"Likely Long Gone"

"Technically speaking, they could be very far away. Could they have flown? That's unlikely, but they could drive just about anywhere. There's lots of places to get over the border from Canada to the United States without being detected... For all we know, they could be in a car on their way to Mexico or in Mexico at this point."
"They've had time to utilize standard society to get away, so they could be well on their way."
"Now we're into the Hollywood movie kind of thing, because having probably watched too many things online, who knows what's in their head. I can only tell you what I would do and I would likely disappear into society and do all those silly Hollywood tricks like change my appearance."
"It's one thing to be experienced, it's another to be a fugitive on the run ... they're kids. Maybe they're pretending they're in Hunger Games. this is absolutely not Tarzan, this is fugitives doing whatever they can to escape and evade, they're not war vets trained in wilderness survival. this is not Rambo, they're not hiding in mud banks, these are a couple of kids on the run."
Les Stroud, Canadian survivalist "Survivorman"

Manitoba RCMP have announced that they believe the bodies of Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod have been found.

"I haven't heard anyone say we've seen them go into the woods with an axe and banana, no one ever said that. I'm half thinking they met someone in a big town ... and they've long gone to Texas or the Bahamas."
"Either they've been helped by someone, maybe they got to Winnipeg and stayed there, out of sight and now they're heading east now that the heat is off."
"But if I was them, I would've been heading east about two days after the army moved into Gillam because that's where the police and the whole army thinks they're up there, so the last place they're going to look for them is Northern Ontario ... how they've got anywhere is beyond me."
"This is not a heist, these are seemingly random killings on the West coast ... We're not dealing with Ocean's 11 here, this is a couple of kids too deep in a rabbit hole. It's highly unlikely there's a system of people working with them."
"If they've gone in there [the dense northern Manitoba bush], four to ten km deep and expired, they may never be found. All those guys had to do was go eight kilometres in or around the lake, expire over there. The animals would make most of them disappear and their bodies would just go back into the ground."
Terry Grant, cowboy, "Mantracker"

Triple murder suspects, two young men in their late teens from Port Alberni in British Columbia were tracked fruitlessly by the RCMP with help from a military plane equipped with sensors for two weeks. An intensive search took place primarily in and around an isolated northern Manitoba town of 1,265 inhabitants where they were last seen, in Gillam, Manitoba, surrounded by dense forest and boggy terrain, making the search difficult and speculation about how two teens who were not experienced outdoorsmen could even survive.

Well, that speculation has now been answered. They failed to survive. And it is also highly likely that for the greater time that the search had gone on, they were already dead. An autopsy is under way that will identify how they died, depending on the state of decomposition of the corpses. The RCMP had, in the last few days, discovered discarded objects that they had definitely linked to the two fugitives, after an RCMP dive team had scoured the Nelson River, those objects discovered on the shore.

Yet another intensive search on land this time, took place, which succeeded in discovering the bodies of two men about eight kilometers' distant from where their abandoned, torched vehicle had been found two weeks earlier. Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod were wanted on a second-degree murder charge in the death of 64-year-old University of British Columbia biology professor Leonard Dyck, along with suspicion that they were responsible for the shooting deaths of Australian tourist Lucas Fowler, 23, and his U.S. girlfriend, 24-year-old Chynna Deese, in northern British Columbia.

The bodies of tourists Chynna Deese and Lucas Fowler, left, were found near Liard Hot Springs, B.C., on July 15. University lecturer Leonard Dyck, right, was found dead four days later near Dease Lake, B.C. (New South Wales Police; University of British Columbia)

The two fugitives were at first regarded as missing teens, until suddenly evidence was unearthed to link them to the three random killings, committed some distance from one another. After the murders they moved quickly across four provinces in the space of ten days, last recognized in Gillam on July 22nd. And from that time forward the search commenced, officers going house-to-house in the community and other nearby isolated towns, as well as combing extensively through the boggy terrain of the surrounding forests known to house aggressive wildlife and seasonal stinging insects, in an environment that would test the survival skills of experienced backwoodsmen.

Evidently, it had tested the resolve of the two young men, and found them wanting in the kind of resilience and resourcefulness in a natural environment with abundant potable water and berries to enable them to survive the test. “While there were no confirmed sightings since July 22nd, our officers never gave up in their search efforts – following up on every lead, considering all options, and using every available resource. Our officers knew that we just needed to find that one piece of evidence that could move this search forward", explained Assistant Commissioner Jane MacLatchy, commanding officer of the Manitoba RCMP.

Security camera images of Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, are displayed during a news conference in Surrey, British Columbia, Tuesday, July 23, 2019. The two young men, thought to be missing, are now suspects in the murders of an American woman and her Australian boyfriend as well as the death of another man in northern British Columbia. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP)