THE RCMP IS TRYING TO DESTROY EVIDENCE FROM THE PICKTON PIG FARM
The Quasi-Confession of Robert Pickton --- CANADIAN NIGHTMARE (PART 3)
HEY FOLKS,
Today is June 26th, 2024. It’s a day I’ve been preparing for.
Today is the day that the RCMP will appear in a B.C. court seeking permission to destroy over 14,000 exhibits that were gathered during the investigation of the infamous Pickton pig farm in Port Coquitlam.
The family members of some of the victims held a press conference six months in which they made their position clear - they do not want this evidence to be destroyed, and they see the actions of the RCMP as highly suspicious.
Many people, including myself, have accused the RCMP of trying to cover up the true story of the Pickton farm, which was the site of a Hells Angels chop shop.
Many people believe that the Coquitlam RCMP and the B.C. Hells Angels have long had a cozy relationship, meaning that the Mounties may have a conflict of interest in seeking to destroy evidence that may incriminate some of their members, such as Frank Henley, formerly of B.C.’s Unsolved Homicides unit.
After all, it has been widely reported that members of the Coquitlam detachment were regular guests at Piggie’s Palace, an entertainment venue owned by Robert Pickton and his brother David.
Convicted serial killer Robert Pickton died last month after being attacked by another inmate at Quebec maximum-security Port Cartier prison.
WE NOW KNOW THE NAME OF ROBERT PICKTON’S (ALLEGED) KILLER: MARTIN CHAREST
According to the Montreal Gazette:
The man suspected of attacking B.C. serial killer Robert Pickton at a maximum-security prison has a long history of criminal offences dating back decades.
Martin “Spike” Charest, 51, has not yet been charged with what Correctional Service Canada called a “major assault,” which left Pickton hospitalized in a coma.
But sources confirmed the longtime prisoner is the suspect under investigation.
Pickton was brutally assaulted on May 19, at about 5:15 p.m., in a specialized unit for at-risk inmates in Quebec’s Port-Cartier maximum security prison near Sept-Îles.
WHO IS MARTIN CHAREST? IS HE A HELLS ANGELS AFFILIATE?
Personally, my first question about Martin Charest is whether or not he is associated with the Hells Angels, who had a plausible motive for wanting Pickton dead.
The Gazette doesn’t mention any gang affiliation, but I will pass along the information they do provide:
In 2022, Charest was serving time at the Donnacona Institution, a maximum-security penitentiary near Quebec City, when he was charged with more than a dozen counts of uttering threats to cause bodily harm or the death of a person. On May 22, 2022, he pleaded guilty to all 13 of the counts he faced and was sentenced to a 36-month prison term.
In 2014, Charest was sentenced to a 48-month prison term for uttering threats while he was serving time at Port-Cartier.
He was at Port-Cartier at the time because, in 2007, he pleaded guilty to three counts of armed robbery and was sentenced to an eight-year prison term.
The motive for his attack on Pickton is unknown. But one source told Postmedia that Pickton was a target because of the brutality of his crimes against women.
Another question pertains to whether or not prison staff deliberately put Charest in close proximity to Pickton so that he could attack him.
Given the fact that Pickton was a high-profile prisoner in protective custody at a maximum-security prison, the fact that he was attacked so soon after coming up for parole is certainly highly suspicious.
APPARENTLY THERE WILL BE AN INTERNAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE ATTACK
Catherine Latimer, the executive director of the John Howard Society, said there should be an independent investigation into how the attacker got access to Pickton in the secure unit.
If Charest had a history of assaulting other inmates “why would they place him with someone who would be particularly vulnerable to assault because of the charges and convictions that he had?” Latimer asked.
She noted that federal Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Tuesday that there would be an internal investigation into the attack.
“But I think given the information that came out last week by the correctional investigator, that prison violence was increasing across the board, that there really should … be a broader, more independent investigation into prison violence,” Latimer said. “Internal investigations, they don’t really have as much credibility as one would hope.”
Last week, the Globe and Mail reported on data it obtained through an access to information request showing about escalating violence in federal prisons.
Latimer said the violence is worse in some maximum-security prisons where “there is a different code” that means any prisoner that did not take a shot at an inmate like Pickton “might be victimized.”
WAIT, WHAT? THE WHOLE PRISON JUST GOT EVACUATED?
In a surprise twist, all prisoners have been evacuated from the maximum-security Port Cartier prison, supposedly due to extreme risk posed by wildfires.
I am a wildfire fighter by trade, and I can assure you that it is not normal to evacuate maximum-security prisons due to forest fires.
I’d bet money those wildfires will never get within 5 kilometers of the prison.
Forest fires happen every year in Canada, and all institutions that are at risk are supposed to have plans in place to mitigate the risks posed by wildfires. It’s part of living in the North. And 2024 has been unreasonably cool. It’s not like there are wildfires burning all over the place right now.
Can you imagine the logistical challenges of quickly relocating 1000 of Canada’s worst-of-the-worst convicted criminals? Can you imagine the cost?
I’m guessing that this evacuation is due to incompetence, but still, this story really makes me wonder. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was video footage of the attack on Pickton. Now I’m guessing they’d announce later that the footage vanished in the chaos of the evacuation. No one’s fault. Just the way the cookie crumbled.
