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