The death of Madison Scott

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple. Listen on Spotify.

Today we’re heading back to 2011 into the vast wilderness of British Columbia, Canada when a 20-year-old woman headed out for a birthday party at a lakeside campground not far from her home. The last time any of the partygoers recalled seeing Madison Scott she was settled in her tent, ready for bed, but hours later, she was missing without a trace. Despite extensive search measures, her family waited twelve agonizing years for any information & still have so many more questions that remain unanswered to this day.

Madison “Maddy” Scott was born on April 29, 1991 to parents Eldon & Dawn Scott & she had two siblings, a brother, Ben & a sister, Georgia. The Scott family of five lived in Vanderhoof which is situated in the center of British Columbia, Canada, a vast, westernmost province of Canada that is bordered to the west by the Pacific Ocean & Alaska, to the north by Yukon & the Northwest Territories, to the east by the province of Alberta & to the south by Washington, Idaho & Montana & is 1.7 times the size of France.

Maddy worked as an apprentice heavy duty mechanic in the logging industry with her father. She had shoulder-length auburn hair, stood at 5’4” & had a bird silhouette tattoo on the inside of her left wrist as well as a nose piercing through her left nostril. She was last seen wearing a black t-shirt & blue jean capri pants.

On Friday, May 27, 2011, Maddy headed out for a birthday party at Hogsback Lake in British Columbia, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from her home in Vanderhoof. Since she knew drinking was going to be involved, she & her friend, Jordanne “Jordy” Bolduc planned to set up a tent & campout that night. Maddy & Jordy hadn’t interacted all that much during high school, but after graduation, they connected & started forming a friendship.

Hogsback Lake has a 5 mile trail system & 3 campsites which run along 6 lakes & is a hotspot for local parties since it’s far enough away from residents to avoid noise complaints.

With tears in her eyes, Dawn recalls the last time she ever saw her daughter. Maddy ran back into the house at about 9:30 pm that Friday after she’d forgotten some of her necessary camping supplies. Dawn told her daughter that she loved her, to be safe & to have fun & as she watched her bound out of the house, she figured she would see Maddy the next day.

Maddy drove her white Ford F-150 to the lake for the birthday party that involved about fifty young people from around the area, ranging in age from about 18-25. According to Jordy, once they arrived they set their two-tone blue tent up near Maddy’s truck & the girls headed off to gather firewood & as they got back to the site, more & more people began filtering in for the party.

As the night wore on, additional guests started showing up, which according to Jordy, were on the rougher side & not a part of their group. Maddy texted with her dad at about 11 pm & right around midnight, a fight broke out which caused the party to break up earlier than expected.

While Maddy wasn’t a big drinker, Jordy admits that she got extremely intoxicated that night & after she fell into the campfire, she just wanted to go home. When she told Maddy she was going to leave with her boyfriend instead of camping with her as they planned all along, Maddy was already settled in her tent. By this time, about five people remained at the campsite, none of which planned to stay the night. Maddy tried her best to persuade Jordy to stay with her, but she was set on leaving. Jordy & her boyfriend offered to drive Maddy home, but she said no so they left.

Other party goers indicated that they’d also offered Maddy a ride home that night, but she declined & chose to stay with her tent & her belongings as she originally planned. According to the last people who filtered out that night, Maddy didn’t seem drunk or concerned that she would be out there on her own for the rest of the night.

The last time anyone recalled seeing Maddy, it was just before 3 am on Saturday morning; she was left alone to sleep at the campsite. When investigators later spoke with Dawn, it was her belief that Maddy didn’t realize that she was going to be completely alone in the dark wilderness since she doesn’t believe she would have stayed had that been the case.

Hours later, at about 8:30 am, Jordy was on her way to work & stopped back at the campsite to grab some of the things she left behind in Maddy’s tent. When she pulled up, she saw that Maddy’s truck was still where she originally parked it, the tent door flap was unzipped & open, but Maddy wasn’t there. Her sleeping bag, blanket & belongings were pushed to the side inside the tent & she also saw Maddy’s rings outside the tent despite the fact that she rarely ever took them off, as well as her earrings on the ground. Regardless, Jordy grabbed her things, went to work & never got in touch with Eldon or Dawn about the fact that Maddy wasn’t there.

