Wednesday, January 31

Could I have done more, ex-'Toban anguishes


By CHRIS KITCHING, SUN MEDIA
January 31, 2007

As disturbing details emerge at Robert Pickton's trial, a former Manitoban wonders if he could have done more to publicize the missing women and pressure Vancouver police.

During his stint as a police reporter at the Vancouver Sun, Lindsay Kines was one of the first to write about a growing number of prostitutes missing from the city's Downtown Eastside and question whether a serial killer was targeting them.

"I'm torn about the whole thing," said Kines, a Red River College journalism graduate from Birtle who worked as a columnist at the Brandon Sun.

"I feel like we did some good work, but there's always a sense that we could have done more stories and put more pressure on."

PROFOUND SADNESS

Kines said he feels "profound sadness" for the women and their families when he hears of the gruesome details told to jurors at Pickton's murder trial.

"(Covering the disappearances) was a strain because I was getting a lot of calls from family members, and it was tough not (knowing) what to tell them or be able to tell them anything new," said Kines, who now covers the B.C. legislature for the Victoria Times-Colonist.

Wayne Leng turned to Kines when his friend, Sarah De Vries, vanished.

"I am grateful to him because he followed up on it. He was interested and concerned about what was going on," Leng said. "When Sarah went missing I contacted a lot of media ... but (no one else) got back to me."

Kines' first article, in 1997, told a woman's tale of how her sister disappeared. A year later, he wrote about De Vries and learned several others were missing.

He participated in a four-month investigation that uncovered a flawed police investigation. The report identified 45 missing women at a time when police said 27 had disappeared, Leng said.

Self-interest and a personal obligation to the families were his motivation to keep the story in the minds of readers and police officers. Kines shared a National Newspaper Award for his coverage of the police investigation at Pickton's farm.

"The families deserve a lot of credit for pushing it ahead," Kines said. "It was to try to answer their questions as much as anything that kept me going."
The Winnipeg Sun
How Lindsay Kines and Sun Reporters broke the missing women story

The Vancouver Sun - Robert Pickton on Trial



Part 1: The Pickton police interview begins This is an edited excerpt of the 11-hour police interview of Robert (Willie) Pickton, following his arrest in February 2002 on two counts of murder relating to Mona Wilson and Sereena Abotsway. The first three and a half hours of the interrogation tape was played in the courtroom January 23, and this is a portion of it.
Part 2: Second portion of the police interview This is an abridged excerpt of the 11-hour police interview of Robert (Willie) Pickton, following his arrest in February 2002 on two counts of murder relating to Mona Wilson and Sereena Abotsway.
Part 3: Third portion of the police interview This is an edited excerpt of the 11-hour police interview of Robert (Willie) Pickton, following his arrest in February 2002 for two counts of murder relating to Mona Wilson and Sereena Abotsway. The first 7.5 hours of the interrogation tape was played in B.C. Supreme Court Tuesday and Wednesday. This is a portion of what the jury heard Thursday.
Day 6: Adam says Pickton denied Hells Angels involved Don Adam admitted that police investigated other suspects for the missing women murders, including an explosive tip that a Hells Angels member was involved. Adam said Pickton denied the Hells Angels or his brother, Dave Pickton, were involved.
Day 5: The lead investigator testifies RCMP Insp. Don Adam, the lead investigator, testified about the events leading to Robert William Pickton's Feb. 22, 2002 arrest and police tactics after the arrest, when Pickton was initially charged with two murders of missing women.
Week in Review: Pickton tells police he got 'sloppy' Pickton told police that he got sloppy before his arrest and expected police would find the blood of several women at his Port Coquitlam farm. He also said he had "one more planned" before he "shut it down."
Day 4: Jury watches 11-hour videotape For the third day, the jury continued watching an 11-hour videotape of the police interrogation of Robert (Willie) Pickton that took place on Feb. 23, 2002, a day after he was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
Day 3: Pickton denies inviting missing women to farm The jury heard the second day of an 11-hour videotape of the police interrogation of Robert (Willie) Pickton that took place on Feb. 23, 2002, a day after he was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
Day 2: Jury begins hearing interrogation tape The jury began hearing an 11-hour videotape of the police interrogation of Robert (Willie) Pickton on Feb. 23, 2002, a day after he was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
Day 1: Courtroom is full as the trial opens It was the first day of trial of Robert (Willie) Pickton, who is accused of six counts of first-degree murder. Pickton, 57, has been awaiting trial for five years since his arrest in February 2002.
Pickton an adept 'stickhandler': police A senior officer testified Tuesday that Robert (Willie) Pickton had "the upper hand" by the end of an 11-hour police interrogation, and was an adept "stickhandler" as he tried to broker a deal with the RCMP.
Confidential tip led police to Pickton farm, court told Police investigated a confidential tip that a Hells Angels member was involved in the murders of missing women on the farm co-owned by accused killer Robert (Willie) Pickton, a jury was told today at Pickton's murder trial.
Pickton arrest followed unexpected break in case: officer A senior police officer in charge of the Missing Women Task Force testified Monday he had no idea there would be a massive break in the case when Mounties armed with a firearms search warrant entered Robert (Willie) Pickton's pig farm.
Accused on police radar before arrest on farm RCMP Insp. Don Adam admitted that when police interrogator, Sgt. Bill Fordy, promised he wouldn't lie to Pickton during an 11-hour police interrogation almost five years ago, the officer was not telling the truth. The interrogation was played last week at the B.C. Supreme Court trial in New Westminster.

Pickton's intelligence under question

David Carrigg
CanWest News Service

Wednesday, January 31, 2007
CREDIT: Felicity Don, Bill Keay / Vancouver Sun
Art work from Felicity Don of RCMP Staff Sgt. Bill Fordy (who is on the stand today.

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. — Defence lawyer Peter Ritchie asked a police witness Wednesday whether he had heard that accused serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton was "slow" or that he was "controlled by his brother and sister."

RCMP Staff Sgt. Bill Fordy responded that he had not heard that. Only that Pickton’s brother Dave "took care of him."

Ritchie then asked Fordy whether he had heard that Pickton’s mom, who died in 1979, ensured in her will that Pickton would not get direct control of his portion of her estate.

"Did you hear that his brother and sister don’t consult, they control,?" Ritchie asked.

CREDIT: Ian Smith/Vancouver Sun

RCMP Inspector Don Adam outside the Robert Pickton trial. He was the head of the Missing Women's Task Force.

Pickton and his younger brother Dave lived on the family’s Port Coquitlam, B.C., farm, where police in 2002 recovered the remains of several of Vancouver’s missing women. Pickton’s sister,
Linda Wright, is a realtor and did not live on the farm.
The Pickton brothers operated an illegal night-club on another property owned by the family, the court was told.

Fordy was the police officer who spearheaded an 11-hour interview with Pickton after he was arrested on murder charges in February 2002.

Earlier Wednesday Ritchie revealed that Pickton "flunked Grade 2" and was put into a "special class" as a result.

Ritchie then asked Fordy whether he was aware of Pickton’s academic record before he conducted Pickton’s post-arrest interview.

"I have no recollection that Mr. Pickton flunked Grade 2," Fordy said. "I recall he quit school before he was 16."

