Park Predators - The Tower

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

An elderly woman working alone high up in a fire-spotting tower in the Canadian wilderness disappears while on-duty. Evidence at the scene points to foul play but police investigators remain baffled as to who climbed the tower to get her and why? Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit parkpredators.com  Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to tell you about today is a bizarre one. It's the story of a forestry worker who disappeared from a fire-spotting tower in the middle of the Canadian wilderness under very suspicious circumstances. What happened to 70-year-old Stephanie Stewart in the summer of 2006 is so suspicious that law enforcement officials in Canada no longer consider her just a missing person. They actually categorize her as a victim of a homicide, even though her body has never been found. Stephanie worked as a fire

spotter for Alberta's Sustainable Resource Development Department, which meant she spent several months out of the year living alone at a metal fire tower stationed in Alberta's landscape. A fire spotter is someone who spends their entire day keeping a lookout for puffs of smoke or lightning that indicate wildfires have sparked. When a spotter sees physical signs of a fire, they relay the precise geographical location of smoke to firefighters so those individuals can address the problem before it becomes deadly. According to Canada Parks' website, there are more than 8,000 wildfires each year across the country's provinces. Lightning strikes account for about 50% of those burns,

and in rare cases, officials have determined arson is the cause of some of them as well. The roughly 130 fire spotters who work as lookouts are employed during the summer months when fire dangers are at an all-time high. Many, if not all, the spotters are outdoor enthusiasts who love nature and prefer the isolation of the woods over a busy city life. To me, these employees seem to be cut from the same cloth as, say, lighthouse keepers. They're people who thrive working alone. And Stephanie Stewart was no exception. She loved the environment and the solitude of her tower. What exactly happened while she was on duty 16 years ago

has remained one of Canada's most baffling mysteries. This is Park Predators. Around 8 o'clock in the morning on Saturday, August 26, 2006, a regional supervisor for the Alberta Sustainable Resource Department noticed something strange. A fire tower spotter named Stephanie had not radioed in her normal morning weather report. The check-in was a routine protocol that Stephanie's supervisor knew the 70-year-old never missed. Lookouts were required to check in with their supervisors at least three times per day, every day. So the fact that Stephanie had missed this first call-in was definitely out of character.

But her supervisor didn't panic right away, though. He figured maybe Stephanie was in the process of climbing the 40-foot metal tower she worked in. Stephanie was nearing the end of a six-month stint, operating as a spotter in Alberta's Athabasca River Valley. six-month stint operating as a spotter in Alberta's Athabasca River Valley, which meant between the months of April and September, she spent most of her waking hours stationed inside the tower, looking out over the wilderness just north of Jasper National Park. At the base of the structure was a small cabin that the resource authority allowed employees to cook meals at and sleep in at night. Alberta had been employing fire spotters since the 1930s, so the practice of stationing one person in a remote region

to solely dedicate their time to keeping a lookout for wildfires was nothing new. And the job certainly wasn't new to Stephanie. She'd worked in her role for 18 years, 13 of which she'd spent working at the Athabasca Tower. After waiting a few more minutes, her supervisor called Stephanie again around 8.30 a.m., but got no answer. He tried again and again and again,

but the line just rang and rang. Stephanie never picked up. Strange Outdoors reported that eventually the phone line at the cabin went dead, and that's when Stephanie's supervisor got a sinking feeling that something was terribly wrong. One article mentioned that her supervisor heard someone pick up the phone line before it went dead, but I'm not sure how accurate that information is.

Anyway, shortly after 8.30, he drove from the nearby town of Hinton, Alberta, a rural community roughly three hours west of Edmonton, to check on Stephanie. When he arrived at the tower and cabin, he found a bizarre scene. Parked right at the base of the structure was Stephanie's Dodge Ram pickup truck. Now, normally the sight of the truck would have been a good sign, indicating that she was there, but when her supervisor went inside the cabin, he didn't find Stephanie and she wasn't up in the metal tower either. Multiple news outlets reported that he found a pot of boiling water still bubbling on the stove and several pieces of bedding and personal items missing from the living quarters.

