Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Operating within an earshot of Canada’s infamous Highway of Tears, one of Canada’s youngest serial killers was just 19 when he brutally murdered his first victim – and he wouldn’t stop there.
The vast, forested landscape of British Columbia is both a beautiful and ideal place for serial killers. One of them was Cody Legebokoff.
British Colunbia is really a fascinating place and it’s incredibly isolated,we’re in the middle of a sea of trees,British Columba isa bout 1,7 times the size of France,you have these little communities that for years didn’t have rinning water or electricity.
Cutting through these rural communities is a highway that for the last few decades has become increasingly notorious,highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, it is 725 kilometers long.
Highway 16 in British Colombia has a much more well- known name,It’s often referred to as the ” highway of tears”.
It relates back to the incredible amount of murdered and missing women and girls that have simply just disappeared on that highway.
When these cases happen, it hits close to home.
Usually ,they’re hitchhiking and doing so out of desperation, they really have no other form of transportation.
Can you imagine a 720- kilometer stretch, there’s maybe a town every hour…
As a hiding place, this highway is deal.
a body might not be found ever or maybe never for years…
Fort St. James , a small village just off the highway of tears, is home to Cody legebokoff, his born in 1990 and grows up close to this infamous stretch of road.
By all appearances , Cody came from a great family, didn’t want for much growung up , had everything, all the comforts of home,essentially ,his full life ahead of him.
Legebokoff was, in some respectes, a normal kid,he was a big kid ,kind of an early bloomer in some ways,but one of the things that stood out about him is ,he loved to play hokey, but he stood out in terms of his level of violence on the hokey rink.
Other parents would take their children off the ice when he was participating in hokey because of his aggressive nature, we all can come out and be very, very aggressive at certain times, the difference is ,are we able to control our anger and not have it come out that serious violent acts occur to other people?
Legerbokoff has an even darker side away from the ice hockey rink.
Here ,you have someone who’s a deer hunter, and he is hunting the deer but maims them first and then goes with his hands to finish the deal of killing them.
This is somebody who would literally beat a deer to death, the fact that he’s a hunter doesn’t surprise,but the fact that he took pleasure in seeing those animals suffer, that’s staggering, actually.
It is a marker, it is a risk factor for violence against humans and yet in some respects , it was compartmentalized because he was very well -liked and got along and had plenty of friends.
The hardest part of all is anyone that knew him never suspected for a minute that any of this would ever gone on.
After graduating high school, Legebokoff moves 100 miles from rural Fort St James to the city of Prince George.
Cariboo- Prince George, have a tremendous amount of First Nation communities in and around the area, and gradually over time , as forestry industry has been decimated ,there’s a lot of economic hardship.
You’ve got families that are finding it harder to make ends meet, you have substance abuse issues , you have dometic abuse issues.
Cody gets a job as a mechanic ,starts a relationship, and appears to quickly aapt to city life, if you want to find trouble , it’s not difficult to find in Prince George.
It could be a bit of a party town, there are certainly escort services in the city,it’s not difficult to find drugs in this town.
So ,imagine moving to this urban environment,this environment with all of these different stimulus ,all this different ideas , all these different things coming at you, from you coming from a small rural environment ,that’s a lot.
We can now see the potential as he’s in this urban area for him to escalate…
Cody Legebokoff seemed to like party a lot, and he wasfairly popular with the girls and he really got into the cocaine, Legebokoff ,almost lived a double life.
You have somebody who is working at Ford dealership ,who’s got a relationship, who people see as very personable,as likable , as funny.
And then you have this other side,it’s like the dark depths of the soul that she starts seeing,here you have an individual who is now working, but the cocaine addiction is their, girlfriend in the middle.
The idea to juggle all of those , this is more stress on an individual,this anger , this aggression is already there, you have elements starting to line up now that can lead someone to be involved in very violent activities.
.Cody Legebokoff, now aged 20 ,has a girlfriend and his working as a mechanic, he also hiding a cocaine addiction, and has started chatting with a 15 year old girl online- Loren Leslie.
Loren Leslie is a very innocent 15 year old girl, she meets this predator on a Canadian internet site called Nexopia,from the very beginning , it is clear that the agendas are very ,very different.
From the very beginning ,Cody starts saying things about sex to Loren,very graphic things about sex, you can see that this makes Loren very uncomfortable and the way she handles that in their communication online is she tries to ignore it.
