00:00:04
[Music] as a hiding place this highway is ideal a body might not be found ever or
00:00:22
maybe never for years Lauren was kind of a free spirit and we didn't worry about her
00:00:30
when probably we should have worried about her more from the very beginning um Cody
00:00:37
starts saying things about sex to Lauren very very graphic things about sex it's so frightening to to hear the
00:00:48
story it appears that you know Cody was a proverbial ticking time ball just waiting to go
00:00:56
off it wasn't poaching it was um it was murder you can't learn that you have to
00:01:06
be born that way you can't learn that evil if one is already killed then how
00:01:14
many other victims may still be out there [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] British Columbia is really a fascinating
00:02:04
place and it's incredibly isolated we're in the middle of a sea of trees British Columbia uh is about 1.7
00:02:18
times the size of France you know have these little communities that for years didn't have
00:02:26
running water or you know update electricities I go back a long way and um there were
00:02:34
just small little Villages even till I was 14 we traveled to town once a week by horse and buggy or horse and
00:02:42
[Music] sleigh never heard of anyone go missing like this never cutting through these rural
00:02:57
communities is a Highway that for the last few decades has become increasingly notorious Highway
00:03:07
16 between Prince George and Prince rert it is 725 kilm Long Highway 16 in British Columbia has
00:03:24
a much more well-known name it's often refer to as the highway of tear it relates back to the incredible
00:03:37
amount of uh murdered and missing women and girls uh that that have simply just disappeared on that
00:03:49
Highway when these cases happen uh it takes a very uh it hits close to home usually their hitchhike and doing
00:04:01
so out of desperation they really have no other form of transportation can you imagine a 720 km
00:04:11
stretch there's maybe a town every hour as a hiding place this highway is ideal a body might not be found ever or
00:04:27
maybe never for years [Music] Fort St James a small village just off the highway of Tears is home to Cody
00:04:45
lebov he's born in 1990 and grows up close to this Infamous stretch of road by all appearances Cody came from a
00:04:56
great family um didn't want for much growing up had everything all the Comforts of Home essentially uh his full
00:05:06
life ahead of him I didn't know him personally I didn't know his father or mother
00:05:14
personally but his grandparents I knew extremely well can't say anything bad
00:05:20
about them at all why aov was in some respects a normal kid he was a big kid kind of a um
00:05:34
early Bloomer in some ways but one of the things that kind of stood out about him is he loved to play
00:05:41
hockey but he stood out in terms of his level of violence um on the hockey rank other parents would take their
00:05:51
children off the ice when he was participating in hockey because of his aggressive
00:05:57
nature we all can come out and be very very aggressive at certain times the difference is are we able to control our
00:06:06
anger and not have it come out that serious violent acts occur to other [Music] people here you have someone who's a a
00:06:23
deer hunter and he is hunting the deer but Ms them first and then goes with his hands to finish the deal of killing them
00:06:33
this is somebody who would literally beat a deer to death the fact that he's a hunter
00:06:41
doesn't surprise me um but the fact that he took pleasure in uh seeing those
00:06:47
animals suffer uh that is um that's staggering actually it is a marker it is a risk
00:06:56
factor for violence against humans and yet in some respects it was compartmentalized because he was very
00:07:06
well-liked and got along and had plenty of friends I think the hardest part of all
00:07:11
is anyone that knew him never suspected for a minute that any of this would have
00:07:18
ever gone on after graduating high school leab bakov moves 100 miles from rural Fort St
00:07:28
James to the city of of Prince George my name is Todd dhy I'm the Member of Parliament uh for Caribou
00:07:38
print George we have uh uh a tremendous amount of First Nation communities in and
00:07:45
around our area um and uh gradually over time as our forestry industry has been uh
00:07:53
decimated we've seen a lot of economic hardship you've got families that are uh are
00:08:03
finding it harder to make ends meet you have substance abuse issues you have domestic uh abuse
00:08:16
issues Cody gets a job as a mechanic starts a relationship and appears to quickly
00:08:23
