Canada - Lucas Fowler, Chynna Deese, and Leonard Dyck, all murdered, Alaska Hwy, BC, Jul 2019 #15

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The media is acting like vultures with no regard for him or the victims' families. Talking to them won't help him one bit, and it sure isn't doing anything to alleviate the pain of the others either.

Since we are not him, we don't know what helps him during this time. I've seen people react to the death of family member, especially a child, in so many different ways. Most of us have no idea how we would react in the same situation.

At any rate, I do think some people are helped (perhaps temporarily) by speaking to whoever will listen or by speaking to the media (as a subset of "whoever will listen"). Temporary pain relief, when the pain is extreme, is better than no pain relief at all, IME.

I totally agree that Australian 60 minutes has behaved badly, but someone else would have done it. And many of us watched, it was linked here and has been discussed a lot. So, that's why it happens. People want to know.

As long as there has been public information, reaction stories have circulated.

I don't see any point in criticizing Mr. S, though (criticizing the media means scrutinizing our own choices, for sure). I actually didn't watch the Australian 60 minutes thing, but I read everyone else's descriptions here, so it's not like I don't have the same curiousity (WS, for me, means not giving Australia 60 minutes as many hits on youtube or whatever platform it's on).

Really appreciate your comments, btw.
 
I still haven’t managed to find a video with his saying “blaze of glory”, despite watching many, with a few articles even stating they were the whole interview.

Imagine he is/was being sequestered somehow by Australia 60 Minutes. He doesn’t have access to news or media. He’s already been through a roller coaster of believing his son is missing and possibly a victim due to truck being destroyed to finding out his son is now charged with second degree murder (but he’s told nothing about what prompted police to think his son was involved) and he’s a suspect in the murder of two others (which to him seems extremely unrelated, to the police itvwas unrelated for time as well). He’s going through all that and then 60 minutes Australia shows him brief footage of his son and friend, still alive and not shot by police who he believes will “shoot first, ask questions later”. I assume his initial reaction was such relief his son was still alive and then instant hope his son might still come home and it would all be sorted out. Granted a very simplistic view perhaps but not necessarily malicious. I can’t imagine any parent being able to accept being told their child is a murderer, especially in a short time frame without having been given one iota of information about alleged crimes.

Scrutinizing his emotions and reactions and then judging based on them, for them - it just seems fundamentally wrong to me.
In a thread wayyyyy back, we went over the “blaze of glory” thing, and it was stated that he never said that exact phrase, instead the media made that up and attributed it to him.

I think people are scrutinizing him because he’s so out there with everything and basically trashing his ex-wife. Plus there’s not a lot of sympathy for someone who was charged with harassing his ex. Repeatedly. He’s got a lot to answer for in terms of not being there and helping raise his son in a healthy environment.
 
After reading so much about Canadian law regarding publication and crime, it occurs to me yet again that the failure to charge KM/BS with the two murders is a complicating factor.

No one is charged in those murders, so even if the law extended to Mr. S, it wouldn't apply to his (uncharged, unconvicted) son's involvement in those crimes.

RCMP's goal must have been (and IMO, should have been) to take them alive. I think that was a worthy goal and worth the complications involving relatives being paid for talking to the press.

I am assuming that the Australian 60 minutes crew was in Canada for the recent interview. I'm also assuming no one violated any laws in doing the AS interview.
 
After reading so much about Canadian law regarding publication and crime, it occurs to me yet again that the failure to charge KM/BS with the two murders is a complicating factor.

No one is charged in those murders, so even if the law extended to Mr. S, it wouldn't apply to his (uncharged, unconvicted) son's involvement in those crimes.

RCMP's goal must have been (and IMO, should have been) to take them alive. I think that was a worthy goal and worth the complications involving relatives being paid for talking to the press.

I am assuming that the Australian 60 minutes crew was in Canada for the recent interview. I'm also assuming no one violated any laws in doing the AS interview.

