Serial Crime News - February 2002

back to index

DAVE PICKTON: hosted parties at Piggy's Palace

ROBERT PICKTON: offered to help police dig

Their friends say they're getting a bad rap.

Robert and David Pickton have been in the proverbial eye of the hurricane since police descended on their Port Coquitlam pig farm last week and began searching for any evidence of Vancouver's missing women.

The brothers have had a colourful history in the community, butting heads with the local municipality and other government agencies over a variety of issues.

"Dave and Willy have been pretty good guys, they're a little rough around the edges," said neighbour Randy Thibert. "I've known them for quite a few years and I've watched them do a lot of nice things for people. It's too difficult to fathom that they're involved. It just doesn't seem like them."

Since last week's events, they've disappeared from public view.

"They're keeping fairly low key," said Thibert. "I've heard through the rumour mill that they've offered to even dig up the yard themselves, side by side with police, to end this so that they can get back on with their lives."

On a property separate from the pig farm, for several years they hosted parties at Piggy's Palace, a converted dance hall that the city at one point tried to close.

Some have claimed that bikers attended the parties and that there were liquor violations.

But others say there's no truth to the allegations.

"Even our (former) mayor, Len Traboulay, went," said one woman who claimed to have attended all of the parties. "He wrote them a letter of thanks for inviting him. He said the food was better than a first-class restaurant."

The woman, who didn't want to be named, said it cost $10 to get in to the parties and drinks were two for $5.

"If you were there and you got drunk, you never drove home. They'd either give you a cab or they'd drive you. Them boys never had a smoke in their life and they never had a drink in their life and they don't do drugs."

Mayor Scott Young attended one party at the palace and Coun. Darrell Penner contracted out his band to play on the premises.

Vancouver police Det.-Const. Scott Driemel admitted a car impounded by police could have ended up on the Pickton property. He said cars from the police impound lot are eventually sold to an auction house which sells them to wreckers.

The Province / Missing Angela Jardine (right) with mom Deborah in family photo.

Global BC Part of poster of Vancouver's missing women.

B.C. is a killing field for sex- trade workers.

Community organizations have tallied more than 110 missing and murdered sex- trade workers in the Lower Mainland in the last two decades.

And RCMP figures released to The Province show the numbers may be even higher when the entire B.C.-wide sex-trade worker death toll is included.

Police figures show they are hoping to shed light on 50 missing women in the search of a pig farm in Coquitlam, but PACE, a society doing research and counselling of sex-trade workers, says it has more than 60 additional sex-trade workers who have been killed in the same time frame in the Greater Vancouver area.

The RCMP's violent-crime tracking computers show a total of 144 sex-trade workers, all but four of them women, have been victims of murder, manslaughter, sudden death with foul play suspected or have been reported missing with foul play suspected in the last decade in B.C.

"In those four categories, we have 144 that have been reported to us," said Cpl. Warren Moore, who is a specialist working on the crime-tracking computers at RCMP headquarters in Vancouver. "And these are all sex-trade workers."

Those figures might not provide a true picture because some RCMP districts are still not compliant with reporting procedures for input into crime-tracking computers, he said.

Of the 144 reported dead or missing, 84 remain unsolved, Moore said yesterday.

Ivan Jardine, whose daughter, Angela, is on the list of 50 missing women, says the figures of murder and disappearance are a painful reminder of the inability of police to put a concerted effort into solving the murders of sex-trade workers.

"Its almost numbing to think that that many people could be dead or lost," Jardine said yesterday as he waited for word from a police task force of its findings at the Poco pig farm. "Some of them have not even been looked for."

The pain of the disappearance of Angela, and a feeling police did not care, prompted Deborah Jardine to set up her own website as a memorial to her daughter and to other missing women.

The site, www.vanishedvoices.com, plays to the song "Missing You" and is filled with news archives of the slow police probe and memories of Angela and others.

In a message, Deborah Jardine says on her site: "When our daughter vanished under suspicious circumstances Nov. 20, 1998, I was at a loss of what to do. The feeling of helplessness and frustration was overwhelming at times. To comprehend what happened I began my own investigation from my home."

Soltys commits suicide, officials say

By Sam Stanton -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 8:23 a.m. PST Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2002

Nikolay Soltys, the troubled Ukrainian accused of killing six members of his family with a knife last year in a bloody rampage that drew national attention, hanged himself in the Sacramento County Jail early Wednesday.

Soltys, 28, had had difficulty in the jail since his arrest last summer. At one point, officials said they believed he had tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists, but later said it appeared he was simply trying to give himself a tattoo. Another time he leapt from a second floor balcony to the concrete below and broke his foot.

Soltys had a camera in his cell, and jail officials checked on him regularly, one source said. However, the source said that jailers are prohibited from being overly intrusive and must turn out the cell lights to give an inmate the opportunity to sleep. Soltys apparently hanged himself in between checks and his body was discovered Wednesday morning.

He spent most of his time alone in his cell, isolated from other inmates by the language barrier -- he spoke very poor English -- and by the nature of his crimes.

Soltys had been held there since his arrest Aug. 30, 10 days after he went berserk and slashed and stabbed to death his pregnant wife, his 3-year-old son, two 9-year-old cousins and his aunt and uncle. He later confessed to authorities that he had committed the killings, sources told The Bee, saying his wife had been disrespecful and eventually telling interrogators that his troubles with her went back years to life in Ukraine, where her family disapproved of him and where he had regularly beaten her.

The Soltys case gripped the community and brought hordes of national media to Sacramento after he was booked on charges of killing his wife, Lyubov, 23, then driving to Rancho Cordova and killing his aunt and uncle, Petr Kukharskiy, 75, and Galina Kukharskaya, 74, as well as two 9-year-old cousins, Dimitriy Kukharskiy and Tatyana Kukharskaya.

After those slayings, authorities said he drove to his mother's home in Citrus Heights and picked up his 3-year-old son, Sergei, then disappeared. The little boy's body was later found in a remote area inside a large cardboard box. His throat had been slit, and officials said Soltys lured the child into the box with some new toys before killing him. Detectives found two pairs of footprints, one of an adult and one of a small child, leading to the box. Only the adult's footprints led away from it.

Soltys eluded a massive manhunt for 10 days by camping out and hiding in an abandoned home and slowly making his way along a creek toward his mother's house in Citrus Heights. His brother and other family members spotted him hiding in the mother's backyard early one morning and fled to call sheriff's officials who had been staking it out.

He was arrested without incident.

Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun / Freda Ens (foreground) of the Vancouver Police and Native Liason and RCMP Constable Catherine Galliford tell reporters about the tent area set aside at the search site for family and friends of the missing women.

Federal food inspectors contacted a Vancouver rendering plant Tuesday to follow up a Vancouver Sun story that said the plant had received pig entrails from the Port Coquitlam farm now under police scrutiny in the disappearance of 50 women from the Downtown Eastside.

Sheila Fagnan, regional director of operations for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said she called West Coast Reduction Ltd. to get assurances that the material received at the rendering plant from the farm over years of deliveries had been examined closely.

"I have confirmed again with the reduction facility today [Tuesday] that pig materials only have been delivered as animal products to the rendering plant," Fagnan said. "I just followed up. I was checking with our inspection team here. I read your article."

But she confirmed that the only inspection that is done at the plant is a visual one, without any testing to determine the origin of the material received.

"Any testing that would have been done would be around surveillance for chemical residues. I can't imagine any testing that would distinguish, um, you know -- animal matter one from another," she said.

Police contacted West Coast Reduction last week to inquire about records of deliveries from the Port Coquitlam farm owned by Robert William Pickton and his two siblings.

The rendering plant processes animal remains so they can be used in many products, including animal feed and cosmetics.

It is located at 105 North Commercial Drive, a block away from a busy prostitute stroll and several blocks away from the Downtown Eastside, where the missing women worked in the sex trade and struggled with drug addiction.

West Coast executive Humphry Koch told The Sun the Picktons had delivered to the rendering plant for more than 20 years and that the company was searching all the necessary records to fully cooperate with police. He said police are interested in an accounting of dates the deliveries were made.

Gina Houston, a friend of Pickton's, earlier told The Sun that the man met prostitutes on his trips to the rendering plant and that he helped them out financially because he felt sorry for them.

Fagnan said West Coast is due for its annual inspection in March and the rendering plant has always met industry standards.

But she said determining the content or origin of entrails delivered to the plant would not be part of the normal inspection process for the federal agency.

"That wouldn't come under a food safety concern," Fagnan said. "It is not an area over which we have jurisdiction. We would be concerned if their source material had chemical residues that are not going to be treated. We have assorted concerns around animal disease prevention. That sort of thing."

The food inspection agency only checks food safety at meat processing plants and not on farms where products originate, she said.

"If we had any concerns about food safety at the processing plant, we might conduct a trace-back to the farm site. And to my knowledge, this farm has never been a supplier to any of the investigations we've been involved in."

Part of the pig farm has been the subject of an intense search since Feb. 5 by the joint Vancouver Police-RCMP Missing Women Task Force.

Police sources earlier told The Sun that Pickton, known as Willy, is a person of interest in the investigation, though no one has been charged.

On Tuesday morning, several relatives of missing women were invited to the search site by police, who have set up a tent for the families. The tent is outfitted with supplies donated by community members.

"It is very understandable that family members have a need to be near the search site; to be near the shrine that has been built to honour the missing women; to watch police working; to have privacy; and to have a place where they can meet and talk and share their feelings," RCMP Constable Catherine Galliford said.

Police revealed little else about the massive search and accompanying investigation that now involves an 85-person police team.

"From the very beginning we have stressed that this search is complex, will take time, and by necessity requires investigators to painstakingly examine the scene inch by inch," Galliford said.

The pigs and other animals on the farm have already been moved by the SPCA.

Clarence Jensen, general manager of the B.C. Hog Marketing Commission, said the Picktons' farm is not a member producer, meaning it doesn't sell its pigs commercially.

He also said that conditions he has seen of the farm in news reports would mean it would not qualify as a licensed commission member.

"When I look at this farm, well, it just won't happen ... All our producers are registered licensed producers who ship either to federal or provincially inspected packers," Jensen said.

"I did check back and we don't have any record of [the Pickton farm]."

He said there are always small-farm operators who sell pigs at market or from the farm who are not under the commission's auspices.

"When you are driving through the country, you can probably buy some milk off a farmer. You can probably buy some chickens off a farmer. You can certainly buy eggs. I don't know if they process pork or what they do."

Global BC Police take family members of missing Downtown Eastside women to the edge of the Pickton pig farm in Port Coquitlam.

Global BC

Global BC Car containing women's clothing and makeup.

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. - Police have been searching a Port Coquitlam pig farm for almost a week, looking for clues to the disappearance of 50 women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Since the search started at the Pickton family farm, dozens of relatives and friends of the missing women have arrived at the site to see it for themselves and to visit a memorial that's been set up.

On Tuesday, about half a dozen family members were taken down to the property after meeting with police. They were not, however, actually taken onto the farm.

They were also told they will be briefed on a regular basis but for many the police investigation took far too long.

"Now the police can’t be nicer to us but before ... nobody cared, nobody would listen," said Laurie Isberg, whose sister is missing.

A special tent is also being set-up so friends and family can gather away from the media.

Investigators are reviewing a link to Vancouver’s West Coast Reduction Ltd., a company that processes pig entrails and has done business with the Pickton brothers.

On Tuesday, the company issued a memo to employees. It reads:

"The pig farm in question has been a small supplier of raw materials to the company over the past 20 or more years. However, we have no reason to surmise that any of the product delivered to our plant from the farm in question has been anything but pig material."

Meantime, a friend of the Pickton family is questioning items that might be considered evidence.

Bill Malone said Tuesday a car found on the property - which contains women’s clothing and makeup - was actually bought at a police auction.

"This is something (Robert and David Pickton) want cleared-up," said Malone. "It is a bad stigma."

"They want this thing done as thoroughly as possible to clear them."

Arlen Redekop, The Province / Sandra Gagnon holds a portrait of her sister, Janet Henry, who disappeared in June, 1997.

As police sift the muck at a Port Coquitlam pig farm, their search is also unearthing old torments for the families of missing women.

Sandra Gagnon, whose sister Janet Henry vanished in 1997, suffered another loss when her youngest son, Terry, 23, took his own life.

Just before midnight last Thursday -- the day Gagnon learned of the search -- Terry committed suicide at his brother's Maple Ridge home.

"Terry remembered his Auntie Janet very well, and he loved her, but even more than that, he knew how terribly I suffered when she went missing, and how I'd searched for her, and then when he heard about this horrible farm and saw the scenes on TV, it was too much for him," said a grieving Gagnon, who lives in Vancouver but is now staying with her remaining son, Richard, 25.

"He told me on the phone he was very worried about me, how I could handle things if there was news of Janet at this place, and then later that night, before we could get together, he took his own life. And it was his brother Richard who found his body."

Gagnon said Terry, a roofer, was also despondent because his girlfriend had moved away with their young son, whom he adored, because Terry could not get enough work to support his family.

"This news must have just put him over the edge."

Gagnon said Janet Henry, who was last seen on June 6, 1997 at the age of 36, was her "favourite sister, the one I was closest to in life.

"Even after she began living in the Downtown Eastside, and was deep into her addiction, she'd still call me every other day. I'd go down there and pick her up, take her to my home in Maple Ridge, give her a meal and clean clothes, let her sleep and relax.

"I'd make a picnic with her favourite foods and we'd go to the park together, trying to forget the horrors of her life down there."

Wayne Leng, who maintains a website on the missing women and keeps in touch with their family and friends, admits he is worried about Gagnon, and some of the other relatives of the missing women.

"To see those horrible sights at the Port Coquitlam farm is like something out of a Stephen King novel," said Leng, who set up the website after his friend Sarah deVries disappeared in 1998.

Ernie Crey, whose sister Dawn went missing in the fall of 2000, was among those who made a weekend pilgrimage to the Port Coquitlam site.

"The families are focused on this search, and they're faced with the torment, of 'are they going to find a tooth, a bone, some hair from my sister, my aunt, my mother?'" Crey said yesterday.

Erin McGrath

Ric Ernst, The Province / A lone officer yesterday crosses the pig farm where police seek clues to 50 missing women.

Police have gone back to at least one family among relatives of the 50 missing women for more DNA samples since the gruelling search for evidence began last Wednesday at a Port Coquitlam pig farm.

Family members were asked two years ago to provide DNA so police could rule out unidentified bodies or body parts in B.C. morgues, but DNA sampling of missing women's relatives has stepped up since a joint police task force was launched last April.

Some families have not yet been tested, but other families have had police return to them, without explanation, asking for more.

Erin McGrath and Doreen Hanna, the sister and mother of Leigh Miner, who disappeared in 1993 from the Downtown Eastside, have provided DNA samples to police in the past but were contacted unexpectedly after the police search began last week.

"Both my mother and I willingly provided DNA samples to the police in January, but then on Friday the RCMP called again, saying that they would like to obtain a DNA sample from Leigh's daughter," said McGrath, a Nanaimo draughtswoman.

McGrath said Leigh's daughter, now 15, has been shielded by the family and lives at a school where she doesn't watch TV or see the news stories.

"I wanted to wait until I could go with the police to see my niece, but they insisted on going right away, and did get a DNA sample from Leigh's daughter," said McGrath. "The police promised us they would tell us if they had a match-up and would call us back, but they didn't say if they found anything, so of course, we're anxious to know.

"Obviously we want to aid their investigation any way we can, but it's pretty nerve-wracking not to know what's going on."

Vancouver police Det. Scott Driemel said he couldn't comment on why police went back to Miner's family. He said the relatives "are all supposed to have a police liaison officer to call, but obviously we're not telling the media who that is.

"We're going to be having regular meetings with the families, but we can't tell them anything about the investigation because we know that it may just find its way into the media, and we can't do anything to jeopardize our investigation."

Dr. Dean Hildebrand, B.C. Institute of Technology's co-ordinator of forensic science technology, said police may be seeking "the best evidence possible" by asking for DNA from both the mother and the offspring of a possible victim.

"It adds more weight and information [to obtain DNA from bracketing generations] and it's useful if more samples are available to provide a comparison," he said.

But Hildebrand added that the quality of DNA obtained from the Port Coquitlam site, "especially if it is commingled with animal remains," may be poor.

"If they have a tooth, or a pristine bone fragment, that will help, although even bone samples several years old can provide DNA information," he said. "Moisture and mud are both bad, and the animal remains tend to foster bacterial and fungal growth which excretes enzymes that degrade the quality of DNA."

Sto:lo aboriginal leader Ernie Crey, whose sister Dawn went missing in 2000, said police have asked, but not yet obtained any DNA samples from his family.

"We know that the resources of this police investigation have been quite strapped, so it maybe they don't have the time or money to do thorough comparisons with everyone's DNA," he said. "But naturally the imagination runs wild, as soon as one family is asked for more information or more DNA."

There are now 85 investigators on the case, including 40 forensic specialists, said Det. Scott Driemel of the Vancouver police.

"This search clearly qualifies as a large event," said RCMP Const. Catherine Galliford.

"Indeed, we do believe that this search and associated investigations represent one of the largest co-ordinated police efforts in B.C."

'Railroad Killer' Confesses From Death Row

Resendiz Details 3 Murders In Texas

SAN ANTONIO -- The man known as the "Railroad Killer" recently confessed from Texas' death row about three murders he claimed he committed.

Angel Maturino Resendiz, who has been linked to 25 murders, said he committed the crimes when he lived in San Antonio in late 1985 to early 1986.

The convicted serial killer said one of his victims was a Cuban man who practiced Santeria, a religion in which Yoruba deities are identified with Roman Catholic saints.

Hear Resendiz' Confessions

Resendiz said he murdered his second victim at an abandoned house near a dance hall downtown.

"I just shot him (because) he was a homosexual," Resendiz said. "He was gonna have sex with somebody there and I just shot him."

While authorities have not found any crimes to match Resendiz's two claims, his third confession cracked a cold Bexar County, Texas murder case.

Authorities in March 1986 found a badly decomposed body of an unidentified woman in an abandoned farm house in southeast Bexar County.

Resendiz said he and the woman used to frequent the area for target practice.

"When she was there she started mentioning something about Santeria and that's what really got me really pissed off," Resendiz said.

Resendiz claimed the woman cast a spell on him, so he shot her. He said all he knows about the woman is that she was from Florida.

"Check on the name Norma, just in case somebody disappeared during that time with the name Norma," he said.

Bexar County sheriff's investigators said they haven't been able to identify the woman.

Resendiz said he doesn't feel guilt or remorse for the three murders

http://www.mycfnow.com/sh/news/stories/nat-news-123098120020212-080255.html

Study: U.S. capital punishment system flawed

February 11, 2002 Posted: 3:27 PM EST (2027 GMT)

February 11, 2002 Posted: 3:27 PM EST (2027 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A new academic study warns that "serious, reversible errors" in cases involving capital punishment are crippling the U.S. legal system.

The report, released Monday by a group of Columbia University law professors, updates a 2000 study that warned more than seven of every 10 death penalty cases between 1973 and 1995 were reversed because of errors made by judges, juries and prosecutors.

The professors said their study is not designed to present a moral argument for or against capital punishment. They said they're concerned about the failure of the current system to perform the way it should.

The latest study found a correlation between the number of cases eligible for the death penalty and the risk of legal mistakes.

"It puts you at very high risk of having high error rates," said study author and Columbia law professor James Liebman. "It also puts you at high risk of sentencing people to death who will later turn out to be innocent."

The report cites political and social pressures to expand the use of the death penalty and notes that other factors can affect the outcome of capital cases, such as race and the quality of local law enforcement agencies.

The study also says that state courts are overworked -- and underfunded -- to the point they can no longer monitor the quality of cases passing through the system.

The study's key recommendation is that states should apply the death penalty less often. "If we are going to have the death penalty, it should be reserved for the worst of the worst," according to the study, which suggests a public consensus be found on crimes considered universally heinous to justify the taking of a life by the state.

Saying the U.S. legal system is collapsing under the weight of error-filled death penalty cases, the study also recommends the burden of proof in capital cases be increased to eliminate "any doubt" of guilt. The current standard requires that there be no "reasonable doubt."

The report said the death penalty should not be imposed on juveniles and defendants who are seriously mentally ill. And it urges that judges be required to inform juries that life without parole is a sentencing option.

The report concludes the "time is ripe to fix the death penalty, or if it can't be fixed, to end it."

The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a public interest law organization, has disputed Liebman's central premise that errors are responsible for overturned sentences and calls the professor a longtime opponent of capital punishment.

"On Monday, February 11, another report is scheduled to be released by opponents of capital punishment, claiming to show that the system of capital trials is 'broken' because of the large number of verdicts reversed on appeal," the group said in a statement Friday.

"This study is a follow-up to a study released June 12, 2000, that received widespread criticism as not supporting its conclusions, stating its data in misleading ways, and, in some respects, simply dishonest."

In an interview, Liebman said the report was conducted fairly and addressed the issue of bias.

He stressed that the death penalty is a "very contentious" issue and said that if people with positions on the subject were disqualified from studying it, no one would be available to look into it.

"Everybody has a view on the death penalty," Liebman said.

He said he happens to be against the death penalty but pointed out that others on the study team support it.

"We go where the data takes us," he said.

(A map of the plant and the surrounding area.)

Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun / West Coast Reduction plant near the north foot of Commercial in Vancouver, not far from streets known to be frequented by prostitutes.

Police investigating the disappearance of 50 women from the Downtown Eastside have asked for records from the Vancouver rendering plant that for years has processed pig entrails from a Port Coquitlam farm now under scrutiny, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

Humphry Koch, an executive with West Coast Reduction Ltd., confirmed Monday the plant at 105 North Commercial Drive has had the farm as a client for more than two decades.

Koch said police contacted the company last week looking for records and he is trying to see what is available.

"They've asked us if we get deliveries from that farm, not from any individual," Koch said.

"The answer to that question is -- we have deliveries from that farm."

Police interest in the rendering plant is the first sign the investigation is looking for evidence beyond the confines of the Port Coquitlam farm that has been the subject of a massive search since last Tuesday.

Investigators have refused to say if they have found any human remains at the farm, but forensic experts have said police would be looking for DNA that links the site to any of the missing women.

Police sources earlier told The Sun that personal possessions of at least two of the women were found at the farm at 953 Dominion Ave. The sources identified Robert William Pickton, one of three owners of the property, as a person of interest in the case.

Koch said he couldn't provide The Sun with dates or details of how often the Pickton farm would bring the waste remains of dead livestock to the plant, which is just a block from a busy prostitute stroll and several blocks from the Downtown Eastside stroll most of the missing women frequented.

"Right now it is under police investigation," Koch said. "If we have any information of relevance, the onus is on us to tell it to the police."

Asked what specifically the police had requested, Koch said: "I think they are interested in if [Pickton] delivers to us just like you are interested in if he delivers to us. Frankly I don't know what else I can tell you."

Pickton's friend, Gina Houston, told The Sun earlier that the farmer and businessman would drop off pig entrails at a downtown Vancouver plant that was in a neighbourhood with lots of prostitutes, whom he befriended and assisted financially.

"There happens to be a lot of them around there," she said of the area where the rendering plant is located. "So, I mean, he befriends a lot of them and he kind of feels sorry for them and he gives them money."

