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Speaker 5: The overtiparty lost the term conditions eating class. You are
Speaker 5: now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in
Speaker 5: true crime history and the authors that have written about
Speaker 5: them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week, another
Speaker 5: fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers
Speaker 5: in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist
Speaker 5: and author Dan Zupanski. Good evening. Robert Picton inherited a
Speaker 5: pig farm outside of Vancouver worth a million dollars and
Speaker 5: used his wealth to lure skid row hookers to his farm.
Speaker 5: This surreal murder investigation the biggest, longest, and costliest in
Speaker 5: Canadian history. He confessed to murdering forty nine female victims,
Speaker 5: dismembering and feeding their body parts to his pigs, some
Speaker 5: of the pork which he supplied to Vancouver area restaurants.
Speaker 5: The book that we're featuring this evening is Robert Picton,
Speaker 5: The Pig Farmer Killer, with my special guests ce L Swiney,
Speaker 5: Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much
Speaker 5: for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 4: Ce L Swiney, heybody, it's a pleasure to be back again.
Speaker 4: I appreciate you having me on the show.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you very much. It's always our pleasure. You
Speaker 5: seem to, well not seem to. You absolutely deal with
Speaker 5: some of the more shocking subject matter, even in true
Speaker 5: crime standards. Let's get to write to why you wanted
Speaker 5: to write about. What was it, especially about the Robert
Speaker 5: Picton story, that compelled you to write this book.
Speaker 4: I kind of got suggested to write this book by R. J. Parker,
Speaker 4: who was another true crime author who lives in Canada.
Speaker 4: But I was interested in this book a lot, in
Speaker 4: the whole story because it involved law enforcement and whether
Speaker 4: or not they did their jobs and then Canada law
Speaker 4: and the fact that only one person, Robert Picton, was
Speaker 4: convicted in this case. And I had a strong sense
Speaker 4: when I started reading it, especially when I learned about
Speaker 4: his brother at this farm and the whole environment, that
Speaker 4: I felt other people should have been charged or could
Speaker 4: have been charged. So just the fact that so many
Speaker 4: women went missing, the fact that the Vancouver Police Department
Speaker 4: seemed to drop the ball several times in this case,
Speaker 4: and just the nature of how Robert Picton was raised
Speaker 4: and what went on at the Piggy Palace, as they
Speaker 4: called it, just kind of caught me. So I started
Speaker 4: digging into it years ago. I wrote this one about
Speaker 4: five years ago, I think, and it was my first
Speaker 4: true crime book, so it's interesting to look at it
Speaker 4: now and where I've come on my ninth book. So
Speaker 4: it was a great story, and it kind of keeps
Speaker 4: coming up. Robert Picton keeps popping up on everybody's radar
Speaker 4: in the true crime world. So I'm happy I did.
Speaker 5: It absolutely Now as you do, as you find out
Speaker 5: in the book you talk about his early life. There's
Speaker 5: not incredible about information, but there's some really telling and
Speaker 5: demonstraive information that you provide. You say, was born in
Speaker 5: October nineteen forty nine, So tell us about his mother,
Speaker 5: Louise Wright, and his father, Leonard Picton, and what their
Speaker 5: life was like and what it was characterized by.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So the reason why it wasn't a ton of
Speaker 4: information available for his upbringing, if you will, was his
Speaker 4: mom and dad had passed away before I started the project,
Speaker 4: and Robert himself doesn't typically talk a ton about his childhood,
Speaker 4: but there was enough for me to grab from some
Speaker 4: of his statements and some of the people involved in
Speaker 4: the case when I first wrote the book, and since then,
Speaker 4: I've been contacted by twenty or thirty people who were
Speaker 4: actually involved with the case. And I'm actually considering writing
Speaker 4: a second version of this, or maybe an update to it.
Speaker 4: But his family life was tough, but it turned into
Speaker 4: more of a situation in which three children were abused physically, emotionally,
Speaker 4: verbally on a pig farm. And basically his mom, Louise
Speaker 4: kind of ran the show the dad. His father, Leonard
Speaker 4: would do kind of the grunt work if he will,
Speaker 4: on this farm, but Louise made the decisions. She was
Speaker 4: the one who negotiated with local families and restaurants on
Speaker 4: their pork products, and she kind of had the iron fist,
Speaker 4: but she'd get mad and basically do the old Leonard
Speaker 4: take care of the kid type thing. So Robert was
Speaker 4: exposed to a lot of violence, but he was also
Speaker 4: exposed to a lot of death. He saw these animals,
Speaker 4: these pigs, being slaughtered daily. There's a story that he
Speaker 4: shared when he was being interviewed after he'd been apprehended
Speaker 4: about how he used to flee his mom's wrath and
Speaker 4: his father's wrath by locating large carcasses of hogs on
Speaker 4: the farm that had been butchered, and he tried to
Speaker 4: hide in them to try to get away from the abuse,
Speaker 4: the punishment, the physical punishment that was going to come
Speaker 4: his way if his dad got a hold of him. So,
Speaker 4: you know, he had the upbringing of a rough childhood.
Speaker 4: He saw a lot of death, and then there was
Speaker 4: one kind of incident that he specifically brought up and
Speaker 4: he's talked about numerous times, and essentially what happens is
Speaker 4: he kind of falls for a calf that they had
Speaker 4: because they had other animals on this farm, but he
Speaker 4: kind of came attached to a certain calf and made
Speaker 4: it known to the family that that was kind of
Speaker 4: like his personal pet, and literally out of kind of
Speaker 4: spite and out of kind of like trying to show
Speaker 4: Robert who was in charge of what life was really
Speaker 4: all about. His mom had the calf butchered one day
Speaker 4: when he was at school before he dropped out, and
Speaker 4: he came home looking for this calf and his mom
Speaker 4: said it wanted to go down to the farm, and
Speaker 4: he responded down there and found his you know, his pet.
Speaker 4: Kind of like you and I with our first dog.
Speaker 4: If you will hanging butchered and gut it out in
Speaker 4: the farm, so you know he's exposed to quite a bit.
Speaker 5: You also talk about the character of his mother to
Speaker 5: explain some things on an incident when he was fourteen
Speaker 5: years old, or in pardon me, a fourteen year old
Speaker 5: neighborhood boy named Tim Barrett tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about this again another telling story for the environment in
Speaker 5: which Robert Picton grew up in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a pretty annother example of kind of
Speaker 4: how Luis spot She's kind of a no nonsense type
Speaker 4: of person. But what happened in that incident was his brother,
Speaker 4: Robert's brother David, was driving down the road from the
Speaker 4: farm and he ended up striking that child, a younger child.
Speaker 4: His brother was I believe he was sixteen, and he
Speaker 4: struck this kid, and you know, he he he panicked
Speaker 4: and but he stopped the car, he stopped the truck,
Speaker 4: if you will, and got out and this kid was
Speaker 4: injured severely. He wasn't dead, but he was he had
Speaker 4: obvious injuries. So he ran back to his mom and said, hey, Mom,
Speaker 4: you need to come over here. I need your help.
Speaker 4: And she literally walked up on the scene, looked at
Speaker 4: this poor kid who was still breathing, looked at her son,
Speaker 4: kind of shrugged her shoulders, if you will, rolled the
Speaker 4: kid over to the embankment and down into to some
Speaker 4: standing water that was at the opposite end or at
Speaker 4: the bottom of that embankment, and left the kid to die.
Speaker 4: And you know, obviously David went in town, tried to
Speaker 4: cover up what he had done and tried to get
Speaker 4: some work done on the truck to replace the bumper
Speaker 4: in the headlight. And then you know, Robert saw that
Speaker 4: and the fact that Louise just calmly walked up, saw
Speaker 4: this child that her son had run over with a
Speaker 4: truck but was still alive, and calmly dumped him in
Speaker 4: the water and left him for dead. You know, it
Speaker 4: got to David, it got to Robert and their sister,
Speaker 4: and you know, it was just another example of how
Speaker 4: if it didn't involve Louise and her children and her husband,
Speaker 4: it didn't really connect in her mind, just didn't compute.
Speaker 4: She didn't care, So they left that kid for death.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about his life working at this farm
Speaker 5: and that school was basically neglected for the work that
Speaker 5: Louise wanted. These her siblings to do so along with
Speaker 5: his sister Linda, and also David and David and Robert
Speaker 5: working together. Tell us a little bit about his dating life,
Speaker 5: We talk about his hygiene, you talk about all the
Speaker 5: things that made up the kind of person that he
Speaker 5: was regarded as. Maybe not so much in his own family,
Speaker 5: because you say he had that little thing going on
Speaker 5: his family, but outside in high school and out in society,
Speaker 5: how did people look at and regard Robert Picton.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, you know, because of his upbringing and because
Speaker 4: of working on that pig farm and anybody who has
Speaker 4: been around I've never worked on a pig farm, but
Speaker 4: I've been around them and any farm in general. Role
Speaker 4: you work your butt off. It's it's not an easy job,
Speaker 4: and you're always going to be dirty. And Robert didn't
Speaker 4: really care for showers. He didn't really care about hygiene.
Speaker 4: He was picked on, uh, relentlessly in school, and it
Speaker 4: was because he was he was perceived as being a
Speaker 4: little bit slow. And we know that, you know, children
Speaker 4: can be mean to other children, and even back when
Speaker 4: Robert was going to school, it was the same thing.