Other guests from the party also returned to the campsite on Saturday morning to gather the belongings they’d accidentally left behind, but when they saw Maddy’s truck & tent, they just assumed she was still asleep.

On Saturday night, one night after the birthday party that Maddy attended, there was an even larger party held at Hogsback Lake with about 150 people in attendance, none of whom recalled seeing Maddy in the area. This reinforced the idea that whatever may have happened to her, happened in the earlier hours of Saturday morning. If there was any evidence that related to Maddy’s disappearance, it was likely erased by the partygoers on Saturday night.

Meanwhile, when Maddy didn’t come home on Saturday, Dawn & Eldon just figured she decided to stay another night at the campsite since she didn’t have concrete plans leading into the weekend. Cell service in the area was also spotty so they figured she was unable to get a hold of them to let them know. Each time they tried to call her phone, it went straight to voicemail.

When they still hadn’t heard from her by the following day, Sunday, May 29, Dawn called Jordy’s mother who indicated that Jordy had been home since the previous day & was currently at work. This was the moment that Dawn felt a sense of fear begin to creep in. She called her husband at work & they drove over to Hogsback Lake to see if they could find their daughter.

As they pulled up to the campsite, Eldon & Dawn found her tent partially collapsed with all of her belongings still inside, but Maddy was nowhere to be found. They knew their daughter to be an impulsive person who often did spur-of-the moment things, but she always touched base with her parents about her plans.

Since they brought spare keys, Eldon & Dawn were able to get into Maddy’s truck where they found her purse & backpack inside, but her car keys with a gothic-style lanyard & iPhone 4 with its light blue case were missing. They were immediately concerned since Maddy never went anywhere without her purse & was unlikely to have left her things behind. They also walked around the area of the campsite & spoke with other campers who knew Maddy, but hadn’t seen her & noted that her truck had been there the entire time they’d been there.

After walking the nearby trails & finding no sign of Maddy, Dawn contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to report her daughter missing & the fear & desperation in her voice could be clearly heard.

An official search & rescue began that afternoon as Dawn could only wonder where her daughter could possibly be & kept hoping & praying that she would just meander up to the campsite with a reasonable explanation as to where she’d been. They learned that a party goer from the larger party that was held on Saturday night had collapsed her tent, possibly after falling into it. The man responsible was tracked down & quickly cleared from having any involvement.

Investigators were troubled when they learned that Maddy’s friends who’d been at the party had left her at the lake completely alone. Maddy’s mom was incredibly disappointed by that fact, especially since Jody had promised her she’d stay with her.

Jordy indicated that since Maddy disappeared, she’s received a lot of online hate where she’s been accused of being a horrible person who left their friend alone in the Canadian wilderness.

Since the terrain around Hogsback Lake is so rugged & vast, involving dense wooded areas & water, finding Maddy has been likened to trying to find a needle in a haystack. Searchers, which included rescue teams, volunteers, divers & tracking dogs, combed the area hoping to find Maddy. Sonar equipment was also used to scan the lake, but there was no trace of her.

It was the RCMP’s belief that something may have happened to Maddy sometime between 4 & 8:30 am on Saturday morning, May 28, hours after she was last seen. Based on evidence at the scene, they did not believe that Maddy had simply walked away on her own accord.

It wasn’t until Monday, May 30 when terror truly set in for Maddy’s friends who had been holding out hope that maybe she’d taken an impromptu trip with someone & her cell phone had died, leaving her unable to update her parents. Everyone who loved her carried a sick feeling in the pit of their stomachs, unable to comprehend what might have happened to her.

The majority of Maddy’s belongings were intact other than the fact that her keys, phone & clothing she was last seen wearing were missing. Her family launched extensive campaigns in order to raise awareness & offered a $100,000 reward for information that could lead to finding Maddy. They also organized fundraising events such as the annual Poker Ride for Maddy.

While the police investigation continued, Dawn & Eldon began their own investigation & compiled a list of people who had been at the party that night including when they arrived & when they left, who they arrived with & who they left with. They set up a makeshift investigation on their home’s basement wall only feet from where Maddy’s now empty bedroom was situated.

