Murdered Aussie Lucas Fowler ‘a wonderful boy’, says dad

The shooting deaths of Australian Lucas Fowler and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese have prompted outpourings of grief.

Lucas Fowler and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese, who were found dead on the Alaska Highway in British Columbia. Picture: AAP.

A broken-down blue van, a remote stretch of highway in Canada, two murdered travellers and seemingly too few clues.

The shooting deaths of Australian Lucas Fowler, 23, and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese, 24, have prompted outpourings of grief from two families and sparked a major manhunt.

Mr Fowler, from Sydney, was the beloved son of NSW Police Force chief inspector Stephen Fowler, who has arrived in Canada with other family members and two homicide detectives for support.

Speaking while in transit at Los Angeles airport, he said his son was “just a wonderful boy”.

“He’s a loss to so many ­people,” he told Nine News.

“And his girlfriend also — it’s just devastating. Our heart goes out to the whole of her family. We are just crushed.”

The comments were echoed by relatives of Ms Deese, from North Carolina, who had considered her Aussie boyfriend part of the family. “I just want to know why,” her mother, Sheila Deese, told US media. “What was the purpose of it?”

That is the question facing Canadian investigators, who are working to determine whether the murders were the result of a robbery gone wrong or there had been another motivation.

They have sought to hose down theories about a serial killer, but the discovery of another body on a highway 700km away on Friday fuelled speculation.

In that case, a man was found dead near a burning pickup truck south of the Stikine River Bridge on Highway 37 in northern British Columbia.

“Northern BC is a really big area and yet they don’t have a lot of these events,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police corporal Chris Manseau said. “Two of them have happened within a couple of days and people want to speculate.

“The last I heard, there was nothing to tie either of those two together, although investigators are looking at all of the leads.”

Mr Fowler and Ms Deese were a couple clearly in love, travelling the world together since meeting at a Croatian hostel in 2017.

Relatives thought they would one day marry. Instead, they were found dead on the side of the Alaska Highway after their 1986 Chevrolet van broke down 20km south of Liard Hot Springs.

“I want this to be personal, this was someone’s son, someone’s daughter,” Sheila Deese said. “She always came home at some point and it just doesn’t seem real because in my mind, I’m hoping she’s going to come home.”

NSW police have confirmed it was not standard practice for a homicide victim’s relatives to be accompanied overseas by the state’s detectives, but this was personal, involving a high-ranking officer and member of the police family.

The detectives — Chief Inspector Wayne Walpole and Sergeant Adam Childs — will act as liaison officers and will not be involved in investigations.

Mr Fowler had been working as a ranch hand in British Columbia. Ms Deese went there to meet him, before a planned three-week road trip to Alaska.

Canadian couple Curtis and Sandra Broughton stopped to offer assistance about 3.20pm last Sunday. Mr Broughton, a mechanic, said he spoke to Mr Fowler but the young Australian seemed to know how to fix the van.

NSW Assistant Commissioner Mark Jones has said the couple was shot in “what can only be described as horrific ­circumstances”.

Additional reporting: AAP