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Should be a very interesting trial. Far more brutal than I could have imagined...
'I was gonna do one more - make it an even 50'
Prosecutor reveals ghastly details of what was found on B.C. pig farm
January 23, 2007
Rosie DiManno
Columnist
NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C.–The details ooze and congeal – like blood.
What for five years has been hidden from public view began to emerge here yesterday, in all its ghastly particulars.
Six murder victims, precious little of them left behind to whisper of their deaths – bone fragments, severed heads, the stumps of hands and feet, a clutch of recognizable personal possessions – all of whom came to their grisly end in the ramshackle buildings and derelict caravans scattered about a Port Coquitlam pig farm.
So distressing was even the thumbnail sketch of these crimes, as outlined in the Crown's opening statement, that two victims' relatives fled from Courtroom 102, one in tears and the other cursing under his breath. "I'm going to be sick," the relative of yet another hissed as she bolted for the ladies' room at the break.
They'd waited so long for answers and now they couldn't take the truth.
Robert "Willie" Pickton, charged with six counts of first-degree murder, reacted to none of it. Head cocked slightly to the right, one long leg crossed over the other, he seemed to twist his body away from the judicial spectacle as it began to unfold in what looms as the most sensational and complex trial in Canadian history, likely to last a year.
"I was gonna do one more – make it an even 50," Pickton told a jailhouse plant, an RCMP undercover officer who was slipped in with the accused after his arrest on Feb. 22, 2002, a conversation that will be revisited at length during the trial, as Crown attorney Derrill Prevett told the court.
"I was going to shut it down. I was just plotting just the last one," Pickton continued – quoted by Prevett – adding that he believed he was now "nailed to the cross."
And: "I made my own grave by being sloppy."
A grave is what was denied the victims.
Their paltry remains were found in plastic buckets, chest freezers, garbage bags, troughs of dirt and mounds of debris, buried in the very soil of the Pickton farm, court heard: Some teeth here, a couple of split skulls there, fingers and heels, blood splatter across the wall, and thousands upon thousands of minute DNA traces.
Eventually, Pickton was charged with 26 murders – six of them detached from the balance for this first of two trials – the victims all on the roster of nearly 70 missing women, mostly vanished from Vancouver's sad and sleazy Downtown Eastside. Pickton has been in custody since his arrest.
Yesterday, the 57-year-old accused, balding with strands of greying hair curling at the collar, wore a slate-coloured shirt, tight-fitting black trousers and white sneakers. On his lap was propped a notebook but he rarely jotted anything down, spoke not at all to his phalanx of lawyers and made no eye contact with those who sat in the gallery, behind the bulletproof pane of glass that separates the well of the courtroom from the public area. In the small and claustrophobic room, the prisoner's dock is situated behind a double row of lawyer tables, just in front of the glass partition. It's as if the trial is occurring inside a sealed chamber.
Forty-four days ago, Pickton pleaded not guilty in the murders of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey.
All were sex-trade workers. All had plummeted to the bottom of a human cesspool inhabited by whores, drug addicts and vagrants. And each, in the words of Prevett, "had people, places and things that were important to her."
Collectively, they left behind 10 children, their gradual disappearance over many years noticed first when they ceased making calls to parents and kids and siblings; stopped getting refills on medical prescriptions; failed to pick up benefits cheques. Lured, Prevett said, to the Pickton property. "There, he murdered them, butchered their remains and disposed of them."
Not till early 2002 – long after worried friends and family of the missing had first mentioned the Pickton residence to police – did investigators descend on the property, armed with a search warrant that related specifically to firearms. Almost immediately, spotting evidence of personal possessions that would later be confirmed as belonging to Abotsway, the original search was suspended, police returning soon with an expanded warrant that covered the entire property and its buildings. Those included the marooned mobile home that Pickton used as a living place and office, as well as a partially collapsed slaughterhouse, mechanical workshop and trailer.
What police found first, in the trailer, was "obvious staining" near the shoulder-strap of a duffel bag – later DNA-linked to Abotsway – two syringes similarly connected to the victim, and an asthma inhaler prescribed to the woman, who had been last seen on July 19, 2001.