But hey, I’m just a crazy conspiracy theorist. Who cares what I think?
CANADIAN NIGHTMARE (PART 3)
Anyway, what I’m going to share with you is part three of Canadian Nightmare, which a series that I’ve been writing about the crimes of 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 the Vancouver Police Department’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.”
Part 3 of Canadian Nightmare will focus on the interrogation of Robert Pickton in 2002.
In it, he sort of confesses, but not really. You’ll have to read it attentively to see what I mean.
Personally, I think that there is extremely strong evidence to suggest that a woman named Dinah Taylor took a very hands-on role in assisting Robert Pickton procure victims. She seems to have been a full-blown psychopath.
Speaking of a time soon after Pickton was arrested, Shenher had this to say:
Hundreds of tips flowed in daily, and the team followed up on several leads. The most pressing one involved Dinah Taylor, a Downtown Eastside sex worker, drug addict, and longtime associate of Robert Pickton. She had lived in the Roosevelt Hotel on Hastings Street—an address that would become synonymous with betrayal and death. Taylor’s name continued to come up in connection to Pickton, and she had lived on the farm at various times over the past seven years.
She was alleged to have steered women out to the farm, and according to sources, Pickton would pay her for this service at the rate of $100 per woman. By all accounts, she was mean, violent, and self-serving. Dan Roy, a French-Canadian sergeant on loan from the RCMP in Quebec, was assigned to manage Taylor and set her up for an introduction to an undercover operator. She was typically unreliable, and instead of meeting with Roy at the prearranged times, Taylor would be out allegedly threatening potential witnesses on the Downtown Eastside, warning them not to talk about Pickton to the police or they would end up beaten or worse.
Taylor personified a major problem that would recur throughout this investigation. So much of the anecdotal “buzz” around many of the players in this case seemed to indicate that others beyond Robert Pickton had knowledge of and participated in the murderous activities on that farm. Pickton himself would indicate many times throughout his February 23, 2002, interrogation that there were several others involved, yet no one else was ever charged.
I have no inside knowledge of the strategic plans—if any existed—made by investigators around these questions, but it appears that these matters were under-considered early in the investigation. I believe if these issues had been explored more carefully, the jury’s uncertainty about whether Pickton had acted alone and therefore could be found guilty of first-degree murder—and the jury’s ultimate finding that he was guilty on six second-degree murder charges—might have been avoided.
Can someone kill six people at six different times and say these killings were not premeditated acts? Can someone really kill six people on six different dates and say each occurred without planning or forethought?
Maybe that was a rhetorical question, but I’ll answer it anyway. The answer is NO! No one in the world is so klutzy and disaster-prone that they accidentally kill 6 different people on six different dates.
The reason that Pickton was only ever convicted of 6 counts of second-degree murder is because he didn’t act alone. His accomplices were likely numerous and included Lisa Yelds, Gina Houston, Scott Chubb, Ross Contois, and Ron Menard.
In any case, the RCMP is seeking to destroy DNA evidence connected to many unsolved murder cases. This is a cover up. It’s plain as day, people.
Anyway, what you are about to read in an in-depth, play-by-play account of the interrogation of Robert Pickton back in 2022. It is important because Robert Pickton sort of confesses to being a serial killer… but strongly implied that he did not act alone.
Please share this article! Don’t let the RCMP get away with covering up these crimes against humanity!
Love & Solidarity,
Crow Qu’appelle
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, 2024 - The Never-Ending Nightmare
June 20, 2024 - Canadian Nightmare (Part 1)
June 20, 2024 - “Canada’s Epstein Island” (Canadian Nightmare Part 2)
June 23, 2024 - KICK DOWN THE DOOR FOR JUSTICE! (The Case of Chelsea Poorman)
June 26, 2024 - Canadian Nightmare (Part 3)
Interrogating Robert Pickton
by Lori Shenher, excerpted from That Lonely Stretch of Hell (2015)
(This is Part 3 of a multipart series. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, I suggest starting here.)
On February 22, 2002, Robert Pickton slept on a cold mattress in a Surrey detachment jail cell. His cellmate was an undercover RCMP officer. When I arrived at the detachment early that morning, I sat down in a video room with Sergeant John Woodlock, an RCMP member and the undercover officer's handler. We stared at the video monitor showing Pickton asleep in his cell. It felt surreal sitting there looking at him, this object of my thoughts for so many months. John and I had ski-raced together twenty years earlier in Calgary, and he shared his disgust with me. Pickton had masturbated almost immediately upon entering the cell the previous night and, to the horror of his poor cellmate, would do so several times throughout the night.
Eventually, the members of the RCMP Forensic Interview Team arrived and began preparation for the long day of interviewing ahead. The mood was high and expectant of success—these were the best and brightest interviewers in the province, and they were not accustomed to failure: the goal was a confession. I was joined by VPD Homicide Detective Phil Little and RCMP Sergeant Randy Hundt, a forensics expert, and we were taken to a larger meeting room outfitted with a large projection screen so that we could watch the interview from there. Throughout the day, several high-ranking RCMP members would come and go, but the three of us remained throughout.
