Just past 1 a.m., Mabel Jack’s phone rang.
Concerned it might be an emergency, she picked up. On the line was her 26-year-old son, Ronnie, calling with what sounded like good news. He and his partner, Doreen, had been offered work at a local logging camp that even had childcare on-site. They didn’t own a vehicle, but the man offering the job had arranged to pick them up that night so they could start the following morning.
Mabel knew how much Ronnie needed the job and chose not to question it. But just before the call ended, he said something that would echo in her mind forever:
“If I don’t come back, come looking for me.”
Ronald and Doreen Jack, along with their sons — nine-year-old Russell and four-year-old Ryan — vanished in the early hours of August 2, 1980. It remains one of Canada’s most baffling disappearances, the only known case where an entire family went missing without a trace.
An Encounter with a Stranger
To understand what might have happened to the Jack family, we need to rewind to the night they vanished; a night that began in a bar in Prince George’s, British Columbia.
Ronnie, full name Ronald Paul Jack, had walked into the local pub, the First Litre. Things hadn’t been going his way lately, and like many before him, he was trying to drown his troubles in alcohol.
He’d recently lost his job at a nearby sawmill after a back injury. With no income and only social assistance coming in, Ronnie, his partner Doreen, and their two young children found themselves in a precarious situation. He had been the household’s only source of income, and now they were struggling.
But Ronnie wasn’t entirely alone. His extended family did what they could to help. It could have been worse.
It was about to be. They just didn’t know it yet.
At some point that evening — the exact time remains uncertain — a stranger walked into the bar. Neither the staff nor the regulars had seen him before. But his arrival would change everything.
Witnesses described the man as a tall, heavyset Caucasian in his late 30s, with reddish-brown hair and a full beard. He wore a baseball cap, a red plaid work shirt, and a blue nylon jacket that stopped at the waist, bearing an orange emblem on the chest.
Suspect police sketches that have been released
Before long, he struck up a conversation with Ronnie. The two appeared to get along quickly, and eventually, they left together around 11 p.m. in the man’s dark 4×4 pickup.
The drive was a short one — just 350 meters — to the Jack family’s residence at 2116 Strathcona Avenue. Once home, Ronnie introduced the man to his partner, Doreen.
Doreen Jack, known to friends as warm, funny, and easygoing, likely welcomed the stranger kindly, especially once she heard what Ronnie had to say.
The man had offered them both well-paying jobs at a logging camp located about an hour west of Prince George. Ronnie would be handling log bucking, and Doreen was offered a position as the camp cook. The camp even had childcare — a huge relief given they had no vehicle and were raising two young boys.
Because the camp was remote and the job started first thing the next morning, the man offered to drive them there that night. Faced with mounting financial stress and limited options, Doreen agreed.
There was just one catch: their children, four-year-old Ryan and nine-year-old Russell. Russell was due to start school in a few weeks. And this opportunity, though it offered hope, meant uprooting them without warning.
At 11:16 PM, phone records show Ronnie placed a call to his brother.
During the conversation, he shared the news: he and Doreen had landed short-term jobs at a logging camp near Bednesti, in the Cluculz Lake region — roughly 40 kilometers west of their home in Prince George. The work was expected to last about 10 days, possibly stretching to two weeks.
Ronnie asked if his brother could care for the kids while they were away. His brother declined.
But the mysterious man who had offered them the job seemed to have a solution for that too: the camp had facilities to care for the children. Whether it was a desperate leap of faith or a decision made under pressure, Ronnie and Doreen apparently agreed to take the boys with them.
Witness Encounters of the Jack Family Disappearance
Around midnight, Doreen’s cousin stopped by the house. He saw her packing supplies for what looked like a two-week stay, and he noticed the unknown man inside the home. That cousin, who stayed for about an hour, remains the only person to have provided a first-hand physical description of the stranger.
At 1:21 AM on Wednesday, August 2, another phone call was made — this time to Ronnie’s parents in Burns Lake. Mabel, Ronnie’s mother, later confirmed that her son told her he’d been offered a solid-paying job, and that the whole family would be heading to the camp since there was daycare for the kids. He assured her they’d be back before school started for Russell in September.