At that point, it was 9 o'clock in the morning and he decided enough was enough. So he called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Branch in Hinton and reported Stephanie missing. Shortly after getting that call, RCMP detectives came out to the fire tower to start investigating. The Edmonton Journal reported that when units arrived and looked around, they determined that, along with Stephanie, two pillows with blue cases were missing, a burgundy bedsheet, and a Navajo-patterned quilt were gone, along with a gold men's watch that Stephanie's employer said she kept as a sentimental keepsake her whole life. Investigators also noted the pot of boiling water that Stephanie's

supervisor had seen, and upon closer inspection, they found several smears and drops of blood. Unfortunately, none of my source material is super clear about how much blood investigators found or where exactly the blood spots were, but some articles state blood drops were found on the steps leading up to the cabin, while others say smears were on the threshold of the front door. No source material explicitly says if blood was cast on the walls or furniture or anything like that. And RCMP has never released those details, so we're sort of left to wonder. But regardless of how much blood was present or where exactly in the cabin it was, the fact that it was present at all caused police

to speculate about a lot of different scenarios. They wondered, did Stephanie injure herself and maybe gone for help without her vehicle? Was the blood the result of a struggle with someone? Was it even her blood? Detectives couldn't answer any of those questions, but they were determined to try and find out. Crime scene techs continued to process the cabin and examine the fire tower, but if they ever found any more pieces of evidence beyond what I've already mentioned,

that's never been reported. All I know is that clues were few and far between, to the point where police couldn't be sure what exactly had happened. The blood smears and all of Stephanie's bedding being gone were not good signs, but authorities had to at least consider the possibility that Stephanie had just walked away on her own for some reason. They couldn't jump to any one theory right away. Police told the Star Phoenix that it was weird Stephanie's tent and camping gear were left behind in the cabin, but her bed sheet quilt and pillows were gone. The lead detective on the case told the Edmonton

Journal, quote, if someone just wandered off, they'd take a tarp or a tent, end quote. And I guess the point he was trying to make was that if Stephanie had just randomly decided to leave on her own free will to go camp for a night or go out on a patrol or something, she would have taken the necessary gear to do so. She wouldn't have just taken her bedsheet, pillows, and a quilt. She would have been smarter than that. Her prized possession, the gold watch being missing, was also an interesting clue that investigators felt meant one of two things.

One, Stephanie took it with her when she left. Or two, someone who'd been uninvited had possibly robbed her of it. Her Dodge pickup truck still being parked under the tower was also something detectives struggled to make sense of. Why was it still there? None of the reporting on this case says whether police located Stephanie's car keys inside the cabin, but I have to assume that they were accounted for since the truck was still parked under the tower. But who knows? RCMP has kept a lot of details like that under wraps. Anyway, within a few hours of getting on scene, RCMP search and rescue staff,

as well as volunteers from Alberta's Sustainable Resource Development Department, launched a massive ground search in the immediate area surrounding the fire tower. Until nightfall on Saturday, teams of trained searchers scoured hundreds of acres of woods calling out Stephanie's name and looking for any trace of her. Meanwhile, major crimes investigators started speaking with Stephanie's co-workers and family members. They learned that just a few hours before she'd vanished, Stephanie had spoken on the phone with her adult daughter Lori around nine o'clock on Friday night. Lori told police that during that conversation, her mom hadn't mentioned being worried about anything or that she was expecting any visitors. Lori said that Stephanie also hadn't mentioned any plans of leaving the fire tower the following day.

CBC News reported that every now and then Stephanie would leave her post, but only to pick up food, supplies, or mail. Otherwise, she pretty much stayed in the tower all the time. If she was going to make a trip like that into town, she would have scheduled it, and she would have radioed to her supervisor or another fire tower spotter to let them know she was leaving. It was a buddy system kind of thing.

