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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, The Most Shocking
Speaker 5: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about him Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker VCK
Speaker 5: every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 5: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 5: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 6: Good evening. This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 6: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime
Speaker 6: History and the authors that are written about them. By
Speaker 6: the mid nineties, women began begin disappearing from Vancouver's East
Speaker 6: Side street prostitutes, drug users, the most vulnerable and desperate
Speaker 6: of women vanishing from the streets. Not until the year
Speaker 6: two thousand the police began closing in on Robert Willie Picton,
Speaker 6: who soon would pique the world's interest as one of
Speaker 6: the most prolific, shocking and bizarre serial killers of all time.
Speaker 6: Stevie Cameron, Award winning investigative journalist and best selling author,
Speaker 6: decided to write about and report about this case, and
Speaker 6: the result was two books, The pict In Files and
Speaker 6: now the definitive, never before heard, incredibly shocking story of
Speaker 6: Robert Willie Picton, his murder victims, the lucky ones who
Speaker 6: escaped death, the investigators that worked the case, the entire
Speaker 6: fascinating story on the farm William Picton in the tragic
Speaker 6: story of Vancouver's Missing Women, with my special guest, journalist
Speaker 6: and author Stevie Cameron. Welcome to the program, and thank
Speaker 6: you very much for Greensay's interview. Stevie Cameron.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Dan, I'm really happy to be with you.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much. It's going to be a
Speaker 6: great thrill for me. It's gonna be a great program
Speaker 6: for our audience. They very much anticipated this program absolutely.
Speaker 6: Now you're investigative journalist and very successful author, having written
Speaker 6: about Canada's Prime Minister Brown Maroney and his years in
Speaker 6: politics called On the Take and The Last Amigo, a
Speaker 6: book about Carheiin Scriber Schreiber, the German Canadian arms dealer
Speaker 6: and part of the airbus scandal, and you founded a
Speaker 6: critically acclaimed national magazine ELM Street. What exactly was it
Speaker 6: about this case and this story that made you want
Speaker 6: to write two books, The Picton Files and now On
Speaker 6: the farm. What compelled you to write and want to
Speaker 6: write about this particular case.
Speaker 2: Well, it actually wasn't my idea. I mean, you're quite
Speaker 2: right when you say that. I was a political journalist
Speaker 2: and I wrote, I'm a white collar crime person. You know.
Speaker 2: I'm interested in corrupt politicians and how they steal and
Speaker 2: how they hide it and why they do it and
Speaker 2: where they get it, and why they never get charged
Speaker 2: and why they never get arrested, why they never go
Speaker 2: to prison. So I've done a lot of that. I've
Speaker 2: done five books like that. And then all of a
Speaker 2: sudden my agent called me and said, how would you
Speaker 2: like to write a book on the Picton case? And
Speaker 2: I said, you can't be serious and she said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I want your connounce Here in Canada, as it is
Speaker 2: in the United States is a publishing company owned by
Speaker 2: Random House, and so it was a wonderful, wonderful company.
Speaker 2: And she said they would like you to do a
Speaker 2: book on the Picton case. And I said I'll do
Speaker 2: it and she said no, no, no, that's not what
Speaker 2: you are I'm just offering and I have a responsibility
Speaker 2: to tell you what they want you to do. This
Speaker 2: isn't the kind of thing you do, and I think
Speaker 2: it might be a mistake. I said, no, no, I'm
Speaker 2: going to do it. Why because it's so interesting, Because
Speaker 2: I said, I, uh, I feel I just can't believe
Speaker 2: my luck and she's so finally acquiesced. And why did
Speaker 2: I do it? Because I'm interested in criminals and I
Speaker 2: got awfully tired of working on ones and never went
Speaker 2: to jail. I also lived in Vancouver for many years,
Speaker 2: and I'm a graduate of the University British Columbia in Vancouver,
Speaker 2: so I know the city well. There a lot of
Speaker 2: family there. And another reason is that many years ago,
Speaker 2: in my church in Toronto, I was involved in starting
Speaker 2: a program to help the homeless in our church and
Speaker 2: we ran a shelter there and fed them and found
Speaker 2: clothes for them and so on. And I ran that
Speaker 2: shelter for seventeen years, and I'm now on a couple
Speaker 2: of boards that help destitute people and one board that
Speaker 2: sends food to two hundred and fifty agencies in the city.
Speaker 2: So I have a long history of experience with homelessness,
Speaker 2: addiction and the issues around that. So when I knew
Speaker 2: that the victims were prostitutes, I knew they were destitute.
Speaker 2: I knew they lived in terrible places in the downtown
Speaker 2: east Side in Vancouver, and in fact, I've commissioned a
Speaker 2: story on the missing women of Vancouver for my magazine
Speaker 2: Elm Street. And you know, to me, it was a
Speaker 2: perfect fit.
Speaker 6: Did you what did you initially anticipate you would learn
Speaker 6: from this case, especially considering well, I don't want to
Speaker 6: jump ahead, but just considering what you eventually learned about
Speaker 6: the entire thing. Was there something that you initially anticipated
Speaker 6: you would learn from this, especially given the great information
Speaker 6: you did learn? Was there maybe a little naivity in
Speaker 6: the beginning, maybe something that total So you're right.
Speaker 2: I mean I didn't know how long it was going
Speaker 2: to take, and you know, I just jumped right into it.
Speaker 2: I actually, well, to be fair to myself, I didn't
Speaker 2: jump right into it. I spent four months, four or
Speaker 2: five months reading everything I could get my hands on.
Speaker 2: I said, I'm not going out there till I know
Speaker 2: what this is about, until I've assembled a list of
Speaker 2: people to talk to. And I brought a consultant in
Speaker 2: right away, a man called Ron McKay who was retired
Speaker 2: Mount Here RCMP inspector in Canada, and he was the
Speaker 2: first Canadian to go to Quantico, the FBI headquarters where
Speaker 2: they teach people the about serial killers, and they that's
Speaker 2: where they trained the profiles, right, and so Ron was
Speaker 2: the first Canadian to go there, and they took one
Speaker 2: more who's also a friend of mine, the following year,
Speaker 2: and then they closed the program to foreigners for I
Speaker 2: think for financial reasons. But he was very helpful in
Speaker 2: suggesting people to talk to. And so finally when I felt,
Speaker 2: you know, I had a long list of names and
Speaker 2: I understood the story pretty well, and they had arrested
Speaker 2: picked him. They arrested him in February two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: and I finally went to Vancouver in August. It took
Speaker 2: me that long to really wrap my head around the
Speaker 2: story and do the research. So I went to Vancouver
Speaker 2: in August, and by that time I had lined up
Speaker 2: a lot of people to talk to, and from that
Speaker 2: time till now, I've lived there part of every year,
Speaker 2: sometimes as much as two thades of the year, sometimes
Speaker 2: just half a year. And because this thing has taken
Speaker 2: eight years.
Speaker 6: Right right now, your incredible book starts with someone named
Speaker 6: Bill Wilson, and who was he and what did he
Speaker 6: discover and what was especially unusual about what he did
Speaker 6: discover and showed police.
Speaker 2: Well, Bill Wilson test side at the preliminary hearing and
Speaker 2: that's how we got his story. Also testified again at
Speaker 2: the I'm sorry he didn't he testified in the trial.
