It’s an injustice and you know it. Your world is turned upside down as what should be a cut-and-dried case is suddenly dismissed despite the mountain of evidence presented. Phone calls and letters go unheard and unread as you try to shine a light on what is clearly a case of corruption. What do you do—what can you do—when the deck is stacked against you?

It’s like being shackled in a dark room with no doors and windows. You bang on the wall, but it feels like there’s nothing out there, nothing on the other side. Your entire world is that dark little box holding you captive.
Indigenous women in Canada are six times more likely to experience violence than white men, and three times more likely than white women. One report I read actually put the figure at sixteen times the rate of white women.

Indigenous people make up only 5% of Canada’s population today, but account for 32% of the adult prison population. From Statistics Canada: roughly 40% of indigenous, Maite, and Inuit people in Canada say they have experienced sexual assault before the age of 15. Police and Child Welfare services are about 3x more likely to receive and respond to reports of violence and abuse involving Native families compared to white families, and the children are more than 10x more likely to end up in care. In 2021, the average graduation rate for Indigenous youth in Saskatchewan was only 65%—and that was a dramatic leap forward. In Smithers in the 1970s—a town that will feature prominently here later on—the graduation rate was only about 24%, according to The Highway of Tears by Jessica McDiarmid. In another section, she continues: “The RCMP reported that the proportion of homicide cases that were solved was about the same for Indigenous and non-Indigenous women and girls—88 and 89 percent respectively—but Native Women’s Association of Canada research into 582 cases suggested that 40% of cases remained unsolved.”

And another quote from CulturalSurvival.org, which deals with mental health issues among Indigenous communities: “According to Canada’s Centre for Suicide Prevention, suicide and self-inflicted injuries are the leading causes of death for First Nations youths and adults up to age 44. The suicide rate for First Nations male youths ages 15-24 is 126 per 100,000, compared to 24 per 100,000 for non-Indigenous male youth. For First Nations females, the suicide rate is 35 per 100,000 compared to 5 per 100,000 for non-Indigenous females. Suicide rates for Inuit youth are among the highest in the world, at 11 times the national average.”

This is such a systemic issue that in 2009, Health Canada responded to pleas “for funding so we can get organized and to ensure medicines, hand sanitizers and other preventative kits were in place” by sending out extra body bags rather than the requested supplies or money. And as I write this, the city of Winnepeg in Manitoba is arguing that it is “too hard” and “too expensive” to search for the bodies of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, a mother and daughter murdered and dumped in the garbage. Instead, the city is arguing that the landfill should have a memorial added to it and their remains should be left in situ, despite a 55 page plan to recover the bodies already being in place and ready to go.

The message was exceedingly clear: The old adage “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” is still implied across the board, even when it isn’t said out loud. And once those Indians are dead, they are less than worthless.

Prostitutes, hitch hikers, addicts—”Just another Indian.” It’s a phrase and excuse used over and over again in the investigation of the Highway 16 cases. They’re less likely to get the media coverage that a missing middle class white person would get. Families are often left to raise their own money for rewards, posters, and supplies, and organize their own searches after being told their missing children probably “just” ran away or “will be back in a few days.”

From the racial tensions happening every day in the US to racial profiling at airports worldwide to everyday micro aggressions enacted against a multitude of different groups across the globe, we are no strangers to systemic racism and violence. The only surprising thing is that in the past 50 years, despite protests and new laws and repealing laws, we haven’t done a damn thing to improve it.

Welcome and listen up, because we’re about to make contact with The Ghosts of Highway 16.

Monica Ignas went missing on December 13, 1974. At only 14 years old, she is one of the youngest victims on my list. Originally from Houston, BC, she’d been living in the Terrace area for about a year. She was last seen walking home along Highway 16 after school. Two witnesses said they saw a white car pull over containing a man and a young girl, but nothing ever came from the tip.

Monica was missing all winter, before being found on April 6 the following spring. Melting snow revealed her partially decayed remains laying along a service road about six kilometers from where she was last seen. Some of her clothing had been removed, but were still at the scene—except for a single blue sock. In 2007 she was added in the second batch of E-PANA cases.
If her case sounds somewhat familiar, it’s because the state of her body and the manner of death are very similar to Colleen McMillian from last week, one of Bobby Jack Fowler’s victims. Her body was found just a few months before Monica went missing.

