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Hi there. I'm a PBM. I'm also an insurance company. We middlemen are often owned by the same company. So, hard to tell apart.
We control what medicines you get and what you pay at the pharmacy. That's why today, more than half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to middlemen like us. Middlemen are driving medicine costs, and you don't know the half of it. Get the whole story at phrma.org slash middlemen. Paid for by Pharma.
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Toyota, let's go places. Bocas del Toro, Panama. Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple.
survive. I'm Candice DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the story I'm going to tell you today is a case I briefly mentioned toward the end of an episode in season three titled The Tower.
That was the story about the suspicious disappearance of fire spotter Stephanie Stewart in the wilderness of Alberta, Canada. This episode is going to cover the harrowing double murder of a husband and wife named Lyle and Marie McCann. This couple set out on a road trip across the western provinces of Canada, only to be stopped short by a ruthless killer.
The highly publicized case of what happened to them during the summer of 2010 is one that no one should easily forget. The crime took place in the woods near Edson, Alberta, a town about an hour northeast of Jasper National Park and roughly two hours west of Edmonton. Lyle and Marie were driving their RV to British Columbia to spend time with family and while en route had made plans to camp at various campgrounds along Canada Highway 16.
This part of the country is known for having thick woods in between rest stops, recreation areas, private farms, and small towns. And it's in this pristine landscape that the unthinkable happened at the hands of a man who to this day has never taken responsibility for his actions or revealed what happened to his innocent victims. This is Park Predators.
Around 7 o'clock at night on Monday, July 5th, 2010, firefighters from the Edson Fire Department in Alberta got a call for something out of the ordinary. A motorhome was on fire at Minnow Lake Campground, a small camping area in the woods about 30 miles southeast of town.
These firefighters knew that from time to time, fires could spark in local campgrounds or dry brush could spontaneously ignite in the woods. But an entire RV on fire was unusual. The town of Edson was small. According to data from Alberta Regional Dashboard, the population in 2020 was roughly 8,000 people. And it's probably safe to say there were even less residents there 13 years ago in 2010.
So, a call like this more than likely sent the fire department into overdrive. According to Miriam Ibrahim's reporting for the Edmonton Journal, when the fire crews arrived at Minnow Lake and made their way back to the RV, they immediately noticed it was engulfed in flames, like completely burned up. There was zero chance of salvaging it, but they quickly doused it anyway so they could safely make their way through the rubble. They didn't find much except charred metal, fabric, and wood.
The 1999 green and white Gulfstream Sun Voyager was a complete loss. From the looks of it, it didn't appear as if anyone had been inside when it had caught on fire, which was good. But as they sifted through the debris, the firefighters found little in the way of evidence to determine how the fire had started.
So, to learn more, the fire department recovered the license plate and registration from the smoldering heap and held onto that stuff so they could pass it along to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, also known as the RCMP. That agency would have the right databases to search in order to figure out who the motorhome belonged to.
Shortly after getting the RV's info, the RCMP learned the camper belonged to 78-year-old Lyle McCann and his wife, 77-year-old Marie McCann, who were from St. Albert, Alberta, a suburb of Edmonton, about two hours away from Minnow Lake Campground. The only other vehicle registered in the couple's name was a 2006 light green Hyundai Tucson.
Over the next few days, the RCMP called Lyle and Marie's listed phone numbers several times so that officers could inform them of what had happened to their camper. But all of those calls went unanswered. The McCanns not responding didn't set off alarm bells for authorities right away though. I can imagine they figured the couple was just busy living their life, or maybe they'd left their camper unattended or lent it to a friend and they didn't even know it had been destroyed. The possibilities were endless.
So, as is typical when someone's property gets messed up and police can't prove a crime occurred, the RCMP just kind of let the whole thing go and left the burned-out motor home where they'd found it, in the woods at Minnow Lake. That is, until five days later, on Saturday, July 10th. That afternoon, an RCMP outpost near Abbotsford, British Columbia, got a call from a woman named Trudy Holder.
Trudy explained that her parents, Lyle and Marie McCann, had not shown up to the airport to pick her and her daughter up, and she was worried about them. According to CBC News' reporting, Lyle and Marie had previously made plans to get Trudy and her daughter in Abbotsford on that Saturday morning, and then the group would drive together in the RV to the neighboring town of Chilliwack to vacation for about two weeks.
Trudy told the authorities that she'd gotten more worried about her parents after calling a family friend whose house Lyle and Marie were supposed to stay at as they drove the almost 14 hours from St. Albert to British Columbia. And to her surprise, those friends revealed that the couple had never shown up. After the RCMP learned this information from Trudy, investigators knew something was up with the McCanns.