Speaker 4: And so because of his received kind of slowness, because
Speaker 4: he's stunk, so bad that he used to tease him
Speaker 4: and call him stinky and names like that, and the
Speaker 4: constant pressure from Louise to basically, you know, you know,
Speaker 4: hector school, We don't we don't really care about that.
Speaker 4: We have the farm, you know, That's what we deal
Speaker 4: with that. We're pig farmers. That's what we do. He
Speaker 4: didn't have any you know, love life, if you will.
Speaker 4: There was one girl who felt terrible for him and
Speaker 4: at times would convince him to go take a shower
Speaker 4: because she just couldn't stand being around him. And sometimes
Speaker 4: he would kind of hesitate, and he would basically say hey,
Speaker 4: or she would say, hey, you know, I'm really your
Speaker 4: only friend, and so if you're not gonna go shower
Speaker 4: and at least try to clean up some, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to spend time around you. And so
Speaker 4: he would reluctantly go take a shower and try to
Speaker 4: clean up a little bit. But it was pretty rare.
Speaker 4: Kid is exposed to violence. He's around killing animals. His
Speaker 4: mom has no regard for human life other than her
Speaker 4: own and her children and her husband. He has no
Speaker 4: friends at school, he's constantly picked on school, and all
Speaker 4: that stuff combined, he just basically steps out as he
Speaker 4: drops out of school, and his mom is like, you know,
Speaker 4: thank god, finally you did it. You know, I need
Speaker 4: your help out the farm.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about work on the farm. But eventually
Speaker 5: Louise dies and soon after, do you say, Leonard dies,
Speaker 5: So the Robert and his siblings are left to run
Speaker 5: this meat producing farm. But after a few years it
Speaker 5: seems to be too much work. So tell us what
Speaker 5: happens with the farm, and then tell us about what
Speaker 5: happens in nineteen ninety four and ninety five that changes
Speaker 5: their fortunes forever.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So even though Robert and his sister and brother
Speaker 4: were you know, quote unquote working on a farm, they
Speaker 4: kind of didn't really know the ins and outs, the
Speaker 4: subtle intricacies and for what it's where Louise and Leonard
Speaker 4: actually ran a pretty productive farm and were kind of
Speaker 4: well respected, but they were also all kind of like misfits,
Speaker 4: you know. But when they passed, first Louise passed and
Speaker 4: then Robert's father passed away, the three siblings try to
Speaker 4: take over the farm and try to run it, but
Speaker 4: they just didn't have the experience. Even though they worked
Speaker 4: there and lived there, they didn't they didn't know the
Speaker 4: day in and day out operations that were needed to
Speaker 4: keep it successful. They didn't have a lot of communication
Speaker 4: skills to meet with other families nearby that they would
Speaker 4: sell pork with, or the restaurants and stuff. So they
Speaker 4: had a tough time selling product. But they basically had
Speaker 4: to shut the pig farm part of it down, and
Speaker 4: it was it was actually beneficial to the three siblings
Speaker 4: because their property was quite large, and so they were
Speaker 4: actually able even though they kind of the pig farm
Speaker 4: went under, if you will, they were able to sell
Speaker 4: portion of their property and it wasn't even a large portion.
Speaker 4: I think it was like I think it was like
Speaker 4: four or five acres or something like that, but they
Speaker 4: made a couple million dollars on that transaction, and now
Speaker 4: things that simple transaction, if you will, or that change
Speaker 4: in that that family dynamic of mom and dad running
Speaker 4: the farm, they passed away. Siblings try to run it
Speaker 4: and it doesn't work. They're thinking they're down out and
Speaker 4: they're in real trouble. But investors show up and give
Speaker 4: them a couple million dollars for a chunk of their property,
Speaker 4: and that's when things changed. That's when they went to
Speaker 4: I think I wrote in the book how they started
Speaker 4: living high in the hog and I was just kind
Speaker 4: of playing on words there. But they they went from
Speaker 4: dirty clothes, hand me down clothes, nothing nice at all
Speaker 4: because it was work, work, work, and get the farm
Speaker 4: to keep going, to actually having some stuff. And it
Speaker 4: kind of changed the mentality of the siblings. And that's
Speaker 4: when the two brothers, when Robert and David started to
Speaker 4: convince their sister that they should, you know, live a
Speaker 4: little kind of live. You know, we have a little
Speaker 4: bit of money, now, let's live a little bit. And
Speaker 4: so they started having these parties, these lavish parties on
Speaker 4: the farm, and that's when things dramatically changed for how
Speaker 4: Robert Pickton becomes or is involved in being a serial killer.
Speaker 5: You talk about they they got a zoning variance for
Speaker 5: this property and then called it the Piggy Palace. And
Speaker 5: now they were putting on big parties. And you say
Speaker 5: Hell's Angels was down the road. We're talking about parties
Speaker 5: up to one thousand people. And they had the ability
Speaker 5: to do that. And this is where they also sold,
Speaker 5: as they were already done, pork to their neighbors and
Speaker 5: they would provide they had some pigs to provide pork
Speaker 5: for themselves and for their neighbors. So tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about this piggy palace, good time society and
Speaker 5: these parties and what eventually happens with this party scene.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Robert now kind of, you know, they've made
Speaker 4: some money on this transact transaction, and kind of feels
Speaker 4: like he's maybe kind of business savvy, right, and he's
Speaker 4: made some money and stuff, and so he starts having
Speaker 4: these lavish parties. And what he's doing is he's going
Speaker 4: down to an area called the Low Track and he's
Speaker 4: picking up girls that obviously are interested in him because
Speaker 4: he's flashing money at them, and he kind of basically
Speaker 4: gets these girls to come with him. And mind you,
Speaker 4: he didn't have a lot of In fact, what I
Speaker 4: can tell, he didn't have any girlfriends up until the
Speaker 4: point that he came into money, and he really didn't
Speaker 4: have girlfriends, but he had women that were interested in
Speaker 4: him because of his money. So he would go down
Speaker 4: and pick up girls for him. His brother would go
Speaker 4: down and pick up girls in the Low Track area
Speaker 4: and bring them back to the farm. And at this
Speaker 4: kind of point, the sister sort of kind of starts
Speaker 4: divorcing herself from the situation. She's not hugely involved, she's
Speaker 4: not really into the party scene, and kind of distance
Speaker 4: herself a little bit from that scene. But you know,
Speaker 4: I work in law enforcement, and I can tell you
Speaker 4: that if you have a location that is away from
Speaker 4: the general public, away from police, the you know, watchful eye,
Speaker 4: and there's money and prostitution and drugs going on, these
Speaker 4: kinds of locations attract people who live those lifestyles, and
Speaker 4: so eventually this Piggy Palace Robert thought. He tried his
Speaker 4: society angle, which was kind of like a club, and
Speaker 4: he kind of fashioned it marginally on what he thought
Speaker 4: the Hell's Angels would have a club on. But he
Speaker 4: learned quickly that he was not going to be a
Speaker 4: Hell's Angel. He was not, you know, a biker. He
Speaker 4: had really nothing to do with that world. But they
Speaker 4: did associate at some point because he would buy narcotics
Speaker 4: from them from local hs. But at that point, as
Speaker 4: this thing starts to grow infester, the neighbors are saying, hey,
Speaker 4: there's this is too much. You know, there's parties every night,
Speaker 4: there's screaming. It sounds like women are being assaulted. They're
Speaker 4: not having fun. There's drunk people walking down the dirt road,
Speaker 4: there's car crashes. I mean, they start basically complaining to
Speaker 4: Robert and his brother and they say, hey, this is guy,
Speaker 4: to stop. Well they don't and they keep going. Well
Speaker 4: it brings the attention of the local law enforcement and
Speaker 4: so they Vancouver PD responds out there and says, hey,
Speaker 4: you know, don't make us come out here again. Stop
Speaker 4: what you're doing. We know you're you know, he's coming
Speaker 4: to some money and there's some stuff out here going on.
Speaker 4: Just keep it down, stop doing it. Eventually the PD leaves.
Speaker 4: Robert says okay, but they don't stop, and at some
Speaker 4: point the city's able to get kind of an ordinance
Speaker 4: pass if you will, that shuts down the Ticky Palace.
Speaker 4: They actually go to court and get an injunction slapped
Speaker 4: on the society. And it kind of crushes Robert because
Speaker 4: it shuts down this society that he was so high on.
Speaker 4: He was so fancy. He felt like he was sophisticated,
Speaker 4: and you know, he's got all these women that want him.
Speaker 4: He feels loved. Even though it was, you know, fake,
Speaker 4: he was it was about drugs and sex, but you
Speaker 4: know it crushed them. They crushed them pretty good. But
Speaker 4: there was no sentiment at that time with the parties,
Speaker 4: with the prostitution, drug the monies, all that stuff, that
Speaker 4: there was any killing going on at the farm. It
Speaker 4: was just kind of kind of considered like a brothel
Speaker 4: of just kind of craziness, you know, and that's why
Speaker 4: they had that Piggy Palace name for it.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about the missing women, tell us and
Speaker 5: we alluded to this police investigation and whether there was
Speaker 5: some ineptitude or improper procedural work done by the police
Speaker 5: during this talk about the investigation that in the task
Speaker 5: force that's eventually formed, But tell us about how they
Speaker 5: do discover or come to think that there may be
Speaker 5: a serial killer in their midst operating in the Vancouver area.