Houston said Pickton does not use the services of prostitutes and is not involved in the disappearances -- "He'd rather give them a couple of bucks than see them working."

Koch said West Coast Reduction will see what information and records it can find for the police investigation.

"We have many people who deliver to us their product and I don't know how often they deliver to us. If it is a small person, we wouldn't really have a record of it," he said.

"I think we've dealt with that farm for 20-odd years. I am making inquiries in the company right now to see if anyone can remember."

West Coast Reduction is one of the oldest and largest rendering plants in North America, according to its Web site.

The plant collects and receives meat, poultry and fish byproducts -- including guts, blood, bones, fat and feathers -- from manufacturers, farms and restaurants.

The materials are ground, cooked, purified, pressed, separated and dried before being used in a variety of products, including animal feed, cosmetics, soap, paint, textiles, plastics and cleaners, according to the company's Web site.

"West Coast Reduction's products are valued throughout the world for their consistent and superior standards," it says. "Strict quality control shows up in our end products, all of which satisfy or surpass their required specifications."

RCMP Constable Catherine Galliford, who speaks for the missing women task force, said Monday she couldn't comment on any possible police interest in the rendering company.

"We are not in a position to make any comment," she said.

Earlier, police said they would not be revealing or commenting publicly on any evidence uncovered during the search of the four-hectare farm site or in the related investigation.

"We are not in a position to disclose to the media or the public any physical evidence that we may find here at this property or any other property because that may be used as direct evidence in court," Galliford said.

Pickton is due to appear in provincial court later this month on three charges connected to possession and storage of an unregistered .22-calibre revolver.

He is not in police custody, nor would police say if he is under surveillance.

Retired Port Coquitlam building inspector Edward Heffner told The Sun Monday that Pickton may have had a gun because he and his brother David had complained of a problem with coyotes eating their pigs.

"If Robert had a gun, well, that's the reason he would have a gun because they did have quite a few problems with coyotes, et cetera coming on to their property and eating their stock," Heffner said.

Heffner, who retired about five years ago, was the inspector during the development of more than half of the original Pickton farmland, which he said was 32 hectares (80 acres) at its peak.

He said he found both the brothers to be very nice community-minded men.

"I know the people quite well," Heffner said. "In my dealings with them they were honest and generous."

He said there was a lot of junk on the property, but he never saw anything unusual.

"I don't think I ever saw them bury anything and I was on the property many times," said Heffner, adding that the attention to the family and property is quite upsetting.

"I think it is blown a little out of proportion . . . I've known them for 20 years. They are very quiet, very quiet. They stick to their own business and work is their number-one thing."

He said he knows Robert better than David.

"They would give you the shirt off their backs," he said. "But they are pig farmers at heart."

Vancouver Sun Files / Humphrey Koch of West Coast Reduction Ltd. says police contacted the company looking for records regarding the pig farm currently being searched.

The police investigation into the disappearance of dozens of women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside has expanded to 85 people, including up to 40 who continue to scour a Port Coquitlam pig farm.

RCMP Constable Catherine Galliford, who speaks for the joint Vancouver Police-RCMP Missing Women Task Force, said Monday there are now up to 40 investigators at the farm site and another 45 police personnel working off-site to follow up on tips.

About 400 tips have come in since the Missing Women Task Force moved on to the farm at 953 Dominion Avenue a week ago and set up a new tip line several days ago.

Asked how the 85-person team is being funded, Galliford said there is enough money in place for the investigation.

"What we can tell you is that the joint task force has an ongoing operational budget. That budget is used to pay ongoing, daily costs associated with the investigation," she said.

"What police also have is a contingency fund to deal with sudden, unexpected events that are large in scope. This search clearly qualifies as a large event. Indeed we believe that this search and associated investigations represent one of the largest coordinated police efforts in B.C."

She said she could not provide any specific budget numbers, but "we are pleased with the level of confidence and support provided by not only senior police management, but also by the provincial solicitor-general."

The joint task force was formed last fall after a Vancouver police-RCMP review team put in place in April 2001, found the number of missing women involved in the drug trade or prostitution was much higher than originally believed.

The task force expanded to 30 investigators in December, as the number of women on the list expanded to 50.

The search of the Port Coquitlam farmed owned by Robert William Pickton and his two siblings began with the execution of a search warrant Feb. 5 to look for firearms.

When Coquitlam RCMP officers arrived at the scene, what they discovered led them to call in the missing women task force.

The task force got its own search warrant and has been at the farm ever since, carefully shovelling piles of dirt, scouring mountains of gravel and examining decrepit outbuildings and abandoned cars.

Pickton was charged with three counts related to a firearm found on the property, but no charges have been laid in connection with the missing women.

Since The Vancouver Sun first arrived at the farm Wednesday night, dozens of media outlets from around the world have converged there, to the point where police are no longer permitting reporters to park their cars on the road outside the farm, bordered on either side by ditches.

Police have been tight-lipped about the investigation, revealing little and decreasing their availability to the media. As of today , press briefings have been cut back to just one in the mid-afternoon.

As for what they have found at the four-hectare search site, neither Galliford, nor Vancouver police Detective Scott Driemel, would comment Monday.

"Investigations of this magnitude are a complex and often shadowy web of interconnected issues and bits of information. As we discover yet another link in the web, it can change the nature of what we already know. Hopefully, we will soon see the full picture," Driemel said.

The unfolding events are painful for Karen Joesbury, whose daughter Angela disappeared last June from the Downtown Eastside.

"I'm not doing too well," said Joesbury.

She said she has been contacted by police and is happy with the level of communication from investigators.

"They can't tell us too much because that screws up the investigation," Joesbury said. "They seem to be pretty good."

She feels she will soon have the closure she so desperately wants, even though it will be painful.

"I have a strong feeling I am going to get it soon. It is just a gut feeling."

Unlike other relatives who have visited the farm and left candles there, Joesbury said she can't bear to go to the site.

"I can't do it. I am not prepared to do it," she said. "For me personally, it is just too much to take."

Global BC Sixteen senior investigators added to pig farm search on Monday.

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. - Both on the Pickton pig farm and off the 10-acre property, 85 police officers, including 16 senior members added Monday, are part of a massive investigation.

"This search clearly qualifies as a large event," said missing women’s task force spokesperson Const. Cate Galliford. "Indeed, we do believe that this search and associated investigations represent one the largest coordinated police efforts in B.C."

Investigators and experts are combing the entire farm except the Pickton home, which wasn’t part of the police investigation. Police won’t say if they intend to search the house.

For family and friends of the 50 missing women, the continued lack of information is frustrating and frightening. Many have been drawn to the search site to see for themselves what is happening.

"I am worried," said one family member who did not want to be identified. "I want them to find something but I don’t want them to at the same time."

"I am waiting for some kind of answer," said Carrie Kerr, the sister of a missing woman. "I think something could have been done sooner but I can’t dwell on that now. All I can look at is what they are doing now."

More than 400 calls have come in on the special tip-line (1-877-687-3377) police have set up. Some of those tips are said to be significant. Three officers have been assigned full-time to deal with the information.

In the meantime, B.C.'s solicitor general is deflecting calls for a public inquiry into the police handling of the missing women case. Rich Coleman said Monday it's too early to talk about an inquiry, especially with the investigation still underway.

He also assured police that the money would be there to complete the search of the farm, no matter how long it takes.

Monday, February 11, 2002

Originally published 2/9/02

Flint - A fingerprint left on a faucet at the Mott estate has linked a Vienna Township man to the 1986 slaying of a former University of Michigan-Flint provost, police said.

Jeffrey Wayne Gorton, 39, was arrested at his Tuscola Road home Friday afternoon for the Nov. 9, 1986, slaying of Margarette F. Eby.

Eby, 55, was found nearly decapitated in her second-story bedroom at the gatehouse she rented on the grounds of Applewood, the 16-acre estate of the late Charles Stewart Mott and Ruth Rawlings Mott.

DNA evidence collected from the Eby crime scene was linked in August to the Feb. 17, 1991, killing of Nancy J. Ludwig of Minneapolis, a Northwest Airlines flight attendant found bound and gagged with her throat slashed inside a Romulus hotel room near Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

The Wayne County Prosecutor's office is expected to seek murder charges against Gorton in Ludwig's slaying.

Both women were killed in a similar way and police sources have said both crime scenes had been meticulously cleaned.

Police were led to Gorton after the Flint violent crimes task force sent a fingerprint collected from a faucet in the Eby case to the FBI forensic science laboratory. The print was then enhanced and compared with prints in the FBI's national fingerprint database.

The fingerprint from the Eby case matched a fingerprint in Gorton's criminal file in Florida, Flint Sgt. Larry Sorensen told District Judge Michael D. McAra, who issued an arrest warrant for Gorton on Friday afternoon.

Sorensen told McAra that Eby had been raped and that semen was found at the scene.

A state police detective declined comment when asked if police have matched Gorton's DNA to that evidence but said investigators have evidence besides the fingerprints linking the suspect to the slayings.

Gorton is expected to be arraigned today in 68th District Court on charges of felony murder, first-degree premeditated murder, first-degree criminal sexual conduct, armed robbery and breaking and entering of an occupied dwelling.

The gatehouse where Eby's body was found was immaculately clean and her nude body had been left atop an electric blanket that had been turned on high. Knife wounds to her chest suggested she might have been tortured, police have said.

"This was a gruesome crime," Genesee County Prosecutor Arthur A. Busch said.

Busch said in the years since Eby's slaying, the suspect "blended into the community."

"He has a family and children," Busch said.

Gorton's ex-wife, who lives in Genesee County, declined to provide specifics about her former husband.

"I've been questioned all day by the FBI," she said. "I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say. This is much bigger than people realize."

Gorton's ex-wife said she was married to him from 1982-88.

"We were married legally for six years, but physically we were married for only two years," she said.

She declined to comment on Gorton's police file in Florida.

Gorton's brother, reached by telephone Friday evening, said he could not speak to a reporter.

"The state police are here," he said. "I'm talking to them now."

Aside from the DNA link between the slayings of Eby and Ludwig, investigators still are trying to sort out how Gorton allegedly came into contact with the two women.

Police are also investigating the possibility that there might be other slayings linked to the suspect because of the "distinctive pattern and approach" of the two killings, Busch said.

'Oh my Lord, have mercy'

UM-Flint health department director Suzanne Selig, who reported directly to Eby when Eby was provost, said Eby's death "stopped everybody in their tracks, literally. People on campus were just mortified."

Selig said the two women had visited one another's homes and that Eby was full of life and loved music.

"I'm sure her family will be tremendously relieved," Selig said of the arrest. "It was just such a brutal, horrible way to die. Everybody on campus who remembers her will be definitely relieved."

Neighbors along Tuscola Road near Gorton's home were stunned at news of his arrest.

"It makes me nervous," said Sherry Bull, who lives a few houses from Gorton.

Bull said she has never met Gorton or seen anyone outside his home. But the arrest makes her think twice about her neighbors, she said.

"I keep my doors locked at night," she said.

A clerk at the small country market just down the road shuddered at the thought that an accused killer might have frequented her store.

"I know most of my customers more by face than by name," said the clerk, who declined to give her name. "It's really scary."

"Oh my Lord, have mercy," said the woman's co-worker.

Old cases, new technology

Friday's arrest was the third major arrest made by the Flint violent crimes task force since it was formed last year.

The team of 10 state police detectives and troopers working with Flint detectives used DNA to link a Flint man with the 1999 slayings of two prostitutes. The team also arrested a Bay County man suspected of raping several Flint prostitutes.

The team's success has been partly credited to advances in crime-fighting technology, including DNA analysis, which allows investigators to uncover fresh leads with evidence that may have been collected years ago.

The passage of time meant that two generations of law enforcement officers from one family worked on the slayings of Eby and Ludwig.

Joe Dekatch, lieutenant and head of Flint homicide detectives at the time of the Eby murder, worked on the investigation until he retired in 1991.

It was early that year that Ludwig was slain in Romulus. When Dekatch's son Todd, who became an FBI agent, had an internship with state police science and profiling personnel, one of the cases they worked on was the Ludwig killing.

Art Ludwig, the victim's husband, said Friday he was glad a suspect was in custody after so many years.

"I let out a couple of wild whoops, and then I couldn't say anything else," he said.

"I'm very happy the case had been developed to a point where there can be closure for the communities and for the families of the victims," Joe Dekatch said about Gorton's arrest. "I don't know how many investigator man-hours must have gone into it, then and now. My hat's off to them."

Timeline

July 1981: Margarette F. Eby arrives in Flint to become the new provost at the University of Michigan-Flint.

• February 1983: Eby resigns as provost and chief academic officer to become special assistant to then-Chancellor Conny E. Nelson. Her job is to oversee Flint's Basically Bach Festival. She oversees a four-month festival of 40 concerts, dances, lectures and other special programs in 1985. Eby later becomes president of the Flint Community Cultural Festivals Inc.

   

   

• Nov. 9, 1986: Eby, 55, is found dead in the bedroom of her gatehouse home on the Charles Stewart Mott estate by friends who stopped by to see her and found her door ajar. It soon becomes apparent that police had no obvious suspects.

   

   

• Nov. 11, 1986: FBI behaviorial experts are called in to develop a profile of Eby's killer.

   

   

• Nov. 16, 1986: Eby is eulogized by friends and family as a woman who was sustained by her faith, love of music and her attachment to Flint. The service was held at the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Flint.

   

   

• Dec. 28, 1986: FBI profilers say they believe the killer was a man who was having financial and job-related stress and underwent a major personality change after the slaying. They also say they believe the killer knew Eby and had visited her home before the slaying. The man likely had been drinking before the crime, and likely went to visit her in order to talk to her. The murder probably was not planned, but resulted from frustration or anger, perhaps after finding out that he was not welcome.

   

   

• Nov. 19, 1987: A private eye hired by Eby's family said a man was seen near her home the last day she was seen alive.

   

   

• Sept. 15, 1988: Eby's family and friends offer a $25,000 reward.

   

   

• Oct. 25, 1990: The unsolved slaying was presented to an international conference of homicide detectives in Kansas City, Mo., in hopes of generating some new ideas.

   

   

• August 16, 2001: Police announce that DNA evidence links Eby's killer with the slaying of a Northwest Airlines flight attendant in a hotel room near Detroit Metropolitan Airport in 1991.

   

  DNA evidence techniques were not available at the time Eby was murdered, but Flint police took their evidence to the state police crime lab for comparison to other crimes. Investigators then used the FBI's national Violent Criminal Apprehension Program to check DNA evidence in other crimes, finding the link with the Romulus slaying.

And it will go even higher if state seeks death for Ridgway

Tuesday, February 12, 2002

By MARGARET TAUS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The cost of the renewed Green River killings case already has grown to at least $15 million over the next three years, and will rise more if prosecutors seek the death penalty against suspect Gary Ridgway, according to new King County estimates.

And now the county plans to ask the federal government for more help.

Just two months ago, County Executive Ron Sims had offered a preliminary estimate of up to $12 million. A new analysis by Sims' budget office predicts the case actually will cost about $5 million each year through 2004. That assumes that public defense costs for Ridgway will grow even without seeking a death penalty.

The money is to investigate 49 unsolved killings from the 1980s, and to prosecute and defend Ridgway, who was charged in December in the deaths of four women in the case.

For this year, the Office of Public Defense cost is about $1.4 million. But the estimates grow to just over $2 million next year and $2.1 million in 2004. The county sheriff's office stays level at about $2.6 million a year.

Defense costs grow as more information becomes available, and they include expert witnesses and DNA testing, among other things, said David Chapman, managing director of the Associated Counsel for the Accused.

"The problem with these cases is the defense has an obligation to look at other suspects," he said.

Sims has asked the Metropolitan King County Council to approve spending $5.3 million this year on the case. The council yesterday voted to seek $2.6 million from the federal government to help the sheriff's investigation. The county already received $500,000 for DNA testing.

For 2002, Sims proposes paying for the work with the federal grant and money from the county's current expense fund balance, the executive's contingency fund and an increased special property tax that supports the county's Automated Fingerprint Information System.

Todd Webster, a spokesman for Sen. Patty Murray, said she believes the case is important and will try to get more funding.

Missing woman's friend keeps families informed via website
Man who fell for Sarah deVries now 'driven' by search

Greg Middleton
The Province


Monday, February 11, 2002

Sarah deVries and Wayne Leng with her son, Benjamin. Pat deVries, Sarah's mother, is raising Benjamin and his big sister, Jeanie.


Wayne Leng is the man behind the scenes.

He has quietly been running a website dedicated to Vancouver's 50 missing women at his own expense.

"He's done an awful lot. He's the one with all the names of all the relatives and he's kept everyone up to date with the website," said Lynn Frey, the mother of Marnie Frey, a Vancouver sex-trade worker who disappeared in 1997.

Leng a 52-year old automotive technician, isn't a relative.

"I am just a good friend of Sarah deVries," Leng said.

He met deVries, then 29, at a convenience store as he was leaving town to go on a trip in 1994.

He was smitten by her infectious laugh and sassy way and invited her to have a drink.

DeVries came from an upper-middle class background, the adopted daughter of a UBC professor and a nurse. But teenage rebellion led her to a life on the streets, drugs and prostitution,

"We got talking and she told about the horrors she'd been through in her life. She wanted somebody to talk to," Leng said. "She didn't say anything about using drugs. I didn't know about that until later.

He said they made a date to go to the PNE together.

"I got involved with her," Leng admits. It was an involvement that lasted, but as a friendship.

"She used to leave things like clothes at my apartment so they wouldn't get stolen," said Leng. "It was a safe haven for her."

He was the one who got the call from Sarah's mother to say Sarah was HIV-positive.

"I went and found her and brought her back to my place so she could call her mom," Leng said. "She broke down. I hugged her and held her. It was hard to take."

Leng said he saw Sarah on the night she vanished.

Sarah and a girlfriend had gone out to work. It was about 4:30 a.m., and they were the last ones on the street. Sarah needed money so she would have drugs when she woke up.

When Sarah didn't show up in the next couple of days, Leng thought at first she had taken a job caretaking a grow house -- something she talked of, ironically, as a way to get off drugs.

"She was tired of it and wanted to get off," Leng said.

Leng said he got three chilling messages on his pager the following Saturday night saying she was dead and not to look for her.

"Sarah's dead," a slightly slurred man's voice said over loud music in the background. "So there will be more girls like her dead. There will be one every Friday night. At the busiest time."

In the third and last message the man said he was present when a friend of his killed deVries.

Leng, who was laid off at about that time, spent the next two years living on his savings as he papered the downtown with posters and launched the website with software donated by another missing woman's mother.

"I feel driven to do this." Leng said. He has since moved to Los Angeles, but keeps up the website, www.missingpeople.net.

The latest postings are stories about the search at the Port Coquitlam pig farm.

"I would like to fly up and go out there to see if I can feel Sarah's spirit, to see I can sense whether or not she was ever there."

'DOWN HERE IT'S DIFFERENT'

An entry from Sarah deVries' journal:

Down here it's different...

A fine line divides your world from mine and yet there is so much that you people wouldn't understand -- our rules must be followed.

Some of you would say I am from the wrong side of the tracks. It's a fine line that keeps both our worlds apart.

We have our own law, our own justice system, etc. and it works.

All that I have in this world are the few things you see here in this room and my word.

If my word was no good I don't think I would be alive to be writing these inkstains.

I've been around a long time, longer than you think.

I now hate. I just hate and hate so deep it burns my soul.

I want to lash out at the world and make it pay but I made my bed. I sleep on it with my hate.

A platonic relationship -- how about that.

I think that my hate is going to be my destruction, my executioner.

Hate wants me to let her out but I can't. I'm too greedy.

I can't let my hate loose on the world.

Only the person who helped me create my hate will I share her with.

A POEM FROM SARAH'S JOURNAL

Woman's body found beaten beyond recognition

You sip your coffee

Taking a drag on your smoke

Turning the page

Taking a bit of your toast

Just another day

Just another death

Just one more thing you so forget

You and your soft sheltered life

Just go on and on

For nobody special from your world is gone

Just another day

Just another death

Another Hastings Street whore

Sentenced to death

No judge

No Jury

No trial

No mercy

The Judge's gavel already fallen

Sentence already passed

But you

You just sip your coffee

Washing down your toast

For you it's just another day

For you it's just another death

For you you've already forgot

It's not just another day.

It's not just another death

(Victoria) Younker

(Mary) Lidguerre

(Tracy) Olajide

(Tammy Lee) Pipe

The police search at a Port Coquitlam pig farm has raised hopes that any evidence found there about 50 missing Vancouver women will also shed light on the murders of at least four others, The Province has learned.

The Missing Women Task Force has been looking at the files of the provincial task force on unsolved homicides in relation to the murders of sex-trade workers Tammy Lee Pipe, Tracy Olajide, and Victoria Younker, whose bodies were found near Agassiz and Mission in 1995, police sources said.

Another woman, Mary Lidguerre, whose remains were found in North Vancouver in 1997, also disappeared from the same Main and Hastings location as the three women whose bodies were found near Agassiz and Mission.

Police have said in the past they believe the person who killed Pipe, Olajide, Younker and Lidguerre had a hand in the disappearances of Vancouver women Dorothy Spence, Catherine Knight, and Cathy Gonzalez, whose names were on the original list of 31 women made public three years ago.

Police thought they had a suspect in the murders of Pipe, Olajide and Younker and the disappearances of Spence, Knight and Gonzalez, but DNA tests cleared him.

Now investigators tell The Province they are pinning their hopes on the pig farm.

"We are looking at" the possible connections, said a source close to the investigation. "It would be stupid not to."

Police have DNA evidence from the bodies of Olajide, Pipe and Younker and there is also concrete evidence that one man killed at least two of them.

- The SPCA yesterday took 40 sheep, 10 goats, eight pigs, two llamas and two cows from the farm to an disclosed location in Langley.

"Our concern ultimately was for the health of the animals and it felt the best thing for the animals was to remove them from the site," said Shawn Eccles, manager of field operations for the B.C. SPCA Vancouver region.

Two pigs and two sheep were earlier diagnosed as being critically distressed, said Eccles. The pigs were euthanized last week and taken to the provincial animal health centre in Abbotsford for a post mortem.

Two wading pools were brought on to the property yesterday "to assist the investigators," said RCMP Const. Catherine Galliford, a task force spokeswoman. "But we don't want to get anymore specific in regard to that."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Samantha Barton was living at a care home

Vancouver Sun SPCA officials relocate the farm's cows, pigs, sheep, goats and llamas to a site in Langley.

Vancouver Sun Curious onlookers came out in the rain early Sunday to get a glimpse of the investigation at the Picktons' Port Coquitlam farm.

Driving rains hindered police and drove away onlookers Sunday at a Port Coquitlam farm where a search is under way for evidence connecting the property to more than 50 prostitutes missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Vancouver police spokesman Detective Scott Driemel said the rain was slowing down what is already a painstaking investigation, which is still at its beginning stages.

Meanwhile, the B.C. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals removed about 60 animals, including about 40 sheep, 10 goats, eight pigs, two llamas and two cows, from the farm to a location in Langley.

"It was felt that the best thing for the animals was to remove them from the site," said Shawn Eccles, the society's field operations manager for the Vancouver district. "They [didn't] have access to pasture or the ability to run free."