They told Trudy and eventually her brother, Brett McCann, that their parents' camper had been found abandoned and on fire five days earlier outside of Edson. The department also informed the siblings that Lila Marie's Hyundai Tucson was still unaccounted for. At that point, it became clear to the children that something was very, very wrong. So they officially filed missing persons reports to get an investigation underway.
At a news conference the following Monday, July 12th, the RCMP announced it was bringing in detectives from its serious crimes unit and revealed to the press that the McCann's camper had been found on fire under suspicious circumstances. Authorities and the couple's son, Brett, pleaded with the public to be on the lookout for the missing Hyundai Tucson. Its light green color was distinct, so hopes were high that it would be found quickly and more information could be gleaned from it.
Brett, who at that point had already started a Facebook group to try and help funnel leads to police, told CBC News, quote, From that moment on, the investigation kicked into high gear.
The CBC reported that by nightfall on the 13th, police had conducted a thorough search using helicopters over hundreds of square kilometers of woods and roadways near the Middle Lake campground in Alberta. They'd also dispatched police dogs and additional officers in that area to help in the search.
Some of these teams went to farms surrounding the recreation site and began the arduous task of finding and interviewing people who'd been working at or stayed in the campground on July 3rd, 4th, and 5th. The Edmonton Journal reported that RCMP investigators couldn't find any record with the campground that the McCanns had registered for a campsite there on the weekend in question.
CBC News reported that after speaking with the campground's manager, RCMP detectives learned that the McCann's motorhome and SUV had been seen parked at a campsite in the campground on the morning of July 5th, hours before the fire, but no one had come or gone from it. The manager even told police that they'd knocked on the RV's door when it showed up unannounced, but no one responded.
While the ground and air searches were underway in Edson, a group of investigators had obtained the McCanns' cell phone and bank records, but unfortunately, nothing noteworthy stood out. Their accounts hadn't been touched, and according to an article by reporter Kenyon Wallace for the National Post, the cell phone that Lyle and Marie shared had been turned off.
Officers working in the McCann's hometown of St. Albert retraced the couple's last movements, and according to an article by CBC News, they hit a stroke of luck. They located surveillance video from a Superstore gas bar store in town that showed a man who looked a lot like Lyle pumping gas into an RV on the morning of July 3rd, which would have been two days before the camper fire.
Connected to the back of the motorhome in the video was a light green Hyundai Tucson. According to the CBC's reporting, police determined that was Lyle and Marie in the video, and unfortunately, that had been the last sighting of the couple. Well, kind of.
According to several articles from CBC News and the National Post, RCMP investigators in British Columbia had received at least one report that the McCann's Hyundai had been spotted on July 8th near the city of Prince George, British Columbia. But authorities had ignored that tip or somehow lost the contact info for the people who left it.
So, no one had checked up on that lead. And it wasn't until days later that detectives realized its significance and then finally went to track down those witnesses who'd reported it. This mishap invited an avalanche of heavy criticism from the public and the media.
In response to this mounting pressure that they'd not acted fast enough to investigate, the RCMP sent crime scene techs back out to Minnow Lake to more thoroughly examine the remains of the burned-out camper. You know, to treat it like an actual crime scene. And based on what the agency told the Edmonton Journal at the time, the forensic teams didn't find any traces of human remains inside the camper.
The source material isn't super clear on what specific tests the RCMP forensics identification unit ran on the debris or how they searched it. But regardless, there weren't bones or human tissue found inside. So that pretty much ended the discussion as to whether the couple had died in there, perhaps accidentally. It confirmed that Lyle and Marie were still very much missing.
Not finding remains was kind of a good thing, though, and a huge relief to the McCann's adult children. But at the same time, the couple's ongoing absence was puzzling and out of character. Referring to how ominous the situation was looking regarding the missing couple, an RCMP spokesman told reporter Miriam Ibrahim, quote, We do consider it as suspicious because of the circumstances of a burned vehicle associated with missing people, end quote.
After processing the camper's charred pieces, the RCMP towed it to a storage yard in the nearby town of Hinton, Alberta, for further examination and preservation. The fact that so much time had passed between when the camper was found on fire and when police really got on the ball to try and figure out why Lyle and Marie weren't with it or answering their phones made it all too easy for critics to condemn the RCMP.
One retired officer and criminologist from Edmonton named Bill Pitt told CBC News that he thought the delay between when the camper had been found and when investigators realized that finding the McCanns was important had been too long. And he referred to the current detective's work on the case as, quote, botched, end quote. Lila Marie's kids, Brett and Trudy, weren't quite as critical, though.
They told news outlets they felt confident in the RCMP's efforts and were holding out hope that the countless hours the agency had dedicated so far would pay off. Regarding the appearance that the RCMP had dropped the ball, Brett told the National Post, quote, end quote.
