Suspects confessed to B.C. murders
RCMP describe video and photos, and say Schmegelsky, McLeod showed no remorse
Two suspects confessed to the murders of three people in northern British Columbia in several videos taken before they shot themselves in a suicide pact, the RCMP said Friday.
The Mounties said that Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, and Kam McLeod, 19, expressed no remorse in the videos and did not explain their motives behind the killings that sparked a nationwide manhunt this summer. Before their deaths, the men were charged with the murder of Leonard Dyck, a University of British Columbia botany lecturer, and were also suspects in the deaths of American Chynna Deese and her Australian boyfriend Lucas Fowler.
The RCMP released new details of its investigation Friday, including descriptions of the videos, and said police located a digital camera belonging to Dyck near where the bodies of the two suspects were found in northern Manitoba.
The Mounties said McLeod shot Schmegelsky before shooting himself in a suicide pact, and two guns found near their bodies were the same firearms used in the murders of Deese, Fowler and Dyck.
The RCMP said its Behavioural Analysis Unit believes the videos may inspire copycat killers and that releasing them would be seen as disrespectful to the victims and their families, so they aren’t being made public at this time.
The camera contained three still images and six videos. In the first 58-second video, the RCMP describe Schmegelsky as saying their plan is to march to Hudson Bay, hijack a boat and travel to Europe or Africa. In the next, which is 51 seconds, he says they have reached a river that is large and fast-moving and may have to die by suicide, to which McLeod agrees.
The next 32-second video shows Schmegelsky saying they have shaved in preparation for their own deaths and they now plan to kill more people and expect to be dead in a week, the RCMP said.
The fourth video is 19 seconds long and they say they will shoot themselves, while the next is just six seconds and appears to have been taken accidentally. The final 31-second video is what the two men describe as their “last will and testament,” and they express their wish to be cremated, the RCMP said.
One of the still images shows Schmegelsky lying on his side posing with a SKS rifle, another is a blurred photo with a finger across the lens, and the third shows McLeod from the chest up.
The Mounties released a seven-page, double-sided overview of their investigation to media on Friday. The document provides a timeline and new details, but does not draw any conclusions about motive.