VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) - Canadian police have linked a dead U.S. convict to one of 18 women who vanished along three highways in British Columbia over several decades, and authorities are investigating the man for possible links to five murders in the U.S.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Insp. Gary Shinkaruk says Bobby Jack Fowler, who died in 2006, is a person of interest in 10 of the Canadian cases.
Shinkaruk says DNA has linked Fowler to the 1974 killing of teenage hitchhiker Colleen MacMillen.
The district attorney in Lincoln County, Oregon, said Monday that Fowler is a suspect in five unsolved murders of female teenagers there in the 1980s and 1990s.
Fowler was convicted in 1996 of kidnapping, assault, and the attempted rape of a woman he met at a bar in Oregon.
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