Also on Sunday, officers from the missing women's task force, made up of RCMP and Vancouver police personnel, met with a group of family members of the missing women at an undisclosed location in the Lower Mainland, task force spokeswoman Catherine Galliford said.

The meeting, she said, was to keep the families informed as much as possible and to urge them to have patience with the pace of the investigation.

Driemel and Galliford also told a media briefing Sunday that the investigation has been promised whatever additional resources it requires and more manpower from police forces around the Lower Mainland will be added in the near future.

"The investigators are working very hard and working very long hours," Driemel said. "There's no doubt that there's going to be a time coming soon when we're going to have additional resources coming through the property site to assist them with their investigation. Who will be coming and from where is now trying to be decided by the chief investigator on this file."

Galliford said the additional officers would be used to investigate the steady flow of tips pouring into the missing women's task force tip line at 1-877-687-3377.

At the media briefing, held in a tent set up in the parking lot of mall near the farm, Driemel said police are hopeful about solving the case with the investigation at the farm, but looking to other areas as well.

"We're cautiously optimistic, of course, about this whole thing," Driemel said. "[But] we don't want to have . . . families . . . getting very optimistic about what may or may not turn out with this. We really want to go and make sure we keep everything in perspective and not get hopes and ambitions running too high."

Police sources have told The Sun that investigators have already found personal items linked to at least two of the missing women at the property owned by Robert Pickton and two of his family members. Police sources have said Pickton is a person of interest in the case.

Police executed a search warrant on the property Tuesday to look for illegal firearms. Information gained on that search led to a broader warrant to search for evidence in the case of the missing women. Pickton has been charged with illegal possession of a firearm and related offences and is scheduled to appear in court Feb. 28.

On the property, police have set up a shantytown of trailers and propane-heated tents. Investigators in white jumpsuits search the grounds and more than 15 outbuildings, which include rundown shacks, ramshackle barns and storage containers. Police have sealed off entrances to the farm.

Large spotlights, to aid searchers working at night, line the driveway extending deep into the heart of the farm. Another tower of lights about 40 metres high sits in a cleared area in front of the largest barn on the site.

Police are revealing little about the search, either to media or to relatives of the missing women.

Commenting on Sunday's meeting with relatives, Galliford said: "We're not going to be releasing any information to the families that we would be concerned about . . . going public.

"One of the things that we will be telling them is, just in general, what it is we are doing. If they have any specific questions that we cannot answer because it might jeopardize our investigation, we will tell them that. We just want to keep them in the loop as much as we can without jeopardizing the ongoing investigation."

Galliford said police would try to hold weekly or bi-weekly meetings with representatives of the families to keep them informed.

Driemel emphasized the difficulty of the search.

In addition to the buildings, there are a number of vehicles and pieces of heavy equipment on the property, as well as huge mounds of dirt and a gigantic stack of concrete blocks.

"Even prior to entering a building, of course, it has to be videoed, it has to be photographed, the outside of the door frames et cetera are all looked at, it's a very, very, slow, methodical process," Driemel said.

Because of that pace, Driemel said police could not estimate what percentage of the search has been completed, only that it is at the very beginning.

He said police won't comment about any people they might be investigating.

"At this point, we don't have any charges laid against anybody, and of course we're not discussing the issue about suspects at this time," he said. "Right now, we're just examining a physical property and hopefully, if we can determine if there is anything of evidentiary value, then we can look on to the next phase."

Meanwhile, the SPCA's Eccles said police are not considering the animals as possible sources of evidence.

"The RCMP's main concern was the health of the animals and the welfare of the animals to ensure that the animals were getting their basic needs," he said of the decision to move them.

Robert Pickton described by friend as 'a nice, caring man.'

Robert William Pickton befriended prostitutes working on the Downtown Eastside and gave them money because he felt sorry for them, according to a woman who says she has known him for years.

Gina Houston also claims to have been interviewed previously by RCMP serious crime investigators about Pickton, 52, and Vancouver's missing women case.

Last Wednesday, Houston and her husband, Ross Edward Contois, showed up at Pickton's farm on Dominion Avenue, but were turned away by police who have been searching the property since Tuesday in connection with the disappearance of 50 women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Houston and Contois both spoke to The Vancouver Sun that night and Houston was interviewed again Thursday. They claim the search of Pickton's property is the result of false accusations by a woman with a drug problem.

Houston was unable to provide the woman's full name, but says she met her in a transition house.

"She's got a great personality, but as soon as she gets a little heroin or a little coke, and she can't get no more drugs, she goes right off," Houston said.

"I've been hauled into the serious crime unit umpteen times over this crackhead . . . when he [Pickton] doesn't give her money for dope, she phones and says he's slaughtering the hookers and burying them on the property."

She said she and Pickton, whom she calls Willy, were once questioned by police for five hours about the missing women case because of the accusation. "Oh, they questioned us from one end to the other about them, and I know a few of them."

Told of Houston's comments about being interviewed by police, Constable Catherine Galliford, who speaks for the joint Vancouver Police-RCMP Missing Women Task Force, declined to say anything Sunday.

"I am giving you the official no comment," Galliford said.

Police have also refused to comment on whether they have had any discussions with Pickton or anyone else in connection with the investigation of the pig farm.

They have remained tight-lipped on the search of Pickton's farm and have refused to confirm or deny reports in The Sun that police have found personal items on the property linked to at least two of the 50 missing women, all of whom were involved in drugs or the sex trade.

Houston insists the allegations by the woman she met at the transition house are baseless.

"This chick watched him slaughter a few pigs, and she went and phoned them," she said. "And she described in detail how he slaughters and skins them and cuts them. So she phones the police up and tells them that she watched him and I doing that there one night, and it was just a pig. She said it was one of the missing hookers from the Downtown Eastside."

Houston also claimed to know the Vancouver prostitute whom Pickton was accused of trying to stab to death with a knife in 1997. The charges against him were stayed in 1998.

"He got the bum end of the deal because of that incident with the hooker that he brought back here that stabbed him," Houston said. "They dropped the charges against him because all the stab wounds on him were in the back. He defended himself and ended up stabbing her."

Houston described Pickton as a "nice caring man" who likes to help out single mothers in the community.

Houston denied that her friend used the services of prostitutes. "But he befriends lots of them. He likes to help people."

She said Pickton would take pig entrails to Vancouver, where they were turned into bonemeal. He made his deliveries in an area frequented by prostitutes, Houston said.

"There happens to be a lot of them around there. So, I mean, he befriends a lot of them, and he kind of feels sorry for them and he does give them money. He'll give them 20 bucks to go buy themselves . . . well, I mean, they obviously go get dope, but they say they need cigarettes and tampons and condoms and blah, blah, blah, blah. And he'd rather give them a couple of bucks than see them working -- the ones he has befriended, right?"

Asked if she ever went with Pickton to Vancouver, Houston said: "Oh yeah, I've been downtown with him lots of times."

Occasionally, Houston said Pickton would go downtown to look for Houston's roommate if she hadn't heard from her in a couple of days. "Sometimes, he'd spend half the night down there looking for her.

"And when he found her, he'd still bring her home, right? And he's never hurt her. And I've known him for quite a few years now."

Houston also said Pickton was accused of bothering a prostitute in Vancouver one night. But Houston said Pickton had loaned her his pickup truck for several months, and that it was really her and Contois in the vehicle when the incident occurred.

"We pulled up and Roscoe [Contois] was talking to them and then did a big screech out, and they said that's how . . . the person identified Willy, but I had the truck for five months or six months, and all these incidents that they were talking about with Willy being in the truck, it couldn't have happened, because I had the truck and I never lent it to Willy."

Contois gave a similar version of events, claiming the police questioned Pickton about the incident. "But that was me doing that."

Asked if Pickton could be involved in the disappearance of women from Vancouver, Houston said: "Willy? No. No. Willy's not like that."

"Willy's not the type. Willy would never hurt a soul, I mean if someone's hurting him and he had to defend himself. But Willy's not one for confrontation. He hates confrontation and he would rather just turn and walk away from an argument."

Houston said she spoke to Pickton Wednesday night after stopping by the property that police were searching. She said Pickton told her he had been having more problems with the woman who had made accusations against him in the past.

Houston said Pickton told her that he pulled into his driveway Tuesday night and police pulled in right after him, and took him to jail for almost 24 hours. He has since been charged with three offences related to the possession and storage of a .22 calibre revolver.

Houston said Pickton uses a gun to slaughter the pigs.

Houston also said there had been a report of a woman screaming on the property a night or two earlier. But she said that was her and Contois having an argument.

Of the police search, Houston said: "They're going to have fun with that dirt, I tell you, because, I mean, with all the houses being built and all the dirt being brought in, and then being that that's been farmland for years, there's been cows, pigs, goats.

"You know, when they do the DNA testing? They're going to have fun, lotsa fun."

Contois said he met Gina in a treatment centre in Port Coquitlam.

Jon Murray, The Province / Grieving friends and relatives comfort one another outside Port Coquitlam pig farm yesterday.

"It was a rough crowd" at Piggy's Palace, said Brian, a musician who played there a few years ago with the hard-rock band South City Slam.

The nightclub, he said, was inside an old building on a property Dave Pickton and his brother Robert own at 2552 Burns Rd., near their pig farm on Dominion Road in Port Coquitlam. Police from the missing-women task force are searching the farm.

"Even the women were tough- looking -- a lot of leather and denim. It wasn't a cocktail-gown kind of place," he recalled.

Brian, who didn't want his last name used, recalled that there was a coat-check girl and a sign saying, "Check your knives and other weapons at the door."

He told the Sunday Province he hooked up with Dave Pickton when the now-defunct band played at the South City Club in New Westminster -- a "heavier bar" where Pickton used to hang out.

The crowd at Piggy's Palace often included men wearing Hells Angels biker club colours.

"They were there a lot," said Brian. "The people who came all seemed to know one another."

Piggy's Palace had a stage with a good sound system and lights.

"They had deep pockets and spent some money on the place," Brian said. "It was like a regular club. They did do some benefits, sports-related things, but they were out to make a profit."

The City of Port Coquitlam went to considerable effort to shut down Piggy's Palace.

PoCo attempted, but failed, to get a court order in 1996 to force the Picktons and their Piggy's Palace Good Times Society to cease throwing parties on the property.

The society was incorporated in 1996 with five directors, including the Picktons, and was dissolved in January 2000 for failing to file annual statements.

The city got an injunction in 1998, but the parties went on.

Brian said his band played a New Year's Eve gig there in 1998.

"I wasn't really keen on spending New Year's Eve on a pig farm, but the money was good," Brian said. He made about $500 a night.

"They were always very good to us, very generous. You get a bit nervous playing at a private party like that, but we played at biker parties a lot and never had any trouble."

The dances would usually start with a roast pork dinner about 8 p.m. The band would start about 9:30 p.m. and play until 1 or later.

Among those who attended parties at Piggy's Palace was Port Coquitlam Mayor Scott Young.

Young said he went to Piggy's Palace in September 1996 for a neighbourhood party when he was on the school board.

He described the party as a "getting to know you" event put on by people living in the area.

CP Photo / Dawn Sangret placed picture of her friend Elaine Dumba at gate of the Pickton brothers' Port Coquitlam farm yesterday.

Family and friends lit candles in memory of their lost ones yesterday as the missing- women task force continued its around-the-clock search of a Port Coquitlam pig farm.

Dawn Sangret lit a candle for her friend Elaine Dumba, who disappeared in 1998, and placed her picture at the gate to the farm at 953 Dominion Ave.

"I'm here for her today and just want to find out what happened to these poor women," said Sangret.

More than 1,200 metres of metal fencing has been placed around the farm to keep out the curious. They lined up along Dominion Road to watch search dogs comb huge mounds of dirt and investigators stake out plots in advance of excavating in their search for 50 Vancouver prostitutes from the Downtown Eastside.

Investigators are looking for bodies and tiny body fragments -- with forensic specialists paying close attention to a wood chipper on the farm. They spent hours this weekend searching pig barns.

RCMP Const. Catherine Galliford said police have received more than 250 tips.

"Some of the tips that have come in are very, very valuable," she said.

Some of the farm animals were being moved yesterday. Robert William Pickton, 52, and his brother David had 30 sheep, 12 pigs, 12 goats, a couple of llamas and cows.

Police said the animals were not being quarantined for evidence.

Lawyer Peter Ritchie, representing the Picktons, said they were "shocked" to find their farm at the centre of the massive police investigation.

Ritchie was Robert Pickton's lawyer in 1997 when Pickton was charged with unlawful confinement, attempted murder and aggravated assault in an attack on a woman who alleged that he had slashed her with a knife at the farm.

The charges were stayed.

Ritchie said his clients are assisting police, though he said Robert Pickton was "flabbergasted" to hear police call him a "person of interest."

Robert Pickton faces firearms charges stemming from a search of the farm last Tuesday.

Police would not confirm reports that officers found identification belonging to two of the missing women as well as an inhaler -- possibly for asthma --Ýwith instructions bearing the name of one of the missing prostitutes.

But those discoveries apparently led the task force to get its own warrant on Wednesday. Up to 40 investigators have been combing the 11-hectare site since.

The Picktons are well-known in the area, colourful operators of a demolition business in Surrey, a used-building-supplies company and owners of properties assessed in the millions. The brothers inherited the farm from their parents. Their sister is a co-owner.

An aunt of one of the missing women said she told police three years ago about suspicious activities on the farm, but they dismissed the tip. Newspaper reports said another woman told police in 1998 that she saw bags of bloodied clothing in a trailer at the farm.

Police say they are interested in the farm, not the owners.

Police have established a tip line at 1-877-687-3377.

Jon Murray, The Province / Police dogs and their handlers looking for missing prostitutes search huge mounds of earth on a Port Coquitlam pig farm yesterday.

(Dr. Mark) Skinner

(Mike) Eastham

Dr. Mark Skinner well knows the potentially grisly road that lies ahead for police searching the ramshackle grounds of a Port Coquitlam pig farm.

Skinner, a professor of forensic anthropology at Simon Fraser university, has investigated mass grave sites in the former Yugoslavia, East Timor and Afghanistan and has worked with local police for 25 years.

He took The Province through the steps the 30-member team of police officers and forensic experts will likely take as they look for evidence in the disappearance of 50 women.

The first thing is to record everything they see, down to the smallest object. Everything will be photographed and mapped, possibly using aerial photography, video cameras and still cameras.

"They want to try and record everything that is on that site," said Skinner. "The better job they do at the beginning, the happier they'll be at the end if they actually find something.

"There may be body parts on the surface, they may be at depth. They are just going to have to go very slowly."

Investigators will be looking for freshly disturbed earth, and evidence of historic movements of land.

"You look for anything that suggests the land has been disturbed," he said.

They might bring in botanists to look for clues in vegetation, such as lush growth where bodies may be buried, or tree rings to gauge time frames when the disturbance occurred.

Ground-penetrating radar may be used to pinpoint any bodies. And long metal probes might be used, looking for differences in textures below the surface.

Skinner speculated that investigators may have to move a lot of earth. They may run a series of trenches, looking for grave sites.

"It is worrisome to me that there is large earth-moving equipment there. This means whatever is there could be very deep."

The deepest graves he has worked on were three and a half metres deep. Typically, most mass graves are about a metre and a half, he said.

The deeper the remains are buried, the better the preservation will be.

"Certainly you'd expect soft tissue preservation for five to 10 years at the bottom of a deep grave," he said, adding that wet ground will help the preservation.

DNA would be in good enough shape to help identify any bodies.

Skinner said the fact there are pigs on the site could make the investigation more difficult, especially if they were used to scavenge any remains. But he witnessed a similar scenario in East Timor, where useful evidence was recovered.

He also witnessed a site in B.C. where animal remains were mixed with human remains in an attempt to confuse investigators.

"If there's commingling of human remains and pig, it's going to be challenging," said Skinner.

Clothing will supply clues and will help hold the body together as investigators delicately retrieve any remains.

The wet earth will make the job that much more difficult.

"I could see it being very difficult to remove sticky earth from around bodies," he said, adding that tents or portable buildings will likely be brought in to shelter any digs from the rain.

Skinner said police are capable of running the investigation at this point without outside experts.

"The police are very experienced at looking for evidence. They should have no trouble observing essential evidence," he said. "They don't need other experts at this stage, but they will eventually if they have to process a lot of remains."

Retired RCMP Staff Sgt Mike Eastham, who worked many involved and long cases, said police are facing a "monumental task."

And even if they do find evidence of the missing women, they will still have to make a case.

"It's no different than finding a body in downtown Surrey," said Eastham. "You've got a dead body, but it doesn't lead you to who did it. It's step number one."

Eastham speculated that police are confident they will find what they are after and might have an informant.

"They obviously have something that's triggered the possibility that there may be one or more of these women on the grounds," he said. "They're not just fishing."

If they do find remains, they will precisely record the scene which will give clues to how the women were murdered, said Skinner.

"How those remains were treated -- with reverence or in a cavalier manner -- can tell you a lot about the manner of their death," he said.

Skinner said he was "very encouraged" to hear police say the investigation could take months.

"The idea is, slow but sure," he said. "It's very demanding. You don't know what's important."

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. - Canadian police have received more than 250 tips since they began picking through a run-down pig farm for clues in the disappearances of 50 Vancouver-area women.

"We want to stress that some of the tips are very, very valuable," Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable Catherine Galliford said a news conference Saturday.

Vancouver police detective Scott Driemel would not specify how many officers were working on the case but said more would be assigned to help follow up all the leads.

Driemel cautioned against expecting rushed results from the tips. "It's way too early to speculate how bona fide or genuine this will be," Driemel said.

Investigators have been working around the clock since Thursday, searching the 10-acre farm about 22 miles east of Vancouver.

Police dogs helped Saturday, burrowing into a steep mound of muddy earth near the hog barn. Detectives refused to confirm a report that an inhaler belonging to one of the missing women had been found at the site.

Also on Saturday, police apologized to families of the missing women who have complained they're not being updated on what investigators are uncovering.

"We are aware that there has been some concern from family members who feel out of the information loop," Galliford said. "The joint task force contacted family members to let them know we were coming to this site. We're now taking steps to make sure we can keep them updated with whatever information we can share without jeopardizing the investigation."

It has been an grueling wait for loved ones of the missing women, most of them prostitutes and drug addicts who vanished as far back as 1983.

Global BC Retired RCMP investigator Bruce Northorp.

Global BC Book co-written by Retired RCMP investigator Bruce Northorp.

VANCOUVER - Bruce Northorp is a retired RCMP investigator. He knows a thing or two about serial killers.

"I had a feeling when it first came out that there had to be a serial killer or some serial killers on the move," he said.

It's a theory on the missing women's case that carries weight. Northop was the lead investigator in the Clifford Olson case - one that involved various police agencies.

"It could be ... there are similarities," he said. "Certainly, it is difficult to get some other police department interested in a missing person (from another city)."

Northorp said officers aren't motivated to look for someone who was never in their community.

Just like the Olson case, police initially didn't think there was a serial killer loose when prostitutes in the Downtown Eastside went missing. Friends and family members of the 50 missing women say they told police as far back as 1998 about a pig farm in Port Coquitlam. They blame police for not providing enough resources to the investigation and not communicating with other agencies.

"I can’t really provide a speculation as to how we might have acted if we would have had that information or how people might think or place any kind blame whatsoever," said Vancouver police spokesperson Det. Scott Driemel on Thursday.

In the Olson investigation, police said the cases weren't linked, arguing the disappearances occurred and some bodies were found in different cities.

When Northorp took over the case, he got all jurisdictions to cooperate. A month later Clifford Olson was arrested.

"I think there has to be a multi-jurisdictional task force set up that takes care of these cases," said Northorp.

He has co-written a book on his experience with Clifford Olson, one that will be turned into a docu-drama. The one lesson learned from the Olson case still applies 20 years later:

"You have to have a team of people that are working together in concert and not in conflict."

Vancouver Sun RCMP and Vancouver city police officers launched search of Port Coquitlam pig farm after personal identification of missing prostitutes was found.

Robert William Pickton (above), whose property is being searched by police, heads into a pigpen on his farm in this 1996 still from a Global BCTV News video. The footage was taken during a story about a property tax complaint.

(Robert William Pickton)

Police searching for firearms on a Port Coquitlam farm found personal identification and other items linked to at least two of the 50 prostitutes missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

Members of the joint RCMP-Vancouver city police missing women task force were present for the firearms search Tuesday night and discovery of the women's ID prompted them to get a second warrant for the property, according to police sources familiar with the investigation.

Officially, however, police weren't saying Thursday what they found during the firearms search that prompted them to get a second warrant.

"We are very confident in our reasons for obtaining the search warrant and as you know, we need to have some really good information in order for a judge to grant us a search warrant," said Constable Catherine Galliford, who speaks for the missing women task force.

Dozens of RCMP officers patrolled the farm Thursday, while neighbours, schoolchildren and curiosity-seekers flocked to the area, jamming traffic and queuing in front of the throng of television cameras from local, national and U.S. media outlets.

But Galliford refused to comment on whether any human remains have been found on the four-hectare (10-acre) site.

"We are not in a position to disclose to the media or the public any physical evidence that we may find here at this property or any other property, because that may be used as direct evidence in court," Galliford said.

Late Thursday afternoon, however, police forensic identification specialists picked up a small black purse in the entranceway to the property, as well as several other items along a ditch at the edge of the property.

Police sources have identified Robert William Pickton as a person of interest in the case. He is listed on B.C. assessment records as one of three owners of the property being searched.

The farm, which is bordered by new housing developments, has been sealed off since Tuesday, with police stationed at every entrance. On Thursday, police began erecting a chain-link fence to keep out intruders.

Court records show that after the search, Pickton was charged with possession of a loaded, restricted .22-calibre revolver, unsafe storage of a firearm, and possession of a weapon without licence or registration.

Pickton is no longer in custody and has not been been charged with any offences relating to the disappearance of women from the Downtown Eastside. He is due to appear in court on the weapons charges Feb. 28.

Galliford said the missing women task force became interested in the property during its review of all files on prostitutes who have vanished in recent years. The review began last April.

"Over the last few months this became a property of interest to us," Galliford said.

But The Sun has learned that the Vancouver city police began considering Pickton, who goes by the name 'Willy,' a possible person of interest in the missing women case as early as July, 1998.

Investigators received a tip around that time that a woman had been inside Pickton's trailer and had seen bags of bloody clothing as well as women's identification.

Detectives also learned that Pickton had been charged with a knife attack on a Vancouver prostitute in Port Coquitlam on March 23, 1997.

Pickton was also badly wounded in the incident and all the charges against him -- including one of attempted murder -- were stayed on Jan. 28, 1998.

Later, Vancouver police developed a second, independent source who also offered tantalizing information that a woman had seen a body on his property.

Vancouver police detectives pursued the information, but apparently ran into conflict because Pickton resides in RCMP jurisdiction.

As other officers from B.C.'s Unsolved Homicide unit became involved, there was a disagreement over the accuracy of some of the information and the investigation stalled.

Before the disagreement, Vancouver detectives and a Coquitlam investigator had been pushing forward in hopes of getting permission to use a wiretap on the case, but that was apparently abandoned.

Police sources in both the RCMP and Vancouver police department say senior managers are bracing themselves for possible criticism of the way the case was handled.

Already, people are asking why police didn't act sooner.