A few days later, on July 15th, staff for the RCMP told the press that detectives were investigating two credible sightings of the McCann's SUV being seen in or near the city of Prince George, British Columbia. Those reports put the couple's car in the area on either Monday, July 5th or Tuesday, July 6th. And the 6th was very interesting to police because that meant someone had seen it being driven after the motorhome fire. But by whom?
the mccanns or someone else the next day july 16th authorities made a bombshell announcement they found the mccanns missing hyundai and they had a specific person of interest they wanted the public's help to try and find hi there i'm a pbm i'm also an insurance company we middlemen are often owned by the same company so hard to tell apart
We control what medicines you get and what you pay at the pharmacy. That's why today, more than half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to middlemen like us. Middlemen are driving medicine costs, and you don't know the half of it. Get the whole story at phrma.org slash middlemen. Paid for by Pharma.
Was it easy leaving the group chat when the bubbles turned green and every message was Cam likes this and Claire dislikes that? Oh yes, yes it was because I get enough overreacting at home. Like liking messaging again with WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone.
According to an article for the Edmonton Journal written by Richard Warnicka, 11 days after the McCann's camper burned up and almost a week after they were reported missing, a man working in a field about 30 kilometers east of Edson spotted a light green Hyundai Tucson SUV tucked away in some trees.
That man reported what he'd found to the RCMP, and according to reporting by CBC News, when police arrived, they found the Hyundai and immediately roped it off so nothing could be disturbed. After that, forensic techs got into it and processed it for evidence. Information about if they'd found anything of value wasn't something police released right away.
Interestingly, that same day, the assistant commissioner for the RCMP announced that the agency considered whatever had happened to the McCanns to be the result of foul play. So even though Lyle and Marie were still technically just missing, their case was officially being worked as a homicide.
And that was it. That's all the authorities would say. They didn't elaborate. They didn't reveal any clues or evidence they'd found that pointed to murder, just that they suspected foul play. And they wanted to speak with a 38-year-old man named Travis Vader. Now, up until this point, no one had heard Travis's name in connection to this investigation. But behind closed doors, RCMP investigators had been having conversations about him.
You see, in 2010, Travis was a bit of a transient dude with no last known address, and he had a bunch of prior arrests and outstanding warrants for crimes involving drugs, car theft, and firearms, none of which were related to whatever had happened to the McCanns. But open warrants for some of those crimes were as recent as late June of 2010. When Lyle and Marie disappeared, Travis was a fugitive with close family ties to the greater Edson area in Alberta.
So because of his past criminal history, stealing cars, using drugs, and being kind of an outlaw, police wanted to question him more about his whereabouts on the weekend of July 3rd. One of Travis's most recent crimes was stealing a truck and burning it, a suspiciously similar crime to what the RCMP suspected might have happened to the McCann's RV.
According to a detailed article by CBC News, when reporters heard Travis's name from police for the first time, they tracked down his ex-wife, a woman named Victoria Vader. Victoria lived in British Columbia, and she told the news outlets that during the summer of 2010, she didn't know Travis was even wanted by police. She said she didn't know where he was, only that the last time she'd heard from him, he'd been in Alberta.
The article by CBC goes on to say that despite sharing several children together, Victoria and Travis hadn't lived in the same house since 2004, though some other source material like The Globe and Mail also says 2008. Either way, there was a history of issues in their marriage, and CBC News dug up a restraining order that reportedly detailed how up and down their relationship had been after they split.
Some of their problems included Travis displaying concerning behaviors like calling Victoria and her extended family members multiple times a day, trying to get back together, and he also overused alcohol. People from Alberta who knew Travis or had grown up with him told the press that he was a troubled man with, quote, "demons," end quote. But few of them thought he was capable of harming the McCanns.
Even one of Travis's sisters, a woman named Alicia, wrote on social media after he was named a person of interest that she was worried about him and about the situation with the McCanns. She said, quote, I am unsure of his whereabouts as myself and my family have not heard from him, nor do we expect to. Our hearts go out to the McCann family, and we hope these developments lead to finding them.
"We can only hope and pray that he is just a person of interest at this point and that the McCanns will be found safe." Travis's mother, Jennifer, had also stated to members of the press that she wanted Travis to turn himself in to the authorities. RCMP investigators emphasized in news releases that if anyone happened to bump into Travis or see him out, under no circumstances should they approach him. Police considered him armed and dangerous.
A few days after the police dropped Travis's name to the media, the search for him came to an end. CBC News reported that on July 19th, detectives located him inside a house in a town not far from Edson. There, they took him into custody for those drug, theft, and firearm crimes I was telling you about earlier. Tons of tips from the public had been what had led police to his front door.
