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Pickton facing 27 murder charges
Neal Hall
CanWest News Service
Thursday, May 26, 2005
VANCOUVER -- An indictment containing a dozen new first-degree murder charges was filed in court Wednesday against Port Coquitlam, B.C., pig farmer Robert (Willy) Pickton, bringing the total number of murder charges to 27.
Pickton, 55, already accused of being Canada's worst serial killer, sat with his head down as Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie announced the new charges in a high-security courtroom in New Westminster.
The balding Pickton was not in court but appeared by a video link to the Fraser Regional Pre-trial Centre, where he has been in custody since his arrest in February 2002.
Trial judge B.C. Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Barrow told the 16 lawyers in court -- five for the defence, seven for the Crown and four lawyers representing the media who argued against a proposed sweeping publication ban -- that Wednesday was, in effect, the first day of Pickton's trial.
The judge came to court wearing a robe lined with red, indicating a jury trial, but the actual jury trial isn't expected to begin until January.
It is expected that the Crown will now proceed to trial with the new 27-count murder indictment and will not add any more charges.
Pickton had been previously charged with 15 counts of murder of women who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
A total of 69 women are contained in a list of missing women under investigation by the Missing Women's Task Force.
The Crown had previously stated that seven additional charges would be added before Pickton went to trial -- evidence of those charges was heard at Pickton's preliminary hearing in 2003, when police were in the midst of a massive investigation that has cost more than $70 million.
Crown spokesman Stan Lowe told reporters that the 12 new counts met the prosecution's stringent charge-approval standards.
"It affords certainty to the trial process," he said, adding this will allow the trial to move ahead efficiently.
Wednesday was the start of what is expected to be three weeks of pre-trial applications by the defence for disclosure, followed in September by a four-month voir dire to determine the admissibility of certain evidence.
At one point during Wednesday's proceedings, the judge asked Pickton if he could hear.
"I'm all right, sir," Pickton replied.
Pickton has been in custody since police descended on his pig farm with a search warrant, which later extended to other property he and his family owned. Dozens of investigators, aided by forensic anthropologists, took apart every building on the farm and sifted through hundreds of tonnes of dirt looking for evidence.
Before Wednesday, Pickton had been charged with the murder of 15 women, mainly sex trade workers who disappeared from the Downtown Eastside between 1996 and 2002: Serena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Jacqueline McDonell, Diane Rock, Heather Bottomley, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Ann Wolfe, Jennifer Lynn Furminger, Helen Mae Hallmark, Patricia Rose Johnson, Georgina Faith Papin, Heather Chinnock, Tanya Holyk, Sherry Irving and Inga Hall.
The new counts of first-degree murder include an unknown female described as "Jane Doe" who died sometime before Feb. 23, 1995. The other victims named in the new indictment are: Marnie Frey, Tiffany Drew, Sarah deVries, Cynthia Feliks, Angela Jardine, Diana Melnick, Debra Lynne Jones, Wendy Crawford, Kerry Koski, Andrea Borhaven and Cara Ellis.
Feliks's stepmother, Marilyn Kraft of Calgary, was relieved to hear of the additional charges.
"We've been waiting for this for a long time," Kraft said Wednesday. "It's a good day."
Meanwhile, Pickton's lawyer Peter Ritchie applied Wednesday for a highly unusual secrecy ban that would prevent anyone attending the Pickton pre-trial proceedings from discussing what was heard in court with anyone.
The court was told that the defence plans to make applications for disclosure of evidence concerning third parties -- not Pickton -- who may have been involved in unlawful activity, including murder.
"Some of the evidence, we expect, will be extremely prejudicial," Ritchie told the court.
Such a measure, the defence lawyer said, is necessary to protect the right of the accused to a fair trial by not tainting potential jurors with inflammatory information. Ritchie said he had no problem with the Canadian media, who are already restricted by the existing publication ban from publishing or broadcasting pre-trial evidence heard in the absence of a jury.
He said he wanted to prevent foreign media, who are not legally obliged to obey Canadian publication bans, from posting material prejudicial to Pickton on the Internet -- a problem that first arose at Pickton's preliminary hearing in 2003.
"We're concerned about foreign media who don't give a hoot about Canadian law," Ritchie explained outside court.