And then she tries to say to him;
” hey,that’s not what i’m looking for,i’m looking for something different.”.
it’s different to see the differences in what these two people are saying.
November 27 , 2010
On the night of November,she tells her mom she’s going to have coffe with a friend and she goes and she meets this person,this predator at a school on the playground.
He offers to get her some alcohol, which she’s much too young to be drinking but she finally says,” ok” .
There were two RCMP officers , one from the Prince George detachment and one from the Vanderhoof detachment, that were meeting on highway 16 late at night.
It is amongst one of the darkest highways, just ahead of them ,this truk pulls out of a isolated logging road and at a high rate of speed kind of fishtailing down the road.
To his credit , this cop’s spidey senses just start going off,puts his lights on, calls for backup, and puls over this black truck.
Think about the remoteness of the highway of tears,but can you imagine making a traffic stop in a remote area like this?
The police officer coem up to the window,his shining his light ,he looks at his credentials,and he notices that there’s this kind of red smudge n this person ,the driver’s chin and it looks like its blood.
Meanwhile ,his backup person comes,they start looking around and they found blood, there was a knife in the car that’s got blood on it,there’s a wrench in the car that’s got blood on it, they found blood just about everywhere .
The first response from him is,”well , i’ve been hunting ,been paching deer” and that’s what happened .” ok, blood on a wrench?”the officers continues on.
Even though the police don’t at all believe Cody’s story, they’re going to check it out, they go back to this logging road and they discover the worst case scenario.
They discoverthe body of a young girl who’s in the snow,she has been beaten so badly that her face is unrecognizable.
They have some clue,though , in terms of who she is, because they also had found this realy adorable monkey backpack.
They found a wallet , a polka dot wallet and in that has got
Loren Leslie’sidentification card ,her medical card.
CODY LEGEBOKOFF IS CHARGED WITH FIRST- DEGREE MURDER.
HE DENIES IT.
This was somebody who was not out of control of his life, this was somebody who had a girlfriend,this was somebody who was holding down a job.
So, this is not somebody whose life is going off the rails becaue of their cocaine use.
When you look at the premeditated and calculating way that this offender , this predator goes online , meets somebody , and that’s not he kind of murder that you see with somebody who’s psychotic because of some drug fueled frenzy.
Legebokoff is held in custody. his apartment is searched ans he swabbed for DNA as police began preparing evidence for his trial.
12 months after Loren’s death , after examining new evidence,police contact Loren’s family with shocking news.
About a year later , police connected the dots and found out that Cody was in fact being charged with three more murders.
You never know what’s going on in the house beside you, with this case , that’s probably one of the most terrifying things.
Cody Legebokoff is in custody, charged with the first degree murder of 15 year old Loren Leslie ,police now suspect Loren isn’t his first vicitm.
Tey’ve been investigating the murders in missing persons cases of three other women.
This happened over a course of a long period of time, when you have one body, another body completely unrelated, you don’t believe that you have a serial killer walking amongst us.
And it was only after the discovery of Loren that investigators were able to really piece together that , “holy smokes , we have a serial killer amongst us”
The unsolved murders and missing person cases date back to over a year before Loren Leslie was killed.
On October 9. 2009, local woman Jill stuchenko is reported missing.
Jill Stuchenko, a 35 year old mother of five , who is very much deep into her addictions, she was kind of known and she had friends who wanted to get the word out about her disappearance .
This is a woman who had some struggles in her life,she had a pretty significant cocaine addiction that she was battling,but she was also the mother of five children and she really , wanted to get her life straightened out so she could take care of her children ,and she was just having a difficult time with it.
October 20, 2009
Stuchenko was found half buried in a garvel pit just outside Prince George.
She had been completely mutilated, there was evidence that she had been beaten with a blunt object, she had been stabbed,there was evidence that she had been sexually assaulted,it was just an absolutely horrendous crime scene.
Whenever they find a body , they do a lot of forensics,they just gather as much evidence asthey can,they’ll close the scene down for a day or so.
By comaring DNA records from Jill Stuchenko to a stain found on Legebokoff’s sofa, police now believe he is Jill’s killer.
This is Cody Legebokoff’s first murder, at leasts first confirmed murder.
