Sins & Survivors: A Las Vegas True Crime Podcast - DVA Month Bonus - PNW Haunts and Homicides Presents - The Highway of Tears Part 1

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

In week 3 of Domestic Violence Month, we're sharing an episode from PNW Haunts & Homicides, hosted by the amazing and talented Caitlyn and Cassie. Normally they focus on all things spooky in the Pacific Northwest, but in this two-part episode, they have branched out to talk about the Highway of Tears.In case you haven't heard of this, the Highway of Tears refers to a stretch of Highway 16 in British Columbia, Canada, where many Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been found murdered since the 1970s.It runs about 450 miles between Prince George and Prince Rupert and is known for being remote and having limited transportation options, making it dangerous for those who need to hitchhike. Covering these tragic cases serves to draw attention to the systemic issues facing Indigenous communities, such as racism, poverty, and a lack of police response, leading to calls for greater action and justice for the victims, and even to a formal inquiry by the Canadian government.IMPORTANT NOTE! To listen to Part 2 head over to the PNW Haunts and Homicides Website at https://sinspod.co/tears2 or you can always find it wherever you get your podcasts. Head over, listen, and show them some love by following them on all the typical socials.Here are PNW's Show notes!This week there's no clever title we're sticking with the name coined for a series of stories that take place along the highway that makes the devastating facts of the case all too clear on its own.  Links to the references I would highly recommend for any further independent study on this topic:  Highway of Tears Documentary you can watch the Official Trailer here and the Highway of Tears Book.  Domestic Violence Resourceshttp://sinspod.co/resourcesClick here to become a member of our Patreon!https://sinspod.co/patreonVisit and join our Patreon now and access our ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content & schwag! Get ad-free access for only $1 a month or ad-free and bonus episodes for $3 a monthApple Podcast Subscriptionshttps://sinspod.co/appleWe're now offering premium membership benefits on Apple Podcast Subscriptions! On your mobile deviceLet us know what you think about the episodehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2248640/open_sms Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sins-survivors-a-las-vegas-true-crime-podcast--6173686/support.

To listen ad-free, visit Zinspod.co slash subscribe. Starting at $2.99 a month, you'll also get access to our exclusive bonus content episodes when you join through Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Thanks for supporting the show! Welcome to the third of our What Happens Here, Happens Everywhere Domestic Violence Awareness Month bonus episodes. I'm Sean, and with me, as always, is the one and only John. I am the only John in the room.

This week, we have a presentation from PNW Haunts and Homicides, hosted by the awesome and spooky Caitlin and Cassie. They generally focus on paranormal-related true crime stories in the Pacific Northwest, but this one is a bit different. We asked Caitlin and Cassie if we could share this episode with all of you, because here in the U.S., October 14th is observed as Indigenous People's Day. For this episode, Caitlin and Cassie discuss the Highway of Tears, a highway in British Columbia where many women, mostly Indigenous, have disappeared or been found murdered. We wanted to share this episode with all of you because Indigenous women experience violence at an alarming rate. More than four in five Indigenous women experience violence at an alarming rate.

More than four in five Indigenous women living in America have experienced violence, and the crisis of deaths and disappearances along Highway 16 prompted the Canadian government to conduct an official inquiry. When you're done, head over to pnNW Haunts and Homicides. So so Hi, Cassie. Hi, Caitlin. Hi, creepy people. Hi. Hello. This is P&W Hunts and Homicides.

Again. Yeah. Always. Always. Mm-hmm. We're always going to be here forever and ever until you die i mean for some of you we might be here after you die oh i mean i hate to go that is sad oh my god i don't want any of our creepy people to ever die don't ever pass away okay can you guys do us a

favor and live forever yeah please and thank you and also tell like a hundred of your closest friends to come and listen or like maybe a million yeah like a like a cool mill yeah okay a cool mill oh yay okay well that's enough laughing yep not a lot of laughter on this one um see i did my best okay i found another case to preempt this one like just trying to drag my feet a little bit and um here we are nonetheless we're here okay you guys i was trying so hard to like not get us to record this today. And she was like, no, we have to do it. Yeah.

Okay. Rip that bandaid off. Fine. Okay. Here we go. Today, we travel up north to British Columbia. It's the westernmost province of Canada. I'm not going to pull any punches here, you guys.

