Hey Folks,
Welcome to Part 2 of Canadian Nightmare, a series of articles exposing how the Coquitlam RCMP blocked the Vancouver Police Department’s investigation into serial killer Robert Pickton.
Canadian Nightmare is based on That Lonely Stretch of Hell, a 2015 book written by Lori Shenher, who was appointed the lead investigator of VPD’s Missing Persons Unit in 1998.
Shenher received credible information about Robert Pickton on her first week on the job, as detailed in Canadian Nightmare (Part 1).
That Lonely Stretch of Hell chronicles Shenher’s search for the serial killer who was preying on vulnerable women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It focuses on Shenher’s struggle with PTSD, which led to her leaving her job as a cop.
After hearing last month that Pickton had been attacked in prison, Shenher told the Victoria Times Colonist:
Unfortunately, all an attack like this serves to do is further thwart the truth of this case from being told so that all the remaining perpetrators could be brought to justice… It’s been an open secret for more than 20 years that these murders were not committed solely by the hands of Robert Pickton.”
As you may be aware, the RCMP cover-up continues.
In recent months, families of his victims and advocates for other missing women have spoken out against a B.C. Supreme Court application made by the RCMP to destroy more than 14,000 exhibits seized from Pickton’s property during the lengthy investigation.
The critics said that destroying the exhibits might impact future investigations, especially if there continue to be advances in forensic technology that have already led to resolutions in decades-old cold cases.
The article does not mention that the vast majority of the Pickton evidence has already been destroyed. Originally, there were over 200,000 exhibits, but most of them were destroyed without any kind of public outcry. Nor were family members informed that this was happening.
In December of 2023, it became public knowledge that the RCMP applied to the court to dispose of 14,000 exhibits of evidence pertaining to the Pickton murders.
According to Brown, the exhibits are from his farm in Port Coquitlam where most of the murders are believed to have taken place.
A letter titled, “A call to preserve evidence in the Pickton case” was signed by 35 organizations and 10 individuals.
“The exhibits were obtained during the investigations into 50+ women who were murdered and disappeared from the Downtown Eastside,” reads the Justice for Girls letter. “The majority of these missing women are Indigenous and their cases remain unsolved to this date.”
According to Dark Mind Detective (formerly known as the Vancouver True Crime podcast), the exhibits included three freezers full of meat products.
Given what I know about the Pickton farm, I’m guessing that those meat products are not pork.
Back in 2004, in an article entitled Alert issued about meat from Pickton’s pig farm, The Globe and Mail reported that:
British Columbia's top health official says human remains may have been mixed up in meat that came from the property of Robert Pickton, a suburban Vancouver pig farmer at the centre of a massive serial-killing investigation.
[…]
"Cross-contamination could mean that human remains did get into or contaminate some of the pork meat that was produced," Dr. Kendall told reporters yesterday.
"We can't rule this out, although there is no evidence that it did happen or that it got into the food chain. But it is a possibility."
Dr. Kendall said human tissue may have been added to meat processed at the farm. Police have said they found human DNA in their extensive search of the farm.
Was Robert Pickton selling human meat as pork?
So… am I crazy for thinking that the meat products that Canadian authorities want to dispose of include human remains? Was Robert Pickton selling human meat as pork? Or could he have been selling human meat on the black market? Is there a black market for human meat? Is there demand for human meat?
Well, given that it only took a few years before people to started selling organs on the darkweb, let’s just say there’s a market for human body parts. And Robert Pickton was a prolific butcher.
According to Shenher, he was “locally famous” for “killing up to 150 pigs a week”. That’s 20 a day. Good Lord… no wonder he was so insane. Sounds like he was knee deep in blood 24/7.
[My colleague] asked Pickton how he got into butchering pigs, and Pickton explained the process to him, stressing the need to do it cleanly and not rush, because the meat is for the public's consumption. He was obviously proud of this work and became quite self-deprecating when [my colleague] suggested that Pickton was the best butcher around—he said that everyone has their own way of doing things and they all butcher animals. He was unable to estimate how many pigs he had killed but allowed it could have been more than ten thousand over the years.
This is also a story about animal cruelty. This is a side of this story that hasn’t gotten enough attention. Believe it or not, Robert Pickton may not have been born a psychopath. He might have become a vicious butcher of human victims by night because he was a vicious butcher of animal victims by day. In Shenher’s words, he was a “slaughtering machine”.
Anyway, given the kind of abominations that happened at that farm, I honestly wouldn’t put it past these people to sell human meat.
We will never know all the gruesome details, but one thing is for sure - Canadian authorities want to destroy the Pickton evidence because they want to continue the cover-up that’s been going on for over 20 years at this point.
MARK JUNE 26, 2024 ON YOUR CALENDAR!
To Brown’s knowledge, they are fighting for the remaining 14 to 15,000 exhibits.
“The majority of these cases, apart from the six that Robert Pickton was convicted of, remain unsolved cases,” said Brown. “It’s our belief that those exhibits do retain evidentiary value and they ought to be preserved and the police ought to continue thoroughly investigating those unsolved cases.”
In January, the court was notified of Justice for Girls interest in “applying for standing to intervene on the RCMP’s application,” said Brown.
A court date regarding the RCMP application is scheduled on June 26.
