Butcher (15 page)

“I’m telling you right now that you did kill some of these girls,” Fordy said to Pickton. “And I’m telling you right now that you took them away from their families.”

Fordy’s demeanor had clearly changed. He had become more rough, and had begun outright accusing Pickton of the murders. He told him that the DNA evidence was the building blocks of the case, and that it would be the DNA evidence that would cause a jury to convict him of the murders of several of the missing women. Fordy told him again that Mona Wilson had been to his place. Fordy told Pickton that he did not view him as a monster, as someone who would “go out and hurt innocent little kids.” He again said that the bloodletting on the mattress in Pickton’s motor home was extreme, and the amount of blood loss that had soaked into the mattress would have rendered the person unconscious. He explained that experts had determined that the blood spatter on the wall had been caused from the impact of someone having been struck with a weapon of some type. By this time Pickton avoided looking at Fordy.

“This is not from a bloody nose,” Fordy said.

“I agree with that,” Pickton responded, still avoiding eye contact with his inquisitor. “Shit. I didn’t do anything.”

“You know what, Rob? You did…. This game of cat and mouse is over now.”

Fordy reminded Pickton about the inhalers found on the farm, particularly the one found inside his trailer. Pickton said at one point that he had found it lying on the floorboard of a gray car. Fordy, however, told him that his brother, Dave, had told the police that the inhaler found inside the trailer had originally been found inside the glove box of a red car.

“What did you tell Dave?” Fordy asked. “Do you remember that? Unless Dave’s lying.”

“I never did, I never even told Dave,” Pickton responded.

Fordy wanted to know if Pickton’s response meant that Dave had lied to the police.

“No, I mean I don’t think Dave really knows,” Pickton replied.

“Dave’s telling us that you told him,” Fordy added.

“I told him I found it in the car,” Pickton said. “I didn’t tell him what kind of car. Yeah, that’s true. And he presumed it’s in a red car because it’s full of clothes. We’re always talking about a red car.”

Pickton added that he might have seen a black purse inside the red car, in addition to the inhaler. When Fordy specifically tried to get Pickton to recall what he had done with the purse and what its contents might have been, Pickton said that it had been too long ago for him to remember.

“We’re going back a long time here,” Pickton added.

“Yes, we are,” Fordy agreed. “We’re going back right to when Sereena was killed. Sereena Abotsway. Obviously, you know that…was Sereena’s inhaler.”

“Sereena, who’s that?” Pickton asked.

Fordy pointed to her photo on the large poster.

“That’s obviously the inhaler that we recovered,” Fordy continued. “It’s dated July nineteenth…. That, as you know, was leaked out to the media. So you took the inhaler in and you…didn’t take anything else in [from the car]?”

“I can’t remember,” Pickton said.

Fordy went back to the black purse, and asked Pickton if he had taken it inside his trailer.

“I don’t know,” Pickton replied. “I might have….I’m going back a while here.”

“Well…it’s not that long. You’re doin’ a good job. Thanks. I appreciate that. So Sereena then disappeared on July nineteenth, that’s the day she picked up her inhaler.”

“It looked fairly new when I—when I—” Pickton said.

“It was brand-new,” Fordy interrupted. “It was the same day she got it.”

“Oh…really?”

“Which is probably why it makes sense. You thought it…was so expensive.”

Fordy told him that he found it very interesting how Sereena’s inhaler could be inside his trailer without her having ever been there.

“She hasn’t been there,” Pickton said.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know her, really.”

Fordy told Pickton that his DNA was mixed with Mona Wilson’s DNA, and that Mona Wilson was dead, killed on Pickton’s farm.

“I didn’t do it,” Pickton said. “I don’t even know her, really.”

“You’re a liar,” Fordy told him.

“Who’s the other one?” Pickton asked, now wanting to know the name of the other woman that he had been charged with murdering. “The one who left the bag there. She’s not here,” he said, motioning toward the poster. “Is she dead?”

“Yeah,” Fordy said. “Sereena Abotsway. You’re also charged with her murder, Rob.”

Fordy pointed out her photo to Pickton again.

“She’s dead! She’s dead, too! She’s dead! No way. No way.” Pickton told Fordy that he had dropped her off at the bus depot, and that she was supposed to have come back to the farm that night.