So the fact that a call like that had never taken place on Friday night or early Saturday morning, plus the fact that Stephanie's truck was still at the tower, strongly indicated to the authorities that more than likely Stephanie had been taken away from her outpost against her will. Or something had happened to her that was so urgent she'd been unable to check in with another spotter before leaving. For many of you at this point, maybe you're thinking what I was at first, which is this woman was 70 years old. Maybe she got confused, suffered a bout of forgetfulness, fell, or just wandered away on her own. Well,

investigators kind of thought that too at one point, but they determined that none of those things were likely scenarios, mostly because Stephanie just wasn't that type of person. Her daughter Lori and her close co-workers said that Stephanie was always responsible and never missed a check-in while she was on duty. She never broke protocol and was not one to just walk away from her job or wander off. Even though she was getting up there in years, Stephanie was in great health and had no documented mental illness or early onset of dementia or anything like that. Alberta's vast wilderness was nothing new to her. When she wasn't working as a fire tower lookout, Stephanie would return home to her house in Canmore, Alberta,

near Banff National Park. During the winter, she would do a lot of recreational activities and spend a ton of time outdoors. Her entire life, she'd lived to explore Canada's national parks, and she had great skills as a survivalist and outdoors woman. Even when she started to get well into her upper 60s, she traveled the world doing what many would consider extreme adventuring for someone her age. For example, before she vanished, she'd solo cycled across Canada and even climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. There was nothing that could slow this woman down,

which is why her case was so puzzling to RCMP detectives. Annette Bidniak, a spokeswoman for the Resource Development Authority, told the Edmonton Journal that Stephanie going missing was extremely upsetting and shocked everyone. Her disappearance was the first time a fire spotter for the department had vanished under suspicious circumstances while on duty. By Monday, August 28th, two days after Stephanie disappeared, news about her case made its way to local and national publications. Since she'd been missing, more than 200 RCMP search and rescue team members and volunteers had tirelessly scoured nearly 7,500 square kilometers of woods, but nothing had surfaced that pointed police in any helpful direction. In an attempt to drum up

leads, authorities issued a public plea for help, and they sent out Stephanie's physical description to media outlets across Canada. They asked people, especially those living within several miles of the fire tower, to keep an eye out for any sign of her. The flyers described Stephanie as five feet tall, weighing about 100 pounds, had blue eyes, permed shoulder-length gray and auburn hair, and wore eyeglasses. Detectives specifically wanted people living in the Athabasca River Valley to keep a sharp eye out for her if they were hunting in the woods or driving on rural roads. Police also wanted residents to report anything that seemed suspicious to them. Pieces of torn clothing, a trail of supplies, anything. According to some of the source material on this case, rumors had started to swirl that maybe Stephanie had been attacked by an animal. The thought was that perhaps she'd been injured

sometime on Saturday morning and decided for some reason to leave the tower and try and get to her truck, but had been unable to do so. The Calgary Herald reported that search and rescue staff who specialized in animal tracking had found animal droppings, paw prints, and animal hair near the base of Stephanie's tower, not far from her cabin, but those trackers had been unable to find signs of a scuffle or bloody attack. So in RCMP's mind, the animal attack theory was quickly ruled out because it just didn't make sense, especially when they considered the evidence they'd found in Stephanie's living quarters, not to mention the fact that Stephanie's body was nowhere near the tower or in the surrounding woods.