You catch that? There’s a court date on June 26. That’s next week. And you’d better believe that application will be rubber-stamped. Throughout this whole three-decade nightmare, the courts have been just as guilty in the Pickton cover-up as the cops and the media. This is why my brother called this case “Canada’s Epstein Island”. It’s what made a lot of people realize that the government is evil beyond hope of redemption. The only solution is revolution, folks.
Anyway, may be our last chance to raise hell about this mockery of justice.
STAY TUNED TO NEVERMORE MEDIA FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THIS SHOCKING CASE!
Love & Solidarity,
Crow Qu’appelle
Oh yeah, and if you want to learn more about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in B.C., I refer you to my previous work on this subject:
MY PREVIOUS ARTICLES ABOUT MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN IN B.C.
August 13, 2022 - Ten Things You Need to Know about the Drug War Right Fucking Now
August 20, 2022 - Indigenous women are still being murdered in Vancouver, and the police are still are covering it up
August 21, 2022 - Will Five Billion Dollars be Enough to Cover Up Vancouver’s Dirty Little Secret?
October 3rd, 2023 - Robert Pickton is Eligible for Parole in 2024
March 1, 2024 - Robert Pickton is Up for Parole
May 2024 - Who Killed Robert Pickton?
June 19, 2020 - The Never-Ending Nightmare
June 20, 2020 - Canadian Nightmare (Part 1)
June 20, 2020 - “Canada’s Epstein Island” (Canadian Nightmare Part 2)
THE SECOND PICKTON TIP
by Lori Shenher, excerpted from That Lonely Stretch of Hell (2015)
(This is Part 2 of a multipart series. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, I suggest starting there.)
In April 1999, Pickton resurfaced as a suspect in a sexual assault and strangulation attempt on a New Westminster sex worker. Although [Port Coquitlam RCMP officer] Mike Connor and I had attempted to track his activities through the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) flag, we had received next to no information about his activities. Finally, we had something.
Because Pickton fit the description of the attacker, a meeting was held at the New Westminster Police Department with members of the NWPD, the Burnaby RCMP, the Coquitlam RCMP, the Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit, and the VPD.
We discussed Pickton’s viability as a suspect in the missing women files, and we agreed that his photo should be shown to as many sex workers as possible in all the jurisdictions with an active sex trade.
Again, Special O was assigned to conduct surveillance and obtain a discard DNA sample—an item such as a cigarette butt, condom, drinking straw, or dirty Kleenex used by the suspect from which a DNA profile can be taken—from Pickton to use in comparison with DNA found in three murders around Agassiz, B.C., of women who fit our victim profile—Tammy Pipe, Tracy Olajide, and Victoria Younker.
Quick note - Pickton’s DNA was not a match for these murders, and they are believed to have been committed by another serial killer, who has never been caught.
You didn’t think that Pickton was the only serial killer in B.C., did you?
The RCMP’s Special O surveillance unit observed Pickton from May 5 to 11 and saw nothing unusual or apparently significant. He was followed to West Coast Reduction Ltd., an animal-product rendering plant on the Downtown Eastside waterfront, where it was later determined he regularly brought pig entrails. Aside from that, there was little activity. Pickton seemed to attract minimal police attention, and despite the CPIC flag, we were receiving no reports of his being stopped in areas frequented by sex workers. There was not enough evidence in the New Westminster assault to charge him, and he continued with his day-to-day activities.
By this point, Shenher is suffering symptoms of burnout (or early signs of PTSD), and she took some time off work.
While I was away, [my co-worker] Geramy took a call from Jim Brown, a Coquitlam RCMP constable. He wanted to pass on information he'd received from a source about a male and female—and perhaps others—killing Downtown Eastside prostitutes. It quickly became evident that Brown wanted to pass on to us not only the information but also the source himself, which was highly unusual, if not unheard of, for an RCMP officer to do. Geramy assigned [VPD constable] Mark Chernoff to follow up on the tip.
ENTER ROSS CALDWELL
On July 19, Mark met with the confidential source, Ross Caldwell. He told Mark about a murder that occurred on the Picktons’ Dominion Avenue property sometime between February and April. Caldwell explained that a close associate of Pickton’s, Lynn Ellingsen, had told him this story, and it was through her that Caldwell had come to know and occasionally work for Pickton.
Ellingsen told Caldwell she and Pickton had gone downtown in a Chevy S-10 pickup truck and enticed a sex worker with drugs, booze, and money to come with them to the Port Coquitlam farm.
SMELLS LIKE HELLFIRE
This information elevated Pickton from a strong possible suspect to a highly likely suspect in my opinion—we had smelled smoke before; now we could see the inferno.
[…]
According to Caldwell, Ellingsen’s story was that Pickton gave them each some money—hers was for helping to bring the woman out there, and the sex worker was paid for her time. According to Ellingsen, she went into a separate room in the trailer so that Pickton and the woman could be alone, presumably to complete the sexual arrangement.
Sometime later, Ellingsen said she went out on the property to look for Pickton, wondering where he had gone. As she approached the slaughterhouse, she saw what she believed was a female human body hanging from a meat hook and Robert Pickton standing beside it, removing the skin. She later told Caldwell she didn’t know human fatty tissue was yellow, an ominous indication she was telling the truth.
