FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

searchers

An Ex-Cop's Mission to Solve the Murders Along Canada's Highway of Tears

Former RCMP detective Ray Michalko is investigating the murders of a number of women along Northern BC's 'Highway of Tears.'

British Columbia's Provincial AutoRoute 16 is both a trucking passage and the winding graveyard of many murdered Aboriginal women. The RCMP, the chief police force investigating the crimes, puts the number of women missing or murdered at 18, while Aboriginal organizations believe it is much higher. The RCMP thinks that a number of serial killers have been operating along the highway over the past four decades.

Running west to east through some of the most remote terrain in North America, passing by desolate First Nations reserves and logging towns, the highway has become synonymous with the endemic violence toward Indigenous women in Canada. Indigenous women are five times more likely than any other ethnicity in Canada to be raped or murdered. It wasn't until after a caucasian tree planter went missing along the highway that the RCMP finally launched a full-scale investigation. The taskforce, called E-PANA, has had its funding cut several times since it was founded in 2005, going from a team of 70 to just 12.

Ray Michalko, a former RCMP member who quit the force, is now looking into the disappearances and murders as a private investigator. He works directly with the families of missing or murdered Indigenous women on his own dime. Michalko took VICE on a tour of the Highway of Tears and connected us with the families who have turned to him after sometimes decades of stalled police investigations.