"If this guy does turn out to be the guy responsible, why wasn't it acted on before?" said Wayne Leng, a friend of Sarah deVries, who went missing in 1998.

Leng has told The Sun that he heard about a farmer named "Willy" while searching for deVries in 1998. Leng had set up a toll-free line for information on deVries' whereabouts, and he received a call from a male tipster.

Leng said he passed the information on to Vancouver city police but never heard what they did with it.

Leng said the name surfaced again a few years later, when family members were again trying to get answers on the case.

"We were all concerned because it didn't seem anybody wanted to take this guy [Willy] seriously, right? We never heard whether they actually did searches of Willy's place or whatever. You know. But we knew he had lots of land and he was fairly well off it seems."

At the farm Thursday, Galliford said police will bring in cadaver dogs and excavating equipment if necessary. But the machinery visible on the farm at present belongs to the owner, she said.

"We are going to go through different stages in our search," she said.

Galliford said the SPCA has been called in to take away pigs on the property and care for them for the duration of the search. The residents of the property are not in custody, nor are they at the scene.

Galliford said police do not know where they are, nor are they trying to locate them.

"We're here to conduct a search. We have a search warrant and that's what we're doing."

While police initially said the property covered 11 hectares (28 acres), much of that has been developed into new subdivisions. The four-hectare (10-acre) remaining farm is the focus of the search.

Galliford was also careful to say that police continue to pursue other leads on the missing women case unrelated to the Pickton property.

"We don't know where we are going to be two months from now or six months from now," she said. "We don't know where our investigation is going to take us."

Galliford also said police worked through the night Wednesday to alert families of a possible break in the missing women case. "And we felt they needed to know that before they found out about it in the media," she said.

"Some of the family did choose to come by the site today and they have also met with some of the investigators."

Val Hughes, whose sister Kerri Koski is among the missing, was one of the family members at the site Thursday, but she declined to comment to the media after meeting with police.

Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education Society (PACE) praised police efforts to alert families members, some of whom arrived at the farm late Thursday to light candles for the missing.

"It is commendable that the families of the missing women were contacted before media and agencies," PACE said in a press release.

The organization also praised the task force's efforts in recent months to meet with women in the sex trade.

"PACE Society applauds their respectful efforts and support investigators in involving these key people without prejudice or punishment."

The police investigation dates back to 1998 and has been marred by problems and controversy throughout. It began when Vancouver police assigned a second officer to its missing persons section to review a sharp increase in the number of missing women.

Then, in 1999, the department formed the Missing Women Review Team amid mounting public pressure over the disappearances, and rising fear that a serial killer was stalking Vancouver prostitutes.

Mayor Philip Owen and senior police officers assured the media at the time that the department was doing everything it could to solve the cases.

The city and province offered a $100,000 reward, brought John Walsh from television's America's Most Wanted to town to release a poster of all 31 women known to be missing at that time and, at one point, police told the media that nine people were at work on the file.

But a Sun investigation last year found the original Vancouver city police investigation was assigned to inexperienced and overworked officers without the time or resources to do a thorough job. The probe was hindered by infighting among officers, a lack of proper training and computer problems.

The investigation eventually stalled until a joint RCMP-Vancouver police probe began in early 2001. The team expanded earlier this year to 30 members, and they have continued to add new names to the list of the missing, which has now reached 50.

Women working the street near the Patricia Hotel Wednesday night welcomed news of a possible break in the case.

But one woman who identified herself as Candy held out little hope for an end to the violence.

"There's always going to be psychos," she said. "They're never going to go away."

Vancouver Sun THE POLICE SEARCH: An aerial photograph taken Thursday shows the pig farm on Dominion Avenue in Port Coquitlam that is partly owned by Robert Pickton. The farm buildings are at the right close to the street and the Carnoustie Golf Course borders the property.

Vancouver Sun This Rottweiler roamed the Pickton property in Port Coquitlam.

The alleged stabbing of a downtown Eastside drug user in 1997 was one of the key incidents that led police to consider Robert Pickton as a person of interest in the disappearance of sex-trade workers.

But for reasons that have yet to be explained, the charges -- including attempted murder and aggravated assault -- against Pickton were dropped less than a year after the incident took place.

What police, medical experts and crown prosecutors know is that Wendy Lyn Eistetter, a drug user who like many addicts support her habit by working in the sex trade, came close to dying on the night April 8, 1997.

Her family says she was saved by an elderly couple who found her bleeding to death on a road in Port Coquitlam near the pig farm co-owned by Pickton and took her to Royal Columbia Hospital.

Pickton was subsequently charged on April 8, 1997 with one count of attempting to murder Eistetter by repeatedly stabbing her with a knife. He was also charged with assaulting her with a brown-handled kitchen knife, unlawful confinement and aggravated assault.

The charges were stayed on Jan. 28, 1998.

Peter Ritchie, Pickton's lawyer at the time, refused Thursday to comment on why the charges were stayed. He also would not say if he is acting for Pickton in the most recent investigation. "You can try me next week," he said.

Randi M. Connor, the Crown counsel who handled the Eistetter case, no longer works for the Crown and could not be located.

The Vancouver Sun could not locate Eistetter, 36, who lives on the street in the downtown Eastside or occasionally stays with friends. She's been interviewed extensively by missing women investigators about the incident, and her mother says she spoke to her as recently as Friday.

Eistetter's mother, Sharon Parry said the incident never shook her daughter off her drug life, even though she knew she was exceptionally lucky to be alive.

"She knew she could have been killed," Parry said.

She said her daughter was so badly injured she remained in hospital for several weeks.

Parry said she never knew why the charges against Pickton were stayed.

Catherine Eistetter, who is married to Wendy Lyn's oldest brother Randy, said in an interview from Prince George her sister-in-law nearly bled to death in the incident.

"We know she nearly died. If it hadn't been for that elderly man and woman who picked her up on the highway, she would have bled to death," she said.

Wendy Lyn has been in frequent trouble with police and the courts for years, most notably in 1998 when she stole a police cruiser in Vancouver while high on cocaine. She dragged a police officer down the street as he tried to stop her from taking the car, which she eventually crashed into the Woodwards building. She was charged with theft and dangerous driving, and given six months in jail and a year's probation.

However, she breached the probation order, and in recent years most of the charges against her are for failing to appear in court.

Parry said her daughter has battled with drugs and street life for years.

"She is a drug user, and she has never been able to kick the habit. She's a pretty sad case. We've had her in treatment many, many times, but she always goes back to the drugs."

Parry said Eistetter got hooked on drugs many years ago after she got hurt playing softball. She said she showed her daughter how to inject a painkiller, Toleran, which had been prescribed by her doctor.

"I guess that's where it all started for her," Parry said.

Parry -- who divorced Wendy Lyn's father Ed Eistetter more than 30 years ago and recently remarried -- said she is in regular contact with her daughter, who is the youngest of four children, behind brothers Randy and Terry and sister Cindy.

She said her daughter has two children, aged seven and eight, who live in North Vancouver with their father, a commercial fisherman.

Parry went to the downtown Eastside Thursday looking for Wendy Lyn, but could not find her.

"I heard from her on Friday, and we keep in contact. I haven't seen her since, but I know she reads the papers, so she's probably aware of what is going on with the place in Port Coquitlam," Parry said.

The scene at the Port Coquitlam pig farm as the search continues. (Ward Perrin - Vancouver Sun)

Lawyer Peter Ritchie previously defended Robert Pickton on an attempted murder charge. (CP File photo)

Port Coquitlam Mayor Scott Young talks with reporters in front of the property being searched by police on Dominion Avenue. (Ward Perrin - Vancouver Sun)

An investigator walks amid debris at the search site. (Ian Lindsay - Vancouver Sun)

Ernie Crey holds a copy of The Vancouver Sun with a story about his missing sister Dawn Crey. (Ian Lindsay - Vancouver Sun)

A Port Coquitlam pig farmer is "shocked" and "flabbergasted" that he has been named a person of interest in the disappearance of 50 prostitutes from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, his lawyer said Friday.

Peter Ritchie, who said he is acting for Robert William Pickton and two other family members, said they are offering police every assistance and are overwhelmed by the media frenzy surrounding the police search of their property on Dominion Avenue.

"I've spoken to the sister and two brothers," Ritchie said, breaking the silence on behalf of the family. "They spoke to me yesterday [Thursday] . . . the family is shocked by this and is trying to assist police."

The family is willing to allow the use of any farm equipment to assist police, he added. "But they're concerned about underground digging, because there are wires and gas lines and various soils stored in a certain way."

"They're flabbergasted," he said when asked what the family members thought about the media reports linking the intensive police search of the farm to the dozens of women who have gone missing from Vancouver.

"They're just stunned by the sudden media attention," Ritchie said. "I think the media intensity is frightening to normal people."

He said he chose to talk to The Sun on behalf of the family because "mostly they want to be left alone. They've had reporters showing up at all hours of the night."

He suggested the media coverage seems to have reached a frenzied pitch. "It appears to be out of hand."

Ritchie said his clients have various business interests, including a home demolition business, a used building supply company and the farm. They also buy and sell cars.

He said he didn't know if his clients were home when police executed a search warrant on the property Tuesday.

But the family doesn't want to return because of the media attention he said, referring to one news report that showed a crowd of reporters watching police fish a shoe out a ditch adjacent to the property.

The family members are living in the Vancouver area and do not wish to speak to the media, said Ritchie, who may hold a further press conference Monday. The family probably would not attend, he added.

Ritchie is part of the Vancouver law firm Gibbons Ritchie & Associates. He previously represented Pickton when the farmer was charged with an attack on a Vancouver prostitute on March 23, 1997. The four charges -- including one of attempted murder -- were stayed in 1998.

On Friday, police refused to confirm if their painstaking search of Pickton's property has yielded the remains or personal possessions of any of the 50 women, some of whom have been missing since 1983.

But Vancouver police Detective Scott Driemel told about 60 local, national and international media gathered for an afternoon news conference at a building supply store parking lot overlooking the farm that they are prepared to scour the entire 10-acre search area "inch by inch" in an investigation that may take months to complete.

Police announced Thursday that Robert Pickton has been charged with illegal possession of a firearm and related offences. He is scheduled to appear in court Feb. 28.

But RCMP missing women's task force spokeswoman Constable Catherine Galliford would not discuss on Friday whether Pickton is a suspect in the missing women investigation. Police sources, however, have told The Sun he is a person of interest in the case.

Dozens of police are involved in the search, including tactical team members charged with curtailing public access to the site, which is ringed on two sides by new housing developments on land formerly owned by the Picktons -- and by temporary fencing in an effort to keep out the curious.

On Friday, the search appeared to focus at the northwest corner of the property, where two farm buildings and a barn-sized mound of construction debris are ringed by three- and four-storey mounds of landfill -- and police acknowledged it may be necessary to use earth moving equipment as the search for evidence continues.

White-clad investigators were visible Friday as they moved around the south end of a sagging old barn that is fronted by a grey pigpen with a cream coloured roof.

Squeals of pigs were audible and members of the SPCA were seen at one point to be administering needles to at least two pigs before taking them away in an SPCA van.

On another occasion an investigator in a hooded white jump suit walked towards the pigpen carrying a white plastic bag.

There is another two-storey wooden building about 30 metres away and police could be seen moving inside that building as well.

In the vicinity are brown mounds of earth and rock with earth movers and old vehicles scattered around them.

Immediately behind the search area is a new condominium complex, part of Port Coquitlam's sprawling Riverwood development.

The condo complex, an elementary school, a park and an under-construction street of single family homes are all part of the original Pickton property. About half the original 55 acres was rezoned for development in the early 1990s.

The remainder of the land retains its agricultural zoning, which allows for the raising and processing of animals.

Galliford said none of the missing women, most of whom were involved in drugs and prostitution, has been confirmed dead, but she added that "progress is being made" in the investigation.

"We are not going to be going into any specifics with regard to what we're searching for," Galliford said. "We've got to be very circumspect about what we can release."

The police representatives declined to comment on a Sun report that police have found personal possessions of some of the missing women -- except to say that the disclosure of potential information relating to the case could be harmful to the investigation.

They announced they are clamping down on the information flow from the investigation, saying they will will be available to comment only twice a day, at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. The briefings will take place seven days a week and will continue indefinitely.

Galliford said police have been flooded with tips since news of the investigation broke Wednesday night and announced that a new tip line has been created -- 1-877-687-3377.

A brother of Dawn Crey, one of the missing women, visited the site Friday, saying he could not stop himself from going there. Relatives of other missing women have also visited the site, desperate for some sort of information about the fate of their loved ones.

"I want to know what has become of my sister," Ernie Crey said. "I never imagined that the investigation would take us to a place like this.

"I'm afraid of what may be found here. It fills me with anxiety and dread, but those feelings aside, I'm anxious to learn what it is they discover here. It's a horrifying idea to contemplate any of the women being found in these circumstances."

A former president of the United Native Nations, which serves urban aboriginals, Crey was one of the participants in a protest march last year through the Downtown Eastside to raise the profile of what many of the missing women's families believe was an unnecessarily slow investigation by Vancouver police.

The investigation picked up speed after the RCMP became involved.

Crey noted that critics of Vancouver police suggested the original investigation was hindered by the profile of the women involved -- poor, drug-addicted prostitutes --- but he declined to voice a criticism himself, saying he is mainly relieved that there seems to be a break in the case.

"All of the families are hungry for some knowledge about what became of the particular family members and if it is determined that this determination is made right here, so be it, because we want to know what became of our loved ones.

"What happens now is important, what happens tomorrow and the days to follow. I don't know that it benefits us to revisit history."

In a related development, Port Coquitlam Mayor Scott Young acknowledged Friday he attended a party at a hall dubbed "Piggy's Palace," co-owned by Robert Pickton.

But Young said that at the time of his visit in September, 1996, he was unaware that the city was in a dispute with Robert Pickton and his brother David over whether the building was a fire hazard. And he said his visit was at the request of people living in the neighbourhood who wanted to "get to know" him.

At the time, Young was a school trustee and was considering running for council. He was subsequently elected as a councillor, and won a byelection for the mayor's job last year after the death of long-serving Mayor Len Traboulay.

"I was invited there on one occasion, in September, 1996, prior to being on council," he said. "It was a neighbourhood party. I was on the school board at the time, and I was invited so people could get to know me."

Young said he was introduced to David Pickton at the party, but has never met his brother Robert.

In 1996, the city went to court seeking an order against the brothers and their "Piggy's Palace Good Times Society" to bar them from holding parties at the hall at 2552 Burns Road in Port Coquitlam.

Company records indicate the society was incorporated on June 11, 1996 and had five directors, including the two Pickton brothers. It was eventually dissolved on January 14, 2000 for failing to file its annual statements.

By that time, however, the city's attention on the property had heated up considerably after Fire Chief Randy Shaw became concerned about parties being held in the hall contrary to regulations. RCMP had also noted liquor was served at a graduation party there in May, 1998.

Young said he was not aware that the hall was operating illegally until the issue was brought to council by Shaw following his election.

Mother says she hopes they find bodies there

Saturday, February 9, 2002

By LEWIS KAMB AND MIKE BARBER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. -- Lynn Frey has made the half-day trip countless times from her home in Campbell River on Vancouver Island to the avenues of British Columbia's biggest city.

For the past four years, she and her sister have braved the sleazy streets of Vancouver's Eastside tenderloin district, questioning the unfortunate women who haunt the streets, in a lonely search for Frey's troubled daughter.

About two years ago they began hearing from drug users and prostitutes who might have known Frey's daughter, Marnie, who was 24 when she disappeared in 1997. The bits and pieces of information seemed to point to an inconspicuous, muddy pig farm 22 miles out of town.

One of the men who lived at the farm was well-known to girls who work the streets, and in 1997 had been arrested for trying to kill a prostitute, she heard. It was a dirty place on a potholed road amid a blossoming bedroom community, the girls told her. It was a place many only heard about and refused to go to even though its hosts threw great parties, lest they be left with no way back to Vancouver, Frey recalls.

The stories resonated with Frey. The swampy farm was too close to home, blocks from the home of her own sister. The pig farm seemed eerie to both of them, she said.

"It was like a magnet," alternately attracting and repelling, she said.

Yet when Frey suggested that Vancouver police investigating the disappearances of dozens of missing women in recent years look at the place, her words seemed to fall on deaf ears. Her fading hopes were buoyed, though, when a joint police task force of Vancouver police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police was formed last year to look into the disappearances of 50 women in what is believed to be Canada's most prolific string of serial slayings.

Two days ago, Frey steeled her heart again.

"The task force called me (Wednesday) night to let me know there was going to be something on the media the next day," Frey said. "I thought nothing of it. I've been in touch with the police and called umpteen times in the last four years."

On Thursday, images of the pig farm flashed across television screens and newspaper pages as the task force searched the farm amid speculation of a major break in the case. Frey felt her heart soar, then crash.

"My heart went to my stomach," she said. "I hope this doesn't sound callous, I don't know how else to say it, but I am hoping -- I'm willing to believe -- that they will find bodies.

"Over the years you get your hopes up high to find her, only to have them drop like a falling elevator. I need closure now to carry on with my life. How many times can a mother do this?"

Mothers, fathers, family and friends of many of the missing women have driven to the farm now under police seal. Like Frey, they believe police waited too long to take their fears seriously. Some say they also alerted investigators to their suspicions and tips about one of the farmers, even as the list of missing women grew.

Two brothers, Robert William and David Francis Pickton, and their sister, Linda, own the farm where they grew up. They became wealthy, by some reports, by selling off parcels for development. Rows of townhouses border the north of the farm, a golf course flanks the east, where the nearby Pitt River flows toward the Fraser River. The brothers live on the last 10 acres.

Early yesterday, investigators could be seen shoveling dirt or manure mounds in a plank barn on the property near the confluence of the Fraser and Pitt rivers.

Robert Pickton, 52, was arrested Tuesday on three weapons violations after police served a search warrant on the pale yellow house. According to the Vancouver Sun, officers found identification cards and other personal items belonging to two missing women, prompting another search.

Pickton was released from custody Wednesday, but is due in court on Feb. 28. Police yesterday declined to say if they know where he is or whether he is under surveillance. Police also declined to call Pickton a suspect in the disappearances, saying only that he is among "hundreds" of people still under scrutiny.

Asked at a news conference about the criticism that Vancouver police bungled by not looking sooner at the Pickton farm, Detective Scott Driemel, spokesman for the department, said any information gathered years ago was "shared, and whatever could be acted upon was."

"We're not about to go back and defend ourselves for something that happened years ago," he said, adding that resource constraints and time needed to track thousands of leads complicated early investigation efforts. But authorities are now "aggressively pursuing the investigation," he said.

Other officials said they have been diligent, but it takes time to examine hundreds of tips to determine what was hearsay and what was legally actionable, and that it is difficult to track down prostitutes and drug users who live a transient lifestyle, often using different names.

While the list of 50 missing women dates back to 1983, most dropped out of sight in the 1990s, including 31 since 1997.

Last fall, the new task force said the missing persons cases were being treated as multiple homicides. While task force members have consulted King County investigators looking into the Green River slayings of 49 women -- many of them prostitutes -- between 1982 and 1984, police in both countries see no link.

Neighbors say Pickton and his younger brother, David, sometimes threw late night parties and pig roasts in a makeshift, unlicensed nightclub known as "Piggy's Palace."

Over the years, the brothers raised fewer pigs, instead selling fill-dirt and gravel from the farm and dabbling in building demolition, friends said.

One woman who declined to giver her name said she has known the brothers for more than 10 years and often joined them for outings to a biker bar in Burnaby. The brothers rode Harley-Davidson motorcycles and mingled with biker gangs, she said.

She described David Pickton as generous and friendly, but said "Willy" was creepy.

"He kind of kept to himself, hanging out back there in the piggery all the time," she said.

Willy, a tall, thin man with a halo of long and curly dirty blond hair, once showed the woman how he boiled pigs in a large vat, she said.

"It kind of freaked me out," she said.

Friends and relatives of the missing women say they became aware of Robert Pickton after his name surfaced in 1997, when a prostitute and drug addict accused him of trying to stab her to death during an encounter at the farm in 1997. Pickton was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and unlawful confinement, but charges were later dropped. The woman, who had run screaming from the farm in handcuffs, reportedly refused to testify. Her whereabouts is unknown.

Those who know Pickton, who was also seriously wounded during the incident, have a different version of the attack. They say a prostitute pulled a knife and tried to rob Pickton, slashing him across the chin.

Yet those who tried to point police toward the farm over the years believe authorities missed their chance to stop the disappearances.

"They dropped the ball on this," said Wayne Leng, a B.C. native who now lives in California. His friend, Sarah deVries, is one of the missing women. He said he first told Vancouver police about a pig farmer known as "Willy" in mid-1998, after a man told him about an assault of a prostitute, and of finding women's clothing and identification at the farm.

"I think that more women would be alive today if they would have acted sooner," Leng said yesterday.

That authorities knew of tips and Pickton's past run-ins with the law years ago, but did not key in on the pig farmer until now "really pisses me off," said Carrie Kerr, a 28-year-old Maple Ridge woman whose sister went missing in 1997.

When Kerr's older sister, Helen Hallmark, a drug user and known prostitute, didn't show up for Christmas that year, "we knew something was wrong," Kerr said. "They knew about this guy for years, and they didn't do anything about it," she said. "How many women are dead now because of it?"

Frey, meanwhile, wonders what might have happened to her daughter. The tale of Marnie's slide into prostitution, and the battles to save her, is a familiar one to the victims' families she has met.

"Marnie was a very loving person. If a stranger walking down a street needed 50 cents and that was all she had, she'd give the last 50 cents in her pocket," her mother said.

"Marnie got mixed up with the wrong people, started doing cocaine, then heroin. She was 19 or 20 when it started. When she got on heroin, she went to the streets of Vancouver to support her heroin habit, and started living that life. We couldn't stop her."

Frey said her daughter, however, worried about her family and called several times a week to let them know she was OK. That stopped almost five years ago.

Frey and her husband, Dean, a commercial fisherman, kept their doors open to their daughter and waged a battle over the years for her life.

She came back home several times, thin, sick, vomiting, determined to clean the toxins from her body.

Once she made it into drug treatment in Victoria.

Always she bolted in less than a week, surrendering to heroin. Marnie's body would ache from withdrawal, her mother said, the shakes, vomiting, her bones aching. Her family's heart ached, too.

"The doors were never closed and they still are not," her mother said.

'It's hard for me to believe this': Community reacts to search of B.C. pig farm

By Janet Burkitt
Seattle Times staff reporter

	BCTV NEWS / VANCOUVER SUN David Pickton talks with an unidentified man in 1996.

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. — Gloria Bidwell first met Robert "Willy" Pickton two years ago, when she needed someone with a trailer to move her horse, and he offered to do it for $25. When one of her goats got sick a year later, she turned to Pickton again, and he advised a successful treatment of penicillin shots and vitamins.

He's always been helpful to Bidwell; about the worst she can say about her 52-year-old friend and neighbor is he sometimes tells corny knock-knock jokes and — with his grubby appearance and solitary ways — might come across as weird.

But Bidwell, 32, is well aware that some in this suburban Vancouver town have long viewed his eccentricities in a more sinister light, whispering about a man alternately described as an oddball loner and the host of wild parties.

	BCTV / VANCOUVER SUN David Pickton's older brother, Robert “Willy” Pickton, also in 1996.