As a refresher, between 1973-1974, he killed three girls who were hitchhiking in the area, ages 19, 17, and 16, in that order. I’m no expert, but to my eye, Monica could easily pass for 16, and appears to have lighter brown hair, about the same shade as the other girls, though it’s hard to tell from black and white photos. So far, however, the RCMP has declined to make any official connection between Monica’s case and Fowler’s other known or suspected victims. The only difference between them, other than a slight difference in age? Monica was Indigenous, while Gale, Pam, and Coleen were white. I guess it doesn’t matter that at first glance at least, Monica was white passing, and it would probably be a pretty easy mistake to make.

Unfortunately, that’s all the information I can give you at this time about Monica. I couldn’t find anything about her as a person. But strap in because the case of Coreen Thomas, who was killed in 1976 is absolutely rage inducing, and does, in fact, include the youngest victim on our list.
On July 3, Coreen was days away from giving birth. Like a lot of moms-to-be, she was probably intensely uncomfortable. According to some reports, Coreen was hitchhiking on her way home to Vanderhoof. Either way, she was walking along the side of Stoney Creek Road when a car came out of nowhere and mowed her down without hesitation.

Coreen and some friends had spent the day at a street party in Stoney Creek, a long weekend celebrating Canada Day and the 50th anniversary of the town’s incorporation. It had been a long day. She and the other women were in high spirits as they walked back to the reservation, a distance of 9 miles. There had been alcohol involved (remember, this is 1976; I’m not sure fetal alcohol syndrome was even a known thing at the time). A group of Native women, including Coreen’s younger sister Marjie, were walking together, about eight of them in all. A few meters behind them was an unrelated group of white women. In total, it was bout twelve people.

As they walked, the women laughed and joked. When a yellow car passed, Coreen jokingly leaned out into the road, holding out her thumb. The car sped by.

A few minutes later, a rented sedan came speeding up to them in the dark, engine roaring and bright headlights trained on the group of pedestrians. At first it looked like the car—which was estimated to be going up to 70km per hour in a 40km zone—would pass without incident, but suddenly the car swerved. The women scattered, but Coreen wasn’t fast enough, possibly disoriented by the sudden noise and light. She was struck and killed, along with her unborn child.

The following “investigation” involved a miscarriage of justice at every turn.
When police arrived at the scene, they were already convinced it was an accident. According to the driver, Richard Redekop, there were about 30 women walking in the road. Coreen jumped in front of his car, and he couldn’t help but hit her.

It wasn’t uncommon for white drivers to harass Indigenous people walking along the side of the road in Stoney Creek or in other areas along Highway 16. They usually—usually—stopped short of hitting anyone. But Coreen just wasn’t fast enough to avoid tragedy, and Redekop sure wasn’t trying to avoid her.

One of the officers at the scene was a good friend of Redekop, who was known in the area as an alcoholic with a strong temper and a particular hatred of the Indigenous residents in the area. The two of them stayed at the scene until an ambulance and additional officers arrived an hour later, and then the officer drove Redekop home, only then issuing a breathalyzer. Redekop measured at .08.

Coreen’s body was taken for autopsy. By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late to save her or the baby, and no effort was made. The coroner listed her blood alcohol at .12, which is quite high, but remember, she was walking. She didn’t even have access to a car. He initially listed her cause of death as accidental, but some time later it was revealed that he’d also been accused of running down a First Nations person with his vehicle ten years earlier, but got let off on a lesser charge. He was also the same coroner who determined the death of Coreen’s cousin on the same road by the same method two years before was an accident. Not a good look. Especially when the driver in that case was Redekop’s brother.

The death of Coreen’s cousin was still well known in the area, and everyone agreed it had been murder. Stanley Redekop was never charged, however, and the lawyer representing Larry Thomas’s family wasn’t told about the hearing until an hour before it happened—when he lived an hour away. At the same time, the RCMP arrived to arrest Larry’s mother because “Her talk was too loud.” She wasn’t released until after the inquest was over.

Coreen’s family was devastated, and more than a little angry. Her father wouldn’t even believe she was dead until he saw the body in the morgue. Then, two days after the accident, the RCMP arrived to take Marjie in for questioning, and here we get to one of the biggest problems with this case.
Marjie was fifteen at the time, as was the other witness they picked up, Donna Patrick. If this was an “accident” as the RCMP insisted, why were they being brought “downtown” to be questioned rather than giving their statements in their living rooms?

More than that, why were their parents excluded from the interviews? And why weren’t they interviewing any of the other adults who had been present? Or the white women at the scene? Because there is no mention anywhere of their statements. Donna and Marjie are the only witnesses mentioned.
Sophie Thomas, Marjie’s aunt and a respected community elder, accompanied her to the station along with her daughter and two family friends. When the adults requested to be present for the interview, the police denied it. They weren’t even allowed into the station, and were made to sit on the concrete steps outside, not even offered chairs.