Mabel immediately sensed that something wasn’t right. Despite Ronnie’s excitement about the job, a quiet alarm rang in her chest. But knowing how desperate he’d been for work, she chose not to speak up. Still, the final thing he said before hanging up left a chill that would stay with her for the rest of her life: “If I don’t come back, come looking for me.”
Around 1:30 a.m., Doreen’s cousin left their home. Not long after he left, the family departed. Doreen’s sister, who also happened to stop by that night, saw the family sitting in a vehicle outside. She decided not to interrupt, but later admitted she had an inexplicable feeling that told her to stay away. She had no idea she’d just witnessed the last known sighting of her sister and her family.
The man drove them off into the night, into the remote wilderness, and they were never seen again.
Media and Police Blunders in the Jack Family Disappearance
The Yellowhead Highway — a route that cuts through dense forests and coastal mountain terrain — is one of British Columbia’s most visually stunning, yet isolated stretches of road. And while BC is known for its natural beauty, it also holds its share of secrets.
In the weeks that followed, Mabel’s worry grew. Ronnie always kept in touch, always called, especially when he was away. But now — nothing. Still, she hesitated. Maybe they were just too far out to access a phone. Maybe it wasn’t unusual in a logging camp to be unreachable for a while. He hadn’t told anyone exactly where the camp was, or when they’d be back. With no official return date or location to point to, there wasn’t much to report — not yet.
So, they waited.
After two weeks passed without a word, they gave it one more week before finally reporting the family missing to the RCMP in Prince George on August 26, 1980. The police began by making a few phone inquiries to nearby areas, but when those yielded no results, they released the story to the media.
The response was almost nonexistent.
Despite the clear urgency of the case — a family lured out of their home by a stranger in the middle of the night — the media didn’t bite. It didn’t dominate headlines. It didn’t spark national concern. On August 30, four days after the family was reported missing, a local newspaper ran a short article that even got the basic facts wrong, claiming the Jacks were from Burns Lake. In reality, they lived in Prince George.
Jack family now and then. Age progression using software.
Even with clear warning signs — Ronnie’s uncharacteristic silence, the fact that they’d taken only two weeks’ worth of clothing, and the children already registered to begin school in September — authorities appeared to lean toward a less severe explanation. The official statement from police at the time suggested that “it is possible he found further employment and hasn’t bothered to phone home.”
If that wasn’t frustrating enough, just over a week later, a spokesperson for the Prince George Police Department incorrectly announced that the family had been located and were home safe. They hadn’t been. They were still missing — and the investigation had barely begun.
This entire chapter of events was, at first, utterly unknown to the Jack family’s relatives. They hadn’t seen the local article printed in the Prince George Citizen — because they didn’t live in Prince George. According to the RCMP, the confusion arose from a misunderstanding between an investigator and Ronnie’s father regarding a supposed sighting. But this explanation falls apart under scrutiny. Not only had the family just moved into Ronnie and Doreen’s house to begin fundraising for a private search, they were also actively pushing for answers.
Maria Jack, Doreen’s younger sister, still questions how such a major oversight happened. She later explained that when the family asked police about the status of the investigation months later, the officers responded, “We thought they were found.” This forced the RCMP to reopen the file.
So, unbelievably, for nearly two months after their disappearance, the case of the missing Jack family wasn’t being properly investigated — nor was it being publicly discussed.
Jack Family Disappearance. Where did they go?
Eventually, by October 1980, investigators made some effort. They contacted nearby logging camps and initiated limited aerial and ground searches in and around Prince George. But, given the lack of a specific location for the camp and only a vague description of the man who had taken the family, these searches led nowhere.
By Christmas, with the weather worsening, efforts stalled. Mabel Jack had temporarily moved into her son’s home, holding out hope that Ronnie, Doreen, and the kids might return. But as the weeks dragged on with no word, she eventually had no choice but to leave. Aside from a reward poster offering $2,000 for information, both media and police attention faded. Tips dried up. Search parties disbanded. The Jack family was left to search the vast British Columbian wilderness on their own. Mabel, her husband, and their remaining five sons searched every forest trail they could find. Doreen’s sister Maria took her search efforts to Vancouver. But night after night, they found nothing — no signs, no remains, no answers.