The talk has never been more rampant than now, as Canadian authorities scour the muddy pig farm where he lives with his brother in the investigation into the disappearance of some 50 women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside over nearly 20 years.

The family of one missing woman said it told police about the Pickton farm years ago; the friend of another said he told police about a man named Willy.

Police won't say what they're looking for on the 10-acre farm, and they aren't calling Pickton a suspect. They say they carried out a search warrant against him Tuesday on firearms violations and found something that made them get another search warrant the next day.

According to anonymous police sources quoted in The Vancouver Sun, identifications of at least two of the missing women were among the items found.

Willy Pickton and his younger brother, David Pickton, meanwhile, are apparently not at their farm, though police won't comment on their whereabouts.

Willy Pickton was charged Thursday with violating Canadian gun laws and has a court appearance scheduled for Feb. 28.

The brothers did not return calls; an attorney for the family said Willy Pickton was flabbergasted by the investigation.

As far as any connection between Willy Pickton and the missing women, "I wouldn't figure him to be involved in something like that," says his friend Bidwell, who raises farm animals. "It's hard for me to believe that something like this could be happening."

Owned the farm for decades

The Pickton name is well known in Port Coquitlam, a city of 53,000 known locally as "PoCo." Mayor Scott Young said the Picktons were among the early settlers, having owned the farm for decades.

"When you mention the Picktons, you know the pig farm right away," said 62-year-old Gordon Stidolph, a lifelong resident. Locals say it had 600 or 700 pigs in its prime, and was several times its current size.

"I think in Port Coquitlam it was probably the biggest pig farm there ever was," Stidolph said.

Pickton, his brother and sister grew up on the farm with their parents — "simple farmers," said 38-year-old Troy Hoffer, whose father bought pigs from the Picktons.

When Hoffer worked on the farm as a teen, Willy and Dave's father wasn't working on the farm as much and the brothers worked alongside their middle-aged mother. "She was a really nice lady, super hard-working," Hoffer recalls. Hoffer said the boys went to school, but he doesn't know for how long. At some point, he said, Dave got interested in running heavy equipment and other work pursuits, but Willy was a natural farmer, always on the land.

The brothers and their sister inherited the farm and reportedly cashed in on PoCo's growth spurt, selling off land for condos, an elementary school and a city park as the once-rural enclave 22 miles east of Vancouver was transformed into a sprawling suburb. What remains of the farm was recently assessed at more than $3 million in Canadian dollars.

The brothers own a number of other properties under a company called Pickton Brothers Investments, as well as a used-building materials business in a nearby town.

Burly, bearded Dave Pickton has long been a familiar sight at City Hall, applying for rezoning and development permits.

"Most of the staff have found him to be a decent fellow," Mayor Young said. "He's no stranger to the community ... (but) to be perfectly honest, I've never met Robert."

Some neighbors say they didn't know Dave Pickton had a brother.

That's how it is around PoCo, said Lilian Seymour, 33, who's lived in the area most of her life. "Everybody knows Dave," she said. "Nobody knows too much of Willy."

Willy Pickton goes most Saturdays to the Fraser Valley Auction, where Bidwell often sees him buying pigs, sheep, llamas and goats. Friends say he goes to a lot of auto auctions, too, and sells car parts.

And he spends a lot of time at the farm, reportedly living in a trailer that police were searching last week. Friends say Dave lives in the main house.

Hoffer said Willy Pickton might be more solitary than his brother but that he's far from anti-social.

Both brothers took part in a venture they dubbed the "Piggy Palace Good Times Society," involving a building on a swampy Pickton property around the corner from the farm where they threw big parties that quickly became legendary.

The city tried to shut down the parties at "Piggy's Palace" a few years ago, claiming they created fire hazards. The fire chief said in an affidavit that a building on the land — zoned for agriculture — housed a "commercial-type kitchen, pub-type bar, raised entertainment stage, dance floor, sound and lighting system and tables and chairs capable of accommodating a group in excess of 150 persons."

An injunction was granted in 1998, though some residents say parties still regularly happen.

Locals don't talk much about the parties, but people in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside do, according to the family of a missing woman.

Lynn Frey started visiting with prostitutes in the city after her 24-year-old stepdaughter, Marnie, disappeared in August 1997, hoping to hear something that might help her find Marnie. When women started mentioning a pig farm and a guy they called "Wee Willy Wonka," she recalled, she thought they were probably just stoned and rambling. But the references kept coming up.

"They'd say, 'This guy's got pigs and he's really gross, and people will come and pick you up and take you there. ... But it was a place to stay, plus there was all the booze they wanted ... and they could shower," she said.

Police were called

When Frey pressed women about it, though, she says they clammed up. "They would say, 'I don't want to talk about it,' hold their hand up and just walk away."

She and her sister called police in 1999. She said they were told that police would check on it, but never heard anything from authorities about the farm until last week.

A few months before Frey's stepdaughter disappeared, Willy Pickton was charged with attempted murder, accused of stabbing a young woman from Vancouver's streets and confining her. It's not clear why the charges were eventually dismissed.

"I just figured it was a rumor," Bidwell said. "People always tell wild and whacked-out stories."

As for the current talk, Bidwell says she'll pay it no heed unless she knows more.

Last week, she said that she hadn't heard from him since mid-January.

After the police search started, she paged him one night, just to see how he was doing. He hasn't called back.

Monday, February 11, 2002

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

So here's the plot: For two decades, a detective tries to find a psychopath believed to have abducted and strangled dozens of prostitutes while leaving few clues to his identity. Finally, DNA technology provides the break he has longed for.

It sounds like a book or movie that might give the detective some well-deserved credit.

The only problem is that the detective -- King County Sheriff Dave Reichert -- wants no part of it.

"This isn't about Dave Reichert. This is about the families," Reichert told the South County Journal in Kent. "I am not doing any movies. I am not writing any book. I am about solving crimes."

Reichert began investigating the murders as a young detective in the early 1980s. As the death toll grew to 49, he became ever more resolved -- and eventually took the lead of the Green River Task Force.

He and others long suspected Gary Ridgway, a truck painter from Auburn who was the last person to be seen with several of the women before they vanished. Last year, advances in DNA technology allowed them to link him conclusively to four victims, prosecutors say.

Ridgway, 52, was arrested in November and charged with aggravated first-degree murder in the deaths of four women -- three of whom were found in or near the Green River south of Seattle.

Within an hour after Reichert announced the arrest, a talent agent in Beverly Hills, Calif., was on the phone, asking to represent the sheriff and his staff in telling their story. A follow-up fax read, "I believe your success will generate an enormous amount of publicity and interest from the entertainment industry."

Reichert -- jokingly referred to as "Dave Hollywood" by his staff -- wasn't impressed.

As officers search B.C. farm, gate bars families

By Seattle Times News Services

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. — Investigators broke out sandbags yesterday as rain churned the mud at a pig farm where they've spent the past several days searching for clues in the disappearances of 50 women from the Vancouver area.

Crews of between a dozen and 40 officers, assisted by dogs, continued searching the site around the clock. A security fence barred onlookers and friends and family members of victims from the property east of Vancouver.

Roses and pictures of some of the women adorned the farm's front entrance. Tears streamed down Kathy Murray's face after she placed a white paper heart in remembrance of her friend Cathy Gonzalez, who has been missing since March 1995.

"I just wanted her family, in particular her daughter, to know that somebody remembers Cathy," Murray said.

Last week, police executed a search warrant on the farm about 22 miles east of Vancouver. One of the owners, 52-year-old Robert William Pickton, faces three weapons charges.

Police have not named Pickton or his brother as suspects, but they insist they had good reason to seek the search warrant.

Police refused to comment on reports in The Vancouver Sun that police have found personal items on the property linked to at least two of the 50 missing women, all of whom were involved in drugs or the sex trade.

Yesterday, The Sun reported that a longtime friend of Pickton's said she had been interviewed previously by RCMP investigators about Pickton and Vancouver's missing women case.

Gina Houston told The Sun that she and Pickton, whom she calls Willy, were once questioned by police for five hours about the missing women. "Oh, they questioned us from one end to the other about them, and I know a few of them."

Houston said the search of Pickton's property is the result of false accusations by a woman with a drug problem.

Told of Houston's comments about being interviewed by police, Constable Catherine Galliford, who speaks for the joint Vancouver Police-RCMP Missing Women Task Force, declined to say anything yesterday.

Houston also claimed to know the Vancouver prostitute whom Pickton was accused of trying to stab to death with a knife in 1997. Charges of attempted murder against him were dropped in 1998.

"He got the bum end of the deal because of that incident with the hooker that he brought back here that stabbed him," Houston told The Sun. "They dropped the charges against him because all the wounds on him were in the back. He defended himself and ended up stabbing her."

Yesterday the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals removed about 40 sheep, 10 goats, eight pigs, two llamas and two cows from the farm to a location in Langley, according to The Sun.

Last week two pigs on the property had to be euthanized and two sick sheep were turned over to an SPCA veterinarian.

Officers from the missing women's task force, made up of RCMP and Vancouver Police personnel, met yesterday afternoon with a select group of family members of the missing women at an undisclosed location in the Lower Mainland, task-force spokeswoman Galliford said.

The meeting, she said, was to keep the families informed as much as possible and to urge them to have patience with the pace of the investigation.

"We're not going to be releasing any information to the families that we would be concerned about ... going public," she said. "One of the things that we will be telling them is, just in general, what it is we are doing. If they have any specific questions that we can not answer because it might jeopardize our investigation, we will tell them that. We just want to keep them in the loop as much as we can without jeopardizing the ongoing investigation."

It could be months before the joint RCMP-Vancouver City Police task force wraps up the search at the farm.

"Keep in mind that before anything is even touched, everything has to be photographed, it has to be videoed, maps have to be drawn," Vancouver police spokesman Detective Scott Driemel said.

"It's painstakingly slow, but we have to be methodical," Driemel said, "and we have to be absolutely clear and concise because we don't know at this point what may or may not be evidence in court."

Muddy Search For Missing B.C. Women Continues

February 10, 2002
 
By KOMO Staff & News Services

Email This Story

PORT COQUITLAM, BRITISH COLUMBIA - Investigators broke out sandbags on Sunday as rain churned the mud at a pig farm where they've spent the last several days searching for clues in the disappearances of 50 women from the Vancouver area.

Crews of between a dozen and 40 officers, assisted by dogs, continued searching the site around the clock. A security fence barred onlookers and friends and family members of victims from the property east of Vancouver.

Roses and pictures of some of the women adorned the farm's front entrance. Tears streamed down Kathy Murray's face after she placed a white paper heart in remembrance of her friend Cathy Gonzalez, who has been missing since March 1995

"I just wanted her family, in particular her daughter, to know that somebody remembers Cathy," Murray said.

Last week, police executed a search warrant on the farm about 22 miles east of Vancouver. One of the owners, 52-year-old Robert William Pickton, faces three weapons charges.

Police have not named Pickton or his brother as suspects, but they insist they had good reason to seek the search warrant.

It could be months before the joint RCMP-Vancouver City Police task force investigating the disappearances wraps up the search at the farm.

"Keep in mind that before anything is even touched, everything has to be photographed, it has to be videoed, maps have to be drawn," Vancouver police spokesman Det. Scott Driemel said Sunday.

"It's painstakingly slow, but we have to be methodical," Driemel said, "and we have to be absolutely clear and concise because we don't know at this point what may or may not be evidence in court."

Police refused to comment on media reports that identification and personal items belonging to one or more of the missing women have been located at the farm.

The Pickton brothers once hosted elaborate, club-style parties at "Piggy's Palace," a warehouse they owned near the pig farm.

The city tried but failed to get a court order in 1996 to force the Picktons and their Piggy's Palace Good Times Society to stop throwing parties on the property.

The city got an injunction in 1998, but the parties continued. The society was dissolved in January 2000 for failing to file annual statements.

Meanwhile, John Urquhart, spokesman for the King County Sheriff's office in Seattle, said no link had been found between the women's disappearances and the deaths of 49 women in the Green River serial killings around Seattle and Portland, Ore., in the early 1980s.

"Everybody is trying to read more into this than they probably should at this point," Urquhart said.

"We've got the largest unsolved serial killing case in the United States, and I have to assume that (the) missing Vancouver prostitutes is the largest in Canada, so they want to link them up," Urquhart said. "Maybe they're linked and maybe they're not. Most likely, they're not.

Vancouver investigators compared notes with Washington state detectives in December after the arrest of a 52-year-old truck painter from Auburn, in four of the 49 slayings.

Customs checks have not yet determined if Gary Ridgway had ever been to Vancouver. Ridgway has pleaded innocent to four counts of aggravated first-degree murder.

Vancouver police had been criticized for their handling of the case before a joint task force was formed a year ago.

Families have said that the disappearances were ignored because the women were poor, some of them drug-addicted prostitutes. And families have complained they are not being kept abreast of new developments.

"This (farm) is not the sole focus of the investigation, this is just one aspect of the overall general joint task force investigation," Driemel said.

But some victims' families are hopeful of resolution after so many years of silence.

"It's heart-wrenching," Murray said.

"I don't even want to let my mind think about what might have happened in there," she said, peering behind her at a decrepit house in the corner of the property.

Murray said she just wants Gonzalez to finally be found. "I just want to know that she is found and that there is some closure for her family, for her daughter."

David Pickton (left) talks with an unidentified official in this 1996 photo taken when the family was contesting an increase in their property assessment. David is Robert Pickton's brother and is part owner of the farm being searched.

This advertisement appeared in the Tri-City News in 1996 for a party being held at Robert and David Pickton's property. The ad was attached to an affidavit filed in court by Port Coquitlam Fire Chief Randy Shaw seeking to have an injunction issued against the Picktons to bar parties on the site.

A Port Coquitlam property also owned by the man whose farm is being searched by the missing-women task force was the site of several large parties the city tried to shut down as a fire hazard, court documents show.

Documents filed in B.C. Supreme Court show that Robert Pickton, described by police sources as "a person of interest" in their investigation, and his brother David held several parties in a building dubbed "Piggy's Palace."

One was a 1998 graduation party at which liquor was served.

The city of Port Coquitlam went to court in 1996 seeking an order against the brothers and their "Piggy Palace Good Times Society" to bar them from holding any more parties on their property, zoned as agricultural land.

No order was issued at that time.

In an affidavit filed with the court in 1998, Port Coquitlam Fire Chief Randy Shaw said he toured the property with David Pickton in September 1998 and found a building there that appeared to be a dance hall.

"I observed a commercial type kitchen, pub type bar, raised entertainment stage, dance floor, sound and lighting system and tables and chairs capable of accommodating a group in excess of 150 persons," the affidavit states.

While Pickton insisted to Shaw that the building was only used for "family gatherings" or other small events, Shaw said the city's bylaw enforcement office said the building had been regularly used for large, commercial parties -- including some that were advertised in local community newspapers.

In May 1998, Shaw wrote, he received a report "from the RCMP that they attended the [Picktons'] property and found approximately 60 to 80 people present for a graduation party at which liquor was being served."

In a statement of defence filed with the court, the Picktons said the parties they held on their property were for "sports organizations or other worthy groups, with the net profits, if any, of such events to be gifted to worthy non-profit groups and associations."

The brothers argued the parties did not violate the agricultural zoning of their property.

On Dec. 31, 1998, Shaw attended the Picktons' property again and noticed "a refrigerated truck parked in front of the premises and individuals unloading a [pallet] of beer."

As a result, the city went to court that day and sought an injunction halting any more parties at the property.

Justice William Scarth granted the injunction on Dec. 31, 1998, barring the Picktons from using their property for large dances or parties.

But the parties apparently continued.

The Picktons own several properties in the Port Coquitlam and Maple Ridge area worth millions of dollars.

The largest, at 953 Dominion Ave. in Port Coquitlam, where the police are now searching, was assessed this year at $3 million.

The brothers own the property with their sister, Linda L. Wright, who lives in Vancouver.

Last September, the Picktons bought a nearby property, at 2650 Burns Rd., for $831,000.

The brothers also own two smaller properties -- a residential and farm property on Burns Road assessed at $135,500 (where Piggy's Palace was located) and a residence on 113th Ave. in Maple Ridge assessed at $257,000.

Some of those properties are owned by Pickton Brothers Investments Inc., a company controlled by the Picktons and another man, Brian Omichinski.

Neither the Picktons nor Omichinski could be reached for comment Thursday.

The brothers also own P & B Used Building Materials Ltd., located on Tannery Road in Surrey.

"They go and bid on houses that need to be demolished and then buy all the salvageable stuff and sell it," said Haroon Rashid, owner of the nearby Standard Truck Parts.

Rashid said he gets along well with the staff at P & B, but doesn't know much about the Pickton brothers.

"I don't really know the owners too much," he said. "They don't come around too much. I've seen Dave. He was here about a week ago. . . . [But] I don't know Rob."

Rashid said David is an "awesome guy" with a long beard and stocky build.

"Not your typical business type," he said.

Scott Young, the mayor of Port Coquitlam, said he believes the Picktons have lived on their farm for several decades.

"They owned it for quite a number of years -- 30 or 40 years," he said. "They've been in the community a long time."

Young said he remembers meeting David a few times.

"Dave's been into city hall. . . . He seemed to get along well with the staff," he said. "But I don't know Robert."

Don Leslie, who estimated he has known the family for 30 years, said he does not think the men are capable of murder.

"They don't strike me as killers," he said. "They don't strike me as people who would do those kinds of things."

He said he was better acquainted with David Pickton, whom he described as a "pretty normal guy."

"I knew his brother too, but we're not really friends," he said.

Bill Leslie, another Port Coquitlam resident, said he believes David has a grown son and daughter.

He said he knows the brothers, but not that well.

"They're not the most sociable people," he said.

Vancouver Sun THE POLICE SEARCH: An aerial photograph taken Thursday shows the pig farm on Dominion Avenue in Port Coquitlam that is partly owned by Robert Pickton. The farm buildings are at the right close to the street and the Carnoustie Golf Course borders the property.

Vancouver Sun This Rottweiler roamed the Pickton property in Port Coquitlam.

The alleged stabbing of a downtown Eastside drug user in 1997 was one of the key incidents that led police to consider Robert Pickton as a person of interest in the disappearance of sex-trade workers.

But for reasons that have yet to be explained, the charges -- including attempted murder and aggravated assault -- against Pickton were dropped less than a year after the incident took place.

What police, medical experts and crown prosecutors know is that Wendy Lyn Eistetter, a drug user who like many addicts support her habit by working in the sex trade, came close to dying on the night April 8, 1997.

Her family says she was saved by an elderly couple who found her bleeding to death on a road in Port Coquitlam near the pig farm co-owned by Pickton and took her to Royal Columbia Hospital.

Pickton was subsequently charged on April 8, 1997 with one count of attempting to murder Eistetter by repeatedly stabbing her with a knife. He was also charged with assaulting her with a brown-handled kitchen knife, unlawful confinement and aggravated assault.

The charges were stayed on Jan. 28, 1998.

Peter Ritchie, Pickton's lawyer at the time, refused Thursday to comment on why the charges were stayed. He also would not say if he is acting for Pickton in the most recent investigation. "You can try me next week," he said.

Randi M. Connor, the Crown counsel who handled the Eistetter case, no longer works for the Crown and could not be located.

The Vancouver Sun could not locate Eistetter, 36, who lives on the street in the downtown Eastside or occasionally stays with friends. She's been interviewed extensively by missing women investigators about the incident, and her mother says she spoke to her as recently as Friday.

Eistetter's mother, Sharon Parry said the incident never shook her daughter off her drug life, even though she knew she was exceptionally lucky to be alive.

"She knew she could have been killed," Parry said.

She said her daughter was so badly injured she remained in hospital for several weeks.

Parry said she never knew why the charges against Pickton were stayed.

Catherine Eistetter, who is married to Wendy Lyn's oldest brother Randy, said in an interview from Prince George her sister-in-law nearly bled to death in the incident.

"We know she nearly died. If it hadn't been for that elderly man and woman who picked her up on the highway, she would have bled to death," she said.

Wendy Lyn has been in frequent trouble with police and the courts for years, most notably in 1998 when she stole a police cruiser in Vancouver while high on cocaine. She dragged a police officer down the street as he tried to stop her from taking the car, which she eventually crashed into the Woodwards building. She was charged with theft and dangerous driving, and given six months in jail and a year's probation.

However, she breached the probation order, and in recent years most of the charges against her are for failing to appear in court.

Parry said her daughter has battled with drugs and street life for years.

"She is a drug user, and she has never been able to kick the habit. She's a pretty sad case. We've had her in treatment many, many times, but she always goes back to the drugs."

Parry said Eistetter got hooked on drugs many years ago after she got hurt playing softball. She said she showed her daughter how to inject a painkiller, Toleran, which had been prescribed by her doctor.

"I guess that's where it all started for her," Parry said.

Parry -- who divorced Wendy Lyn's father Ed Eistetter more than 30 years ago and recently remarried -- said she is in regular contact with her daughter, who is the youngest of four children, behind brothers Randy and Terry and sister Cindy.

She said her daughter has two children, aged seven and eight, who live in North Vancouver with their father, a commercial fisherman.

Parry went to the downtown Eastside Thursday looking for Wendy Lyn, but could not find her.

"I heard from her on Friday, and we keep in contact. I haven't seen her since, but I know she reads the papers, so she's probably aware of what is going on with the place in Port Coquitlam," Parry said.

Vancouver Sun His every move watched through the lenses of a horde of photographers, an RCMP identification squad member pulls a shoe from a ditch at the Pickton property.

Vancouver Sun A relative of Kerri Koske, one of the 50 missing women, talks with RCMP at the search site.

The road that led investigators looking into the cases of missing women to a Port Coquitlam pig farm this week has been long and circuitous.

Vancouver police first began the missing women probe back in 1998 after noticing a pattern of disappearances of women in the sex trade on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Initially, there were just two missing persons investigators on the case.

But that was expanded with much fanfare in 1999 -- the same year police released a poster of 31 women who had vanished.

Police said at the time they were doing everything they could, especially given that they had no bodies. Even John Walsh, of America's Most Wanted television show, praised police efforts and the offer of a $100,000 reward in the case.

But a recent Vancouver Sun investigation uncovered major deficiencies with the initial investigation.

The Sun discovered the number of women missing was much higher than Vancouver police had identified.

And the Sun team found that although Vancouver police told the media and the public they had up to nine people working on the file, many of those officers were either assigned part-time or were working two jobs at once -- meaning the actual number of officers on the case at any one time was much fewer than indicated.

In some cases, the officers distrusted one another, withheld information from the rest of the team, or lacked the proper training to handle such a complex case.

The Sun has also learned that there were data entry problems with the computer system that was used to manage information about the case.

The result was a deficient investigation into what may be the largest serial murder case in the city's history.

And at least one officer familiar with the case told The Sun the investigation was so rife with problems that the case should be the subject of a public inquiry.

The investigation goes back to the summer of 1998, when Vancouver police assigned a second officer to the missing-persons section to review a sharp increase in the number of missing women.

The investigation eventually stalled and was replaced last spring by the current RCMP-Vancouver police team, which began a months-long review of files involving missing and murdered prostitutes from around the province.

It was during that review that the Port Coquitlam property that is now being searched was flagged by investigators.