If she'd been attacked by, say, a bear or a wolf or something, there should have been a blood trail or some piece of evidence pointing to that on the ground near the tower, and there just wasn't. Police also considered the possibility that maybe Stephanie had fallen while trying to climb up the tower's ladder, but again, the fact that her body had not been found near the tower or in her cabin made that scenario next to impossible. Shortly after sending out their plea for public assistance, RCMP pivoted hard and doubled down on a theory they'd been silently thinking about from the start. Stephanie Stewart was not lost. She had not wandered away

on her own. She was a murder victim. Despite using helicopters equipped with infrared technology and sending boats to drag the Athabasca River and other local waterways, no clues turned up related to Stephanie Stewart. According to reporting by Canwest News Service, on August 30th, five days after she'd been missing, law enforcement announced it was calling off the ground search for Stephanie. RCMP said it was pulling back its resources because the search efforts to find her had been fruitless and detectives didn't think, based on the evidence they'd gathered,

that she'd been attacked by an animal or voluntarily left her post. They said all things considered, they were left with only one realistic avenue of investigation, foul play. The day after this announcement, Stephanie's daughter, Lori, and Lori's husband, Paul, spoke at a press conference alongside investigators at RCMP's headquarters in Edmonton. Lori and Paul told reporters, quote,

We all love Stephanie very much and are very concerned that she's missing and has been for six days. She's a hell of a woman. She's very strong. She's very independent. She's very capable, end quote. Lori went on to tell reporters she couldn't wrap her head around why someone would have wanted to harm her mother. Stephanie had no known enemies and the location where she was working was not the easiest place to get to and just to give you some context so you can visualize the area better the fire tower where Stephanie was stationed wasn't completely cut off from the outside world but it wasn't right on the side of

the highway either it was deep in the woods just a few miles down the road from a popular wilderness area known as William A. Switzer Provincial Park. That park housed a building called the Athabasca Lookout Nordic Center. The center was used for outdoor sporting events and national park ceremonies all the time. Back in 2006, people coming to that area could easily access the fire tower's location via a gravel road, but they'd have to go a little ways off the beaten path to do so. Visitors weren't supposed to do this, but there were no gates or fences around the tower or cabin, so you could go right up to Stephanie's front door if you wanted to, you just had to know where it was. Because of this, police

investigators had to consider the possibility that maybe someone who'd come into that area trying to blend in with the crowds or who was looking to hide out for a bit, could have made their way to Stephanie's quarters, unaware that she was even there. According to the Edmonton Journal, one theory detectives tossed around was that maybe Stephanie's disappearance had something to do with a growing drug trade that law enforcement knew had been operating in the Athabasca Valley. Police's thinking was that maybe someone with bad intentions or who was trying to smuggle drugs through the area had come across Stephanie and decided to hurt her for some reason. Jim Farrell and Ryan Cormier reported that residents and police were aware of incidents

involving crack cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking near the town of Hinton and in the northern sections of Jasper National Park. A lot of the traffickers who'd been caught and arrested up until that point would normally use rural roads inside the woods to elude detection. A lot of those paths crossed right under or next to fire spotting towers like Stephanie's. Detectives could only speculate though. They wondered if maybe someone had shown up to the fire tower on Saturday morning unannounced while Stephanie had been cooking her breakfast and boiling her water on the stove. And it was at that point they took her by surprise.

If that was the case, though, police felt sure the suspect or suspects would have had to have been driving their own vehicle because clearly they didn't take Stephanie's. In the event they forced their way inside the cabin, that might have been where a struggle took place. To add to the police's already desperate plea for public help, RCMP added that they were interested in hearing

from anyone who'd seen suspicious vehicles or activities near Highway 40 or the Athabasca Nordic Center on August 25th or 26th. Even though authorities couldn't outright prove that Stephanie had been abducted or killed, they were definitely headed in that direction. They just needed a lot more information. But unfortunately, weeks passed with no new information. Then on September 15th, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, of which Stephanie was a union member and the province's forestry department, offered up a $20,000 reward for information. The president of the union told the Times-Colonist, We classify dedicated employees like Stephanie as part of our family because we are family, and when one of us hurts, all of us hurt.

