Mysterious Deaths Piling Up

Mysterious deaths piling up
June 19, 2008


It’s almost like the opening of a Hollywood thriller. Except that unlike in the movies, the disappearances of young men around the Lower Mainland is very real. This year alone has seen at least four men vanish without a trace.

Chilliwack resident Michael Scullion, 30, was last seen in Agassiz on April 10. Burnaby resident Kellen McElwee, 25, went missing in Langley March 19. On Jan. 17, White Rock resident Wade Mackenzie, 23, disappeared. Langley resident Derek Kelly, 32, was last seen at Bridge Lake on New Year’s Day.

But these are just some of the latest cases. Earlier this month a Vancouver Courier feature story showed some staggering numbers. Going back to 2003, as many as 22 men aged 18-52 have vanished with no real leads whatsoever. The similarities are there, however hazy. Most are young, athletic, work construction or labour jobs and have tattoos, and go missing after a night of drinking or partying with friends at crowded places. Some have vanished during the day and a ton of false sightings have occurred.

These apparent victims of foul play weren’t grouped together for some male version of the Downtown East Side women story. The newspaper’s investigation started with a list of 60 missing men from around B.C. whose cases dated to the 1990s. The list was whittled down to 22 relatively young, healthy men who vanished with virtually no leads.

All the families talk similarly about how their boys were “happy” and how each disappearance was “completely out of character.”

After delving into the research, I noticed the similarities myself and over time I couldn’t tell one from another; they all seemed to blend into one similar story.

Rewards offer $2,000, $5,000, up to $50,000 for any type of lead. But in general the tips aren’t coming.

The mothers of these victims, obviously going through incomprehensible suffering, offer up similar quotes for news organization. Janice Braumberger whose son, Burnaby resident Brian Braumberger, 18, was last seen on June 1, 2007 — his deserted car was the first sign of his disappearance — gave a heartfelt accounting of her anguish:

“It’s as if the earth opened up and swallowed him,” she told the Courier. “It’s hard to believe none of these men have been found. Why aren’t there any bodies?”

The no-bodies aspect is particularly puzzling. With the so-called Smiley Face murders in the U.S. Midwest, young men were reported missing, but their bodies washed up on riverbanks days later. The remains gave some form of closure, such as in the case of convicted killer Robert ‘Willy’ Pickton, when DNA samples from decomposed remains found on his Port Coquitlam pig farm were matched to missing Vancouver prostitutes.

Studies have shown that serial killers usually target vulnerable individuals such as homeless people, female prostitutes or small children. The fact all these men who’ve disappeared are big, brooding guys who played sports or worked labour jobs is even more frightening.

It’s as if they were abducted; snapped up so quickly they didn’t know what hit them. After all, most of the photos show young, hulking men with thick biceps. You don’t take one of them down without at least some kind of a struggle or path of evidence, unless they’ve been subdued.

Police have yet to sound an alarm linking the disappearances. But with the count standing at 22 in a relatively few years, within a relatively small distance, similar victims, similar circumstances, how many more does it take to have this scenario fall into the suspicious category?

The latest was 20-year-old White Rock resident Daniel Bouchard, who went missing on June 9 after walking home from a pub where he’d been drinking with friends.

Young, fit, happy, working construction, Bouchard fits the profile. False sightings have already occurred, but at press time he was still missing, still another question mark in a growing number of eerily similar disappearances.

Patrick Blennerhassett writes for the Victoria News.

patrickb@vicnews.com.