It is interesting how some of us get hooked by different issues in this discussion. I found discussion of keys by the burned RAV4 and the van registration of passing interest. However, I find the ethical and legal issues regarding profiting from criminal notoriety very interesting (and applicable to this case since it was brought up in an article by a news reporter).

But I think the topic is probably of minor interest to most people as it relates to this case. Some of us may be concerned about the impact of his disclosures on victim’s families and find the idea of the press pursuing/paying him for stories distasteful. But I think that it would be very hard to hold him legally accountable for sharing his views/perspective — even if he should co-author a book, sell the rights for a movie, etc.. For those who are interested, this is the best and most interesting summary of son of Sam laws and their issues I have found with numerous examples (e.g., OJs children) -
Feature: ‘Son of Sam’ Laws: How Much Does Crime Pay?

But I am glad the came up in the discussion as it clarified for me the father’s right to free speech and the broad extent to which he might engage in it lawfully.
 
Just about everything related to the 2 killers is covered here, from the most trivial detail to the official reports.
I would think seeing the homes of the killers would be at least as interesting to websleuthers as say... did LF have car insurance ;)

For those who missed it:

Hometown of Canadian Teenage Murder Suspects Grapples With Unwanted Infamy

Yeah I think there's a difference. We're discussing the case in our own little corner of the internet where the family members would have to actively seek us out to see what we've written. The reporters are going right up to the families' houses, where they're presumably inside grieving, and taking close-up pictures of their garden ornaments and stuff.

Didn't he write this memoir long before the situation with Bryer and Kam? Sounds like he might actually have shared some similar ideologies with Bryer if he really was mentioning manhunts and serial killings. Also, what a strange coincidence if he had written specifically about "two brutal serial killers" in a memoir about his life long before any of this happened. Talk about a foreshadowing.
jmo.

The Daily Fail did publish some excerpts from the book. Unfortunately, it's the Daily Fail, so who knows....

Father of teen Canadian murder fugitive tries to hijack media frenzy to publicize his new book | Daily Mail Online

'Just read my book, I explain everything,' he said. 'I wrote it in October, before all this. It has been in editorial and publishing processes this whole time.'

Schmegelsky does not mention his son by name in the book, but describes how in 2008 his ex-wife pressed criminal harassment charges against him, leading to restrictions on his access to then nine-year-old Bryer.

The 53-year-old construction worker wrote that he turned himself in to police over the harassment charge, rather than prompting a 'multi-million dollar, province-wide search', but complained that RCMP wrote a report for the judge in his case casting him as a 'homicidal, suicidal schizophrenic maniac'.

'This proceeding contained three reports: The RCMP Report; the homicidal, suicidal schizophrenic maniac off his meds and going to murder. The Forensic Psychiatric Assessment Report; the delusional, untreatable and needs medication for the rest of his life. And the Probation Services Report; hard worker, never missed an appointment, always courteous, never does drugs, no apparent alcohol problem,' he wrote.

That is really weird...why would he think there would be a multi-million dollar province-wide search over a criminal harassment charge?

And those reports sound awfully familiar, don't they...ie. Bryer's grandma and great-uncle saying "he was a great kid, polite and quiet" vs. his peers saying "we're not surprised, he was acting like a future mass shooter since middle school."

There are also some other excerpts posted in that article. The other excerpts are very telling when it comes to Bryer's childhood, if they are true (well, even if they aren't it tells us something). Of course, we have no idea of knowing how much of what he wrote was actually true, especially because he said parts of it were fictionalized (why?). In my experience coming from an entire family of "grievance collectors," usually the basic facts of what they rant about are generally true, but they exaggerate or misinterpret events to fit their narrative. But as I said, who knows. It's all very, very strange.

If I knew my parent was going to write something this personal I would freak out (but I wouldn’t kill anyone). I would not want to be associated with it at all.

I imagine BS was aware of the content. I wonder if he was fuelled by it.