Ritchie also highlighted a string of "odd" comments made by Pickton during the 11-hour interview, conducted on Feb. 23, 2002.

One example was when Pickton responded to the question "do you miss your mom?", with "yeah, tit for tat."

"Isn’t that odd?" Ritchie said to Fordy. "He uses a number of odd expressions when you’re dealing with this fellow."

Ritchie pointed out that when Fordy made the comment "life goes on", Pickton responded "I guess you just build a house, you do this, you do that. You die tomorrow and another person borns."

Fordy told Ritchie that "Mr. Pickton has speech patterns that are different or uncommon."

Fordy also said he believed Pickton knew what he was being asked during the interview and that he had no concerns about Pickton’s mental capacity.

Ritchie pointed out that Pickton did not seem to know who O.J. Simpson or Osama bin Laden were. Both men were mentioned during the interview.

A recording of the post arrest interview was played in court last week and contained a series of stunning comments by Pickton, including that he "got sloppy" with the "last one."

Earlier Wednesday, Ritchie told the court that Pickton’s lawyer was inside the Surrey RCMP detachment during the interview.

Responding to Ritchie, Fordy confirmed that he knew the lawyer was in the building and that he tried to persuade Pickton not to follow legal advice — which was to not speak to police.

"You wouldn’t get very far if the lawyer’s advice not to speak to the police was reinforced," Ritchie told Fordy.

Ritchie then probed Fordy over a series of lies and misstatements the officer made during the marathon interview.
Fordy said he made a dozen misstatements and told half a dozen lies.

Ritchie asked Fordy "are there so many lies you can’t remember them. I suggest you lied as much as you could."

Fordy responded, "I did lie to Mr. Pickton, but I did not fabricate evidence with regards to Mr. Pickton."

"I lied to Mr. Pickton on a number of occasions. I lied about the death of my mother. I lied when I said I wouldn’t lie to him because I did lie to him. I misstated a number of things with respect to the investigation," Fordy said.

He said he lied in a bid to establish rapport with Pickton, which is a police interview technique.

Fordy said Pickton did not fall asleep or cry at any time during the interview. He said that if Pickton did not understand Fordy’s questions, he would ask for clarification.

Pickton stared at Fordy during his testimony and took notes on a legal pad. At one point, Pickton handed a note to a sheriff and it was delivered to one of his lawyers.

Justice James Williams warned jurors before the interview tape was played last week that Pickton’s words in the interview were to be considered evidence in the case, not the questions posed by the police officers interrogating him.

Ritchie earlier stated that his client had made "inculpatory" statements during the interview, meaning statements that suggest guilt.

Fordy revealed Pickton’s DNA was collected by undercover officers while he was under surveillance between his Feb. 7 weapons arrest and his Feb. 22 arrest for murder.

Earlier Wednesday, Fordy told a Crown prosecutor that the interview was long, but that it was not uncommon for an interview to last that long.

A recording of the interview was played in court last week and contained a series of stunning comments by Pickton, including "you’re making me out to be more of a murderer than I really am."

When Insp. Don Adam, who also questioned Pickton, asked the suspect what he should tell the victim’s families, Pickton responded "shit happens".

Highlights from this week in court include:

• Pickton kept the stuffed head of his favourite horse, Goldy, on the wall of his trailer.
• Pickton’s brother Dave told police he knew about "bodies" and showed investigators where to look.
• Police investigated links between Pickton and the Hells Angels.
• Pickton had at least five female associates — Dinah Taylor, Lynn Ellingsen, Lisa Yeles, Gina Houston and Nancy Plasman. Ellingsen is expected to testify against Pickton, while Taylor refused to co-operate.
• Taylor, Ellingsen and another Pickton associate, Pat Casanova, were arrested on suspicion of murder but no charges were laid.
• Police received confidential information that men were involved in "blood sport" at the Pickton farm that involved killing women.

Pickton, 57, who ran a pig-butchering business on his family’s Port Coquitlam, B.C., farm, is on trial in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster, B.C., for the first six of the 26 first-degree murders he’s now charged with.

Within six months of the February 2002 interview, police found three of the missing women’s heads and their hands and feet on the Pickton farm.

Police also recovered DNA from bones on the farm that matched the DNA from a skull found on the side of the road in Mission, B.C., in 1985.

Pickton accepts those body parts were found on the property but he denies he killed the women.
Pickton is currently being tried for the murder of Andrea Joesbury, Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin and Brenda Wolfe.

Vancouver Province

© CanWest News Service 2007

Hells Angels probed for Pickton link

David Carrigg
CanWest News Service
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
CREDIT: Canadian Press/Jane Wolsak
Crown witness RCMP Insp. Don Adam admitted yesterday he lied to Robert Pickton during the interrogation.


Warning: Potentially offensive material. Reader discretion is advised

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. — Day 6 of the trial of accused serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton ended Tuesday they way it started, with the defence grilling RCMP Insp. Don Adam.

Wednesday’s session will begin at 9:30 a.m., with Adam, who spearheaded the Pickton investigation, answering more questions from Peter Ritchie, Pickton’s lawyer.

Earlier Tuesday, Adam said police investigated links between accused serial killer Robert Pickton and the Hell’s Angels.

During the lengthy cross-examination conducted by Ritchie, Adam said that police examined two people they believed had Hell’s Angels connections.

The first was Lisa Yeles, who used to be married to "Blacky the biker".

The second was a man called Vickers who was associated with a well-known Downtown Eastside sex worker flophouse.

Adam said police ruled out any involvement between the pair and the alleged murders Pickton is being tried for.

Adams said police initially thought Vickers was a Hells Angels member but later learned that was a mistaken belief.

Adam said police also received confidential information that men were involved in "blood sport" at the Pickton farm that involved killing women.

Ritchie said Tueday that Pickton was fatigued during a marathon interview following his arrest.
When the jury was shown a recording of that interview last week they saw Pickton make a series of stunning comments, including that "I got sloppy with the last one."

"Will you agree with me at all that Mr. Pickton was fatigued during the interview," Ritchie asked Adam. Adam disagreed.

Ritchie asked Adam whether he thought the fact Pickton yawned several times during the interview and often sat with his head in his hand meant he was exhausted.

"His head on his hand I didn’t take as exhaustion," Adam said. "I thought it was a way of sitting comfortably. I would describe it as resting."

Ritchie asked Adam if he noticed that interrogator Sgt. Bill Fordy touched Pickton several times during the interview.

Adam said touching a person is an interview technique.

"Touching of a person can sometimes strengthen bonding, or show compassion," he said.
Ritchie questioned Adam about statements made by police during the 11-hour interview following Pickton’s February 2002 arrest.

Ritchie said police told Pickton that the case against him was so strong it was hopeless for him to deny he allegedly killed the women.

Earlier today, Adam revealed that only one of Robert Pickton’s two female associates agreed to help police following his arrest.

Adam said police arrested Lynn Ellingsen and during the ensuing interview her lawyer suggested an immunity agreement be signed.

He said police eventually resolved the issue and an immunity agreement wasn’t necessary.

Another associate, Dinah Taylor, fled to Ontario after Pickton’s arrest.

Adam said police tracked her down to her home on an aboriginal reserve and met with her and her parents.

