PORT ALBERNI, B.C.—In the hometown of the two young fugitives whose alleged crimes have captured international attention, news that their bodies had likely been found was met with grim acceptance Wednesday.

Residents of this Vancouver Island community, founded on a booming forestry industry, in recent weeks have been faced with very unclear and sometimes contradictory images of lifelong friends Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky.

There have been the tender descriptions by family — of “caring, loving” boys — who their parents just wanted home safe. Then there has been the RCMP portrait of two alleged killers on the run, accompanied by an online trail that hints at dark, far-right leanings.

On a sun-drenched Wednesday, as many gathered in the town’s quay, there was little surprise at the apparent outcome of the saga.

“I honestly thought they were dead a while ago,” said 19-year-old Mud Edward, sitting on a dock rail. “There’s no way two Caucasian kids can walk around like that and not get found. There’s no way they could hide out for that long.”

McLeod, 19, and Schmegelsky, 18, played online games, enjoyed camping and worked briefly at the local Walmart. They attended the local high school, but many young people The Star has spoken with in Port Alberni, a community of roughly 17,000, have said they did not know the pair well.

Some have speculated that their lives may have existed as much online as in the town itself.

Because his father said Schmegelsky was a gamer and into strategy games, The Star looked into Steam — a popular video game digital distribution platform. Although a number of accounts exist under the name Bryer, one account matched the same friends as Schmegelsky’s social media accounts and a couple of gamers listed in his friends group confirmed it was indeed Schmegelsky based on photos he had shared of himself and his friends.

The main picture on the profile is a banner of Azov Battalion, yellow background with purple Z with a stroke through the middle. The banner signifies Ukrainian nationalist movement with neo-Nazi ties.

Although the profile claims to be from Mordovia, Russia, a couple of users from the profile’s friends list confirmed the profile named Bryer was an English-speaker from Canada.

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In an interview with Canadian Press, Schmegelsky’s father, who is estranged from the suspect’s mother, explained that he didn’t see his son between the ages of eight and 16, and during that time the boy came under the mistaken belief that he had Russian heritage.

“He thought he was Russian. Germans are their enemies,” he said insisting that because of this he did not believe his son identified as a neo-Nazi.

However, on the Steam profile, apart from following regular gamer groups, the profile Bryer also follows groups with names like “Ablaze Terrorists” and “Terrorist Deniers” which has comments from other users like “I don’t like brown people” and “Allahu akbar [Implodes]”.

There are other traces, meanwhile, of the lives the two young men left behind.

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Schmegelsky lived with his grandmother for part of his childhood. By 2016, he was working in his father’s construction company. His father posted a photo of Bryer and himself on Facebook in 2016, with the caption reading, “Bryer’s first day of work.”

Al Schmegelsky told Star Vancouver his son and McLeod went camping regularly and loved dressing up in camouflage gear and playing hunting games with their aerosoft guns. In a statement sent to media at the onset of the manhunt, McLeod’s father called his son a considerate and caring person who was always concerned about other people’s feelings.

On July 12, McLeod and Schmegelsky reportedly left Port Alberni with a plan to find work in the Yukon. Ten days later, RCMP said the two men were missing in northern B.C.

The next day, Mounties announced the pair were in fact suspects in three deaths, including tourists Chynna Deese and Lucas Fowler, and a third person, who was later identified as Leonard Dyck, a botanist from Vancouver. This launched a two-week long manhunt for the two suspects that ultimately ended in Manitoba on Wednesday.

The idea that Canada’s most wanted men for the past two weeks were raised in quiet Port Alberni was a tough pill to swallow for residents, said Kevin Wright, the owner of SteamPunk Cafe.

“The community doesn’t like to be painted with this unfortunate brush. We already struggle with our own image problem. This is not the type of publicity we want to see,” he said of his community.

The town of Port Alberni — whose website describes it as home to B.C.’s first sawmill — is located in a valley in the centre of Vancouver Island. While the mill is no longer the main employer in the region, the town’s population has remained stable in recent decades thanks to other industries such as commercial fishing and a growing health sector, according to the city’s website. But the town’s residents are still poorer on average than most resource communities, partially due to retirees flocking to the region, Wright said.

“It is hard on the community, because we are generally a heartwarming, step up, kind of place.”

Sitting outside, Edward said that since McLeod and Schmegelsky were marked as murder suspects, some have noticed a chill among locals when they catch a ride hitchhiking, with drivers expressing increased wariness of who they’re picking up.

“They’re kids, they’re my age — same age as me. It’s messed up,” he said.”I feel no remorse for them. I feel bad for the families.”

Port Alberni resident Tom Carrier said the fact that the pair had apparently been found dead was “sad for everybody involved. For the families, for the kids, for the people affected, obviously, and the community.”

The town has been through hard times in the last decade, with job losses in the logging industry, and is slowly rebuilding.

“For a small community like this you’re trying to grow the community, get more people to come here and then something like this happens it’s almost like it’s a step back,” Carrier said.

With files from Jesse Winter

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