Sergeant Bill Fordy was first in the room, and he spoke to the monitor before Pickton came in. He had the most difficult job—to lay out the groundwork of the investigation for Pickton so that he could understand the case facing him. The first interviewer is much like a starting pitcher—often the confession isn’t given to the starter; it is the closer who hears it. As the first interviewer, you are in a thankless, often frustrating position and are frequently left wondering whether the person has even heard or grasped what you've said. Not until the person confesses do you see that you've done your job.
Fordy apologized for the way he might have to speak about the women, suggesting that this would be a tactic and in no way represented his own feelings or judgments about the victims. I found this to be a sensitive and compassionate preamble that would likely put family members and loved ones at ease when the time came for the tape to be viewed in court. This statement moved me unexpectedly, and I had to fight to hide my emotions from the others in the room. My objective was to observe and try to understand as much as I could about this man who stood accused of such unimaginable crimes.
For this reason, I made no notes during the interview. I would have had to provide them to the court, and that was not my function. My description of this interview is, therefore, based on my recollection of what was said and the spirit in which it was said. When I paraphrase, it is in my language, not Pickton’s—unless I specify otherwise—because his language was at times incomprehensible and so lacking in focus that it was often impossible to fully decipher.
Fordy brought Pickton into the interview room just after ten o'clock, and the two sat down. The room was furnished with a few upholstered chairs, a video monitor and VCR, a table, and an easel. Pickton looked haggard, his hair unkempt and scraggly, and he had several days’ growth of beard. He was the personification of Charles M. Schultz's Pig-Pen, all grown up and accused of horrific crimes. Fordy explained the two murder charges to Pickton and reiterated his right to speak to counsel, confirming that Pickton had spoken to a lawyer that morning. Pickton looked at the floor, and often his answers were incoherent mumblings, difficult for us to understand over the monitor.
Fordy assured Pickton that he would treat him with dignity and respect and that he expected the same in return from Pickton. The two shook hands on this, and Pickton appeared taken aback at Fordy’s earnest attempt to treat him like a person; it seemed to throw off his plan to appear uninterested. It also seemed that Pickton was only half-listening; he would grunt or chuckle slightly when Fordy told him he was being investigated in the disappearances of fifty women and had so far been charged with the murders of two. Hearing that number shocked me, as it first had when I began looking at the Project Evenhanded material on my first day. I assumed these were women who had gone missing from outside of Vancouver or after my time on the case. Pickton made some halfhearted assertions that he wasn’t guilty but was the victim of some sort of conspiracy or setup.
As is often done in the rapport-building phase of an interview, Fordy spoke about himself in an effort to bond with and create empathy in Pickton. The goal is to allow the accused to see the interviewer as a human being, not merely a police officer in a position of authority. Throughout this portion of the interview, Pickton appeared to be almost slow or mentally deficient, referring to himself at various times as “just a pig man” and a simple, hardworking guy. He sat hunched over in his chair, turned slightly away from the table holding the TV monitor, his feet tucked up underneath his legs on the chair.
Fordy told Pickton a story of the worst thing that had happened in his life, about how a hockey injury cut short his career and ended his dream of playing professionally. Fordy asked Pickton what the worst thing was that had happened to him, and Pickton talked about being stabbed in 1997. He referred to himself as being “nailed to a cross” by that event, though it was unclear what he meant by this. Pickton’s answers to Fordy’s questions were bizarre and almost ridiculously simple and inappropriate, considering the gravity of his situation.
Eventually, the conversation led to Pickton’s mother, who died of cancer in 1979, and Pickton quoted the exact date. He told Fordy how close the two of them were, how he got his work ethic from his mother, what a strong person she had been, and how he had always tried to emulate this strength and work as hard as she had. He said he respected her strong mind and her willpower. Fordy went on to talk about the best thing that had happened in his life—having his children—and asked Pickton to tell him what the best thing in his life was. Pickton said it was hard work—work was the best thing in his life.
After some reflection, Pickton offered that he had gone on a holiday once. I leaned in close to the monitor, expecting to hear him tell of some trip to Hawaii or Mexico to lie in the sun. Pickton said he went to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1974—his one holiday away from Port Coquitlam and the farm that both sustained and trapped him. He was twenty-four years old and had money in his pocket and friends to visit, and within a week of being there, he met a woman named Connie and they fell in love.
They became engaged and spent the next five weeks together, hanging out, traveling around the area, and meeting people. He told of free cherry pie being given away in the streets with a hint of disdain, as though this waste was offensive to him. He said several times he figured Connie was probably married with kids by now. It was an odd thing to say—as though he still thought about her often and wondered whether she would be available today. He said he had to return to the farm, and she had a job she couldn't leave in Pontiac, Michigan, so they went their separate ways. His resentment toward the farm was obvious as he spoke. He continued to speak in his mumbling, rambling manner.
He and Fordy talked briefly about Pickton’s siblings, Dave and Linda, and he was clear that he and Linda weren't close and had never spent much time together, as she had left the farm at a young age to attend Catholic school and go on to university. Pickton seemed uncertain whether she had become a lawyer or a realtor. When talking about Dave, Pickton seemed almost indifferent, as though he tolerated Dave and merely allowed him to control and dominate him. I got the sense that he enjoyed making Dave believe that he controlled him, but that, in reality, it might have been the other way around.