Speaker 2: He was he was sort of a whitler. He sold
Speaker 2: bird houses and hurligigs and so on. We called him
Speaker 2: the hurly gig Man. He sold these on the roadside
Speaker 2: near a town called Mission. And that town is probably
Speaker 2: about twenty miles from the Picton Farms, which is again
Speaker 2: about twenty five miles east of Vancouver. So if you
Speaker 2: think of one road that's along line with Vancouver. And
Speaker 2: then he was picked and farm and foot Coquitlam. And
Speaker 2: then there's a place called Mission, and there's a river
Speaker 2: there that goes into it was a big slew and
Speaker 2: he found the skull of a woman in the slough
Speaker 2: and he reported it to the police rather reluctantly because
Speaker 2: he had a criminal record himself and he was a
Speaker 2: bit nervous about that. But they overlooked that. They took
Speaker 2: the skull into Vancouver and they tried to find out
Speaker 2: who it was. It was the skull of a woman,
Speaker 2: and it was really only half a skull. It had
Speaker 2: been sawn in half vertically, and that skull they did
Speaker 2: a drawing of, they reconstructed the face, they did a
Speaker 2: you know, they published that face on posters, and nobody
Speaker 2: recognized her. She was part to a Native Indian and
Speaker 2: part white, but nobody knew who she was, and so
Speaker 2: she was Jane Doe. They put her skull in a
Speaker 2: box and put it in a locker and it stayed
Speaker 2: there for years and years. And the reason that Bill
Speaker 2: Wilson's discovery was so important was that when they did
Speaker 2: go on to Pickton Farm and they started finding body parts,
Speaker 2: they found some of the leg bones of this Jain
Speaker 2: Doe on the farm, and they also found skulls that
Speaker 2: were cut in the identical way, you know, to dispose
Speaker 2: of them. He cut the skulls in half, and he
Speaker 2: had tried her skull into the emission slew. And that
Speaker 2: to this day nobody knows who she was. She's the
Speaker 2: one woman they were not unable to identify.
Speaker 6: I just found it very fascinated. The first police officer.
Speaker 6: It really didn't you know, it didn't ring bells or
Speaker 6: set off bells in our alarms in his mind, just
Speaker 6: from the mechanically cut a skull, like you say, very
Speaker 6: kind of unusual, I would think. But but you say
Speaker 6: that police didn't really make much of this. They didn't think.
Speaker 6: They didn't really think.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting. There were two people who worked on
Speaker 2: Jane Doe's skull back in nineteen ninety five when they
Speaker 2: found it. And one was a woman called Tracy Rodgers
Speaker 2: who worked in the in the reconstruction of the face
Speaker 2: so that they could put a poster out, and she
Speaker 2: was a forensic anthropologist, very good, who was working quite
Speaker 2: often with the ARCMP the Mountain in British Columbia. And
Speaker 2: the other person was an RCNP officer called Tim Slay.
Speaker 2: And both of them knew that this was a homicide
Speaker 2: back in nineteen ninety five, but they could not find
Speaker 2: anyone who knew who she was. They could not reconstruct
Speaker 2: the face well enough so the people would identify her.
Speaker 2: But both of those people, Tim Slay and Tracy Rogers,
Speaker 2: worked on the Picton case many years later. They were
Speaker 2: brought back, you know, it was just because it was
Speaker 2: their job, not because of his skull. And finally Tracy
Speaker 2: Rogers was able to match the skull and the bones
Speaker 2: to this one woman, right, and Tim say worked them
Speaker 2: as well, both of these people.
Speaker 6: Now, maybe you can tell us the location where Willie
Speaker 6: Pickton's family had property was called a farm, and talk
Speaker 6: about it. Technically, I guess you could call the farm.
Speaker 6: But maybe you can tell us what really the state
Speaker 6: of this was, because it wasn't so much a farm,
Speaker 6: you say, And who owned the property originally, and what
Speaker 6: business was conducted there and who resided there?
Speaker 2: Okay, The Pictons were an old family in a small
Speaker 2: town called Port Coquitlam, which is, as I said, about
Speaker 2: twenty five miles east of Vancouver, and it's a working
Speaker 2: class community which had a lot of farms and fishing.
Speaker 2: And so it was on the Fraser River near the
Speaker 2: mouth as of the Frasers that enters the Pacific Ocean
Speaker 2: in Vancouver. And this family were always hard working, quite poor,
Speaker 2: and they had their first farm was right on the
Speaker 2: top of a hill right beside an insane asylum, a
Speaker 2: place where the criminally insane were kept, and some of
Speaker 2: these people worked on the Picton farm. Eventually they sold
Speaker 2: that place and moved down the hill onto about to
Speaker 2: a farm quite nearby in the little town of Port Coquitlam,
Speaker 2: and Billy had a brother and a sister, and the
Speaker 2: parents worked them very hard. These kids went to school
Speaker 2: smelling a pig manure. They were They slapped the pigs
Speaker 2: two or three times a day. The animals were allowed
Speaker 2: in and out of the house, and the children were
Speaker 2: shunned by had the kids them in school because of
Speaker 2: their smell and their poverty and the fact that they
Speaker 2: didn't fit in. And Willy was always considered a bit slow.
Speaker 2: He's actually got normal intelligence, but he sort of talks
Speaker 2: like Daffy Duck or something. He's got an odd voice,
Speaker 2: and he's ugly and just very you know. It was
Speaker 2: it was a terrible situation and these kids were I
Speaker 2: shook permanently him by this. He certainly was.
Speaker 6: Now, what was Willie Picked in in his life growing up?
Speaker 6: Through your investigation, what was it really like?
Speaker 2: Well, it was very tough, he kept saying. He had
Speaker 2: a hard, hard life. Willie Picked was one of these people.
Speaker 2: He loved to talk, but he always tells the same story.
Speaker 2: And one of the stories he tells him is about
Speaker 2: how he was given a baby calf to raise and
Speaker 2: it was a pet, and one day he came home
Speaker 2: from school and he couldn't find the calf, and his
Speaker 2: mother told him fairly briskly, that he should go to
Speaker 2: the barn. He went to the barn and found his
Speaker 2: calf had been slotted and was hanging from a hook
Speaker 2: in the barn. And he tells that story again and
Speaker 2: again and again. It was obviously a terrible experience for him.
Speaker 2: He said, well, you know, that's what happens. But he
Speaker 2: had that kind of thing happened to him many times.
Speaker 2: And one of the worst things that happened was the
Speaker 2: time his younger brother, Dave, he had just got his
Speaker 2: driver's license, and hit a young neighborhood boy on the
Speaker 2: road outside the family farm. He ran home to tell
Speaker 2: his parents, and his mother told him to take the car.
Speaker 2: His mother and father told him to take the truck
Speaker 2: it was actually a truck to the garage and get
Speaker 2: it repaired. There was a dint in it act they were,
Speaker 2: you know, there were some problems with it because of
Speaker 2: the accident. And the mother went out to the place
Speaker 2: on the road where the boy was lying and rolled
Speaker 2: him into a deep flew of water beside the road
Speaker 2: where he drowned.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: And so you know that the Dave Pickton was. There
Speaker 2: was the assumption that Dave Pickton had just had a
Speaker 2: bad accident and he was His license was taken away
Speaker 2: from him. He wasn't allowed to drop till he was
Speaker 2: twenty one. Nobody realized for a long time that the
Speaker 2: mother had actually rolled the body into the He was
Speaker 2: still alive when he was hit by the by the car,
Speaker 2: and the coroner said later he would have lived despite
Speaker 2: the injuries. When the drug hit him, he would have
Speaker 2: he would have lived. So I tell you that story
Speaker 2: down because that is the kind of family right It
Speaker 2: grew up in and his brother and sister made great
Speaker 2: successes of their lives in business. Even though his brother
Speaker 2: had a hell of angels want to be and you
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Speaker 2: Wealthy and the selling off the farm property after their
Speaker 2: parents died and they had a lot of money. Willi
Speaker 2: Pickton as a serial killer who was also a millionaire.
