Mantracker, Survivorman offer their two cents on location of B.C. murder suspects

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – As another clue in the search for two B.C. murder suspects fails to lead Manitoba Mounties to the young men, pop culture’s experts on searching for people in the woods and surviving in the wilderness are offering up their own theories on where the pair could be.

“Mantracker” Terry Grant, who chased after people in the wild for six seasons, tells the National Post he “half thinks” 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky and 19-year-old Kam McLeod met someone in a big town and are now as far as Texas or even the Bahamas.

“I haven’t heard anyone say we’ve seen them go into the woods with an axe and banana, no one ever said that,” Grant told the publication.

He adds if the two went deep into the wilderness of Manitoba’s north and died, they may never be found.

“All those guys had to do was go eight kilometres in or around the lake, expire over there. The animals would make most of them disappear and their bodies would just go back into the ground,” Grant said in the interview.

Schmegelsky and McLeod have evaded police for over two weeks. They were last seen in Gillam, Manitoba on July 22 — a day before they were named suspects in the deaths of three people in northern B.C. earlier in the month.

The most recent development in the search for the pair was the weekend discovery of “several items directly linked to the suspects” along the shores of the Nelson River, not far from Gillam. A further search of the water appears to have been fruitless and Mounties don’t seem any closer to finding the two men.

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While he has doubts the men are still in northern Manitoba, Grant hopes they are, so no one else gets hurt.

Les Stroud, an outdoorsman and survival expert known as “Survivorman”, also tells the National Post technically speaking, the two young men from Vancouver Island could be very far away.

“There’s lots of places to get over the border from Canada to the United States without being detected … For all we know, they could be in a car on their way to Mexico or in Mexico at this point,” Stroud told the Post.

He adds the two have had time to get away and could have changed their appearance.

“Now we’re into the Hollywood movie kind of thing, because having probably watched too many things online, who knows what’s in their head. I can only tell you what I would do and I would likely disappear into society and do all those silly Hollywood tricks like change my appearance,” Stroud said.

Schmegelsky and McLeod — who police initially believed were missing — are charged with second-degree murder in the death of UBC sessional lecturer Leonard Dyck, who was found dead on July 19 near Dease Lake.

The pair is also wanted in connection to the double homicide of American Chynna Deese and her Australian boyfriend Lucas Fowler. The pair was found shot dead on the side of the Alaska Highway near Liard Hot Springs around July 15.