"Her parents wanted her to cooperate with police but she never got on board at all. I thought we could get her on board," Adam said.

It was revealed Tuesday that three of Pickton’s associates —Taylor, Ellingsen and Pat Casanova — were arrested in the murder of missing women.

Pat Casanova, who helped with Pickton’s pig-butchering business, was picked up on suspicion of 15 first-degree murders.

Taylor and Ellingsen were also arrested for murder, but police were able to resolve the issue of Ellingsen’s suspected involvement without extensive investigation, Adam said.

Neither Casanova, Taylor nor Ellingsen were charged with any of the murders.

Pickton was arrested for murder on Feb. 22, 2002. Police had picked up Ellingsen 12 days previously and Taylor a day before that. Casanova was arrested Jan. 25, 2003.

During the police interrogation tape played last week for the jury, an RCMP officer told Pickton that Ellingsen saw Pickton skinning a woman who was hanging from a hook.

Also heard on the videotape was a suggestion that Pickton had told his brother Dave Pickton that Dinah Taylor was involved in some of the murders.

And Pickton repeatedly told police during the interrogation that he wanted to speak with Taylor before saying anything more.

Yesterday afternoon, Ritchie asked Adam whether police lied during a marathon post-arrest interview with Pickton.

Adam said that during the interview Pickton was told police had heard he had sex with dead bodies. That was not true.

Ritchie also pointed out that the police did not use satellites in the investigation, despite telling Pickton they had.

During the interview, Pickton makes a series of stunning comments, including that Pickton "got sloppy with the last one."
He also said "you’re making me out to be more of a murderer than I really am," and when Adam asks Pickton what he should tell the victim’s families, Pickton responds "shit happens".

During the interview Pickton was shocked to see one of his employees, Scott Chubb, told police his former boss boasted he could kill a drug addict by injecting them with windshield wiper fluid. Police later found a windshield wiper fluid filled syringe in Pickton’s trailer.

Pickton, 57, who ran a pig-butchering business on his family’s Port Coquitlam farm, is on trial in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster for the first six of the 26 first-degree murders he’s now charged with.

Within six months of the February 2002 interview, police found three of the missing women’s heads and their hands and feet.

Police also recovered DNA from bones on the farm that matched the DNA from a skull found on the side of the road in Mission in 1985.

Pickton accepts those body parts were found on the property but he denies he killed the women.
Pickton is currently being tried for the murder of Andrea Joesbury, Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin and Brenda Wolfle.

Vancouver Province

© CanWest News Service 2007

Tuesday, January 30

Construction company kick-starts reward fund

Sat Jan 27 2007

By Aldo Santin
Winnipeg Free Press

A Winnipeg construction firm that does most of its work in the North is contributing $1,000 from every home it builds to a reward fund that will shed light on the cases of the many missing aboriginal women and the unsolved murders of aboriginal women.

Jerry Sorokowski, head of PMG Inc., said he's making a modest contribution to solve a problem that's haunted Manitoba.

"I've never been touched by this kind of tragedy and I can't imagine what it's like to be in a family whose daughter has gone missing or has been murdered," Sorokowski said.

Sorokowski said he expects to build about 50 homes on northern reserves this season, adding that would total $50,000 for the reward fund.

The fund, known as Sisters in Spirit, Winnipeg Chapter, was the brainchild of Raven ThunderSky, whose sister Barbara Keam was murdered in 1980 in Norway House. Her slaying has never been solved.

ThunderSky said she has known Sorokowski for many years but couldn't believe he was kick-starting the reward fund with such a large contribution.

"I told Jerry I had this impossible dream to start a reward fund and when he said he'd give $1,000 for every home I didn't think I heard him properly," ThunderSky said.

It's believed that there are more than 50 missing women or women whose murders remain unsolved in Manitoba. Many of these women were sex-trade workers and almost all of them are aboriginal.

Sorokowski said he's hopeful that other firms that do business with First Nation communities, and those that don't, will contribute to the reward fund.

ThunderSky said the group's lawyer is in the process of setting up the fund, adding that if any individual or firm wants to donate they can contact her through her e-mail: raventhundersky@hotmail.com

Ú aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca

© 2007 Winnipeg Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

Tough slogging in farm search

By IRWIN LOY, 24 HOURS

January 30, 2007

RCMP investigators combing through Robert Pickton's pig farm relied on skills learned from sifting through the aftermath of 9/11 and war-torn Kosovo, a B.C. Supreme Court jury heard this morning.

Investigators used the expertise of a man from the B.C. Coroner's Office. The specialist in uncovering human remains had previously visited Kosovo to look through the remains of mass burials, Insp. Don Adam told the jury.

Police also sent an officer to learn from those who had sifted through the rubble of the World Trade Center. That visit prompted investigators to employ students of osteology, the study of bones, to help sort through 383,000 cubic yards of soil.

"Often it's not easy to identify [bones]," Adam explained in testimony.

These were some of the details coming out in court yesterday about the massive investigation that mushroomed after police first descended on Pickton's PoCo farm in February 2002.

Adam, who led the investigation, told the jury his team ballooned from around 30 before the search to as many as 270 afterwards, including police officers and civilians.

Adam said the sheer amount of evidence that needed to be examined "challenged the [forensic] lab system in this country."

"This isn't TV," he said. "You don't go onto a farm like that and start rushing around as if you're on some sort of Easter egg hunt, looking for a hot piece of evidence."


Journalist has witnessed this story before


Journalist has witnessed this story before
Les MacPherson, The StarPhoenix
Published: Tuesday, January 30, 2007

When Warren Goulding follows the trial in Vancouver of alleged serial killer Robert Pickton, he remembers a Saskatoon case with disturbing similarities. What's even more disturbing is the likelihood of more such cases to come.

A veteran journalist -- and former StarPhoenix colleague -- Goulding wrote a book about a serial killer who stalked Saskatoon's mean streets in the early 1990s. The title, Just Another Indian, refl ects a theme of public indifference to the multiple victims. Goulding sees similar indifference to the 26 victims in Vancouver and to the vulnerable women who could all too easily become victims in future. He would not be surprised in the least if other serial killers are preying on these women without anyone knowing about it, even as the Pickton trial unfolds.
As in Vancouver, the Saskatoon victims were luckless transients reduced to prostitution on the city's stroll. It was in 1992 that John Martin Crawford, all but unnoticed, murdered three of them, one after another. An investigation into the disappearances didn't even begin until three years later, when the women's remains were discovered by accident in shallow graves in the bush west of the city.

Apathetic authorities, to their credit, then went into high gear. Thanks to impressive investigative work, the deceased were quickly identifi ed and Crawford pegged as the prime suspect.
He was convicted largely on the strength of admissions recorded as part of a textbook sting operation.

What has always troubled Goulding is how authorities overlooked not only the disappearances but Crawford himself. He was not even a blip on police radar until bodies were discovered, years after the murder. Even then, Crawford quickly emerged as the prime suspect. An ex-con who had done 10 years in prison for killing a woman in Lethbridge, he reportedly was well-known and regarded as a threat by women on the street here. Police surveillance revealed Crawford endlessly prowled the stroll, often while drunk or stoned and driving. That's how he's spent his idle hours for years. Goulding would have hoped police during all that time might have gotten to know him a little better.