They began retracing their daughter’s last known movements from that Friday. Before Maddy made her way to the campsite, she stopped off at a liquor store & later picked up snacks & she was seen on surveillance video only hours before she vanished.

On their investigation board, the Scotts compiled a list of questions they wanted answered such as: Why was she left on her own, why did everyone leave despite their initial plans to stay?

Since Maddy intended to camp the night with Jordy Bolduc, Eldon & Dawn knew that she was a person who could potentially answer these questions. Jordy indicated that the party had grown beyond what was expected since it was initially supposed to be a group of people who were all familiar with one another. But because word of the party spread online where it was posted to Facebook, some people showed up that Jordy didn’t know.

Since Jordy was one of the last people to have seen Maddy that night, investigators focused a lot of attention on her & spoke to her on a near daily basis for months. She passed two polygraph tests & was eventually eliminated as a suspect.

Meanwhile, days turned to months & months turned to years & there was still no sign of Maddy. Her disappearance gave people the feeling that she just simply vanished into thin air since the majority of things remained at her campsite that looked frozen in time. There was no sign of any kind of physical altercation at her campsite, no blood, nothing out of the ordinary. The fact that her tent flap had been found unzipped & opened gave the appearance that she may have just stepped out of her tent for a moment, maybe to relieve herself & likely planned to go right back inside. Since her truck was still there, investigators wondered if someone drove up to the site while she was there alone & took her in their vehicle.

More than a decade passed while the RCMP & community volunteers continued their search for Maddy to no avail. Posters remained hung & billboards were mounted to keep her case alive along Highway 16 in British Columbia which runs from Prince George to Prince Rupert.

Highway 16 has become increasingly notorious & has come to be known to locals as the Highway of Tears due to a series of disappearances & murders of women & girls that date back four decades. According to the RCMP, since 1969 there have been at least eighteen victims with a large number of the cases still unsolved, while locals believe the number is as high as 43 or more.

Hogsback Lake, where Maddy was last seen alive, is 72 miles (116 km) which is a little less than an hour & a half drive away. However, Maddy fits the same pattern as some of the cases that have occurred along Highway 16.

Sergeant Ken Floyd & Constable Tom Wamsteeker of the RCMP led the investigation & began developing a profile of Maddy. She’d always been close with her siblings & after she graduated from high school, she began working with her dad within the logging industry.

She was very involved & well-loved within the community & had a love of the outdoors, sports & dirt biking. Her best friends, Amanda & Jasmine described Maddy as a real competitor, a thoughtful person who always shared, & someone who loved to take charge. The three girls used to make videos together & Maddy co-wrote & starred in a suspense movie they called, The Stalker.

Maddy was incredibly social, funny & independent & according to her brother, Ben, she could go from wearing a frilly dress to overalls so she could change her oil in her truck, someone who was stubborn, so much fun, up for anything & incredibly spontaneous.

Neither Amanda nor Jasmine had been at the birthday party on the night that Maddy was last seen, but investigators went on to speak with each of the fifty people that attended the party & they didn’t meet a single person who had something against Maddy or would have had reason to harm her.

Sergeant Floyd began hearing murmurs that 28-year-old Fribjon “Frib” Bjornson, a logger. a single father of two & resident of Vanderhoof, had been talking to his friends about knowing what happened to Maddy. Frib was an acquaintance of Maddy’s & the two often socialized together, but according to Jordy, he was bad news. Police confirmed that he led a troubled life that involved drugs, while his mom insisted he had been turning his life around.

When investigators turned their attention to Frib, they learned that he owed drug dealers in town money & there was a theory that these people abducted Maddy to teach him a lesson. Because they wanted to leave no stone unturned, this was something the RCMP looked into & when Frib voluntarily took a polygraph test, he passed & was cleared from the case. However, only two days later, Frib himself vanished after he was last seen at a 7/11 in Vanderhoof. Investigators were shocked when two weeks later, they found the man’s severed head about 40 miles north of Vanderhoof in an abandoned house.