During that raid, authorities also arrested another man who'd been in the house, but they didn't reveal his name or what exactly he'd been taken into custody for. The Edmonton Journal later reported that after interviewing that guy, the RCMP released him without charges and refocused their efforts on grilling Travis. In addition to getting Travis into custody, police also seized a bunch of boxes full of stuff from the house he'd been at.
CBC reported that searchers also fanned out in the neighborhoods and woods around the house to conduct a more thorough ground search. Police didn't outright confirm if these efforts were part of the McCann investigation, but reading between the lines, that's what all the publications seemed to report. Back at the jail, though, detectives interviewed Travis about Lyle and Marie, and they determined that he likely had more information that would be helpful to their investigation.
But unfortunately, Travis wasn't keen on cooperating. During July and August, he remained in custody for his charges related to drug possession, possessing stolen property, and possessing a weapon. But no charges related to Lyle and Marie were brought against him. At a hearing for one of his unrelated crime charges, another one of his sisters, a woman named Bobbie Jo Vader, spoke to the press.
She said she didn't think her brother was connected to whatever had happened to the McCanns and emphasized he wasn't the type of guy to harm people. She said the fact that he was being labeled a person of interest in the couple's disappearance was sad to her. During her talk with reporters, she revealed that on July 4th, the day after Lyle and Marie were last seen and also happened to be the day before the RV was torched, Travis had shown up at her house in Edmonton and stayed until July 9th.
She said the entire time he was there, he seemed to be in poor health and appeared to be really tired. The big question lingering in everyone's mind was what the RCMP had found that connected Travis to the McCanns' disappearance. RCMP investigators kept saying over and over again that he was their guy, but they never provided information or proof as to why they thought that.
By all accounts, Lyle and Marie did not know Travis. None of their family and friends said they'd ever met him. So the link just seemed really unclear. RCMP investigators also never publicly revealed what, if any, forensic evidence had been found that tied Travis to the McCanns' burned RV or their recovered Hyundai Tucson.
Then, on August 31st, so almost two months after the McCanns vanished, the RCMP announced that detectives had made significant progress in the case. Progress that made them officially upgrade Travis' label as a person of interest to prime suspect. But again, police still didn't charge him with anything related to Lyle and Marie, and the news media's requests as to what evidence authorities had against him went unanswered.
And that's how this case played out for a while. The RCMP would announce that investigators were searching a new area or piece of property for evidence, but detectives would never say how any of it connected to Travis. In early September, the Edmonton Journal verified that a parcel of land police had searched extensively was connected to a friend of Travis's. But police never confirmed that.
Divers also searched a pond on that property, but nothing turned up, and police just moved on and didn't address anyone's questions. The detectives were definitely staying tight-lipped, despite a reward for information growing as large as $60,000 and the McCann children organizing their own search parties to help authorities cover more ground.
Months passed with no new updates in the case, and any hope the couple's loved ones had been clinging to that they were still alive somewhere dwindled. In February 2011, Brett told Carissa Gall for the Edson Leader, quote, The man the RCMP believed was that someone who knew something was Travis Vader.
So they stayed on him, and thanks to judges in Alberta, he kept getting his bail denied for his other criminal charges. So for the rest of 2010, Travis stayed behind bars in Edmonton while investigators working the McCanns' disappearance built a case. And at this point, the police weren't oblivious to the fact that the story of the couple's disappearance had reached far beyond Canada.
On the one-year anniversary, a spokesman for the RCMP told the Sioux Star that the vast search radius around Minnow Lake Campground had posed challenges to the department's personnel and resources. The fact that the couple's camper had been set on fire also didn't help matters. He said, "...the investigation is not typical, the circumstances are unique, and we understand the investigation has caught the attention of Alberta and beyond."
He went on to say that the team of 15 full-time detectives assigned to the case met with the McCann family members on a regular basis about once a month to keep them in the loop. Meanwhile, Travis Vader's family grew frustrated that police were holding him in custody for his unrelated crimes, but continued to verbally link him to the McCann case without ever bringing charges against him for their deaths.
His parents, Ed and Jennifer, told Jana Pruden for the Vancouver Sun that the case had really impacted their family in a negative way, and they wanted more answers from police. In the article, they described how they didn't think Travis was capable of doing what RCMP detectives claimed he'd done. They said that Travis had grown up like any other normal boy, and sure, he'd gotten into the occasional fistfight here and there, but he'd never seriously hurt anyone.
He was a father of six daughters and one stepson, and he'd worked hard in the oil industry. He was no killer, they said. Reporter Jana Pruden included in her article a deep dive into incidents of volatility while Travis had been married to his ex-wife, Victoria. These reports painted a much more disturbing picture of the so-called family man. He and his wife were known to fight on and off for years. They'd then reconcile, but eventually they called it quits for good in 2008.