adapt to city life if you want to find trouble it's not difficult to find in Prince
00:08:31
George it could be a bit of a party town um there are certainly escort services in in the
00:08:40
city it's not difficult to find drugs in this town so imagine moving to this
00:08:47
Urban environment this environment with all of these different stimulus all these different ideas all these
00:08:55
different things coming at you from you coming from a small rural envir environment that's a
00:09:02
lot we can now see the potential as he's in this urban area for him to escalate Cody leab boom seemed to like
00:09:13
the party a lot he was fairly popular with the girls he really got into the cocaine I think leer POF he he almost
00:09:21
lived a double life I think you have somebody who is working at a for dealership who's got a relationship who
00:09:29
people see as very personable as likable as funny and then you have this other side it's like the the dark depths of
00:09:39
the soul that you start seeing here you have an individual who is now working but the cocaine addiction
00:09:50
is there girlfriend in the middle the idea to juggle all of those this is more stress on an
00:09:57
individual this anger this this this aggression is already there you have elements starting to line up now that
00:10:05
can lead someone to be involved in very violent activities my name is Doug Lesley and I
00:10:16
am Lauren Don Lesley's father from what I can understand she she did meet him online and he went and
00:10:25
picked her up it's so so frightening to to hear this [Music] story it appears that you know Cody was
00:10:37
a ticking Time Bomb just waiting to go [Music] [Music] off Cody leer bakov now aged 20 has a
00:10:56
girlfriend and is working as a mechanic he's also hiding a cocaine addiction and has started chatting with
00:11:05
a 15-year-old girl online Lauren Leslie Lauren was special from day one as she grew she spent a lot of time
00:11:21
at my house visiting she was a unique girl very unique girl she was always awesome very
00:11:33
thoughtful she had a a vision problem she was legally blind but uh you'd really never know it by watching her
00:11:41
because she never let on and never really slowed her down at all when she was four she went to school
00:11:49
with the little boy and like this little boy but when this boy was nine he drowned in the
00:11:58
lake when when it came to the day of the funeral she wanted to sit with the parents and she sat beside the mother
00:12:05
and stroke her arm and this is how unique she's 9 years old this is the unique little
00:12:15
girl Lauren Lesley is a very innocent 15-year-old girl she meets this predator on a Canadian
00:12:27
Internet site called nexopia from the very beginning it's it's is clear that the agendas are very very
00:12:38
different from the very beginning um Cody starts saying things about sex to Lauren very very graphic things about
00:12:47
sex you can see that this makes Lauren very very uncomfortable and the way she handles that in their Communication
00:12:55
online is she tries to ignore it and then she tries to kind of say to him hey that's not what I'm looking for I'm
00:13:02
looking for something different um and you know it's it's just dramatic to see
00:13:07
the differences in what these two people are [Music] saying well the last time I saw her was
00:13:30
about 3:00 in the afternoon and she was hanging around with friends and walking downtown on the night of November
00:13:40
27th she tells her mom she's going to have coffee with a friend and she goes
00:13:45
and she meets this person this Predator at a school on the playground he offers to get her some
00:13:57
alcohol um which you know she is much too young to be drinking um but she finally says okay I'll have some muds
00:14:05
[Music] sliders what is about to happen I think is something that's very very
00:14:16
scary there were um two RCMP officers one from the prince Geor Detachment uh one from the vaner roof Detachment that
00:14:24
were meeting on Highway 16 uh late at night it is amongst one of the darkest highways I've ever been
00:14:34
on just ahead of them this truck pulls out of a isolated Logging Road um and uh at a high rate of speed kind of fish
00:14:45
tailing down the road to his credit this cop's Spidey senses just start going
00:14:52
off puts his lights on calls her backup and pulls over this black truck [Music] think about the remoteness of the
00:15:03
highway of tears but can you imagine making a traffic stop in a remote area like
00:15:14
this the police officer comes up to the window he's shining his light he looks
00:15:18
at his uh credentials and he notices that there's this kind of red smudge on
00:15:25
um this person the driver's chin and it looks like a blood meanwhile his backup person