Several times during the conversation, Pickton would go off on a rambling explanation of his life philosophy in connection with a particular question. He portrayed himself as having a live-and-let-live attitude and of accepting other people's faults. He expressed the belief that we're here today, gone tomorrow, and that’s all it’s really about—and that the best die first. He had a very casual attitude about death and several times said that someday you won't wake up and life will go on. He wouldn’t commit to naming anyone as his best friend but preferred to explain how he helped anyone who asked for it without judging. He said he didn’t care whether people were honest but then said he disrespected people who stole.
Pickton told a story about being injured trying to break up a fight between two boars on his farm. He dragged himself to the hospital for treatment, but the staff couldn't do anything for him other than wrap up his wounds. He was told to rest, but it was the height of summer and there was much work to be done. He described how he climbed up on his tractor in the midday heat and worked, pus streaming down his injured leg, heat blisters forming and breaking on his back. He told Fordy he stayed on that tractor and worked, despite his pain, despite the heat, and it was clear he took a great deal of pride in this.
He told another story about being injured by the hogs on the farm when he was younger, and from these two stories, it seemed there arose a respect bordering on hatred for these beasts. My sense was these events galvanized Pickton. He made a decision to never be conquered by these animals again and turned into the slaughtering machine he would become locally famous for, killing up to 150 pigs a week. He had been close to other animals—a calf he raised as a young boy and a horse he would later have to put down because of injury—but they had disappointed him, causing him a great deal of sadness, and it seemed he decided not to go through the pain of losing a loved one again.
The story of his horse was bizarre. Fordy asked him about it because the head of a horse was mounted on the wall of the trailer on Pickton’s property. Again, Pickton quoted the dates and times of the horse’s birth and death as though they were yesterday, even though both events had taken place more than twenty years ago. His command of dates was almost savant-like, and I suspected that if he had killed these women, he would probably be able to recite every detail surrounding the events. I wasn’t at all certain I was prepared to hear that.
He had to put the horse down because another of the horses kicked his horse in the leg and the damage was irreparable. He put it down, then loaded it into his truck to take to a taxidermist for mounting, but there was some problem with the truck and Pickton ended up hauling the head—blood leaking from the burlap sack he carried it in—onto a city bus. The people on the bus stared at him, but no one spoke to him, and he just sat there, stunned in his grief. Thinking back, he said, they must have thought he was crazy.
He also told a story about the calf he had raised, which was another pivotal event in his life. Pickton wasn’t more than ten years old and played with the calf like a pet. He came home from school one day and couldn't see the animal anywhere in the yard, so he set out to find it. Because he had trained the calf to stay away from the barn, where the slaughtering was done, he didn’t think to look there first, telling himself his calf wouldn’t go there after being told not to. Finally, after exhausting all other options, he went to look in the barn and found his calf—his special friend—hanging upside down, butchered. He was clearly devastated, though he seemed to try to downplay the event's effect on him in front of Fordy. He said he had never spent time in the barn before that incident. He didn't like the killing.
Fordy 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 Fordy 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.
Fordy began to introduce the evidence against Pickton and to explain DNA profiling and blood spatter evidence. Pickton appeared to become lost and uninterested almost immediately, asking Fordy more than once what this had to do with him. Eventually, Fordy and Pickton agreed that for DNA to be at a scene, a person must have been there physically. I sat watching, wondering if this man had any clue what was happening or if he really was the stunned, slow hayseed he was making himself out to be.
Fordy left the room for a moment and brought in a large poster board displaying photos of the fifty missing women and set it off to the side. I couldn’t see whether their names were beneath their photos, nor could I make out each woman’s identity. But the board was a looming and ominous presence in the room, and I knew it bore many of those same images I had stared up at for long hours in our project room. Pickton would not look directly at it until Fordy began to point to various photos and ask questions about the women.
Fordy asked Pickton to tell him which of these women had been out to his farm. Fordy began with number one, and Pickton said she had been out to the farm “lots.” For some of the other photos, Pickton said he didn’t know the woman; others he commented were pretty. When shown number twenty-six, he said she looked like Lynn. I leaned forward, thinking he must be referring to Lynn Ellingsen. Fordy asked Pickton whether he would want that to be Lynn in the picture, and Pickton didn’t respond. Pickton then asked Fordy to show him which ones he was charged with murdering, and Fordy pointed to Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson. Pickton exclaimed, “Who the hell is she?” to one of their pictures, and it came out sounding phony and rehearsed. This was the first indication I saw that perhaps the dumb pig farmer persona really was an act.
The conversation turned to sex, and Fordy asked Pickton to explain what he meant by sex. Pickton seemed particularly obtuse on this point, ignoring Fordy’s questions. Pickton asserted that he hadn’t had sex in more than a year and that had been with a woman named Roxanne. Fordy asked questions about Roxanne’s sexual skills, and Pickton replied that she was a very, very nice person. He was indifferent about his first sexual experience, first saying there wasn’t much to tell about it, then saying he couldn’t remember. He couldn't remember his first sex worker experience. He said he hadn't had sex with Connie, his fiancée from Michigan. Pickton’s responses to this whole line of questioning seemed to be deliberately obtuse and out of place for someone who demonstrated such a solid memory in so many other areas.