Pickton, likewise, was reportedly well-known on Vancouver's stroll by almost everyone except police. He, too, was reportedly exposed only by accident. Police were searching his property on unrelated fi rearms charges when they stumbled on an asthma inhaler prescribed to one of the missing women. A subsequent search of the property revealed the remains of 26 women.
This after police had for years discounted persistent complaints about women disappearing from city streets.

It's not as if authorities were outsmarted.

Goulding points out that neither Pickton nor Crawford are anyone's idea of a criminal genius.
Crawford, he says, was not smart enough to form a complete sentence. Still, he was able for years to get away with successive murders.

In the Vancouver trial, Pickton's lawyer urged the jury to keep in mind Pickton's intellect. He seemed to be laying the groundwork for arguing later that his client is not smart enough to have organized multiple murders. The Crawford precedent would suggest, however, that a predator need not be especially clever if the victims are suffi ciently vulnerable.

Goulding says Pickton seems more intelligent than Crawford. Pickton owned property, he was running a business of sorts and he apparently had a large circle of associates. He at least had something going for him, unlike Crawford, a chronically unemployed, low-life freeloader.

There are important differences, too, in the cases. Crawford was convicted after a short trial.

Pickton's trial is expected to last more than a year. Goulding was surprised to hear Pickton's lead lawyer, Peter Ritchie, declare unequivocally that his client did not commit the six murders for which he is on trial. (He'll be tried later on the additional 20 murder charges.) Goulding, who has lengthy experience covering crime and courts, says defence lawyers usually don't come out and say their client didn't do it.

The more common line is to argue there's not enough proof. Goulding is familiar with Ritchie, describing him as an excellent criminal lawyer.

For him to declare in open court his client's innocence is indicative of a stronger case for the defence than we might expect, Goulding believes.

He also believes this won't be the last such case in Canada. In spite of all the murders, no one keeps track of women on the margins of society. There is no hue and cry when they disappear.
They remain easy prey for the monsters among us.

© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2007

Serial killer who roamed Saskatoon met with indifference by police, media:
Journalist-author accepts award for book about slain aboriginal women.

Monday, January 29

A hard-working farmer with 'lots of friends'

Pickton painted a picture for police of an ordinary man with a normal life

ROBERT MATAS
Globe and Mail

January 29, 2007

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. -- Sergeant Bill Fordy wears a white shirt and tie -- no sports jacket -- for the interrogation of Robert Pickton. A video camera behind Sgt. Fordy is focused on the man accused of murder. It is impossible to see Sgt. Fordy's expression as he speaks to Mr. Pickton.

But Sgt. Fordy's words are clear enough as he says what will remain on many people's minds as long as Mr. Pickton remains in the news: You're a mature adult, smart, not stupid and not crazy, he tells Mr. Pickton in the early hours of the marathon 11-hour interrogation.

"I'm a student of human behaviour and I speak to you from the heart, I want you to teach me about yourself," Sgt. Fordy says. "I want you to teach me about how did Robert Pickton do the things he did."

The interrogation took place at an RCMP station in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey on Feb. 23, 2002, the day after Mr. Pickton was arrested for the murder of two women -- Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson -- missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. Police had found some evidence related to their murders, but no human remains.

Mr. Pickton is on trial for the murder of Ms. Abotsway, Ms. Wilson and four other women: Georgina Papin, Marnie Frey, Andrea Joesbury and Brenda Wolfe. The videotape of the police interview was played in B.C. Supreme Court last week, in the opening days of Mr. Pickton's first-degree murder trial.

In the first few hours of the interrogation, Sgt. Fordy asks Mr. Pickton numerous questions about his life before confronting him with evidence related to the murder charges against him. Mr. Pickton's responses form the first picture of him to emerge so far, solely in his own words.

Mr. Pickton, 52 years old at the time of his arrest, portrays himself as an ordinary, hard-working, productive pig farmer with a normal life. He says he does not drink, does not smoke and does not watch television.

He sits for hours without fidgeting or showing signs of nervousness or aggression, despite an unrelenting barrage of accusations. The police leave numerous pregnant pauses after questions, trying to make him uncomfortable with the quietness. He does not jump in to fill the silence. Throughout the grilling, he remains mostly polite and deferential.

Mr. Pickton says he was close to his mother, but had little to do with his father.

His mother, Louise Helen Pickton, died of cancer when Mr. Pickton was 29 years old. They were "like two peas in a pod," he says. Mr. Pickton says he doesn't know how old she was when she died, but he admits to missing her. She was the person he most respected in the world, he says in response to a question from Sgt. Fordy. He liked her for her strong mind and strong willpower, he says.

He did not talk much to his father. "He was always working," Mr. Pickton says. He felt closer to his mother, although he doesn't have a picture of her to show Sgt. Fordy.

Mr. Pickton also has kind words about his younger siblings, David and Linda. Mr. Pickton says he has quarrelled with David Pickton but enjoys his company. Sgt. Fordy asks what he does with his brother. "Work," Mr. Pickton replies.

He says he was never close to his sister. She was sent to a Catholic school and went on to university without working on the farm. "I do not have a problem with that," Mr. Pickton says. "I think it's good. Some people make it right through school. Some can't."

Sgt. Fordy asks about best friends. Although he never married, he says he doesn't lead a solitary life. "Girlfriends, boyfriends, I have lots of friends," Mr. Pickton says. He portrays himself as having a big heart, that he is even ready to help out those who steal from him. "If they are in a jam, I help them out. . . . maybe some day they help me."

But when asked what qualities he does not like in a friend, he says stealing. He is particularly bothered by anyone who steals tools he needs for work.

Mr. Pickton shows a keen interest in a photograph of the farm used during the interrogation. When asked to name the best thing that ever happened to him, he replies: "Work." Mr. Pickton takes pride in his skills as a butcher. He was taught how to cut meat by a family friend when he was 13 years old. He once did 34 head in one day, in December of 1977. He could do up to 150 a week.

But he cautions against speed in butchering. "There is nothing fast about it," he tells Sgt. Fordy. "You want to do it nicely, make it respectable because people want to eat it. Nothing fast about anything."

Sgt. Fordy asks what he enjoys about pig farming. "Nothing, I'm in it for the money," Mr. Pickton says. He wants to give up butchering but his friends keep asking him to do favours for them.

In contrast to his interest in the farm, Mr. Pickton barely glances at a police poster in the interview room showing 48 women that he is under investigation for killing.

Sgt. Fordy tries to delve into Mr. Pickton's emotional life. The investigator asks Mr. Pickton to describe himself relative to others. "We wear the same clothes, same shoes, just different sizes. Males and females, just a little different. Otherwise we're actually the same."

When asked about the inside differences, Mr. Pickton sticks to a physical description. "We eat the same food, we go to the same toilet, the same washrooms, the same everything else," Mr. Pickton says.

He does not show any empathy for the women who died, or even for their families. "That's not my problem," he says when asked about the families. "Shit happens."

What if it were your niece or nephew, he is asked. "If it was my niece or nephew, they're at the wrong place at the right time. What else can I say," Mr. Pickton says, responding with a twisted aphorism.