End quote. The hope with the $20,000 reward was that such a large sum of money would convince someone who knew something or saw something to come forward, but no one ever did. The case remained at a standstill until January of 2007. According to an article by Trish Audette for the Edmonton Journal, RCMP officials said that in the five months since Stephanie had vanished, they'd been working the case tirelessly. They categorized her disappearance as a suspicious death and were treating it as a homicide investigation.

They would not provide any information to the press, though, about what kind of evidence they had beyond what had already been released. All the agency did was publish its annual homicide stats and reported that 2006 had the lowest number of murders in Alberta in recent history. The data showed that in 2005, there had been 49 murders in the province, and in 2004, there had been 50. However, in 2006, there had only been 36 homicides. But despite the reported downturn in murders, the fact remained that RCMP still needed to catch a break in Stephanie's case. But with every month that passed, they just kept hitting wall after wall. When the snow melted in May of 2007, the agency once again notified hikers and hunters to be on the lookout for clues that might be related to Stephanie's disappearance. They handed out flyers to everyone who came into recreational areas in the Athabasca Valley,

and they even mailed letters to campers who'd been registered at campsites and parks back in August of 2006. But few people answered those letters with any helpful information. to campers who'd been registered at campsites and parks back in August of 2006. But few people answered those letters with any helpful information. At the end of the summer of 07, Alberta government officials released a lengthy safety report explaining changes they'd put in place in the aftermath of Stephanie's disappearance. CTV News reported that the government's report recommended forestry workers receive self-defense training on a regular basis. It also said that they'd be required to carry radios that had emergency beacons and panic buttons on them. The report encouraged that all provinces' fire towers be outfitted with secure fencing and gates to prevent anyone but government staff from being

able to access the outposts. Leading up to the proposed changes, forestry workers had been noticing more and more tourists venturing to the fire towers to take photos for social media or hang out. Officials told the Calgary Herald, quote, it must be remembered that fire lookout towers are work sites with inherent dangers and not a location to be romanticized by visitors, end quote. Regular landscaping to clear away brush and trees that obscured the spotters' line of sight to and from their towers also became mandatory. The Forestry Workers Union responded

to the government's changes with gratitude, but were disheartened it had taken Alberta's leaders so long to see how vulnerable fire spotters were in the wilderness and then actually do something to protect them. The union's president told the Herald, quote, they're doing the right thing. It was about time that those were reviewed and it's too bad that a tragedy had to occur before they were looked at, end quote. After July 2007,

months turned into years with no new information surfacing in Stephanie's case. RCMP put up billboards and posters in Jasper National Park and around the town of Hinton, hoping to generate new leads, but nothing came in. The five-year anniversary of Stephanie's disappearance came and went, and then the 10-year, and her daughter Lori was no closer to getting answers. On each anniversary, RCMP officials released that they still had no suspects or leads in the case, but despite having no proof that Stephanie was dead, detectives said they were still investigating her case as a murder. A sergeant told CTV News Edmonton, quote,

we do not have human remains. It's still considered suspicious and we're approaching it as a homicide investigation, end quote. A few years after that update, on August 22nd, 2018, RCMP launched a renewed ground search for Stephanie. At that point, it wasn't explicitly said, but the unspoken objective of the search was to locate her remains if they were out there in the wilderness somewhere. A sergeant named Kerry Shima updated the public about the search's progress every day on RCMP's official Twitter account. He wrote a status that said, quote, I have no reason to believe Stephanie is alive and many reasons to believe she was murdered, end quote. For eight days, he tweeted pictures of search and rescue teams with helicopters combing the hills and mountains of the Athabasca River Valley. On August 29th, the search wrapped up and Sergeant Shima reported that

