She did not report it because she feared Pickton and depended on him for money for drugs. Hiscox believed they were the property of the missing women. Police questioned Yelds, but she was uncooperative.
It was the second time Hiscox had contacted police about his suspicions, but they could not obtain a search warrant based on hearsay evidence verbal information reported by someone who was not directly a witness to it. They required an eyewitness report of criminal activity, or the existence of physical evidence. That information met the official requirement for a search warrant. On 5 February, officers of the task force raided the pig farm. In addition to several illegal and unregistered guns, they found items connecting missing women to the property.
Pickton was arrested on weapons charges, and then released on bail. He was kept under surveillance and was not permitted to return to the pig farm while police conducted a thorough search under a second warrant.
DNA testing of blood found in a motorhome on the property proved to be that of Mona Wilson. On 22 February , Pickton was re-arrested and charged with two counts of murder. A total of 26 murder charges were eventually laid against him. While Pickton was being held in jail in Surrey , British Columbia, he shared a cell with an undercover RCMP officer he believed to be another detainee.
In their conversation, Pickton said he had murdered 49 women, and had wanted to make it Meanwhile, the pig farm became the largest crime scene in Canadian history. Investigators took , DNA samples and seized , exhibits. Archaeologists and forensic experts needed heavy equipment to sift through , cubic yards of soil in search of human remains. Due to the unprecedented volume and complexity of legal issues that had to be litigated, his trial on the first six charges did not begin until 22 January , in New Westminster.
On 9 December , Pickton was found guilty by a jury on six counts of second-degree murder ; he was sentenced to life imprisonment in a federal penitentiary , with no possibility of parole for 25 years. Those convictions were upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in After Pickton was convicted of six charges in the initial trial, British Columbia Crown prosecutors kept open the possibility of trying Pickton on the other 20 charges at a later date.
However, on 4 August , prosecutors announced they would not proceed on the 20 charges. They said a second trial, even if further convictions were achieved, would not add anything to Pickton's punishment, which was already the maximum possible under the law. The decision angered some of the families of the 20 victims; others said they were relieved at being spared the experience of another long and difficult trial. David, his brother, owns a salvage company. He spent years plowing thousands of tons of fill onto the low-lying farm property, readying it for development.
He is not charged in the murders and Robert Pickton, the Crown noted, told interrogators his brother isn't involved. Ritchie also contrasts the crack police interrogation team against the "level of sophistication" displayed by Pickton. The man the Crown considers a canny murderer Ritchie seems determined to portray as a hapless innocent. When the video interview was conducted, police interrogators knew only a fraction of the macabre evidence that would literally be unearthed.
They knew of a bloodied tote bag containing the DNA and personal effects of Abotsway. And in a laundry room of Robert Pickton's single-wide trailer they found a. It is a measure of the chaotic nature of the junk-strewn property and the pace of the search that it took almost two months before police opened a freezer to find the first severed heads and body parts. In May, three months into the search, half of Wolfe's lower jaw was found in an animal trough. It was June before investigators separated two stacked plastic garbage pails to find the decomposing skull, hands and feet of Wilson.
In July, 14 hand and wrist bones, one belonging to Papin, were found in the dirt and manure of a pigpen. In all, it took forensic investigators 18 months to scour the farm, raze the buildings and excavate and sift the dirt to a depth of as much as two metres. Investigators asked Pickton why he thinks it took so long to stop the run of murders. It's the only area of agreement he has with the families of the victims and the women of the Vancouver stroll.
From the beginning, the case has been a train wreck of frustration, futile acts and wishes unfulfilled. Their disappearances, which took a substantial jump starting in the mids, were written off by Vancouver police as the inexplicable comings and goings of druggies and hookers. Once the trail began, the media ban that had been in place during the investigation was lifted and the press began to learn of the evidence found on the farm.
The revelations from the trial were disturbing. Police found skulls cut in half with hands and feet stuffed inside them and small body parts scattered about the pig pens. The remains of one victim, Mona Wilson, was found in a pink soup of decomposing human matter in the bottom of a garbage can. It was determined that their bodies had been exposed to the elements for several weeks before being stashed inside the freezer. During the trial yet another witness, Lynn Ellingsen, came forward with new evidence.
She told of walking in on Pickton skinning a woman hanging from a meat hook. She said she delayed coming forward out of fear that Pickton would kill her. Oddly, it was found that afterward, she had been blackmailing him about the incident. Police determined that Pickton used the slaughterhouse to grind up the bodies of his victims. A wood chipper found on the property was believed to have devoured much of the evidence.
