A father and son charged with the first-degree murder of a runaway teenage girl from Abbotsford, whose body was found in a shallow grave outside of Hope, are headed to trial this month.

Jesse (Blue) West, 56, and his son Dustin (Blue) Moir, 24, have pleaded not guilty in the murder of 14-year-old Chelsey Acorn.

Jury selection for the case is taking place Nov. 16 in Chilliwack Supreme Court and the trial is scheduled to start Nov. 23.

Acorn’s body was discovered in April 2006 when hikers near the Carolin Mines exit off the Coquihalla Highway came across a suspicious depression in a treed area and discovered human bones.

Her remains were identified with the aid of dental records.

Acorn was in the care of the Ministry of Children and Family Development when she left an Abbotsford-area group home on June 10, 2005.

She was reported missing the next day.

Police said the young girl had run away as many as a dozen times before her final disappearance.

There were reports of her being spotted in Abbotsford, Mission, Surrey and Chilliwack, but the sightings stopped in the fall, when it’s believed she was killed.

West, from Victoria, and Moir, who formerly lived in Abbotsford and Surrey, were long-haul truckers who sometimes worked together.

Homicide investigators had tracked the pair through B.C. and Alberta, including Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland.

Both were known to police for engaging “in contact and relationships” with other underage girls, said investigators.

West has known to have used several aliases, including Gary Wayne Vance, Michael Harrison, John Angus Cameron, Richard Ciouata, Ben Jansen, Alan King and John Ford.

West was working for an Abbotsford trucking firm when arrested.

Moir was released on $200,000 bail in May 2007, but his father has remained in custody since the pair’s arrest in March of the same year.

– with Black Press files