00:15:33
comes they start looking around and they find blood there's a knife in the car that's
00:15:41
got blood on it there's a wrench in the car that's got blood on it they find
00:15:44
blood just about everywhere the first response from him is well I've been hunting been poaching
00:15:53
deer and that's what happened okay blood on a wrench the officer continues on even though the police don't at all
00:16:09
believe Cody's story they're going to check it out they go back to this Logging Road
00:16:19
and they discover the worst case scenario they discover the body of a young girl who's in the
00:16:32
snow she has been beaten so badly that her face is unrecognizable they have some clue
00:16:42
though in terms of who she is because they also had found this really adorable monkey
00:16:48
backpack they find a wallet a polka dot wallet and in that has got uh Lauren Leslie's identification card her medical
00:16:56
card I got a call from the cops at I don't know it was probably midnigh is I went up to the to the site and that
00:17:09
when I got there the cops were at the end of the road my son Doug called me by phone
00:17:18
quite early in the morning to tell me what had happened and it was devastating to hear
00:17:26
that news Lauren was so young absolutely devastated that family absolutely devastated that family
00:17:38
um in so many ways I couldn't imagine um what Lauren's last moments were
00:17:47
[Music] late I remember vividly the the photograph that they issued of Cody leer
00:18:02
boov he looked like an absolute train wreck you could tell he did a lot of drugs I ended up in the police station
00:18:13
in Van about 30 ft from Leeder bokov he was in the cell in the next couple of rooms over and you know I I told the cop
00:18:23
to let me in for 5 minutes and I found out later on and that's all he could to not let me in um but it was
00:18:32
you know to to have that 30 ft away from me at that time was uh pretty rough this is somebody who was not out
00:18:45
of control of his life this was somebody who had a girlfriend this was somebody who was
00:18:51
holding down a job so this is not somebody whose life is gone off the rails because of their cocaine
00:18:59
use when you look at the premeditated and calculating way that this offender that this
00:19:08
Predator goes online meets somebody and that's not the kind of murder that you see with somebody who's
00:19:18
psychotic because of some drug and fueled frenzy leab bakov is held in custody [Music]
00:19:28
his apartment is searched and he swabbed for DNA as police began preparing evidence for his
00:19:35
trial 12 months after Lauren's death after examining new evidence police contact Lauren's family with shocking
00:19:43
news about a year later we got called in when they connected the dots and uh found out that he was in fact um being
00:19:54
charged with three more murders it's unbelievable stumbled upon what turned out to be kanda's youngest serial
00:20:05
killer you never know what's going on in the house beside you with this case
00:20:10
that's probably one of the most terrifying things Cody lebov is in custody charged
00:20:27
with the first-degree murder a 15-year-old Lauren Leslie police now suspect Lauren isn't
00:20:34
his first victim they've been investigating the murders and missing persons cases of three other
00:20:41
women this happened over a course of you know uh a long period of time when you have one body turn up and
00:20:49
then maybe you have another body and completely unrelated you don't believe that you
00:20:54
have a serial killer walking amongst us and it was only after um the discovery of Lauren um that
00:21:04
investigators were they able to really piece together that Holy Smokes we have a serial
00:21:11
killer uh amongst us the unsolved murders and missing person cases date back to over a year
00:21:21
before Lauren Leslie was killed on October 9th 2009 Local woman Jill Steno is reported
00:21:34
missing Jill Steno a 35-year-old mother of five who was very much deep into her addictions she was kind of known I and I
00:21:45
actually kind of known and liked she had friends who wanted to get the word out about her disappearance and and of
00:21:51
course turned to us to get that word out this is a woman who had had some struggle in her
00:21:59
life she had a pretty significant Co cocaine addiction that she was battling but she
00:22:07
was also the mother of five children and she really really wanted to get her life straightened out so she
00:22:14
could take care of her children and it she was just having a difficult time with
00:22:21
[Music] it stachenko was found half half buried in a gravel pit just outside Prince
00:22:37
