Chynna Noelle Deese and Lucas Robertson Fowler loved traveling. The American woman and her Australian boyfriend met overseas, and they planned to tour Canada’s national parks together. It was on a highway in British Columbia that their bodies were found last week. Now police are looking for clues to the couple’s slaying while their families are grieving on two continents.
The bodies of Deese, 24, of Charlotte, and Fowler, 23, were located by police on Monday on Alaska Highway 97, about 12 miles south of Liard Hot Springs, according to Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Also found was a blue 1986 Chevrolet van, which, family said, belongs to Fowler.
It is not yet clear whether Deese and Fowler were targeted or if this was a crime of opportunity, RCMP Sgt. Janelle Shoihet said in a statement Friday.
Police are asking for anyone with information to come forward. Though remote, the area is popular with nature enthusiasts and tourists, Shoihet said.
Deese and Fowler, who first met at a Croatian hostel in 2017, were just beginning a long road trip, according to The Charlotte Observer. “They were deeply in love,” Deese’s brother, British Deese, told the newspaper. “They met traveling and that’s just what they did — travel.”
Fowler had been working on a ranch in Canada, and the pair had planned on staying there before visiting national parks around the country, the Observer reported.
Fowler’s family, accompanied by members of the New South Wales police force in Australia, is traveling to Canada.
“To lose someone so young and vibrant, who was traveling the world and enjoying life to the full, is devastating,” Fowler’s family said in a statement.
Canadian authorities are asking anyone who was in the area between Sunday afternoon July 14 and Monday night July 15 to speak with police. They are looking for dashboard camera footage, information on the blue van or anyone who might have seen the couple.