Frib’s mom believes that her son was murdered for a paycheck he cashed for $2,500 just before he went missing in January 2012. On January 12, he went to the home of Robert Antoine to purchase drugs & he was killed in the early morning hours in the home’s basement. Shortly before his death, he suffered a broken nose, two black eyes, cuts & contusions to his face & head before he was strangled to death by 30-year-old Wesley Duncan.

His severed head was found wrapped in a comforter in the basement of 5 Lower Road; a piece of plastic cable insulation was found wrapped in the comforter with Frib’s DNA on it. In October 2015 his femur & patella bones were found after 34-year-old Jesse Bird confessed to committing the murder & guided undercover officers to the location where Frib’s body was buried. Four suspects ended up being charged in connection with Frib’s murder which was not connected to Maddy’s disappearance.

It turned out that Frib had been lured to a house party when three men learned he had a large sum of money on him. When he arrived, they took him down to the basement & tortured him for the money & he died as a result of his injuries.

Moving forward to May 29, 2023, twelve years to the day that Maddy was reported missing, the RCMP discovered her remains on a rural property about 11 miles (18 kilometers) from Hogsback Lake off of South Slope Road. Police secured the location with a search warrant on the private farm where her remains were located.

Despite the fact that two years have gone by since her remains have been found, the RCMP have remained very tight-lipped regarding any information regarding the property owners, how her remains were found, as well as the cause & manner of death. For more than three weeks, a white canopy tent remained erected from a gravel road near the property where RCMP cruisers & unmarked trucks gathered.

Online rumors indicate that Maddy’s remains were found on a property owned by a man whose two sons were at the party on that Friday night.

With the finding of her remains, the community mourned Maddy’s confirmed death; the municipal flag was lowered to half-mast at Vanderhoof city hall & more than 1,000 people attended a vigil in honor of her.

With word out that Maddy’s remains had been located on a private property, the community could only assume that someone would be charged for her murder & the mystery behind her death would be solved. However, despite the relief that Eldon & Dawn felt in finding their daughter, they realized that only more questions had been generated that remain unsolved.

The RCMP has not revealed if foul play was involved in Maddy’s death though investigators indicate that solving this case remains their top priority & they are doing what they need to do in the meantime so that justice can happen.

There have been many theories about Maddy’s disappearance & death & many believe that she encountered foul play at the hands of one of the guests at the party that night. Many of the attendees left near midnight after a fight broke out, leaving Maddy behind, alone in her tent.

Her phone, keys & clothing were missing though there were no signs of a struggle or forced entry into her truck which suggests she was likely transported by someone familiar with the area. Lack of physical evidence at her camp site has made it difficult to determine if she willingly walked away from her tent with someone she knew & trusted or if she was taken by a stranger.

The fact that her remains were found on a private property near her last known location reinforces the idea about local involvement. As this case stands, it’s unknown what the property owners’ relationship to Maddy is, if there was a relationship or if her death had any connection to the owners at all, but the fact that the RCMP obtained a search warrant for the property suggests they had specific reasons to believe the property had significance to her case.

Because the location is 11 miles/18 kilometers from the campsite at Hogsback Lake, it’s highly unlikely that Maddy just happened to wander over to that spot & succumbed to an accident or injury.

Throughout the timeframe Maddy was missing, there was a lot of speculation if her disappearance was connected to the Highway of Tears, the 450 mile (725 kilometer) stretch of road that runs east-west through British Columbia.

Because of the vast wilderness & isolation around Highway 16, serial offenders have taken advantage of this location making it a perfect hunting ground for a predator. The possibilities of hiding a victim’s remains are endless & of the missing, most are girls & women, many of which are Indigenous. Many of the women were out hitchhiking at the time they vanished.

The youngest victim from the Highway of Tears is 12-year-old Monica Jack who vanished while she was out riding her bike on May 6, 1978 only two weeks before she had the chance to celebrate her 13th birthday. Her bike was found the following day, but her remains weren’t located until 1995, 17 years later by a forestry worker. Garry Handlen was charged with first-degree murder with no chance of parole for 15 years.

