VANCOUVER -- Mounties believe a now-dead US prisoner killed at least three women along BC's so-called Highway of Tears almost 40 years ago. DNA evidence has linked him to one victim - 16-year-old Colleen MacMillen.

Police believe violent offender Bobby Jack Fowler was working "odd jobs" in the Prince George area during the early 1970s, around the same time MacMillen and 19-year-olds Gale Weys and Pamela Darlington were murdered.

At least 18 young women vanished or were killed along Highways 5, 16, and 97 in British Columbia from 1969 to 2006. Mounties are still checking their evidence, but have ruled out Fowler as a suspect in eight of the cases.

Currently, police are chasing another two suspects.

"It's always struck me how many men are capable of this," said a solemn RCMP Staff Sgt. Wayne Clary on Tuesday."We're confident a single killer is not responsible for all cases," said RCMP Staff Sgt. Wayne Clary, adding that in the decades-long investigation covered 700 boxes of police files, 750 DNA profiles, 1,400 persons of interest, 2,500 interviews and 18,000 investigative enquiries.

MacMillen was 16 when she left home on Aug. 9, 1974, to hitchhike to a friend's house. Her body was found less than a month later, in a ditch on a logging road near Highway 97.

"There are no words to express how terribly she (Colleen) was wronged," the victim's brother, Shawn MacMillen, said Tuesday.

DNA submitted to Interpol this year linked evidence found on MacMillen to authorities in Oregon.

Fowler, a 66-year-old former roofer and a drug user who, police say, believed hitchhiking women desired to be violently assaulted, didn't have a Canadian criminal record, so previous searches within the country found nothing.

Fowler died in an Oregon prison in 2006 of lung cancer while serving a 16-year sentence for kidnapping, assault and attempted rape. He is additionally a "person of interest" or suspect in at least seven US homicides, two of them double murders.

"We are comforted by the fact that he was in prison when he died, and that he can't ever hurt anyone else," MacMillen said.

Weys was hitchhiking home to Kamloops from work on Oct. 16, 1973, when she vanished. Her body surfaced six months later along Highway 5.

Darlington was last seen at the David Thompson Bar in Kamloops on Nov. 6 that year. Her body was found the next day along the waterfront in Pioneer Park.

Mounties believe they've exhausted approximately 80 to 90% of all leads in the case, known as E-PANA. Officials acknowledged 18 women - the file's total number of victims - may not represent all homicides near BC highways in the nearly four-decade time frame.

Specifically, only females who died or went missing within a mile of Highways 5, 16 and 97 are accepted as "Highway of Tears" victims by E-PANA investigators.

Only MacMillen's case has been positively linked through DNA - though Fowler's guilt is not proven in the court of law because of his passing.

"Will we solve the remaining 17? I'm not certain," said Insp. Gary Shinkaruk. "There's a couple of files where there's a point of strong persons of interest ... where we don't have enough evidence to bring to charge."

In tracking Fowler's movements, officers attempted to interview dozens of jail mates who've had interaction with him. None of the interviews proved successful.

Fowler was known as a "transient," and was known to cross up to three state borders in a single day. International borders didn't hinder him, either.

In investigating other persons of interest, officers have taken DNA from transportation workers in BC These include truckers and cab drivers, the latter of whom have so far been ruled out as suspects in an of the cases.

Fowler has been investigated in at least seven US killings.

The Lincoln County District Attorney's Office reopened five Newport, Ore., homicide files in 2009, four victims belonging to two double homicides in the ‘90s, with a fifth dating back to the mid '80s.

Seventeen-year-old Kelly Disney was the first to vanish after reportedly getting into a fight with her boyfriend and deciding to walk home in March 1984.

According to US media, a decade passed before her skull was found in an abandoned car at a rural area just outside Newport.

In May 1992, teenagers Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders went missing near Beverly Beach State Park, just north of Newport, during a camping trip.

Their bodies were discovered five months later in a wooded area about 15 kilometres east of town. 
In February 1995, Jennifer Esson and Kara Leas, both 16, disappeared walking a short distance from town centre to a highway separating the municipality.

Their bodies were found less than a month later in a wooded area east of where they vanished.

Additionally, Fowler's family members have accused him of killing another relative and hiding the body in an undisclosed property, Lincoln County investigator Ron Benson told reporters Tuesday. However, the body was never found.

Benson also believes Fowler was responsible for the homicide of a man in Texas. That charge was also never proven.

Fowler was arrested in 1995 after a woman escaped him by jumping from a Newport motel room, "unclothed and with a rope tied around her ankle, out of a second-storey window," police said.

Fowler died in an Oregon prison in 2006 of lung cancer while serving a 16-year sentence for kidnapping, assault and attempted rape. He is additionally a "person of interest" or suspect in at least seven US homicides, two of them double murders.

"We are comforted by the fact that he was in prison when he died, and that he can't ever hurt anyone else," MacMillen said.

Family members of Fowler interviewed by police in the US have accused him of killing a relative, although a body has not been found.

Weys was hitchhiking home to Kamloops from work on Oct. 16, 1973, when she vanished. Her body surfaced six months later along Highway 5.

Darlington was last seen at the David Thompson Bar in Kamloops on Nov. 6 that year. Her body was found the next day along the waterfront in Pioneer Park.