We're talking about a specific stretch of highway that runs between Prince George, a.k.a. the gateway to the north, and Prince Rupert. They're not actual princes. We're not talking about castles.

It's's you know two separate areas so just to clarify we got a lot of princes up there what's going on I know if you didn't happen to major in Canadian geography which would be a very obscure

yeah program I think or this just doesn't sound familiar we're going to be talking about the Highway of Tears. Because I keep my damn promises. Yeah, you do. This is where a mind-blowing number of murders have taken place. Many have remained unsolved for decades obviously we briefly touched on this in our coverage of bobby jack fowler yeah bobby jack shit sick yeah but you know we wouldn't dare leave it at that it would be horrific like this is definitely a case in its own right. If you know anything about this case, and I'm sure many of you do, you know it's a tragedy of massive proportions. We're going to get into

a bit of the background and touch very briefly on some of the historical context of this case. I'll start with some of the information taken directly from the highway of tears documentary which i highly recommend the documentary is narrated by the guy from firefly nathan fillion i've never seen it yeah um yeah i don't know i'm not a big sci-fi person but i heard it was really good and then ended so i was like do i want to piss myself off no not today i probably wouldn't but i cannot tell you enough first of all how much i love his voice though but also even if sci-fi isn't usually your flavor you gotta love a celebrity that lends said voice to such important storytelling for sure so we heart you nathan fellian good guy good guy good guy good guy i mean i hope gosh

right what if he's not we're just sitting here like praising him yeah actually he's a douchebag yeah that's about all of the feel good that I got for you today. So without much further ado, here we go. In 2013, Human Rights Watch released a report stating that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in northern British Columbia failed to protect Indigenous women. I'd argue that's probably a bit of an understatement, and unfortunately, it's a bit of a pattern as well. Indigenous women are 3.5 times more likely to experience violence than non-Indigenous women. Wow. That's a big difference, I feel like. Absolutely. And I know we've talked about how disproportionate that is in other cases in the past. So I think probably if you listen to us regularly, it's something that you might have at least a cursory familiarity with 582 indigenous women have been reported missing and murdered across canada and that's a figure that's taken directly from the documentary um

so that number has only gone up. Considering the fact that Indigenous women make up about 4% of the female Canadian population, this is a pretty staggering number. And I have bad news on that front, unfortunately. According to more recent information, that number has likely more than doubled. What? More than doubled? Mm-hmm. Oh my God. Where, wait, where are they going? Not anywhere good. What the fuck? Piling right on, many advocates and experts believe this number is inaccurate, being far too low and conservative to match the lived experience of those within these communities. Either way, that accounts for less than 35 years of Canada's overall history. So less than 35 years. Wow.

Like how much more is it really? And how many are they just like, eh, they just ran away. They just left. Pretty much. I mean, it's the type of thing where it's hard to even get an accurate statistic, which I think, you know, like I say, the advocates and experts in this area are saying there's probably a lot of them that don't even get reported missing. And there's a lot of reasons why those numbers are probably inaccurate and not in the good way. So I think it's safe to say that Indigenous women are significantly overrepresented among missing and murdered women. Unfortunately, we've seen in other cases that this is true in the U.S. as well. This is not an isolated issue. It's not

just a problem in one country or one specific part of the world. I know we like our problems to be far away, but I can't give you that in this case. Now, you might recall that we've discussed the forced removal of children from their homes in both Canada and the U.S. before. Sometimes this was done so that Native children could be adopted out to white families. But there's also the problematic history of residential schools where Indigenous children had both their family and cultural ties all but erased, in addition to facing horrific abuse in many cases. You can refer back to the Joseph Condro case where we do discuss the baby scoop a bit more. But today we're going to focus on the specific aspects of violence against Indigenous women. The underreported and uninvestigated murders and disappearances

of First Nation women in the area is honestly just the latest iteration in a pattern of abuse against Indigenous people by those that have colonized them. We have an awareness of a variety of these fraught topics and understand the complex issues facing the indigenous population in terms of their history, the world they inhabit today, and the impact it has on their future. But we'll be focusing on specific aspects that won't offer a detailed look at the residential schools and forced adoptions today. I really just want to specifically talk about the violence that has been perpetrated in a very targeted way against women. If parts of this story don't fit into the true crime-related mold in your mind, I would beg you to bear with us because this is a story that needs to be told. So this feels like a pretty good place to talk about some terminology.

