Highway of Tears Revisited

RCMP Staff Sgt. Hulan with the “Highway of Tears” evidence boxes – Photograph by Bill Keay/Vancouver Sun

It is called: the Highway of Tears. Why? Because at least 18 women, many of them native, have disappeared from or have been found murdered along B.C. highways over the past 40 years. And there is still no progress in these cases.

In “Cold Case Re-Investigations For All!” you can read about the fears that these cases do not get much attention because the girls and women were not white.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, has repeatedly called for a public inquiry in the the Highway of Tears cases. Phillip believes B.C. should follow the lead of Manitoba, which has formed an inter-agency task force to investigate cases of missing and murdered women in that province.

In the post “E-pana and cold case re-investigations” Neal Hall interviewed RCMP Staff-Sgt. Bruce Hulan, the officer in charge of B.C.’s Unsolved Homicide Unit and team commander of Project E-Pana, which is conducting the homicide investigations of the 18 girls and women.

Adriana Rolston gives an extensive overview of the investigation and the lack of results. “Part one of the online component of “Vanishing Point” addressed why certain cases had been excluded from Project E-Pana, such as that of Deena Braem from Quesnel, B.C., who went missing on September 26, 1999, one day before her 17th birthday. She had been seen hitchhiking, but Braem’s body was found farther than a mile from a major highway. Families of victims not included in the investigation often feel their daughters’ cases are being neglected.”