[…]
Ellingsen’s motivation would become clear: she told Caldwell she was using what she had seen to extort money from Pickton—blood money to buy her silence and ensure that she wouldn't go to the police. Clearly, she had been bothered enough by what she had seen—and possibly done—to tell someone. And that someone was Caldwell, who told Mark that she appeared genuinely disturbed by the incident—but not disturbed enough to mess up her cozy arrangement with Pickton. We later learned that she had told her story to others as well.
It bears mentioning that Ellingsen was severely drug-addicted at the time, and that Pickton was providing her with drugs, money, accommodation, and employment.
Caldwell appeared credible and forthright in his dealings with Mark and his partner, Ron Lepine. He had a history as an informant for the RCMP and had been paid for information in the past that turned out to be factual and useful; although later, during the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, retired RCMP corporal Frank Henley referred to Caldwell as a “treacherous” informant, meaning he was not to be trusted.
WHO IS FRANK HENLEY?
Henley was with the provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit,
Frank Henley, by the way, was later sued by some family members of Pickton’s victims. He appears to have taken a very hands-on approach to suppressing the investigation into Robert Pickton and his accomplices.
As insane as this is, it’s a matter of public record that Henley informed Pickton prior to the raid of his farm that he was a suspect in the disappearances of Vancouver’s missing women, and told him that Ellingsen and Caldwell were talking to police about him.
Obviously, this put their lives at risk. We’re talking about a known killer with connections to the Hells Angels. It’s a miracle that Lynn Ellingsen survived to give testimony at Pickton’s trial.
On July 28, I met with [VPD boss] Fred Biddlecombe, Geramy, Mark, and Ron after the two detectives’ second meeting with Caldwell a couple of days before and asked them whether anyone found this source hand-off from Brown unusual. After my informant experiences in patrol and later with Hiscox, and seeing the proprietary way police officers protect their sources from other officers, I found this a little strange.
My colleagues all commented that they'd never seen a Mountie offer to share a source, let alone actually pass one on so easily with no period of transition or introduction. Still, we had a hot new source and what seemed to be useful information, so we didn’t sit around puzzling over our good fortune. I've certainly wondered since then what Brown’s reasons were for effectively dropping Caldwell on our doorstep with no apparent further involvement.
Mark and Ron met with Caldwell several times from July 19 to 28, and more details emerged. Caldwell was able to get a vague physical description of the woman seen hanging from the hook—she was young, Caucasian, with short reddish hair—and we felt this could be Jacqueline McDonnell, a Vancouver woman last seen in January 1999 and the only 1999 case we had on our list at that time. Later, we would discover there were others missing that year of whom we were unaware. Again, because we were unaware of some of the victims, we couldn't see the full picture of our investigation.
In that July 28 meeting, Fred, Geramy, Mark, Ron, and I planned our next moves. We agreed that the Coquitlam RCMP had to take the lead, since the Pickton farm was in its jurisdiction, but Mark and Ron were the logical interviewers because they had the most knowledge of Ellingsen and the best relationship with Caldwell. Mark and Ron agreed to cancel their own vacation plans for that week and contact Mike Connor to set up a meeting.
I was scheduled to fly to Washington, D.C., at the end of the week for the July 31 airing of an America’s Most Wanted segment about the missing women and wanted nothing more than to cancel and stay in Vancouver to see how this would unfold. But I was already booked and had agreed to go.
This episode of America’s Most Wanted is actually an important part of the Pickton story. It was only once the Pickton case began attracting international notoriety that authorities offered a cash reward for information leading to Vancouver’s missing women.
The following day, Mark and Ron met in Coquitlam with several RCMP members, including Inspector Earl Moulton and Corporal Mike Connor. They discussed the new information and confirmed that two women and two men—Yelds, Ellingsen, Hiscox, and Caldwell—had come forward with similar information about Robert Pickton killing sex workers.
When Mark returned to our office and relayed the details of the meeting to me, he was stunned that some officers were still raising doubts, questioning whether our sources were credible and whether Ellingsen had actually seen what she said she had.
I was dumbfounded. This was more than normal investigative second-guessing or devil’s advocacy at play. There were some problems with Caldwell, without question, and the RCMP members seemed to equate drug dependency with lying, which we did not believe had to go hand in hand. Mark and Ron were working 24/7 to keep Caldwell on track; he wasn’t unstable or mentally unwell at that point, merely feeling the pressure. For us, his substance abuse issues did not change the veracity of the information we believed he'd heard firsthand from Ellingsen, but it seemed to for some RCMP members.
While the RCMP determined its next move, we decided we would mobilize the VPD Strike Force to conduct surveillance on Pickton’s property and his activities. This began on July 31, and after meeting again with Coquitlam, Mark and Ron were able to get the RCMP to commit Special O to assist with surveillance.
Note that the RCMP only began surveillance operations after the VPD, despite Port Coquitlam being in their jurisdiction.
On August 3, we met with the RCMP in Coquitlam to discuss committing money and resources and forming an investigative team and an operational plan to pursue Pickton. Someone suggested that Crown counsel be consulted about how Ellingsen should be approached—as a witness or as a suspect—and a member was assigned to do this.
The VPD agreed to supply Mark and Ron to assist the Coquitlam and Unsolved Homicide members. E Division—the name for the British Columbia division of the RCMP—was asked to review its commitment to the file.
