The father of a dead murder suspect in Canada balked at acknowledging if his son was a killer, and actually commended the teen and co-suspect after they managed to evade detection.
“I’m not going to say my son is a murderer until I get some facts,” Alan Schmegelsky told 60 Minutes Australia in a new report. “You want me to sit here and tell you that my son positively murdered your co-citizen? Because I won’t. Because I can’t. I can’t do it.”
His son Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, and the teen’s friend Kam McLeod, 19, were wanted in three homicides in British Columbia. The bodies a young couple–Australian Lucas Fowler, 23, and North Carolina native Chynna Noelle Deese, 24–were found dead in a remote area in the middle of last month. A few days later, authorities found the body of botanist Leonard Dyck, 64, about 292 miles away, and just over a mile away from a burnt out vehicle previously driven by McLeod and the younger Schmegelsky, said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The two teens were soon wanted in all three deaths. Two questions pervaded the case: 1) Where were the suspects? 2) If the allegation were true, then why would they kill three police they’d apparently never met before? Cops said on Wednesday they recently found bodies apparently belonging to the duo thousands of miles east in the province of Manitoba. Autopsy results are pending. Police continue to investigate motive, but even a spokesperson has said that we may never know why this happened.
Before they were announced as suspects, Alan Schmegelsky told CHEK his son and McLeod were traveling to find better-paying jobs. In speaking with 60 Minutes some time after, he responded to a then-current report that the duo went unrecognized while driving through a roadblock. At the time, it seemed like his son was still alive.
“These boys are smart,” he said. “They’re intelligent. Kudos, boys. Kudos. Kudos.”
Through the interview, he continued to push back on the murder allegations, insisting they were only accused, and that “nobody knows what happened out there.” He described the suspects as “little boys.”
[Screengrab via 60 Minutes Australia]