Cody would often contact women who were sex workers,he also would get them to get crack, cocaine for him, he seemed to have a pretty significant addiction around this time to crack cocaine.
And so, those both may have been in play in terms of when she came over to his apartment,we know that she died an absolutely horrendous death based on autopsy results.
The first murder was probably very opportunistic, and he found that “well, wait a second , i got away with this” and it was easy to do and he had it in him,and that just fueled the passion to do more.
September 1,2010
12 weeks before Loren Leslie’s murder.
Another vulnerable woman is reported missing from Prince George.
Natasha Montgomery was a girl from Quesnel, which is a small community , probably about an hour and a half drive south of Prince George.
Came from a good family, did a lot of figure skating as a youngster and sort of lost her way when she came up to Prince George.
Natasha Montgomery was 23 years old,she had struggled with crack cocaine, that was kind of a moneky on her back that she had a really hard time getting rid off.
She sometimes resorted to sex work as a way to supplement her income, so , she was really somebody who was in a high -risk category.
She was missing ,and quite honestly,every couple of weeks somebody goes missing and more often than not, they sort of resurface,but she hadn’t resurfaced.
Natasha Montgomery is still missing and presumed dead when Legebokoff is charged with Loren’s murder.
Police find Natasha’s DNA on Legebokoff’s clothing…
and various places in his apartment,they blue- lighted it and there were swabs everywhere, and it looked like he basically started chasing her from his bedroom into the kitchen and beat her to death.
Now ,we have another victim that’s linked to him because of DNA evidence found in his apartment,if the police have Monthomery’s body (that has never been found)
We just never know how many others are out there, wether it be on the highway of tears or some other place, that if one is already killed , then how many other victims may still be out there?
There is 11 months between Cody’s first murder and his second one.
Is it possible that he did other murders during this time? it is, there certainly have been serial killers who have started out slowly and then ramped up.
They did one in one year , one the next year , one six months later, and ramped up, so it’s possible that he waited for a year.
But it’s also possible that there are other victims that we don’t know about.
September 10, 2010
Cynthia Maas, a mother of a young girl, is reported missing.
The best way to describe her ,is through her sister,the way she describes Cynthia was a very trusting,a bit of a hippie,it sounds like,she was quite the pleasant person.
Cynthia seemed to struggle at times with cocaine addiction and also would engage in sex work, as a way to supplement her income.
On September the 10th ,2010 , Cynthia Maas was murdered , leaving behind one child to now be without a mom.
Maas is found in a wooded park in Prince George .
One of Legebokoff’s socks is found to cotain DNA matching Cynthia’s.
Her DNA is also found on an axe in Legebokoff’s bedroom.
What we see with the brutal murder of Ms. Maas is just pure aggression and violence coming out,we’ve seen his violence with animals and the way that he hunts and the way he kills with his hands,we hope that we don’t see that move to a human being,but we do with the victim of Maas.
These three victims are clearly targeted , they ‘re vulnerable and they’re individuals that Cody knows he can take advantage of.
Most of his victims are mothers , who now leave behind children who will never see the smile ,the affection of their mother again.
Legebokoff arranged to meet Loren Leslie less than three months after murdering Cynthia Maas,Loren had no way of knowing that the gut she met online was already a serial killer because until he met Loren, he’d gotten away with it.
Cody Legebokoff was really certain counting on nobody finding Loren Leslie’s body.
The way he was trying to get away from the scene,it sounded like he had probably a lot of guilt on his mind , a lot of fear.
It’s challenging for those that go missing that may be on the street and maybe do not have regular contact with loved ones.
It also speaks to how incredibly fortunate that RCMPE officer on the road was because if they hadn’t caught him that night , they likely wouldn’t have caught him for a while.
The way the bodies were positioned and the injuries that they suffered and what he did to them afterwards,it was definitely the signs of a pattern.
If he was not stopped , would we have the ability to catch this individual because he is moving on from people being involved ,women being involved in the sex trade to people who are not involved in the sex trade.
We often like to put our serial killers in a box, where we can find that these similar characteristics are telling us or giving us some sort of profile or indicator of where he or she may go next.
This switch- up is a difficult one to take , and thank goodness he was taken into custody!!
June 2,2014
Legebokoff is on trial for 4 counts of first-degree murder.
Legebokoff’s heavy use of illegal drugs is exposed at the trial.