Staff Sgt. Don Adam, who takes over the interrogation for the final 90 minutes, confronts Mr. Pickton about his "complete lack of caring" about the women who died and their families.

"I respect them for worrying about their offspring, and for worrying about where they are located, or where they are, if they are inside a cave, or here or there," Mr. Pickton says. "Yes, I would be in the same position as they are. But at my stage, right now, I haven't got nothing to say. At this stage."

Staff Sgt. Adam says Mr. Pickton has the same personality as Clifford Olsen, a serial killer who showed no remorse or empathy for his victims. "Not necessarily," Mr. Pickton replies.

Earlier, under constant prodding from Sgt. Fordy, Mr. Pickton chatters on about his life. He says he was once engaged to a women he first knew as a pen pal. He went to meet her in the United States in February, 1974. He was 24 years old. She did not want to leave her job and he had to get back to the farm. The relationship ended.

Sgt. Fordy asks about his first experience with sex. "Not much to say," Mr. Pickton replies. "I seen lots of girls that went to school with me." Sgt. Fordy asks about his first time with a prostitute. Mr. Pickton refers to a woman named Lynn who knifed him. He did not do anything, he adds. "I only go to sleep."

Mr. Pickton recounts a few memorable experiences from which he extracted lessons for life. He recalls a big scare he got when he was tearing a gas tank open and the tank exploded, almost blowing up the farm. "I'm still alive. But that doesn't make me, make me a mass murderer," he says, suggesting he has been accused of murder just because he is there. "The problem is, that life, life goes on," Mr. Pickton says.

He also recalls being shaken by the death of a farm animal when he was 13 years old. He had bought his first calf at an auction and thought he would keep the calf for the rest of his life. Two weeks later, he came home from school to discover the calf hanging upside down in the barn, being butchered.

He was so upset he did not talk to anyone for four days, he says. "And I finally realized that we're not here forever. We're here for the time we're here for," Mr. Pickton says.

© Copyright 2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Cops lied to Pickton


David Carrigg
The Province
Monday, January 29, 2007

NEW WESTMINSTER - Police lied to Robert Pickton several times during the accused mass murderer's post arrest interview, the court heard this afternoon.

Defence lawyer Peter Ritchie asked police witness Insp. Don Adam to confirm that interviewing officer Bill Fordy lied to Pickton when he told him he would "promise to tell the truth."

During the Feb. 23, 2002, interview, Pickton was told police had heard he had sex with dead bodies.

"That's an absolute lie, isn't it?," Ritchie said.

Adam confirmed the statement wasn't true and that it was a "test to see
(Pickton's) reaction."

Fordy also told Pickton that his mom had died of cancer, which is also not true. Pickton's mom died of cancer in 1979.

Ritchie pointed out that the police did not use satellites in the investigation, despite telling Pickton they had.

Adam said he made a mistake when he told Pickton during the interview that he had heard that Pickton contracted Hep C from a sex worker.

"I knew he had Hep C and I thought he got that from one of the sex workers.

When I reviewed that I found out it was inaccurate," Adam said.

Ritchie asked Adam whether police were telling the truth when they told Pickton they heard from several sex workers that Pickton would not look at sex workers when he had sex with them.

At that point, Adam became agitated.

"Mr. Ritchie. I made 100 statements during the interview against a backdrop of a massive investigation," Adam said.

Today's hearing ended on that note.

Ritchie will continue questioning Adam tomorrow.

Adam, the RCMP officer who masterminded the Pickton interrogation, earlier detailed the interview process in court.

Adam was questioned at length by defence lawyer Peter Ritchie about the interview team that talked with Pickton for 11 hours following his arrest on murder charges on Feb. 22, 2002.

Adam said the team comprised police from various RCMP detachments and the Edmonton Police Service.

The Pickton interview was observed via a live feed in a room nearby at the Surrey RCMP detachment. There were two criminal psychologists and a "criminal profiler" in the observation room, as well as Adam, who took over the interview at the 11th hour.

Adam is credited with making the breakthrough in the marathon Pickton interview. The interview was played to the jury last week and contained a series of stunning admissions, including that Pickton "got sloppy with the last one."

Adam said he was running on three hours sleep a night in the two weeks between Pickton's Feb. 5 weapons-related arrest and his arrest on murder charges.

Ritchie also asked Adam to show the jury a photo of the 16-acre Pickton farm. He pointed out that Dave Pickton's home was at the other end of the property from Robert Pickton's trailer, which was only 30 metres from a row of newly developed townhouses.

The entire property was surrounded by an eight-foot high metal ring-lock fence in the days after Pickton's arrest.

This morning, Ritchie asked RCMP Insp. Don Adam to confirm that three Pickton associates- Lynn Ellingsen, Dinah Taylor and Pat Casanova - were arrested on suspicion of murder following Pickton's arrest in Feb. 2002.

Casanova had been suspected of 15 killings, including the deaths of five of the six women Pickton is now standing trial for killing. No charges were laid against the trio.

Police have suggested Ellingsen and Taylor lured sex workers from the Downtown Eastside to Pickton's Port Coquitlam farm. Casanova was a Pickton employee who helped butcher pigs.

Adam explained to Ritchie how information related to the Pickton file was gathered and stored and who the key investigators were.

Adam said after Pickton's arrest the number of people working the file, including civilians and science students, went rapidly from 30 to 300.

Ritchie asked Adam about the forensic and blood splatter experts the Crown would call as witnesses.

He told Adam that this afternoon he will be asking him a lot of questions about the RCMP interview team that interrogated Pickton after he was charged with murder.

Adam earlier told the court forensic experts took over 400,000 DNA swabs from the Pickton farm and sifted through 383,000 cubic metres of soil.

"You don't rush around like an Easter egg hunt looking for a piece of evidence. You take baby steps. We started at (Pickton's) trailer and went out methodically from there," Adam said.

Outside the courthouse a dozen Native drummers turned out, lining the entrance to the building.

"We are here to support the families, to give them strength to protect themselves," said Seis'lam, of the Lil'wat First Nation.

"We are here to honour women, all women, as lifegivers." Many of Pickton's alleged victims were First Nations.

Inside the court, Adam talked about the 30-person missing women's taskforce formed in the spring of 2001.

Today, Adam said Pickton was a person of interest in the investigation prior to his arrest on a gun charge in early February. Police had gone to the farm acting on a tip Pickton had a gun in his trailer.

During that raid police found the gun with a sex toy attached to it and several items belonging to two of the missing women.

"On the morning of the sixth (of February) when I discovered what had been located I knew we needed to do a search," Adam said.

Pickton was released the following day on the firearms arrest and police began tracking him.

"If (Pickton) was in fact a serial killer then that release posed a huge threat to the public," Adam said.

Adam said police went to great lengths not to contaminate evidence with DNA from the forensic search crew.

Nine trailers were brought onto the farm as well as bulldozers.

Homicide investigators from various municipal detachments began work talking to people who knew Pickton and his associates, including sex workers in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

"We knew someone was going there and taking them out," Adam said.

In the interview played last week, Pickton also said "you're making me out to be more of a murderer than I really am," and when Adam asks Pickton what he should tell the victim's families, Pickton responds "shit happens".