no new clues had been found. The renewed search in 2018 came right after RCMP announced that its historical homicide unit was hoping to utilize new technology to not only solve Stephanie's case, but two more murders of missing women near Hinton, Alberta that had gone cold. According to a press release from RCMP in 2018, detectives with the agency's Cold Case Homicide Unit had been trying to solve three separate cases of missing women from Hinton, Alberta, one of which was Stephanie. Authorities made it crystal clear from the get-go that they didn't think the three cases were linked in any way, but the circumstances surrounding all of them were kind of similar and incredibly difficult for police to put together. First was the case of 16-year-old Shelly Ann Baksu, who disappeared from Hinton in May

of 1983. Shelly had been out for a walk in the woods in the Athabasca River Valley and failed to come home after several hours. After her family reported her missing, police searched for her for days and eventually found her comb and jacket near the banks of the river. Inside the jacket was her library card. Her body was never located, though, and the case went cold. In a matter of months, it was recategorized as a homicide, despite never finding her body. The second case was Stephanie's,

and the third was the disappearance of a 44-year-old woman named Deanna McNeil. Deanna actually vanished from a small town east of Edmonton in November 2013, but RCMP grouped her in with this press release about Shelly and Stephanie's cases because she had some ties to Hinton. Back in 2013, one of Deanna's friends reported her missing after they hadn't heard from her in two days. Thanks to surveillance footage and eyewitness accounts, investigators were able to track Deanna's last movements to a bank ATM, a liquor store, and eventually another friend's house. But after that, her trail just went cold. And like Shelly and Stephanie, RCMP reclassified Deanna's case

from a suspicious missing person to a homicide. Again, even though RCMP did not consider these three cases linked or in any way indicate they suspected the same perpetrator was responsible for the women's deaths, they did continue to group the three women's pictures and information together in media briefings. A lead sergeant for the Historical Homicide Unit told reporters, In each of these three cases, we know that there are people out there who have knowledge of what happened to Shelly Ann, Deanna, and Stephanie.

We want to hear from those people, whether it be through Crimestoppers, through local detachment, or through our own social media channels." Global News reported that with all three cases, RCMP detectives were hoping to utilize advances in DNA technology to retest items of evidence to see if they can make some progress. They said in all of the cases, they wanted to re-evaluate things like impressions from tire marks, shoe prints, and fingerprints. They also wanted to do new DNA extraction on items of evidence like clothing, blood, and other personal belongings.

By January of 2019, though, the Calgary Herald reported that all the testing on new equipment with new labs had been a bust. Deanna McNeil and Shelley Baksu's cases remained unsolved, and by August of 2021, on the 15th anniversary of Stephanie's disappearance, no new leads had materialized from any advanced DNA technology. CTV News Edmonton reported RCMP investigators were still asking the public for information, though, related to the case. The agency released a statement saying, the public for information, though, related to the case. The agency released a statement saying, quote, Alberta's RCMP historical homicide unit remains dedicated to this ongoing police investigation into Stephanie's disappearance. Alberta RCMP resources continue working in

partnership with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry and Civilian Search and Rescue teams in hopes of locating Stephanie, end quote. And that's where things have stayed. No answers, no new developments, no arrests, nothing. While I was putting this episode together, I came across something that I thought was kind of interesting though, and I believe it's important for you to consider if you're going to try and make sense of Stephanie's story. It has to do with the arrest and eventual conviction of a man named Travis Vader.

Let me just preface what I'm about to tell you with the disclaimer that in no way has Travis been officially linked to Stephanie's disappearance and presumed murder, nor has he ever been named

an official person of interest in the case. But Travis was responsible for a double murder of two elderly people in a wilderness area near Hinton, a few years after Stephanie disappeared. Honestly, I'll probably do a future episode on Travis and his crimes at some point,

because the story is super wild. But for now, to make a long story short, I'll just say that many people, including some members of law enforcement, have speculated whether Travis could have crossed paths with Stephanie in the summer of 06. Let me explain. On July 3rd of 2010, so four years after Stephanie vanished, a 78-year-old man named Lyle McCann and his 77-year-old wife Marie left their home in Edmonton, Alberta.