Fordy played a videotape for Pickton. It was difficult to hear the tape, but it contained an interview with a man named Scott Chubb, a Pickton associate and frequent visitor to the farm, who would later testify in the criminal trial. The gist of the tape seemed to be that Chubb had seen Pickton do things to women, including injecting them with antifreeze. Pickton seemed shocked by this tape, stunned that someone would actually come to the police and say these things. He shook his head over and over saying, “What? What? Is that Scott Chubb? Is that Scott Chubb?” He told Fordy he had spoken to Chubb on the telephone just a couple of nights earlier. Fordy told him Chubb would be giving evidence against him, and Pickton responded by asking, “He’s going to give evidence? After everything I helped him with?” He seemed to imply that Chubb was involved in the same type of behavior as he was, but he refused to elaborate. Later in the interview, Pickton repeated his disbelief at Chubb’s involvement.
At this point in the interview, Dana Lillies—the female RCMP constable who had been talking with Pickton at the jobsite before his arrest—arrived and brought lunch for Pickton and Fordy. Fordy left, and Lillies offered to sit with Pickton and keep him company. Pickton seemed pleased to see her, and she acted as though she was genuinely concerned about his well-being. As they talked, we saw another, very different side of Robert Pickton.
He was very quiet and non-confrontational and said several times that he didn’t deserve to live, didn’t deserve Lillies’s kindness, didn’t deserve to eat, and that he should be on death row. It was like watching a child try to elicit sympathy from his mother, saying demeaning things about himself so that she would respond that he was wrong and that he did deserve all those things and so much more.
Lillies played the role well and managed to portray a level of caring I know she did not truly feel. She told Pickton she had seen a side of him others hadn’t and she cared about him as a human being. He seemed to lap this up, and it was obvious he wanted nothing more than to believe that this professional, attractive, bright woman could actually be interested in him. Lillies tried to steer the conversation toward the investigation, but Pickton seemed wary and said little about the specifics of the case. Still, her mere presence served to illuminate the complexity of Pickton’s personality—seeing him with Fordy and then with Lillies was like watching two different people.
Pickton repeatedly told Lillies he was finished, that his life was over, that he was “nailed to the cross.” She made some bold attempts to get him talking, asking questions about a dildo that was found on the end of a handgun and wondering aloud how Pickton’s DNA and Mona Wilson’s DNA could both have been found on the end of that dildo. He said he sometimes used the dildo as a silencer for the gun because of the new subdivision beside his property. She said that didn’t explain how DNA ended up there, and he didn’t respond.
He kept going back to Scott Chubb, shaking his head incredulously and saying, “Of all guys, Scott Chubb.” Lillies asked Pickton whether he had some dirt on Chubb, and Pickton answered that was neither here nor there. But the implication was that perhaps Chubb had a few skeletons—proverbial or real—of his own in his closet.
Lillies played a videotaped compilation of all the local media coverage since the search began on the Pickton farm on February 5. He watched for a few moments but then asked Lillies to stop the tape and asked to go back to his cell.
Lillies left, and Fordy resumed his task of laying out the evidence against Pickton. This was a particularly difficult job, because all of the evidence at this point was purely circumstantial. Pickton had a contract with the City of Vancouver to buy abandoned vehicles that were headed for the junkyard, and they began to talk about this. Pickton seemed to believe that he could explain some of the evidence—such as Abotsway’s asthma inhalers—as actually having come to his property in one of these vehicles. He seemed to focus on some black gym bag and told Fordy that Dinah Taylor would straighten the whole thing out and that the bag belonged to Nancy, Pickton’s girlfriend.
Pickton went off on a long diatribe about how he helped people and, unfortunately, it often got him into trouble. He said Fordy would have to take him as he was, that he would be there to help the next person and repeated that he was just a poor, plain little farm boy, nailed to the cross. He said “I’m sorry” several times, but it was unclear what he was apologizing for other than who he was. All he tried to do was help people, he said.
Pickton spoke about the guns on his property, for which the original search warrant had been obtained. He told Fordy his lawyer would be angry with him for talking, but he didn’t care about being open. He said he used the Hilti gun and a .22 to kill the pigs before slaughter, that it would often require three or four shots from the Hilti to do the job. He told Fordy how he put plastic on the end of one of the guns to quiet it. Then, this speech ended as suddenly as it had begun.
One of the very last questions Fordy asked Pickton was whether he had heard of a man named Willy Pickton, and Pickton answered, “That’s me.”
Fordy left the room, and Lillies reappeared. She took Pickton to another part of the building where he met his lawyer, Peter Ritchie, for the first time. Pickton was read his rights and taken back to his cell.
We had heard several hours’ worth of audio interviews Pickton had given in the days immediately following his arrest, so none of this was truly new. But seeing the play of emotions across Pickton’s face, the confusion, and the constant jumping from one subject to another made it seem much more immediate and much more damning. This was our first truly good look at our prime suspect, and my blood ran cold. The crime scene investigators’ stories of that initial foray onto the Pickton farm suddenly seemed all the more real and disturbing. All the theories, all the wonderings about what had happened to the missing women now had a face and a name.