Handlen was a suspect early on in the investigation after he had a rape conviction where he was paroled in 1975. It wasn’t until February 2014 that RCMP concocted a Mr. Big sting operation which led to his confession of Monica’s murder. After he raped & murdered the young girl, he burned her clothing, leaving her body behind a log.

So far the RCMP has identified two alleged serial killers that were active along the highway. The first is Cody Legebokoff who became Canada’s youngest serial killer, a young man from Fort St. James who seemed like the all-Canadian boy next door. He worked at a Ford dealership as a mechanic in Prince George & lived in a house with three female roommates. He came from a good family who loved & supported him.

Despite the fact that he was well-liked & always surrounded by friends, there were definitely red flags raised. During his youth, Cody was an avid hockey player who was known for his aggressive behavior on the ice, sometimes so bad that parents pulled their children off the ice. He was a hunter who liked to finish his kill with his bare hands.

After he relocated to Prince George, Cody found himself a girlfriend & a severe cocaine addiction.

At 20-years-old Cody was pulled over on a routine traffic stop in November 2010 while he was driving his pick-up truck off of a remote logging road. Immediately, the officer felt suspicious that he was hiding something after he noted a smudge of what looked like blood on the driver’s chin. He initially suspected that the boy was out poaching an animal & as a responding officer arrived, they noticed a knife & a wrench in the truck, both of which were coated in blood.

Cody claimed he’d been out hunting deer, something the officers didn’t believe. As they followed the boy’s tracks from where he’d just come from, they were horrified to discover the body of a young girl in the snow. 15-year-old Loren Leslie had been beaten beyond recognition by a pipe wrench & her throat had been slit.

Despite the fact that Loren had a genetic eye condition that left her nearly blind since birth, she was a joyful child who was a great swimmer & athlete who excelled in karate. She met Cody on a Canadian internet site, Nexopia & based on their chat history, it was clear Cody had an agenda from the start. Loren had a very innocent nature yet from the get-go, Cody was very graphic in his discussions about sex, something that was clearly making Loren uncomfortable.

About a year after Loren’s murder, investigators managed to tie Cody to three other murders near the Highway of Tears with victims that vanished in 2009 & 2010, 35-year-old Jill Stuchenko, 23-year-old Natasha Montgomery, whose body has never been found & 35-year-old Cynthia Maas based on DNA found in his apartment & on his clothing. Those that knew Cody were stunned since he’d always been a popular kid who had a lot of friends. However, by the time Maddy vanished, Cody had been in custody for months.

Using advanced DNA technology, in 2012 the Highway of Tears task force was able to match male DNA recovered from a victim’s clothing that vanished in 1974, 16-year-old Colleen MacMillen. When her brother last saw Colleen, she asked him not to tell her parents that she was going to hitchhike & her remains were found a month later, 30 miles away.

The DNA was a match to Texas native, Bobby Jack Fowler, who was working as a roofer in Prince George. Sadly, Colleen’s family never got the satisfaction of seeing him pay for her murder since he died in prison in 2006. The task force believe he is also responsible for the murders of Gail Weys & Pamela Darlington, both 19 when they vanished in 1973. They suspect he’s also responsible for six other Highway of Tears murders as well as seven murders in Oregon.

While they’re thankful they were able to allow Maddy to rest, Madison Scott’s family still wait for closure & believe that they will someday receive answers as to how she died & who was responsible. They live with their grief of losing Maddy 24/7 & remain hopeful for justice, but there have yet to be any arrests in relation to Maddy’s death.

According to the RCMP, no further information can be released in order to maintain the integrity of the investigation which remains active & ongoing.

A documentary, The Vanishing of Madison Scott, has been created about her mysterious disappearance as well as the deep impact her death left on her community.

2025 marks 2 years since Maddy’s remains have been found & 14 years since she vanished; she would have been 34-years-old this year. Her loved ones remember her as a vibrant, free-spirited, loyal & kind person. When she wasn’t working at her parent’s family business, she was immersed in spending time with her family & friends, hockey, softball & photography.

References:

Recent Posts

Previous PostThe murder of Jennifer Daugherty (Greensburg 6)

Next PostThe Coleman family murders

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

Stay in the loop, join our newsletter