Speaker 6: Credible. You talk about the Hell's Angels a little bit,
Speaker 6: not to really involve them in this at all, but
Speaker 6: just certainly that in terms of proximity, the Hell's Angels
Speaker 6: were down the street, they had some parties, and then
Speaker 6: you talk about Piggy's Palace and the Good Time Society.
Speaker 6: Tell our audience a little bit about the Hell's Angels,
Speaker 6: the parties and the relationship they had with the Picton's
Speaker 6: and Picton's idea of kind of capitalizing on their property
Speaker 6: and as I mentioned, the good Time Society that they
Speaker 6: set up at Piggy's Palace.
Speaker 2: Well, in those days, this will probably be in the
Speaker 2: early nineties. Dave picked and the younger brother, very shrewd businessman.
Speaker 2: He had a business hauling soil, and he also did
Speaker 2: demolitions of old buildings, and he had all kinds of
Speaker 2: irons and fire and he kept all his trucks and
Speaker 2: so on on the farm property. Willy in the meantime
Speaker 2: of making a living doing odd jobs but basically running
Speaker 2: a pig slaughtering business, he had placed and so on.
Speaker 2: But they had lots of money because they were selling
Speaker 2: off bits and pieces of their farm for development. And
Speaker 2: what's very strange about this is if you picture a
Speaker 2: narrow strip of farm, it's not even farmland. It's like
Speaker 2: a junkyard. Frankly now fourteen agus left surrounded by tracktosing,
Speaker 2: that's basically, and across the streets from their place the
Speaker 2: two things. One was a Hell's Angels clubhouse and the
Speaker 2: other one was a massive small development which and they
Speaker 2: faced directly on a home depot, so it's very weird.
Speaker 2: And down the end of their road they bought more
Speaker 2: land and that's where they built Piggy's Palace. From Dave's demolitions.
Speaker 2: He took out a bar in a hotel and he
Speaker 2: moved it to this barn and they had parties there.
Speaker 2: They brought in bands, they had food, and it was
Speaker 2: raided several times by the police, but a lot of
Speaker 2: local politicians loved going there, so they were sort of protected.
Speaker 2: Willie loved going there and they made a lot of money,
Speaker 2: but it was basically a place where the Hell's Angels
Speaker 2: like to hang out, and so Dave was as far
Speaker 2: as I know, he's not a patch member of the
Speaker 2: Hell's Angels, but he's certainly a Hell's Angel hang around
Speaker 2: or you know, I don't know quite what level he's reached.
Speaker 2: But the Hell's Angels clubhouse was directly across the street
Speaker 2: from the Picton's home of his farmhouse and the remains
Speaker 2: of the farm land. So was people would go to
Speaker 2: Piggy's Palace and dance, and it was in the bands,
Speaker 2: and then they'd all go back to the Hell's Angel's
Speaker 2: Clubhouse and stay up all night and get drunk, and
Speaker 2: you know, it was a real scene. And in the
Speaker 2: city of Port Coquitlam had a terrible time trying to
Speaker 2: close them down. Eventually they closed down Piggy's Palace, but
Speaker 2: the Hell's Angels only sold that clubhouse and moved out
Speaker 2: of there after the Willie Tipton's rest was too hot
Speaker 2: for them.
Speaker 6: In that area, now, did you, I don't know did
Speaker 6: Willie Picton was the sole person that resided at the
Speaker 6: property though even though that David Picked and his brother
Speaker 6: and his sister Linda Wright were actually co owners of
Speaker 6: this property as well, but was it Willie primarily stayed
Speaker 6: on the property.
Speaker 2: Well, his brother was there for a long time, and
Speaker 2: the two brothers lived together for a long time after
Speaker 2: their parents died. And Dave's girlfriends who came, and you know,
Speaker 2: he had a series of girlfriends who came, and you know,
Speaker 2: the first one he had two children buy her. They
Speaker 2: all lived together in his house. But Willie and Dave
Speaker 2: fought all the time, and finally Dave kicked him out,
Speaker 2: and eventually they bought a trailer. First of all, it
Speaker 2: was a little motor home, and then they bought a trailer.
Speaker 2: And so Willie lived in the motorhome at the back
Speaker 2: of the property for a while, a couple of years,
Speaker 2: and then he bought a trailer and they put it
Speaker 2: on a cement pad, and he lived at the back
Speaker 2: of the property. And he was where he was at
Speaker 2: the back of this strip of this back of a
Speaker 2: sort of rectangular strip. He had a garage workshop and
Speaker 2: he still had the motor homes sitting there, and he
Speaker 2: had another sort of a barn, and he had a
Speaker 2: bunch of a slaughter house for his pigs and there
Speaker 2: was a bit of a pigoty there. It was an
Speaker 2: incredible mess, all these old cars. He also traded in
Speaker 2: old cars and he went to car auctions so he
Speaker 2: could fix anything. So he was basically living on the
Speaker 2: same property as brother as his brother, but he was
Speaker 2: at the back. And then just before a year or
Speaker 2: two before he's arrest, Dave moved out, bought his own
Speaker 2: home down near the about a mile away, and Willy
Speaker 2: was alone there.
Speaker 6: Now you speak about Willie's relationships, you talked to he
Speaker 6: was a guy that was kind of weird, considered creepy.
Speaker 6: He had some money, he was very dirty, his hygiene
Speaker 6: was had a lot to left to desire. What was
Speaker 6: Willy's sex life? What did it consist of? He didn't
Speaker 6: he didn't much had to have many relationships. So what
Speaker 6: did his sex life consist of? What was he really like?
Speaker 2: Well? I talked to people who knew him well, and
Speaker 2: he he was he he had great desires, but nobody
Speaker 2: wanted to go out with Willy and he he patronized
Speaker 2: the sex shop in Port Coquitlam where he bought and
Speaker 2: a great deal of you know sex what in Canada
Speaker 2: we politely called sex toys. You know, dildo's, but he
Speaker 2: bought a lot of really awful things, you know, fur
Speaker 2: furry handcuffs and restraints. He bought zap straps, all the
Speaker 2: tools of serial killers. You know, we now have this
Speaker 2: incredible story going on in Canada right now. The man
Speaker 2: was convicted today, a colonel in our military who is
Speaker 2: a serial killer and killed two women not far from here.
Speaker 2: And again, you though, those zap straps come into that
Speaker 2: story as well. Willie was like that, and he was
Speaker 2: I think he is starting to murder women from nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five on, because he certainly murdered Jane Doe and
Speaker 2: her skull was found in ninety five and it was
Speaker 2: a fairly new skull. What he did because he had
Speaker 2: so much money and because nobody else, no woman in
Speaker 2: the right lines, would go out with him. He would
Speaker 2: drive it to the downtown East side of Vancouver, which
Speaker 2: is famous around the world for the saddest, poorest, most
Speaker 2: addicted women. It's poorest postal code in Canada. And they
Speaker 2: would be wandering the streets and looking for business, and
Speaker 2: he'd pick them up in bars around the streets and
Speaker 2: take them back out to the farm and sometimes he
Speaker 2: wouldturned them but he often killed them and he would
Speaker 2: have sex with them. They went out there in the
Speaker 2: first place because he would offer them more money than
Speaker 2: any man on the street that stopped the car or
Speaker 2: walked by, and he would offer them one hundred dollars
Speaker 2: for sex, and then he would be getting ten to
Speaker 2: twenty bucks, so of course, and he would offer them
Speaker 2: all the free drugs they wanted, so they would go
Speaker 2: out to his place. And nobody knows quite why he
Speaker 2: brought some of them back and why he murdered some
Speaker 2: of them. Who knows what those choices are. And some
Speaker 2: women were able to talk their way out of being killed,
Speaker 2: and one woman thought him nearly killed him and she
Speaker 2: did survive.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about how he was able to get
Speaker 6: women to come out to this remote place with him,
Speaker 6: even though he was creepy. So he offered drugs and
Speaker 6: probably picked on people that had drug problems, but he
Speaker 6: also had some assistance. He had a couple I found
Speaker 6: this incredible other drug addicted women. Gina Houston, you have
Speaker 6: a Dina Taylor. What were their role in actually helping
Speaker 6: Willie picked and find women. I thought it was fascinating
Speaker 6: what they did.