Later that year, the family briefly felt a flicker of hope when Crime Stoppers Canada partnered with a local Prince George TV station, CKPG, to air a reenactment of the disappearance. The short film aired for three weeks in the fall of 1990 and again in spring 1991. But there was a problem — the broadcast didn’t reach the regions where the family was believed to have vanished. Once again, a potential breakthrough vanished into silence. The only other sound came from law enforcement, who shifted blame toward Indigenous communities for allegedly withholding information.
Officers publicly lamented the lack of cooperation, ignoring the long-standing and well-documented history of abuse that these communities had faced from the RCMP — especially in Prince George.
Research confirms a dark history. Indigenous children as young as 12 were attacked by police dogs. Corruption scandals rocked the local judicial system. In such an environment, it’s not surprising that community members were reluctant to engage with authorities. And as if that wasn’t enough, family members were warned not to go to the media if they wanted to keep receiving updates on the case. According to Maria, Doreen’s sister, the pressure to stay silent was real. At a later hearing, she recalled, “I got afraid then… I was afraid to talk because I needed to stay in touch with Doreen’s case.”
a snippet of the family from the local newspaper
Predictably, the silence that followed was deafening. Media coverage faded. Leads dried up. The investigation stagnated.
That is, until January 28, 1996.
On that Sunday morning, the RCMP received an anonymous call referencing the Jack family. The caller didn’t leave a name, but the police considered it significant enough to make a public appeal. When the caller didn’t follow up, investigators released the recording to the public along with a blunt statement: “We wouldn’t be going to all this trouble if it wasn’t credible.”
So why did they believe it? For one, the call came from near the area where the Jacks were suspected to have disappeared — a region heavily populated by forestry workers. There had also been a party on the property the night of the call, and police theorized that the caller used the event as cover, knowing the phone would be traceable. But perhaps most critically — they simply had nothing else.
The family thought this would be the breakthrough they had waited sixteen years for. But the trail fizzled quickly. The party was long over by the time investigators arrived. Not all attendees could be tracked down. The recording itself was unclear — the caller may have said “Gordy’s Ranch,” or “Gordy’s,” or even “Cory’s.” No one could agree. And so, once again, the investigation went cold.
Still, that phone call marked a psychological shift in the case. For the first time, police publicly moved away from theories that the Jacks had run off or that Ronnie was responsible. After all, if Ronnie had done something sinister, why bring along an unknown man? How could he have vanished entirely with no car and no money? If they’d died in an accident, why had no vehicle or remains ever been found? And if someone had killed them over a debt, how would that debt ever be repaid?
Theories emerged but none held up to scrutiny. If the mystery man had actually been a logging boss, someone would have noticed his absence. But no one matching his description was ever reported missing.
Ultimately, the police concluded that, given the sheer number of loggers, hunters, and backcountry workers active in the region, some trace of the Jacks would’ve turned up if it had been an accident. But nothing ever did.
The Jack family didn’t just vanish. That’s not how reality works.
Except — somehow — they did.
Jack Family and the Highway of Tears
An entire family disappearing without a trace is nearly unheard of. The Jack family’s case was an outlier, but not a complete anomaly. It was part of a larger, unsettling pattern that authorities were just beginning to acknowledge — a pattern centered on a stretch of highway that runs through the heart of British Columbia.
Highway 16.
Also known as the Highway of Tears.
Running through rugged terrain and remote communities, Highway 16 has long been the backdrop for disappearances and unsolved murders. Officially, the number of victims since 1970 sits at 37 — 19 men and 18 women — but the actual count is almost certainly much higher. Data in Canada, particularly around violent crime, is fragmented, inaccessible, and often incomplete. The system meant to track and connect violent cases — ViCLAS, the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System — is rarely transparent. Cases are entered into a bureaucratic void, and matches, if they exist, are not publicly shared. Advocacy groups have long pushed for a centralized, public-facing database like those used in the U.S., but every effort has faced institutional roadblocks.
And then there’s the issue of who is going missing.
The overwhelming majority of victims along Highway 16 are Indigenous — women, girls, and sometimes entire families like the Jacks. These communities, already impacted by generational trauma, are marked by high rates of poverty, lack of access to basic services, and a deep, historical distrust of police.
