EP 16: Jean Mary Kovacs - The Highway of Tears

[00:00:00] - [Cassie]
On an October night in 1981, a Prince George woman was out on the town. In the middle of the night, she gets a cab to the intersection of two highways. She tells the cabbie she's going to hitchhike to Alberta. One of those highways is called the Highway Of Tears. And that was the last time that Jean Mary Kovacs was ever seen alive.

[00:00:30] - [Cassie]
This is episode 16, Jean Mary Kovacs, the Highway of Tears. Content warning. This episode will contain brief discussions of murder and violence of a sexual nature. Please take care when listening. Welcome to mishaps and mysteries.

[00:00:50] - [Cassie]
I'm your host, Cassie.

[00:00:53] - [Nina]
And I'm your host, Nina. Our podcasts explore stories of misadventures in the wild landscapes of British Columbia, Canada. Thanks for being with us here today. Where do we even begin when it comes to talking about the Highway of Tears? It's overwhelming.

[00:01:10] - [Nina]
And that's why we've decided the best way through is to share one story at a time. Across Canada, there's an ongoing crisis, an epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls who have been failed by a systematic neglect and society time and time again. And of all provinces, British Columbia holds the highest numbers. Geographically, Highway 16 cuts across Northern BC from the Alberta border all the way to the coast. But when people say the Highway Of Tears, they're referring specifically to a 720 kilometer stretch running from Prince George and Prince Rupert, including side routes into surrounding communities like Kitimat.

[00:01:59] - [Nina]
The name was coined in 1998 by Florence Naziel, an indigenous family advocate at a memorial vigil in Terrace. Reflecting on the grief, searching, and heartbreak carried by families, she called it what it felt like, a highway of tears. Since the nineteen seventies, dozens of people, predominantly indigenous women and girls, have vanished or been found murdered along the corridor. While official RCMP tallies sit lower, local advocates and families estimate that between forty and eighty victims belong to this quarter's history.

[00:02:39] - [Cassie]
It's such a heavy, dense, and complex piece of our story in British Columbia. We're going to be doing more Highway of Tears cases in the future. So with each one, we will expand more and more on the history and geography, the factors that play in the area, the societal and system failures, and theories. We'll talk about why so many cases remain unsolved and why there are disproportionately high numbers of female indigenous victims and the theories around those responsible for the violence. So as you listen along in future cases, we'll be building your knowledge of this haunted highway.

[00:03:24] - [Cassie]
The first factor we're going to share is the remoteness of most of the areas along the Highway Of Tears. Between cities and communities, there's often nothing, just isolation. Because of the vast distance between places, if a ride wasn't possible, public transit was pretty much nil or sparse between communities, so hitchhiking was the answer. It was and still can be a necessity for many when household incomes were commonly low and many were vulnerable. There are some other key elements related to the geography of the area that impact the outcomes of violence here.

[00:04:09] - [Cassie]
The landscape itself lends favorably to nefarious intentions between the soft soil in many areas making for easy burials, the sub boreal spruce landscape with thick forested terrain, and the abundant wildlife to scavenge and scatter remains. It's something we so take for granted today, but there was also no cell service along much of the highway until very recent years.

[00:04:45] - [Nina]
Today we're going to share one of the earliest cases of murder on the Highway Of Tears. The story of Jean Mary Kovacs. Jean was 36 years old in 1981. Originally from Saskatchewan, she was a petite woman at just five'five and weighed about one hundred and ten pounds with shoulder length black hair. She had three children and worked as a court worker in Prince George.

[00:05:11] - [Nina]
Prince George is in the Port Fraser region of BC in the early eighties. It was primarily a resource town and had a population of about 68,000. I don't know if you know this cast, but I actually spent my early career in Prince George, and I have a lot of good memories of the city.

[00:05:29] - [Cassie]
I think I recall that, but, yeah. How long were you there?

[00:05:33] - [Nina]
For about eight years.

[00:05:35] - [Cassie]
Oh my gosh. That's a pretty big chunk.