“When did you drop her off?”

“Nine,” Pickton replied. “Nine
A.M
.”

“Where did you sleep?”

“In the trailer.”

“Did you have sex with her?”

“No. I wanted to.”

“What happened?”

Fordy insinuated that Pickton was lying by saying that Sereena Abotsway never left Pickton’s property that evening, but Pickton reiterated his account of taking her to the bus depot. He said that he gave her a hundred-dollar bill.

“I feel sorry for you telling me these lies,” Fordy said.

“I’m not lying. I’m not lying. I think we better call this off.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything. I understand that.”

“You’re telling me she’s dead,” Pickton stated.

“She’s dead. And you know what? We haven’t finished talking about the first girl.”

“I didn’t do that. I didn’t. I’ll tell you right now. I didn’t.”

“Who did?” Fordy challenged.

“I don’t know anything about it. I don’t…. I am being honest. I didn’t even go in the trailer. Just because it’s on my property doesn’t mean anything. I haven’t been in that motor home for quite a spell. Not for quite a spell. The other girl with the black case. I drove her to the bus depot. Nine
A.M
. I’m not sure of the date. She’s a French girl. What’s her name? The one with the black bag.”

“Is that the one you never slept with?” Fordy asked.

“I slept with her.”

“Have sex with her?”

“No. She’ll tell you the same thing. I dropped her at the bus depot. At Coquitlam station.”

“Where’d you work that day?”

“I don’t remember,” Pickton answered.

There was a light knock at the door, and Fordy left Pickton alone in the interrogation room for a few minutes. During his absence Pickton sat there talking to himself.

“I can’t believe this,” Pickton said, still being videotaped. “No way. I can’t believe this.” He repeated himself several times while Fordy was gone.

When Fordy returned, he brought a copy of the latest edition of the newspaper and placed it on the desk.

“Here’s today’s paper,” Fordy said.

“Shit,” Pickton said as he looked at the headlines.

Fordy left Pickton alone for several minutes, giving him time to read some of the articles that had been written about him.

“Believe me now?” Fordy asked when he came back into the room. “That you’re done? It’s over. You’re not getting bail. You’re going to trial, jail—you may die there.”

Fordy pointed out Mona Wilson’s photo again.

“She died at your place,” Fordy said.

“I didn’t know her.”

“Your DNA is with hers. It’s over. You’re done, done, done, like dinner—roast pork. You can cry wolf and people will think you’ve done them all. There’s two camps here—one is you buried them whole, the others think you chopped them up, ground them. We’ll find a tooth here, bone here, no matter what way you did it, they’ll find it. Experts are going to get evidence.”

“I didn’t do it. I didn’t know her, really.”

“You look me in the eye and tell me that, and you’re a dirty, rotten liar.”

“You can think what you like. I didn’t do it.”

“It’s not somebody else’s DNA. It’s your DNA. One person. Robert William Pickton. So you’re done on this. And you can continue to lie, to hide behind lies, because that’s what people do when they’re scared….They have hardly begun out there.”

“They’re not going to find nothing there.”

“You’re wrong. They’ve linked you with tons of them. And they’re only two weeks into this investigation. I can’t imagine how you feel—but you’re done. You need to start looking at yourself. ‘Who am I going to take down with me—am I going to take down Dave?’”

“Dave? What’s he got to do with it?”

“As long as you lie, he’s attached to the lie…. It affects him. People who trust you. People who may even love you.”

“I want to go back to my cell.”

“It’s my duty to talk to you,” Fordy continued, ignoring Pickton’s request to be returned to his cell. “That’s what I’m going to do. You don’t have to say anything to me. Friends have told us you said a good way to get rid of a girl—”

“Who said that?”

“Lots of people are coming forward. The—the killer is one who’s known to the girls, and has means of getting them to the area, and disposing of the bodies. You have all three. I’m going to show you a tape. Just a second. You’re thinking, ‘This is not good. People I thought were my friends are talking about me.’ Your DNA and Mona’s are together.”

At one point Fordy brought out an audiotape and told Pickton that it was an interview that police had with one of his friends, Andrew Bellwood. The tape sounded scratchy and was difficult to discern what was being said at times, but enough could be clearly heard to implicate Pickton in the murders of prostitutes.

