The father of a Canadian teenager who shot dead an Australian backpacker and his girlfriend refuses to accept his son is a serial killer, and revealed the chilling final text he sent him before his body was found.
Alan Schmegelsky fought back tears as he said he couldn’t believe his 18-year-old son Bryer and his friend Kam McLeod, 19, killed Lucas Fowler and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese – as well as Vancouver professor Leonard Dyck.
‘I’m not going to say my son is a murderer until I get some facts, OK?’, Mr Schmegelsky told Australian current affairs program 60 Minutes on Sunday night.
‘You want me to sit here and tell you that my son killed your co-citizen? I’m not doing it… I have just lost my son.’
Shot dead: Lucas Fowler, the 24-year-old son of an Australian police officer, and his girlfriend Chynna Deese, from Charlotte, North Carolina, were found dead on the Alaska Highway on July 15
Alan Schmegelsky said he can’t accept that his 18-year-old son Bryer and friend Kam McLeod, 19, allegedly killed Lucas Fowler and his US girlfriend Chynna Deese
Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky were found dead on August 31 following a manhunt
Bryer and Kam are suspected of killing Mr Fowler and Ms Deese, whose bodies were discovered in a ditch beside their Chevrolet van in the western province of British Columbia July 15.
A 15-day manhunt for the teenagers led police across the country before they found two bodies a mile from the Nelson River near Gillam, Manitoba, on Wednesday morning.
Days earlier, Bryer and Kam were seen alive but had evaded police at a checkpoint. Mr Schmegelsky commended the pair for avoiding arrest.
‘I knew they were still alive. These boys are smart, these guys are intelligent. Kudos boys. Kudos,’ he said.
A 15-day manhunt for the alleged attackers led police across the country before they discovered two bodies believed to belong to the suspects a mile from the Nelson River near Gilam, Manitoba, Canada, on Wednesday morning (pictured left: Kam McLeod; pictured right: Bryer Schmegelsky)
Father and son: Mr Schmegelsky refuses to believe his boy could be a serial killer
Bryer (pictured) told his dad that he was headed to the province of Alberta and that was the last he heard from him
Mr Schmegelsky burst into tears as he recalled the moment police confirmed the pair were suspects in the killings.
‘My heart just sank, it just sank. I kept saying it was a mistake. There’s got to be a mistake,’ he said.
Their final hide-out, a densely-wooded area, was found after local tour guide Clint Sawchuk spotted a blue sleeping bag tangled in willows in the Nelson River last Friday.
Mr Schmegelsky revealed the last text Bryer sent him, saying he did not hear from his son following the message.
‘I’m off to Alberta,’ Mr Schmegelsky said his son texted.
Alberta is a province in Western Canada, nearly 2,000km from where the teenagers’ bodies were found.
Officials said an autopsy will be performed on Thursday to confirm the identities of the deceased, along with when and how they died.
But local media is reporting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police may never make the results public.
The couple met in 2017 and spent the next two years sharing their love of travel by visiting Central and South America, Japan and South East Asia
This is the red and grey Dodge ‘pickup truck’ that Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky were travelling in when they disappeared
Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky disappeared driving around the same region of Canada as Australian man Lucas Fowler and American woman Chynna Deese. They were found dead on August 31
Mr Schmegelsky also revealed he bought his son an airsoft gun, a replica firearm that shoots pellets, last Christmas.
‘The guns look realistic, they’re like machine guns and they’ve got a realistic magazine. But they’re still just a built in air compressor and they shoot a pellet,’ he explained.
He thought the $600 weapon would get his son off the couch and outside to play.
When asked if he was concerned that the gun is what led him to allegedly commit murder, Mr Schmegelsky denied that it was his fault.
‘It was getting him out in the woods with his buddies. I’m not going to say it’s my fault, I’m not going to say that,’ he said.
‘You can’t blame airsoft. I didn’t give him a real gun. I never gave him a gun that killed someone.’
Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, had been on the run since July 15 when the bodies of Lucas Fowler, 24, and Chynna Deese, 23, (pictured) were found in British Columbia
The father reconnected with Bryer a few years ago after suffering years of homelessness and mental health issues.
However, it was when Bryer was five years old and his parents were getting divorced, that he began acting out.
‘He’s mother moved away from him and he’s been angry since he was five years old,’ Mr Schmegelsky said.
‘He had a lot of time with very little attention. He was raised by YouTube and video games. He’s trained in isolation, mentally he won’t break down.’
He apologised to the victim’s families and said he would never wish this upon anyone.
‘I’m so sorry for what’s happened, OK?’ he said.
‘Whether it’s my son or someone else, we don’t know. I have just lost my son, I know exactly how you [the families] feel.’
Despite losing his son, he feels a sense of relief that ‘his troubles are over’.
The body discovery concluded a 15-day manhunt that began in the western Canadian province of British Columbia and spanned about 3,100 miles across five provinces
Bryer and co-suspect Kam McLeod, 19, have been accused of killing Mr Fowler and Ms Deese (pictured)
Ms Deese’s sister, Kennedy Deese, described Mr Schmegelsky’s apology as hollow.
‘He is trying to relate to us. When he played a part in the cause of our pain. We had no doing in his,’ she told Daily Telegraph.
‘His sorrow is for himself and not sincerely for us,’ she said.
‘We are not cut from the same cloth, as he has played the victim throughout his life and won’t acknowledge his hand in his child’s upbringing and ultimate demise.’
Despite her position on his apology, Ms Deese said, ‘we still forgive you and have mercy’.
Chynna Deese’s sister, Kennedy Deese, described Mr Schmegelsky’s apology as hallow
‘We are not cut from the same cloth, as he has played the victim throughout his life and won’t acknowledge his hand in his child’s upbringing and ultimate demise,’ Kennedy said
Schmegelsky and McLeod were the sole suspects in the murders of North Carolina of Ms Deese, 24, Mr Fowler, 23, and Mr Dyck – a Vancouver botanist and father-of-two.
The heartbreaking saga began on July 15 in the western province of British Columbia when the bodies of Fowler and Deese were found in a ditch beside their broken down blue 1986 Chevrolet van.
The lovestruck couple was on a Canadian road trip.
Lucas Fowler hugs Chynna Deese in the last recorded moment before their deaths
Four days later Dyck was found dead on another BC highway some 300 miles away by Dease Lake. His Toyota RAV4 was missing and a Dodge pickup truck had been set on fire about a mile away.
Police determined that the Dodge belonged to McLeod, who had vanished along with his childhood best friend Schmegelsky.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported the teens as missing on July 19, fearing that they had been killed or kidnapped by whomever committed the murders of Deese, Fowler and Dyck.
On July 24, RCMP announced that Schmegelsky and McLeod were suspects in the three murders after the RAV4 was found in flames near Gillam by local residents Billy and Tamara Beardy.
While Schmegelsky and McLeod are currently the only suspects in the three murders, police say their investigation will not close until it is proven they were responsible.