They were headed on an RV trip to British Columbia. They went west on Highway 16, which passed right through Hinton. On July 5th, two days after they hit the road, firefighters from the small town of Edson, Alberta, just 50 minutes east of Hinton, found the couple's RV burned out at a campground. The motorhome was charred beyond repair, and when investigators sorted through the mess, they realized that Lyle and Marie were not inside. Also missing was their green Hyundai Tucson SUV. The scene raised a lot of questions

right away, and RCMP major crimes detectives immediately started investigating it as suspicious. They learned that the couple had been scheduled to meet one of their daughters at an airport in British Columbia on July 10th, but they never made it. After a few days of working the case and sifting through tips, witnesses came forward to report they'd seen the couple's SUV driving around Edson after the RV fire, which meant someone had been driving it. But the question was, who? Turned out, not the McCanns. CBC News reported that RCMP detectives eventually identified 38-year-old Travis Vader as being the person seen driving it. Police put out an all-points bulletin for him and the SUV,

and two weeks after the couple disappeared, investigators found the SUV abandoned in the woods near Edson. Shortly after that, detectives arrested Travis on some outstanding warrants for drug trafficking and weapons possession that were unrelated to Lyle and Marie's disappearance. At the time of his arrest, Travis was a bit of a transient who had no home address and kind of bounced around from couch to couch. By the end of August 2010, though, RCMP officials announced that Travis was the prime suspect

in the elderly couple's disappearance, but they refrained from pressing charges against him until they had more evidence to prove he'd done something to the couple. From 2010 to 2012, Travis stayed in jail for his other charges, and no sign of the McCanns turned up. During that time, the couple's children had the courts declare Lyle and Marie legally dead, and they held memorial services in their honor. declare Lyle and Marie legally dead, and they held memorial services in their honor. By April 2012, the Crown officially charged Travis with two counts of first-degree murder for the McCanns'

deaths, despite not having their bodies. What the government did have, though, was a trove of physical evidence. They had Travis' DNA and fingerprints in the couple's SUV, on their belongings that were spattered with both Travis' and the couple's SUV, on their belongings that were spattered with both Travis's and the couple's blood, as well as phone records that showed someone had used Lyle McCann's cell phone to text and call Travis's girlfriend on the first day the elderly couple left for their camping trip. Prosecutors' theory was that Travis had randomly chosen to rob the couple at their campground, at which point a struggle ensued and he likely shot both of them to death. It wasn't a rock-solid case by any means, mostly because the court couldn't conclusively confirm the sequence of events leading up to the murders, but prosecutors were

sure Travis was their guy. It took several more years for the case to go to trial, but in March of 2016, proceedings got underway, and by September of that year, both sides had wrapped up their arguments. A judge ultimately sided with the prosecution and found Travis guilty of two counts of second-degree murder, not first-degree murder. CBC News reported that shortly after the judge rendered his verdict, issues with the criminal code the judge had based his ruling on forced another judge to downgrade Travis's conviction to two counts of manslaughter. Regardless of the criminal code language snafu, Travis was still sentenced to life in prison, which according to Canada's sentencing guidelines meant he'd be eligible

for parole after serving only seven years of that sentence. The Toronto Star reported in 2020 that Travis maintained his innocence and declared he would not stop fighting for early release. To date, he remains incarcerated and the bodies of his victims have never been found. What I find so interesting about him, though, is that he was living in and committing violent abductions and murders literally minutes from where Stephanie Stewart worked and around the same time she vanished. It's speculative to think he was involved in her death, but I think the possibility should be considered by RCMP investigators. And who knows, maybe they have looked at Travis. Maybe they have evidence that clears him. All I can say is that someone is out there who operated as a vicious predator and had no remorse for taking Stephanie's life.

Who that person is though, at least in her case, remains unidentified. Anyone with information related to her disappearance should contact the Hinton RCMP branch at 780-865-2455 or Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-8477. Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve?