The plan was refused. Instead, Pickton was put under surveillance for three days. But as he did little to arouse suspicion, this was discontinued. Although this was an improvement from the Missing Persons Unit, it still lacked the resources of a fully-fledged homicide investigation. Then another source came forward with a gruesome story that appeared to identify Pickton as the man killing and disposing of the missing women. The source said he had seen handcuffs in Pickton's bedroom and a special freezer in his barn from which he had been served "strange meat", which he believed could have been human.
He also spoke of a female friend, whom he named as Lynn Ellingsen, who had gone with Pickton to the Downtown Eastside to help him pick up women. The source said that Ellingsen had told him that she had walked into Pickton's slaughterhouse and had seen what she thought was a female body hanging from a meat hook. Pickton was standing beside it cutting strips of flesh off the body's legs.
She said she hadn't realised that human fat was yellow - a detail that lent credibility to her story. At this point Shenher felt he had enough evidence to bring both Ellingsen and Pickton in for questioning, but because Pickton's farm fell under the jurisdiction of the RCMP, it was up to them to take the investigation forward.
As for Pickton, Shenher later found that an RCMP officer visited his farm but was told by his brother to "come back during the rainy season" because they were too busy working. He consented to a search of his property - but amazingly, this offer was not followed up. By now the number of missing women had risen to 30 and Shenher was beginning to experience physical symptoms brought on by what he regarded as his failure to solve the crimes.
He suffered from nightmares and mysterious aches in his body, had trouble eating and developed allergies. It was not my jurisdiction. What failed us was that someone at a very senior level in my force should have approached someone at a very senior level in the RCMP. But it didn't work that way. We didn't get that support. By the end of , Shenher was exhausted and demoralised.
He was beginning to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder so asked to be transferred to a different unit. Then, in January , nearly three years after Shenher had received his first tip-off about Pickton, the RCMP and Vancouver Police Department finally established a joint operation to re-examine the cases of missing and murdered sex workers in the province of British Columbia.
Shenher should have been cheered by this. Instead he was depressed. It was only in February when a junior RCMP officer visited Pickton's farm looking for an unlicensed gun and spotted an asthma inhaler bearing the name of one of the missing women, that he was finally arrested. Within hours, the Pickton property became the site of the largest crime scene search in Canadian history.
Shenher, when he found out, experienced a wave of contradictory emotions. In , a court found Pickton guilty of six counts of second-degree murder. There was enough evidence to charge him for a further 20 killings, but prosecutors decided not to proceed because he had already been given the maximum life sentence. Shenher's criticism of the police investigations was shared by family and friends of the victims.
In , in response to popular pressure, the government of British Columbia formally announced a Missing Women Commission of Inquiry to look into the police's conduct. It ruled that their investigations suffered from a lack of leadership, describing them as a "blatant failure" marked by a deep bias against the poor, often drug-addicted, victims.
At the same time it praised certain officers, like Shenher, for striving valiantly to solve the crisis. But what could have been an opportunity for genuine soul-searching about the failures of the province's police and justice systems was wasted, Shenher says. He even accuses the inquiry of suppressing information that would have shed light on why Pickton's farm was not searched earlier. He now hopes a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, announced last year by the new government of Justin Trudeau, will go further towards answering the question why vulnerable women were so badly let down.
Racism and sexism were still a problem within the country's police forces, she added. On 22 February , Pickton was re-arrested and charged with two counts of murder. A total of 26 murder charges were eventually laid against him. While Pickton was being held in jail in Surrey , British Columbia, he shared a cell with an undercover RCMP officer he believed to be another detainee.
In their conversation, Pickton said he had murdered 49 women, and had wanted to make it Meanwhile, the pig farm became the largest crime scene in Canadian history. Investigators took , DNA samples and seized , exhibits. Archaeologists and forensic experts needed heavy equipment to sift through , cubic yards of soil in search of human remains. Due to the unprecedented volume and complexity of legal issues that had to be litigated, his trial on the first six charges did not begin until 22 January , in New Westminster.