Now, the documentary is heavy with usage of the term Aboriginal in the narration. I think oftentimes we look for one-size-fits-all terminology, but I wanted to avoid that tag. Native is a bit of a loaded term, and aboriginal isn't really the ideal term in every case either. Not everyone feels the same about each of these terms, and I'm not going to dive deep into an explanation with either term, and that's just for the sake of brevity. I think this can be a great area to begin an exploration of our own, and I'm going to include an extensive list of resources that I explored for terminology and details of the cases in the show notes. But as I said, even though it's a frequently used term in the documentary, which is perhaps somewhat dated at this point upon reflection,

I have polled resources in order to approach our terminology in the most culturally sensitive and conscientious way possible. Yeah. I hope to bear witness to these stories with the utmost respect. It's really hard to know. Like there's so many different things out there and you can Google one thing and then one article will say one thing and then someone will say something else. And there I try to look for them from like the actual people who it's affecting. Yeah.

Right. But they I feel like all of the things that really struck me is that feeling that we sort of look for these catch-all terms because we want to do the right thing, but then we don't go a step further and really look at these things from more than one perspective. And so there are some terms that, you know, for a lot of more recent years have been kind of the popularized terms that now people have pointed out, you know, maybe that's not the best. So it's a tough thing to identify, you know, a singular term that maybe pleases everybody. But I do think, and I guess, you know, I'll talk about it a little bit here. I think there are some, some things that all lay out why I'm choosing to do it this way. And hopefully, you know, going about approaching this in a way that, like I said, is, you know, respectful in, you know, the, to the best of my ability. Yeah. So all we can do is do our best to try to say the right thing. And if we don't, yeah. And I will be utilizing the term indigenous for the

most part in this case, because we will discuss individual people and larger communities where tribal association may not always be clear-cut. Part of that has to do with the nature of how available some different records are. I will say that largely, I think the people that we are going to discuss in connection with this case would identify as First Nation. While I was tempted to really dig in on this front and disregard simplicity or brevity altogether, I think these women and girls have important stories that need to be shared and that's really my focus. Their names, families, and unique cultural backgrounds are not only important to who they were as people but as part of sharing their memory where that information is readily available and you know from what i'm able to gather it seems like that's clear cut i'll do my best to

be more specific because not only is that widely accepted as the most appropriate approach, but it feels like the right thing to do if I can. If you know someone's name, you don't just say, hey, you, right? Yeah. But I'm also not going to call you Patricia if your real friends call you Patty. So I just want to be sensitive to the fact that words matter and the labels and the connections that we make to anyone that we talk about, we want to be respectful in that. So hopefully we're all kind of clear on that now for the topical issue today. I think you did a really good job explaining that. Okay. All right. There's really nothing else we need to discuss as kind of a precursor.

So stalling only makes ripping this band-aid off that much harder. Dozens of women have been reported missing or murdered along the Highway 16 corridor, known as the Highway of Tears. There are countless other disappearances, and we'll be trying to get to as many of them as possible, especially because many remain unsolved. But before we dive into the disappearances, I feel it's important to talk about one thing in particular that has had a devastating impact on the female population in Indigenous communities. We've talked about other social issues, but this one hits hard at the center of Indigenous womanhood and motherhood specifically.

Sterilization has been imposed on Indigenous women in Canada, not once or twice or in isolated areas. Sexual sterilization legislation was passed in Alberta and was active between 1928 and 1972 and in british columbia from 1933 to 1973 wow decades i just don't get that like i it does not compute in the brain no but this legislation was intended to target Indigenous women. Coerced sterilization of Indigenous women took place both within and outside existing legislation and in federally operated hospitals. It's an ugly and shameful part of history, especially because it was government sanctioned. The practice has allegedly continued into the 21st century. Now, this is where we

explain that allegedly is one of my least favorite terms, but for legal reasons, you'll find it pops up from time to time. Anyway, approximately a hundred indigenous women have shared stories being pressured to consent to sterilization. This took place from between the 1970s and all the way up to 2018. Oh my God, really? Yes. And occurred oftentimes while these women were in an extremely vulnerable state, either during their pregnancy or childbirth. Oh my God. Let that sink in for a moment. This has occurred in all of our lifetimes. And we sure as shit know that our government here in the States has done it as well. And quite frankly, still doing it today with certain populations. I just don't understand why. I'm literally shaking with rage, but we're going to fight to channel it into