The joint review team expanded to a full-fledged task force last fall and grew in December to 30 officers, as the number of women missing also grew -- to 50.

Now, task force media liaison officer Constable Catherine Galliford says whatever is necessary for the current probe will be provided.

"We have been assured that we will be given whatever resources we need to conduct this search," she said.

Vancouver Sun RCMP and Vancouver city police officers launched search of Port Coquitlam pig farm after personal identification of missing prostitutes was found.

Robert William Pickton (above), whose property is being searched by police, heads into a pigpen on his farm in this 1996 still from a Global BCTV News video. The footage was taken during a story about a property tax complaint.

(Robert William Pickton)

Police searching for firearms on a Port Coquitlam farm found personal identification and other items linked to at least two of the 50 prostitutes missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

Members of the joint RCMP-Vancouver city police missing women task force were present for the firearms search Tuesday night and discovery of the women's ID prompted them to get a second warrant for the property, according to police sources familiar with the investigation.

Officially, however, police weren't saying Thursday what they found during the firearms search that prompted them to get a second warrant.

"We are very confident in our reasons for obtaining the search warrant and as you know, we need to have some really good information in order for a judge to grant us a search warrant," said Constable Catherine Galliford, who speaks for the missing women task force.

Dozens of RCMP officers patrolled the farm Thursday, while neighbours, schoolchildren and curiosity-seekers flocked to the area, jamming traffic and queuing in front of the throng of television cameras from local, national and U.S. media outlets.

But Galliford refused to comment on whether any human remains have been found on the four-hectare (10-acre) site.

"We are not in a position to disclose to the media or the public any physical evidence that we may find here at this property or any other property, because that may be used as direct evidence in court," Galliford said.

Late Thursday afternoon, however, police forensic identification specialists picked up a small black purse in the entranceway to the property, as well as several other items along a ditch at the edge of the property.

Police sources have identified Robert William Pickton as a person of interest in the case. He is listed on B.C. assessment records as one of three owners of the property being searched.

The farm, which is bordered by new housing developments, has been sealed off since Tuesday, with police stationed at every entrance. On Thursday, police began erecting a chain-link fence to keep out intruders.

Court records show that after the search, Pickton was charged with possession of a loaded, restricted .22-calibre revolver, unsafe storage of a firearm, and possession of a weapon without licence or registration.

Pickton is no longer in custody and has not been been charged with any offences relating to the disappearance of women from the Downtown Eastside. He is due to appear in court on the weapons charges Feb. 28.

Galliford said the missing women task force became interested in the property during its review of all files on prostitutes who have vanished in recent years. The review began last April.

"Over the last few months this became a property of interest to us," Galliford said.

But The Sun has learned that the Vancouver city police began considering Pickton, who goes by the name 'Willy,' a possible person of interest in the missing women case as early as July, 1998.

Investigators received a tip around that time that a woman had been inside Pickton's trailer and had seen bags of bloody clothing as well as women's identification.

Detectives also learned that Pickton had been charged with a knife attack on a Vancouver prostitute in Port Coquitlam on March 23, 1997.

Pickton was also badly wounded in the incident and all the charges against him -- including one of attempted murder -- were stayed on Jan. 28, 1998.

Later, Vancouver police developed a second, independent source who also offered tantalizing information that a woman had seen a body on his property.

Vancouver police detectives pursued the information, but apparently ran into conflict because Pickton resides in RCMP jurisdiction.

As other officers from B.C.'s Unsolved Homicide unit became involved, there was a disagreement over the accuracy of some of the information and the investigation stalled.

Before the disagreement, Vancouver detectives and a Coquitlam investigator had been pushing forward in hopes of getting permission to use a wiretap on the case, but that was apparently abandoned.

Police sources in both the RCMP and Vancouver police department say senior managers are bracing themselves for possible criticism of the way the case was handled.

Already, people are asking why police didn't act sooner.

"If this guy does turn out to be the guy responsible, why wasn't it acted on before?" said Wayne Leng, a friend of Sarah deVries, who went missing in 1998.

Leng has told The Sun that he heard about a farmer named "Willy" while searching for deVries in 1998. Leng had set up a toll-free line for information on deVries' whereabouts, and he received a call from a male tipster.

Leng said he passed the information on to Vancouver city police but never heard what they did with it.

Leng said the name surfaced again a few years later, when family members were again trying to get answers on the case.

"We were all concerned because it didn't seem anybody wanted to take this guy [Willy] seriously, right? We never heard whether they actually did searches of Willy's place or whatever. You know. But we knew he had lots of land and he was fairly well off it seems."

At the farm Thursday, Galliford said police will bring in cadaver dogs and excavating equipment if necessary. But the machinery visible on the farm at present belongs to the owner, she said.

"We are going to go through different stages in our search," she said.

Galliford said the SPCA has been called in to take away pigs on the property and care for them for the duration of the search. The residents of the property are not in custody, nor are they at the scene.

Galliford said police do not know where they are, nor are they trying to locate them.

"We're here to conduct a search. We have a search warrant and that's what we're doing."

While police initially said the property covered 11 hectares (28 acres), much of that has been developed into new subdivisions. The four-hectare (10-acre) remaining farm is the focus of the search.

Galliford was also careful to say that police continue to pursue other leads on the missing women case unrelated to the Pickton property.

"We don't know where we are going to be two months from now or six months from now," she said. "We don't know where our investigation is going to take us."

Galliford also said police worked through the night Wednesday to alert families of a possible break in the missing women case. "And we felt they needed to know that before they found out about it in the media," she said.

"Some of the family did choose to come by the site today and they have also met with some of the investigators."

Val Hughes, whose sister Kerri Koski is among the missing, was one of the family members at the site Thursday, but she declined to comment to the media after meeting with police.

Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education Society (PACE) praised police efforts to alert families members, some of whom arrived at the farm late Thursday to light candles for the missing.

"It is commendable that the families of the missing women were contacted before media and agencies," PACE said in a press release.

The organization also praised the task force's efforts in recent months to meet with women in the sex trade.

"PACE Society applauds their respectful efforts and support investigators in involving these key people without prejudice or punishment."

The police investigation dates back to 1998 and has been marred by problems and controversy throughout. It began when Vancouver police assigned a second officer to its missing persons section to review a sharp increase in the number of missing women.

Then, in 1999, the department formed the Missing Women Review Team amid mounting public pressure over the disappearances, and rising fear that a serial killer was stalking Vancouver prostitutes.

Mayor Philip Owen and senior police officers assured the media at the time that the department was doing everything it could to solve the cases.

The city and province offered a $100,000 reward, brought John Walsh from television's America's Most Wanted to town to release a poster of all 31 women known to be missing at that time and, at one point, police told the media that nine people were at work on the file.

But a Sun investigation last year found the original Vancouver city police investigation was assigned to inexperienced and overworked officers without the time or resources to do a thorough job. The probe was hindered by infighting among officers, a lack of proper training and computer problems.

The investigation eventually stalled until a joint RCMP-Vancouver police probe began in early 2001. The team expanded earlier this year to 30 members, and they have continued to add new names to the list of the missing, which has now reached 50.

Women working the street near the Patricia Hotel Wednesday night welcomed news of a possible break in the case.

But one woman who identified herself as Candy held out little hope for an end to the violence.

"There's always going to be psychos," she said. "They're never going to go away."

Global BC Part of poster of Vancouver's missing women.

Global BC Marnie Lee Frey

Global BC Sandra Gagnon, sister of Janet Henry who disappeared in 1997.

Global BC Janet Henry disappeared in 1997.

Global BC Dawn Terersa Crey

VANCOUVER - For most Lower Mainland residents, Vancouver’s missing women are those faces on the missing persons’ posters.

There are fifty women in all and each one of them has left behind loved ones and friends who wonder to this day just what happened to them.

In fact, the missing women's task force, which is responsible for the search of a pig farm in Port Coquitlam, was only created after families of the women who disappeared spoke-out.

Marnie Lee Frey's family is still looking for her. She is originally from Campbell River and went missing in August of 1997 when she was 24-years old.

"Marnie had a very big heart," said Marnie's stepmother Lynn Frey. "She loved life and she was very rambunctious ... she loved horses and horseback riding."

"We didn’t like why she was down (in the Downtown Eastside)," said Marnie’s father Rick Frey. "We tried in different ways to help her with her problem."

"You would like to be able to grab them and hold them and make them better."

Janet Henry was last seen in the Downtown Eastside in June of 1997. She was 36-years old when she disappeared.

"She is a loving mother ... no matter how messed up she was, her daughter was number one," said Janet’s sister Sandra Gagnon.

"She went through hell before she went missing. She never had an easy life."

"We want to bring her home and have a proper burial."

Dawn Terersa Crey was reported missing in December 2000. She was 43 at the time.

"First and foremost to us she was a sister and a mom and she was an aunt to all of her nieces and nephews," said Dawn’s brother Ernie Crey. "We love her and miss her a great deal. We just hope to learn her fate."

"I think about her a lot. I think about how things could have been different."

Pictures of many of the missing women can be found on the Vancouver Police Department web site.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Global BC Part of poster of Vancouver's missing women.

Global BC King County Sheriff Dave Reichert.

Global BC Gary Leon Ridgway

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. - Sandwiched between a golf course and a townhouse development, a Port Coquitlam pig farm represents the most significant lead police have in the missing women’s investigation.

For the first time they have a potential crime scene. That is something those investigating the Green River murders in Washington State never lacked.

"There was always a top five and Gary Ridgway was always one of those," said King County Sheriff Dave Reichert during a press conference in November 2001.

Last month, Ridgway was charged in the deaths of four women who were among the 49 deaths and disappearances attributed to the Green River killer in the 80's. The four women were killed between 1982 and 1984.

The first woman to go missing in Vancouver was in 1983. And the similarities don't end there. The women were prostitutes, all with substance abuse problems.

Members of the Vancouver Police Department travelled to Seattle recently to share information with the Green River task force after it was learned Ridgway loved to camp and had travelled to B.C.

In December 2001, Vancouver Police Det. Jim McKnight told BCTV News sex trade workers had told police they recognized Gary Ridgway.

"They believe that it was Mr. Ridgway who was in the Vancouver area, (but) there is nothing yet that corroborates that," he said.

Police emphasize there could be more than one serial killer of prostitutes in the Downtown Eastside, considering there are 600 potential suspects, 100 of which are considered high priority, including Ridgway.

"Mr. Ridgeway is only one of hundreds of potential suspects," said missing women's task force spokesperson Const. Catherine Galliford. "We did exchange information with the Green River task force. We have entered that information on a databank."

"However, there are some potential suspects that are standing out at this point much more than others ..."

With no bodies, and no proof that any of the prostitutes met with foul play, the search of a Port Coquitlam pig farm is the biggest step taken by Vancouver investigators.

Unlike the lengthy Green River task force, police started the missing women's investigation three years ago when there 31 women on the list. Today, that number sits at 50.

Global BC

Global BC Port Coquitlam farm subject of missing women's task force investigation.

Global BC Dave Pickton was interviewed by BCTV News for a property tax story in January of 1994.

Global BC Robert Pickton was interviewed by BCTV News for a property tax story in January of 1994.

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. - There appears to be a major break in the investigation into the disappearance of 50 women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

 

---

Global reports

---

Dozens of police officers including members of the missing women's task force are searching a Vancouver-area farm.

Police arrived at the Port Coquitlam pig farm - about a 45-minute drive east of downtown Vancouver - Tuesday night with a search warrant.

“The missing women’s task force executed a search warrant (at the pig farm) on Tuesday night with Coquiltam RCMP,” said task force spokesperson Const. Kate Galliford. “The warrant was executed by Coquitlam RCMP but we were in attendance.”

“As a result of that firearm search warrant, the missing women’s team obtained its own search warrant and (officers are on the farm today) to execute that search warrant.”

Galliford said that the families of the missing women were contacted Wednesday night.

"(We wanted) to ensure that they received word from us that we were conducting a search of the property and that they didn’t hear it through the media."

The search may take days, weeks or even months to execute.

“We can’t speculate at this time how long it is going to take us to search the various buildings on the property as well as the property itself,” said Galliford.

Other than a woman's purse, police won’t say what they have found so far or even what they are looking for.

Forensic identification specialists were brought to the scene Thursday afternoon.

The farm belongs to the Pickton family.

The Picktons have been pig farmers in the area for more than 100 years.

BCTV News did a story on the family in January 1994.

Brothers Dave and Robert Pickton were upset over a high property tax assessment.

They worried at that time they would have to sell some of their land and their 100 pigs.

The property that is being searched has been owned by the Picktons for 38 years.

Just down the road from the police investigation is another property that is said to be owned by the Picktons.

The mayor of Port Coquitlam has offered any assistance the city can give to the investigation including maps of the property.

"I am unable to comment on the evidence - substantial or lack of - at this time but obviously the evidence has led them to this particular site," said Mayor Scott Young.

Neighbour Dawn Sangret said she is shocked by the news of the investigation pointing out that infamous serial killer Clifford Olsen is from the area.

"It is pretty scary in this little town," she said.

Even though authorities are remaining tight-lipped, with the task force investigating the disappearance of 50 Vancouver women, wild speculation about what police will find has begun.

In the meantime, charges have been laid against Robert Pickton in connection with the initial search warrant.

The 52-year-old is charged with storing a firearm contrary to regulations, possession of a firearm while not being holder of a licence, and possession of a loaded restricted firearm without a licence.

Police say neither brother is a suspect in the missing women case.

Officers with a joint Vancouver Police-RCMP missing women's task force last night began searching parts of the 11-hectare site in Port Coquitlam after erecting lights and a fence to avoid the prying eyes of the media and other curious onlookers who gathered.

Police refused to say what they are looking for and stressed that no charges have been laid in connection with the women, predominantly drug-addicted prostitutes.

However, they did contact family members of those missing before the search began.

Police said one of the farm's owners, Robert Pickton, 52, now faces various firearms charges following the execution of a search warrant Tuesday. He is not in custody.

Pickton was charged with storing a firearm contrary to regulations, possession of a gun without a licence and possession of a loaded restricted weapon without a licence.

The first search warrant led police to get a second one to look for evidence in the case of the missing women, whose numbers have steadily increased as investigations have accelerated in recent months.

Task force spokesperson Constable Cate Galliford offered few details of the search, warning that it could take weeks, even months. Police also said there remain up to 1,000 suspects in the case and other properties are of interest to investigators.

"We do anticipate that we're going to have to do some excavating but at this particular time that's not the stage of the search that we're at," Galliford told reporters.

For a number of years, Vancouver police have been criticized by family members of the missing women as well as advocates for prostitutes for being unwilling to admit there might be a serial killer at work. Critics said that because of their lifestyles, those who vanished were deemed unimportant and not worthy of a large investigation.

Not surprisingly, Vancouver police repeatedly denied those allegations, but nevertheless scaled back the number of investigators on the case in the summer of 2000. The RCMP joined in a few months later and the profile of the file has increased along with the number of women reported missing from the poor, drug-infested neighbourhood.

Pickton was charged on April 8, 1997, with attempted murder, assault with a weapon, unlawful confinement and aggravated assault in a case involving an alleged attack on a female, according to provincial court documents. The charges were stayed in January, 1998, when the crown said there wasn't enough evidence to proceed.

Local radio station CKNW and television station BCTV reported last night that the case involved a prostitute he picked up in the downtown eastside and drove to Port Coquitlam. They reported that the case involved a knifing incident in which both Pickton and the woman were injured.

Police refused all comment on that case.

A Guelph mother said she is dreading police may discover the remains of her daughter.

Pat deVries said she has a "busy life" and is not really prepared to deal with her daughter Sarah's body being found.

But it's important to her that, in time, the news does come.

"It's not going to be very pleasant," she said. "I am not looking forward to it."

Sarah deVries, who was 29 when she disappeared in 1998, had become involved in prostitution to support a drug habit.

Wayne Leng, a friend of Sarah's who runs a Web site devoted to spreading information about the missing women, said relatives and friends are hopeful their questions may be finally answered.

"It's a waiting game at this point," Leng said in a telephone interview from his home in California.

Family members and friends of the missing women joined many spectators and media in coming to the site throughout the day. Some wept. Others were angry that it took so long for any sign of a breakthrough in the case.

A woman whose friend disappeared in 1989 said she heard about the search and decided to have a look.

Dawn Sangret said she and her friend Elaine Dumba came to British Columbia from Regina around 1965.

"I'm not really into hearing that she's maybe under one of those mounds," she said, looking at a large gravel hill on the property.

The mayor of Port Coquitlam, about 35 kilometres east of Vancouver, said residents are stunned.

"Certainly the discussions in the coffee shops and around kitchen tables in our small town this morning are ones of shock and disbelief," Scott Young said.

Friday, February 8, 2002

By MIKE LEWIS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

VANCOUVER, B.C. -- The fear hasn't left -- not by any stretch.

But if there can be any hope in a swath of downtown with a clear shortage of it, the identification of suspects in the disappearances of 50 young women offers a glimmer, locals say.

In fact, as news became public of the search of a pig farm 22 miles from the east downtown tenderloin neighborhood where the women were last seen, Karen Duddy was attending a memorial for those women at a center that serves addicts and prostitutes.

"I thought, 'Wow, what a coincidence,'" said Duddy, executive director of the Women's Information and Safe House center. "I guess that I think it's wonderful. But I'm not putting all of my hopes into it. I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude."

Yesterday, authorities had little new information about the search of the farm and the arrest of Robert William Pickton, 52, on weapons charges. They also wouldn't confirm if Pickton is a suspect in the disappearances of some or all of the 50 women, mostly addicts and prostitutes, who started disappearing from downtown's poorest neighborhood 20 years ago.

Described by authorities as a pig farmer with a criminal past, Pickton faces three illegal-weapons counts, including possession of a loaded, unregistered weapon while lacking a license. Authorities seized the weapons late Tuesday after a search of his property. Pickton, authorities said, had been investigated for possible attacks on prostitutes.

Though searchers had found nothing by late last night, one investigator who asked to remain anonymous said simply that "we've got our fingers crossed."

The same is true for the women who are potential targets. Judy McGuire, who is on the WISH board and has worked in east downtown with a needle exchange program for the past decade, said it's premature for her or the women who use the center's services to get too excited.

"It's hard right now. It's so early," she said, sitting in her downtown storefront in one of the city's worst neighborhoods. "The bottom line is that nobody knows much right now."

Krissy, a center visitor who declined to give her last name and her age but who appeared to be a teenager, said she'd seen "something on TV" about the search. She said that if an arrest was going to be made, she wouldn't necessarily feel any safer.

"There's a lot of bad dates out there," she said. "One guy didn't kill all of those girls."

Shawna, 22, agreed. Standing on Hastings Street in the late afternoon, she said she's surprised the police are doing anything at all. "They probably will blame a bunch of (expletive) on this guy whether he did it or not. It ain't safe out here anyway."

The women and hundreds like them work in Vancouver's east downtown, a seedy 10-block stretch of downtown not far from tony Robson Street stores and the historic Gastown district.

All the women who have disappeared since 1983 worked these streets, which are known for weekly rate hotels, cheap eateries and a thriving China White heroin business.

In an interview two months ago when authorities wondered if Gary Ridgway, who has been charged in connection with three murders attributed to the Seattle area's Green River Killer, was responsible for some of the disappearances, veteran police Officer Dave Dickson called the women who work here the "most vulnerable" in British Columbia.

McGuire said that regardless of Pickton's involvement, she is thankful for the police and public attention to the long-standing spate of disappearances.

"You really wonder what would have happened if the police had been working on this at this level five or six years ago," she said. "A lot of girls have gone missing since then."

McGuire, who tries to make the street safer for the girls by publishing the "Bad Date" sheet with descriptions of unknown but reportedly violent johns, said she's heard the rumor that Pickton might be on the sheet. She said she'll search the center's database.

"I understand he's a big guy who drives a truck," she said. "Frankly that fits the description of a lot of the men on that list."

50 MISSING WOMEN: Officials seeking possible links to Green River case

The Associated Press and News Tribune staff ; News Tribune staff writer Stacey Burns contributed to this report.

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. - Green River Killer investigators said they will keep an eye on an investigation in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area, where authorities searched a pig farm Thursday in hopes of learning what happened to 50 missing women.

"We are not willing to overlook anything," said King County sheriff's detective Kathleen Larson. "We need to allow them an opportunity to conduct their investigation."

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Catherine Galliford, a spokeswoman for the missing-women task force, wouldn't confirm a major break had occurred.

She said a search warrant for the farm, about 22 miles east of Vancouver, was issued Tuesday night related to firearms.

The Mounted Police said Robert William Pickton, 52, was charged with storing a firearm contrary to regulations and possession of a firearm without a license.

Police said Pickton was not being held in custody. Pickton is listed on B.C. assessment records as one of three owners of the property being searched, the Vancouver Sun reported.

Galliford said the site was a property of interest in the investigation of 50 women who have disappeared since 1983, mainly prostitutes from Vancouver's seedy downtown east side. She said the missing-women task force on Wednesday got a warrant to search the property.

Investigators looking into the disappearances met with Green River Task Force members in December. Nothing has been found to link the two investigations, Larson said.

The Canadian investigators came to Seattle shortly after King County detectives arrested Gary Leon Ridgway in connection with four of the Green River murders. Ridgway, a 52-year-old Auburn area man, has been charged with the deaths of Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds, Opal Mills and Carol Ann Christensen.

Investigators were looking for information to determine whether Ridgway had been in the Vancouver area and, if so, whether he can be connected to the missing Canadian women.

On Thursday, the mayor of Port Coquitlam said residents were in shock.

"Certainly the discussions in the coffee shops and around kitchen tables in our small town this morning is one of shock and disbelief," Mayor Scott Young said.

He said he found out about the search Wednesday morning. The city was working with police to find water mains and other services in case police decided to excavate the property, which is between a discount retailer and a new residential development.

A sister of one of the missing women spent about half an hour at the farm Thursday morning.

Sherry Koski, whose sister Kerry Lynn Koski has been missing since January 1998, was crying as she spoke to police officers. She brushed by reporters, saying she didn't feel like talking to the media.

Galliford said the search of the 10-acre farm, which contains a house, a trailer and other outbuildings, could take days or months. More than three dozen officers were on the scene.

"Right now we're just sorting out logistical problems," she said. "We're bringing in some barriers to give the investigators some privacy.

"We do anticipate that we're going to have to do some excavation, but at this particular time that's not the stage of the search that we're at."

News of a possible break in the case surfaced after Ernie Crey, the brother of one of the missing women, told the Vancouver Sun late Wednesday that police had called him to say they had a suspect.

Crey said he wasn't told if police believe the suspect is directly involved in his sister's disappearance.

Galliford said investigators had talked to the farm's owners but didn't know where they were.

"That's not a concern to us at this time," she said.

Neighbors said the swampy area was fenced and guarded by dogs.

A friendly Rottweiler roamed the property. A sign on the gate warned: "This Property Protected by a Pit Bull with AIDS."

It appeared to be a working farm, with pigs on the property, but there were also piles of dirt and gravel, along with heavy earthmoving machinery.

Neighbor Randy Thibert said the farm's residents had lived there "for years." He said he hoped police wouldn't find anything because "you like to think it doesn't happen out here."

The number of missing women has climbed steadily as a joint task force of Vancouver police and Mounties added more names to their file.