Pickton lured the women to the farm with the promise of free drugs. At the farm, he had sex with them, then murdered them. The remains were hacked apart. Some of the remains were dispersed in the pig pens for the pigs to consume.
Hand bones from Georgina Papin were found in one of the pigpens and after disassembling the pen, police found the jaw bone and teeth belong to Frey. Other times the remains were mixed with pig entrails and sent to the West Coast Reduction disposal plant where they were mixed with pork and sold to the public.
On December 9, , the jury returned a verdict of not guilty on six counts of first-degree murder. However, they found Pickton guilty of six counts of second-degree murder. The reason for this verdict has never been disclosed but it is believed the jury felt Pickton had not acted alone see notes on David Pickton and Pat Casanova below in which case the finding of second-degree murder would leave open the possibility of additional arrests in the future.
Judge Justice James Williams sentenced Robert Pickton to life with no possibility of parole for 25 years. The trial for the remaining 20 victims was never held. It was stayed on August 4, On that same day, Pickton was transferred to a federal penitentiary to spend the remainder of his days. Although Pickton was charged with only 26 murders, Pickton has been implicated via DNA evidence in the murders of additional victims. The other known victims include:.
Dawn Teresa Gray : reported missing in December , she was the main subject of a documentary film Finding Dawn about murdered and missing Aboriginal women. Pickton himself thought the number he murdered was He was likely the last person to see her alive. During the trail, Casanova was caught several times issuing conflicting testimony concerning the prostitutes at the farm.
He later claimed he did not lie, but rather, simply forgot. One of the most disturbing aspects of the case was the many times Robert Pickton narrowly avoided capture by the police. Many on the police force have felt great grief knowing they had arrested Pikcton in and received tips in before turning him loose, allowing him to kill unabated for five more years.
One officer, Lori Shenher, wrote of the investigation in a book that was never published. I see now that I was merely a figurehead, a sacrificial lamb thrown into an investigation the VPD management was convinced would never amount to anything and would never grow into the tragedy it has become.
An investigation they could care less about. I was no longer able to bear the weight of our ineptitude and rationalization…. It had always been Pickton. I wish that, the several agencies involved, that we could have done better in so many ways. I wish that all the mistakes that were made, we could undo.
And I wish that more lives would have been saved. So on my behalf and behalf of the Vancouver Police Department and all the men and women that worked on this investigation, I would say to the families how sorry we all are for your losses and because we did not catch this monster sooner. September Vancouver police set up team to review files of as many as 40 women missing as far back as December Task force investigators travel to Seattle to interview Gary Ridgway, charged in four of 49 Green River homicides in Washington state.
List of missing officially grows to March 10, Health officials report they cannot rule out that human remains may have been in meat processed for human consumption at the Pickton property. June Pre-trial hearings begin in B. Supreme Court in New Westminster, under publication ban.
The story provides a heart-breaking story regarding their mother. On the evening of Oct. It was about Just ahead of him, on the right side, one of the neighborhood kids, a year-old boy named Tim Barrett, was walking down the road. How exactly it happened no one can say now, but Dave slammed right into him. Dave knew right away that Tim, who was lying crumpled on the road, was badly hurt, and he raced home in a panic to tell his mother what had happened. Louise Pickton stopped what she was doing and hurried over to the place where the injured boy lay.
Court of Appeal upholds Pickton's conviction in a split ruling. Two of the three judges rule that Justice James Williams, the trial judge, erred in his final instructions to the jury, but that those mistakes were not serious enough to warrant a new trial. The other judge disagrees, concluding the trial judge and Crown lawyers created so much confusion over key points of law that the conviction should be overturned.
In a separate ruling on the Crown's appeal, the B. Supreme Court Judge James Williams sentences Pickton to life in prison, serving six life sentences concurrently, with no eligibility for parole for the maximum 25 years. Wally Oppal, B. His comments were expected to last for three days. Prosecutor Michael Petrie tells the jury Pickton revealed himself to be a cagey negotiator during a police interview and challenged the idea that he's a dimwitted pig farmer.
Petrie admitted to the jury that his key witnesses are "unsavoury," but added that's no reason to throw out their testimony. They also pointed to what the Crown says was Pickton's confession, saying it was a simple parroting of what police were telling him. Defence lawyers also said DNA evidence points to more links between Pickton's friends and the missing women than to the accused killer himself. Thirty witnesses were called. An expert testifies he believes some of the stains aren't blood at all, but different types of glue.
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