He was living with three girls, and one of the girls testified that she saw him, his nose was bleeding into a toilet, just kind of warn him ,like ;
“you’re doing way too much cocaine”
Friends of Jill stuchenko, Natasha Montgomery and Cynthia,Maas also testify in court, they really wanted to get their stories out.
They were scared ,they were really worried that they could be the next victim,and they really wanted to put him away.
Pretty much ,the first thing that the Crown prosecutor says was we have 3,000 pages of forensic evidence, they weren’t going to missa bit on this one.
August 26, 2014
Legebokoff takes the stand with his own version of how Jill Stuchenko , Natasha Monthomery and Cynthia Maas died.
He basically said ,well these three women were in trouble with the local drug dealers and , you know, they wanted to get tthem beacause they owed them money.
And Mr X and a Mr Y and a Mr Z, said, Cody , you got to help us out,he said that he was the one who handed him the weapons, and these characters actually dispose of the bodies.
it was so outrageouse and so ridiculous.
Legebokoff has another explanation for Loren’s death, he claims that her death is because she brought a knife with her ans self – inflicted this harm on herself.
She somehow escaped from the truck and she was doing this to herself.
And that he decided , well, ok , she’s done for ,i’m going to just put her out of her misery with this wrench….
He truly seems to have a lack of understanding about normal emotions and he also seems to have a limited ability to feel them, you know ,when you hear him talk about the murders .
There’s just no sense of emotions , remorse,regret, guilt, or any of the things that we would hope to see,he was going to rol lthe dice and see if he could fool everybody.
The jury are considering their verdict at Legebokoff’s murder trial, his defense claim Loren Leslie tried to take her own life and that three unnamed individuals are responsible for the murders of Jill Stuchenko, Natasha Montgomery and Cynthia Maas.
September 11,2014
The jury reach their verdict- Guilty
Legebokoff is convicted in September of 2014 of four counts of murder.
What’s interesting is how rare it is for a serial killer to start in their teens and that speaks to the level of depravity, to some extent , in Cody.
About 14% of serial killers start in their teens.
Remember, the brain does not fully form until about age 25, so he has the impulsivity of a teenager with the anger that’s developed that usually doesn’t make its way to criminal activity of this nature until one is in their late 20s or 30s that shows itself in the aggressive nature of how these people were killed.
Primarily at circumstances ,trauma, and those kinds of things, and it’s easy to forget that there are people who seem to, for whatever reason ,biologically, seem to have something missing.
And Cody is an example of that,i would say he was a predator, he prayed on the weak, he prayed on the most vulnerable, and he tookfull advantages of their disadvantages.
As his methods and modus operandi kind of evolved with the others.
March 2019.
The heartache for the families of Legebokoff’s victims continues.
5 years into his 25 year sentence ,Legebokoff is transferred from a maximum to a medium security prison .
What they do is they give prisoners a bit of a faint hope, as a way to make them behave themselves and kind of do the right things and , not be incorrigible and not make it difficult on the staff.
It gives them that bit of incentive and keeps them out of trouble.
It seems he’s following the rules and therefore he is rewarded with being in a less secure prison,what that means, more privileges, a better environment.
25 years is a long time, some people become institutionalized and follow the rules and make their way toward rehabilitation,others take the time to simply say ;
” let me go along with this, let mme play the game ” if you will, “and do my time and then go back to whatever.”
In a Written statement at the time, Correction Services Canada said:
All offenders are thoroughly evaluated and placed in facilites that can assure their security and meet their progam needs.
Rehabilitative efforts , leading to a gradual and controlled release , have proven to be a better way of protecting the public”
A lot of people are very angry that this has happened just on principle, the whole turmoil that he caused these people.
How can Corrections Canada transfer this horrific killer.
Canada’s youngest serial killer, he’s shown no signs of remorse, and still holds the information to th whereabouts of one of his vicitms.
When you speak with the victim’s families, it’s absolutely heartbreaking and overwhelmingly ,the question is ,.who fight for us? where is our voice?
You can’t help but get emotional and get drawn into it.
We ‘ve never seen any remorse from this person,this is somebody who to this day is saying he didn’t do it.
He’s blaming it on three other people,there’s no evidence they even exist,and so when you look at risk factors for recidivism,they’re all over the place.
He has the capacity to kill again.
How many more are there ,actually out there that he has murdered?