Speaker 2: Was Gena Houston actually lived in Port Coquitlam, and she
Speaker 2: befriended him. He paid her close to one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars over a few years, basically to you for her
Speaker 2: drugs and for her groceries. He almost had a kind
Speaker 2: of non sexual relationship with a girlfriend that he never harmed.
Speaker 2: And one of them was a woman called Lisa Wells Yelds,
Speaker 2: whom I am still close to. She was one of
Speaker 2: my best sources for this case, and she was one
Speaker 2: of the women that he was very fond of, and
Speaker 2: she was a neighbor. But the other two, she never
Speaker 2: brought any women to the farm for him to kill,
Speaker 2: but the other two did. Dinah Taylor well the woman
Speaker 2: who replaced Lisa Yelds with Jennie Houston. The woman who
Speaker 2: replaced Jenny Houston was Dinna Taylor, and both of these
Speaker 2: women would go to the shelters and the drop ins
Speaker 2: that the prostitutes and addicts in the downtown Eastside would use.
Speaker 2: For example, First United Church, a wonderful community center in
Speaker 2: church in the downtown Easide had a drop in for
Speaker 2: these addicted prostitutes, and Dinah Taylor and Jennie Houston would
Speaker 2: go there and try to talk women into coming out
Speaker 2: to the farm with them for firemen, for drugs, and
Speaker 2: Willie's great guy. And quite often these women were so
Speaker 2: desperate they'd go and they and they didn't come back. Now,
Speaker 2: we never heard any evidence that Dinnah Taylor or Genie
Speaker 2: Houston helped him kill these women, but they certainly lured
Speaker 2: them out to the farm with promises, as I've said
Speaker 2: to you already have drugs.
Speaker 6: And money, and.
Speaker 2: Once in a while he'd returned them. But then he
Speaker 2: killed so many. I mean, in nineteen ninety seven, two
Speaker 2: years after that mission skull was found, thirteen women in
Speaker 2: the downtown East Side went missing. And you're convinced that
Speaker 2: he wasn't charged on all thirteen that year that we
Speaker 2: know he killed out thirteen. Wow.
Speaker 6: Now, did you talk about Dinah Taylor and Gina Houston,
Speaker 6: whether it was evidence or not. Do you believe that
Speaker 6: they you say they didn't actually assist him per se,
Speaker 6: but do you believe that they knew these women's fate?
Speaker 6: Was there any evidence or at least could you assume
Speaker 6: that they actually knew that something had happened to these
Speaker 6: women that they didn't Were they privy to that information?
Speaker 2: Dinah Taylor did testify during the during the trial, very briefly,
Speaker 2: and she had testified in the preliminary hearing that I
Speaker 2: attended in two thousand and three, and she suggested that
Speaker 2: Lilly had told her one of the women had died
Speaker 2: and he'd tried to save her, and this is all
Speaker 2: in a phone call she'd had with him. It was
Speaker 2: very unclear to me what her role was in the
Speaker 2: deaths of anybody, and nobody was ever able to prove
Speaker 2: that she had helped kill anyone, and she was never charged.
Speaker 2: She died recently of cancer. The other and Danna Taylor's
Speaker 2: the Native woman who went back to her home in Ontario.
Speaker 2: You know you're here in the province of Ontario, and
Speaker 2: she did come out. She was brought back out to
Speaker 2: court once, but not during a trial. And again no
Speaker 2: charges were laid against either women by the police and
Speaker 2: they were left alone ultimately, so I don't think the
Speaker 2: police ever had enough to charge them with anything, even
Speaker 2: assisting him.
Speaker 6: Right right now, what was the mood, like you say
Speaker 6: in ninety five women start disappearing at what time and
Speaker 6: through what process? You talk about Vancouver's Sun articles, it
Speaker 6: seemed to awaken people to how bad or they people
Speaker 6: in the Vancouver area didn't realize how many women were missing,
Speaker 6: or how big or complex or the magnitude of the
Speaker 6: problem actually, So tell us what the mood was in
Speaker 6: the nineties and mid nineties after these women went missing,
Speaker 6: And then at what point did it seem to people
Speaker 6: became aware of that maybe a serial killer was working,
Speaker 6: but certainly women were disappearing from the face of the earth,
Speaker 6: and a lot of women. So went give us that
Speaker 6: description of that time in Vancouver.
Speaker 2: Well, the problem was that in Vancouver, the police ignored
Speaker 2: these women. The Vancouver police ignored these women. Their families
Speaker 2: would say, my daughter's disappeared, my sister's disappeared. And I'm
Speaker 2: talking basically about the mid nineties up until about nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight, and they and nothing would happen. The man
Speaker 2: in charge of the missing person's department at the Vancouver Police,
Speaker 2: and we're talking about a huge city, a very big, sophisticated,
Speaker 2: wealthy city, with this area of incredible poverty and addiction,
Speaker 2: so that the Vancouver police seemed to have very little
Speaker 2: interest in these women. The man in charge of missing
Speaker 2: persons turned out years later to have a He spent
Speaker 2: most of his time on his computer trolling for kitty porn.
Speaker 2: He was convicted. They only had one person really in
Speaker 2: the missing Person's unit, and that was this criminal police officer.
Speaker 2: They had one halftime assistant. They had one expert on
Speaker 2: serial killers, Kim Rosswell, who's now teaching it in Texas.
Speaker 2: He is a brilliant, brilliant profiler, and it was a
Speaker 2: doctorate in criminology. He's taught the FDI, the pure of
Speaker 2: alcohol to background firearms. He's taught Scotland Yard. He's worked
Speaker 2: with police forces all over the world on serial killers,
Speaker 2: and Vancouver Police had him in their own department and
Speaker 2: they didn't like him. Police officers tend not.
Speaker 6: To like profiles. You may know that the actus.
Speaker 2: You probably know that they think that there's just all,
Speaker 2: you know, witchcraft, and it's not. It's not real police work.
Speaker 2: But Kim Osman knew that something was in this. He
Speaker 2: knew that there must be a serial killer, and other
Speaker 2: people knew that it wasn't really until nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 2: that when the thirteen women disappeared, that the you know,
Speaker 2: really it was. It was becoming very, very alarming. In
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight, that was when I asked a writer
Speaker 2: there to do a story for me from my magazine,
Speaker 2: which we published in nineteen ninety nine. In about nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine, the Bank of the Son started a campaign
Speaker 2: and they started doing stories. A couple of reporters there,
Speaker 2: and one in particular called Lindsay Kins, started to really
Speaker 2: go after this story, talking to the families. Police still
Speaker 2: didn't do anything, and finally, sometime between nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: I can't quite remember the data, in two thousand the
Speaker 2: case was turned over to the RCMP, the Mounties, which
Speaker 2: kind of preferential police force there in British Columbia, and
Speaker 2: they started getting a file review and they put together
Speaker 2: a list. The missing Women's List from Vancouver is sixty
Speaker 2: five names, theficial list and the officers that did nothing about.
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Speaker 2: DIC is quietly vanished. By the time I got there
Speaker 2: in two thousand and two, these officers were not available.
Speaker 2: They disappeared. They you know, they had unlisted numbers, and
Speaker 2: the Vancouver Police was in disgrace and the r FMP
Speaker 2: had taken over the case.