George she had been completely mutilated there was evidence that she had been beaten with a blunt object um she had
00:22:43
been stabbed there was evidence that she had been sexually assaulted it was just an absolutely
00:22:50
horrendous crime scene whenever they find a body they do a lot of forensics they they just ga as
00:22:58
much evidence as they can they'll close the the scene down for a day or so by comparing DNA records from Jill
00:23:10
sinko to a stain found on leab bakov sofa police now believe he is Jill's killer this is Cody lov's first murder
00:23:22
at least first confirmed murder Cody would often contact women who were sex workers he also would get
00:23:33
them to get crack cocaine for him he seemed to have a pretty significant addiction around this time to crack
00:23:39
cocaine and so those both may have been in play in terms of when she came over to his
00:23:46
apartment we know that she died an absolutely horrendous horrendous death based on autopsy
00:23:55
results the first murder was probably very opportunistic and he found that well wait a second I got away with this
00:24:01
it was easy to do and he had it in him um and that just fueled the passion to do
00:24:11
[Music] more another vulnerable woman is reported missing from Prince GE Gorge Natasha Montgomery was a girl from
00:24:32
quinel which is a a small community probably about an hour and a half hour and a half Drive south of Prince
00:24:40
George came from a good family um did a lot of figure skating as a as a youngster and sort of lost her way when
00:24:48
she came up to Prince George Natasha Montgomery was 23 years old she had struggled with uh crack
00:24:56
cocaine that was kind of a a on her back that she had a really hard time getting
00:25:01
rid of um she sometimes resorted to sex work as a way to supplement her income so she was really somebody who was in a
00:25:08
highrisk category she was missing um and we you know quite honestly every couple of
00:25:18
weeks somebody goes missing and more often than not they sort of resurface um but she hadn't
00:25:25
resurfaced Natasha mcgomery is still missing and presumed dead when leab bakov is charged with Lauren's
00:25:33
murder police find Natasha's DNA on leab bov's clothing and in various places in
00:25:40
his apartment they Blu lighted it and there was swabs everywhere and um it was it
00:25:49
looked like he basically started chasing her from his bedroom into the kitchen and and beat her to
00:25:55
death now we have another vict victim that's linked to him because of DNA evidence found in his
00:26:05
apartment if we have Montgomery's body that has never been found we just never
00:26:11
know how many others are out there whether it be on the highway of Tears or some other place that if one is already
00:26:18
killed then how many other victims may still be out there there is 11 months between uh
00:26:27
Cody's first murder and a second one is it possible that he did other murders during this time it
00:26:34
is there certainly have been several Killers who have started out slowly and then ramped up they did one one year one
00:26:42
the next year one six months later and ramped up so it's possible that he waited for a year um but it's also
00:26:50
possible that there are other victims that we don't know about it would be horrifying for parents
00:26:57
to not not be able to find their children regardless of what has happened to them you know um to not know anything
00:27:06
is would be very very [Music] difficult the best way to describe her is through her
00:27:24
sister the way she described Cynthia was a very trusting uh you know a bit of a hippie it sounds like uh you know she
00:27:35
was quite the pleasant person Cynthia seemed to struggle at times with cocaine addiction and also
00:27:44
would engage in sex work is a way to supplement her income on September the 10th
00:28:00
2010 Cynthia Moss was murdered leaving behind one child to now be without a mom Moss is found in a wooded park in
00:28:12
Prince George one of leab bov's socks is found to contain DNA matching Cynthia her DNA is also found on an axe
00:28:23
in leab bov's bedroom what we see with the brutal murder of of Miss Moss is just pure aggression and violence coming
00:28:33
out we' have seen his vience with animals and the way that he hunts and the way he kills with his
00:28:42
hands we hope that we don't see that move to a human being but we do with the
00:28:48
victim of moss these three victims are clearly targeted I believe they're vulnerable
00:28:57
and they're individuals that Cody knows he can take advantage of most of his victims are mothers who
00:29:07
now leave behind children who will never see the smile the affection of their mother
00:29:19