something productive and stay focused. I don't want children, but I want to burn this whole goddamn planet to the ground to protect women's rights when it comes to freedom of choice in relation to fertility and family planning, regardless of what that choice is for you, your partner, your loved ones, because it should be your choice. Okay, we'll deactivate caps lock now. Getting back to the business of dozens of missing women along Highway 16. Right about now is when you're probably realizing that based on sheer volume, we simply couldn't possibly cover all of the individual cases adequately. And you're right. This is about the time that I started ugly crying in my research

and then again when in the editing phase. I've been told the expectation upon meeting me would be that I'm one of those delicate, pretty criers. I can't get out a real sneeze for the life of me, but I'm a full-blown snotty mess in the crying department. And this, much like my girl Miley, came in like a wrecking ball. I think that's going to be the last. I think you can belt that out a little bit more. Come on. I mean, in all seriousness, it utterly fucked me up. I'm red and puffy emotionally and also around the eyes.

Something weird was happening where water was seeping out of them. There are simply too many active missing persons and murder cases associated with the Highway of Tears to present it all here with the level of respect that I'd like to. I already have plans in the works to cover some additional cases in this area. So just bear with me because unfortunately, particularly when the investigative work is this thin, to put it mildly, there's not much for us to talk about in relation to each victim. And I'm only going to cover what I can crush. We can raise awareness about some of the slimmer cases by talking about this though. So that's my aim and I'm going to see what more I can dig for. I hope that one day we can go deeper on more as there are breaks in the cases. So what we're going to do is share as many resources as possible to try to spread the

word and keep these cases alive. We're going to talk about some of the cases that were specifically connected according to official record and classification, and then some of those that weren't, at least in an official capacity, whatever that means. Because did you really think I'd only talk about the ones that are officially classified as highway of tears cases? Don't be daft, darling. Hell no. I'm terrified that without being linked to a massive story like this, that those cases have less and less hope as time passes of being solved. I'll preface this next section by saying I realize we're about to discuss one of the missing that came much later in the timeline and is not indigenous, but we're

trying to create some context here. So please just trust me. I trust you. Okay. With my life. Nicole Hoare was 25 years old in June of 2002. On the 21st, she disappeared when hitchhiking. She is officially linked to the Highway of Tears. Her parents learned how different and fraught the experience of others who'd lost loved ones on the corridor had unfortunately been. Her father, Jack, commented how embarrassing and upsetting that was. It was diametrically opposed to how he and his wife, Betty, had been treated by the RCMP. That's the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Ooh.

Yeah, so RCMP for short, from here forward. You're not going gonna call them mounties no is that offensive oh i can't imagine it is i don't know when nicole went missing the search for her was one of the largest in northern bc with a reported 300 searchers at that time six other girls had already disappeared in In some of their cases, several years had passed with lackluster efforts on the part of law enforcement, scant coverage by the media, and little in the way of financial and other practical support for those searches and investigations. In stark contrast, the investigators collected hundreds of hours of surveillance camera footage from local businesses along the highway. Even after the official search was downgraded, the family continued for weeks, thanks to their support system that was able to pitch in financially.

Nicole Hoare also had the benefit of some minor celebrity attention. Her prom date had been Olympic speed skater Stephen Elm. Oh, wow. Yeah. He also had a hand in fundraising. Her father's employer, the Hudson's Bay Company, even put up a $25,000 reward. Aw.

Yeah. company even put up a $25,000 reward. Oh yeah. They received support from locals in so many forms, groceries, photocopying posters. The Rotary Club of Red Deer East offered a second reward of $5,000. Wow. Yeah. Nicole's company had granted everyone time off their work. She worked as, um, it's actually a really cool job. She worked for a company where they would go all through like these rural areas and they would plant trees. Oh, she planted trees. That was her job. And she was incredible at it. Oh my God. Where do I get that job? I know. Yeah.

So her company actually gave everybody, like, multiple days off work so that they could go and help the search. That is so awesome. Yeah. In addition to receiving more support from law enforcement and a variety of community sources, the reporting of Nicole was colored very differently. Authorities spoke about her differently, going to some effort to distance her from the other Highway of Tears disappearances. It was clear to Nicole's family that she was being treated as a worthy victim, and they were disgusted to find that the same could not be said of the other women. So the family made a concerted effort to bring attention to those other cases, and they really resented how the other families were treated.