Travis's father told the Vancouver Sun that after his son's divorce, Travis went downhill and started using drugs. It was at that point his family lost touch with him. In that same article, Travis was interviewed from jail over the phone, and he told the reporter that when he was arrested on July 19, 2010, he had no clue the RCMP had listed him as a wanted person.
He said he would have gladly turned himself in for his property crimes and all the other stuff he was being charged with, and in fact claimed he'd been planning to do so after seeing himself on the news. But police had found him first. He denied any involvement in what happened to Lyle and Marie and denied killing them. But the official position of the RCMP one year into its investigation was that Lyle and Marie had been murdered in some sort of violent interaction with Travis at the start of their road trip.
CBC News reported that by the end of July 2011, a court had officially declared the couple dead so that their kids could start handling their estate and funeral arrangements. Court filings from the Declaration of Death proceedings included a little bit of detail about what detectives' theories were at that point one year into their investigation.
But the information was slim. Basically, detectives believed Lila Marie had been killed the day they vanished, so sometime on July 3rd. But then they also said it was possible they died on the 4th or 5th. And that was it. No more detail was included in the court filings. And authorities didn't use this as an opportunity to provide any insight as to how the couple had been killed or where they'd been killed. Nothing. The RCMP just said it was an ongoing investigation.
But even though these court filings weren't much help in terms of getting additional details, it did allow Brett McCann and Trudy Holder to have a funeral for their parents. According to CBC's reporting, that memorial service took place on what would have been Lila Marie's 59th wedding anniversary. Even though their bodies weren't there, the ceremony gave the kids some closure and comfort.
They had guests put rose petals into envelopes and then transfer those petals into an urn as a way to memorialize Lila Marie. Shortly after that, in October 2011, Travis went to trial for a handful of crimes that were unrelated to Lila Marie's case. These were crimes like vehicle theft, arson, breaking and entering, possessing stolen property, etc.,
It only took a few days for him to be found guilty of those offenses, and a judge sentenced him to a little over two years in prison, with credit for time served and good behavior. But he still had another trial awaiting him in a neighboring jurisdiction for a slew of other property and drug crimes. He didn't see the inside of a courtroom for that stuff until April of 2012. But according to Ryan Cormier's reporting for the Edmonton Journal, a jury eventually found him guilty of those offenses too.
However, right before that verdict came in, the RCMP dropped another bombshell. Investigators were officially charging Travis with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Lyle and Marie McCann, despite never finding the victims' bodies. Hi there. I'm a PBM. I'm also an insurance company. We middlemen are often owned by the same company, so hard to tell apart.
We control what medicines you get and what you pay at the pharmacy. That's why today, more than half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to middlemen like us. Middlemen are driving medicine costs, and you don't know the half of it. Get the whole story at phrma.org slash middlemen. Paid for by Pharma.
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Toyota, let's go places. Even though Lyle and Marie were nowhere to be found, the RCMP felt confident in moving forward with charging Travis. At that point, it had been almost two years since the couple had vanished. And in that time, the police's prime suspect had been on trial several times for various unrelated crimes that had taken place years earlier in the greater Edmonton area.
The biggest assumption to come out of this announcement about the murder charges was that police maintained they had hard evidence to support that Travis killed Lila Marie on July 3rd, 2010. Before that, it was still unknown when exactly authorities believed the murders had occurred. But just as soon as it seemed like police were opening up, RCMP officials then refused to elaborate or provide any further comment beyond what was in their charging document.
They basically said everything would come out in court. But that day in court, it took a while. Because for the next few years, there was a lot of back and forth regarding some appeals Travis had made for his unrelated criminal charges. There was also a preliminary hearing for the murder case that would have lasted six weeks and several other important court dates that had all been delayed. Oh, and there was also something else that knocked things off course for a while. Travis sued the RCMP.
Yeah, according to civil court documents cited by CBC News, Travis claimed that it was wrong and a violation of his rights for the RCMP to have kept him in jail for his other crimes while detectives working the McCann investigation built a murder case against him. He claimed, among many things, that detectives failed to investigate other leads and possible suspects. For his hardship, he wanted to be awarded $150,000 from the government.
His lawyers fought hard in that civil lawsuit, with one attorney remarking to CBC News that the RCMP's case against Travis was the result of a, quote, "rush to judgment," end quote. And later said the department's work was, quote, "shoddy," end quote. And this argument worked. In March 2014, the Crown Court in Alberta decided to stay the proceedings for the murder charges against Travis.
Which meant prosecution against him was put on pause until the court decided whether to move forward or drop the case entirely. Reporter Janice Johnston wrote a piece for CBC News that detailed some of the reasons why this decision was made. For starters, the head prosecutor, a woman named Michelle Doyle, and investigators with the RCMP had not been on the same page when it came to being organized and having all of the evidence and paperwork in one place.