On 9 December , Pickton was found guilty by a jury on six counts of second-degree murder ; he was sentenced to life imprisonment in a federal penitentiary , with no possibility of parole for 25 years. Those convictions were upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in After Pickton was convicted of six charges in the initial trial, British Columbia Crown prosecutors kept open the possibility of trying Pickton on the other 20 charges at a later date. However, on 4 August , prosecutors announced they would not proceed on the 20 charges.
They said a second trial, even if further convictions were achieved, would not add anything to Pickton's punishment, which was already the maximum possible under the law. The decision angered some of the families of the 20 victims; others said they were relieved at being spared the experience of another long and difficult trial.
It was offered for sale on Amazon. In , a provincial government inquiry was established to examine the Pickton case and how it was handled by authorities. The inquiry issued 63 recommendations, including the creation of a Greater Vancouver regional police force to allow for more effective, less fragmented police cooperation. It also called for adequate funding for emergency shelters for women in the sex trade, and for compensation for children of the missing women.
Following the report, the Vancouver Police Department implemented several policy and procedural changes to its missing persons investigations: the missing-persons unit was made a regular part of the police department; investigations are required to begin without delay; family members are advised regularly and consulted before the release of information; and the case file is kept open until the missing person is located.
Vancouver Eastside Missing Women A private website detailing the Pickton case, the missing women, and the various players in the case. Missing Women Inquiry The website of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, tasked by the British Columbia government to investigate the missing women of the Downtown Eastside, and the criminal investigation and prosecution of Robert Pickton.
Search The Canadian Encyclopedia. Remember me. I forgot my password. Why sign up? Create Account. Suggest an Edit. Enter your suggested edit s to this article in the form field below. Accessed 12 November In The Canadian Encyclopedia.
Historica Canada. Article published July 26, ; Last Edited April 24, The Canadian Encyclopedia , s. Pickton pleaded not guilty to 27 charges of first-degree murder, one of which was later rejected on the grounds of a lack of evidence. Because of the publication ban, not all the details are publicly known about the proceedings. The 26 charges were split so six of them, those of Marnie Lee Frey, Georgina Faith Papin, Brenda Ann Wolfe, Andrea Joesbury, Sereena Abostway and Mona Lee Wilson, were processed first; according to the presiding judge, it was because all 26 charges would put too much strain on the jury and because the evidence in those six counts was "materially different" from the other On December 6, , a jury found Pickton guilty of the six murders, which were reduced from first-degree to second-degree.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment, which in Canada entails a possibility of parole in 25 years and is the highest possible punishment for second-degree murder, essentially earning Pickton the same punishment that he would have received for a first-degree conviction.
On August 4, , the other 20 charges were stayed. Three appeals have been filed since to the British Columbia Court of Appeal. The first one made by the defense was rejected and the one made by the prosecution was allowed on the grounds that the trial judge had made a mistake in excluding some evidence and in splitting the charges.
Pickton's defense then filed an appeal with the Canadian Supreme Court, which was rejected on July 30, He is currently incarcerated. A spokesman for the Crown stated that the other 20 charges are likely to be discontinued. The RCMP and Vancouver police have suffered some criticism for their way of handling the case, such as the two agencies withholding information from each other.
The RCMP have been called arrogant in Canadian media and said not to work well in tandem with other investigative agencies, as exemplified during their "turf war" with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service during the investigation of the Air India bombing. The Vancouver police has also been criticized for not taking action sooner and not taking the disappearances of so many women seriously. Because the Pickton case is still under investigation, exactly how he killed his victims is not entirely known to the public, as is anything he might have done to them before killing them.
According to a witness on tape, Pickton had claimed that he brought his victims, who were prostitutes, to the farm, handcuffed them, raped them, killed them by strangling them, bled and gutted them, ran them through a wood-chipper and then fed their remains to his pigs. Another claim is that the victims were ground, the resulting mince mixed with the pork mince from the farm and the packages given to Pickton's friends and family.
It was stated in a Biography Channel documentary about the case that Pickton would lure his victims to his farm using a simple ruse, such as pretending to buy sexual favors. During sex, he would become violent and accuse the victims of something, such as stealing from him, in order to build up his rage.
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