Speaker 6: Now you also talk about you had alluded to the
Speaker 6: BSU in quantico, the affection of the FBI that does profiling,
Speaker 6: that pioneered the criminal profiling that we now know. And
Speaker 6: then there was someone named Royal Hazelwood, which is people
Speaker 6: who read true crime will recognize this name along with
Speaker 6: the pioneers Robert K. Wrestler and John Douglas h So
Speaker 6: you talked about Ray Hazelwood. When was Ray Roy Hazelwood
Speaker 6: brought in? And again, how did the Vancouver police react
Speaker 6: to his attempt at profiling. We already know that Kim
Speaker 6: Rosmo was was dismissed basically, and and they didn't like him,
Speaker 6: and they didn't like him claiming that it was a
Speaker 6: serial killer and didn't believe in his form of geographical
Speaker 6: geographical profiling. So what did they say when a legend
Speaker 6: like Roy Hazelwood, who had worked with all kinds of
Speaker 6: major cases and I think even the Gary Ridgeway cave
Speaker 6: tell us about the Gary Ridgeway connection and Roy Hazelwood
Speaker 6: and the reaction to what he had said and what
Speaker 6: he had told police.
Speaker 2: Well, it was really interesting when the when the worknated
Speaker 2: amount of police took over the case, set up a
Speaker 2: task force and they set it up with the Vancouver Police.
Speaker 2: They tried to bring peace and harmony and they brought
Speaker 2: in some of the Vancouver Police officers to work with him.
Speaker 2: But it was definitely a mounted case and they were
Speaker 2: getting ready to interview picked. And what happened was that
Speaker 2: they were able to arrest him in February two thousand
Speaker 2: and two. They were able to get until then, they
Speaker 2: had been unable to get a search point to go
Speaker 2: on the farm. He was a prime suspect them from
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine on. He was the prime suspect. It
Speaker 2: took them till two thousand and two to get on
Speaker 2: his farm, to get a search point to get on
Speaker 2: the farm. And when they got on because he had
Speaker 2: illegal weapons, not because they were able to get on
Speaker 2: on a search point on missing women. They got on
Speaker 2: a search point and put missing for the illegal guns,
Speaker 2: and when they got on the farm they found the
Speaker 2: belongings of many of these missing women. They always knew
Speaker 2: he was the right guy, but they couldn't get on
Speaker 2: the phone, so they had very very little time in
Speaker 2: which to get ready to interview him for you know,
Speaker 2: the formal interrogation. And they were scrambling around trying to
Speaker 2: figure out what to do, and they decided to bring
Speaker 2: in down the advice of one of the police officers
Speaker 2: who was a profile. They decided to bring in Roy
Speaker 2: hazel Wood, and they the police officers who were really
Speaker 2: in charge of the case at the time, had very
Speaker 2: little faith in this. But you know, there was you know,
Speaker 2: from shame and what had happened to Kim Rossmo when
Speaker 2: he'd been dismissed from the Vancouver Police, and they thought
Speaker 2: they'd give it a try. They bought Roy hazel Wood up.
Speaker 2: But they'd chosen a young star in the ICMP to interview,
Speaker 2: to interrogate fist and they called the interview and he
Speaker 2: had no interest in dealing with the profile. He said,
Speaker 2: they have nothing of value to teach me. He felt
Speaker 2: he was the trained, you know, trained in questioning suspects, right,
Speaker 2: and he you know, he was part of the I'm
Speaker 2: forgetting the word now for it, but polygraph unit, okay,
Speaker 2: so he administered polygraph law detector tests. So he was
Speaker 2: a trained interviewer and he wasn't interested in having Roye Hazelwood.
Speaker 2: But there was a mountain there on the team, a
Speaker 2: woman who called Dana Lilies, who really really pushed for
Speaker 2: him to come because obviously, to someone like Dana Lillies,
Speaker 2: this man was you know, just the leader in the field.
Speaker 2: So Roy Mazelwood came up. They basically did not use him,
Speaker 2: and they sent him home. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that happened was that he told them not to rely
Speaker 2: on Picton's conscience. They said, don't He said to them, don't,
Speaker 2: you know, don't think he has a conscience. Don't appeal
Speaker 2: to his conscience, to his sense of conscience or anything
Speaker 2: like that. It's not going to work, you know. Basically,
Speaker 2: you appeal to his ego. Exactly a great guy, he is,
Speaker 2: so almost the first question that the Canadian officer asked him.
Speaker 2: After Roy hazel One went home without being properly used
Speaker 2: or I think he was only there a day and
Speaker 2: a half or two days. They drove him to the
Speaker 2: airport and sent him on his way. I remember the
Speaker 2: police officers saying to pick him in the interrogation because
Speaker 2: we watched it, you know, we watched the videos of it.
Speaker 2: He said, you know, Willie, think of your mother up
Speaker 2: in heaven. Do the right thing for her, you know,
Speaker 2: WILLI picked him just looked at him as if he
Speaker 2: crawled down under the rock if it. Yeah, yeah, advice
Speaker 2: was absolutely right on the money.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's amazing. So they don't. They don't take his input.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 6: So then there's a lawsuit as well, which I thought
Speaker 6: was interesting that Kim Rosma there was quite a bit
Speaker 6: of him burrissment for the police force because he had
Speaker 6: already launched a lawsuit for his dismissal or his treatment
Speaker 6: by the police. So that didn't help or the look
Speaker 6: or the reputation of the Vancouver Police Department and all
Speaker 6: this at all. Now, who is Scott Chubb? And we
Speaker 6: talked about how the police got onto Picton's property through
Speaker 6: illegal weapons charges and that's how they had him arrested.
Speaker 6: But who is Scott Chubb? Did he initially say to
Speaker 6: police and why? And what did he eventually tell police?
Speaker 6: Scott Chubb's a very important person in this story. Tell
Speaker 6: us about Scott Chubb, police, Well.
Speaker 2: Scott Chubb is a real character, and I went to
Speaker 2: interview him. I found him in a small town in
Speaker 2: the interior British Columbia and had a long talk with him.
Speaker 2: Scott Chubb was one of Dave Pickton's truck drivers and
Speaker 2: worked in the demolition business with him and helped to
Speaker 2: build the Piggy's Palace, you know, the place that they
Speaker 2: all partied in down the road from the farm, and
Speaker 2: he was quite a character. He had a criminal record
Speaker 2: and he got into this case because he was broke.
Speaker 2: He needed money and he had a small family, a
Speaker 2: baby and a wife, and he went to the police
Speaker 2: as a tipster on drugs and they said they weren't
Speaker 2: interested in his drug information because they already knew all
Speaker 2: about the people, you know, with marijuana grow ups and
Speaker 2: for so he said, well, he was desperate for money,
Speaker 2: and he said, well, what's it worth to you if
Speaker 2: I tell you about some illegal weapons? So they said, well,
Speaker 2: that's interesting. So when they found out it was the
Speaker 2: Pickton farm and they'd been waiting for months to have
Speaker 2: an excuse to get on that farm. They worked very
Speaker 2: closely with Scott Chubb and he said they were these
Speaker 2: guns on the farm. He told him where they were
Speaker 2: and they said they would pay him some money if
Speaker 2: his tip proved to be true. But basically they were
Speaker 2: after picked in for the women, and so it did
Speaker 2: give them a chance to get a search warrant. They
Speaker 2: got a search WANT. They went on the farm one
Speaker 2: night and it was all carefully planned. It was half
Speaker 2: an hour left in the search want by the time
Speaker 2: they were able to get on the property, and they
Speaker 2: did find the guns. Scott Chubb had told the truth
Speaker 2: about the guns, and several of the women that picked
Speaker 2: and killed a shot in the back of the head
Speaker 2: before they were dismembered. So those guns were very important.