Through their efforts, many of the girls made their debut in major publications. So Nicole's family basically got pissed that they had never heard of some of these other missing persons cases. As they should. Yeah. And they made a point of bringing them up in interviews with the media. And that is a big part of why some of them ever made it into the major publications. Wow. This family is amazing going through what they're going through and still worried about other people. Yeah. They were able to donate excess funds that were raised for Nicole to Crime stoppers and local search and rescue. There are other families that have done their damnedest despite the odds and obstacles.

And I told you that there's no way we could cover everyone, but we're going to get to a few of the rest because you bet your sweet ass, we are not just going to talk about Nicole. She sounds like an incredible person, but you might even be thinking, wow, there was a huge groundswell of support in Nicole's case and I've been led to believe she was just one of the many that went missing. Is this when they maybe start a task force? No. No? And this is where the timeline really gets critical. Because we have to briefly consider one other case that unexpectedly drew resources away from the Highway of Tears.

Ugh. So they know that there's this huge problem on this one highway, but there's not a task force for it? No, not yet. Okay. Yeah, that's fine, right? As long as we're all on the same page. Not even a low budget one. Not even a little one.

Moving in a totally different direction, some of you may be anticipating that we'll cover Robert Pickton as part of this case. Who? I'm kidding. I know who he is. I've heard. Yeah. And certainly in the documentary, that was one of my major resources. They did cover him. But all you're going to get from me on that from me today is the view from about 10,000 feet. Partially because of my disdain for that sack of shit that identifies as both a man and a serial killer, but also partially because we're really trying to focus on the Highway of Tears specifically. And it's truthfully related on the one hand, and on the other hand, a whole ass separate shit sandwich garnished with rumors of possible

human meat consumption. That is so gross. Like, if you guys don't know about that case, it's fucking disgusting. And to be honest, that's where the line is for me. Cannibalism is just usually more than I can handle, which I feel like is the appropriate response. Yeah. Robert Pickton's pig farm in Port Coquitlam, a suburb of Vancouver,

is where numerous murders went all but unnoticed, or perhaps more accurately, ignored by authorities, even when victims were reported missing the dna of 33 different women was eventually found on his farm even though he was initially only charged with two counts of first degree murder the investigation and trial cost canadians more than a hundred million dollars. Holy shit. And it feels like a bit of bad karma that now authorities have to explain that to their citizens. Wow. Seems like if all you want to do

is drill down to the dollars and cents, it would have made a hell of a lot more sense to investigate before it gets to that point. I don't know. Maybe catch a serial killer and nip it in the bud. What do I know, right? We could try blaming it on the fact that rural areas make it easy to hide evidence of a crime, just like it did on Highway 16.

But I think we all know that is LeMay. Did you know DP says that too? All the time. Yes, because I binge listen to them. As if we didn't love them enough. Back to our case. Delphine Ann Camelia Nicole. Such a pretty name.

It's so pretty. She was born February 1975 in the same hospital as another young girl in the community named Ramona. Don't worry, we're going to talk about her too. Delphine loved animals, which is always a plus in a rural upbringing. Yeah. But she especially loved horses because what girl doesn't? Duh. She was quite a bit younger than her siblings. Her sister really thought of her as her baby too.

Aww. Her parents divorced when she was young, and then just a few short years later her father died in 1986 she was pretty young delphine moved in with her mother judy and judy's new husband she wasn't happy in this new home and living situation it led to her staying away from home as much as possible which honestly most teenagers do to some degree anyway, but I digress. Her juvenile criminal record began during this period. When Delphine went missing, she had last been seen hitchhiking back towards home. Her mother was very ill and her friends insisted her intent was to return home.

They adamantly disagreed with the assertion that she might have run away from home. Of course, the fact that she had a history of bad behavior as a juvenile, the authorities were all too comfortable dismissing her disappearance as a runaway. She'd come back. I hate that. Remember what I said about 13 she went missing on june 13th wow of 1990 oh my gosh all of these june dates and then 13th was a big one in the brophy case too that was just what five days ago yeah her disappearance is linked to the Highway of Tears by authorities. In a twist of fate that's almost too cruel to come to grips with, her cousin, Cecilia Nicole, was murdered a few years later.