Speaker 4: So, you know what does Robert keeps pushing the button
Speaker 4: of a Vancouver PD. And on the sidebar there are
Speaker 4: groups basically family members of women working as prostitutes in
Speaker 4: the Low Track area where who are basically bombarding the
Speaker 4: police department saying, I know my family member is a prostitute,
Speaker 4: but she's missing, she's been missing, it's not her way
Speaker 4: she works. And they continually hound Vancouver PD and at
Speaker 4: some point I think it was in the maybe the
Speaker 4: early part of ninety nine. Nineteen ninety nine, Vancouver PD
Speaker 4: with RCMP, working on a tip from a guy named
Speaker 4: his Cocks, which is a friend of Roberts, and I'll
Speaker 4: go into more detail about him in a minute, they
Speaker 4: formed this task force about these Vancouver missing women and
Speaker 4: the number goes from forty to fifty to over two
Speaker 4: to three hundred missing women and it causes a huge
Speaker 4: concern in the community. Finally, the family members feel like
Speaker 4: the police department is going to get involved. But you're
Speaker 4: the time that this started, the time that the women
Speaker 4: started missing was around nineteen seventy one, and this task
Speaker 4: force is not put together until nineteen ninety nine. That's
Speaker 4: a twenty eight year gap. Almost the generation goes by
Speaker 4: before law enforcement starts to pay attention to this growing
Speaker 4: number of missing women from this Low Track area. And
Speaker 4: you know, eventually, if you look into this case, you'll
Speaker 4: see that Vancouver PED actually apologizes profusely for how they
Speaker 4: handled this case. Holly handled the missing women's portion of it,
Speaker 4: and so it it's clear that the police department made
Speaker 4: a huge mistake and they were actually investigated themselves so
Speaker 4: it was a big deal. So they they really bundled
Speaker 4: the investigation, but with and one of the inspectors and
Speaker 4: all these groups coming together and this guy Bill his
Speaker 4: cocks his information basically going to the police saying, hey,
Speaker 4: there's something more going on besides parties out there at
Speaker 4: the palace. The police department was able to get search horns,
Speaker 4: so in fact, they were able to get three separate
Speaker 4: search horns and searched the piggy Palace and the farm
Speaker 4: and the remaining property belonging to Robert. They searched it
Speaker 4: three times and found nothing in those three searches. And
Speaker 4: the thing that really upset the families is, and what
Speaker 4: we learned later is that they just basically walked around
Speaker 4: for a few minutes and walked off the property. They didn't,
Speaker 4: you know, open refrigerators. That had they open refrigerators, they
Speaker 4: would have found human remains sitting right next to slabs
Speaker 4: of pork. Okay, they didn't do their jobs, and that's
Speaker 4: why they Vancouver PD specifically was investigated, and that's why
Speaker 4: they issued a huge apology. And then as this is
Speaker 4: still ongoing, Robert's still going to the low truck grabbing
Speaker 4: prostitutes and he's still doing what he's doing out at
Speaker 4: this farm. And eventually, after even failed attempts finding anything
Speaker 4: that was going on up there that was criminal besides
Speaker 4: the alleged prostitution and drug use, police get police get
Speaker 4: a wind of some information that hey, you need to
Speaker 4: go to the Piggy Farm one more time or the
Speaker 4: Piggy Palace they called it to and look in the
Speaker 4: refrigerators near where the slaughterhouse is. And he also need
Speaker 4: to check the pens where the So Robert had this
Speaker 4: six hundred pound bore that was kind of his pet
Speaker 4: that kind of patrolled the property and it kind of intimidated.
Speaker 4: I mean, six hundred pound animals is huge, So this
Speaker 4: thing intimidated a lot of people. But this source, this
Speaker 4: confidential hormant, told the police, hey, go check the boor's pen,
Speaker 4: and so again they do it. They go out there
Speaker 4: and lo and behold, they found a human jaw, the
Speaker 4: remnants of a human jaw, and the boor's pen, and
Speaker 4: then they found some body parts in a refrigerator and
Speaker 4: just kind of this whole case finally got some teeth
Speaker 4: and finally the whole mention of a serial killer to
Speaker 4: connecting the low track women missing to the Piggy Palace
Speaker 4: kind of came.
Speaker 5: About you talk about another incident again with police dropping
Speaker 5: the ball in that Bill Hitchcock, unless I got this wrong,
Speaker 5: Bill Hitchcock says that that he knows about this attempted
Speaker 5: murder of Willie Picton had to charge in nineteen ninety
Speaker 5: seven where he stabs a prostitute named Wendy Lynn Eyesletter.
Speaker 5: Now this is a couple of years before the Task
Speaker 5: Forces is formed. So and he also said that they'd
Speaker 5: been handcuffs and so he gave some and he is
Speaker 5: the guy that said that there was a six hundred bore,
Speaker 5: six hundred pounds bore patrolling the property. So a lot
Speaker 5: of the things that he said were later backed up
Speaker 5: after they had this search for the illegal weapon. But
Speaker 5: also that this Wendy Lynn Eyesletter was wasn't taken very
Speaker 5: seriously by police at all?
Speaker 4: Was she No? And that was one thing that frustrated
Speaker 4: me and kind of got me involved with this case.
Speaker 4: And it's sort of what I talked about or got
Speaker 4: me going on my last book on Joseph Nasso was
Speaker 4: that law enforcement still today sometimes gets it wrong when
Speaker 4: a victim is a prostitute, whether living or deceased, and
Speaker 4: kind of doesn't give them the same credibility or the
Speaker 4: same concern or the same level of service because simply
Speaker 4: they were prostitutes. And that was one of the key
Speaker 4: things in this book about picked and that really frustrated me.
Speaker 4: We all, we're humans. We make mistakes. Law enforcement makes mistakes.
Speaker 4: In this particular case, too many mistakes were made by
Speaker 4: the police department. But had they listened to that victim,
Speaker 4: the one that was stabbed, they would have they would
Speaker 4: have had, I think a better sense of what was
Speaker 4: going on, and they would have had some teeth to
Speaker 4: turn up the heat on Robert. But don't forget that
Speaker 4: it wasn't just a police department dropped the ball there.
Speaker 4: In that particular case with Wendy, the prosecutor who was
Speaker 4: aware of the case said, hey, for lack of better words, that, hey,
Speaker 4: she's a prostitute. She's going to get destroyed by the
Speaker 4: defense attorney. And so he didn't want to have her
Speaker 4: go to court because she was a heavy drug user
Speaker 4: and prostitute. And so the prosecutor refused to file that case. So, yes,
Speaker 4: the police dropped the ball numerous times. Eventually they tried
Speaker 4: to convince the prosecutor to file a case, and then
Speaker 4: at that point the prosecutor said no. So several groups,
Speaker 4: several people were involved in dismissing what was happening out there,
Speaker 4: and that led to more women being killed at the
Speaker 4: Piggy Palace.
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, Now tell us basically because it's not there
Speaker 5: is resistance. Like you said, he had the three searches
Speaker 5: where they didn't find anything, and you say, but they
Speaker 5: missed glaringly everything that they could have found. Now, tell
Speaker 5: us about the search and what this search develops into.
Speaker 5: We talked about the biggest, costliest, longest, and people know
Speaker 5: about some of the archaeology that was done basically at
Speaker 5: this and the number of exhibits. So tell us what
Speaker 5: they first find and then from there how it proceeds.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then we kind of briefly talked about it earlier,
Speaker 4: but they when they went out there with the information
Speaker 4: that they had from his cocks and from their own observations.
Speaker 4: And remember too that we didn't talk about, but Robert
Speaker 4: had been picked up on some charges unrelated to anything
Speaker 4: really going on at the Piggy Palace or unrelated to
Speaker 4: any type of serial killer investigation, and he was allowed
Speaker 4: to bail out, but when he bailed out, he was
Speaker 4: placed on twenty four hours surveillance, and so information and
Speaker 4: probable cause developed from observations on that twenty four hour
Speaker 4: surveillance and the information from the quote unquote informant which
Speaker 4: was that guy, which was Bill. They went out there
Speaker 4: to that farm again and specifically looked in certain areas,
Speaker 4: and that's when they found a human torso, half of
Speaker 4: a human torso. They found human skulls. They found ahead
Speaker 4: of a female. They found skulls that were cut in half,
Speaker 4: and inside the skulls were like hands and feet, human
Speaker 4: hands and feet. And that's when that's when kind of
Speaker 4: the wheels fell off. Was like, oh my gosh. You know,
Speaker 4: the police department realized quickly that they had themselves a
Speaker 4: large problem, and they decided that, okay, we're going to
Speaker 4: have to search this full property, you know, thoroughly. And
Speaker 4: that's when you get into the expense part. There was
Speaker 4: over one hundred anthropologists called out to that property and
Speaker 4: they dug for over a year and continually found human remains, bones, teeth, jaws,
Speaker 4: everything all throughout the farm. And so it suggests at
Speaker 4: some point when they started trying to put these remains
Speaker 4: together and kind of form bodies, if you will. The
Speaker 4: number was in the high seventies of full remains that
Speaker 4: they had recovered out there, So you had twenty four
Speaker 4: hour a day digging seven days a week. In total.