again leab bakov arranged to meet Lauren Leslie Less Than 3 months after murdering Cynthia
00:29:25
Moss Lauren had no way of knowing that the guy she met online was already a serial killer because until he met
00:29:33
Lauren he'd gotten away with it I'm certain that Cody leder bokov was really
00:29:38
counting on nobody finding Lauren Les's body the way he was trying to get away
00:29:44
from the scene it sound like he had a probably a lot of guilt on his mind um a lot of
00:29:51
fear it's challenging um for those that go missing that may be on the street and
00:29:57
maybe do not have regular contact with loved ones it also speaks to how uh incredibly
00:30:09
fortunate that that RP officer on the on the on the road was cuz if they hadn't
00:30:14
caught him that night they likely wouldn't have caught him for a while the way the bodies were positioned
00:30:21
uh and the the injuries that they suffered and um what he did to them afterwards um
00:30:28
it you know it was all it was definitely the signs of a pattern if he was not stopped would we
00:30:37
have the ability to catch this individual because he is moving on from people being involved women being
00:30:44
involved in the sex trade to people who are not involved in the sex trade we we often like to put our serial killers in
00:30:52
a box where we can find that these similar characteristics are telling us or giving us sort of profile or
00:30:59
indicator of where he she may go next this switch up is is a difficult one to take and thank goodness he was taken
00:31:07
into custody it's bittersweet because I mean it's terrible to have a child gone but that she was a catalyst
00:31:27
to stop him that was the good part one of the really impressive things about the
00:31:40
story is that Lauren Leslie's family has said a couple of times that the one
00:31:47
thing they've held on to is the fact that their daughter's murder prevented
00:31:53
additional murders and that that has been somewhat comforting to them and I am 100%
00:32:01
sure that if they had not caught him at this point he would have continued to murder until he was
00:32:09
[Music] caught during court we were pretty much all together so many people were
00:32:25
impacted by it he was living with three girls and uh one of the girls testified that she she
00:32:37
saw him um his nose was bleeding into a toilet and she said Cody you know just kind of warned him like you're doing way
00:32:46
too much cocaine he he was a bit of a puzzle I I remember during the during the trial um there was a a you know a
00:32:57
sex worker who supplied drugs to him and she said yeah I owe you 300 bucks and he
00:33:04
said oh don't worry about it you know I'll I'll catch you on the rebound I I
00:33:09
just don't quite understand um I think it was a little bit of probably a bit
00:33:15
impulsive friends of Jill sinko Natasha mcgomery and Cynthia Moss also testify in
00:33:23
court they really wanted to get their stories out and uh really they were scared they were really worried that
00:33:32
they could be this next victim and I think they really wanted to put him away pretty much the first thing that
00:33:40
the crown prosecutor says was we have 3,000 pages of forensic evidence you know they weren't going to miss a beat
00:33:47
on this one [Music] he basically said uh well uh these three women were in trouble with the local
00:34:06
drug dealers and uh you know they wanted to get them because they owed them money
00:34:12
um uh and a Mr X and a Mr Y and a Mr Zed uh said Cody you you got to help us out he said that he was the he was the
00:34:24
one who handed them the weapons and they the these characters actually did did these three end and uh uh disposed of
00:34:33
the bodies it was it was you know so outrageous and so ridiculous leab bakov has another
00:34:42
explanation for Lauren's death he claims that her death is because she brought a knife with her and
00:34:52
self-inflicted this harm on herself she you know somehow escaped from the truck and she was doing this to
00:35:01
herself and uh that he decided Well okay she's done for I'm going to just put her
00:35:07
out of her mizy with this wrench he truly seems to have a lack of understanding about
00:35:16
normal emotions and he also seems to have a limited ability to feel them you know
00:35:22
when you hear him talk about the murders there's just no sense of emotion remorse
00:35:27
regret guilt or any of the things that we would hope to see he was going to roll a dice and see
00:35:36
if he could fool everybody the jury are considering their verdict at leab bov's murder
00:35:55
trial his defense claimed Lauren Leslie tried to take her own life and that three unnamed individuals are
00:36:02