During the interview Pickton was shocked to see one of his employees, Scott Chubb, told police his former boss boasted he could kill a drug addict by injecting them with windshield wiper fluid.

Police later found a windshield wiper fluid filled syringe in Pickton's trailer.

Pickton also requested several times to talk to Taylor.

Adam tells Pickton another of his female associates Ellingsen "talks about coming in when you were skinning a girl while she was hanging from a hook."

Adam told the court today that a comment he made to Pickton during the interview that he had heard Pickton had sex with corpses was a lie.

Adam said Pickton "came to life" during the latter part of the 11-hour interview.

"He had no trouble understanding what I was saying to him, but he was toying with me," Adam said.

Pickton, 57, who ran a pig-butchering business on his family's Port Coquitlam farm, is on trial in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster for the first six of the 26 first-degree murders he's now charged with.

Within six months of the February 2002 interview, police found three of the missing women's heads and their hands and feet.

Police also recovered DNA from bones on the farm that matched the DNA from a skull found on the side of the road in Mission in 1985.

Pickton accepts those body parts were found on the property but he denies he killed the women.

Pickton is currently being tried for the murder of Andrea Joesbury, Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin and Brenda Wolfe.

© The Province

Police believed a predator was hunting women on the Downtown Eastside


Canadian Press


Monday, January 29, 2007


Frame2

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. (CP) - Police believed someone was hunting women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and "taking them out" even before they discovered body parts on a pig farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C.

RCMP Insp. Don Adam told the jury in Robert Pickton's murder trial Monday that police had organized lab and forensic needs and a program that would keep track of thousands of pieces of evidence.

"The one thing we did know is that the victim pool came from the Downtown Eastside and we absolutely believed that somebody is going into that Downtown Eastside and taking them out."

Pickton has been charged with 26 counts of murder and is currently standing trial on six of them. A trial on the further 20 will take place later.

Adam said when police moved onto the farm property in 2002, they realized they had a massive search ahead.

"You don't go onto a farm like that and start rushing around as though you are on some Easter egg hunt looking for a hot piece of evidence. . . you take baby steps."

Adam said police spoke to investigators sifting through the rubble of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York to see how they dealt with finding body parts.

Eventually, nine trailers were brought onto the site. There were more than 400,000 swabs of DNA and officers used used every white contamination suit in the country.

"Even as I try to think big, I've been guilty of continually underestimating the incredible amount of resources and money this investigation would cost," Adam said.

"This is the largest, most expensive search that has been done in Canadian policing."

Officers also consulted with a B.C. coroner who had worked on excavating mass grave sites in war-torn Kosovo.

© The Canadian Press 2007


RCMP witness confirms Pickton associates detained in connection with case.

David Carrigg
CanWest News Service

Monday, January 29, 2007

Warning: Potentially offensive material. Reader discretion is advised

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. — Under questioning by defence lawyer Peter Ritchie, RCMP Insp. Don Adam confirmed today that three associates of accused murderer Robert (Willie) Pickton were detained following Pickton’s arrest in February 2002.

Charges against Lynn Ellingsen, Dinah Taylor and Pat Casanova were later dropped.

Police say Ellingsen and Taylor lured sex workers from the Downtown Eastside to Pickton’s Port Coquitlam farm.

During cross-examination, Adam explained to Ritchie how information related to the Pickton file was gathered and stored and who the key investigators were.

Adam said after Pickton’s arrest the number of people working the file, including civilians and science students, went rapidly from 30 to 300.

Ritchie asked Adam about the forensic and blood splatter experts the Crown would call as witnesses.

He told Adam, who spearheaded the Pickton investigation, that he will be asking him a lot of questions about the RCMP interview team that interrogated Pickton after he was charged with murder.

Adam earlier told the court forensic experts took over 400,000 DNA swabs from the Pickton farm and sifted through 383,000 cubic metres of soil.

"You don’t rush around like an Easter egg hunt looking for a piece of evidence. You take baby steps. We started at (Pickton’s) trailer and went out methodically from there," Adam said.

Adam, who is credited with making the breakthrough in a marathon interview with Pickton conducted after his February 2002 arrest, talked about the 30-person missing women’s taskforce formed in the spring of 2001. The interview was played to the jury last week and contained a series of stunning admissions, including that Pickton "got sloppy with the last one."

Today, Adam said Pickton was a person of interest in the investigation prior to his arrest on a gun charge in early February. Police had gone to the farm acting on a tip Pickton had a gun in his trailer.

During that raid, police found the gun with a sex toy attached to it and several items belonging to two of the missing women.

"On the morning of the sixth (of February) when I discovered what had been located I knew we needed to do a search," Adam said.

Adam said police went to great lengths not to contaminate evidence with DNA from the forensic search crew.

Nine trailers were brought onto the farm as well as bulldozers.

Homicide investigators from various municipal detachments began work talking to people who knew Pickton and his associates, including sex workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

"We knew someone was going there and taking them out," Adam said.

In the interview played last week, Pickton also said "you’re making me out to be more of a murderer than I really am," and when Adam asks Pickton what he should tell the victim’s families, Pickton responds "shit happens".

During the interview Pickton was shocked to see one of his employees, Scott Chubb, told police his former boss boasted he could kill a drug addict by injecting them with windshield wiper fluid. Police later found a windshield wiper fluid filled syringe in Pickton’s trailer.

Pickton also requested several times to talk to Taylor.

Adam tells Pickton another of his female associate Ellingsen "talks about coming in when you were skinning a girl while she was hanging from a hook."

Adam told the court today that a comment he made to Pickton during the interview that he had heard Pickton had sex with corpses was a lie.

Adam said Pickton "came to life" during the latter part of the 11-hour interview.

"He had no trouble understanding what I was saying to him, but he was toying with me," Adam said.

Pickton, 57, who ran a pig-butchering business on his family’s Port Coquitlam farm, is on trial in B.C. Supreme Court for the first six of 26 first-degree murder charges.

Within six months of the February 2002 interview, police found three of the missing women’s heads and their hands and feet.

Police also recovered DNA from bones on the farm that matched the DNA from a skull found on the side of the road in Mission in 1985.

Pickton accepts those body parts were found on the property but he denies he killed the women.

Pickton is currently being tried for the murder of Andrea Joesbury, Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin and Brenda Wolfe.

Outside the courthouse a dozen native drummers turned out, lining the entrance to the building.

"We are here to support the families, to give them strength to protect themselves," said Seis’lam, of the Lil’wat First Nation.

"We are here to honour women, all women, as lifegivers."

Many of Pickton’s alleged victims were First Nations.

Inside the court, Vancouver Province

© CanWest News Service 2007


EVIL AN ETERNAL WOE

By Jordan Michael Smith
Ottawa Sun
January 29, 2007

Last Sunday, I enjoyed an episode of American Justice, the popular crime show on A&E. The episode focused on a serial killer, if you can believe it (Most of them are about serial killers).

The next morning, I opened up the newspaper and, lo and behold, the pages were filled with details about the nascent trial of pig farmer Robert Pickton. I went from one serial killer to allegations about another. Such is their pervasiveness.

In reading and watching about serial killers over the years, I have noticed that the same comments are repeated over and over. When details of the crimes emerge, most people express their amazement and wonderment.