Only three of the ten from this region of the highway victims were actually publicly confirmed as having been hitchhiking. Nationally, more than 90% of kids are found within a week. So this is what's so frustrating is with these types of numbers, it's like only a third of these people were actually confirmed as having been doing this. You know, I mean, now hindsight from 2022 hitchhiking is a very risky behavior. A lot of them were not. And even if they were like, maybe we should. I don't know.

Maybe still try looking for. Yeah, definitely try looking for them. I mean, risky behavior doesn't mean you deserve to die. Right. And the one that really sticks with me is, you know, they keep saying about a lot of these girls, oh, they'll come back. And then you look at it nationally, more than 90% of kids are found within a week well sure if they ran away yeah but maybe don't wait the full week to start looking for them if you start looking for them because aren't the statistics if they were kidnapped are like far shorter 24 hours yeah

and if you have family and friends who know these people saying like, no, she didn't run away. You need to fucking listen. Yeah. You don't know them. The cops insisted there were no signs of foul play and that like many other runaways, she had likely fled to a city like Vancouver in the hopes of forging a new life on her own. They insisted many runaways had done just so. Though Delphine's family and friends tried looking for her in Vancouver, they were unsuccessful. Cecilia, born in 1971, just a handful of years before her cousin Delphine, boarded a bus in 1989 in Smithers on her way to Vancouver with a friend to visit her mother. The woman who had actually raised her in Smithers got a call from her saying she'd return in a couple of weeks,

but it's unknown whether she actually arrived in Vancouver. We just don't know. There was one family member that claimed to see her there. The two cousins' disappearances happened so close together that there was actually an organization that had recently taken it upon themselves to help some of these families with the search for their missing loved ones.

And they took both of them extremely seriously. Because how often does lightning strike twice like that? I just, for fuck's sake, they're children. Though unlike her cousin, her disappearance and murder would not be attributed to the list of Highway of Tears victims. So only one of the two cousins was officially identified as. And I keep touching on that with each of these, you know, girls and with each one of the women. And I'm going to explain why it's important.

Okay. Just an aside, if you will even so it would be july of 1993 before a postal worker unexpectedly found a bloody shoe i guess there's no way that could be expected but a thorough search of the area was done in fact trained cadaver dogs were flown in from portland not by the rcmp by the organization trying to help these families oh wow is my understanding wow classy however in the convening time since the initial report, a construction crew had begun work digging in the area to widen the road. Okay. Couldn't wait for the cadaver dogs.

They literally were just like, oh, there might be a body here. It's fine. The excavation process likely would have recovered any remains, but they brought in the dogs anyway, which is so frustrating. For just wait. Yeah. Like. Ultimately, this effort didn't pay off by moving the case forward, at least directly. But it does seem like it may have helped to generate leads.

Then a tip from a psychic even came in, but unfortunately that didn't pay off, as is oftentimes the case. There was, however, a woman who produced a tip after speaking with a gas station employee who saw Delphine and her friends just before they parted ways on the night of her disappearance. Though she couldn't remember the name of that employee who provided the account, she did remember from her notes that this individual stated Delphine had gotten into a red sports car. Jack fucking pot. It doesn't seem like a lot, but they had nothing. So now they have nothing and a red car, possibly. Something.

Yeah. Her mother was asked if there was anyone that she could think of that Delphine would have taken a ride from that she knew drove a red car. Apparently they get a name at that point and it's a lead they were pursuing and provided to the police. So again, this is like a third party organization that is investigating this. Wow. And they're taking the information to the police because the families have had so little success getting anything done. Jeez. Though the name doesn't appear to have ever been released,

nor to have paid off by the recovery of her body or the bringing of her killer to justice, at least yet, which is hardly a satisfying way for the story to end for their families. Though hopefully for all of you, this won't be an unsatisfactory place to leave it for now. Until next time, as we continue the highway of tears. It's so heavy.'s gonna get heavier yeah okay don't hate me we love you we love you for doing all of the dirty work for us you know what i mean i promise you that i'm gonna give you some glimpses into the only bright spots that are accessible in the case yeah because there is some really i mean we talked about nicole whore's family and the things that they were doing to try

to bring awareness to the other cases there are some other good things and connections that are made. And it's not enough, but it's something. And I want to focus on that and, you know, encourage those little nuggets to grow. Well, it's so amazing like what a community can do when you are all like working together. Yeah. And it's so great that the family shared that with the other victims. Yeah. And it's so great that the family shared that with the other victims. and other sources that I saw and in the book that I read, they really understood and acknowledged very openly what it meant in this situation to be able to use their privilege to help other people. And while it felt terrible that they, you know, that that was the case. And then that's the reality.