On a shelf above the furnace in the trailer laundry room, police recovered a .22-calibre Smith & Wesson with one spent casing, a sex toy wrapped in plastic along the barrel. When that dildo was swabbed, DNA scrapings would prove a match to both Pickton and Wilson. On that evidence, Pickton was charged on the first two murder counts, for Abotsway and Wilson.
It was weeks later that a police officer, trying to discover the source of an electrical short-circuit at the farm – where investigators continued their search – came across a freezer in the workshop. Peeking inside, he discovered two plastic five-gallon pails, nested together. Inside the first he saw a severed head; inside the second, another severed head.
"The heads had been cut in half vertically," Prevett told court.
Inside each bisected head – cut lengthways by a saw – were stuffed "disarticulated" hands and parts of feet. The skulls showed gunshot wounds, one bullet exiting through the eye socket.
Forensic analysts later identified the remains as belonging to Abotsway and Joesbury.
A further few months on, investigators laboriously searching the property grid by grid came upon a green garbage can near the southern wall of the slaughterhouse, tucked inside another pail. There was a skull in there too, also sliced in half, with hands and feet similarly bundled, but these remains were in a more advanced state of decomposition, "almost skeletal," said Prevett.
Also collected was a black jacket with a crack pipe in the pocket, white and silver running shoes, and a rosary necklace, the same piece of jewellery earlier described by the family of Wilson. She was never without it. Through the crucifix and DNA tests, these body pieces were identified as Wilson's remains.
In May 2002, sifting through debris found in a trough beside the L-shaped slaughterhouse, police discovered the lower jaw of Brenda Wolfe, including five teeth.
Not far distant, inside a pigpen with its elevated platform, diggers came upon 14 bones – hands and wrists – that had been mixed in with manure. These were the hand bones of Georgina Papin. Marnie Frey's jawbone, three teeth in place – one of them yielding a match – would also be found at that site.
When Pickton was first interviewed at the RCMP detachment in Surrey, B.C., after his arrest, police had almost none of this evidence to hand, didn't even know of its existence yet, and were relying heavily on the boastful admissions Pickton had made over 11 hours of conversation with the undercover plant, court heard.
But in the formal interrogation that lasted nearly as long, Pickton was alternately coy and provocative with police. Shown a display of 48 missing women, Prevett said the suspect snipped: "You make me more of a mass murderer than I am." Yet, in his cell, Pickton had allegedly lifted five fingers on one hand and fashioned an "0" with the other, indicating to his jailmate the number of women he'd killed.
At one point, said Prevett, Pickton – feet up – even made a clumsy bribery attempt, asking his inquisitors what he could offer to have police leave his property. To his cellmate, Pickton said he would "wait awhile" before offering to "cut a deal."
The entire opening address took only an hour or so, followed immediately – and unusually, in Canadian courts – by a statement from the defence, lead counsel Peter Ritchie hastily urging the jury of seven men and five women not to be "overwhelmed by what you've heard this morning," swept away by revulsion.
"The defence position is that Mr. Pickton did not kill or participate in the killing of the six women he is accused of killing."
Referring specifically to the videotaped interrogation, Ritchie noted: "Pay particular close attention to his level of competence and level of understanding."
While Pickton's team agreed on an admission of facts – the six women are dead; these are their identities – Ritchie showed a bit of his defensive hand.
"This case will unfold slowly. The case is complicated. You will hear about other people in this case and their roles can be significant. Some may have, you may find, their own motives.
"Do not move quickly to conclusions."
Day 1 of the trial concluded with the promise of Pickton's interrogation tapes to be played this morning.
Prosecutor reveals ghastly details of what was found on B.C. pig farm
January 23, 2007
Rosie DiManno
Columnist
NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C.–The details ooze and congeal – like blood.
What for five years has been hidden from public view began to emerge here yesterday, in all its ghastly particulars.
Six murder victims, precious little of them left behind to whisper of their deaths – bone fragments, severed heads, the stumps of hands and feet, a clutch of recognizable personal possessions – all of whom came to their grisly end in the ramshackle buildings and derelict caravans scattered about a Port Coquitlam pig farm.
