Eerie similarities between Canada murder spree and book of teen’s father
The father of the teen accused of murdering Aussie tourist Lucas Fowler and his girlfriend penned a book with shocking similarities to the murder spree his son and best friend allegedly embarked upon.
Exclusive: Suspected teen thrill-killer Bryer Schmegelsky's troubled father recently attempted to publish a book that has eerie similarities to the murder spree his son and best friend allegedly embarked on last month, in which a young Aussie backpacker and two others were killed.
Alan Schmegelsky's book reveals an interest in homicides and cop procedures, referring four times to police chases for murderers and gruesome serial killer cases.
He mentions a “province-wide manhunt” and “multimillion-dollar, province-wide search” and writes about two brutal serial killers in the rambling 131-page memoir.
Schmegelsky Sr also claims police in his home town cast him as a “homicidal, suicidal, schizophrenic maniac off his meds and going to murder”.
It comes as Canadian authorities revealed autopsies showed Bryer and his friend Kam McLeod killed themselves shortly after they ditched their car in remote wilderness on July 22.
MORE: How police search for killer teens went wrong
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said the pair died a “few days” after they were last seen in July ”in what appears to be suicides by gunfire”.
“While both individuals were deceased for a number of days before they were found, the exact time and date of their deaths are not known,” a statement from RCMP released Monday local time said.
The pair was suspected of killing Australian backpacker Lucas Fowler, 23, and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese, 24, who were found beside a remote road British Columbia road known as the “highway of tears” because of a series of murders attributed to a suspected serial killer, on July 15.
Four days later, police found the body if Canadian botanist Leonard Dyck, 64, prompting a three week, nationwide manhunt that spanned four provinces and stretched the distance of Sydney to Perth.
Autopsies were completed on Schmegelsky and McLeod over the weekend after their bodies were found alongside two guns, 8km from the burnt out car they abandoned, a stolen RAV4 belonging to Mr Dyck.
While the autopsy has provided resolution to the mystery of how the pair died, police say they expect their investigation into how and why they committed the murders to take several weeks. They have engaged behavioural scientists to try to find a motive.
In his book, which he attempted to publish last October, Schmegelsky Sr devotes a chapter to Triago Andretti, a man who dismembered his wife and killed another woman in Winnipeg, and also mentions the ‘Merritt Mountain Butcher’, Allan Schoenborn, who killed his three young children in 2008.
The memoir, Red Flagged, is a bizarre 131-page screed covering the last few decades of Schmegelsky Sr’s life, and gives a shocking insight into the upbringing of his son, now an alleged serial killer.
The text is laced with vicious criticism of Bryer's mother, Deborah Sweeney, his ex-wife whom he calls “hex”, detailing the bitter custody battle over their son. But also threaded throughout the book are a disturbing number of references to serial killers and manhunts for criminals.
In one chapter, Schmegelsky Sr describes what is likely a fictional account of spending “eighteen hours a day for thirty days straight” locked in a cell with double homicide convict Andretti.
He describes in graphic detail how Andretti “tied his wife to a tree and cut her into tiny little bits while she was still alive”, claiming that Canadian Mounties “traced his steps backwards; they found a lot of bodies”.
“I wasn’t afraid of Triago, I assessed him in ten seconds,” the father wrote.
“I spent thirty days with Triago, I know more than the authorities do about him. Highway of Tears we call it.”
Schmegelsky makes a second reference to serial killers in a confusing mention of notorious killer Schoenborn, shoehorning a paragraph about the man's shocking triple filicide between seemingly unrelated pieces of dialogue between characters in the chapter.
“A province-wide manhunt is ongoing; the Merritt Mountain Butcher, Allan Schoenborn, WANTED FOR MURDERING [capitalisation in context] his three little children,” Schmegelsky Sr wrote.
“Schizophrenic, Armed and Dangerous. DO NOT APPROACH!”
The troubled man reveals in the book how he struggled for years with his mental health, claiming his court-ordered psychologist diagnosed him as “delusional” and threatened to have him committed to a mental institution.
In an interview last month, after the police hunt for his son began, Schmegelsky said he feared Bryer had a death wish.
“He's on a suicide mission. He wants his pain to end,” he told Canadian Press.
“Basically, he's going to be dead today or tomorrow. I know that. Rest in peace, Bryer. I love you. I'm so sorry all this had to happen.”
He said his son had struggled to cope with his parents' acrimonious split in 2005, which ended in court when Schmegelsky Sr was charged with criminal harassment of his ex-wife.
The book lays bare the dysfunctional household in which the allegedly murderous teenager was raised from 2000, with Schmegelsky Sr claiming his ex-wife would berate him for not being rich.
Sweeney did not respond to a request for comment about the lurid claims by her troubled ex-husband.
The father compared his wife to the fictional character Dr Jekyll, saying she ‘turned into Mrs. Hyde’ after they married, and called her a ‘sociopath’.
‘“Why aren’t you rich? I married you because you’re supposed to be f—ing rich!” was her favourite saying,” he wrote.
Schmegelsky Sr does not mention his son by name in the book, but describes how in 2008 his ex-wife pressed criminal harassment charges against him, leading to restrictions on his access to then nine-year-old Bryer.
The 53-year-old construction worker wrote that he turned himself in to police over the harassment charge, rather than prompting a “multimillion-dollar, province-wide search” – much like the search for his suspected killer son.
Schmegelsky Sr complained that after turning himself in, RCMP wrote a report for the judge in his case casting him as a “homicidal, suicidal schizophrenic maniac”.
In a passage of his book describing the court report about him, Schmegelsky Sr wrote: “This proceeding contained three reports: The RCMP Report; the homicidal, suicidal schizophrenic maniac off his meds and going to murder. The Forensic Psychiatric Assessment Report; the delusional, untreatable and needs medication for the rest of his life. And the Probation Services Report; hard worker, never missed an appointment, always courteous, never does drugs, no apparent alcohol problem, but HE CREATED A WEBSITE THAT SAYS HIS SON IS A CRACK BABY!”, he wrote.
Schmegelsky Sr revealed that after his criminal conviction, his fortnightly visits to see his son were supervised by a social worker, and claimed that his psychologist diagnosed him as ‘delusional’ and threatened to have him committed to a mental institution in 2011.
In another chapter Schmegelsky Sr claims he had an affair with another therapist who was appointed after his 2010 harassment conviction, and describes a steamy sex scene in a hotel on Vancouver Island.
It is unclear whether the encounter was a fantasy.
According to the manuscript's cover, Schmegelsky Sr wrote the text in 12 days while drunk.
“I didn’t write it, I got my soul drunk and let him loose on the keyboard,” the 53-year-old wrote on the book's cover.
Schmegelsky Sr tried to get his 131-page work published by New York-based Austin McCauley Publishers in October last year, without success, according to a letter he showed this newspaper.
The alleged murderer's opportunistic father sent out copies of his book to international media last month, even as the Canadian Armed Forces deployed a military plane to search for the two wanted teenagers.
Pushing his book, he bragged “I am a really good writer”, and added that the book was meant to be published last month, the same day his son and McLeod are suspected of killing three people.
“I put release on hold, it was supposed to be released on Monday,” he said.
“I wrote my book so Bryer and I could buy a home,” he said. “That was our plan.”
He said that now he is not selling the book for money and merely wants it publicised.
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