The RCMP was “asked to review its commitment to the file.” That’s some pretty weird phrasing, isn’t it? That seems to suggest that they had no involvement in investigating the case at this point, which seems extremely bizarre given the nature of this case, which involved multiple jurisdictions.
On August 4, the newly formed investigative team met in Coquitlam. Coquitlam RCMP provided three members, including Mike Connor, and Unsolved Homicide supplied Detective Bruce Ballantyne, a VPD member seconded to that team.
Mark and Ron were to continue working with Caldwell, who was becoming difficult to manage. He was living in a seedy hotel in Surrey and slipping deeper into heavy drinking and drug use. Mark and Ron met with Caldwell later that day, and he provided information that concerned them deeply.
A man named Ron Menard worked on the farm and hung around with Ellingsen, Pickton, and the others. Menard told Caldwell that Pickton was tired of paying Ellingsen “extortion money.”
Man, how much corroborating evidence do these people need?
Menard had an abusive relationship with Ellingsen, and it was difficult to determine how all the players fit. It was then that Caldwell agreed to act as an agent for the police, and Mark and Ron provided him with a pager so that they could reach him anytime.
The next day, Caldwell attended an interview with the investigative team looking tired and worn. His mental state seemed precarious, and some suspected he was under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or both. The RCMP members, with the exception of Mike Connor, were increasingly skeptical about his credibility, to the frustration of Mark and Ron, who knew that Caldwell was feeling under pressure.
Ellingsen had told another friend, Leah Best, the story of the hanging body. Best was deeply upset by the information and was horrified when Ellingsen told her she was hoping to extort enough money to take a cruise—something she had never been able to afford because of her drug habit and poor circumstances. Best thought Ellingsen was telling the truth—she found the suggestion that anyone would make up such a story ludicrous—and took the information to the Burnaby RCMP.
Okay, let’s recap. By July of 1999, police knew about:
Pickton’s attempted murder of Wendy Lynn Eisletter in 1997
Bill Hiscox’s report that Lisa Yelds suspected Pickton of multiple murders
Pickton’s attempted strangulation of a New Westminster sex worker
Ross Caldwell’s retelling of Lynn Ellingsen’s eyewitness account
Ron Menard’s corroboration of Caldwell’s account
Leah Best’s retelling of Lynn Ellingsen’s eyewitness account
And yet we’re supposed to believe that there wasn’t enough information to charge Pickton with a crime, raid his property, or even bring him in for questioning. What a fucking joke.
The group agreed to locate Ellingsen and bring her in for an interview, though Mark, Ron, and I questioned whether interviewing her would serve our goal of getting onto the Pickton farm and thought it would be better to make her the target of an undercover operation. We were concerned that the RCMP wanted to write her off as unreliable and stop pursuing Pickton, but this was not our jurisdiction and we were forced to do things their way. Our fears would turn out to be well-founded.
THE FIRST BOTCHED INTERROGATION OF LYNN ELLINGSON
Lynn Ellingsen was first interviewed on August 10. I felt this was poorly planned because the RCMP had rebuffed Mike, Mark, and Ron’s suggestions that surveillance and wiretap be put in place first. We had all thought that surveillance was necessary so that Ellingsen could be followed afterward and that an authorized wiretap should be set up to see and hear whether she went straight to Pickton from the interview.
I also suggested that an undercover operator would be the best way to get Ellingsen to retell this story so that we could judge its truthfulness. Because she was a heavy drinker and drug user and worked at a seedy bar, I thought a female undercover operator planted there working behind the bar or waiting tables could befriend her easily, share a few beers, and engage her in a conversation about what she had seen.
These ideas were rejected, and to this day, I don’t know why, though I suspect it was because Unsolved Homicide members refused to believe our witness information and to believe that anything sinister was going on at the Pickton farm.
I later heard Missing Women Commission of Inquiry testimony from RCMP members that they feared an entire undercover team would have to be called in, an operational plan would need to be created, and the safety of members would be in jeopardy because of so much drug use among the Pickton associates. In my experience, this did not sound much different from most undercover operations involving drug users that police embark upon every day.
It seemed no one wanted to go to the bother or expense because no one believed this was a murder investigation. I'd always worked on the premise that you rule things in until you can conclusively rule them out, so I failed to understand how the Unsolved Homicide members could so blithely discount our source information without any evidence to support dismissing it.
Mark and Ron were initially set to conduct the Ellingsen interview and were the most logical and prepared for the job. At the last moment, they were told they would not be doing the interview.
VPD Detective Bruce Ballantyne and his Unsolved Homicide partner RCMP corporal Frank Henley would take over—with little preparation and even less confidence that Ellingsen had indeed seen a hanging body. Mark and Ron were understandably upset. They were relegated to watching from the observation room of the Whalley RCMP suboffice, where they observed an eighteen-minute-long discussion between Ellingsen, Ballantyne, and Henley.
A full transcript of this interrogation is available online.
The recording began with an acknowledgment that they had been speaking casually for a few minutes before recording. They asked Ellingsen some questions about her knowledge of Robert Pickton and her relationship with him. There were no questions about her extortion of Pickton for what she saw in the barn. The interview continued with Ellingsen alternately denying seeing a body hanging in the barn and defending her memory and asserting that being drunk doesn’t make people forget something upsetting. Ellingsen’s answers were one-word denials and short sentences, like “that’s the truth,” which many who study statement analysis believe are intended to slam the door on any further questioning but may not be indications of innocence. Unfortunately, the interviewer’s questions were not open-ended, enabling Ellingsen to answer in the negative without the need for elaboration.