Speaker 4: I believe this case costs close to one hundred million
Speaker 4: dollars for law enforcement to pay all the cranes and
Speaker 4: the operators, and the evidence texts, and the forensic specialists,
Speaker 4: the anthropologists, law enforcement, the overtime, everything that went into
Speaker 4: this case kind of absorbed the Crown kind of it.
Speaker 4: Just the PD was exhausted. I mean, it was one
Speaker 4: of those things where they found those first few items
Speaker 4: and and cordoned off the entire property and started uh
Speaker 4: systematically searching. They spent over a year finding evidence of crimes.
Speaker 4: That was the body portions in a little trailer that
Speaker 4: was kind of the spot that Robert Let lived in
Speaker 4: or stayed in. They found evidence of his kind of SEXUALBVNCY.
Speaker 4: They found for example, and it's you know, not a
Speaker 4: fun thing to talk about, but one of the things
Speaker 4: that he did was he used a a dildo if
Speaker 4: you will, on one of the one of the prostitutes.
Speaker 4: But he had fixed a twenty two caliber rifle to
Speaker 4: that device, and while inserted into one of his victims,
Speaker 4: he pulled the trigger and killed her. They also found
Speaker 4: syringes filled with window washer fluid. I don't know if
Speaker 4: you know how that works, but if you want to
Speaker 4: research that, it's a very brutal way to kill somebody
Speaker 4: if by injecting them with that. They found handcuffs, they
Speaker 4: found just you know, a treasure trove if you will,
Speaker 4: for an investigator's point of view of items that they
Speaker 4: were using to build a case against Robert. So it
Speaker 4: just took so long to unearth all this evidence, categorize it,
Speaker 4: and then put it in warehouses and try to make
Speaker 4: sense of it before they brought this case to court.
Speaker 5: You talk about later in the book, but we'll talk
Speaker 5: about it now. Let's talk about what police knew about
Speaker 5: who occupied this property. There is the sister you say
Speaker 5: was distancing herself, but have been involved in owning this
Speaker 5: property as well as David and David Picton and Robert Picton.
Speaker 5: So tell us what that situation was at that time.
Speaker 5: And you also point out something I didn't know before
Speaker 5: about David's past criminal convictions.
Speaker 4: Well, the sister, the police knew that Robert was kind
Speaker 4: of the main player at the Picky Palace or at
Speaker 4: the property. But they knew that he hung out because
Speaker 4: specifically they had him under surveillance, and he and David
Speaker 4: worked together quite often. And they weren't seeing the sister
Speaker 4: quite a bit out there, so they weren't they weren't
Speaker 4: overly concerned or convinced of what role he played in
Speaker 4: any of this. And and and she never was charged
Speaker 4: with anything. And you know, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 4: know if she had any inclination because she she distanced
Speaker 4: herself quite a bit before most of this really started.
Speaker 4: But David, he had a history of violence as well.
Speaker 4: He was no you know, I mean, remember he ran
Speaker 4: over a child and watched his mom dump him, dump
Speaker 4: the child into the to the water, and the kid,
Speaker 4: you know, for just so you know that the child
Speaker 4: that tim he could have survived. The autopsy revealed that
Speaker 4: he drowned. So had they just called for an ambulance
Speaker 4: or or helped him for that child would have survived.
Speaker 4: So David was no you know, no saint. And and
Speaker 4: it was my opinion right in the very beginning of
Speaker 4: investigating this case that those guys were of the same
Speaker 4: ilk and I just don't I don't have any concrete
Speaker 4: evidence to prove that David was involved with all this stuff,
Speaker 4: but there's no way in my mind, given the fact
Speaker 4: that they were inseparable, given the fact that they both
Speaker 4: started using drugs, they both had prostitutes, they both went
Speaker 4: to the low track. There was over seventy plus victims
Speaker 4: found on their farms. There's just I just can't believe
Speaker 4: he didn't have any involvement in any of those murders.
Speaker 4: I just can't. I can't believe it. So they also
Speaker 4: as they searched the area, they kind of branched out
Speaker 4: a little bit from the farm, and there was a
Speaker 4: neighbor that was friends one of the neighbors I was
Speaker 4: friends with Robert, and they also found two bodies over
Speaker 4: there on the outside edge of Robert's property. So every
Speaker 4: time they kind of moved quadrants, if you will, they
Speaker 4: just kept finding more bodies. So it was it was
Speaker 4: a pretty throughsome and long term. It was going for
Speaker 4: so long though, that it was almost like you couldn't
Speaker 4: get more shocked. It came out that Robert was feeding
Speaker 4: his victims to the pigs, and these same pigs were
Speaker 4: being butchered and sold to local families into restaurants. So
Speaker 4: at some point members of the community and members, you know,
Speaker 4: neighbors of Robert and the Pictins were actually eating pigs
Speaker 4: that were fed by these victims, you know, fed these victims,
Speaker 4: and they just kind of that was kind of one
Speaker 4: of the things that rocked the community pretty hard. It
Speaker 4: was one thing that all these women, missing women, you know,
Speaker 4: a lot of them were tied to the farm and
Speaker 4: now they're finding a lot of evidence of dead bodies.
Speaker 4: But then it was another to actually, you know, dispose
Speaker 4: of the bodies to these pigs, and how the pigs
Speaker 4: eat them and then butcher the pigs and sell them
Speaker 4: to people to eat. It just kind of really it
Speaker 4: rocked the world of a lot of people, even law enforcement.
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Speaker 5: we were talking about Robert Picton is finally arrested. The
Speaker 5: whoror is realized throughout the entire world. There is a
Speaker 5: preliminary we will skip ahead to the trial which starts
Speaker 5: in two thousand and two. There is a problem with
Speaker 5: the amount of victims that are positively identified and then
Speaker 5: being able to do this trial. This is something that
Speaker 5: Canadian law had never seen the complexity of this trial.
Speaker 5: And then you also introduced a couple very very colorful
Speaker 5: characters for the prosecution, one named Casanova ironically and another
Speaker 5: name Chubb. So tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 5: these two characters have to say about Robert Picton and
Speaker 5: how it's utilized in this trial.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you can imagine. So he gets arrested in
Speaker 4: charge with two murders, and then over the course of
Speaker 4: the next three years, the number rises to twenty six.
Speaker 4: And the one thing that you talked about something that
Speaker 4: was unique and the court and the judge's decision was
Speaker 4: that he split up the twenty six murder cases. He
Speaker 4: split six into one and then twenty into the other,
Speaker 4: and essentially only wanted to hear the six that he
Speaker 4: kept kind of live, if you will. He kind of
Speaker 4: put those twenty on the shelf, and it was his
Speaker 4: prerogative that he could do that. But it was very unique.
Speaker 4: But the trial court judge or was very cognizant of
Speaker 4: the fact that this trial was going to go on forever,
Speaker 4: even with six victims, and it was going to cost
Speaker 4: too much, and he basically was like, if he gets six,
Speaker 4: you know, it's pretty much in his mind as good
Speaker 4: as twenty six and because of the sentencing guidelines at
Speaker 4: that time. You know they've changed since, but at that time,
Speaker 4: he weren't really going to get much more time on
Speaker 4: top of the case, so he split those up and
Speaker 4: it upset the other twenty known victims. Their families were outraged.
Speaker 4: They wanted justice for their their family members too, But
Speaker 4: the judge ultimately decided that he was going to keep
Speaker 4: that ruling, and so he did. But as you can
Speaker 4: imagine the court case, the trial was, it was a zoo.
Speaker 4: I mean it just with so many pieces of evidence,
Speaker 4: so much time invested in the case, so many agencies involved,
Speaker 4: there just was gonna it was still gonna be a
Speaker 4: lengthy trial. And so it started. It started with a bang.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of point and hollering and objections
Speaker 4: and stuff. And interestingly enough, a little sidebar on this
Speaker 4: was there would be several times in which Robert would
Speaker 4: appeal his charges or his sentences and convictions. But there
Speaker 4: was a ploy used by law enforcement in this case
Speaker 4: that's kind of used sparingly throughout the United States as well.
Speaker 4: And while he was in custody fighting his case in
Speaker 4: the very beginning, when he was arrested for the first
Speaker 4: two murder charges. Vancouver PD inserted a law enforcement officer
Speaker 4: into the jail, so it was a full fledged officer,
Speaker 4: a badged officer into the jail pretending to be an inmate.
Speaker 4: And it was at that point that Robert confessed to
Speaker 4: at least forty nine murders to that undercover cop, and
Speaker 4: so I thought that was unique. It was a very
Speaker 4: unique way of trying to get data for this case.
Speaker 4: And the reason why it was agreed upon because it's
Speaker 4: not It is definitely not the norm to do that.
Speaker 4: I've seen it in my own career, but it's not
Speaker 4: the norm. But the reason why was because of the
Speaker 4: two guys you talked about, Chubb and Casanova. There was
Speaker 4: some great concern by the prosecution team that Casanova and
Speaker 4: Chubb might not hold up in court, and so they
Speaker 4: were trying to get something concrete, and a confession would
Speaker 4: be fairly concrete, and so the prosecutor was trying to
Speaker 4: hedge his bets, if you will. It later came out
Speaker 4: that he made those statements to this guy, but the
Speaker 4: judge throughout the quote unquote confession because he didn't like
Speaker 4: that police had snuck in undercover comp into the jail.
