Between Prince Rupert and Prince George, Highway 16, has been dubbed the Highway of Tears. Here in Canada this stretch of highway has been given this name as approximately 18 women have gone missing or have been killed since 1969.
Gloria Moody, 27, is reportedly the first woman who was killed as a result of being on this stretch of highway. On Oct. 25, 1969, she was last seen at a bar before her body was found the next day.
A number of missing women have been reported since this incident, the most recent being in 2006 when it was reported 14-year-old Aielah Saric Auger's body was found.
Most women along this stretch of highway had been hitchhiking, making them "easy" targets. Allowing for predators to, in a remote area, stalk their prey.
I had no idea that something like this was happening in Canada until a few years ago. The coverage in the national news was never something overtly publicized. It wasn't until my friend did a project in school paralleling the deaths of women in Juarez, Mexico to the women who have lost their lives on the Highway of Tears.
She made the note that it was surprising in Canada, a First World country, that something like this would go virtually unnoticed. The women in Mexico often go missing as they travel from their place of work to their houses, often not making it home. The ways the women are abducted are similar as they too are often walking along an isolated stretch of road when taken.
Many women remain to be missing along the Highway of Tears or their bodies have been found without discovering what happened to them. It has been said that it is the work of more than one person. Multiple killers have prowled the area or have taken part in crimes of opportunity as they travel the Highway of Tears.
It is an extremely tragic reality. When reports did make the news often the reaction of the public was to question why they were hitchhiking in the first place. After all, everyone knows hitchhiking is dangerous.
This, however, is not the case. Even if people know hitchhiking is dangerous, what if they do not have the means to travel another way? If they are unable to buy a bus ticket, use their own vehicle, or find a friend also travelling in their direction they may be forced into hitchhiking. If they need to be somewhere this might be the only way they can get there. This made them vulnerable targets simply because they were unable to find "proper" transportation.
For society to actually blame the victims is also tragic in my opinion. They are not asking for this to happen to them obviously. Living in a remote area and forced to travel via foot could not be helped in this instance as the women often didn't have another mode of transport. They were travelling to visit family or simply going home.
The first ever case to be solved in all these years was of 16-year-old Colleen MacMillen who had been found dead in 1974. She had been hitchhiking to a friend's house, but never arrived. It was discovered in 2012, Bobby Jack Fowler, a U.S. sex offender had been her killer. Fowler had died in 2006 of lung cancer while in a gaol in Oregon.
The other cases are still being investigated, but hope is not high as the police have said the cases are quite complex. They have apparently been able to link a few cases, but the evidence is inconclusive and remains to be looked into.
Hopefully with advances in technology the police will be able to bring closure to their families eventually, but for the time being the cases remain unsolved.