Speaker 2: And then they took over the farm because they found
Speaker 2: the identification and belongings, lots of his belongings and IV
Speaker 2: cuts and you know, all sorts of identification of these
Speaker 2: women on the property. So Scott Chubb became a very
Speaker 2: important witness for them, and he told them that Willie
Speaker 2: picked and had told him that he was killing women.
Speaker 2: And he told the police how Willie picked and killed
Speaker 2: the women. You know that Willi picked and told him
Speaker 2: how he killed the women. So all of this was
Speaker 2: made Scott Chubb an absolutely key witness, and he remained
Speaker 2: a key witness over the next few years as this
Speaker 2: process dragged on.
Speaker 6: Now you talked about that he told Scott how he
Speaker 6: did kill the women, and I'll get you to tell
Speaker 6: us how we did that if you could.
Speaker 2: Scott Chubb's said that one day that he and Willy
Speaker 2: were pulling nails out of out of boards. You know,
Speaker 2: Willi was the brothers were involved in many Dave's business
Speaker 2: of you know, tearing down properties and selling me whatever
Speaker 2: was useful. He was in demolition and he would go
Speaker 2: on demolished buildings, and so Willy and Day and Scott
Speaker 2: Chubb were working one day pulling nails out of some wood,
Speaker 2: and Willy decided to entertain himself by telling Scott about
Speaker 2: how he killed women. It was just the bizarre and
Speaker 2: he said he he what he would do was after
Speaker 2: they had sex, he would get them out to the
Speaker 2: farm to pay them, and they do some drugs. And
Speaker 2: Willie never did drugs. Willy never even had a cup
Speaker 2: of coffee. He was never smoked a cigarette. He had
Speaker 2: no use for drugs. But he always had drugs to
Speaker 2: give other people. And so he told the Scott schud
Speaker 2: that once the woman had had sex and she you know,
Speaker 2: he'd been able to get her out of the drugs,
Speaker 2: he would then handcuff her behind her back, behind her back,
Speaker 2: put her hands behind her back, and usually she was
Speaker 2: so high by that time she couldn't exist. And then
Speaker 2: he would strangle her and take to take her out
Speaker 2: to his slaughterhouse behind his trailer, hang her up on
Speaker 2: a hook, winch her up and dismember her, and we
Speaker 2: heard testimony and evidence from the various witness in the
Speaker 2: trial that the bodies were dismembered with a suzzle and
Speaker 2: it was cut down through the He was cut down
Speaker 2: through the middle of the skull, down the front of
Speaker 2: the face, and down the back of the head and
Speaker 2: then snapped the skull in half, which was identical to
Speaker 2: the way that Jane Doe, the skull that had been
Speaker 2: found in the mission flew in nineteen ninety five. That
Speaker 2: was exactly how that skull had been taken apart, and
Speaker 2: that's why he was charged with Jane Jane Doe's murder eventually,
Speaker 2: especially after her feet and ankle bones were found on
Speaker 2: the firm. So he told Scottchubb all about this, and
Speaker 2: Scott Chubb eventually told the police, but initially, as far
Speaker 2: as we know, initially Scott Chubb contacted the police to
Speaker 2: try to give him information about some drug dealers that
Speaker 2: they said they weren't interested in the drug dealers they
Speaker 2: knew about them. That's when he went talked to them
Speaker 2: about Willie and the guns, and then later he told
Speaker 2: them about the Willy and the way that he talked
Speaker 2: to him about killing these women. But there was there's
Speaker 2: been a lot of doubt about that. I mean, we
Speaker 2: wonder whether the police didn't know about Scott Chubbs what
Speaker 2: Willy had told Scott Chubb earlier than that that we
Speaker 2: have no way of knowing that. I'm just telling you
Speaker 2: what emerged at the trial right now.
Speaker 6: The other part of this too is Scott Chubb it
Speaker 6: talked about about the plot that Willy had said to
Speaker 6: him that he wanted to silence someone named Lynn Eleix
Speaker 6: and Ellingson and and so then there was rumors that
Speaker 6: had reached police that she had told friends about her
Speaker 6: witnessing picked and slaughtering a woman in that same slaughterhouse
Speaker 6: slash barn. But there was so explain that she there
Speaker 6: was rumors police went and questioned her. Then she denied
Speaker 6: anything like that. And then Scott Schubb talked about some
Speaker 6: that Willie Pickton had mentioned to him that he might
Speaker 6: might want to have Lynn hurt. So tell us about
Speaker 6: this whole fascinating aspect. This is another bizarre chapter in
Speaker 6: this crazy story.
Speaker 2: Well, you know it's it's it's funny. Dan. I have
Speaker 2: a feeling that this story sounds very complicated and huge,
Speaker 2: and nothing connects to everything else. But it all does
Speaker 2: connect because and really the cast of characters is not
Speaker 2: so small. I mean, it's it's fairly small. What happened
Speaker 2: was that Lynn Ellington was an addict who had was
Speaker 2: living out in the Port Coquitlam area and she met
Speaker 2: the famous Gina Houston in a drug in a recovery house.
Speaker 2: You know. She was she was trying to clean up
Speaker 2: her act and kick drugs, and that she had no
Speaker 2: place to go when she left this recovery house, and
Speaker 2: Gena Houston was there as well. So she said, well,
Speaker 2: I have a friend called Willie Picton and he he
Speaker 2: has room at his place, and I'm sure you could
Speaker 2: go there to find a place to live. And Lynn
Speaker 2: Ellingson had no other place to go. And I got
Speaker 2: to know them Lynn Ellingson a bit, and I certainly
Speaker 2: saw her at court over the years, and she the
Speaker 2: good looking woman, intelligent, very you know, in many ways
Speaker 2: quite appealing, but she had a terrible addiction that she
Speaker 2: simply couldn't kick, and she would do anything for drugs.
Speaker 2: She went out to the farm. She was one of
Speaker 2: the women that Willy never hurt, you know, was one
Speaker 2: of the sort of girlfriends that hung around the place,
Speaker 2: and many many liked that, and so she lived in
Speaker 2: his trailer at one end of his He had a
Speaker 2: big trailer, and she had a bedroom at one end
Speaker 2: and he had a bedroom at the other, and she
Speaker 2: lived there. She helped him with his She kept the
Speaker 2: place cleaning, she did some cooking, and she took all
Speaker 2: the orders for soil and cars, anything else that anything
Speaker 2: people wanted from Willy, whether they wanted a butchered pig,
Speaker 2: you know, from his freezers, or whether they wanted him
Speaker 2: to fix a car, whether they wanted soil from the
Speaker 2: soil business that they had, you know, spreading fresh soil
Speaker 2: on people's gardens. So she would help with that. And
Speaker 2: one day they went really after if she'd mind there,
Speaker 2: if he went into town to get a girl, a prostitute,
Speaker 2: and she went with him because he promised her drugs.
Speaker 2: They went into Vancouver's downtown east side and picked up
Speaker 2: a woman and brought her back, and Lynn Ellingson testified
Speaker 2: that she went to one end of the trailer with
Speaker 2: her drugs it was crack cocaine, and settled down with
Speaker 2: her crack pipe and really went to the other end
Speaker 2: of the trailer with the woman and later on, she
Speaker 2: heard a scream. She was completely stoned. She didn't know,
Speaker 2: you know, really where she or whether that she was doing,
Speaker 2: but she looked out the window and she knew that
Speaker 2: the scream that comes from outside. She went looked out
Speaker 2: the window and saw a light in the barn and
Speaker 2: the slaughterhouse went out there and saw the woman that
Speaker 2: they'd picked up in the downtown east Side hanging from
Speaker 2: a hook, and Willie was starting to cut her up,
Speaker 2: and Willie threatened to kill her, and he made her
Speaker 2: promise that she would never tell what she'd seen, and
Speaker 2: she fled from the farm as soon as she could.