They didn’t ask any behavioral observation questions—designed to gauge truthfulness—just old-school two-on-one interrogation with no plan. After eighteen recorded minutes of conversation, Ballantyne and Henley stepped out of that room and told Mark and Ron they believed Ellingsen—they believed she had not seen what Caldwell and Best said she told them she saw.
Mark called me from Coquitlam, his voice shaking with rage. As I listened, I had the sensation of air leaving me like a gigantic tire deflating. Ellingsen left the Coquitlam RCMP detachment without surveillance, without wiretap in place, without an undercover operation ready to launch, the object of no further plans to try to determine the veracity of her information. I was stunned and completely baffled at the apparent complete lack of a cohesive plan to rule Pickton in or out as a killer.
THERE YOU HAVE IT, FOLKS.
THE PORT COQUITLAM RCMP KILLED THE INVESTIGATION INTO THE PICKTON FARM TWICE.
As Mark and I began to puzzle through the events, we wondered whether perhaps the Mounties knew something. Maybe they have a plan and they just aren't telling us. It had to be something like that, because it was inconceivable that they didn't see this the way we did. We both recalled instances where we'd dealt with the RCMP before in our careers—Mark more than me—and they'd habitually failed to share information or their plans with us lowly “munis.” It certainly wouldn't be the first time, we reasoned.
We ended the call hopeful that maybe the RCMP were just doing their “Mountie thing” and preferred to pursue Pickton without our input. We agreed that would be fine by us, and Mark returned to the office. When he got back, Mark, Ron, Geramy, and I continued to puzzle over what could make the RCMP think they could flat out deny the credibility of this information without any proof to the contrary.
THE SECOND BOTCHED INTERROGATION OF LYNN ELLINGSEN
Mark and Ron continued to pressure the Unsolved Homicide Unit, and, amazingly, Ellingsen agreed to return to the Coquitlam detachment for a second interview on August 26. To me, this was consistent with someone who had a story to tell and only needed the right prompting and reassurance to tell it, and credit must go to Henley for completing his assignment, which was to get her back in the door. She certainly hadn’t been shy about telling several friends about her experience in Pickton’s barn.
MIKE CONNOR GETS A PROMOTION
In the meantime, Mike was promoted to sergeant, and we were told he would no longer be working in the General Investigation Section of Coquitlam RCMP. The Pickton investigation had just lost its best advocate in the RCMP. It was a huge loss, but we had no idea just how huge.
The August 26 interview with Ellingsen proved little better than the first. Again, in light of their knowledge of the case and the information provided by Caldwell, Mark and Ron hoped to conduct it, but the RCMP pressed to have one of their members in the room. RCMP Constable Ruth Yurkiw and Ron began the interview together, only to have Ellingsen object to Ron’s presence when he dared to press her on what she had witnessed in Pickton’s barn. Ron voluntarily left the interview rather than compromise Ellingsen’s information by making her more uncomfortable.
Henley then joined Yurkiw—who, by her own admission in the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry testimony and to Doug LePard during his interview with her for the VPD Missing Women Investigation Report, was inexperienced with murder files—and the interview proceeded. Again, Ron and Mark were incredulous that detectives with little preparation, no file review, and even less belief in the case would be entrusted with dealing with such a key witness.
Yurkiw tried to keep Ellingsen on track and in the room, and Henley attempted to salvage the interview and maintain some sort of rapport with Ellingsen, but little information was gained.
On the recording, the interview proceeded with back and forth about whether Ellingsen accompanied Pickton into Vancouver and whether she was with him when he picked up a sex worker. She went off on a tangent, ruminating on all the ways she could potentially prove her story was true. Finally, Henley refocused Ellingsen on the matter of the hanging body in the barn. He told her there was some trouble with her version of the story.
Henley went on to tell Ellingsen that there were Vancouver police officers who believed she had told others about seeing something in Pickton’s barn. She indicated she understood that. Henley was clearly getting to her and suggested Ellingsen take a polygraph examination to prove she was telling the truth, and she agreed.
Henley explained that the Vancouver police officers believed she helped Pickton pick up this sex worker and she saw him skinning her body in the barn. He warned her this story was not going away until it was either proven true or disproven as untrue. She said she understood. Henley emphasized that this was an important matter and Ellingsen agreed.
When Ellingsen left, however, there was no investigative plan in place to determine the extent of her involvement with Pickton other than to agree to let Henley set up a polygraph test.
As a result of these interviews, Ron and Mark had some discussion with Sergeant Bill Lean of the VPD Polygraph Unit about scheduling a time for Ellingsen to undergo a lie-detector examination in our polygraph suite in Vancouver. The RCMP also tried to have her come in, as their polygraph examiner, Sergeant Jim Hunter, felt she had to be tested. A time was arranged for August 31, but Ellingsen called at the last minute to cancel, saying that on the advice of her lawyer she would not be speaking to the police any further. We were dead in the water as far as Lynn Ellingsen was concerned.