That distrust is not unwarranted. It is the result of centuries of systemic mistreatment — and that makes the story of the Jack family not just a mystery, but a tragedy embedded in a much larger, national failure.
Historically, the Indigenous peoples of Canada have endured what can only be described as cultural genocide. Through centuries of colonization, systematic efforts were made to sever their connection to their land, their identity, and their heritage. One of the most brutal tools of this colonial project was the residential school system. These institutions, the last of which didn’t close until 1996, were created with the intent of assimilating Indigenous children by imposing Euro-Canadian and Christian values.
In practice, they were sites of widespread abuse—both physical and emotional—where children were ripped from their families, forbidden from speaking their languages, and punished for practicing their culture.
In the case of the Jack family, as with many others, this trauma ran deep. Doreen Jack’s childhood was scarred by abuse at the hands of a father struggling with his own unresolved trauma. That experience was compounded by time spent in a residential school. Doreen’s sister would later recount how they were not allowed to bond as siblings. Even when sitting in the same room, if they spoke to one another in their language or showed familial closeness, the nuns would intervene, yanking them apart and warning that such behavior was not permitted. Over time, this conditioning left lasting scars. Doreen and her siblings grew up without the closeness most families take for granted. As her sister painfully stated, “What they taught me doesn’t go away.”
Vanishing act — a write up about the disappearence
Before we continue examining Highway 16 and the victims connected to it, it’s crucial to understand the broader context. The instinct to stay silent when a loved one disappears, the decision to accept a ride from a stranger for a bit of cash, or the hesitation to involve police—all these choices, which might seem irrational to outsiders, make tragic sense when viewed through the lens of systemic abuse and historic betrayal. Many people along this highway, especially Indigenous women, have few options and fewer people they can trust. The police are often not protectors in these stories but reminders of past and present injustice.
This 725-kilometer corridor from Prince George to Prince Rupert is desolate, remote, and unforgiving. The distances between communities are vast, public transportation is nearly nonexistent, and mobile coverage is spotty at best. It is not the sort of place where anyone should be alone, especially with a stranger. Yet again and again, that’s exactly what happens.
This road has become so notorious that if you drive it today, you’ll see large billboards warning: “Girls don’t hitchhike on the Highway of Tears. Killer on the loose.” That language isn’t accidental. It’s deliberate. By 2005, things had gotten so dire that the RCMP was forced to launch an official investigation into whether multiple serial killers were operating along Highway 16. After years of work, the most definitive conclusion they reached was that this wasn’t the work of one person.
Since then, numerous experts have called on Canadian authorities to address what’s become painfully obvious. British Columbia holds a disproportionately high number of missing persons cases, especially when compared to the rest of Canada. Indigenous people are far more likely to be affected. Yet, even after the RCMP admitted this publicly, the pace of investigations dropped sharply. In the case of the Jack family, that shift didn’t matter anyway. They didn’t fit the profile. The Highway of Tears task force was largely focused on missing Indigenous women. The Jacks were an entire family, and as a result, they fell outside the pattern being examined.
Even though statistically, a troubling number of Indigenous men and boys have also gone missing along the route, the system didn’t account for them. And that’s the thing with the Jack case — it always seems to slip between the cracks. Back in 1989, the family’s disappearance never triggered the same public outrage or sustained media coverage that cases like Melanie Carpenter or Nicole Hoer received. Both young women vanished in British Columbia. Nicole disappeared not far from where the Jacks did. Both were featured on the front pages of the province’s largest newspapers and continued to receive coverage for months, even years.
The Jack family, by comparison, got nothing.
Not a single front-page article in the year following their disappearance. Not even a brief mention. And that’s not speculation. The front pages of both major papers in British Columbia were manually reviewed, and the absence is undeniable. In fact, the Jack family wasn’t referenced in regional news until the anonymous phone call in 1996, and even then, media attention amounted to just a handful of articles. This wasn’t due to a lack of interest in covering violent crime or missing persons. The newspapers regularly reported such stories in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The difference was who the victims were.
This absence is deafening. It sends a message. It tells us that some lives are considered worthy of public attention, while others are left to disappear without a trace. It’s one of the quieter, more insidious ways institutional racism operates — not through blatant denial, but through the simple, repeated act of ignoring. A refusal to report. A choice not to care.