Adam reiterated that ifPickton didn’t tell his side of the story, someone like Dinah or Lynn would, and they would get the reward money. Once again, Pickton would be the victim of their betrayal. All Pickton could say was he had to talk to Dinah. When Adam asked him whether Dinah was involved in the killing or steering women to the farm, Pickton answered “No comment’ over and over again.
When Adam took Pickton out of the interview to allow him to use the washroom, he walked him through the large atrium of the Surrey RCMP detachment, past the room where Phil, Randy, and I were watching. We had the windows papered so that no one could see in, but the three of us peered through the cracks in the paper to watch this man, the focus of so much attention, walk by on his way to urinate. He seemed tiny, frail, and pathetic—hardly like the frightening serial killer we were learning he was. He shuffled like someone who had fallen off a horse one too many times. He was the personification of brown—a drab, dusty brown, a mixture of dirt and hopelessness and misery.
As he walked through the atrium, he seemed almost childlike, looking up at the architecture, mouth slightly open. It was clear he hadn’t seen much outside the farm. Many times in my career, I have been face-to-face with people accused of horrible things, and I am continually struck by the ordinariness of these people, by their lack of any remarkable feature or characteristic.
As Pickton walked past us, unaware that he was being watched, he could have been just a small, ineffectual man who became so horribly misguided in his attempts to avoid living a small, ineffectual life. He did not conjure up fear in any of us, merely pity and regret. What do monsters really look like?
Adam brought him back to the interview room, and Adam began to talk about other people who were involved in the murders, specifically one other man. Adam focused on Pickton’s carelessness throughout the time he was killing women.
Adam asked Pickton whether he thought they'd be charging Lynn Ellingsen. Pickton nodded yes. Adam asked him whether there would be aspects of torture in the killings, and Pickton smiled slightly, shook his head, and said no. Adam asked whether he knew why he killed, if he understood that about himself, and Pickton said no, then quickly said he meant no comment, he had to speak to Dinah first. He reiterated that he was the “head honcho” several times but that he needed to speak with her before saying anything more.
They spoke for several more minutes along these lines.
Then Adam tossed out a throwaway line, saying he thought Pickton didn’t do a very good job cleaning up the blood in the trailer in light of how much was found. Pickton quietly replied, “I was sloppy.” Adam seized on this, asking several more specific questions about what Pickton did to try to hide the blood of Ms. Anderson and Sereena Abotsway, but Pickton would say little more other than it was merely bad policing that made it possible for this investigation to go on for so long.
Adam agreed and asked whether Pickton had ever thought of quitting the killing. Pickton said “Yeah.” Was it anger that motivated him? Pickton wouldn't say, but then he told Adam he had one more killing planned; that was going to be the last one, but he never got that far. Adam peppered him with questions about why he didn’t clean up better, why he hadn't disposed of the bloody mattress after killing Mona Wilson, and Pickton kept repeating sloppiness, he was sloppy. A few moments later, Pickton laughed and told Adam he was making him out to be a much worse murderer than he really was.
They continued in this way: Adam asking specific questions and Pickton making vague admissions. Clearly, Pickton was enjoying the cat-and-mouse game with Adam and was well aware of what a direct confession would mean to the investigation. He took obvious pleasure in being in control, and I felt certain that he had lorded this sort of control over his victims, probably forcing them to do all sorts of depraved things for his own enjoyment. I tried to block these images from my mind, but they were streaming in, pictures of all the women I knew begging for their lives, for a chance to go home, and Pickton just laughing at them, telling them that would be impossible because he was the “head honcho.”
Pickton sat there and pointed his finger at Adam, telling him to go home and think about it and come back to him in the morning when he was ready to make a deal after talking with Dinah. Adam again refused to deal. Pickton told Adam they wouldn’t find anything if they dug on the property, but Adam wasn't buying it, and neither was I. There was something in Pickton’s tone and manner that suggested he was trying to appear nonchalant about the digging but didn’t want it to happen—perhaps because it would disrupt his family’s business, but I felt there was more. Adam told him the police had spoken to several people who had told them Pickton had often said if the police started digging, he'd be finished. Pickton said nothing.
Adam ended the interview by telling Pickton they would talk again tomorrow, and Pickton repeated that Adam should think about it, think hard—and it was clear he was talking about his original proposal that he give information to Adam in exchange for the tearing down of the search of the property.
Pickton was returned to his cell, and we all met for a debriefing of the interview. It was well past ten o'clock, yet the air was electric with excitement. Although there had been no outright confession, the mood among the team members said the day had been a success. There was much discussion about how to approach Pickton the following day and who would do that interview. Members of the team approached Lynn Ellingsen again that day and she finally began painfully retelling her story, but it was slow going, as she was extremely emotional and became distraught as she spoke about the difficult things she had seen in that barn.
She would be interviewed further the following day, and then investigators hoped to have more information with which to go at Pickton. All in all, it seemed as though the pieces of the puzzle were finally falling into place. I said little in the meeting, I was a guest and preferred to listen and absorb the incredible events of the day. By the time I got in my car at one o'clock, I was mentally exhausted.
When I arrived back at the Surrey detachment later that same morning, the interview team members were meeting and I joined them. Pickton had apparently bragged to his cellmate—another RCMP undercover officer—that he was the pig farmer, that he had killed forty-eight women, and that he was giving the interviewers’ heads a rap.
