us should know is a

48:45

production of iHeart Radio. you For

48:47

more do that. heart radio, visit

48:49

the iHeart Radio to Apple podcasts

48:51

are wherever you listen to your

48:53

favorite shows.