[00:05:37] - [Nina]
Yeah. Yeah. Was a big chunk. Jean was last seen in a blue jean jacket, blue jeans, and blue high heel shoes. She was out at the bar at the McDonald Hotel until midnight on 10/09/1981.

[00:05:50] - [Nina]
So the rest of the events after she left the hotel were in the early morning hours of October 10. Around midnight, she left the bar. Records mention she may have been asked to leave after drinking heavily. But whatever happened inside, Jean made it safely into a cab and back to her own home. For ninety minutes, she was safe indoors, and then she made a fateful choice.

[00:06:16] - [Nina]
Just before 2AM, Jean ordered another taxi. This time, she didn't ask for a local drop off. She had the driver take her out to the desolate junction where the old Caribou Highway meets Highway 16 East. It's a very quiet area. Even today, there's very little there.

[00:06:36] - [Nina]
A speedway on one corner, a large industrial type site with a massive parking lot on another, and otherwise just feels on highway. Apparently, in the conversation with the cab driver, Jean told him that she was going to hitchhike east, destination pending. She had said she wanted to get to either Jasper or Edmonton, both locations in Alberta. She was armed with a knife.

[00:07:01] - [Cassie]
Something about the knife tells me that even in her inebriated state, she knew that the hitchhiking, that being out at that hour, it was inherently dangerous.

[00:07:12] - [Nina]
Yeah. That's a good observation, Cass. And I'm wondering what drove a mother of three to walk out into the cold at two in the morning intent on traveling hundreds of miles into the night. That question still hangs over the entire case. Because Jean was originally from Saskatchewan, Jasper and Edmonton would have been natural stepping stones along the route east.

[00:07:36] - [Nina]
Maybe she was heading towards someone she knew. Maybe she was just longing for home. But whether this was a planned trip, a sudden impulse,

[00:07:44] - [Cassie]
or an urgent need to leave town, the truth was lost on that asphalt. About 60 kilometers out of town is Purdin Lake, surrounded by the Columbia Mountains and the Rocky Mountains. There's a provincial park, and today, there's a campsite, boat launch, and swimming area. There's also Purdin Ski Village in the area. There are some cabins there.

[00:08:11] - [Cassie]
What runs between the provincial park and the ski resort? Highway 16. Otherwise, there's not much else of anything out here. It's very remote. On 10/11/1981, so the next day after that middle of the night cab ride, a man was out gathering firewood with his family on a logging road out by the Purdon Lake area.

[00:08:39] - [Cassie]
And there in the bush, body was found. Now just a content warning reminder here. We're about to discuss some very dark things. The man gathering firewood spots Jean's body in a ditch off the logging road. She had been shot with a 22 caliber rifle, and she was found nude.

[00:09:02] - [Cassie]
It was absolutely horrific. She still had her going out clothes by her body. When the autopsy was performed, her blood alcohol was double the legal limit to drive. She had been in such a vulnerable position, and someone had preyed on her. 20 police officers were part of the initial investigation.

[00:09:28] - [Cassie]
But by 1985, it was down to one, constable Ken Craig. And he wasn't just working on her case, but the cases of two other women from the Prince George area killed in similar ways in the year after Jean's death. They weren't exactly the same, but the modus operandi seemed to fit, and all murders had sexual overtones. Their names were Roswitha Fuchsbichler and Nina Joseph.

[00:10:01] - [Nina]
For years, the investigation into Jean Mary Kovac's murder hit wall after wall. In the early days, the RCMP threw massive resources at the case, a task force of 20 investigators who would eventually question more than 12,000 people. But as tips dried up and leads went cold, that massive team dwindled down to a single investigator keeping the file alive. Then in 1986, a breakthrough came from another case entirely. On February 7th 1986, police arrested a man named Edward Dennis Isaac for the 1982 murder of 15 year old Nina Joseph.

[00:10:44] - [Nina]
The break hadn't come from forensic evidence. It came from immense courage. Isaac's former girlfriend had witnessed Nina's murder. Terrified by his threats and that she would meet the exact same fate if she ever spoke, she remained silent for years under his control. But by 1985, she had finally managed to escape the abusive relationship, put distance between herself and Prince George, and went to the RCMP.