And they took it and they used it. And I think, unfortunately, if that's the best we can do, we have to at least do that. Yeah. I can't imagine like going through that and then knowing how it would feel when you didn't have that support it's one of the things that her sister and both of her parents talked about quite a bit yeah oh okay tarot yeah we are looking for a tarot card that will help us with some insight into this part one of Highway of Tears okay I'm gonna I think I'm gonna do one more shuffle

okay then we'll let Caitlin decide what she wants to do you know you were saying what if we get a card and it's someone like crying. Yeah. I was just thinking what if it's a card and there's a horse on it. The Royal

Mounted Canadian Police. Now watch, we'll get something totally different. Totally wrong. Okay. now watch we'll get something totally different yeah okay that we've gotten this one so many times and there's a bunch of um oh and i turned right to cups oh my gosh oh sorry there's a bunch of water droplets on it that literally look like teardrops but that's crazy we oh my look like teardrops. But that's crazy. We asked for teardrops and we literally sort of gotten them.

Wow. We didn't even say what it was for the people not watching. I apologize. We're getting there. Ace of Cups in reverse. Yeah. It's got an upside down heart too. Like that makes me sad.

I know. Okay. own heart too like that makes me sad i know okay so for ace of cups we have new love beginning a creative activity joy the reversed ace can indicate a delay in starting a relationship it can also mean a romance that seemed promising doesn't develop or turn out as you'd hoped. This may not be the right time to start something new or to get into a stranger's car. In a reading about money, the reversed ace suggests you may have to wait a while to profit from a new venture. Well, this was a slow going case or it can mean you won't make as much as you'd expected oh that crushes me for every dollar that the other families tried to raise like the efforts just flooded in the fundraising was like quadruple. Yeah.

For Nicole. Yeah. I mean, the other families put together all of these different fundraising events and they just couldn't. I mean, it's just crushing. If the reading is about your work, you may encounter delays in landing your dream job. For creative people, this ace can represent a dry spell when you feel stifled or uninspired. It's funny because this talks about, you know, creativity and if it's about your work, encountering delays and landing your dream job. And at least for Nicole, one of the things that jumped out at me is for her job, she,

you know, literally walked all of these trails and she was like the best and planted trees like in a volume that was just like insane. They broke down the numbers. And I was just like, how is that physically possible to plant that many trees in one day? Oh my gosh. And I don't think that was necessarily her dream job, but she loved it. She felt passionate about it. And they talked about how she was an artist. The really sad thing is that a lot of the people that we're going to talk about, or some of these younger, you know, women and girls, a lot of them probably never were old enough or had the opportunity to

hold down a job that they could feel passionate about, let alone, I mean, having a job at all. Some of them were like 14, 15, 16. Wow. In a reading about love, you may run into obstacles, limitations, or disappointments. Like the family love, you know, that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. And I know we've actually gotten this card a few times recently. We literally just got it. Yeah. So I'm not going to read the description on the card because I don't think it really adds anything.

But it's just, it's kind of insane because I didn't I didn't immediately think, oh, Ace of Cups. Yeah, that really makes sense. But've talked about that relates to how much extra money they had. Their cup was running over with funds. That's a really good point. I didn't even think about that. They literally had all of those excess funds that they, you know, then donated to try to help the other people. How crazy is it that there's freaking teardrops on it? Like, we literally said that, but like kind of as a joke.

Yeah. I was like, there's no way we won't, that won't happen. I'm feeling like I want to just Google Ace of Cups because we've had the same, you know, the same book that we've been reading from. Yeah. You know what? I can also grab the traditional tarot book, too. Oh, yeah, we could. So this is the bitty one.

The bitty tarot that we like. Or I like. I like it, too. It's a tarot bitty. That's one of our Patreon tiers. It is, yeah. You know, and I'm just realizing that we forgot to say for regular stream, we're going to put out the episode two of Highway of Tears next week.

