Brothers may be fleeing to Mexico

SEATTLE • Two brothers wanted in the disappearance and presumed slayings of a Canadian woman and her American husband may be heading for the Mexican border, authorities said Tuesday.

Patrick Shunn and Monique Patenaude, formerly of Burnaby, B.C., were reported missing a week ago from their rural home near Oso in Washington state.

Detectives found a car in Phoenix that had been driven by John Blaine Reed and his brother, Tony Clyde Reed, and said the suspects took another car with an Arizona plate. A licence plate reader captured that plate near Calexico, Calif., on Monday.

The brothers are wanted in the disappearance of John Reed’s former neighbours, Shunn and Patenaude, a married couple who were reported missing April 12.

Investigators say they found evidence the couple were killed, and teams were searching for their bodies in a wooded area around their home near Oso, 80 kilometres northeast of Seattle.

“The exact location of the Reed brothers is unknown, but there is reason to believe they may be trying to flee to Mexico,” the Snohomish County Sheriff ’s Office in Washington said in an email Tuesday. It described them as convicted felons who should be considered armed and dangerous.

Court documents say John Reed had threatened to shoot the couple for cutting brush between their two properties, according to The Seattle Times. Reed threatened to shoot or assault them if they didn’t leave him alone, according to an affidavit for a search warrant.