MURDER SUSPECTS SHARED DARK INTERESTS
A CLOSER LOOK AT TEENS WHO SPARKED MANHUNT
Before he was found dead in the bush of northern Manitoba with his alleged accomplice in a cross-country murder spree, Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, had been living with his grandmother in Port Alberni, the industrial logging city in the middle of Vancouver Island.
He was tall and thin, 6-foot-4 and 169 pounds, and although he had recently been working at Walmart, with his best friend since elementary school, Kam McLeod, the pair had told family they were heading to Whitehorse to find new and better work, driving a red and grey Dodge pickup truck.
His father Al Schmegelsky told local media the two friends liked to “go into the woods and play war” and that both were adept at wilderness survival. The elder Schmegelsky also said his son had endured emotional trouble since his parents separated when he was a child, and had occupied himself primarily with video games and YouTube. The Globe and Mail newspaper reported Schmegelsky had a Facebook account linked to an account called “Illusive Gameing,” which included imagery and themes of far right politics, Communist and fascist iconography, sexualized Japanese anime, and a survivalist video game.
It also published an image of Schmegelsky in military fatigues holding a rifle, and an image said to have come from Schmegelsky showing a red Nazi swastika armband and a knife with the German words for “blood and honour” on the blade. Another shows him in a gas mask.
Before news of his death, Schmegelsky’s father also told media he thought his son was on a “suicide mission” and expected him to go out in a “blaze of glory.”
KAM MCLEOD
Kam McLeod, 19, was tall and thin — 6-foot-4 and 169 pounds — like Schmegelsky, according to police. Classmates described him as more social and friendly than his more reserved friend Schmegelsky. But he appeared to have shared some of Schmegelsky’s darker interests. McLeod’s online presence suggests he was interested in Communist groups, and he connected to the same account Illusive Gameing.
“This is what I do know — Kam is a kind, considerate, caring young man (who) always has been concerned about other people’s feelings,” wrote his father Keith McLeod.
On July 22, just before they were named as suspects, McLeod and Schmegelsky drove through a traffic stop in Manitoba and were pulled over by Albert Saunders, a Split Lake First Nation Safety officer, who searched their vehicle but found only survival gear and maps.
“They looked scared. I spoke to the one with the moustache, Kam McLeod,” Saunders told the Daily Mail. “He just kept saying, ‘Sorry.’ They didn’t say where they were going.”
According to RCMP, it was not until this past Friday that the search around Gillam, Man., finally produced a confirmed link to the fugitives, items that included a battered aluminum boat, found eight kilometres from the burnt-out wreck of their last known vehicle. On Wednesday, the bodies of McLeod and Schmegelsky were found about one kilometre away from those items, in the bush.