Speaker 2: I think it's the next day she got someone to
Speaker 2: come and get her, and later on she talked to
Speaker 2: the police about it. But she was talking to the
Speaker 2: police in nineteen ninety nine about this, and it took
Speaker 2: till two thousand and two for the police to get
Speaker 2: on that farm and arrest him.
Speaker 6: Incredible, incredible, I know, it.
Speaker 2: Just seems unreal to me that it took so long.
Speaker 2: And I mean, that's what I was writing about, what
Speaker 2: was happening during these years? Why what was the problem?
Speaker 2: Why were they not getting out there? And there was
Speaker 2: a police officer in Vancouver who had talked to her
Speaker 2: and believed her story, but they couldn't get anybody else
Speaker 2: to take an interest. I believe it. And they also
Speaker 2: couldn't get a search warrant to get on the property.
Speaker 2: The regional Crown prosecutor, which is what they call them here,
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know what the equivalent would be
Speaker 2: in the United States, but you know, the district attorney,
Speaker 2: I guess that's what you say. It wouldn't give them
Speaker 2: a search warrant to get on because he said, you
Speaker 2: don't have enough evidence. You know, it's a serious thing.
Speaker 2: We can't issue a search warrant and we don't have
Speaker 2: and we only have the word of an addicted woman
Speaker 2: who was probably too high to know what she was
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 6: Yes, I found that aspect of this just incredible. That
Speaker 6: she was discredited because she did drugs. But it seemed
Speaker 6: to be not that this is evidence itself, but if
Speaker 6: you were to apply any kind of logic to it,
Speaker 6: why anyone would testify to that, Why anyone would make
Speaker 6: up a story like that? And there were certain again,
Speaker 6: and Scott Schubb talked about certain things. At least it
Speaker 6: was backed up by evidence that the police found, so
Speaker 6: it at least corroborated the story to a certain degree.
Speaker 6: Now we spoke initially, you said there was an incredible
Speaker 6: amount of forensic evidence, and this case was primarily about
Speaker 6: that to be able to convict this person. Maybe you
Speaker 6: can tell us about what they did find at that
Speaker 6: farm when they finally did go on there and do
Speaker 6: the big investigative. I mean, it was incredible the amount
Speaker 6: of people that were involved and the amount of work
Speaker 6: that was undertaken at that farm to find evidence. What
Speaker 6: I would like to know is, because we only got
Speaker 6: about nine minutes left, this hour has really gone by,
Speaker 6: is that how many victims did they actually find there?
Speaker 6: Because people have heard the number twenty six and then
Speaker 6: there was an eventual trial of only six, so it
Speaker 6: can maybe you can tell us what happened in that
Speaker 6: twenty six and six how that all worked.
Speaker 2: They found when the police went on farm on February
Speaker 2: the fifth, two thousand and two, they did find blood
Speaker 2: and the identity of several women, and they declared the
Speaker 2: whole fourteen acres a crime scene, and they basically took
Speaker 2: it over and they dug up the entire farm. They demolished,
Speaker 2: they swabbed, every surface on the property, and they dug
Speaker 2: up every square foot of the property down to undisturbed soil.
Speaker 2: They hired one hundred and four students, forensic anthropology students,
Speaker 2: and it was run by Tracy Rogers, the woman who
Speaker 2: had looked at that skull, the mission skull all those
Speaker 2: years before in nineteen ninety five, and she is an
Speaker 2: expert at knowing the difference between human bone and animal bone,
Speaker 2: because don't forget it was a farm. They found aside
Speaker 2: from the freezer, bags of human flesh, ground human flesh
Speaker 2: that he kept in his freezer, d from skulls and
Speaker 2: feet and hands that he kept in buckets in his freezer,
Speaker 2: and just sitting around on his in his garage they found.
Speaker 2: After that, they found blood and enough DNA to identify
Speaker 2: I think the number was about twenty seven women initially,
Speaker 2: and then I think they found the DNA of about
Speaker 2: another six women. But when it came to prosecuting him
Speaker 2: on these cases, they police decided, the crown attorneys decided
Speaker 2: that this actually again it was the judge. The Crown
Speaker 2: wanted to prosecute him, what you'd call the district attorney
Speaker 2: wanted to prosecute him on all these cases. They didn't
Speaker 2: care how many it was. And the preliminary hearing heard
Speaker 2: evidence on twenty seven cases, but the trial judge said
Speaker 2: this is too much for any jury, and he decided
Speaker 2: to cut the counts down to six. So he said
Speaker 2: there would be another trial on the twenty. Now, why
Speaker 2: wasn't there twenty seven? Well, because he decided to dismiss
Speaker 2: the count. To quash the count on Jane Doe, the
Speaker 2: one who said was found in the mission flew and
Speaker 2: whose seatan and shin bungs were found on the farm,
Speaker 2: he said, we don't know who she is, and I
Speaker 2: don't know why he quashed the count. He quashed that
Speaker 2: count sore down to twenty six. Then he said we'll
Speaker 2: do the twenty the other twenty count in another trial.
Speaker 2: A jury could only take six, and there was an
Speaker 2: uproar over that, but he was the boss, and that's
Speaker 2: what happened. They tried on six picked them. When he
Speaker 2: was interrogated by the police, he finally admitted to killing
Speaker 2: forty nine women. He said he killed forty nine and
Speaker 2: that was to an undercover cop in himself.
Speaker 6: And didn't and what was his demeanor at that time
Speaker 6: when he said to forty nine was that he was
Speaker 6: to himself.
Speaker 2: He was bragging because he didn't know the cop in
Speaker 2: his cell. He didn't know the man in his cell
Speaker 2: was a with an undercover cop. He was just talking.
Speaker 2: They were He knew he was a killer. He was
Speaker 2: then for you know, he was going to be shipped
Speaker 2: back to Eastern Canada to stand trial on murders and
Speaker 2: so he was. The undercover cop told him how many
Speaker 2: people he'd killed, and Willie said, that's nothing. I'd killed
Speaker 2: forty nine. And he knew that the Green River killer,
Speaker 2: Gary Leon Ridgeway, had killed forty eight. He was quite
Speaker 2: aware he was one over that he had done one
Speaker 2: more than Gary Leon Ridgeway. But they were only ever
Speaker 2: able to find the DNA of about, you know, thirty
Speaker 2: three women. But they couldn't Even though they found the
Speaker 2: DNA of some of these women, they didn't have enough
Speaker 2: evidence to charge him with their murders. But they felt
Speaker 2: they had enough evidence to charge him on twenty seven counts. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: he only stood trial on six because the judge thought
Speaker 2: Jerry couldn't take a trial that would have to hear
Speaker 2: evidence on twenty seven and most people the Appeal Court
Speaker 2: of British Columbia that heard this case later said that
Speaker 2: the trial judge had made a mistake when he did that.
Speaker 2: They said he should have tried on all of accounts right,
Speaker 2: he should not have The appeal court said the trial
Speaker 2: judge should not have thrown out Jane Doe and should
Speaker 2: not have cut the numbers down to six, because you
Speaker 2: certainly had You had a lot of families who will
Speaker 2: never get over the fact that he did not go
Speaker 2: on trial for the murder of their daughter, other wife,
Speaker 2: or other sister.