Speaker 4: So it was very interesting. This judge was unique and
Speaker 4: it was very specific on how he did things, and
Speaker 4: so that kind of backfired against prosecution team. But you
Speaker 4: talked about Chubb, and he talked about Casanova. So Casanova
Speaker 4: was brought in by the prosecution team to testifying court
Speaker 4: against Robert, and Casanova and Robert were good friends, and
Speaker 4: I can't confirm it right now, but I believe they're
Speaker 4: still good friends. And it kind of has to do
Speaker 4: with how Casanova testifying court against him. The prosecution brought
Speaker 4: him in to try to talk about Casanova seeing crimes
Speaker 4: being occurred, our crimes by Robert to these women victims.
Speaker 4: But at some point Casanova kind of changes his story
Speaker 4: and it was later believed that Casanova was ultimately actually
Speaker 4: working for Robert to try to help Robert by confusing
Speaker 4: the jury with his testimony. But Casanova made some damaging
Speaker 4: comments in court about watching crimes occurred, if you will,
Speaker 4: by Robert to these prostitutes. There was some question about
Speaker 4: why didn't he intervene, why didn't he help out with
Speaker 4: these victims, and he said he was afraid, if you will,
Speaker 4: of what Robert might do. To him since he saw
Speaker 4: what he was doing to these women, And ultimately it
Speaker 4: turned out that his name was Pat and pat pat
Speaker 4: statements in court really didn't do anything for the prosecution
Speaker 4: and actually helped out Robert in his case the defense. So,
Speaker 4: mind you, these guys are all criminals. So Casanova and
Speaker 4: Chubb had criminal histories. They were not you know, quote
Speaker 4: unquote outstanding or positive members of the community, if you will,
Speaker 4: you know, based on how you and I would perceive
Speaker 4: them today. But they still had something to say in court,
Speaker 4: and so the prosecution used them. Chubb Scott Schubb, he
Speaker 4: was also another friend of Picton's or Roberts, and he
Speaker 4: he said that he saw a lot of a lot
Speaker 4: of like physical abuse and strangling of prostitutes by Robert,
Speaker 4: and so the prosecution brought that in to say, look,
Speaker 4: you know, Robert's not this nice, kind of homely guy
Speaker 4: who got lost on a farm with a bunch of
Speaker 4: money and drugs. You know, he's a he's a maniac,
Speaker 4: he's violent, and so Chubb was brought in to make
Speaker 4: it appear as though Robert was this extremely violent man.
Speaker 4: But what happened it also backfired against the prosecution because
Speaker 4: the defense attorney was able to bring out some information
Speaker 4: that they had figured out, and I'm not sure how
Speaker 4: they did it, but they basically were able to convince
Speaker 4: the jury and based on some questioning that they had
Speaker 4: of Chubb that Chubb was actually being paid to testify
Speaker 4: against Robert, which the defense said would obviously make it
Speaker 4: so that Chubb would say whatever you had to say
Speaker 4: because he was being paid by the prosecution, which again
Speaker 4: severely crushed his credibility and crush the prosecutions to what
Speaker 4: they had called a bit originally their star witnesses Chubb
Speaker 4: and Casanova.
Speaker 5: You talk about a good witness for the prosecution, and
Speaker 5: they were successful with and Andrew Bellwood, the ninety seventh
Speaker 5: unbelievably witness, and he talked about a dinner he had
Speaker 5: with Pickton in ninety nine. Tell us about this dinner
Speaker 5: that he had with Robert Pickton.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so another another So you know, in the beginning
Speaker 4: of Robert's life, he didn't have a lot of friends,
Speaker 4: but lo and behold, there were still some people that
Speaker 4: he talked to, There were still some he had some
Speaker 4: sort of friendships, you know, and again Andrew was another
Speaker 4: one of those guys that was his friend, but he
Speaker 4: was kind of a no friels, no nonsense kind of guy,
Speaker 4: and when he was being questioned, his responses were far better,
Speaker 4: far more convincing and kind of matter of factly, if
Speaker 4: you will, by when he was questioned by the prosecution
Speaker 4: as well as the defense attorneys, and his credibility was
Speaker 4: super strong. But he said that he had dinner one
Speaker 4: day with Robert, and he had dinner with him, not
Speaker 4: very often, but he said during that dinner that Robert
Speaker 4: told him specifically, kind of like in a spontaneous statement,
Speaker 4: if you will, that he had killed some prostitutes and
Speaker 4: fed him to his pigs. He said that, you know,
Speaker 4: he was shocked. Del would said he was shocked, but
Speaker 4: he was just kind of like, you know, he didn't
Speaker 4: know if Robert was joking or what really the angle was.
Speaker 4: And they continued to have dinner, and he Robert continued
Speaker 4: and said, hey, well, you know these proceeds I pick
Speaker 4: up from the low track, I have sex with them,
Speaker 4: I kill him out here, and Robert would continue. He
Speaker 4: talked about how he would hack up the body parts
Speaker 4: of the female victims, feed him to his pigs, or
Speaker 4: he would store them in large barrels. And get rid
Speaker 4: of them at a local disposal plant. And he said
Speaker 4: what convincing to the jury was that Robert explained all
Speaker 4: this so easily and so clearly to Bellwood that he
Speaker 4: thought it was true. Like it was like, how could
Speaker 4: this not be true? He's saying it so definitively of
Speaker 4: what he's done to these prostitutes, and it just was overwhelming.
Speaker 4: In court, everybody was kind of like stunned. Now we
Speaker 4: talked about like he was the ninety seventh witness, so
Speaker 4: you can imagine, you know, sitting in court and listening
Speaker 4: to this, to all these different characters coming in, but
Speaker 4: this one had a lot of kind of had a
Speaker 4: lot of weight to it. And because he had so
Speaker 4: much information that supposedly directly came from Robert, specifically about
Speaker 4: what Robert was doing to the victims, it was very
Speaker 4: damaging against Robert for his case.
Speaker 5: Now, what was the reaction to this trial and what
Speaker 5: was the world reaction to this trial?
Speaker 4: I think the Canadian reaction to the trial, you know
Speaker 4: that could gather from you know, just major headlines alone
Speaker 4: was was frustration and some small sense of relief. But
Speaker 4: there was a lot of discussion about what was it
Speaker 4: worth one hundred million dollars. Ultimately Roberts convicted, He's charged
Speaker 4: with twenty six first degree murders. They split that. He's
Speaker 4: then charged with six first degree murders, and eventually he's
Speaker 4: found guilty of six second degree murders. And so there
Speaker 4: was some some rumblings in Canada's as far as was
Speaker 4: it worth a four year investigation and a year and
Speaker 4: a half trial at the tune of one hundred million
Speaker 4: dollars for this case, But that was sort of the
Speaker 4: people who didn't have any family members tied up in
Speaker 4: this case. The family members of the victims don't see
Speaker 4: a number, they don't see how long something takes. They
Speaker 4: were just happy, just ecstatic, if you will, that he
Speaker 4: was convicted, and so they were anxious to see what
Speaker 4: he would be, what his sentencing would be. And back then,
Speaker 4: you know, you and I talked about it earlier. But
Speaker 4: they've changed the law a little bit Canada. I'm not
Speaker 4: sure this case specifically is why they did it, but
Speaker 4: there's been unfortunately quite a few serial killers in Canada
Speaker 4: and with a large amount of victims, and so I
Speaker 4: think they changed it. But he was able to be
Speaker 4: sentenced between ten and twenty five years, and that was
Speaker 4: going to be before parole, the possibility of parole, which
Speaker 4: was to be set by the trial judge. So after all,
Speaker 4: it was said he was found guilty of six second
Speaker 4: degree murders sent to the maximum amount of time he
Speaker 4: could be sentenced to, which was twenty five years for
Speaker 4: a second degree murder, and it was kind of the norm.
Speaker 4: It was sort of accepted in the law enforcement community
Speaker 4: because that's what the law was in Canada, but in
Speaker 4: the United States and around the globe, it was a shocker.
Speaker 4: It really upset people. They could not understand how a
Speaker 4: guy could kill six people. And at that time it
Speaker 4: was equated. And I'm from the United States, so I
Speaker 4: can tell you what we thought it was and perceived
Speaker 4: it was. But you could kill one person for a
Speaker 4: thousand people and get the same amount of time and
Speaker 4: that's just, you know, I don't understand it, but that
Speaker 4: was the law. It's changed now so you can get
Speaker 4: twenty five years I think for each person you kill,
Speaker 4: which makes it you know, he kills six, you're at
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty years, I believe, so you're gonna
Speaker 4: die in cussy. So that people feel at least the
Speaker 4: Canadians who wanted more time are happy about that. The outsiders,
Speaker 4: people outside of Canada kind of understand that new change
Speaker 4: in the law, but it was kind of hard to
Speaker 4: understand how you could kill one or a thousand people
Speaker 4: and get the same amount of time in Canada at
Speaker 4: the time that Robert was sentenced, So there was some
Speaker 4: frustration again the judge that his name was Williams. He
Speaker 4: was not a fan, James Williams was his name. He
Speaker 4: wasn't a fan of Robert picked In. He was repulsed
Speaker 4: by Robert picked In, and he had great, kind of
Speaker 4: a great sense of resolve when he got to finally
Speaker 4: sentence him. So it was a bit of relief for
Speaker 4: the families that were involved. But you only had twenty
Speaker 4: six victims on the table, and they found remnants of
Speaker 4: seventy plus bodies, and over that period of seventy one
Speaker 4: to ninety nine, there's been three hundred plus women missing
Speaker 4: from the Low Track area. So we don't know how
Speaker 4: many women actually were murdered by Robert Ticken, but it
Speaker 4: was definitely a significant case for sure.