CNN's Anderson Cooper spoke for many with his comments about Pickton: "Just an unbelievable case."

Well, now what exactly is unbelievable about Pickton's alleged crimes? What I find unbelievable is that people find the Pickton case unbelievable.

After millennia of warfare and destruction, after all the genocide and killing that humans have committed, after violence has emerged during all eras and in every civilization across time and history, people still have difficulty accepting the existence of evil in the world.

Who can still be surprised at the existence of serial killers, after Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and Genghis Kahn and Ivan the Terrible? The guy's nickname is "the Terrible," for God's sake.

Whenever that happens, you know the guy did something bad.
And of course it's not just these iconic murderers from distant times and places. British Columbia had Clifford Olson in the early 1980s. Seattle saw the Green River Killer, arrested just a few years ago.

Perhaps most familiar to Canadians are Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka.

Despite their knowledge of these criminals, most people persist in believing that purposeless, violent crimes can't happen, that they shouldn't happen, and that they won't happen.

Or they believe, in the abstract, that these crimes occur, but they believe it happens to other peoples, in other areas. Expression of wonderment at the horrific nature of crime seems to indicate a belief that human beings should not be capable of this. That this evil, if it ever existed, does not belong in the Canada we know and love.

But no society has ever eliminated evil, and no society ever will. The process of civilization -- instilling into citizens the enlightened values, customs and instincts of advanced communities and societies -- will never be more powerful than the instincts of a truly evil individual.

Certainly some types of crime -- shoplifting, say -- can be reduced as society becomes better at identifying and preventing their causes. But serial killers are generally far beyond the reaches of therapy and welfare. It is insanity to believe a few more food stamps would have kept a killer from hunting for victims.

This is what fascinates us so much about serial killers, alleged or otherwise. This is why we watch movies about them (and why one on Pickton is in the works already), why we devote websites to them, why we can't get enough of them.

It's because we get to see evil up close. Not misguided evil done in the name of politics, not evil in retaliation for a previous injustice, but purposeless, eternal evil.

If there is one good that our serial killer fascination produces, it is this: It reminds us the evil exists in the heart of a few individuals everywhere. It always has, and it always will.

Contact Smith at www.jordanmichaelsmith.com

Sunday, January 28

Stakes of Pickton trial meant strategy essential from outset of investigation

By STEPHANIE LEVITZ
Canadian Press

January 28, 2007

VANCOUVER (CP) - Accused killer Robert Pickton has planted his right foot against the wood-panelled wall of the prisoner's dock for about a year, leaving a scuff imprint that's an exact replica of his right sneaker.

As methodically, lawyers for both sides have been hammering together their cases, strategizing the best way to leave an imprint on jurors. CAUTION TO READERS: This story contains graphic content. Some readers may be offended.

The Crown's decision to start off with the explosive allegations included in an 11-hour videotaped police interview with Pickton was a deliberate attempt to do just that, say experts who keep tabs on courtroom and police tactics.

The courtroom was rocked by allegations that Pickton was seen skinning a woman, talking about how to kill them with windshield washer fluid and being "sloppy" by not cleaning up their blood.

And the tape itself reveals a choreographed 11-hour strategy to push Pickton to reveal as much as possible.

When police launched the investigation into Pickton, it was with the glare of the public eye firmly on their backs.

They'd been accused of mishandling the cases of dozens of missing women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and the pressure for an arrest and charges was mounting.

Botching their first interview with Pickton wasn't an option.

When police have a suspect in a major case like this, the interrogation is crucial, says Gino Arcaro, a former police officer who is now working towards a PhD on the science behind interrogations.

Properly obtained confessions have been recognized by the courts as one of the most powerful types of evidence.

"In a case as big as this one, there's no way that interrogation wasn't planned out," said Arcaro, who also teaches in the police foundations program at Niagara College in Ontario.

"The goal is to get a confession within the rules of the law and in a serious case like this, they'll work until they get one."

Though Pickton did not confess to the crimes he's been accused of, the incriminating statements he made have been held up by the Crown as evidence he's responsible.

It took a full day to elicit those statements, with much of the talking done by police officers who gave lengthy monologues about their own personal lives, debated the merits of cherry versus rhubarb pie and waxed eloquent on the freight train of evidence in the case.

Often, their diatribes provoked no more than nods and grunts from Pickton, and even after hammering at him about specific facts, they were met with flat-out denials.

But Arcaro said what was likely at play was a dance by investigators to get the information they came for and not make the single misstep that could render the whole interrogation inadmissible in court.

The crux is not to do or say anything that makes it appear that a statement by an arrested person isn't voluntary, Arcaro said, as the law automatically excludes confessions induced by threat of violence or even promises of a deal.

The safest way to elicit an admission of guilt is to appeal to a person's conscience, Arcaro said.

"Confessions are actually the product of the conscience's desire to strive for stability and balance," Arcaro said.

"You commit a crime, I don't care what human it is, every human has some degree of conscience."

Police use several tactics to appeal to a person's sense of right and wrong, Arcaro said.

They'll draw on personal experience, try to establish a relationship and use key events in a person's life to try and help them understand - and admit - to why they've done the thing for which they've been charged.

Over the course of the 11 hours, officers asked Pickton to think of his late mother and what she'd want him to do in the situation.

They talked about his family farm and the impact the investigation was having on it.

And they wondered aloud if a stabbing incident in 1997 provoked him to commit more serious crimes.

Yet still, Pickton denied being connected to the murdered women.

"When you've tried everything, you stop focusing on did they do it and switch to the reason they might have done it," Arcaro said, adding investigators will also use the suffering of people connected to the crimes to draw a suspect out.

Officers repeatedly asked Pickton to give closure to the families of the dead women and asked him what he'd think if it were his family that was affected.

"Shit happens," Pickton replied.

The interrogation forms part of the umbrella under which the rest of the trial now hangs, said University of Ottawa law professor David Paciocco, who has worked as both a prosecutor and defence lawyer.

"The statement that Mr. Pickton provided gave the jury a general overview and character for the case that the prosecution is going to build on," he said, adding it's unusual for a statement from the accused to come so early in a trial.

"It's a very interesting and, I think, effective tactical move for the prosecutor to do that."
In major cases, both legal teams would have been strategizing for months on everything, including which lawyers will handle what segments of the trial, said Lyndsay Smith, who works as a criminal lawyer in Vancouver.

"You've got to figure out a way to pace the lawyers so that it's an effective use of time," she said.
"But also so that people don't get exhausted. It's a taxing process and I don't think these facts are going to be easy on anybody involved."

Despite laying bare some of their more brutal evidence in their opening statement and following that with the video, anything can happen to a Crown's case over the course of a trial.

"In a case of this magnitude, there's been a tremendous amount of planning and thinking that's gone into the way the evidence is presented," Paciocco said.

"The reality though is no matter how much planning you put into a case almost invariably the case looks quite different when it is finished."

Missing Lives - Canadian Press
http://cponline.insinc.com//missinglives/cp_missing_lives_intro.php?pid=33

A life remembered

Georgina Papin
Victim’s relative visits site for solemn farewell ritual

By ANDREW HANON, EDMONTON SUN
January 28, 2007

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. -- Rob Papin is out of the car practically before it comes to a full stop at 953 Dominion Avenue.