So distressing was even the thumbnail sketch of these crimes, as outlined in the Crown's opening statement, that two victims' relatives fled from Courtroom 102, one in tears and the other cursing under his breath. "I'm going to be sick," the relative of yet another hissed as she bolted for the ladies' room at the break.
They'd waited so long for answers and now they couldn't take the truth.
Robert "Willie" Pickton, charged with six counts of first-degree murder, reacted to none of it. Head cocked slightly to the right, one long leg crossed over the other, he seemed to twist his body away from the judicial spectacle as it began to unfold in what looms as the most sensational and complex trial in Canadian history, likely to last a year.
"I was gonna do one more – make it an even 50," Pickton told a jailhouse plant, an RCMP undercover officer who was slipped in with the accused after his arrest on Feb. 22, 2002, a conversation that will be revisited at length during the trial, as Crown attorney Derrill Prevett told the court.
"I was going to shut it down. I was just plotting just the last one," Pickton continued – quoted by Prevett – adding that he believed he was now "nailed to the cross."
And: "I made my own grave by being sloppy."
A grave is what was denied the victims.
Their paltry remains were found in plastic buckets, chest freezers, garbage bags, troughs of dirt and mounds of debris, buried in the very soil of the Pickton farm, court heard: Some teeth here, a couple of split skulls there, fingers and heels, blood splatter across the wall, and thousands upon thousands of minute DNA traces.
Eventually, Pickton was charged with 26 murders – six of them detached from the balance for this first of two trials – the victims all on the roster of nearly 70 missing women, mostly vanished from Vancouver's sad and sleazy Downtown Eastside. Pickton has been in custody since his arrest.
Yesterday, the 57-year-old accused, balding with strands of greying hair curling at the collar, wore a slate-coloured shirt, tight-fitting black trousers and white sneakers. On his lap was propped a notebook but he rarely jotted anything down, spoke not at all to his phalanx of lawyers and made no eye contact with those who sat in the gallery, behind the bulletproof pane of glass that separates the well of the courtroom from the public area. In the small and claustrophobic room, the prisoner's dock is situated behind a double row of lawyer tables, just in front of the glass partition. It's as if the trial is occurring inside a sealed chamber.
Forty-four days ago, Pickton pleaded not guilty in the murders of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey.
All were sex-trade workers. All had plummeted to the bottom of a human cesspool inhabited by whores, drug addicts and vagrants. And each, in the words of Prevett, "had people, places and things that were important to her."
Collectively, they left behind 10 children, their gradual disappearance over many years noticed first when they ceased making calls to parents and kids and siblings; stopped getting refills on medical prescriptions; failed to pick up benefits cheques. Lured, Prevett said, to the Pickton property. "There, he murdered them, butchered their remains and disposed of them."
Not till early 2002 – long after worried friends and family of the missing had first mentioned the Pickton residence to police – did investigators descend on the property, armed with a search warrant that related specifically to firearms. Almost immediately, spotting evidence of personal possessions that would later be confirmed as belonging to Abotsway, the original search was suspended, police returning soon with an expanded warrant that covered the entire property and its buildings. Those included the marooned mobile home that Pickton used as a living place and office, as well as a partially collapsed slaughterhouse, mechanical workshop and trailer.
What police found first, in the trailer, was "obvious staining" near the shoulder-strap of a duffel bag – later DNA-linked to Abotsway – two syringes similarly connected to the victim, and an asthma inhaler prescribed to the woman, who had been last seen on July 19, 2001.
On a shelf above the furnace in the trailer laundry room, police recovered a .22-calibre Smith & Wesson with one spent casing, a sex toy wrapped in plastic along the barrel. When that dildo was swabbed, DNA scrapings would prove a match to both Pickton and Wilson. On that evidence, Pickton was charged on the first two murder counts, for Abotsway and Wilson.
It was weeks later that a police officer, trying to discover the source of an electrical short-circuit at the farm – where investigators continued their search – came across a freezer in the workshop. Peeking inside, he discovered two plastic five-gallon pails, nested together. Inside the first he saw a severed head; inside the second, another severed head.