Speaker 5: You talk about the frustration in Canada, and I agree
Speaker 5: with you. I've spoken about on this program, that the
Speaker 5: lack of consecutive sentencing, even for something like murder. So
Speaker 5: now we have in Canada the ability to have a
Speaker 5: consecutive sentence, which would seem reasonable the three murders. You
Speaker 5: would be charged for each one of those murders, and
Speaker 5: and then your parole eligibility could be up to twenty
Speaker 5: five years for each one, getting up to seventy five years,
Speaker 5: say for three, and it would be that was part
Speaker 5: of the outrage that this person would have a parole
Speaker 5: hearing and many parole hearings as a result of this,
Speaker 5: but also that they could not convict despite the syringe
Speaker 5: with the window washer fluid window wiper washer fluid. It
Speaker 5: looked like, why couldn't you get a first degree murder conviction?
Speaker 5: What was the rest of the criticism though, you talk
Speaker 5: about the twenty six and then the frustration at only
Speaker 5: six could be tried in the court, But what was it?
Speaker 5: What was the talk in Canada and probably nationally too
Speaker 5: in terms of frustration, and also what what was the
Speaker 5: what were they criticizing? What areas were they critical of
Speaker 5: in this case? Afterwards?
Speaker 4: Uh, the primary primary area where where everybody except for
Speaker 4: law enforcement was critical of was was law enforcement was
Speaker 4: Vancouver Police Department. The Mountis didn't really get dragged into
Speaker 4: it too much because when they got wind of it,
Speaker 4: they joined that task force right away and they lent
Speaker 4: as much uh uh, services and supplies and and bodies
Speaker 4: that they could to that task force. So they never
Speaker 4: really got a huge, you know, punch on the on
Speaker 4: the chin for their involvement. But Vancouver PD was was
Speaker 4: under severe duress. The families still, even after Robert was convicted,
Speaker 4: wanted answers, and the PD did not have them. If
Speaker 4: they did have them, they didn't give them to the families.
Speaker 4: It was kind of like Vancouver PD was hoping that, okay, listen, everybody,
Speaker 4: we screwed this thing up for years, and yes, we
Speaker 4: acknowledged that because we did so, more women probably were murdered.
Speaker 4: But we caught him, he's convicted, he's going away to prison,
Speaker 4: so let's move on. And that was kind of a
Speaker 4: slap in the face to everybody, especially the family members
Speaker 4: of the victims, that the PD just still didn't seem
Speaker 4: to want to take a lot of ownership of what
Speaker 4: they did wrong in this case. So there was still
Speaker 4: press conferences being held in which family members were actively
Speaker 4: criticizing the police department. There was a request and kind
Speaker 4: of a protest, if you will, that the police department
Speaker 4: would be investigated because there was some concern or some
Speaker 4: allegations that somebody inside maybe was involved with Robert and
Speaker 4: that's why things were bungled the way they were. And
Speaker 4: so the investigation was done, and the police department basically
Speaker 4: at some point was basically knocked their knees and finally
Speaker 4: acquiesced and said, yeah, we we get it. You're right,
Speaker 4: we did this wrong. And then as soon as they
Speaker 4: started to try to appeal to the citizens that they serve,
Speaker 4: the citizens weren't happy still and said, well, that's great,
Speaker 4: you got Robert picked in and there's seventy plus victims
Speaker 4: that we think we're out at that farm, But where's
Speaker 4: the other two hundred and twenty five plus victims at
Speaker 4: you know, what's going on in low Track, what's going
Speaker 4: on with the Indigenous women in Canada? What's going on
Speaker 4: with this? And so they didn't let them go, they
Speaker 4: didn't let it stand. They demanded answers, and it it
Speaker 4: actually helped with these missing women in Canada. And so
Speaker 4: there was a foul case in the public's the public,
Speaker 4: the media, the victims of the families with the police department,
Speaker 4: and it there's still people to this day who are
Speaker 4: very upset with how that thing, how that entire picting
Speaker 4: case was handled, and so it's it's a very very
Speaker 4: ugly eye for the police department, and it definitely trickled
Speaker 4: through the United States to a point where I'm in
Speaker 4: law enforcement and I know these cases, and many of
Speaker 4: the detectives that I work with know these cases, and
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's not a joking matter, but there
Speaker 4: has been talk about we can't have another Robert Pickton case,
Speaker 4: or we can't have another investigation bundled like that. So
Speaker 4: when you when you go outside your country and other
Speaker 4: agencies are trying to prevent having the same errors that
Speaker 4: you had over such a long period of time and
Speaker 4: so many errors, you definitely definitely need to step back
Speaker 4: as an agency and look inside and say how do
Speaker 4: we fix this and how do we prevent this from
Speaker 4: ever happening again. So it was a it was a
Speaker 4: pretty bad situation.
Speaker 5: You talk about that as well. It led to an inquiry,
Speaker 5: a ten million dollar inquiry into the to satisfy the
Speaker 5: families of Picton's victims. It took two years and a
Speaker 5: bunch of recommendations, and so the cost increased as well,
Speaker 5: by ten million dollars to try to get some closure
Speaker 5: in this again overused word completely, but this was a
Speaker 5: huge issue. And the Missing Women's inquiry that is now
Speaker 5: going to go ahead next year is still from this
Speaker 5: same same from the same impetus, from the same horrors
Speaker 5: that Robert Picton inflicted on women, and and the fear
Speaker 5: that was instilled on the West Coast for all those
Speaker 5: years while the serial killer was loose. You also include
Speaker 5: in this some interesting letters in two thousand and seven
Speaker 5: because you talk about that Picton, unlike many other serial killers,
Speaker 5: really didn't have anything to say to anybody. But in
Speaker 5: two thousand and seven you talk about a pen pal,
Speaker 5: Thomas Ludami, that he had a hobby of corresponding with
Speaker 5: these serial killers. What does he release to the Sun
Speaker 5: and tell us, as you do in the book, some
Speaker 5: of the things that he had to say to this
Speaker 5: Thomas Ludami.
Speaker 4: Yeah, moments is like a lot of people across the
Speaker 4: you know, the United States and Canada and across the globe. Basically,
Speaker 4: he's fascinated by serial killers, and he pen pals them
Speaker 4: and he comes up with fake names, fake personas whatever
Speaker 4: he thinks, you know, Mike, catch the eye of a
Speaker 4: serial killer and and like it or not, these serial
Speaker 4: killers get letters, letters all day long, and you know,
Speaker 4: it repulses me, but nonetheless it's a fascinating situation. So
Speaker 4: Thomas got some letters. Uh, he got lots of letters
Speaker 4: actually from Robert, but he released some of them to
Speaker 4: the Sun and the Son's a huge newspaper and it's
Speaker 4: a huge print and there's a lot of volumes of
Speaker 4: that coming out. So it kind of well, it's kind
Speaker 4: of interesting that that the Son would pick these up.
Speaker 4: But they this Robert Pickton case and Robert himself and
Speaker 4: the whole totality of this case and how it's still
Speaker 4: ongoing and we still hear about it caught the eye
Speaker 4: of the Sun. And so they bit and they published
Speaker 4: some of these letters. And I included some of the
Speaker 4: excerpts from the letters that I was able to get
Speaker 4: in the book, just some small spots, and and in
Speaker 4: that area you can kind of see where Robert kind
Speaker 4: of perceives himself as as being godlike, having powers like God.
Speaker 4: He talks about uh, kind of mentions how prostitutes are
Speaker 4: kind of in his mind a little bit impure or immoral,
Speaker 4: and but he doesn't he doesn't confess to anything in
Speaker 4: these letters he's and a lot of people assumed, and
Speaker 4: I did too, that Robert Pickton was kind of a
Speaker 4: a very unintelligent man and kind of operating at the
Speaker 4: low end of the spectrum as far as intelligence. But
Speaker 4: I don't know. I kind of have a As years
Speaker 4: go on, even though I published this book and wrote
Speaker 4: this book and stuff, I still don't haven't let this
Speaker 4: case go. I still get calls, emails, I still try
Speaker 4: to get information. I actually talked to our emailed to
Speaker 4: guys that were actually the guys who interviewed Robert, So
Speaker 4: I have you know, I still have a strong interest
Speaker 4: in this case. And as I go on, I feel
Speaker 4: like he's smarter than he kind of led on. I
Speaker 4: feel like he kind of enjoyed what he was doing
Speaker 4: at the farm. I think he reveled in it. One
Speaker 4: thing we didn't talk about was that he didn't do
Speaker 4: a lot of drugs and alcohol until he got introduced
Speaker 4: to crack cocaine. And when he started using crack cocaine
Speaker 4: is when he started doing all these things. I have
Speaker 4: written plenty of books, and there are plenty of stories
Speaker 4: of serial killers who have either traumatic experiences or ingest
Speaker 4: narcotics like crack or LSD that kind of completely changed
Speaker 4: their mind and how it works and they become serial killers. So,
Speaker 4: you know, there wasn't a lot in my book about that,
Speaker 4: and there's not really a lot talked about about that,
Speaker 4: but these letters really kind of he would actually refer
Speaker 4: to excerpts from the Bible. He would quote, you know,
Speaker 4: acts and and just kind of ramble. But everything he
Speaker 4: kind of talked about was God and Christians and so
Speaker 4: the even so, you know, I mentioned earlier how James Williams,
Speaker 4: which was the judge, the trial court judge, didn't really
Speaker 4: like Robert. Well, Robert didn't really like him either, and
Speaker 4: so in some of these letters he kind of made
Speaker 4: some comments about the judge, about the police, about our
Speaker 4: CMP and kind of saying, you know that they all
Speaker 4: plotted against them. He kind of claimed his innocence again.
