Canadian police hunting two teenage serial-murder suspects sent a dive team to scour a river in Manitoba after a wrecked rowboat was found there last week.
Officers in a helicopter spotted the battered aluminum boat Friday on the shore of the Nelson River near the town of Gillam, Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
Police don’t know whether the green watercraft was used by 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky and 19-year-old Kam McLeod — who are wanted in the murders of an American woman, her Australian boyfriend and a third person, Inspector Leon Fiedler told The Globe and Mail.
Still, officials entering the third week of their manhunt for the teens sent divers to look for them or any clues inside the river on Sunday, and then again on Monday.
“We’re going to search in the area around where we found this boat just to make sure that there is nobody attached to it, whether that is our subjects or anyone else for that matter,” Fielder said.
Police tweeted Monday afternoon that their Undercover Recovery Team “has completed their work following the discovery of a boat on the shore of the Nelson River” and wouldn’t be conducting any additional dives.
They didn’t say what, if anything, was recovered during the search.
Dozens of officers have been combing the rugged Northern Manitoba wilderness for the teen fugitives since July 22, using dogs, drones, helicopters, ATVs and two military aircraft.
Investigators have received dozens of tips, but the search has turned up few clues so far.
The teens have been charged with second-degree murder for allegedly killing 64-year-old Leonard Dyck, a botanist and father of two from Vancouver, while he was on a solo camping trip in mid-July.
They are also suspects in the deaths of North Carolina woman Chynna Deese, 24, and her boyfriend, Lucas Fowler, 23, of Sydney, Australia, who were fatally shot July 14 while on the final-leg of a two-week road trip. Their bodies were discovered the next day about 300 miles from where Dyck was found.