Unanswered Questions in the Jack Family Disappearance
None of this is new. None of it is revolutionary. We know how Canadian institutions have historically handled the disappearances of Indigenous people. We know that the data surrounding Highway 16 raises legitimate fears about serial predators using the road. And yet, despite all this knowledge, one question continues to echo:
Who did the Jack family meet that night?
There’s extensive research dating back to the 1990s on the common professions of serial killers. Truck drivers remain the third most frequently identified occupation among semi-skilled serial offenders. Forestry workers rank even higher. These are jobs that allow for movement, anonymity, and access. They offer the perfect cover. Lawful employment gives predators the opportunity to travel long distances, interact with strangers, and enter environments where no one questions their presence. In criminology, these are called crime attractors — spaces where someone looking for a victim knows they’ll find one.
Most mobile killers don’t force their victims into a car. They use a technique known in profiling as a ruse-con. They tell a story. They create a reason. A job offer, a request for help, a ride, money. Something that creates just enough trust to get someone inside the vehicle.
Given what we know about these patterns, it’s hard not to question the events of that night. Is it really a coincidence that this unknown man turned up in a local bar where no one recognized him? That the bar was just a short drive from Highway 16? That he showed up with an offer of work that was vague, without paperwork, without an exact location, and that somehow included daycare at a logging camp — something almost unheard of in that line of work?
What are the chances that this job was ever real?
And if it wasn’t — what kind of person is capable of walking into someone’s life, fabricating an entire story, gaining their trust, and vanishing with four people, without once slipping up?
Someone confident.
Someone practiced.
Someone who’s done it before.
Just because the unknown man lied about the job’s details doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t a real forestry worker. In fact, the convincing way he spoke to Ronnie—who had firsthand experience in the industry—suggests otherwise. There’s a telling detail buried in the archives, noted by a student researcher who apparently had access to the case file in the early ’90s. According to that source, the orange logo on the man’s jacket read “Husqvarna,” a well-known brand in forestry equipment. If accurate, it strengthens the possibility that this man was indeed involved in the trade.
So, does that mean the job offer was legitimate? Not necessarily. If he truly intended to deceive, why be so open about his profession in a public setting? Wouldn’t that be a reckless move? Possibly—but it also might not matter. Maybe this wasn’t a case of brilliant deception. Maybe all it took was chance, a vulnerable family, and a system too apathetic to ask the right questions. Perhaps he didn’t need to be clever. Maybe he just needed to get lucky—and trust that indifferent institutions would do the rest.
Over the years, several theories have been floated. Some believe the family died in a logging camp accident. Others suggest they may have been trafficked. A few even argue that the unknown man may have had nothing to do with their disappearance at all—that he was simply a bystander caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. But if he was innocent, why didn’t he ever come forward? Why did Ronnie tell his mother, “If I don’t come back, come looking for me”? Was that a grim joke, or a gut feeling he couldn’t explain?
What happened to the Jack family has been unsolved to date
This is the kind of case that drags you into speculation. And with no crime scene, no physical evidence, no known location—nothing can truly be ruled out. The years have offered nothing to clarify things.
Police have followed various tips over the years, many involving reports that the family was buried on or near a ranch. Some of those leads even led to digs. But each time, the results were the same: nothing. No trace of Ronnie, Doreen, Russell, or Ryan has ever been found.
It has now been thirty-four years since the Jack family was last seen. That’s more than three decades without closure, without answers, without justice. Doreen’s sister Maria has been told again and again to let it go, to accept that the truth may never come out. Even the RCMP has told her that justice might not be possible. But Maria doesn’t accept that. She holds on to the belief that the truth, in time, always comes to light.
Will we ever know what happened to the Jack family?
No one can say for sure.
But someone out there knows.
And whoever that person is, they’re still out there.
If you know anything about the disappearance of the Jack family, please contact the Prince George RCMP. Or, if you wish to remain anonymous, reach out to Crime Stoppers. You don’t have to reveal your identity. But your information could be the missing piece that finally brings answers to a family that’s waited far too long.
Written and edited by Abin Tom Sebastian/Mr. Morbid
Next, read about the Demon Core of 1946 or about the Jiko Bukken of Japan!