From the article posted above:
Speaking to DailyMail.com, the 53-year-old said the memoir was meant to be published last week, the same day Bryer and McLeod are suspected of killing three people. [which doesn't make any sense because they didn't kill all three of them on the same day...great job Daily Fail]

'I put the release on hold, it was supposed to be released on Monday,' he said.

'I wrote my book so Bryer and I could buy a home,' he said. 'That was our plan.'

So according to that, maybe Bryer was aware of it. But I feel like if you're a teenager and your mentally ill homeless dad has all these wild plans about publishing a book and getting rich and buying a house, you're probably going to be like "yeah, ok, sure," and quickly change the subject. I highly doubt Bryer took any of it seriously. Unless he was just as delusional as his dad, which of course, is possible.

He may not be responding to the media in a way that I would prefer but it seems that the McLeod's aren't meeting public expectations either.

No matter HOW the families of criminals, especially teen criminals, act, people are always going to find something to nitpick and criticize them on, and twist their words and actions to try to make it seem like they don't really care about the victims. It happens in literally every case.

It would be interesting to know where BS and KM were when the book was revealed to the media. Could have been another tipping point unfortunately.

As far as I can tell it was revealed July 27th so...I think Kam and Bryer had other problems to deal with at that time.

I still haven’t managed to find a video with his saying “blaze of glory”, despite watching many, with a few articles even stating they were the whole interview.

In a thread wayyyyy back, we went over the “blaze of glory” thing, and it was stated that he never said that exact phrase, instead the media made that up and attributed it to him.

I think people are scrutinizing him because he’s so out there with everything and basically trashing his ex-wife. Plus there’s not a lot of sympathy for someone who was charged with harassing his ex. Repeatedly. He’s got a lot to answer for in terms of not being there and helping raise his son in a healthy environment.

Yeah the really bizarre thing is, I went and looked up the video just now, and it has the "blaze of glory" quote as the title, but he never actually said it in the video. Did they edit it out because it was too controversial? And if so, why leave it in the title? Yet another detail about this case that makes no sense, as if we didn't have enough of those already.


Honestly...sometimes the best thing you can do for your kid is NOT be there for them. Like, if he was repeatedly arrested for "criminal harassment" of his ex as well as possibly other people (a charge, which someone posted on here earlier, which involves making threats that makes the person fear for their life...hmm wonder where Bryer got that from), do you honestly think it would have been better if he was more involved in Bryer's life during that time? Sometimes people just do not have the mental capacity to be parents. You can't even necessarily judge them for it, because they just don't have the ability to do better. I think that was the case here. JMO.
 
A child's right to a decent childhood trumps a man's self-interest/pity, any time, everytime.
He gets no pass from me, not one.

I guess what I was trying to say was that legally he seems to have a right to speak his mind and, as well, to get paid for it (IMO after some research - I am not a lawyer). But, of course, each of us has our own ethical/moral view of whether what he says and how he says it seems appropriate.
 
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According to this, if true, AS also though the early reports of the Split Lake “band constable” referred to a police checkstop. It certainly appears he didn’t want his son to peacefully give himself up at any point in time and I do wonder why that is. From the very onset all of AS’s comments eluded to his death wish upon them IMO.

“As he feared for his son’s welfare, he revealed he was overjoyed when discovering they had gone undetected when passing through a police check as they headed east across Canada’s north.

“These boys are smart, they’re intelligent.. kudos boys, kudos,” he told 60 Minutes referring to the sighting....”
'Kudos boys': Dad praises suspected killer son after huge Canada murder manhunt

I completely disagree with Yahoo's assessment that AS praised his son for evading police!

First, the 60 Minutes program was taped over a period of two weeks. The narrator prefaces the program stating that the reporter had been shadowing AS during the manhunt, and was with him on the day he learned his son was dead. He learned earlier his son was missing when he read it in the Vancouver Sun newspaper. It was as they were filming that they learned of a sighting, and that is where AS gave the boys "Kudos," - he was overjoyed to see them on surveillance alive.