Michelle later testified in a review hearing about the stayed proceedings that as the case grew closer and closer to going to trial, she'd lost a lot of confidence in the RCMP detectives working the case and said they failed to give her office a trove of really important documents related to the murder investigation.
She went on to explain that about a month before the Crown was going to put Travis on trial, RCMP detectives had failed to disclose roughly 5,000 documents to the prosecutor's office. And when they finally did hand them over, Michelle said her and her staff were so overwhelmed by the volume of the material in front of them, she had no choice but to request pausing the proceedings so that the interest of justice could be upheld. ♪
Something else Michelle hinted to during her testimony was that the case against Travis was largely circumstantial, but there was some important forensic evidence the detectives had gathered that, quote, placed Mr. Vader at particular locations, end quote.
Now, I interpret that as there was at least some forensic evidence that linked Travis to the McCanns' property or vehicles. But again, neither the police nor the prosecutor's office was willing to go into detail or clarify about what that forensic evidence was. About a month after the paused proceedings, CBC News reported Travis and his attorneys lodged a $1 million lawsuit against the prosecutor's office and several members of the RCMP.
In the suit, Travis claimed that the government and police had wrongfully and maliciously targeted him, and he alleged that he'd endured physical and verbal abuse while in jail. The lawsuit also claimed that the RCMP had blundered its investigation into what happened to Lyle and Marie, which resulted in detectives desperately zeroing in on Travis for unfair reasons. While that lawsuit wound its way through the court system, the McCann family continued to fight for justice.
They kept urging people to come forward if there was credible information about where the couple's bodies might be. At that point, four long years had passed since anyone had laid eyes on the McCanns. Most of 2014 passed with the murder trial still on hold, and Travis made a few more appearances in court for some of his unrelated drug and firearms charges.
It wasn't until mid-December of that year, so almost nine months after initially pausing the murder trial, that the Crown Court reactivated the murder charges against Travis. And the timing of that couldn't have been more crucial, because according to reporting by CBC News, the government only had one year from the time the court stayed the proceedings to then make a decision as to whether to drop the case or pick things up again. So essentially, time was running out.
Two months before these charges were reactivated, Travis had been released on bail and was living in St. Albert, Lila Marie's hometown. In order to reactivate the murder charges, the RCMP had to re-arrest him and bring him back to jail to stand trial. The Edmonton Journal reported that after his bail hearing for the murders, he was released again, but monitored on house arrest.
CBC News and the Edmonton Journal reported that between February and November of 2015, Travis violated bail restrictions multiple times after breaking curfew and being charged with assault. So he went in and out of jail several more times, but ultimately stayed behind bars after a judge denied him bail once and for all in December 2015.
He was scheduled to go to trial for the murders in March of 2016, but before that happened, news agencies who'd been pressing for years to have certain records in the case unsealed landed a huge win. After four long years of silence and secrecy from the RCMP and the prosecutor's office, a Crown Court judge in Alberta made the decision to release court documents that detailed what had led investigators to Travis Vader in the first place.
According to Ryan Cormier's reporting for the Edmonton Journal and articles for CBC News, the crux of the authorities' forensic case against Travis came down to blood, a fingerprint, and DNA. The court documents stated that RCMP detectives had found Marie's blood on food cans inside the couple's SUV. Investigators had also found a beer can that had Travis's DNA and fingerprint on it.
There were also traces of his DNA on the Hyundai Tucson's armrest, the passenger seat, and the steering wheel. In addition to that, police also claimed they'd found Lyle's hat in the SUV, and it had a bullet hole in the brim. Traces of Lyle and Travis's DNA were reportedly both found on that hat.
The documents explained how authorities believed Travis had used the couple's cell phone around 2 p.m. on July 3rd, so just a few hours after they were spotted on surveillance video leaving St. Albert, fueling up for their road trip. Janice Johnston reported that the couple's phone had been used to make seven calls and send two text messages to a woman named Amber Williams. Amber was later identified to be Travis's ex-girlfriend.
Basically, what all these unsealed documents did was provide a lot of insight as to how, for four years, police had built their case. Essentially, they'd been surveilling Travis's communications from jail and testing what little forensic evidence had been found, as well as leveraging the suspect's own family members against him.
Authorities had also hired jailhouse informants and sent undercover officers in, posing as cellmates in an attempt to get incriminating information from Travis about his involvement in the murders. Some of those efforts panned out, some didn't. In the end, Travis went to trial for Lila Marie's murders on March 8, 2016. The court had opted for a bench trial, which meant there wasn't going to be any jury, and the defense agreed to that.
