Teenage B.C. fugitives Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod found dead near Manitoba's Nelson River

by Charlie Smith on August 7th, 2019 at 12:57 PM

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"The search is over," Manitoba RCMP tweeted this hour.

Officers have found the bodies of two men that they believe are Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod, the two B.C. fugitives who were the subject of a nationwide manhunt.

The corpses were found near the shoreline of the Nelson River, about eight kilometres where the pair had abandoned a burned-out vehicle.

Schmegelsky, 18, and McLeod, 19, were charged with second-degree murder in the death of UBC botany instructor Len Dyck. His body was found south of Dease Lake, B.C., on July 21.

The Port Alberni teens and former Walmart workers were also prime suspects in the murder of a young tourist couple, American Chynna Deese and Australian Lucas Fowler.

The two travellers were shot dead along the Alaska Highway and their bodies were found on July 15.

The Mounties tweeted that they knew they needed "just one piece of evidence to move the search forward".

That occurred when they found items on the shoreline of the Nelson River on August 2 that could be directly linked to Schmegelsky and McLeod.

Specialized RCMP teams then searched "nearby high-probability areas", the Mounties tweeted, "leading officers to the discovery of the two male bodies, in the dense brush, within 1 km from where the items were found".