Patreon, you're going to get episode two later this week. Yay. And then Patreon, because you're getting both of them immediately, we don't want you to not have content for that following week. So you're going to be getting a Patreon bonus listener style story episode. So yeah, I was good gonna i'm looking at you am i allowed to say that i think so yeah i think yeah i'm just looking to you for approval i think so okay so the way it so it describes the card kind of like we've heard before with the hand holding the cup out of the clouds it says a symbol of your awareness and spiritual energy influence which that's kind of interesting like their awareness and their

influence i'm thinking of the family of nicole nicole's family Well, and I think that for, it's not something that we'll probably go super in depth on, but to a lot of the other women and girls and their families that are part of the indigenous community, there's such a connection to their spirituality that that's kind of interesting to be, to see that coming in yeah and then it goes on to say below the hand is a vast sea covered with lotus blossoms signifying the awakening of the human spirit a dove descends towards the cup a symbol of divine love flowing through subconscious mind and conscious awareness.

And that was just the description of the card. So I'm going to scroll to the reverse. You can see if you see anything in there and I'm going to read this quickly too. Okay. In my head. Oh, okay. So go. Okay. So I want to read from this one because it is really short it's the pictorial key to the tarot that comes with the traditional deck i want to read both sides because i think it's interesting to see the flip of it okay for this case okay so divinatory meanings house of the true heart joy content abode nourishment abundance fertility oh wow and that's in the upright In the reverse, it says house of the false heart, mutation, instability, and revolution. Revolution? Holy shit. kind of gives me a little bit of chills as I think about going into part two, because we do have some information about some revolution level shit.

Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. We should break out the little book more often and just see what it says, you know? Yeah. Just all of the books i do really like to look at it a little bit deeper yeah me too because i think the sometimes the modern witch tarot looks really different from the traditional and i think this one's really pretty close. It's got the dove. This. Oh, gosh. OK. Well, it's just saying I'm reading like, OK, I'll just read this whole paragraph. OK. The Ace of Cups reverse may be a sign that you are repressing your emotions, not wanting to express yourself fully to the outside world. You have your reasons for keeping your feelings close,

not wanting others to know what's going on inside. You may feel embarrassed or afraid of what might happen if you were to express your emotions. You may worry that if you allow your feelings to flow, they might turn into an overwhelming flood that can't be switched off. However, be careful that you do not create an internal blockage by repressing how you feel. If you are not ready to share your emotions, that's okay. You can find ways to release them privately through journaling, creative projects, movement, or screaming. Maybe starting a movement. Right. But this one. Or screaming your frustration and anger out in the car. Oh, my God.

Wow. I feel like that was what Caitlin was doing. There's a couple of stories that I'm not going to get into. But suppressing the emotions and letting that overwhelm you the fact that it talks about a literal flood when we're talking about a highway of tears yeah um yeah screaming in the car too wow okay there's literally in the book there's a couple of different stories that that's i'm wow i'm fucked up right now wow and the fact that it was saying like that you you might be embarrassed by your emotions like that reminded me too of nicole's family of how like they were kind of embarrassed

well and i think back to um some of the of the indigenous women, some of the things that they said about how angry they were and how hard they had to try to make sure that they were approaching these people that were supposed to be helping them in a way that hopefully they would actually help them. And how frustrating it was to just like, feel like you have to be nice to this person when they're not doing their job and they're not helping you. And I, wow. Wow. Okay.

It works in a lot of ways. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. It works in a lot of ways. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. All right, you guys. We did it. I'm really excited to come back for part two. Yeah. I cannot believe it said movement and revolution.

Yeah. In that. Holy shit. Wow. All right, you guys. We're going to wrap for today, but we'll be back. Have a creepy ass day. See you next Tuesday.

Or sooner if you're a Patreon. Yay. Or never if you're Robert Pickton. Oh, like if you're not listening? Yeah. You should be. So for all of you that are listening, if you have any true crime or paranormal stories that you want us to share, maybe with the whole Pacific Northwest. Yes, we would love to read them on the pod.

Yes, we will read them out loud. Not just in our heads. Yes. They don't have to be from the Pacific Northwest. If you would like to share, email us at PNWHauntsAndHomicides at gmail.com. It's all spelled out. No special characters. Super duper easy peasy. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Same thing as the email

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And if you agree, like Caitlin, you can also find us on patreon and support the show bitchin I'll preface this next section. Section. Section. We know what Caitlin's thinking about. for listening. Visit sinspod.co slash subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad-free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Threads at Sins and Survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of

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