There has long been speculation a serial killer was preying on prostitutes in the downtown east side. Police initially discounted the theory. But as the list grew, the theory gained credence.

In mid-January, the task force added five women to the list of those who had disappeared from Vancouver's gritty downtown, to bring the total to 50. Vancouver police started the missing-women investigation three years ago when the number was thought to be 31.

Inquiry into 50 disappearances leads to brothers' land

Friday, February 8, 2002

By LEWIS KAMB AND MIKE LEWIS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. -- Police investigating the disappearances of 50 Vancouver-area women gathered here yesterday at a sprawling pig farm to search what they called "a property of interest" belonging to a man once charged with viciously attacking a prostitute.

	Investigators looking for clues in the disappearances of 50 Vancouver-area women searched this pig farm in Port Coquitlam, east of the city. Gilbert W. Arias / Seattle Post-Intelligencer Click for larger photo

Though the killings and disappearances in Vancouver rival the Seattle area's Green River killings of 49 women as the worst series of slayings in North America, authorities here and in Seattle said they do not believe there is any connection between the two cases.

And authorities did not refer to either the property owner, Robert William Pickton, 52, or his brother and joint owner, David Pickton, age unknown, as suspects in the string of Vancouver-area disappearances that have stymied investigators for 19 years.

Constable Catherine Galliford, spokeswoman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, would not specify what prompted authorities to search the ramshackle farm, but said a recent review of case files helped them to key in on the brothers and their land.

"We're very confident in our reasons for obtaining a search warrant," she said yesterday. "In order to get one, our grounds have to be very good."

Those reasons may include a 5-year-old incident involving Robert Pickton. On March 23, 1997, Pickton allegedly stabbed a woman repeatedly with a "brown-handled kitchen knife," according to court documents.

The mother of the victim told the Vancouver Province that her daughter, a drug addict, told police she was attacked in Pickton's home, then escaped -- handcuffed -- and ran for help at a nearby home. She said her daughter was stabbed in the chest and was "probably close to death" for two weeks after the attack, and that she has since been unable to find her.

On April 8, 1997, Canadian authorities charged Robert Pickton with attempted murder, assault, unlawful confinement and aggravated assault, court documents say. Those charges were later dropped, however, reportedly because the victim refused to testify against him.

On Tuesday night, members of the RCMP's task force on missing women joined officers from Coquitlam in a search of Pickton's home. They had a warrant allowing them to look for firearms law violations, Galliford said. Robert Pickton was arrested and charged with storing and possessing a loaded, restricted firearm without a license after the search turned up a .22-caliber rifle stored illegally, and an unregistered .22-caliber handgun in the old farmhouse, she said.

Pickton appeared in court Wednesday and was released from custody. Neither he nor his brother could be located for comment.

RCMP officials said that during Tuesday's search they found evidence allegedly linking the missing women to the property. Galliford declined comment on the evidence.

On the basis of that information, investigators returned Wednesday with a fresh warrant allowing them to search the 10-acre farm in the midst of this burgeoning suburb 22 miles east of Vancouver. The Pickton brothers and a sister are listed as owners of the property at Dominion Avenue and Ottawa Street.

The small pig farm where Canadian authorities searched yesterday, with its moss-covered house, barn and trailer, is a vestige of Coquitlam's rural past, abutting a spanking new housing subdivision and a golf course, and situated across Dominion Avenue from a supermarket.

A sign on the gate warned "This Property Protected by a Pit Bull with AIDS." The property, with roaming guard dogs barking, has backhoes and heavy machinery, as well as mounds of fill-dirt and gravel that the brothers sold to supplement their small pig business.

Yesterday, forensic investigators in "moon suits" were checking through brush and brambles, as well as in a stream that runs along Dominion Avenue alongside the property. They were seen pulling a black purse out of bushes, and bagged it as evidence.

Other investigators pitched a large tent and set up lights and generators inside the gated property for the search, which continued into the night.

Some families and friends of the missing women arrived at the farm's gate. They included Dawn Segret, whose friend Elaine Dumba disappeared in 1989.

"I'm not really into hearing that she's maybe under one of those mounds," she said, looking at the large gravel hill on the property.

Robert Pickton -- known here as Willie -- was being described yesterday as a friendly man. His family often would throw large parties with live bands at the nearby home of a nephew, and would set up a crude "nightclub" called "Piggy's Place," where they sold beer to friends. These impromptu bars, known as "booze cans," are common in the region.

Dean Guest, who said he is a friend of the Picktons, came by the property to ask if he could take away a trailer he had stored there.

"They are very, very good, down-to-earth people," Guest said of the brothers. "They can make you laugh at any given time. Everybody is jumping to conclusions."

Deanna, a 34-year-old woman who would not give her last name, said the Picktons often would lend her money and that at least four people live at the farm -- the brothers, a niece and a nephew.

"I don't think he'd do anything like that. He's a nice person. I don't think he would hurt anybody," she said of Robert Pickton. "If he was like that, I wouldn't be standing here today."

But others had concerns about the two brothers.

Michele Gourd, 24, a neighbor who said she walks by the property frequently, described the brothers as "spooky," and was scared of the dogs on the property.

Another neighbor, identified only as Scott, told BCTV he had wondered about some of the nighttime activities at the farm.

"Excavators going in and out. Lights in the back late at night," Scott said. "I didn't think anything of it -- but now..."

Vancouver's missing women became a public concern in June 1987, when Mounties first suspected a serial killer was preying on prostitutes after a woman was found stabbed to death in suburban Burnaby.

At the time, the RCMP said the death of Carol Ruby Davis, 29, a prostitute and drug user who worked the downtown area, was likely linked to the deaths of four other sex industry workers.

An RCMP forensic team member retrieves a shoe found in a ditch in the area of the Port Coquitlam farm that investigators have been searching. Associated Press Click for larger photo

Unlike the RCMP, Vancouver police, who have been criticized for being slow to react in investigating the cases, initially discounted the serial-killer theory, saying there was no evidence to support it.

But last April a joint task force of Vancouver police and RCMP investigators was formed after a Vancouver investigation into the disappearances of women stalled and the serial-killer theory gained credence.

Since then, task force members have been sifting through dozens of old case files, searching for a break in the haunting series of disappearances, dating back to 1982, of prostitutes who mainly worked East Vancouver's "Skid Road" -- East Hastings Street.

Last October, Canadian authorities announced for the first time that the cases were being treated as multiple homicides.

In Seattle, investigators said they know of nothing tying the Vancouver disappearances to the Green River slayings between 1982 and 1984.

"We have no reason to link their cases to ours, at all," said John Urquhart, King County Sheriff's Department spokesman. "There is nothing to indicate any links at all, with one exception, dead prostitutes. But that is a dangerous profession and there are dead prostitutes across the U.S. and Canada."

Last fall, King County authorities on the strength of new DNA evidence arrested and charged Gary Leon Ridgway in four of the 49 deaths and disappearances of Seattle-area women between 1982 and 1984, attributed to the Green River Killer.

Canadian investigators met with Green River Task Force detectives after Ridgway's arrest last year, but Galliford said Ridgway has never been an official suspect in British Columbia.

The last on the RCMP list, Mona Wilson, disappeared in November 2001.

The search buoyed hopes among friends and relatives of the victims, and groups that help women addicted to drugs or in the sex trade.Feelings of friends and relatives ran from dread and fear to relief.

"I have a feeling she's dead," said Sandra Gagnon, whose sister Janet Henry disappeared about June 27, 1997. I've thought that for quite a while because her money's still in the bank and she paid her rent and she never did go home."

Gagnon, who lives in Vancouver, called the possible break in the disappearances "nerve-racking...Overwhelming is the word."

Michelle Pineault, whose daughter, Stephanie Lane, went missing in January 1997, said police called her about the new developments Wednesday.

"It was quite shocking," Pineault said yesterday afternoon. "I haven't slept since. My hope is that my daughter will always walk through the door. But if that's not possible then I hope there's closure. It's tough. It's a daily battle."

Lane was 20 when she disappeared, leaving behind her infant son, Stephen, who is now 5.

Pineault said her grandson has asked her several times why his mother ran away and when she's coming back.

"Last week he wanted to see her gravestone and I said, 'Honey, she doesn't have a gravestone.'"

Break in B.C. disappearances? Items tied to 2 of 50 missing women reportedly found in search at farm

Janet Burkitt
Seattle Times staff reporter

	JEFF VINNICK This is part of the farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C., that has become the focus of a task force investigating the disappearances of 50 women in Vancouver.

PORT COQUITLAM, B.C. — Canadian authorities are searching a muddy farm cluttered with pigs, excavation equipment and shacks for evidence of dozens of women who have vanished from Vancouver's seedy downtown Eastside over the past 18 years.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) would say little yesterday about what they were looking for or any possible connection between the women's disappearances and two brothers who live on the property.

"We're not publicly saying they're suspects," RCMP Constable Catherine Galliford said last night. "All we are saying is this is a property of interest."

The Vancouver Sun reported late last night that police found personal identification and other items linked to at least two of the missing women during a search earlier this week related to firearms.

Canadian authorities formed a missing-women task force last April to investigate the disappearances since 1983 of 50 women, mostly prostitutes addicted to drugs or alcohol. The team became interested in the farm after one brother, Robert William Pickton, 52, was charged this week with violating Canadian firearms laws.

Authorities obtained a search warrant in relation to firearms Tuesday, Galliford said. The Sun said members of the missing-women's task force were present for the firearms search.

Discovery of the women's identification prompted the task force to get a second search warrant for the property Wednesday, The Sun said, quoting unidentified police sources.

Pickton was arrested but was released Wednesday. Authorities would not comment on the whereabouts of the two brothers yesterday.

More investigators were brought to farm, about 22 miles east of Vancouver. They planned to stay over last night, setting up portable generators to light the area.

	JEFF VINNICK Sherry Koski, left, whose sister has been missing since January 1998, is stopped yesterday as she tries to enter the Pickton farm.

More than 35 officers are focusing their efforts on 10 acres of the farm, which contains a house, a trailer and other outbuildings.

"Right now, we're just sorting out logistical problems. We're bringing in some barriers to give the investigators some privacy," Galliford said.

"We do anticipate that we're going to have to do some excavation, but at this particular time that's not the stage of the search that we're at.

"We've only just begun our search," Galliford said, adding that it could take days or months.

The Pickton farm sits on the edge of a once-rural but rapidly developing area where upscale retail and housing developments have sprung up in the past decade.

The disappearance of the women from Vancouver's streets eerily parallels the disappearances and deaths of 49 women in the Green River killings south of Seattle. Many of those women were also prostitutes.

But King County sheriff's detectives investigating the Green River case and Gary Leon Ridgway, who is charged in four of the Green River killings, said the Ridgway case is likely not connected to the Canadian deaths.

However, Green River detectives plan to meet with British Columbia authorities eventually.

"It would be prudent for us to afford them the luxury of time" before bothering them about their case, sheriff's spokeswoman Kathleen Larson said.

Residents of Port Coquitlam are in shock, according to Mayor Scott Young.

"Certainly the discussions in the coffee shops and around kitchen tables in our small town this morning is one of shock and disbelief," Young said.

Since the search began, the city has been working with police to locate water mains and other services in case police decide to excavate the property, between a discount retailer and a new residential development.

Families of the missing women were contacted by police investigators. A sister of one spent about a half-hour at the farm yesterday morning.

Sherry Koski, whose sister Kerry Lynn Koski has been missing since January 1998, cried as she spoke to police officers.

News of a possible break in the case surfaced after Ernie Crey, the brother of one of the missing women, told The Sun late Wednesday that the RCMP had called him to say they had a suspect.

Crey said he wasn't told whether police believe the suspect is directly involved in his sister's disappearance.

Neighbors said the swampy area is fenced and guarded by dogs.

A friendly Rottweiler roamed the property yesterday. It appeared to be a working farm with pigs, but there were also piles of dirt and gravel, along with heavy earthmoving machinery.

Neighbor Randy Thibert said the farm's residents had lived there for years. He said he hoped police wouldn't find anything because "you like to think it doesn't happen out here."

Marshall Pohlmann, who lives on a hay farm across the Pitt River from the Pickton brothers, said he has known them for seven or eight years and did some roofing work for them on properties near the farm.

"They're pretty up in the community their family has been here probably at least for 50 years. I wouldn't say they're upper-class, but everyone knows them around here."

Pohlmann said the brothers are personable, always busy working, always friendly. "I would say they are upstanding people in the community."

The number of missing women in the Vancouver area has climbed steadily as a city police-RCMP task force added more names to its file.

There has long been speculation a serial killer was preying on prostitutes in the downtown Eastside. Police initially discounted the theory, saying there was no evidence to support it. But as the list grew, the theory gained credence.

In mid-January, the task force added five women to the list of those who had disappeared from Vancouver's downtown to bring the total to 50.

Vancouver police started the missing-women investigation three years ago, when the number was thought to be 31.

Thursday, February 7, 2002

By MARGARET TAUS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

King County Executive Ron Sims will ask for $5.3 million this year to investigate the Green River killings and prosecute and defend suspect Gary Ridgway.

In a draft letter expected to be sent to the County Council today, Sims proposed to pay for the costs mainly out of county reserves and half of his contingency budget for the year. The rest would come from a federal grant and a property-tax increase the County Council passed in December.

The money -- close to $6 million, according to an estimate made in December -- would be divided among the Sheriff's Office, the prosecutor and the Office of Public Defense.

Councilman Larry Phillips, chairman of the budget committee, said yesterday that some council members are considering an oversight committee to track Green River spending and keep costs down.

Under Sims' plan, the Sheriff's Office would get $2.6 million, including a $500,000 federal grant for DNA testing. The rest would pay for 18.5 investigative positions.

"We have to have that to investigate," sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart said. "We also hope to get additional federal funding."

Prosecutor Norm Maleng's office would get $1 million this year to convert papers and evidence into an electronic database, and another $200,000 and three positions.

The 52-year-old Auburn truck painter was arrested in November and is charged with four of the Green River slayings, which include the deaths of 49 young women who disappeared between 1982 and 1984. He has pleaded not guilty. Investigators say they haven't determined if he is linked to any of the other deaths.

Public defenders would get more than $1.4 million to defend Ridgway, although the cost could rise another $1 million if it becomes a death penalty case, Sims wrote.

Police seal off PoCo farm, tell family they have suspect

Lindsay Kines and Kim Bolan
Vancouver Sun

February 5, 2002

Police may have a major break in the case of 50 women missing from
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

RCMP sealed off a Port Coquitlam farm Wednesday and set up a mobile
command centre near the property's barn.

Police were seen coming and going from the farm until late Wednesday.
One officer said he had been there since 9 a.m.

Police at the scene refused to comment when asked whether members of
the joint Vancouver police-RCMP task force on missing women were
present.

One officer would say only that the massive search was part of a
criminal investigation.

But a friend of the man who lives at the farm told The Sun his friend
had been interviewed previously by police in connection with the
disappearance of downtown Vancouver prostitutes.

There were investigators from Coquitlam and Burnaby on the scene, as
well as officers in unmarked police vehicles. The command centre had
the markings of Burnaby RCMP.

Large dogs barked and roamed the ramshackle property, which had a
darkened house and abandoned vehicles, as police cars came and
went. "No trespassing" signs hung from a huge wired gate, including
one threatening an attack by a pitbull with AIDS.

The task force recently expanded its investigation to 30 officers as
the number of women confirmed missing climbed to 50.

Most of the women who have disappeared over a number of years were
involved in drugs or the sex trade in the Downtown Eastside.

Late Wednesday, Ernie Crey, the brother of one of the missing women,
said RCMP called him to say they have a suspect.

"The police told me it's going to be known tomorrow and they wanted
me to find out first, so I've been calling all the brothers and
sisters."

Crey said he wasn't told whether police believe the suspect is
directly involved in his sister Dawn's disappearance.

Possible break in missing-women probe: Task force seals off, conducts
search of farm

Thursday, February 7, 2002

Lindsay Kines and Kim Bolan
Vancouver Sun

The missing-women task force was conducting a search of a Port
Coquitlam farm Wednesday in what may be a major break in its
investigation of 50 women missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

"I can tell you a search is being conducted on that property and the
search is being executed by the missing-women task force," said
Constable Catherine Galliford, the spokeswoman for the joint
Vancouver police-RCMP task force.

Corporal Pierre Lemaitre of the Coquitlam RCMP confirmed police went
to the house Tuesday night to execute a search for firearms. The task
force arrived on Wednesday.

"[Police] have been there, obviously, since late last night and all
through today," Lemaitre said Wednesday.

Galliford said she will be on the scene again today. She said she had
no idea how long the search would take because the property is 11
hectares (28 acres).

Police sources identified Robert Pickton as a person of interest in
the case. He is listed on B.C. assessment records as one of three
owners of the property being searched on Dominion Road.

The RCMP set up a trailer as its mobile command centre near the
property's barn, and were coming and going from the farm late into
the night.

There were investigators from Coquitlam and Burnaby on the scene, as
well as officers in unmarked police vehicles. The command centre had
the markings of Burnaby RCMP.

Large dogs barked and roamed the ramshackle property, which had a
darkened house and abandoned vehicles. "No trespassing" signs hung
from a huge wired gate, including one threatening an attack by a pit
bull with AIDS.

A friend of the man who lives at the farm told The Sun his friend had
been interviewed previously by police in connection with the
disappearance of downtown Vancouver prostitutes.

But Ross Edward Contois said his friend is innocent. "These guys are
totally on the wrong trail," Contois said, adding that his friend is
the victim of rumour-mongering.

"It's been going on for years."

The task force recently expanded its investigation to 30 officers as
the number of women confirmed missing climbed to 50.

Most of the women who have disappeared over a number of years were
involved in drugs or the sex trade in the Downtown Eastside.

http://www.missingpeople.net/policesealoffpocofarm.htm

Gary Leon Ridgway

Microscopic fragments of aluminum, and carpet fibres are part of the case Washington State police are building against Gary Leon Ridgway, charged in the murder of three women connected to the Green River murders.

The three are among the 49 women identified as victims of the Green River Killer who left bodies in wooded areas around South King County and in a Portland suburb in the 1980's.

The Vancouver Missing Women Task Force is also eyeing Ridgway to see if he can be linked to some of the 50 women who disappeared from the Downtown Eastside.

"He is still being looked at as a potential suspect, but he's one of hundreds of potential suspects," said Vancouver police Const. Catherine Galliford.

Police say aluminum fragments were found at five sites where bodies were dumped. Aluminum "is commonly used at the truck plant where Ridgway worked.

"Green polyester trilobal carpet fibres" were found at three sites. And police said green carpets were in Ridgway's bedrooms.

Ridgway was arrested last December after saliva, hair and blood samples he gave 15 years ago were retested using modern DNA technology. The test showed that Ridgway's DNA was a full or partial match to semen found on the bodies of three Green River victims, police allege. The fourth victim was linked to Ridgway by circumstantial evidence.

Ridgway prosecution costs plummet

By Peyton Whitely
Seattle Times staff reporter

The cost of investigating and prosecuting Gary L. Ridgway is expected to be about $5 million this year, considerably less than earlier forecast.

Ridgway is accused of killing four women in the 1980s. Officials have been careful not to describe him as the so-called Green River killer, but the cases grew out of the Green River investigations and resulted in Ridgway's arrest and subsequent charges in December.

The Green River killer is believed to have killed 49 women, most of whom disappeared between the summer of 1982 and the spring of 1984.

The new cost estimate, given yesterday to the Metropolitan King County Council in a briefing, had originally been as high as $12 million.

But at a December news conference, King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng said he thought it would be far less. No trial date has been set for Ridgway.

After yesterday's briefing, Councilman Larry Phillips, who also is Budget Committee chairman, said the total figure would be between $5 million and $6 million.

Specific figures for the various parts of the investigation and prosecution — additional sheriff's officers, prosecutors, public defenders and jail staff, for example — are expected to be included in a letter from King County Executive Ron Sims to the County Council seeking a supplemental appropriation, Phillips said.

The investigations of the Green River killings already have cost millions of dollars. In the 1980s, the money paid for a full-fledged task force. By last fall, however, only one detective remained assigned to the case. Improved procedures in analyzing evidence, mainly DNA samples found at crime scenes and a saliva swab taken from Ridgway, led to his arrest.

While the costs are lower than anticipated, Phillips said they still present a substantial challenge for the county, which is already cutting staff and services, such as parks operations, to stay within a $497 million current-expense fund. Two-thirds of that money is already earmarked for law-enforcement.

Some money has been made available through an unused fingerprint-identification levy. Phillips said the county also might be able to receive some state and federal funding.

But he said the most likely result would be that money will be taken from other operations to pay the Ridgway prosecution costs.

Yosemite killings trial to proceed; judge denies postponement bid

BY DANIEL VASQUEZ
Mercury News

The trial of alleged Yosemite serial killer Cary Stayner will begin later this month as scheduled, a judge ruled Monday, despite being told the defense team has not had time to prepare for the high-profile case.

Judge Thomas C. Hastings denied a defense motion to delay the trial but told Stayner's lead attorney, Marcia Morrissey, that she could again try to persuade the court at a Feb. 13 hearing.

The possibility that the triple-murder case would be postponed angered some relatives of the victims. Hastings has repeatedly told the prosecution and defense he intends to begin the trial by Feb. 25.

``The idea of a delay is not pleasing to us at all,'' said Francis Carrington, who lost his daughter and granddaughter in the 1999 Yosemite-area slayings. ``This is something we want to get over with in our lives,'' he said.

Stayner, 40, remained silent during his first appearance in a Santa Clara County courtroom. He is accused of killing Carrington's daughter, Carole Sund, of Eureka, her daughter, Juli, 15, and a family friend, Silvina Pelosso, 16. Stayner's trial is being held in Santa Clara because of a court-ordered change of venue. If convicted of all charges, he could face the death penalty.

During a contentious 90-minute hearing, Morrissey tried to convince the judge that she and her co-counsel have not been able to read through the 54,000 pages of written evidence in the case. She also suggested that some of her expert witnesses have not yet been interviewed.

Prosecutors accused the defense team of stalling and said that Morrissey should be the most prepared attorney because she defended Stayner during his first trial in federal court. Stayner is serving a life sentence for the killing of a Yosemite National Park naturalist, Joie Armstrong.

Armstrong is considered by investigators to have been Stayner's fourth and final victim.

Reasons for delay

George Williamson, the lead prosecutor representing Mariposa County where the tourist slayings occurred, suggested Morrissey was attempting to buy time to find a psychiatric expert who could testify that Stayner was legally insane at the time of the killings.

``That's what I'm smelling here,'' Williamson said. ``To say she is not ready to go is ludicrous.''

Morrissey is expected to argue that the sheer amount of evidence -- which includes hundreds of audio and video tapes -- will not allow her time to plan a strategy.

More challenges ahead

Before the hearing was finished, Morrissey hinted at more challenges, including her desire to suppress confessions made by Stayner to federal agents. Those are the same statements that helped convict Stayner in the Armstrong case.

February 5, 2002 Posted: 04:55:03 AM PST

By MICHAEL G. MOONEY
BEE STAFF WRITER

SANTA CLARA -- Cary Anthony Stayner's murder trial will not begin Feb. 25.

But after Monday's sometimes-contentious hearing before Superior Court Judge Thomas C. Hastings, it's anybody's guess when it will start.