Proving the McCanns were in fact deceased was part of the uphill battle for the Crown prosecution. You see, without their bodies, the government couldn't know or provide detail about how Lyle and Marie had died. They didn't have bullets to compare or autopsies to delve into. This was a no-body case, and everyone knew it.
When the prosecution presented its case, it addressed this head-on, but in the same breath, it really played up the importance of the physical evidence RCMP detectives had found that definitively put Travis in the McCann's Hyundai Tucson after July 3rd. They also emphasized the fact that Lila Marie's cell phone had been used to call and text Travis' ex-girlfriend.
Prosecutors focused on painting a specific narrative around who Travis Bader was. They detailed how he had a history of using meth, and in July 2010, he'd been addicted to the drug and essentially destitute. They said he was in a bad state as he was on the run for unrelated crimes, and he'd been attempting to reconcile and reunite with his girlfriend, Amber Williams.
All of those things, they argued, led him to desperation and to seek out victims of opportunity who he could get money or valuables from. The prosecution alleged that Travis targeted Lyle and Marie because they were vulnerable and he killed one of them during a violent roadside robbery, then killed the other because they'd been a witness.
But CBC News reported that Travis' attorneys argued that the prosecution's case was too circumstantial, saying, quote, Travis' lawyer went on to say that he planned to question all of the forensic testing that had been done in the case, considering all of the mishaps RCMP detectives had made so far in the case.
He even went as far as suggesting that it was possible Lila and Marie were still alive. But that notion wasn't supported by anyone except the defense. Travis's legal team demanded to get access to all of the DNA analysis that had been done because they believed police investigators had ignored other potential suspects and samples that didn't match Travis. The defense also wanted their own experts to review the findings and possibly conduct new tests.
To help refute the defense's claims that Travis had never been in the McCann's SUV, the prosecution called Trudy Holder and Brett McCann to testify. Trudy said that her dad was always washing, cleaning, and maintaining his camper and car. And Brett agreed and emphasized that the RV was Lyle's, quote, pride and joy, end quote.
When photos of what the Hyundai looked like when it was found abandoned in the woods were shown in court, the vehicle appeared to be extremely messy and dirty inside, and the outside of it was covered in mud, which is something Trudy and Brett said their dad would never have allowed to happen if he'd been the person driving it.
But that kind of back and forth about circumstantial evidence only went so far in the prosecution's favor. You see, there was a big problem they had to address related to the missing couples camper that did not look good for the government or the RCMP.
In court, it was revealed that back in July 2010, when the RCMP said it had its forensics teams return to Minnow Lake to process the charred camper, yeah, well, RCMP staff didn't actually do that, at least not in the way the agency originally said they did. Turns out, when forensic teams went back to the woods to treat the crime scene like an actual crime scene, there was no crime scene anymore. Everything had been cleared.
Apparently, the initial first responders who determined the camper fire was just a property crime and didn't make the connection to the McCanns being unaccounted for had called a tow company to come and remove the burned RV and haul it off to a dumpster. It was only after the RCMP later located the dumpster and processed the charred debris that they realized no human remains were present.
So, as you can imagine, this was a huge chain of custody issue for the investigation and a major blow to the prosecution. Another point of contention was the defense's suggestion that authorities had planted the key to the McCann's Hyundai Tucson in the floorboard of a pickup truck that was later seized as evidence in an unrelated vehicle theft case involving Travis.
According to CBC News, RCMP investigators looking into Lyle and Marie's case had conveniently found the McCann's car key in this stolen pickup truck, a month after Travis came on police's radar as a possible suspect. So you can see why the defense was questioning the timing on that situation.
But prosecutors didn't really go into rebutting that claim. Instead, they called a parade of witnesses who they felt supported the fact that Travis had been driving the McCann's SUV after they went missing. Several of these witnesses were men who'd been friends with Travis in July 2010 or had hung out with him at some point that month. One guy named Dave Olson testified that he'd seen Travis twice on July 3rd.
The first time he bumped into him, Dave said Travis was driving a pickup truck he claimed was stolen and said he didn't have any money. But then, later that same day, Dave saw Travis again. But that time, he said Travis was driving a light green Hyundai Tucson SUV and wasn't hurting for money anymore.
Another man named William said he bought groceries for Travis in late July 2010, and when he delivered the items, Travis made statements loosely referencing the McCann case, and that he'd, quote, Then there was a third friend named Miles, who said he'd also seen Travis driving a light green Hyundai Tucson for a short period of time in early July.
And when he'd asked him about where he got the car from, Miles said Travis acted edgy and upset. Now, all of that testimony was compelling. But when it came time for the defense attorney to cross-examine these witnesses, they scored some small victories. Most of the men admitted to using meth or other drugs during their interactions with Travis in 2010. And it was revealed that at least one of them had been paid thousands of dollars for his testimony.
