I've been following this thread (best resource on the web IMHO!) for several days, after finding it in a search for info on this case. I've been to the Canadian far north (BC side) so this case caught my attention. Some things about it, though, make no sense to me, and bothered me enough to register here in order to post.
What's puzzling me, firstly, is the burned truck (the one found near the deceased professor) shown in one picture unburned with a camper shell. It looks, to me, as if it's been rolled, given the combination of convex deformation of the roof, bending of the right rear cab cornerpost, and the down angle between the bed and the cab. I also found it perplexing that I couldn't see any sign of the camper shell.
Another thing puzzling me, one I've yet to see mentioned here or elsewhere, is an aspect of the split lake checkpoint incident; reportedly, the tribal officers who pulled over the two suspects were unarmed. The suspects, reportedly (based on a statement by one of the officers) pulled over, and "looked scared", when dealing with these two reportedly-unarmed tribal officers. This response seems a bit at odds with the cold-blooded unflappable killers the press seems to portray the suspects as. I'm not in any way implying innocence here (my current hunch is that they are guilty) just wondering if this means anything.
I also wonder about the location of the burned RAV4. Seems a bit coincidental to me that it's very close to the only rail line in the region. I know the southbound passenger train runs through in Tuesdays and the RAv4 was found on a Monday, but, I'm wondering about freight trains. So far, I've found that there's a freight service from Thompson to Churchill and back run by Gardewine, arriving in Churchill on Tuesdays back when the rail line reopened last year (it was shut for 9 months due to flood damage), but I haven't found the current schedule, or if it's the only one. I'm wondering if the suspects could have hopped aboard; freight trains tend to go quite slow on curves, and there are some in the area (including just before the southbound crosses the Nelson). Also, on the train issue, there is a southbound passenger train on Tuesdays, goes through the Amery point (near where the Rav4 was reportedly found) around 4:00 am Wednesday. From what I've seen of news items on the reopening of the rail line, there were many places where the train was limited to about 10kph due to poor track conditions. That'd make jumping in fairly easy (it's roughly jogging speed).
In closing, I'll add that I share the misgivings of some posters here regarding RCMP's listing of the couple killed in the van as "suspicious" for several days. Their explanation for this was that they needed to ID the victims and contact next of kin. The problem I have with that is it's not relevant; naming them is not the issue; warning the public that they were murdered is, and they'd already posted that the occupants (though unnamed) of the blue van were dead. Perhaps there is a good explanation for this, though I cannot fathom it at the moment.