This went on for three hours. When it was over, the tearful, traumatized girls came out and explained that the police had bullied them into lying, forcing them to say that Coreen had been playing chicken with oncoming traffic.
Now, I’m not a mom so I’m not an expert here, but maybe those of you who have had kids can tell me: Were you up to playing chicken the week you were due? Because that just doesn’t sound right to me.

In the end, no charges were brought forward against Richard Redekop, despite a dead body, a devastated family, questionable breathalyser, multiple witnesses stating that the driver swerved to hit Coreen and accusations of police intimidation. The RCMP said that a coroner’s inquest sufficed for cause of death, and no further investigation was needed.

But the story doesn’t stop there. Sophie Thomas was angry, and not about to let another one of her family members be murdered—by the same family—and get away with it. She reached out to the biggest network she had: The British Columbia Homemakers Association.

Once the other women in the area heard about the case, regional newspapers were flooded with stories about the poverty and corruption surrounding Stoney Creek and the associated reservation. Instead of washing the dirty laundry, these women aired it. They exposed the high rate of poverty and unemployment and the struggle Native people had to survive. And the underlying message to each and every article, flier, and letter to the editor was the cause: racism.

Their work was enough to get an inquest and trial a year later, but not enough for a guilty verdict. Redekop was acquitted of criminal negligence. Personally, I think they could have added a few more charges to get him on—drunk driving, murder, reckless endangerment—I’d go for the works. But I’m not a lawyer, and lawyers usually go for a shorter list of more easily proven charges.

But let’s talk about the judge for a minute. Now I have been trying to find out who he was, but I’m not familiar enough with Canadian records websites to find all the info I need, and the source I got this from, I can’t find again. What I do know from other reports on this case that he not only knew Redekop, but also had his own history of drunk driving and violence against native women. Talk about impartial, right?

At the hearing, Redekop insisted he was going “no more than 40km”, but that he didn’t really remember and would have to rely on what police at the scene said. Though the skid marks left by his car were much longer than a car doing 30-40km could leave, more consistent with the estimated 70km of passersby, police decided Redekop was telling the truth, and he was acquitted.

There are so many legal ins and outs to this case that I can’t really cover them here. In 1990, Justice at Stoney Creek by Bridget Moran was published, and it goes into far more detail and explains it much better than I can, including how some of the statements made by police were debunked, and the civil suit Coreen’s husband filed against the RCMP. It is just such an intense case.

Coreen’s story was one of the first ones I heard about the Highway of Tears. While I knew what it was before, this was one of the first cases I heard a deep dive on, and it was the first one to have just such blatant misconduct by police. From the way they handled the interviews, to the breathalyzer to the issues with the coroner and the judge. The whole thing smacks of conspiracy and corruption and it left me absolutely enraged, especially because as far as I have been able to see, no one has ever even gotten a reprimand for the way the investigation was handled. Bits of that story have been living rent free in my head for over a year now, and finally helped convince me to start this podcast. It might be too late for Coreen and her child, but staying quiet only opens the door for more killers to walk away, more girls to go missing, more innocent people to get run down on the side of the road just to satisfy the sadistic pleasure of human garbage behind the wheel. I mean, why ruin the life of a drunk white guy, right? It’s not like his actions had irreparable consequences or anything.

If this case makes you angry, then keep listening. Because this is just one example of the injustice that permeates the Highway of Tears.

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Sources:

• nwac.ca/
• www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2022001/article/00012-eng.htm
• nonprofitquarterly.org/report-finds-violence-against-indigenous-women-in-canada-at-genocide-levels/?fbclid=IwAR3x4J2oXoODfwZ7Gsi25-omVDM7POlJLTc3mnGgLnQnoTTKbnfTbVKthDk
• search.nbca.unbc.ca/index.php/2008-3-1-209-2
• pgnewspapers.pgpl.ca/fedora/repository/pgc:1976-09-28/-/Prince%20George%20Citizen%20-%20September%2028,%201976
• books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=-1aDGBsyekIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA6&dq=Coreen+thomas&ots=0cZiC73KLi&sig=wJuyQqF6bbk3c6DLub_Xr48Kj0E#v=onepage&q=Coreen%20thomas&f=false
• pgnewspapers.pgpl.ca/fedora/repository/pgc:1976-08-13/-/Prince%20George%20Citizen%20-%20August%2013,%201976