responsible for the murders of Joel sinko Natasha mcgomery and Cynthia [Music] Moss Ledger bov is convicted in
00:36:19
September of 2014 of four counts of murder I think what's interesting is how rare
00:36:32
it is for a serial killer to start in their teens and I think that speaks to the level of depravity to some extent in
00:36:43
Cody about 14% of serial killers start in their teens remember the brain does not fully
00:36:51
formed until about age 25 so he has the impulsivity of a teenager with the anger that's developed
00:37:01
that usually doesn't make its way to criminal activity of this nature until one is in their late 20s or 30s that
00:37:10
shows itself in the aggressive nature of how these people were killed I think that we often do tend to
00:37:18
look primarily at at circumstances CH trauma and those kinds of things and I think it's easy to forget that there are
00:37:26
people who seem to for whatever reason biologically they seem to have something missing and I do think that Cody is an
00:37:37
example of that I would say he was a predator he prayed on the weak he prayed on the the
00:37:43
most vulnerable and he took full advantages of their [Music] disadvantages as his methods and motiv
00:37:55
uh openda kind of uh involved with their [Music] others what they do is they give uh they
00:38:25
give prisoners a bit of a faint hope as as a way to make them behave themselves and and kind of do the right things and
00:38:32
you know not be incorrigible and and not make it difficult for the on the staff it gives them that a bit of
00:38:41
incentive and and keeps them out of trouble it seems he's following the rules and therefore he is rewarded with
00:38:51
being in a less secure prison what that means more privileges uh a better environment
00:38:59
255 years is a long time some people become institutionalized and follow the rules
00:39:05
and make their way toward Rehabilitation others take the time to Simply say let me go along with this let
00:39:13
me play the game if you will and do my time and then go back to whatever [Music]
00:39:36
I just want him to stay in jail for the rest of his life I'm working with MPS to try to get
00:39:44
him back in maximum security where he belongs I think a lot of people are very angry um that this has happened just on
00:39:53
principle the whole turmoil that he caused these people I've raised this in Parliament um a
00:40:01
number of times as Cody has gone through the system you know how can how can Kus
00:40:07
Canada transfer this horrific killer Canada's youngest serial killer he shown
00:40:13
no signs of remorse uh still holds the information to the whereabouts of one of his
00:40:21
victims you know when you speak with the victim's families um it's absolutely
00:40:31
heartbreaking and overwhelmingly the question is who fights for us where's our
00:40:38
voice you know it's just uh you can't help but get emotional and get drawn into
00:40:51
it we've never seen any remorse from this person this is somebody who to this
00:40:57
day is saying he didn't do it he's blaming it on three other people there's
00:41:03
no evidence they even exist and so when you look at risk factors for recidivism they're all over the place I
00:41:13
think he has the capacity to kill again how many more are there actually out there that he has has murdered I I
00:41:25
don't think it's done you can't learn that you have to be born that way because there's you can't learn
00:41:33
that evil I think the word psychopath gets used and overused all the time I have
00:41:41
not personally evaluated him but I will tell you there is something about him I think that is is very
00:41:51
scary we have so many people that um seemingly just disappear and in our neck of the woods and and there's lots of
00:41:59
different theories as to what's happening with that um did did did he use that as a cover did did that
00:42:06
motivate him did that fuel him to try it himself that's something to ask Cody
00:42:15
leab off and and I don't think he'll ever tell that Lauren was kind of a free spirit
00:42:27
and we didn't worry about her when probably we should have worried about her
00:42:33
more and you know you take it for granted that people are who what they what you see but they're not
00:42:42
really we got to pay more attention to our kids for sure definitely has affected everyone
00:42:51
around uh people that I never knew before that I've come in contact know about
00:42:59
Lauren certainly it's made an impact what would she be doing today if she was still here she would still be
00:43:09
going around helping people that's what she would be doing in some way or another I try not to think about that it
00:43:19
it's too too much to think about [Music] [Music] [Music]