Um, do you think that maybe intimidating your star witness isn’t the best way to get them to cooperate with you?
Those opportunities we had sitting face-to-face with Ellingsen had been squandered. Police would not speak to her about Pickton again until February 2002, after his arrest, when she would finally become a key witness, but even then, they had to be pressured to take her seriously to the point that I often wondered whether there wasn't some sort of concerted effort to keep her and her information buried.
I’ve learned nothing since to lead me to understand this bizarre set of circumstances, and I stated in the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry that I hoped if the inquiry learned nothing more, we would hear testimony explaining the RCMP’s rationale around their mishandling of the Ellingsen information.
Unsolved Homicide members told Mark and Ron they would continue with their attempts to interview Pickton, and indeed, Ruth Yurkiw tried to do so in early autumn of 1999.
From September 1999 on, very little was done about Pickton, but we weren't aware of just how little. At first, I called Mike Connor's old desk number almost daily after the second Ellingsen interview. I continued to call, thinking I would reach an officer who could direct me to the investigator handling the Pickton file. I finally learned that Ruth Yurkiw had custody of the file, and I was able to speak to her, but she said little was happening with the file and didn’t mention that she had tried to interview Pickton. She expressed her frustration and her doubt that her superiors were giving the investigation the priority she felt they should. The Picktons had been selling parcels of their property to the City of Coquitlam, and I called her periodically throughout that fall to suggest the RCMP search that newly released land for evidence. The suggestion was always met with lukewarm enthusiasm at best. The file was dying before my eyes, and I didn’t know what more to do.
No one from Coquitlam ever advised us about what changed for them. As VPD Deputy Chief Constable Doug LePard noted in his August 2010 report "Missing Women Investigation Review," “Pickton was eventually excluded by DNA from being a suspect in the Agassiz Murders. (It appears no further investigation on the Coquitlam RCMP Pickton file occurred until November 2001, when Constable Yurkiw’s replacement, Constable Sherstone, made several attempts to re-interview Ellingsen, but was unsuccessful.)”
In his research, LePard learned that Yurkiw visited the farm in an attempt to interview Pickton but was met by his brother, Dave, who asked her to “come back during the rainy season,” because they were too busy working now.
You catch that? If the police show up at your door investigating you for mass murder, just tell ‘em you’re busy.
No interview took place until January 2000, when Yurkiw and RCMP Constable John Cater sat down with Robert.
The investigators were criticized for allowing Pickton’s friend Gina Houston to sit in on the interview. In fairness to them, their hands had been tied because Pickton told them he wouldn't proceed without her present, and they tried to make the best of the situation. Again, it seemed that inexperienced or under-prepared people were placed in impossible positions because the file wasn’t seen as important enough to assign top investigators or attract adequate resourcing. How familiar that theme would become to me over the years. It’s difficult to blame these investigators who were only doing their jobs but with little or no guidance.
I pressed various RCMP members periodically that autumn and winter, asking what, if anything, was being done with respect to Pickton, including E Division Superintendent Gary Bass, whom I saw at the October 1999 meeting to discuss [another suspect]. Every time, I was met with comments about how “interesting” Pickton was, along with vague mention of how “something” should be done, but it was “difficult” or so-and-so was “looking into it.” I would check with the various so-and-sos, and they would have the same response: someone was “on it,” but no one could tell me what was being done, and no one needed our help. No one seemed to be doing anything, yet no one could tell me that they had substantiated that Ellingsen’s information was false. All I could hope was that if the superintendent of E Division was aware of Pickton, someone in the RCMP must be assigned to follow this up.
But I didn’t understand the politics within the RCMP. The Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit investigators apparently had jurisdiction over members at the detachment—Coquitlam—level. In murder investigations, the investigative opinions of members such as Frank Henley of the PUHU took precedence, even over those of an experienced murder investigator such as Mike Connor, who knew the players and the file far better than any member of the PUHU.
IN MARCH 2001, MOUNTIE FRANK HENLEY MAKES A “SOCIAL VISIT” TO THE PICKTON FARM, IN WHICH HE TELLS THE SUSPECTED SERIAL KILLER THAT ELLINGSEN AND CALDWELL ARE TALKING TO POLICE ABOUT HIM
There seems to have been no police contact with Pickton after the January 19, 2000, interview, aside from RCMP Corporal Frank Henley’s March 2001 one-man self-described “really, very much a social visit” to Pickton’s farm to tell him the names of the two people talking to police about him: Ellingsen and Caldwell. Commissioner Oppal describes this visit in his report: “On March 30, 2001, Cpl. Henley of PUHU goes to the Pickton property to speak with Pickton. He tells Pickton that Ms. Ellingsen and Mr. Caldwell have been saying he killed a girl. Pickton admits to stabbing [Wendy Lynn Eisletter], but says that she stabbed him first. Cpl. Henley’s meeting with Pickton is unexplained and done in total isolation from other police members.”
That seemed to be the last police contact with Pickton until February 5, 2002.
Since mid-1999, PROJECT Amelia had worked closely with RCMP Behavioural Sciences Staff Sergeant Keith Davidson and his partner, Sergeant Scot Filer; Corporal Marg Kingsbury; and the criminal profiling staff. I maintained close contact with these officers over several months, and they shared my team’s frustration that the Pickton investigation seemed to be going nowhere. This group of Mounties shared our conviction that Lynn Ellingsen’s information needed to be more closely examined and that Pickton appeared to be a viable suspect in the missing women investigation. Certainly, no one had yet ruled out his involvement.