“He proceeded to tell…me how he was killing these hookers,” Bellwood could be heard saying on the tape.

“He what?” Pickton asked as he reacted to what he had just heard.

“He reached underneath the mattress,” Bellwood’s voice continued on the tape, “and grabbed some handcuffs and a piece of wire, and he told me how he would get the hookers on the bed, and have them lay on their stomach, and reach their hands behind their backs and put them in handcuffs. And after he handcuffed them, he proceeded to strangle them with a belt or the wire…. Anyway, then he told me that after he killed them, he would take them into the barn and bleed them, gut them, and feed them to the pigs…and nobody could trace them.”

“This guy’s out to lunch,” Pickton told Fordy. He also said: “Funny stories in there, aren’t they?”

As he continued speaking to Pickton, Fordy placed a videotape of Scott Chubb into the VCR and played it.

“I don’t know him.”

“It’s a tape of Dwayne Chubb.”

“Who’s Dwayne? That’s Scott.”

“We know him as Dwayne. You might call him Scott.”

The audio was somewhat difficult to discern, but Pickton was able to hear Chubb telling the police that Pickton had told him that if someone wanted to get rid of another person, he would take a syringe and inject her with windshield wiper fluid and that the police would think that she had died of a drug overdose. Chubb also described how Pickton had said something about having to give a woman a lot of money.

“I got the impression from him that he thought women were just dirty rotten pigs,” the man identified as Chubb said on the tape.

“What!
What!
Is that Scott?” Pickton asked, obviously shaken by the videotape.

“I guess you get the picture,” Fordy said. “So you can spin the story—nobody’s going to believe you. That’s what’s going to happen here. You and I know they’re going to find things in the ground. The decision to tell the truth is yours—you’re certainly not getting out of jail. So you are going to be done and sent away. You took Mona’s life, and your DNA is with her DNA. When you say you weren’t with her, that’s a lie. Nobody likes a liar. I hope you’re not involved with anything else, because I’d have been wrong.”

Pickton sat quietly and said nothing. He picked up the photo of Mona Wilson again and looked at it.

“Do you know the right thing to do?” Fordy asked. “Be strong—for…the people you love and the people who came to love you.”

“Scott Chubb,” Pickton uttered, as if he had not heard anything that Fordy had said.

“He’s going to give evidence.”

“After everything I’ve done for him.”

“Yeah. This case is getting better and stronger. The foundations of this case are DNA. Other things make it stronger. You’re smart. You’re no dummy. I know you’re not stupid. These girls on the (Downtown) Eastside, they had families, too. They had mothers once, too. People that loved them, coddled them. Deep down inside, part of me wonders, because you say you like to help people, maybe you think these girls you helped. These girls aren’t ones you’d want to marry—like Connie. But you took these girls away, Rob.”

“I haven’t killed anybody. Really.”

“Have you killed any kids? Tell me you haven’t killed any kids.”

“No, I haven’t. I told you I haven’t killed anybody.”

Fordy changed the subject and began talking about Pickton’s mother again, reminding him of when she lay on her deathbed, and how she likely had been thinking about what she wanted for her son Robert. Pickton, obviously growing very tired, began yawning again, but Fordy was not ready to let up on him yet. He moved his chair alongside Pickton’s and asked him how being charged with the murders of two women, so far, made him feel.

“Makes me feel sick,” Pickton said.

“That feeling is not going to go away. I knew that before you told me. I’ve talked to lots of killers.”

“I’m not going to get bail or nothing.”

“No, you’re not. You’re absolutely not. If you want to make your mom proud, then you need to be responsible. Don’t let your mother down.”

At one point Pickton wanted to talk about the other woman he had been charged with murdering, Sereena Abotsway, and asked to see her file. Fordy pointed toward Sereena’s photo, but told Pickton that he wasn’t going to talk about her until they had finished talking about Mona Wilson. He asked for details about what had happened to Wilson, but Pickton again denied knowing her.

“You killed her,” Fordy said. “This whole book is written except for your side of the story—why you did what you did. You’re dying to tell me. I’ve talked to lots of people. They feel better afterward.”

Fordy told Pickton that people would never know his side of the story unless he made a confession. If he did not confess, he said, the media would portray him however they wanted.