At 6,416 kilometres, Canada's southern border with the U.S. is the longest undefended boundary in the world. Suspects in sensational, heinous crimes think they can cross the 49th parallel to freedom. But history has shown, they can run, but not hide.
Why Calgary native Ryan Jenkins stopped running from the law may never be known.
Canada is the second-largest country on earth, more than 9 million square kilometres in area.
Jenkins only got to Hope - 150 kilometres from Vancouver - where his demons found him.
The suspected killer of bikini model Jasmine Fiore hanged himself in a ground floor room at an aging motor hotel Sunday, just 10 days after he checked into a seaside San Diego luxury resort with Fiore.
Jenkins re-entered Canada illegally last Wednesday by apparently walking across the border from Point Roberts, Wash., into Tsawwassen. He got there after he piloted a speedboat across Boundary Bay from Blaine.
Charles Ng fled to Calgary after a rape and murder spree with an accomplice in California. He was caught after a violent, botched 1985 shoplifting in a Calgary Bay store and jailed four-and-a-half years. He was successfully extradited to the U.S. and convicted of killing eight males - including two babies - and three females. He is a California death row prisoner.
West Vancouver teens Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns were allowed to return home on a Greyhound bus after Rafay's parents and sister were murdered in 1994 at Bellevue, Wash.
Undercover cops gained enough evidence to charge them, but Burns and Rafay beat their extradition to Washington State because the Supreme Court of Canada said they couldn't be sent to a country where they faced execution. Washington prosecutors instead sought life sentences without parole. They were convicted in 2004.