Speaker 6: What I thought was very interesting, and I see the
Speaker 6: same phenomena with the you spoke of the Colonel Russell
Speaker 6: Williams case as well, and we see unlike America, where
Speaker 6: this audience primarily one we're playing this program too, is
Speaker 6: that the Canadians do not want to know the truth,
Speaker 6: whether it's about the legal system or it's about vulnerable
Speaker 6: people being murdered. They just they are reviled by the
Speaker 6: details and protests vehemently that they don't want to hear
Speaker 6: any more details, where in America is a completely different animal,
Speaker 6: where there is a lot of people that crave every
Speaker 6: single graphic detail, not so much out of any morbid curiosity,
Speaker 6: but just to understand some of these cases as a
Speaker 6: real fascination. I wanted to ask you about the public's
Speaker 6: reaction to the pict In case, because again it seemed
Speaker 6: that Canada, like very much like the Bernardo and Malple case,
Speaker 6: but especially in the pict In case, there was a
Speaker 6: real adverse public reaction to details that were coming out,
Speaker 6: and the media media agencies responded by not publishing or
Speaker 6: reporting on some of those details. I wanted to know what,
Speaker 6: I want to know what you thought of this phenomena
Speaker 6: here in Canada.
Speaker 2: Well, I thought it was a disgrace. I felt that
Speaker 2: they you know, I felt that it devalued the women
Speaker 2: yet again, you know, and they weren't investigated because they're missing,
Speaker 2: their disappearances, were not investigated because they were addictive prostitutes
Speaker 2: from the downtown East Side, and because you know, they
Speaker 2: had terrible, terrible tragedies in their lives and they didn't
Speaker 2: have any power or any clout, but they did have
Speaker 2: people who loved them, many people who loved them. And
Speaker 2: so when the details started to emerge on this case,
Speaker 2: after mister Picton, mister West that used to have to
Speaker 2: call them mister Picton, after Willie Pickton went on trial.
Speaker 2: You know, people would complain to the newspapers, into the broadcasters,
Speaker 2: and so they've cut back. They buried the story in
Speaker 2: the back of the paper. They told their reporters not
Speaker 2: to report much detail, just keep it simple. We don't
Speaker 2: want to gross out our readers. You know, this was
Speaker 2: all body parts. This is bags and freezers. This you know,
Speaker 2: I'm sort of laughing. Jane Rule has said she won't
Speaker 2: write about anything that has to do with freether. So
Speaker 2: I think even in America, Jade Rule won't write about
Speaker 2: body parts contriugers. But it was, Yes, the trial was underplayed,
Speaker 2: and you know, all the details were underplayed, and I
Speaker 2: thought it devalued them one more time because it wasn't
Speaker 2: their stories were not being told. And so my decision
Speaker 2: when I wrote my book was I was going to
Speaker 2: write about every single one of the women on the
Speaker 2: official list. I was going to say who she was,
Speaker 2: what happened, you know, how she grew up, how she
Speaker 2: got into this life of prostitution and addiction. And I
Speaker 2: talked to many of the families as many as I
Speaker 2: could reach, and I met many of them at the
Speaker 2: trial and met many of I traveled across the country,
Speaker 2: talked to them, got to know them over the years,
Speaker 2: and they told me the stories of these women, and
Speaker 2: I decided that there would be one place where their
Speaker 2: stories would be told, and well we wouldn't turn away
Speaker 2: back from what happened to them. And so that's one
Speaker 2: of the goals I had in writing this book. But
Speaker 2: you're quite right now. The Williams story is different in
Speaker 2: a way. All the details have been broadcast in endless
Speaker 2: you know, loops on television and the papers and so
Speaker 2: on over the last four or five days, but this
Speaker 2: has been condensed into four or five days. He pled
Speaker 2: guilty immediately, and there was no fooling around on this one.
Speaker 2: It happened very quickly. Where the Picton was arrested in
Speaker 2: two thousand and two and he didn't go on trial
Speaker 2: until two thousand and seven.
Speaker 6: But it seems like the pict In case where I
Speaker 6: found it very I found it disturbing and surprising that
Speaker 6: it wasn't really well attended the trial apparently no considering.
Speaker 6: And then with the Williams case, it seems like, again
Speaker 6: if the criminal's high profile and the victims are high profile,
Speaker 6: then we can get some reporting on it. But if
Speaker 6: it's prostitutes, or gay alcoholics, or people of lesser stature.
Speaker 6: It seems, you know, it seems bizarre to me that
Speaker 6: there's this much attention for this and all these details,
Speaker 6: where again the pict In case being ignored because there's
Speaker 6: not much analysis from what we're going to learn from
Speaker 6: the pict In case. And I want to ask you too,
Speaker 6: what you thought, what you thought about the inquiry. Now
Speaker 6: we're going to have probably long and drawn out and
Speaker 6: expensive inquiry, and what can they possibly learn that isn't
Speaker 6: well illustrated in your book.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, it's very interesting. I was
Speaker 2: in Vancouver last week and the man who's in charge
Speaker 2: of the public inquiry is a very highly respected politician
Speaker 2: and former judge, but he's unfortunately, he was the Attorney
Speaker 2: general of the province who decided, who said he didn't
Speaker 2: believe it would be in the public interest to go
Speaker 2: ahead with the trial on the twenty. So you have
Speaker 2: the families who have just thrown up their hands. They say,
Speaker 2: we don't believe in this public and great, we don't
Speaker 2: think this is a sham. This is the man who
Speaker 2: said that it wasn't worth going ahead with trying him
Speaker 2: on the twenty and that was our daughter was one
Speaker 2: of the twenty. So you know, he's been undermined by
Speaker 2: that right from the beginning. So it was an unfortunate choice.
Speaker 2: And I don't know what will happen, but you're quite right.
Speaker 2: Rufsell Williams was a colonel of the Canadian notary of
Speaker 2: the Canadian Air Force. He killed two beautiful women. One
Speaker 2: was in the military as well. Lovely women, good families,
Speaker 2: nice lives, pretty not drug addicts, not prostitutes, and every
Speaker 2: single details put out there. It's a very odd situation.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think you've I think you've said
Speaker 2: it very well yourself, right. Uh, it's it's you can't
Speaker 2: get enough of it when these women are gorgeous and
Speaker 2: and successful, when they're prostitutes. I care, and a lot
Speaker 2: of people care, and a lot of Canadians care, and
Speaker 2: their families care. But you certainly had a big problem
Speaker 2: with the police, and we had a big problem with
Speaker 2: broadcasters and publishers who said public doesn't money hear this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think the media is wagging the dog and
Speaker 6: I think they're in a completely wrong direction. I think
Speaker 6: that they do not side enough with the prosecution, especially
Speaker 6: in clear cut cases like this and and also involve
Speaker 6: the public, which the public has a lot of the
Speaker 6: public has a sympathy for the victims. I think the
Speaker 6: media is is misguided or misinformed or misplaced loyalties to
Speaker 6: I'm not sure who, but I think that you've done
Speaker 6: a great service by providing all of the information. Is very,
Speaker 6: very comprehensive. It's a great, great read's. I mean, it's
Speaker 6: the complete, definitive story about this and every aspect of
Speaker 6: this completely fascinating story. And it is a tribute to
Speaker 6: the victims because you do find out who these people are.
Speaker 6: You do find out about the families and the incredible
Speaker 6: people that were brave enough to come forward despite we
Speaker 6: know about the system. It's a thankless job to come
Speaker 6: and be a witness at a trial and jeer across examination.
Speaker 6: But you've captured every single exciting and fascinating moment of
Speaker 6: this case. And it's great to have you on the
Speaker 6: program talking about this incredible book. So I want to
Speaker 6: thank you very much Stevie for coming on the program
Speaker 6: and sharing your incredible book on the farm with our
Speaker 6: audience and myself. I want to thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Dan. It's been a great pleasure for me, and I
Speaker 2: very much appreciate your interest in it.
Speaker 6: Well, Thank you very much, and you have a good
Speaker 6: evening studie you too. Thank you very much, Bye bye bye.
Speaker 6: You've been listening to the program True Murder, the most
Speaker 6: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 6: have written about them, with your host Dan Zupanski. Have
Speaker 6: yourself a good evening, Good night,