MOO
 
The book isn't about these crimes therefore he will not be profiting. Guaranteed he wouldn't make much of a profit anyway - he's probably paid more to self-publish than he will recoup, if he decides to release it.

I still haven’t managed to find a video with his saying “blaze of glory”, despite watching many, with a few articles even stating they were the whole interview.

Scrutinizing his emotions and reactions and then judging based on them, for them - it just seems fundamentally wrong to me.

[sbm]

I think it was edited out of whatever video it was in.
 
Ridiculous. AS has committed no crimes, therefore he should be free to speak about it and profit from it if the opportunity presents itself.

The father has not committed any crimes, and he is not a legal guardian. He is the biological father of one of the suspects, but his parental rights were stripped when his son was 8 years old. Furthermore, deceased suspects will never be found guilty, so it is impossible for the father to violate law about profiting from crimes where a son he did not raise is not guilty.
 
The father has not committed any crimes, and he is not a legal guardian. He is the biological father of one of the suspects, but his parental rights were stripped when his son was 8 years old. Furthermore, deceased suspects will never be found guilty, so it is impossible for the father to violate law about profiting from crimes where a son he did not raise is not guilty.

Vulnerability of the child brain, and the importance of getting the indoctrination in early.
‘Give me the child for his first seven years, and I’ll give you the man.’
 
It's the indiscriminate violence that the author says has shocked Canada, not Canada's sensible gun laws and liberal humanism.
Well, the writer doesn’t suggest that Canada prides itself on Ryan Gosling and it’s fine maple syrup, so it’s clearly meant to be context. :) Like the outlets that described these crimes as “near British Columbia’s Highway of Tears” it uses a fact about the country and misapprehends it as useful context. In fact, it creates an actively misleading error in context, and betrays the writer’s limited understanding. To the extent that the crimes are shocking, they are shocking in the same way they would be shocking anywhere. All societies deal with violence, and sometimes that violence is indiscriminate. Canada is no exception.
 
Vulnerability of the child brain, and the importance of getting the indoctrination in early.
‘Give me the child for his first seven years, and I’ll give you the man.’

I agree with the importance of those formative years, however, the father was essentially a non-parent and non-family member when he was no longer allowed to spend time with his son, except under supervision. His parental rights were completely stripped, so I have a difficult time seeing him as a family member or relative 12 years after he lost parental rights.
 
The father has not committed any crimes, and he is not a legal guardian. He is the biological father of one of the suspects, but his parental rights were stripped when his son was 8 years old. Furthermore, deceased suspects will never be found guilty, so it is impossible for the father to violate law about profiting from crimes where a son he did not raise is not guilty.

That's what I had thought.. I'm still confused about this argument over the profiting of crimes though. Don't people write books or make TV shows/movies about crimes, criminals, suspects all the time and profit from it, even family members or people close to the crime? Is it just the actual criminals that can't detail the crime itself for profit? Or is it just a ruling for certain cases..... Sorry if I sound like an idiot, just trying to understand. Don't know much about these laws. A few people seem to think Alan won't or shouldn't be able to be paid for his TV appearances or book sales because of his connection to this case. I don't see why he wouldn't, as it's not his crime and he's not speaking directly about what happened because he doesn't know what happened, he's just providing insights from his view of things. And his memoir is unrelated really, it's about his own life.

ETA: I do realize he could be taking advantage of the publicity he's receiving to promote his memoir. But the media is also taking advantage of the huge attention of this case, like the 60 minutes episode - also for profit.... Where's the line drawn?
 
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It is interesting how some of us get hooked by different issues in this discussion. I found discussion of keys by the burned RAV4 and the van registration of passing interest. However, I find the ethical and legal issues regarding profiting from criminal notoriety very interesting (and applicable to this case since it was brought up in an article by a news reporter).