On February 10, 2000, Davidson called a meeting with VPD investigators Mark Chernoff and Ron Lepine; RCMP Corporals Marg Kingsbury, Nicole St. Mars, and Grant Johnston; and Constable Paul McCarl and me. I was grateful that people in the RCMP still believed in Pickton as a suspect. This meeting was the follow-up to a January 13, 2000, meeting in which Geramy had asked Davidson and Filer to ask their unit to prepare a suspect profile on Robert Pickton.
At the February 10 meeting, I asked Davidson to use his influence to appeal to his RCMP superiors to create a joint forces operation with the VPD to investigate the missing women. We discussed pursuing Pickton, dealing with the Ellingsen information, and revisiting with Crown counsel the 1997 stay of proceedings in the Anderson attempted murder and forcible confinement case. Davidson and Filer supported the creation of a joint forces operation. We discussed an action plan, and Davidson stated his understanding that those of us from the VPD were there because we wanted a joint forces operation, and if the RCMP could not set one in motion, we were prepared to go to the provincial attorney general.
SNITCHING ON THE COPS
In March 2000, I attended a small memorial gathering at Crab Park, on the north edge of the Downtown Eastside, to commemorate the missing women. Perhaps twenty-five of us stood in a small circle, huddled under our umbrellas, weathering a typical Vancouver downpour. Dave Dickson and I were the only police officers there; standing beside us were Indigenous elders, family members, and women from the Downtown Eastside. People took turns holding the talking stick and speaking quietly to the group, and after about half of them had spoken, Dave passed me the stick. Barely peering out from under my umbrella, I opened my mouth, expecting my usual clear, well-projected voice to come out.
I began with “My name is Lori Shenher and I—” and I couldn’t go on. My throat choked shut with emotion. I pulled the umbrella lower over my head as tears sprang to my eyes and big wracking sobs welled inside me and overflowed, forcing me to cover my mouth to muffle the noise. I wordlessly handed the talking stick to the next person, turned, and slowly walked away from the group toward the parking lot. Lindsay Kines of the Vancouver Sun followed me.
As I approached my Jeep, Lindsay called out to me. “Detective Shenher?”
My first thought was oh damn. I felt sick, not myself in any way, and deeply embarrassed at my public breakdown. I’m sure I would have been mortified to learn this wouldn't be my last. I turned to see Lindsay standing behind me.
“Are you okay?”
Looking back, I think that’s the split second I knew I would be able to trust Lindsay. He was kind and not mining me for a good quote or a scoop. I felt he actually cared whether I was okay. I think he knew I wasn't okay.
“I’m sorry, this just isn’t a good time for me to talk. I hope you can understand,” I said, still sniffling.
“Understand. Off the record, completely.” He smiled sheepishly and I found myself joining him.
“I’m just incredibly frustrated. I can’t say more than that, but this is really wearing on me.”
“Is there anything you can say on the record?” He paused. “I understand if you can't.”
“Only that this is so frustrating to not be able to give the families some closure. All I can tell them is where they aren't. As far as where they are, we haven't got there yet.” I told him I just couldn’t say any more. He told me if I ever wanted to talk, he was there, and I thanked him. And, with that, I walked away.
SPILLING THE BEANS
I left Major Crime at the end of 2000 and struggled to find work within the VPD that might reignite my passion, and I continued to suffer from nightmares and all the other physical and emotional symptoms I'd had since 1999. Eventually, I settled in as a detective in the Financial Crime Unit (FCU).
Lindsay Kines of the Vancouver Sun called me in the summer of 2001. He told me he was doing a series on the missing women and sensed I had some things I might want to talk about. I agreed to meet with him one sunny afternoon on Granville Island, a small idyllic tourist spot on the downtown Vancouver waterfront known as False Creek. I had not decided how much to tell him prior to our meeting, but as we spoke, I found myself telling him the story of Pickton. It was the right thing for me to do personally, but I placed him in an awful position, knowing he wouldn't be able to use any of it, but feeling someone needed to know this—the public needed to know this. Professionally, I was breaking all sorts of VPD policy and codes of conduct, but I didn’t care. How could I responsibly share this information knowing it could jeopardize an investigation? Because by then there was no investigation.
I placed my trust in him—something I would not grow to regret—and found Lindsay to be a rarity: an incredibly ethical and discreet reporter and person. I told him of the setup of Project Amelia, of the shell game that was the VPD’s and the RCMP’s response to these women’s disappearances, of the couple of incompetent people we were forced to work with on both sides of the house… Perhaps if Lindsay’s stories could reawaken the public consciousness to this file and the plight of these women, the RCMP would respond to the pressure and revisit the Pickton investigation. Another aspect of my motivation was my own conscience—I needed someone outside of my own family and close friends to know my frustrations at strongly suspecting Pickton was a serial killer and not having the support and tools to prove it.
Lindsay’s Vancouver Sun series definitely helped to bring more public awareness to the missing women, and he was able to interview several of my teammates, many on the record, but he kept mum on the Pickton information because none of us could go on the record with it. His stories won him well-deserved awards and accolades. We all—Lindsay included—held out hope that the RCMP’s Project Evenhanded might be working on Pickton at that very time. Sadly, it was not.