The eventual consensus of the team was that Pickton was a psychopath and had enjoyed the feeling of control he felt when talking with Don Adam. To now deny Pickton his anticipated second meeting with Adam would be an insult to his huge ego. I quietly disagreed with this strategy. I didn’t think that insulting Pickton would serve any purpose other than to close a door. This wasn’t the time to get into a pissing contest with this man. I believed we should pander to his massive ego in strategic ways if that was what it would take to get to the bottom of this case. There was always the chance that he had used the night in his cell to strengthen his resolve to say nothing and the interview would be short, but I felt this weekend would be our only chance to talk with him like this. What did we have to lose?
~When Adam tookPicktonoutoftheinterviewtoallowhim to use the washroom, he walked him through the large atrium of the Surrey Rcmp detachment, past the room where Phil, Randy, and Iwere watching. We had the windows papered so
that no one could see in, but the three of us peered through the cracks in the paper to watch this man, the focus of so much attention, walk by on his way to urinate. He seemed tiny, frail, and pathetic—hardly like the frightening serial killer we were learning he was. He shuffled like someone who had fallen off a horse one too many times. He was the personification of brown—a drab, dusty brown, a mixture of dirt and hopeless- ness and misery.
As he walked through the atrium, he seemed almost child- like,looking up atthe architecture, mouth slightly open. Itwas clearhehadn’tseenmuchoutsidethefarm.Manytimesinmy — career, Ihave been face-to-face with people accused ofhorrible things, and Iam continually struck by the ordinariness ofthese people, by their lack of any remarkable feature or characteristic.
As Pickton walked past us, unaware that he was being watched, he could have been just a small ineffectual man, who became so horribly misguided in his attempts to avoid living a small ineffectual life. He did not conjure up fear in any of us, merely pity and regret. What do monsters really look like?
Adam brought him back to the interview room, and Adam began to talk about other people who were involved in the murders, specifically one other man. Adam focused on Pick- ton’s carelessness throughout the time he was killing women.
Adam asked Pickton whether he thought they'd be charging Lynn Ellingsen. Pickton nodded yes. Adam asked him whether there would be aspects of torture in the killings and Pick- ton smiled slightly, shook his head, and said no. Adam asked whether he knew why he killed, ifhe understood that about himself, and Pickton said no, then quickly said he meant no comment, he had to speak to Dinah first. He reiterated that he was the “head honcho” several times but that he needed to speak with her before saying anything more.
They spoke for several more minutes along these lines.
Then Adam tossed out a throwaway line, saying he thought Pickton didn’t doa very good job cleaning up the blood in the trailer in light of how much was found. Pickton quietly replied, “Iwas sloppy.” Adam seized on this,asking several more spe- cific.questions about what Pickton did to try to hide the blood of Ms. Anderson and Sereena Abotsway, but Pickton would say little more other than itwas merely bad policing that made it possible for this investigation to go on for so long.
Adam agreed and asked whether Pickton had ever thought of quitting the killing. Pickton said “Yeah.” Was itanger that motivated him? Pickton wouldn't say, but then he told Adam he had one more killing planned; that was going to be the last one, but he never got that far.Adam peppered him with questions about why he didn’t clean up better, why he hadn't disposed of the bloody mattress after killing Mona Wilson, and Pickton kept repeating sloppiness, he was sloppy. A few moments later, Pickton laughed and told Adam he was mak- ing him out to be a much worse murderer than he really was.
They continued in this way: Adam asking specific questions and Pickton making vague admissions. Clearly, Pickton was enjoying the cat-and-mouse game with Adam and was well aware of what a direct confession would mean to the investi- gation. He took obvious pleasure in being in control, and I felt certain that he had lorded this sort of control over his victims, probably forcing them to do all sorts of depraved things for his own enjoyment. I tried to block these images from my mind, buttheywerestreamingin,picturesofallthewomen Iknew begging for their lives, for achance to go home, and Pickton just laughing at them, telling them that would be impossible because he was the “head honcho.”
Pickton sat there and pointed his finger at Adam, telling him to go home and think about itand come back to him in the morning when he was ready to make a deal after talking
Interrogating Robert Pickton 251
252 THAT LONELY SECTION OF HELL
with Dinah. Adam again refused to deal. Pickton told Adam they wouldn’t find anything ifthey dug on the property, but Adam wasn't buying it,and neither was I.There was something in Pickton’s tone and manner that suggested he was trying to
appear nonchalant about the digging but didn’t want itto hap- pen—perhaps because itwould disrupt his family’s business, but Ifelt there was more. Adam told him the police had spo- ken to several people who had told them Pickton had often said ifthe police started digging, he'd be finished. Pickton said nothing.
Adam ended the interview by telling Pickton they would talk again tomorrow, and Pickton repeated that Adam should think about it,think hard—and itwas clear he was talking about his original proposal that he give information to Adam in exchange for the tearing down of the search of the property.
Pickton was returned to his cell, and we all met for a debrief- ing of the interview. Itwas well past ten o'clock, yet the air was electric with excitement. Although there had been no outright confession, the mood among the team members said the day had been a success. There was much discussion about how to approach Pickton the following day and who would do that interview. Members of the team approached Lynn Ellingsen again that day and she finally began painfully retelling her story, but itwas slow going, as she was extremely emotional and became distraught as she spoke about the difficult things she had seen in that barn.