The engine isn't even off, but he's already halfway across the street, striding toward the muddy construction site on the north side.

When he reaches the two-metre fence, Papin halts and becomes very still.

As he stares out over the 17-acre sea of muck and debris, his jaw works up and down slightly, as if he's searching for words. Nothing comes out.

Finally, he mutters a single word: "Horrible."

It's the first time Papin has seen the Pickton farm, where his cousin Georgina's remains were discovered in 2002, three years after she disappeared from Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside.

Later Papin will wonder aloud how anyone could live and work in the houses and businesses surrounding the land where dozens of helpless women met unimaginably gruesome ends.

"There's no way I'd be able to live here," he says. "I can't imagine what goes through their heads when they realize the atrocities that happened here."

The truth of what took place on the farm is slowly unfolding in a courtroom 20 km away in New Westminster, where alleged serial killer Robert Pickton is on trial for the murders of six women: Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Marnie Frey and Edmonton's Georgina Papin.

Pickton is also charged with the murders of 20 other women, but will be tried later on those counts.

He has entered a plea of not guilty in all cases.

All of the women were living what police and social workers euphemistically call "high-risk lifestyles."

Pickton is accused of murdering them, butchering their bodies on the farm and disposing of their remains.

After a year of painstakingly searching every building, vehicle and even several metres down into the farm's soil, police were unable to find more than a few fragments of each victim.

In some cases, hands, feet and vertically bisected heads were found in buckets.

All that has been found of Georgina are a few bones from her left hand, discovered mixed in pig manure.

Six members of the Papin clan travelled from Edmonton and other communities to B.C.'s Lower Mainland for the opening week of Pickton's trial.

On the final day of the trip, Rob decides to go to the farm and offer tobacco, a traditional native ritual.

As dump trucks roar past, he prays silently, crouches and slips a single cigarette through the chainlink fence.

Papin lights another and with the smoke he performs what's known as smudging.

Similar rituals have been performed by others at the site ever since Pickton was charged in 2002.

"It's horrible to imagine what (the victims) were put through," Papin says. "What were their last thoughts, their last cries?"

He hopes their souls are able to pass on to the spirit world.

"They don't deserve to be stuck here," he says quietly.

None of the buildings remain. The entire acreage is buried under four metres of soil, bringing it up to the level of surrounding houses.

A huge pile of scrap sits in the centre of the property, while towering mounds of soil dot the landscape.

Cliff, who lives two houses away, said some of the soil mounds are remnants of the police search.
"They were going day and night," he recalls. "If you even went near the fence, loudspeakers would tell you to back off."

Papin looks at one of the mounds and says, "I can't imagine the amount of work the police went through."

He takes a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. "In any one of these piles could be my relatives, or the other families' relatives."

Before he turns to leave, Papin toys with the idea of reaching through the fence to collect a stone or branch to bring back to Edmonton as a talisman to pray over.

He decides against it.

"When I get home I have to put my dad hat back on," he explains.

"I don't want to carry this heaviness with me when I see my kids."
Missing Lives from the Canadian Press..

Friday, January 26

Canadians tuning out grisly details from Pickton trial


INGRID PERITZ
Saturday's Globe and Mail
January 27, 2007

MONTREAL — Toronto psychiatrist Mark Berber was in line for a coffee at his medical building this week when a colleague approached him to talk about the Pickton trial.

Dr. Berber probes the darkest recesses of the human mind for a living. This topic, however, was a no-go.

“I didn't want to talk about it,” Dr. Berber recalled. “I find it so horrific and disgusting, I don't want to discuss the details.”

Dr. Berber is not alone. The first-degree-murder trial of Robert William Pickton is supposed to the most sensational to ever hit Canada — the biggest serial-killer case in the nation's history, a magnet for media outlets from as far as Britain and Germany.

Yet evidence suggests many Canadians simply don't have the stomach for it. They want justice to be done; they just want to be spared the details.

“The normal, natural response is disgust, of not wanting to know every detail, because it's so alien,” said Dr. Berber, a lecturer at the University of Toronto.

Mr. Pickton, 57, is charged with murder in the deaths of six drug-dependent women who sold sex at the street corners of Vancouver's bleakest neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Killers and mass murderers normally fascinate us. We want to understand what fuels the youthful alienation of a Kimveer Gill or the paranoid rage of a Timothy McVeigh.

The Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka sex slayings of two teenage girls riveted and horrified Canadians, in part because the couple appeared so normal and middle class.

Mr. Pickton has been portrayed by the Crown as a pig farmer who allegedly murdered, dismembered and butchered women. All that's left is the horror.

The start of his trial this week has already sparked early stirrings of a public backlash. Letter writers to newspapers complain that if they wanted a horror story, they'd go to the movies. “No decent person could desire the ghoulish level of coverage you give to this sorry event,” wrote one reader to The Globe and Mail.

The public's prickly reaction creates an ethical high-wire act for news media outlets, which are trying to provide coverage without turning off — and even losing — their customers.

The first survey on the topic suggests they need to step carefully. A poll this month of 800 British Columbians found respondents about evenly split in their interest in the Pickton case.
A majority wanted the media to limit the violent or sexually explicit details, according to the poll for the University of British Columbia's School of Journalism. And while 53 per cent of respondents felt the level of media coverage was “just right,” one-fifth already felt they had seen too much.

And the trial hadn't even started yet.

Even at ground zero — Vancouver — people are showing little appetite for the macabre. The local CBC morning radio show had a talk-back line about its trial coverage Monday and got a record level of response — which was overwhelmingly negative.

“Although some listeners supported extensive coverage,” the broadcaster reported on its website, “the vast majority said that when it comes to this story, less is better.”

Could less be more? If so, the Pickton trial is the opposite of a car wreck: We should want to gawk, but avert our eyes instead. The squeamishness seems especially odd in a day when viewers tune in by the millions to TV shows like CSI, which offer up gruesome forensic examinations of crime scenes. Isn't TV violence supposed to inure us to the real thing?

“You can watch CSI and it's completely divorced from the real experience,” said Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.

If CSI had an episode featuring human body parts, people would simply say “gross,” he said.

“When a news anchor reports it, you'd want the kids to leave the room. I don't think CSI has made us shrug our shoulders at the real story of people being beheaded. We make these distinctions.”

Jean Proulx, a criminologist at the University of Montreal, says the public follows serial murders because, at a deep level, they're looking for clues to their own safety.

“What scares us, we want to understand,” said Prof. Proulx, a specialist on sex murderers.
“Maybe if I understand it, I can protect myself against it.”

In that sense, the Pickton trial holds less prurient interest to most Canadians, because both the victims and suspect come from a demimonde to which few Canadians belong or easily relate.

“People want to know what happened to those women, and they want to see the right people held accountable,” said Mary Lynn Young, an assistant professor of journalism at UBC. “But it's a question of degree. People don't want irrelevant, gory details for the sake of titillation.”

The school plans a follow-up poll to gauge public response down the road, but Ms. Young already predicts diminishing interest.

“There's going to be overload,” she said, “because there is just way too much pain and trauma.”
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