"The heads had been cut in half vertically," Prevett told court.
Inside each bisected head – cut lengthways by a saw – were stuffed "disarticulated" hands and parts of feet. The skulls showed gunshot wounds, one bullet exiting through the eye socket.
Forensic analysts later identified the remains as belonging to Abotsway and Joesbury.
A further few months on, investigators laboriously searching the property grid by grid came upon a green garbage can near the southern wall of the slaughterhouse, tucked inside another pail. There was a skull in there too, also sliced in half, with hands and feet similarly bundled, but these remains were in a more advanced state of decomposition, "almost skeletal," said Prevett.
Also collected was a black jacket with a crack pipe in the pocket, white and silver running shoes, and a rosary necklace, the same piece of jewellery earlier described by the family of Wilson. She was never without it. Through the crucifix and DNA tests, these body pieces were identified as Wilson's remains.
In May 2002, sifting through debris found in a trough beside the L-shaped slaughterhouse, police discovered the lower jaw of Brenda Wolfe, including five teeth.
Not far distant, inside a pigpen with its elevated platform, diggers came upon 14 bones – hands and wrists – that had been mixed in with manure. These were the hand bones of Georgina Papin. Marnie Frey's jawbone, three teeth in place – one of them yielding a match – would also be found at that site.
When Pickton was first interviewed at the RCMP detachment in Surrey, B.C., after his arrest, police had almost none of this evidence to hand, didn't even know of its existence yet, and were relying heavily on the boastful admissions Pickton had made over 11 hours of conversation with the undercover plant, court heard.
But in the formal interrogation that lasted nearly as long, Pickton was alternately coy and provocative with police. Shown a display of 48 missing women, Prevett said the suspect snipped: "You make me more of a mass murderer than I am." Yet, in his cell, Pickton had allegedly lifted five fingers on one hand and fashioned an "0" with the other, indicating to his jailmate the number of women he'd killed.
At one point, said Prevett, Pickton – feet up – even made a clumsy bribery attempt, asking his inquisitors what he could offer to have police leave his property. To his cellmate, Pickton said he would "wait awhile" before offering to "cut a deal."
The entire opening address took only an hour or so, followed immediately – and unusually, in Canadian courts – by a statement from the defence, lead counsel Peter Ritchie hastily urging the jury of seven men and five women not to be "overwhelmed by what you've heard this morning," swept away by revulsion.
"The defence position is that Mr. Pickton did not kill or participate in the killing of the six women he is accused of killing."
Referring specifically to the videotaped interrogation, Ritchie noted: "Pay particular close attention to his level of competence and level of understanding."
While Pickton's team agreed on an admission of facts – the six women are dead; these are their identities – Ritchie showed a bit of his defensive hand.
"This case will unfold slowly. The case is complicated. You will hear about other people in this case and their roles can be significant. Some may have, you may find, their own motives.
"Do not move quickly to conclusions."
Day 1 of the trial concluded with the promise of Pickton's interrogation tapes to be played this morning.
KEY FACTS
# Accused: Robert (Willie) Pickton
# Born: Oct. 24, 1949 (age 57)
# Charges: 26 counts of first-degree murder: first trial on six counts; second trial on 20 counts
# Location: British Columbia Supreme Court in New Westminster
# Length of first trial: Estimated 12 months
# Number of witnesses: Crown expects to call about 240 witnesses, followed by unknown number of defence witnesses
# Principals: Justice James Williams; lead Crown Michael Petrie; lead defence Peter Ritchie
# Accused: Robert (Willie) Pickton
# Born: Oct. 24, 1949 (age 57)
# Charges: 26 counts of first-degree murder: first trial on six counts; second trial on 20 counts
# Location: British Columbia Supreme Court in New Westminster
# Length of first trial: Estimated 12 months
# Number of witnesses: Crown expects to call about 240 witnesses, followed by unknown number of defence witnesses
# Principals: Justice James Williams; lead Crown Michael Petrie; lead defence Peter Ritchie
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