Butcher (16 page)

“So, where do I go from here? I go to court?”

“Go to pretrial and then you go to court, and to court, and court, and court, and then jail, and you die there. That’s another thing. I hope you always wear a condom when you’re there because there’s STDs. I hope you know this is over. Train is on the tracks, and it gets heavier with each piece of evidence, and it’s going to run right over you, Rob. I know you’re smart. I know you’re not some wacko, some crazy guy. I know that. You have made mistakes. There’s evidence all over the place. You can’t hide from it. I want you to tell me the truth. I want to understand you.”

“I got to sleep on it for a couple of days.”

“This pain that’s inside your stomach is not going to go away. It’s going to get worse. Right now, you got a disease and it’s going to eat you up. It’s going to crawl inside you like the cancer that killed your mother. You want to tell me. You want to talk about this. You’re wondering yourself. Rob, you can’t run from this. You can’t hide. This is going to keep going and going. I want to understand you and what happened. I’m not going to judge you and I’m not going to hate you. I’m going to try to understand you. If there was a situation where you wanted to help girls speed up the inevitable, I’ll understand. People aren’t going to hate you.”

“Murder? Charged with two?”

Another officer, Constable Dana Lillies, came into the room and told Fordy that he was wanted outside to discuss new evidence that had been found. When Fordy left the room, she sat down next to Pickton.

Constable Dana Lillies represented a more sympathetic and temperate approach in her attempts at obtaining information from Pickton, and she seemed to provide a bit of relief to the murder suspect after the intensive grilling he had gone through with Fordy. Pickton did not know it yet, but the questioning the he had undergone for the last few hours was not over yet—he still had to meet with the head of the Joint Missing Women Task Force, Inspector Don Adam. Even though he wanted to go back to his cell, he would remain in the interrogation room for several additional hours. They were putting him through the wringer, multiple times.

“It’s a lot to digest,” Lillies said in a relaxed demeanor that was intended to put Pickton more at ease—for a while. “Like I was telling you last week, this was going to happen.”

“Did you find the bones I told you about?” Pickton asked.

During his first arrest nearly two weeks earlier, Pickton had told her about some bones that investigators would find on his property. He had drawn her a map, and said that crime scene personnel would determine that they were ostrich bones.

“Yes, your map was perfect,” Lillies responded.

“And they were ostrich bones?” Pickton asked.

“Yes, we knew they would be. Like Bill was telling you, there’s more evidence every hour. How are you feeling?”

“I can’t feel my toes,” Pickton said, looking down at his feet, clad only in socks.

“You don’t feel your toes?”

Pickton muttered something unintelligible under his breath.

“It’s a lot to be taking in,” Lillies said somewhat sympathetically. “Could you sleep last night? Have you eaten anything since you’ve been in custody here? I brought you a sandwich.”

“I don’t like it.”

“What would you like to eat, Robert?”

“I don’t know. At this stage, do I deserve anything to eat?”

“Of course you do. You’re a human being who’s made mistakes. I’m not going to judge you.”

“I’m dead before I start.”

“You’re not dead. You’re a human being. You deserve that. We’re not here to judge you. I told you that last week. I’m ready to listen to whatever you have to say.”

“I should be on death row.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I’m finished. I’m finished.”

“You know what, Robert,” Lillies continued. “You come to a point where you have to deal with…what’s happened. The best way to deal with it is openly and honestly. It’s not the end of the world…. You’re going to go on living.”

“For what?”

“You have good qualities. I’ve been talking to people who know you.”

“I’m over with. I’m finished.”

“You do have good qualities. You do care about people, people have taken advantage of you…. You are going to jail, not back to the farm…. That will be difficult for you because that’s your whole life, right? It’s a huge change. It’s a lot to take in, but you have to be strong.”

“For what? Dying?”

“[For the] people who care about you,” Lillies said. “Dave is your fiercest protector. He’s beside himself right now. I think what’s important now is to give the families some closure. They want answers. You have to give them answers. You can keep your mouth shut. But you could bring an end to this suffering right now. People out there are thinking you’re a monster. They don’t see the side that I saw, when we sat and visited for a couple of hours there. A human being, with good qualities.”

Pickton kept telling Lillies that he was “dead,” and she attempted to sway his mental attitude into realizing that he was at a crossroads in his life, albeit a very serious one. She tried to make him see that his lying and denial about what the police believed he had done was acting as a “poison” inside him, growing and festering with each passing hour that he continued to hold it inside. Pickton was not listening to her, however, and sat in the chair, shaking his head, saying that he was “dead.”

“Well, my name is mud,” Pickton finally said. “I’m locked up here forever. You tell me why I don’t think that?”

“Do you want to tell me what happened, and see if it feels better?” Lillies asked.

“What’s it matter? I’m dead.”

“This was Mona, right? I really want to understand what happened with Mona. I do.”

“I didn’t do anything, really.”