[00:11:15] - [Nina]
Isaac was charged with first degree murder and confessed to killing Nina. From that moment, investigators were convinced he's responsible for more. By May 1987, the dominoes continued to fall. Isaac confessed to a second homicide, the November 1981 killing of 13 year old Roswitha Fuchsbichler. Yet through it all, Jean's case remained an agonizing question mark.

[00:11:44] - [Nina]
Knowing Isaac was likely their man, the RCMP rebuilt momentum. In November 1987, they assigned a dedicated four person team to focus entirely on Gene's file. For 3.5, they methodically built their case, tightening the circle around him until he could no longer deny it. In February 1988, Edward Dennis Isaac finally confessed to the murder of Jean Mary Kovacs. His confession brought the horrifying reality of her final hours to light.

[00:12:23] - [Nina]
He hadn't acted alone. That night, Isaac and his brother Jim had spotted Jean hitchhiking at the highway junction and pulled over. We're not going to provide all the details, but we'll tell you that they offered her a ride only to violently turn on her, subjecting Jean to a brutal attack before taking her life and leaving her body in the woods. More than six long years had passed since Jean was stolen from her children and her community. And while Isaac was finally brought to account, full justice was permanently out of reach.

[00:13:00] - [Nina]
His brother Jim had been murdered years before, taking his own guilt to the grave.

[00:13:07] - [Cassie]
Edward pleaded to second degree murder in Jean's case. Jean was the first victim of Edward Isaac who killed the three women in 1981 and 1982, but she was the last of the cases to be solved. For the three violent killings, the monster was given three concurrent sentences of fifteen years. We discussed concurrent sentencing in episodes three and four on the Johnson Bentley family murders, but it means that the terms are all served at once, and this is the default of our justice system. He went to the Kent maximum security in the Agassiz area of BC.

[00:13:53] - [Cassie]
He would have been eligible for parole in 2001. There are no records that he has ever appealed for parole. Good. We also do have to wonder, in the case of the three women that he killed, the last occurred in 1982, but he was not apprehended until 1985. Could he have been responsible for more violence?

[00:14:19] - [Cassie]
There are three known serial killers, including him, that operated on the Highway Of Tears. It's believed that there could have been more accounting for numerous cases. We wanted to give Jean her own story today. The three women's cases are often told together for obvious reasons, of course, but the story usually focuses on the villain behind it all. Of course, the three women are forever linked by the heinous acts of their killer, but each woman lived her own unique story, and each of their lives mattered so very much.

[00:14:54] - [Cassie]
We hope to tell the individual stories of Roswitha Fuchsbichler and Nina Joseph in future episodes as well. Nowhere could we find anything on just Jean's story, and unfortunately, we don't know much more about her as a person to be able to share with you. If you are a loved one of Jean's, we would love to hear from you. We also wanna give a big thanks to the record keeping of the Prince George citizen. By going back through the archives online, we were able to piece together a lot more about Jean's story.

[00:15:30] - [Cassie]
Answers were found in this case. A monster was locked up. A dark shadow over Prince George was lifted. But that isn't the outcome with so many of the haunted highways cases. The darkness, the secrets, the shame remain.

[00:15:51] - [Cassie]
Keep listening for future episodes where we cover more of the Highway Of Tears stories.

[00:15:57] - [Nina]
We know that was a lot to take in today. The history surrounding the Highway Of Tears carries decades of grief, and we appreciate you staying with us through Jean's story. Next Tuesday, we're bringing you something a little lighter. We're sitting down for an interview featuring a story of survival, hope, and an outcome that genuinely lifts the spirit. Thank you for joining us today.

[00:16:21] - [Nina]
New episodes are out every Tuesday. You can reach out to us at info@mishapsandmysteries.ca. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe and leave us a rating and a review. It really helps new people find us. Also, share with your friends.

[00:16:39] - [Nina]
Be safe and never stop exploring.