Speaker 4: He mentioned that he was going to clog up the
Speaker 4: courts for a longer period of time through appeals. He
Speaker 4: kind of kind of giggled or not giggled, but made
Speaker 4: it clear that he was happy that he cost the
Speaker 4: crown one hundred million dollars, and you know, he took
Speaker 4: some shots at law enforcement, at the community and that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff. So they were interesting letters. It would
Speaker 4: have been nice to see all the letters, but Ludomine
Speaker 4: didn't put him out, and then there was a question
Speaker 4: on whether or not they were all legit or not,
Speaker 4: and there was an investigation done because everybody questions everything nowadays,
Speaker 4: and so there was some questions as to whether or
Speaker 4: not picked and actually even sent those letters and they
Speaker 4: were an investigation was done and it was determined that
Speaker 4: he did in fact send those letters out. So it's
Speaker 4: interesting that he reached out to somebody and that you know,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of people who communicate with him by letters,
Speaker 4: but Ludamin was the only one to let those letters
Speaker 4: out and got them into the sun, so it was
Speaker 4: kind of unique.
Speaker 5: Right now. You also talk about in this as well
Speaker 5: that there's the nine families filed the civil lawsuit in
Speaker 5: twenty fourteen, all victims of Piggy Palace, and you also
Speaker 5: talk about another losses as well, and so tell us
Speaker 5: you also what was interesting too is that all the
Speaker 5: investigations you had in all those cities you had worked
Speaker 5: in America and visited and know of. But you talk
Speaker 5: about in great detail about the Low Track in Vancouver
Speaker 5: where these murders occurred, and tell us a little about
Speaker 5: your experience. I'm a low.
Speaker 4: Track Yeah, so I didn't. I did not visit Low Track,
Speaker 4: But like I said, R J. Parker, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: lives in in Canada, and I made friends with a
Speaker 4: couple of officers that work in Canada and Vancouver specifically. Obviously,
Speaker 4: I did a lot of research. I researched for about
Speaker 4: a year before I wrote this book. So based on
Speaker 4: all my research and my connections, I was just kind
Speaker 4: of shocked that that what was happening there was happening.
Speaker 4: And then to the to the severity. You have gang wars,
Speaker 4: turf wars, you have the violence, you have girls as
Speaker 4: young as eleven getting into prostitution, you have dead bodies
Speaker 4: being found on a regular out there in that Low
Speaker 4: Track area. There's not a lot of housing. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's like you said, I have been to a lot
Speaker 4: of CD places in California. I can talk about Oakland
Speaker 4: or East pal Walta, I can talk about Chicago, can
Speaker 4: talk about Baltimore. I've been to places in Florida that
Speaker 4: you don't want to be caught you know alone. I've
Speaker 4: been places in the Bahamas. I mean, I've been places
Speaker 4: across the world that you don't want to be caught in.
Speaker 4: But when I researched the Low Track area, it just
Speaker 4: kind of, you know, blew my mind. But what blows
Speaker 4: my mind now is that it's still that way from
Speaker 4: everything that I can figure out and from everybody that
Speaker 4: I talk to, it's still not the place you want
Speaker 4: to take your family for a walkthrough. And that happens,
Speaker 4: and people will often ask me, because I'm in law enforcement, Hey,
Speaker 4: you know this place is terrible. Do something about it. Well,
Speaker 4: you know, you can't just go in there and do
Speaker 4: something about it. It doesn't work that way. Everybody has rights.
Speaker 4: You have to have staffing, you have to have a
Speaker 4: game plan, you have to have funding, you have to
Speaker 4: have the resources to make that happen. But with having
Speaker 4: said that, there are certain places in certain communities, I
Speaker 4: would argue that almost every community has areas on the
Speaker 4: wrong side of the tracks, if you will, or areas
Speaker 4: where you don't really want to go. It just attracts
Speaker 4: those type of people and you're not gonna clean it out.
Speaker 4: Example I can give you is East Palu Alto. I
Speaker 4: have place that was when I was in the training
Speaker 4: program sixteen years or seventeen years ago, where there was
Speaker 4: several stabbings a night, there was seven or eight bars
Speaker 4: in a row, and it was just a free for all,
Speaker 4: not until and we made arrests out of that place,
Speaker 4: out of that area, three or four, five, six even
Speaker 4: more arrests a night every night for about twelve years,
Speaker 4: and nothing changed. Right, So you get to a point
Speaker 4: as a law enforcement member where you wonder, what's it
Speaker 4: going to take. Well, in this case, what it took
Speaker 4: was some extremely wealthy investors purchasing that entire piece of
Speaker 4: property and demolishing it. And now there's a four seasons
Speaker 4: hotel there. So you went from stabbings, homicides, gangs, the
Speaker 4: whole nine to arrest by law enforcement time and time
Speaker 4: again for a period of twelve years, nothing changes, and
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, they leveled it, put in a
Speaker 4: four seasons hotel, which is a high end hotel in
Speaker 4: the United States, and crime significantly decreased in the hotel
Speaker 4: parking lot area, but outside of it it's the same
Speaker 4: whole place. It's just interesting how that works.
Speaker 5: We left out one detail, and I think it's very
Speaker 5: interesting too, And I think some people know about this,
Speaker 5: but that undercover police agent posing as a criminal that
Speaker 5: was booked into the same jail apparently he said that
Speaker 5: Pickton admitted that he had killed forty nine, but his
Speaker 5: only regret was that he didn't make fifty and he
Speaker 5: wanted one more than Gary Ridgeway, the Green infamous Green
Speaker 5: River killer. And he also said something that I thought
Speaker 5: was very interesting too, that he only got caught because
Speaker 5: he was sloppy as far as you found out when
Speaker 5: they did the first three searches. You say that they
Speaker 5: missed some obvious stuff, but was, like you say, some
Speaker 5: people have talked about his IQ being eighty one. Do
Speaker 5: you think that he was a little bit smarter And
Speaker 5: was there any any attempt by picked him to elude
Speaker 5: police and was he successful and did that lead to
Speaker 5: maybe him being as he described sloppy in the end.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So this is where my and I don't do
Speaker 4: this on I actually haven't done this on any of
Speaker 4: my other books or any of my other cases, But
Speaker 4: this is where my conspiracy theory pops up on this
Speaker 4: case is I think Robert is at times more lucid
Speaker 4: and can make better decisions than in other times. I
Speaker 4: don't know officially about his IQ, but this is where
Speaker 4: I believe his brother David was actively involved and was
Speaker 4: the one who would clean up, if you will, after Robert.
Speaker 4: I think David was far more intelligent. I think he
Speaker 4: actively participated with the prostitutes and the things going on
Speaker 4: at that farm, and I think he assisted his brother
Speaker 4: and they worked as a team. That's my personal opinion.
Speaker 4: I don't have anything concrete to put that on. That
Speaker 4: is how I feel, and it comes with comments like
Speaker 4: he made to that undercover officer about being sloppy. It
Speaker 4: comes with the fact that his brother skated any arrests
Speaker 4: during this investigation, and as far as I could tell,
Speaker 4: had a very small, small appearance in court, which makes
Speaker 4: it I just don't understand why the prosecution wouldn't set
Speaker 4: him on this stand for a week to talk about
Speaker 4: his brother, to try to build that picture of this
Speaker 4: guy as a serial killer, and he never that did
Speaker 4: not happen. I don't know why. There's a lot of
Speaker 4: unknowns in this case, but that's my opinion. Is that
Speaker 4: if it wasn't his brother with somebody else, but he
Speaker 4: had assistance, he had help, he needed it. And then
Speaker 4: the stuff about Ridgeway and having fifty so he would
Speaker 4: have one more. We see that a lot with serial killers,
Speaker 4: where they idolize another serial killer and they want to
Speaker 4: be you know, they want to play that one up
Speaker 4: game with that person. And to make a statement like
Speaker 4: that sheds a small glimpse into the mind really of
Speaker 4: what's really going on in Robert's mind to brag like that.
Speaker 4: But on the flip side, and something that has to
Speaker 4: be discussed is I've talked to thousands of criminals in
Speaker 4: my career. I currently work in.
