Into Thin Air – Kamloops RCMP & BC Crime Stoppers | Tip reporting offers crucial help in long-term investigations

“I think most police officers get into this line of work because we want to help and we believe in justice, and we believe in answers.”

She says once someone is reported missing, how the investigation proceeds depends on the individual situation and what details are included at the start.

“Generally, we do database queries, we may obtain statements, conduct neighbourhood inquiries, that sort of thing, which often lead to other avenues of investigation that we can continue on.”

While disappearances are regularly featured in local news stories, most missing person files in Kamloops are resolved promptly after the report is made.

“Often when we do a media release, and it goes out there and people start calling in, that is often a huge contributor to us locating the missing persons quite quickly. That is a very important piece for us,” Lucas explains.

But there are several open files that are years — even decades — old. At that point, police contact with families tends to come in the form of annual updates.

“The common theme with all the families is that they don’t want us to forget about their missing loved one, so it is important in the phone conversations with them that they understand that our file is open. That it’s active. That we are accepting any tips that we receive and as per RCMP policy we do conduct annual reviews on those files and liaise with the family members.”

It’s not an ideal phone call to make, especially when there’s no change in the investigational information.

“We’re all human beings. We can all relate on some level. There is empathy involved. It’s pretty difficult not to put yourself in the position of a family who is struggling and doesn’t know where their family member is. It can weigh on your mind, for sure,” describes Lucas. “But the main goal is to locate somebody and move an investigation forward, so we have to carry on with that.”

Garry Kerr is a retired RCMP Staff Sergeant who worked on multiple different missing person cases over his policing career. He can recall several long-term investigations that did have resolutions, even decades after the person disappeared.

“There’s been a number of cases over the years. The Monica Jack case certainly comes to mind. Monica disappeared from Nicola Lake in 1978 and her remains were not found until 1996. And it wasn’t until 2014, I believe, that a person, Gary Taylor Handlen, was charged with her first degree murder and he was convicted,” recalls Kerr. “Another case that comes to mind, one even closer to Kamloops was Angel Fehr. She disappeared… in the year 2000 and her remains were found I think in 2019. So again, it does happen where a person goes missing and it’s many, many years before their remains are found.”

Kerr feels strongly about maintaining calls for information, no matter how long a case has been open.

“I think it’s crucial that the information be kept in the public’s eye, especially when it comes to the anniversary of when a person goes missing or some significant date that’s attached to it.” he adds, “because I truly believe that, in 99 per cent of the serious cases where public pleas are made, someone other than the person responsible usually has information.”

Some people do have information, and don’t want their name attached to it. Anonymous tip reporting is the whole reason Crime Stoppers was created. Crime Stoppers started in the U.S in the 1970s, with a crime reenactment and a call for information airing on a local television station. Since then, chapters have sprung up around the world, 14 of which are in B.C.

“That very simple idea, the method, is still the same. When you leave a tip, you remain anonymous. We don’t have caller ID at our call centre. If you submit a tip online, no IP address is ever tracked. We have no way of knowing who that person is at the other end of the line, or the other end of a screen,” says Gillian Millam, who is the executive director of BC Crime Stoppers.

The organization says the anonymous method is incredibly popular and the stats back that up. In 2024, CrimeStoppers BC received more than 9,700 tips.

“That’s 9,700 pieces of information that would have been lost had we not given those people a voice,” she notes.

According to the category information from that past year, Millam says more than 200 of those tips specifically pertained to missing person cases.

“There were 63 (tips) last year in the Kamloops area, so people do talk out about missing people.”

Even with the introduction of online tip reporting, the Crime Stoppers phone line still collects about 40 per cent of submissions. To protect the anonymity of a tipster, Millam is adamant that Crime Stoppers will not comment on whether a specific investigation was solved because of a tip.

Millam says it boils down to protecting someone’s identity and protecting the level of trust they’ve established that their services are truly anonymous.

“There are some cases where people don’t want to speak to the police. Either they come from a country — you know we are such a multicultural country and some people are mistrustful of police. They haven’t had a good experience in the past in their home country. People don’t want to go to court, they don’t want anyone to know that they spoke out, they are in fear of reprisal.”

Sometimes, Crime Stoppers offers reward money for tips that turn out to be successful. But that’s not the big motivator behind the thousands of tips they get every year.

“The interesting part about all of that… we found over the years, hardly any of the rewards are being collected now. People aren’t doing this for the money,” reiterates Millam. “People are doing this to do the right thing, to make their community safer.”

The idea that ‘someone knows something’ may not apply to every missing persons case. But for the people who do know what happened to someone who disappeared, and haven’t said anything about it yet, anonymous reporting is ready for if and when they decide to share what they know.

“There will be the odd case where only the person responsible will be aware as to what’s happened,” adds Kerr. “But generally speaking, it’s human nature that people want to tell somebody about what they’ve done, whether it’s good or bad.”

“Small bits of information that may not seem important to the person who has the information and thinks maybe it’s not worth it to share, they don’t know the bigger picture that we see and that tiny bit of information could be very important,” stresses Lucas. “It’s like pieces of a puzzle, right? It’s a small piece but in the grand scheme of things it can make a huge impact.”

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This segment, along with all of our past episodes, can be viewed online here.

We’d like to express our immense gratitude to those family members, friends and investigators who shared their stories with us, and wish them comfort in the days ahead.

If you have information that could help solve a missing persons case, please contact police in your area. To submit tips and information anonymously through Kamloops Crime Stoppers, you can call 1-800-222-TIPS, or us Crime Stoppers secure web form. Thank you for watching.

by Dylana Kneeshaw

Into Thin Air – Kamloops RCMP & BC Crime Stoppers | Tip reporting offers crucial help in long-term investigations

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