When pressed hard by Travis's attorney, one of them even ended up admitting that it was possible other men who'd lived similar criminal lifestyles as Travis and were known to steal cars could have been considered suspects in the McCann murders. And to bolster their case, the defense presented several witnesses who claimed to have seen Travis in Edmonton, far away from Minnow Lake Campground, on the morning and afternoon of July 3rd and again on July 4th.
Even more interesting were witnesses the defense put on who testified to seeing Lyle and Marie alive at another campground on the afternoon and evening of July 3rd and 4th. This completely contradicted the prosecution's timeline. You see, the police and the government had always believed the couple had been killed sometime in the late morning or early afternoon on July 3rd. So the defense presenting eyewitnesses who said they'd seen them alive the night of the 3rd was a problem.
But unfortunately for the defense, their witness testimony was also filled with a lot of murky memories and questions as to whether the campground witnesses truly saw the McCanns or maybe just another couple who looked like them. In the end, the big nail in the coffin for Travis was the fact that police had his DNA in Lila Marie's Hyundai Tucson. I think that went a long way for the judge who was ultimately ruling in this case.
According to CTV News, in September 2016, Travis was convicted of second-degree murder for Lyle and Marie's deaths. The downgraded charge of second-degree murder came as a result of the judge not being able to find evidence that supported the element of premeditation. But despite that, the second-degree verdict came with an automatic life sentence and meant that Travis wouldn't be eligible for parole for at least a decade.
This decision was a great relief to Brett and Trudy, the couple's adult children. There was still a long way to go before their pain would end.
The Toronto Star reported that in October 2016, after his conviction, Travis appealed his case, and due to a technicality and some outdated criminal code language the presiding judge had used in his verdict, Travis won his appeal. And his murder conviction was reduced to two counts of manslaughter instead of second-degree murder.
According to reporter Julia Parrish, he was sentenced in January 2017 to a single term of life in prison, with the option for parole after serving a few years. In a strange twist, just a few months after his sentencing, he was given the chance to apply for a form of parole in Canada that's referred to as "unescorted absences from prison." Basically, unsupervised visits out of prison with the promise that you'll be good.
The McCann family was obviously horrified by that idea, and they fought hard to petition local political leaders to enact legislation that would bar felons who'd been convicted in no body cases from getting any form of parole, especially unescorted absences from prison. The McCann's efforts gained traction thanks to a newly elected Alberta lawmaker who befriended the family.
All the while, Travis continued to proclaim his innocence, and he filed appeals and requests for a reduced sentence, but Canada's highest court denied him. Today, he remains in prison, and the bodies of his victims have never been found. The last time any news agency published a story about him, it was the summer of 2021, and he said he was still planning to apply for parole when it came time, but when or if that will happen is still to be determined.
Something that really stuck with me while researching and writing this episode, aside from all the complicated courtroom drama and the fact that Lyle and Marie have never been found, is who these two victims were to the people who loved them and what their lives meant to the folks who were lucky enough to call them friends. I was truly touched by how deeply they seemed to care for and love one another.
An article for the Edmonton Journal written by Richard Warnicka said the McCann's neighbors often observed how sweet Lyle and Marie were with one another and how in love they'd stayed even into their golden years. Which makes the fact that they likely were killed in such a senseless way so close to being able to enjoy their remaining years together all the more heartbreaking. One neighbor described how they would often go for walks together holding hands and that Lyle would refer to Marie as his darling.
Being in their upper 70s, they lived a long and full life together. Lyle had been a truck driver for years, and Marie had been a stay-at-home mom raising their three kids. And just when the time had come for them to travel and enjoy their lives as seniors, it was all ripped away from them. I personally think the gross errors law enforcement made investigating this case are inexcusable. Who knows? Maybe if the RCMP had acted faster and more professionally, Lyle and Marie may have been found.
Travis might not have had so much of a head start, and the case against him wouldn't have been fraught with so many issues. Maybe if investigators had paid closer attention to detail, they could have spared the McCann children years of heartache and painful visits to court. What an alternate reality might have held is a moot point. Lyle and Marie are gone. Their killer can't hurt anyone else ever again.
And the only way their relatives have been able to carry on is to focus on honoring their lives and legacy the best way they can. Park Predators is an Audiochuck original show. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Hi there. I'm a PBM. I'm also an insurance company. We middlemen are often owned by the same company. So, hard to tell apart.
We control what medicines you get and what you pay at the pharmacy. That's why today, more than half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to middlemen like us. Middlemen are driving medicine costs, and you don't know the half of it. Get the whole story at phrma.org slash middlemen. Paid for by Pharma.
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