Highway of Tears murders

Highway of Tears Murders
Sign on Highway 16 warning girls not to hitchhike
Killings
Victims	16-40+
Span of killings	1969–2011
Country	Canada
Location(s)	Prince George, British Columbia Prince Rupert, British Columbia

External video

B.C.‘s infamous Highway of Tears, CBC Archives, 2:32, June 21, 2006, reported by Miyoung Lee

The Highway of Tears murders is a series of murders and disappearances of mainly aboriginal women along the 720 km (450 mi) section of Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada from 1969 until 2011.Highway 16 is northern British Columbia's east-west corridor, extending from Jasper in the east to Prince Rupert in the west. This route is a section of the Trans-Canada Yellowhead Highway, also known as the "Park-to-Park Highway", which spans across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. There are numerous municipalities and twenty-three First Nations communities that border the Highway of Tears. The region is plagued with poverty and lack of public transportation, forcing its occupants to turn to hitchhiking as a form of transit. Police list the number of Highway 16 victims at nineteen, but estimates by aboriginal organizations range into the forties, largely because they include women who disappeared a greater distance from the highway. Thirteen of the nineteen victims were teenagers while ten out of the nineteen victims were women of aboriginal descent.

To date, only one murder has been solved, for which serial killer Cody Legebokoff was convicted, although American serial rapist and suspected serial killer Bobby Jack Fowler, who died while imprisoned in the United States for other crimes, is a suspect in many of the murders. Authorities have persons of interest in several other cases, but insufficient evidence to press charges.

(May)

Madison was last seen during the early morning hours of May 28, 2011 at Hogsback Lake, 25 kilometres southeast of Vanderhoof.

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 Vincent Switzer, who is currently serving a prison sentence for the second-degree murder of his brother. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) also searched the property for the other missing women from the Highway of Tears; however, no further actions followed the investigation.