Looking further back in time on the Highway of Tears

Should the Highway of Tears case file go back even further than 1990? That could be a valid question if unexplained murders and disappearances prior to that year are taken into account.

The current case load starts with the disappearance of Cicilla Anne Nikal in 1989 and continues under investigation to this day. Most recently a private investigator who is looking into the disappearances suggested that he may have a lead on one of the cases currently under investigation.

But what of before the last decade of the last century, the Daily News on Friday ran a front page story on the disappearance of a young mother from 1978, long before the long stretch of highway between Prince Rupert and Prince George was dubbed “The highway of tears”.

The article poses some interesting questions about the past crimes still unsolved and shapes a bit of a path to the concerns that face the area over the crimes of the present.

WOMAN SEEKS ANSWERS TO MOM’S HIGHWAY 16 DEATH
By James Vassallo
The Daily News
Friday, September 15, 2004.
Pages One and Three

Many years before it was called the ‘Highway of Tears’, before there were symposiums, before there was media attention and concerned politicians, there was a six month old baby without a mother. The only thing the baby now 29 year old Vicki Hill, grew up knowing was that her mother, Mary Jane, was murdered on Highway 16.

“The police never found anything that I know,” said Hill, who grew up in Gitsegukla but who now lives in Prince Rupert. “I’ve been trying to find out myself, it’s been too long not knowing.”

In 2004, with the help of Marlene Swift at the RCMP-base North Coast Victim Support Service’s, Hill was able to obtain the coroners report about the incident. She also found an article at the Public Library in the The Daily News from 1978 that detailed what little he police knew, and all Hill knows today.

“The body of 31-year old Mary Jane Hill of Kincolith, was found on Highway 16, 20 miles east of Prince Rupert at around 5 p.m. on Sunday,” reads the clipping.

“At this time police suspect foul play but the incident is still under investigation. RCMP ask anyone who saw or had contact with Hill on the afternoon of March 26 to contact them. Any motorists traveling on Highway 16 in between the hours of noon and 6 p. m. Sunday between Tyee and Prince Rupert who may have notices any unusual or parked vehicles are also asked to contact the RCMP.”

Hill grew up with her father’s side of the family, who never talked about her mother’s death. It wasn’t until several years ago when she attended a wedding in Kincolith that she even had one of the questions that had troubled her most of her life answered- what her mother looked like.

“I was given a small black and white photograph of her by my mom’s sister,” she said.

“Everybody says I look like her.”

Her mother’s unsolved killing is an example of a number of incidents that predate the sudden public attention on the Highway of Tears.

Hill believes these need to be investigated because they could provide a link with the crimes of the last decade and a half where an inexperienced killer may have made a mistake.

:I think they should (look at these old cases) they never had DNA Test labs in those years, I think they should bring the cases to see if there’s DNA, or semen or blood type or whatever,” she said. “This all probably started back in the 1970’s. You never know if it’s the same guy still out there, if he did time and came back, but police should do something instead of just leaving (these crimes) and saying forget it.

“They’ve got to think it’s not (the victims) that are suffering, it’s the children and the families that are suffering.”

Hill has gotten what she first wanted – she knows something about what happened to her mother and she has a picture of the woman everyone says she looks like. All she needs now is justice for the mother she never knew.

“I find it hard (not knowing my mother), but as a mother of two myself I’d rather have the best for my children,” she said. “Finding who did this makes a difference in life for this generation.”