Speaker 6: A facility that houses inmates anywhere from a purse snatcher
Speaker 6: to looking at murder or multiple murders.
Speaker 4: Okay, in the prison system, people say and do anything.
Speaker 4: So there was a there was a small sense that
Speaker 4: he Robert was just bragging and kind of talking out
Speaker 4: his side of his mouth, kind of trying to build
Speaker 4: himself up because he was, you know, scared, he was
Speaker 4: in custody. He thought he's gonna probably thought he's going
Speaker 4: to go to prison for a long time, and so
Speaker 4: he wanted to brag about how many people he killed
Speaker 4: trying to score a little bit of credibility while in custody.
Speaker 4: So I've seen these guys say and do almost any thing,
Speaker 4: and so there was some question, well, well, Robert wouldn't
Speaker 4: have been smart enough to pull all this off, so
Speaker 4: you know, it probably only just did the six and
Speaker 4: there was only enough evidence for the six and stuff.
Speaker 4: So it caused a lot of confusion. But my opinion,
Speaker 4: based on now going on six years of investigating this
Speaker 4: case and the information I've got after this book came
Speaker 4: out years ago, I think his brother was involved. I
Speaker 4: think Robert's a little bit more intelligent than eighty one
Speaker 4: as far as an IQ, And unless he really actually
Speaker 4: said something someday, or we have something else to go on,
Speaker 4: we just kind of have to go with what's in
Speaker 4: front of us.
Speaker 5: You know, there was the woman that claimed to have
Speaker 5: witnessed the attack, or the woman on the meat hook
Speaker 5: at the farm. Why was tell us about her testimony
Speaker 5: and why she was seemed not credible?
Speaker 4: I believe she was a quote unquote kind of scorned
Speaker 4: ex girlfriend of Roberts. Where when they say ex girlfriend,
Speaker 4: I think he went to her quite a bit for prostitution.
Speaker 4: I also believe she if we're thinking of the same one,
Speaker 4: she was a narcotics user, and I think the prosecution's
Speaker 4: concern was putting her on the stand and how credible
Speaker 4: could a a drug using prostitute be, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean? If it's the one you're talking about.
Speaker 5: What do you think about any involvement by Casanova or
Speaker 5: Chubb in this? They've had some stories that were very
Speaker 5: conflicting and confusing and seemed to be incriminating at some times.
Speaker 5: What do you think about their status in this.
Speaker 4: I think one of a I think it was I
Speaker 4: think it was Chubb is one of the other ones
Speaker 4: I'm I'm forgetting right now. But one of them I
Speaker 4: think had some ties to a place where they would
Speaker 4: get rid of animal waste. And I think in one
Speaker 4: brief instance, there was some discussion on whether or not
Speaker 4: the Robert had sent a couple of barrels of what
Speaker 4: he said was pig remains to this area for disposal.
Speaker 4: And I don't remember which one of those guys was involved,
Speaker 4: if they were at all. I mean, there's ninety seven witnesses,
Speaker 4: so I can't remember all of them.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 4: I don't know if they were involved. I know that
Speaker 4: they were buddies. I know all three of them were buddies.
Speaker 4: I know that if you were out at the this
Speaker 4: is I don't know for sure, but it's my opinion
Speaker 4: and it's supported by the facts. But if you were
Speaker 4: a friend of Robert Picton's and you were hanging out
Speaker 4: at the Piggy Palace, you have had to have had
Speaker 4: some idea of what was really going on out there.
Speaker 4: He just could not. It's not feasible to not have
Speaker 4: some knowledge of what was going on out there. Whether
Speaker 4: they actively participated in murders, I don't think so. Whether
Speaker 4: or not they wanted to help Robert out, because he
Speaker 4: probably got out of control one night or one day
Speaker 4: with one prostitute or one night with another prostitute. Would
Speaker 4: it be beyond them to help him, I don't think so.
Speaker 4: I think they would help him. I don't think they
Speaker 4: would actually be killers, but I think they would help
Speaker 4: Robert if they had to.
Speaker 5: Incredible you also talk about. In May twenty to thirteen,
Speaker 5: another lawsuit thirteen families brought against Vancouver Police Department for
Speaker 5: their failure to warn women on the Downtown east Side
Speaker 5: that a serial killer was operating and in March twenty fourteen,
Speaker 5: there was eleven settled for the paltry sum of fifty
Speaker 5: dollars each.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean to me, I mean, it's a slap
Speaker 4: in the face. I mean, we're talking, we're talking. You're
Speaker 4: somehow trying to put a price tag on somebody's life,
Speaker 4: and you're settling for fifty thousand dollars for prostitute. I
Speaker 4: don't know how they do it. I don't know how
Speaker 4: they the families took those settlements, but I know that
Speaker 4: some of them took that money and put it into
Speaker 4: the various groups that are trying to track down these
Speaker 4: missing women in Canada. So it's kind of like a
Speaker 4: cool thing for them to do. It's kind of like
Speaker 4: what I do, or I donate a lot of my
Speaker 4: almost all my proceeds to victims of violent crimes and
Speaker 4: cancer research and stuff like that, and they donated some
Speaker 4: of their proceeds or what they got from those settlements.
Speaker 4: But you know, I can tell you that a police
Speaker 4: department is not going to give a settlement outunless they
Speaker 4: made a main your mistake. The fact that they settled
Speaker 4: suggests that they did and confirms that we talked about
Speaker 4: at length in this discussion today about how the PD
Speaker 4: dropped the ball, But man, fifty thousand dollars just it
Speaker 4: blows my mind. I don't know if it's a Canadian thing.
Speaker 4: I can tell you right now, in California or in
Speaker 4: the United States, if somebody is going to settle with
Speaker 4: an agency, or if there's a wrongful death or some
Speaker 4: type of settlement, even like a you know, a case
Speaker 4: in which the law enforcement officer takes another person's life
Speaker 4: but it's deemed a substantial or a shoot that was correct,
Speaker 4: you know, so the officer did what they were supposed
Speaker 4: to do, but it still somebody lost their life. Most
Speaker 4: people in the United States are going to get paid
Speaker 4: out something to the to the family, but it's usually
Speaker 4: around a million dollars. So if you have if you
Speaker 4: have that number of that figure United States, and you
Speaker 4: have fifty thousand in Canada, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's appropriate or not, but that's
Speaker 4: what they settled on.
Speaker 5: Right now, you talk about you include in this biggest
Speaker 5: longest case in Canadian history almost a year, six hundred
Speaker 5: thousand exhibits, two hundred and thirty five items seized, took
Speaker 5: nine days of deliberation for him to get this sentence
Speaker 5: in December eleventh, two thousand and seven, twenty five years
Speaker 5: to life. As you mentioned that there's a possibility of
Speaker 5: him getting out parole after twenty five years. And my
Speaker 5: Canadian experience killers like Paul Bernardo and Robert Picton, they
Speaker 5: will go out of their way, not very much like
Speaker 5: Manson and his cohorts never ever see the light of
Speaker 5: day get parole. But as it's small comfort to people
Speaker 5: that have to experience new numerous parole hearings on his behalf.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have, we have. You know, we've had some
Speaker 4: changes in the United States and California specifically as well
Speaker 4: on century and stuff. And you know, the family see
Speaker 4: that too, and I can't imagine it. I haven't. I
Speaker 4: haven't had to experience that personally, but you know, in
Speaker 4: California in two thousand and seven, we decided that the
Speaker 4: manner in which we were using the death penalty, or
Speaker 4: the manner in which we were sentencing people are putting
Speaker 4: them to death on death row is deemed inhumane. And
Speaker 4: so now we have, excuse me, a death row that
Speaker 4: is filled with people who will never be whose sentences
Speaker 4: will never be heard or they won't be taken out.
Speaker 4: It's hard to deal with, especially for the victims' families.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Absolutely. I want to thank you very much Chris
Speaker 5: for coming on and talking about Robert Picton the Pig
Speaker 5: Farmer Killer. For those that might want to take a
Speaker 5: look at your other work, do you have a website
Speaker 5: Facebook page? How my people take a look at work
Speaker 5: and and or contact too?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, everybody can check me out at Facebook under
Speaker 4: cl Swinney. You can find me everywhere under that cl swiney.
Speaker 4: And then if you have any listeners, I have two books.
Speaker 4: I'll give out two signed copies of this Robert Picton book.
Speaker 4: If they're interested, just do what you need to do
Speaker 4: and give me some names and addresses and I'll sign
Speaker 4: them and send them out to your listeners. So I
Speaker 4: appreciate this opportunity to talk again with you on your show.
Speaker 4: I love your show, so thank you very much.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you, And now I'll put out that generous
Speaker 5: offware of the two books to the first people that
Speaker 5: email me personally at Dan dot Zupanski at gmail dot com.
Speaker 5: That's up A N. S k Y dot com at
Speaker 5: gmail dot com. Dan Zupanski. So, first two people that
Speaker 5: come we'll receive one of the books from c. Elsewinny.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much, and thank you very much Chris
Speaker 5: for coming on and talking about another one of your
Speaker 5: fascinating books. Hope to talk to you again real soon.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much Chris for this interview.
Speaker 4: Thank you, sir, I appreciate it. Have a good night
Speaker 4: you too.
Speaker 5: Good night, welcome