AFTER THE VANCOUVER SUN PUBLISHED A SERIES OF ARTICLES BY LINDSAY KINES ABOUT VANCOUVER’S MISSING WOMEN, THE RCMP FINALLY RAIDED THE PICKTON FARM
On February 5, 2002, a young Coquitlam RCMP constable named Nathan Wells would execute a search warrant on the Pickton farm for a weapons offense unrelated to the missing women. He would uncover an inhaler belonging to Sereena Abotsway, one of Vancouver's missing women, last seen in July 2001. He immediately contacted [the VPD] to tell them of his discovery.
In case you’re wondering, by the way, the Port Coquitlam RCMP and the Coquitlam RCMP are not separate. They are part of the same detachment. The Coquitlam RCMP detachment provides policing services to both the City of Coquitlam and the City of Port Coquitlam, among other areas. This combined detachment operates under the same leadership and shares resources to police the areas within its jurisdiction.
Within hours, the largest crime scene search in Canadian history was underway, and police discovered forensic evidence indicating many of the missing women were killed on that farm in the months and years the Pickton investigation languished.
Robert William Pickton was arrested on February 22, 2002, initially charged with the first-degree murders of Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson. Over the next months, he was charged with the additional murders of Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Marnie Frey, and Georgina Papin.
As DNA evidence uncovered through the exhaustive search of the farm trickled in over the ensuing months, the Crown charged Pickton with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jacqueline McDonell, Dianne Rock, Heather Bottomley, Jennifer Furminger, Helen Hallmark, Patricia Johnson, Heather Chinook, Tanya Holyk, Sherry Irving, Inga Hall, Tiffany Drew, Sarah de Vries, Cynthia Feliks aka Mongovius, Angela Jardine, Diana Melnick, Debra Jones, Wendy Crawford, Kerry Koski, Angela Arsenault, and Cara Ellis. They had been there all along.
Wayne Leng received a tip from Bill Hiscox about Robert Pickton on July 27, 1998. He was arrested on February 22, 2002. He is believed to have killed at least 14 women between those two dates.
Frank Henley has never been held accountable for his role in suppressing the investigation.
People in power are all corrupt. It’s sickening. Members of the force were probably friends with him and in on all of it. That’s how it always is with these fucks. The richer or more powerful, the more likely to be involved in this kind of stuff, human and child trafficking, black market organs etc. and worse. It’s disgusting. These people are vile. I grew up in Poco, we passed the Pickton farm all the time when I was growing up. We moved out of BC when I was 10, in 1997. When i found out about this stuff I get sick to my stomach. It still makes me feel so sad and sick.
When I was little we lived in river springs- amazing neighbourhood that was full of families, people took neighbourhood watch seriously, we went to the best preschool and always knocked on the doors of old ladies asking for candy. We’d explore in the forest and eat raspberries growing there, find all kinds of wildlife. The trees were enormous. We could go everywhere without supervision as long as we stayed in the neighbourhood. A lot of fun memories. Then we moved to the townhouse complex behind the united church on Shaughnessy and lougheed, just before river springs. Actually we were friends with the wealthy lougheed family, they were nice, we went on all kinds of trips with them. All us kids got along and the lougheeds gave us hand-me-downs that we were so excited to get. We were on welfare. We got food boxes delivered by hulky football players every month through a church program. That church was the best, doors were literally always open and I’d sneak in there on some nights and go exploring and sit in the storage rooms and look through everything, or go find something t eat in the kitchens. Literally the doors were always open and we played Buffy the vampire slayer all the time running through there at night. But the people in the townhouses were amazing. We were all friends and could walk into each other’s homes, it was all immigrants and low income folk and we had a blast. Behind us was a huge forest with a path and a gushing river that was very wide and we weren’t allowed to cross it. We spent so much time in those forests, making fires and building forts and stuff with found furniture. We were just little kids doing all this! Fast forward to when I moved back tenporarily at age 18 and poco had become a drug den, loads of prostitutes everywhere, even my childhood friend’s mom and a girl I grew up with. Drug raids constantly. And apparently that forest we spent so much time in as kids was dangerous now, many murders and rapes took place there regularly. I was told not to walk that forest path and to stay on the main roads. But there was an amazing Chinese bakery there that I’d always go to for hot dog buns as a kid and I went back at 18 and they were still amazing. Also got long John doughnuts and these buttery flaky buns at a legendary bakery there that I also used to get as a child, and there was this strange pretzel shaped bread bun thing topped with tomato sauce and poppy seeds that I had as a child and I found them finally when I went back, at a grocery store! Couldn’t believe they still existed. Yeah poco was great as a child. It was such a mix of different ethnic people and it felt like a really open and welcoming inclusive community, nothing like the cold and divided racialized communities of Toronto. Poco was different. But In 2007 it was a shell of its former self, or, perhaps my rose tinted glasses from childhood had worn off completely and I could see what was going on, whereas as a child you don’t know about these things. Also when I went back everyone was Chinese?????? Like whites and Indians were a noticeable minority there and Surrey was all Indians. I didn’t see any black people when I went back but when I was a child there were so many people of all backgrounds and we all got along and shared recipes and everything. Good times.