She would be interviewed further the following day, and then investigators hoped to have more information with which to go at Pickton. All in all,itseemed as though the pieces of the puzzle were finally falling into place. I said little in the meeting, Iwas a guest and preferred to listen and absorb the incredible events of the day. By the time Igot in my car at one oclock, Iwas mentally exhausted.
When I arrived back at the Surrey detachment later that same morning, the interview team members were meeting and Ijoined them. Pickton had apparently bragged to his cell- mate—another RCMP undercover officer—that he was the pig farmer, that he had killed forty-eight women, and that he was giving the interviewers’ heads a rap.
The eventual consensus of the team was that Pickton was a psychopath and had enjoyed the feeling of control he felt when talking with Don Adam. To now deny Pickton his antic- ipated second meeting with Adam would be an insult to his huge ego. Iquietly disagreed with this strategy. Ididn’t think that insulting Pickton would serve any purpose other than to close a door. This wasn’t the time to get into a pissing contest with this man. Ibelieved we should pander to his massive ego in strategic ways ifthat was what itwould take to get to the bottom of this case. There was always the chance that he had used the night in his cell to strengthen his resolve to say noth- ing and the interview would be short, but Ifelt this weekend would be our only chance to talk with him like this. What did we have to lose?
The decision was made to let Pickton cool his heels in the cell and stew, indignant that his friend Adam was not dying to talk with him again. The team discussed Lynn Ellingsen and how they had approached her for questioning on the weekend. Finally, people were beginning to believe she played a significant role in this case. I listened to the discussion, filled with both disgust and relief. I held my emotions in check as the team was told that when Ellingsen sat down with interviewers and began to tell the story of what she had seen in the barn that night in 1999, she became overwhelmed by emotion and vomited at the recollection. Finally, plans were being made for an undercover operation involving her boyfriend, Ron Menard, as investigators had gathered some information that he had been the driving force behind Ellingsen’s extortion of Pickton. Supposedly, Menard would send Ellingsen to Pickton for money, and if she did not return with it, he would beat her and forcibly confine her for extended periods of time. Again, I hoped this was in aid of determining who else had taken part in the killing. The interview team would continue to interview Ellingsen and determine how to protect her and keep her on track for a trial down the road.
This day signified an end point for me, an end to my investing so much hope and effort into forcing this investigation in the right direction. I was suddenly faced with my own limits. I knew that I could not continue to be close to this thing, that it was destroying me to have such strong feelings about the way the investigation should move forward and no power to make those things happen. I decided to finish out the week and then return to the VPD. The week was sadly anticlimactic. Pickton was not interviewed again. The forensic search team working on the farm was deliberately kept separate from the detectives, so I received no information about what evidence they were finding. I could only hope it was significant enough to warrant forgoing further interviews with Pickton.
I took three weeks of sick leave in March to try to regroup after all that had happened and to reduce my stress levels and anxiety. Nightmares and soaking sweats terrorized me nightly, and I awoke stiff and sore, as though I'd had an intense workout. Diarrhea, indigestion, lack of appetite, and fatigue dogged me every day. I snapped at everyone, from my partner at home to friends, colleagues, supervisors, and total strangers. I'd always been someone who'd cry at sad movies, but now I found myself breaking down in tears at the most inappropriate and bizarre moments. I worried irrationally about my toddler son's safety and well-being, terrified that even the most benign activity would cause him injury or death. I began to shout and swear at other drivers whenever I was behind the wheel. Everything irritated and annoyed me. Whereas I had always possessed a strong attention span and ability to concentrate, now I could barely sit still for any period of time. I began to clean my home and office obsessively.
I had no idea what was going on with me, but I would come to learn it was a post-traumatic stress injury. When I finally sought out therapy for the intrusive thoughts and violent dreams that had plagued me for these past years, I wasn’t prepared for the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I thought it was something for wimps, sucks, and malingerers, and I quickly dismissed the doctor's finding, though I felt that she was an excellent therapist and that she had helped me. I wanted to understand my anger and feelings of helplessness and find some ways to let myself off the hook for the futility of our investigation. I hoped I would recover quickly.
My time working at Project Evenhanded proved to be a double-edged sword. It fulfilled my need to see the Pickton file finally taken seriously with adequate resources dedicated to investigating his crimes, but it drove home over and over again how much more should have been done far earlier. Like Geramy, I questioned daily whether I had done all I could to portray this case to the RCMP as the priority it was. Intellectually, I knew I had. Emotionally, doubts remained.
For the second time in this investigation, it was time for me to go—and I experienced all of the same guilt I had the first time. I struggled, believing if I stayed, perhaps in some small way I could help the other investigators. But all I felt compelled to do was collect material for this book, and I knew I couldn’t misrepresent myself in that way, especially to those few people working on the file—Geramy Field, Steve Pranzl, Linda Malcolm, Mark Chernoff, Alex Clarke—whom I considered friends. It was time to go, and this time it was clearer to me that I had to do this for my sanity and for my family. My level of anxiety and agitation was higher than ever, the cumulative effects of which I wouldn't fully understand for years.
Yeah, chilling
Freakin' frightening.