But I think the topic is probably of minor interest to most people as it relates to this case. Some of us may be concerned about the impact of his disclosures on victim’s families and find the idea of the press pursuing/paying him for stories distasteful. But I think that it would be very hard to hold him legally accountable for sharing his views/perspective — even if he should co-author a book, sell the rights for a movie, etc.. For those who are interested, this is the best and most interesting summary of son of Sam laws and their issues I have found with numerous examples (e.g., OJs children) -
Feature: ‘Son of Sam’ Laws: How Much Does Crime Pay?

But I am glad the came up in the discussion as it clarified for me the father’s right to free speech and the broad extent to which he might engage in it lawfully.

He has free speech, he'd have the right to speak his mind because he wouldn't be jailed or fined for that even if it's regarded as morally wrong. I think it's more of a question as to whether or not the BC laws about profiting off the case apply to him. Even if the laws are applicable in this case, he still has free speech, he just wouldn't be able to "sell" his story or whatever.
 
Well, the writer doesn’t suggest that Canada prides itself on Ryan Gosling and it’s fine maple syrup, so it’s clearly meant to be context. :) Like the outlets that described these crimes as “near British Columbia’s Highway of Tears” it uses a fact about the country and misapprehends it as useful context. In fact, it creates an actively misleading error in context, and betrays the writer’s limited understanding. To the extent that the crimes are shocking, they are shocking in the same way they would be shocking anywhere. All societies deal with violence, and sometimes that violence is indiscriminate. Canada is no exception.

Generalizing any national character is always a fool's game.

From our BC perspective though, within days of the tourist's murders their grisly fate had all but disappeared from the msm, seemingly filed away as just another 'Highway of Tears' killing. That all changed suddenly once the couple's identities were revealed, and the story vaulted back onto our front pages while Australian and US press began to vent some national outrage.

It would appear then, that given our rcmp's dramatically more urgent (and appropriate) response to the International coverage, that some crimes do shock more than others.
 
Vulnerability of the child brain, and the importance of getting the indoctrination in early.
‘Give me the child for his first seven years, and I’ll give you the man.’

The pictures of Alan Schmegelsky and his son Bryer from before the divorce portray a very different dynamic than one of destruction and hatred, to me anyways. Personally it seems a nasty divorce and ensuing fallout destroyed far far to much.
 
A few people seem to think Alan won't or shouldn't be able to be paid for his TV appearances or book sales because of his connection to this case. I don't see why he wouldn't, as it's not his crime and he's not speaking directly about what happened because he doesn't know what happened, he's just providing insights from his view of things. And his memoir is unrelated really, it's about his own life.

So far we have no evidence he was ever paid -- it's all speculation. I believe he would have done the interview anyway even if he wasn't paid.

ETA: I do realize he could be taking advantage of the publicity he's receiving to promote his memoir. But the media is also taking advantage of the huge attention of this case, like the 60 minutes episode - also for profit.... Where's the line drawn?

He's not planning to publish his memoir for profit anymore. He was planning to publish it for profit before the murder spree, but due to the murder spree, he was very clear that he isn't going to. He did send it to the media but not with the intention of profiting off of it. I believe he was trying to give insight into why his son ended up this way. Because the tabloid media loves to vilify parents of criminals, they turned it into a "heartless dad tries to profit off his son's crimes" thing. But there's literally zero evidence that any of that is the case.

Honestly Bryer's dad's statements are what got me obsessed with this case. The whole thing is just so strange and sad. Like, as someone said on here earlier, the weird thing is he is right in the middle of being totally delusional, and remarkably insightful. If he was 100% delusional it would be one thing. But in some statements he sounds like the drunk guy stumbling around Port Authority yelling at commuters at 8 in the morning, and in some statements he has these brutally honest insights into the multi-factorial failures that allow someone to fall between the cracks and go down the path of violence. It's deeply bizarre.

And I think there are some VERY obvious parallels between Bryer's dad's behavior, and Bryer's behavior in the years leading up to the murders, as I mentioned in my last post. Like, the similarities are so on-the-nose, it almost reads like a case study in generational dysfunction in families. Even if Bryer's dad was not really involved in his life from ages 8-16, clearly whatever happened during those formative years had a huge impact.
 
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