Stayner is accused of killing Carole Sund, 42, of Eureka, her daughter, Julie, 15, and family friend Silvina Pelosso, 16, of Cordoba, Argentina.

The three had been visiting Yosemite National Park in February 1999 when they were slain.

After Monday's hearing, Francis Carrington, the father of Carole Sund and grandfather of Julie, shrugged when asked what he thought about the delay.

"I don't know what to say," Carrington said. "Any delay is not pleasing to us at all (but) we have no say."

Hastings rejected a motion to continue the trial, saying defense attorney Marcia Morrissey needed to share her reasons with prosecutors for seeking the delay.

Morrissey said she needed more time to prepare her defense and complained about receiving some 10,000 pages of prosecution documents -- more than 4,000 in the past week -- since the end of December.

But Hastings rejected the motion "without prejudice," meaning Morrissey can resubmit it, which she said she planned to do. The judge set a Feb. 13 hearing to consider the new motion.

Jury selection had been scheduled to begin Feb. 25 but Hastings said he would reserve that date to consider defense motions.

In those motions, Morrissey is seeking to suppress fingerprint and handwriting evidence, as well as statements Stayner made to investigators after his arrest.

Morrissey said she also wants to keep out of the trial statements Stayner made about various criminal fantasies he discussed but never committed.

In addition, Morrissey said she will meet with prosecutors to try to reach agreement about how to structure questionnaires that will be given to potential jurors during the selection process.

After Monday morning's hearing, Morrissey said she thought she could be ready for trial by the end of May or beginning of June.

Morrissey filed her first continuance motion late last week "under seal," meaning only Hastings read it.

Prosecutor George Williamson objected to the tactic and asked Hastings to reject it, which the judge did after about 90 minutes of barbed discussion with Morrissey.

Williamson said prosecutors needed to understand Morrissey's reasons for seeking the delay. He also hinted that Morrissey might be setting the stage for an insanity defense.

Later, Morrissey told reporters she hasn't made a final decision on a line of defense.

Hastings, while conceding that prosecutors shouldn't see some of the issues Morrissey raised in her written arguments, said the bulk of the document should be provided to the opposing attorneys.

Morrissey disagreed, telling Hastings she planned to file additional written legal arguments supporting her position.

Hastings also warned Morrissey that he would not let Stayner's trial be "held hostage" by the scheduling demands of unnamed defense experts.

The judge also told lawyers on both sides that they must make the Stayner trial their top priority.

Hastings said he would be willing to talk to the judges in other trials the attorneys may be involved with so as not to unduly delay the Stayner trial.

Judge denies request to delay Stayner trial

By Michael Baker The Fresno Bee (Published Monday, February, 4, 2002 12:04PM)

SANTA CLARA -- A judge denied today a request to delay the triple murder death penalty trial for Cary Stayner, but offered the defense another chance to argue the motion next week. Attorneys will meet again in the city of Santa Clara on Feb. 13 so that Stayner's attorney, Marcia Morrissey, can argue to continue the trial, which is now scheduled for Feb. 25. If the motion is granted, attorneys will still meet on Feb. 25 to argue several evidentiary motions, including a motion to suppress Stayner's confession to the FBI, fingerprint evidence, handwriting analysis and any other statement the defendant might have made to authorities about crimes he had thought about committing. If the continuance is not granted, the other motions will be heard beginning Feb. 25 with jury selection and the trial immediately following. Stayner, 40, is accused of murdering Yosemite tourists Carole Sund, 42, her daughter Juli, 15, and Argentine family friend Silvina Pelosso, 16. The three's Feb. 15, 1999 disappearance from the Cedar Lodge in El Portal sparked international headlines. In March 1999, the bodies of Carole Sund and Pelosso were discovered in their torched rental car in Stanislaus National Forest. A week later, Juli's body was found near Lake Don Pedro in Tuolumne County. In July 1999, Stayner was arrested for the murder of Yosemite park naturalist Joie Ruth Armstrong. He then confessed to the FBI that he murdered Armstrong and the sightseers. He told authorities how he strangled Carole Sund and Pelosso and then sexually assaulted Juli Sund before slashing her throat. He escaped the death penalty by pleading guilty in federal court in Fresno to Armstrong's murder and accepting a life sentence. He has pleaded innocent to charge of murdering the Sunds and Pelosso.

Yates team seeks to move trial, suppress evidence

By John K. Wiley
The Associated Press

SPOKANE — Sheriff Mark Sterk says he is confident the Spokane County investigation of convicted serial killer Robert Yates Jr. can withstand legal challenges by Yates' lawyers.

Lawyers for Yates, who is charged in Pierce County in the slayings of two women in the Tacoma area, are seeking a change of venue in his death-penalty trial and are challenging evidence produced by the Spokane Homicide Task Force.

"It is the defense's job to challenge everything with the state's case, and you can be certain they will do that in this case," Sterk said Friday. "However, our team worked hand in hand with the Spokane County prosecutor's office and we are confident the work we did will withstand these challenges."

Yates pleaded guilty in October 2000 to 13 murders, including 10 Spokane women with ties to prostitution or drug abuse.

He is charged in Pierce County with the slayings of Melinda Mercer and Connie LaFontaine-Ellis. Sterk has said evidence found in the Spokane County investigation ties Yates to the Pierce County slayings.

Defense attorneys on Thursday challenged the validity of the warrants used to search Yates' home and property in April 2000.

The defense attorneys did not elaborate on the reasons they think the Spokane County evidence should be suppressed.

Evidence found in Yates' home and vehicles is expected to be used by prosecutors to try to prove Yates killed the two women in Pierce County as part of a common scheme that involved multiple murders in Spokane and elsewhere.

"Search and arrest warrants were prepared jointly with the prosecutor's office, and we know we did it right," Sterk said.

Yates was transferred to Pierce County in October 2000 after he pleaded guilty in Spokane County to the 13 deaths. He was sentenced to 408 years in prison, but his confession was part of a deal to avoid the death penalty.

His court-appointed attorney, Roger Hunko, is arguing the state's death-penalty law should be declared unconstitutional because it's applied differently in various counties.

Hunko filed at least nine defense motions Thursday, including a request to delay Yates' jury trial from April 29 until September.

Pierce County Superior Court Judge John McCarthy will hear arguments next Thursday on delaying the trial.

Deputy Pierce County Prosecutor Jerry Costello said the prosecution will oppose further delays.

Other defense motions, including the request to move the trial out of Pierce County, will be heard Feb. 20-21.

The challenges of a painful legacy: Green River slayings left children without mothers

By Gina Kim and Beth Kaiman
Seattle Times staff reporters

	STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Sarah King, right, daughter of Green River victim Carol Christensen, has an upbeat personality and successful life despite the loss.

Sarah King of Renton remembers lying in the back yard with her mother, sunbathing, making daisy chains and eating cherries. When she was 5, and her father told her that her mother was dead, she crawled under a stool.

Shawnte Fashaw of South Seattle learned the details of her mother's death not from family or friends, but from a true-crime book. She grew up asking a series of women in her life if she could call them "Mom."

King and Fashaw share a painful legacy: They are among at least a dozen now-grown children who were left behind by at least eight of the 49 women police have linked to the Green River killings of 1982 to 1984.

The children — many just babies at the time — were raised by relatives, placed in foster care or put up for adoption. In some cases, they may not know their connection to one of the country's most notorious serial killings.

But King and Fashaw do, and they've dealt with it in different ways.

Fashaw, a 22-year-old receptionist at an optical company at Southcenter, struggles to find stability. King, a 24-year-old dental assistant, calls herself a "together person" who actively guards her mother's memory.

Certainly other children have lost parents young, and to acts of violence. But few have found themselves linked to such a long and disturbing case. They've endured not only the sometimes sordid details of their mothers' lives — many of them were prostitutes — but also an investigation that dragged on for 20 years without an arrest.

Just nine weeks ago, on Nov. 30, an arrest was finally made. Gary Leon Ridgway, a 52-year-old truck painter from Auburn, was taken into custody in connection with the slaying of four women on the Green River list: Cynthia Hinds, Opal Mills, Marcia Chapman and King's mother, Carol Christensen. He has pleaded not guilty to four counts of aggravated murder. A trial could be two years away.

In such prolonged cases, recovery for survivors can be more difficult, said Lucy Berliner, director of the traumatic-stress program at Harborview Medical Center. "It's harder ... in the sense that it's an unsolved case or it continues to remain in the public's interest."

Still, Berliner — emphasizing that she has not dealt with this case — said children who lose a parent to violence aren't necessarily doomed to ruined lives. "Most people survive horrible things pretty well," she said, adding that much depends on how they are raised and whether they learn to manage their loss.

Some of the Green River children, including a 24-year-old woman who graduated recently from a police academy, chose not to talk publicly. Another, a 20-year-old Auburn man who graduated with honors from a high-school special-education program, grew up not fully understanding the realities of the case, largely because of his developmental disabilities.

Fashaw and King shared the stories of their lives.

Shawnte Fashaw

	STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Shawnte Fashaw, daughter of Green River victim Rebecca Marrero, has bounced around for most of her life.

Fashaw would rather not deal with her emotions. Instead, she tattoos them on her body.

The letters B-A-B-Y-D-O-L-L — one letter for every finger except for her thumbs — tattooed across her hands attest to her gang days. Another shows her Latin heritage — three dots meaning "mi vida loca," or "my crazy life."

She also has a tattoo of a cross. According to a missing person's report, her mother, Rebecca Marrero, had a similar tattoo.

She was 3 when Marrero, then 20, left her with a grandmother and never returned. Marrero was last seen Dec. 2, 1982; police link her to the Green River killer because her lifestyle and work as a prostitute fit the profile of the other victims.

Fashaw lived with her grandmother until she was 11, then bounced in and out of the homes of her father, stepmother and aunt.

"There was a lot of stress, a lot of anger," Fashaw recalled. "Everyone was angry about everything that happens. ... Not understanding why things happen."

	STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Shawnte Fashaw holds a photo of her mom. Her mother’s killing has left her angry, she says.

Fashaw said no one talked to her about her mother and she never asked. But while growing up, Fashaw asked various women if she could call them "Mom."

Most of what she knows about her mother's disappearance, she learned from the book, "The Search for the Green River Killer." She read just the parts that referenced her mother. "Really, I just try not to have any feelings about it."

Two tattered black-and-white snapshots are all Fashaw has of Marrero. Those, and an inability to trust men: She sometimes lashes out at them, hitting and kicking.

As she moved from home to home in Seattle and South King County, she also moved from school to school. At 16, she became pregnant and had a daughter. She dropped out but earned her high-school equivalency that year.

Fashaw lost custody of the girl, who now lives with her father's parents. She sees the girl about once a month. "Every time I see her, I tell her I love her."

Now living with a boyfriend in Seattle, Fashaw talks of moving to Palm Springs, Calif., where she intends to build a more stable life, living with an uncle and working as a receptionist.

"Shawnte's a very strong little girl, which is why she has been able to survive most of this," said her stepmother, Sandy Jeans of Lake Forest Park.

Sarah King

	FAMILY PHOTO Sarah King at 2 is sitting on her mom’s lap.

After news of Ridgway's arrest broke, Sarah King couldn't bear to open the newspaper one more day to read about the case and see the eyes-shut, out-of-focus, ugly picture of her mother.

She didn't want strangers to know her mom that way. More important, she didn't want that to become her memory. She had spent too long — almost 20 years — trying to hang on to sweeter images.

So she recently gave The Seattle Times a substitute photo that showed her mother's bright eyes and neatly combed hair, and King, age 2, happy and safe on her lap.

"Better, I thought," King said.

Throughout her life, King has worked quietly to uphold a certain idea of her mother, Carol Christensen, who was strangled and then left in the woods, a grocery bag over her head.

"That's not my mother," King insists. "That's just what happened to her."

King says her mother kept her house neat, got new photos of her daughter every Easter, and made Sarah finish her TV dinner even after a fit of brattiness led the toddler to dump milk onto her tray.

That's not to say King, who is getting a divorce and lives in Renton with a boyfriend, has distanced herself from the grim realities of the Green River case.

In sixth grade, she told a classmate that her mother was a Green River victim. Her teacher, thinking she was lying, called King's grandmother. In high school, when a teacher asked students to take out a book to read for 20 minutes, King opened "The Search for the Green River Killer." The teacher told her to pick a different book.

Growing up in Hoquiam with her father's parents, she imagined that anyone who went to the Seattle area got killed. She once gave $20 to a young woman whose car had stalled on Highway 99 in SeaTac — not far from where her mother disappeared — in hopes the woman would call a cab.

King talks about her link to the case only with close friends and family. "I don't want sympathy from people."

She also doesn't want assumptions. But she sees them, every time someone new learns she is the child of a Green River victim. "They expect me to be scummy or something or a druggie or look really sad," King said. "I'm really a together person."

Christensen disappeared May 3, 1983, after her husband moved out and took Sarah with him. For a scheduled visit with her mother five days later, Mother's Day, Sarah, then 5, brought flowers. No one was home. Christensen's body was found later that day. She was 21.

For a while, King lived with her father, but problems in his life, including time in jail, kept him from playing a steady role. His mother sued for custody and, with her husband, raised Sarah.

She took tap, ballet and jazz and played baseball. Her grandparents answered questions about her mother and the Green River case whenever she asked.

As a teenager, King didn't appreciate her grandparents' discipline and moved out. She was kicked out of school for skipping, and when she had to beg the Hoquiam School Board to let her back in, she realized what she was doing to her life.

Her father dropped out of school in the 10th grade, and her mother in eighth grade. "I owed it to her to make something of myself," said King.

After graduating, King worked on a truck-parts assembly line for three years. More recently, she has been working at a shop selling bath products. She attended Highline Community College to become certified as an orthodontics assistant and last month got a job as a dental assistant.

She hopes her mother can see she is doing well: "I overcame a lot of obstacles. I want her to know that."

On a bedroom mirror, King keeps a photo of her mother and looks at it every day. She remembers how it felt, being soothed as a child just before falling asleep, as her mother stroked her eyebrows.

A few years ago, when King was a lonely newlywed whose husband was away on military duty, she felt her mother's fingers rubbing her back. "Sounds crazy, I know," she said. "But it was comforting."

Yates denied delay of Pierce County trial
Related stories

Bill Morlin - Staff writer

Serial killer Robert L. Yates Jr. has lost an attempt to delay his trial in Pierce County, where he is accused of the murders of two more women.

Superior Court Judge John McCarthy rejected a request Thursday by defense attorneys Roger Hunko and Mary Kay High that Yates' trial be postponed until this fall.

The defense attorneys argued that they need more time to adequately prepare Yates' defense.

Deputy Prosecutors Jerry Costello and Barbara Corey-Boulet said they "vigorously opposed" granting any further delays.

Yates is scheduled to stand trial April 29.

Jury selection could last at least a month.

If convicted, Yates faces the death penalty for the December 1997 murder of Melinda Mercer and October 1998 killing of Connie LaFontaine Ellis.

The 49-year-old killer has been in jail in Tacoma since October 2000, when he pleaded guilty in Spokane to 13 counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.

He struck a plea bargain in Spokane to avoid a trial and the possibility of the death penalty.

His defense attorneys still have other motions pending in Pierce County, including an attempt to suppress evidence seized by sheriff's detectives in an April 2000 search of Yates' house in Spokane.

The defense also wants the trial moved out of Pierce County because of pretrial news coverage.

The judge has scheduled two days of hearings later this month on those remaining defense motions.

02/03/02

Akron

- A Summit County inmate admitted yesterday that his headline-grabbing claim of being a serial killer was an elaborate lie.

Jason Roland West apologized to the public and to sheriff's detectives for sending authorities on a sweeping but fruitless investigation that has dragged on for more than three months.

"Everything I have said to everybody over the last four months is false," West said in a telephone interview from the Summit County Jail.

West, 28, concocted a sensational tale in October, claiming that he had been traveling the country in stolen cars and killing prostitutes since 1992.

"You can't say I don't have a good imagination," he said. "I came up with that story in about half an hour. I never thought that it would get that big. My purpose for all of it was to prolong going back to prison in Virginia.

"The more the story went along, the more I got caught up in playing the role to where it got totally out of control.

West said he was "bored and needed some excitement."

"You might think that I've lost it or that I'm crazy, but I'm actually a nice guy with a lot of time on my hands," he said.

Summit County Sheriff's Capt. Larry Momchilov headed the investigation, after West gave him detailed descriptions - including hair color, tattoos and body piercings - of the women he allegedly killed in Akron, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina.

Momchilov said yesterday that West will always have to look over his shoulder because of the story.

"He'll always be a suspect," Momchilov said. "Some people will always have doubts about him. Was he lying then, or is he lying now?"

West was on probation in Virginia but violated it by returning to his mother's Akron home. He said she turned him away.

In September, police at the University of Akron thought he was peeping into windows at a sorority house and arrested him. Officers said they found keys to a stolen car in West's pocket. West then confessed to stealing a woman's purse and breaking into a house.

While he was in jail, he confessed to killing 29 women.

The campus charges are pending, and the county prosecutor is considering charging West with filing false police reports, obstructing justice and inducing panic for the lies he told.

Officials will also ask a judge to order West to repay the county for the cost of the investigation: two lie detector tests, psychological evaluation, a five-day trip to Arizona and 3,000 hours of detective work. Detectives and a university archaeologist spent Tuesday digging for a woman's hand that West said he had buried in the woods behind Roswell Kent Middle School, near Ina Ave.

West passed the lie detector tests, but detectives found no evidence to substantiate his claims.

West is a high school dropout who owes more than $13,000 in child support for an 8-year-old son who lives in Akron. He said the longest he has held a job was three months.

After apologizing, West said he's relieved the truth is now out.

"I guess I need to learn to channel my energy toward positive things," he said. "I'll get my GED in jail and maybe write a novel."

Delay of Stayner trial is sought

Defense lawyer asks for more time in the triple-murder case. By Cyndee Fontana The Fresno Bee (Published Saturday, February, 2, 2002 7:35AM)

Saying the defense team cannot be ready, the lawyer for Cary Stayner has asked to delay his Feb. 25 trial on triple-murder charges. In a motion filed Thursday in Santa Clara County Superior Court, defense lawyer Marcia Morrissey said Stayner's team needs more time to prepare. She also said she is working on additional motions, such as a challenge to the admissibility of Stayner's tape-recorded confession.

Judge Thomas Hastings is scheduled to hear her request for delay Monday morning.

Stayner, 40, could face the death penalty if convicted in the 1999 slayings of tourists Carole Sund, 42; her daughter, Juli, 15; and their Argentine family friend, Silvina Pelosso, 16.

The three were staying at Cedar Lodge in El Portal, where Stayner lived and sometimes worked as a handyman, when they vanished Feb. 15, 1999.

According to authorities and his confession, Stayner strangled Sund and Silvina and later slashed Juli's throat after a series of sexual assaults.

The case generated intense international publicity as law enforcement authorities searched for the missing women.

Morrissey has hinted over the past few months that she might ask to postpone the trial. Carole Carrington, Sund's mother and Juli's grandmother, said Friday from her Eureka-area home that the request was "expected." She said she would prefer that the trial get started.

"I just hope it's not too long," Carrington said, referring to the potential delay. "A month or two wouldn't be too bad, but I would not like it to go on and on."

Carrington and her husband, Francis, have said they will attend the trial. One or both have been present at court hearings in Mariposa County, where the case originally was scheduled.

Last week, Judge Hastings moved the trial to Santa Clara County because of publicity. This week, another judge denied a defense motion to dismiss three of six accusations that expose Stayner to the death penalty. Stayner has pleaded innocent to all charges.

He was arrested in July 1999 in connection with the murder of Yosemite park naturalist Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26. He pleaded guilty to that crime in federal court and now is serving a life sentence.

Sunday, February 3, 2002

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SPOKANE -- A judge has denied convicted serial killer Robert L. Yates' attempt to delay his trial in Pierce County, where he is accused in the killings of two women.

Defense attorneys Roger Hunko and Mary Kay High had asked that the trial be delayed until this fall, saying they needed more time to prepare.

Deputy Prosecutors Jerry Costello and Barbara Corey-Boulet said they "vigorously opposed" granting any further delays.

Pierce County Superior Court Judge John McCarthy rejected the delay request on Thursday.

Yates, 49 and a married father of five, is scheduled to stand trial April 29. Jury selection is expected to last at least a month.

He faces the death penalty if convicted of the December 1997 slaying of Melinda Mercer and the October 1998 killing of Connie LaFontaine Ellis.

Yates has been in jail in Tacoma since October 2000, when he pleaded guilty in Spokane to 13 counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.

He struck a plea bargain in Spokane to avoid a trial and the possibility of the death penalty.

Yates' lawyers want the trial moved out of Pierce County because of pretrial news coverage.

They have other motions pending, including an attempt to suppress evidence seized by sheriff's detectives in an April 2000 search of Yates' house in Spokane.

Two days of hearings are scheduled later this month on the remaining defense motions.

Tests of trash bags point to suspect in 3 killings, sources say
BY BILL BRYAN
Of the Post-Dispatch
© 2001 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

01/31/2002 09:13 PM

Karla Homolka (Toronto Sun Files)

TORONTO -- Karla Homolka will try to cash in on her notoriety after her release from prison three years from now, says the Toronto lawyer representing her victims' families.

"I'm convinced she will try to profit from this, somewhere, somehow." Tim Danson told The Toronto Sun yesterday.

"The worst-case scenario ... is a book or a movie."

Danson said while a stipulation in a controversial plea-bargain forbids Homolka from even talking about her role in ex-husband Paul Bernardo's murders of teens Kristen French, 15, and Leslie Mahaffy, 14, and the death of her sister Tammy, 14, that restriction ends at the end of her 12-year sentence in But Danson wants to stop her from getting a penny.

He hopes this fall to cross-examine Homolka at a discovery hearing that is part of a "multi-million" dollar lawsuit against Homolka and Bernardo.

Filed in Ontario Court six years ago, the lawsuit seeks unspecified amounts of money for the pain and suffering and personal loss that the murders caused parents Doug and Donna French and Dan and Debbie Mahaffy.

Danson said he was prepared to press forward with the lawsuit early last year, but delayed it as it became clear that Homolka, 31, would be detained for her full sentence.

Danson said with Homolka due for release in 2005, it is time to ensure that at least her portion of the case gets to court and the families secure "one big mother of a judgment."

Should the families get any money that Homolka -- or Bernardo -- gain from recounting their story, Danson said, it would go to charity.

Yates Trial Moves Forward

January 31, 2002
 
By Bryan Johnson

PIERCE COUNTY - A Pierce County Superior Court Judge has refused to delay the trial of Robert Yates, the convicted Spokane Serial Killer.

Yates faces two additional counts of murder in Pierce County, and will go on trial April 29 for the rapes and murders of Tonnie LaFontaine-Ellis and Melinda Mercer.

Yates' attorney Robert Hunko argued Thursday that the defense needed more time to prepare for the death penalty case, but the judge refused.

Outside the courtroom, Hunko told KOMO 4 News this case could be over tomorrow. All Pierce County has to do is drop the death penalty and Yates will plead guilty.

Hunko said that after all, Yates isn't going anywhere, a reference to the fact that Yates faces 408 years in prison after pleading guilty to 14 murders in Spokane.