Neal Hall
CanWest News Service
Thursday, May 26, 2005
VANCOUVER -- An indictment containing a dozen new first-degree murder charges was filed in court Wednesday against Port Coquitlam, B.C., pig farmer Robert (Willy) Pickton, bringing the total number of murder charges to 27.
Pickton, 55, already accused of being Canada's worst serial killer, sat with his head down as Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie announced the new charges in a high-security courtroom in New Westminster.
The balding Pickton was not in court but appeared by a video link to the Fraser Regional Pre-trial Centre, where he has been in custody since his arrest in February 2002.
Trial judge B.C. Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Barrow told the 16 lawyers in court -- five for the defence, seven for the Crown and four lawyers representing the media who argued against a proposed sweeping publication ban -- that Wednesday was, in effect, the first day of Pickton's trial.
The judge came to court wearing a robe lined with red, indicating a jury trial, but the actual jury trial isn't expected to begin until January.
It is expected that the Crown will now proceed to trial with the new 27-count murder indictment and will not add any more charges.
Pickton had been previously charged with 15 counts of murder of women who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
A total of 69 women are contained in a list of missing women under investigation by the Missing Women's Task Force.
The Crown had previously stated that seven additional charges would be added before Pickton went to trial -- evidence of those charges was heard at Pickton's preliminary hearing in 2003, when police were in the midst of a massive investigation that has cost more than $70 million.
Crown spokesman Stan Lowe told reporters that the 12 new counts met the prosecution's stringent charge-approval standards.
"It affords certainty to the trial process," he said, adding this will allow the trial to move ahead efficiently.
Wednesday was the start of what is expected to be three weeks of pre-trial applications by the defence for disclosure, followed in September by a four-month voir dire to determine the admissibility of certain evidence.
At one point during Wednesday's proceedings, the judge asked Pickton if he could hear.
"I'm all right, sir," Pickton replied.
Pickton has been in custody since police descended on his pig farm with a search warrant, which later extended to other property he and his family owned. Dozens of investigators, aided by forensic anthropologists, took apart every building on the farm and sifted through hundreds of tonnes of dirt looking for evidence.
Before Wednesday, Pickton had been charged with the murder of 15 women, mainly sex trade workers who disappeared from the Downtown Eastside between 1996 and 2002: Serena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Jacqueline McDonell, Diane Rock, Heather Bottomley, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Ann Wolfe, Jennifer Lynn Furminger, Helen Mae Hallmark, Patricia Rose Johnson, Georgina Faith Papin, Heather Chinnock, Tanya Holyk, Sherry Irving and Inga Hall.
The new counts of first-degree murder include an unknown female described as "Jane Doe" who died sometime before Feb. 23, 1995. The other victims named in the new indictment are: Marnie Frey, Tiffany Drew, Sarah deVries, Cynthia Feliks, Angela Jardine, Diana Melnick, Debra Lynne Jones, Wendy Crawford, Kerry Koski, Andrea Borhaven and Cara Ellis.
Feliks's stepmother, Marilyn Kraft of Calgary, was relieved to hear of the additional charges.
"We've been waiting for this for a long time," Kraft said Wednesday. "It's a good day."
Meanwhile, Pickton's lawyer Peter Ritchie applied Wednesday for a highly unusual secrecy ban that would prevent anyone attending the Pickton pre-trial proceedings from discussing what was heard in court with anyone.
The court was told that the defence plans to make applications for disclosure of evidence concerning third parties -- not Pickton -- who may have been involved in unlawful activity, including murder.
"Some of the evidence, we expect, will be extremely prejudicial," Ritchie told the court.
Such a measure, the defence lawyer said, is necessary to protect the right of the accused to a fair trial by not tainting potential jurors with inflammatory information. Ritchie said he had no problem with the Canadian media, who are already restricted by the existing publication ban from publishing or broadcasting pre-trial evidence heard in the absence of a jury.
He said he wanted to prevent foreign media, who are not legally obliged to obey Canadian publication bans, from posting material prejudicial to Pickton on the Internet -- a problem that first arose at Pickton's preliminary hearing in 2003.
"We're concerned about foreign media who don't give a hoot about Canadian law," Ritchie explained outside court.
Heterosexuals.
Pigs.
Farmers.
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