“We all know that’s not the case, Robert.”

“That’s what they say now…. I’m nailed to the cross anyway.”

“Like Bill was telling you, her DNA is all over that trailer.”

“But I always been in there. I’ve been in there off and on, but I don’t know anything about this here.”

“I don’t think Bill told you where,” Lillies said, a more serious tone in her voice. “Your DNA was on the dildo, that was on the gun you have—and her DNA was on the tip of that dildo. That’s where it was found.”

“That doesn’t mean I did it.”

“Yes, it does. It does, Robert…. You’re hurting everybody by denying it.”

“There’s a lot of people know I had the gun.”

Pickton covered his eyes with his hands as Lillies continued speaking, telling him that she would like to hear what he had to say about the gun with the dildo attached to it.

“Will you tell me about the, ah, gun with the dildo on it?” Lillies asked.

“Well, I put that on there…in case I have to use it for…shooting boars,” Pickton said. “I shouldn’t be talking about this. It’ll be in court anyways, right? It’s gotta go to court.”

“For shooting boars?” Lillies asked, attempting to get him to continue about the gun.

“Yeah, pigs.”

“With a dildo on the end of it?”

“Yeah, I put it on there for a silencer, but I never used it.”

“That sounds a little unusual…. So tell me, how did Mona’s DNA get on the tip of that dildo?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“See, I don’t know her,” he said, refusing to look at Lillies as she picked up the photo of Mona Wilson and showed it to Pickton.

“That’s not what I asked, is it?” she said. “You probably don’t know her. Her name is Mona Wilson. She was a prostitute, and you killed her. Now, whether or not you knew her isn’t really the issue. The reality of the situation is that the evidence doesn’t lie, the reality of the situation is that her blood is all over that camper, and it’s mixed with your DNA. So whether you knew her, where she lived, who her parents were, whether or not she had children, that’s not what I’m asking.”

She handed Wilson’s photo to Pickton, who placed it on the table.

“I don’t know her,” he said again.

“Robert, you and I both know that’s not true,” she said. “One of the things I know, knowing about the kind of sex you had with these women, that doesn’t change the way that I see you. I still see the good in you. I see the Robert I sat and chatted with for a couple of hours. I still see Robert who saw his favorite calf slaughtered as a child. You have real feelings. I know you’re going to do the right thing. I believe people become who they are because of what’s happened to them. That’s what I want to understand. We talked a lot the other day about your history and growing up on a farm. And I think anyone in the same set of circumstances would grow up doing the same things as you. Maybe if you’d been raised in the circumstances I was raised in, it’d be a different situation right now. I’m here to understand you. I’m not here to judge you.”

“I’m never going to walk again,” Pickton said resignedly. “I’ve got two charges against me, and more pending.”

“You know, as I do, they’re going to find more evidence,” Lillies said. “Here’s your chance to help people, including yourself. I think you have demons you’re struggling with—by sitting there silent, you’re letting them take over.”

Lillies continued trying to convince Pickton that much of the evidence had not even been found yet, and that it was still forthcoming. She also told him that people had begun to come forward to talk about what they knew about his alleged crimes, and that many people would provide information before it was over.

“Are you hearing me?” she asked. “What are you thinking, Robert?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are you feeling?”

“I can’t get over Scott Chubb in the machine there,” he said as he motioned toward the VCR on the desk.

“You’re surprised he came forward to us? Was that a nod? Yeah. What I think really sucks is a lot of people were using you to support their drug habits, and they burn you in the end. There’s a tip line on the news and people are phoning that. All those things are coming through and being followed up on.”

“I can’t get over Scott Chubb.”

“Tell me about Scott. You guys good friends? Tell me about him. I’m interested.”

“I can’t get over him. Who was speaking with him?”

“I’m not sure. Was that someone you worked with? I don’t know the man…but we’re getting lots and lots of phone calls from people like Scott Chubb.”

“I think that was Scott Chubb,” Pickton said again, covering his face with his hands once more. “Scott Chubb. F***. I can’t believe it. It’s way out now.”

“It hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Scott Chubb, of all guys. Of all guys—him! What is he trying to do?”

When RCMP inspector Don Adam walked into the austere interrogation room on Saturday afternoon, February 23, 2002, where Robert Pickton was waiting for him with Sergeant Bill Fordy—who had returned for additional questioning after Constable Dana Lillies had finished with him—Adam noticed that Pickton looked tired, gaunter than ever, and he momentarily considered that Pickton may have been exhausted, due to all of the interviews that he had already sat through with Fordy and Lillies. He was obviously stressed due to the situation that he was in, likely because the noose, so to speak, was becoming tighter with each hour that passed. Adam greeted Fordy with a nod and a handshake as he entered the room.

“Hi, Bill,” Adam said. “I’m just wondering if I should spend a couple of seconds with Willie. I don’t think he’s quite got the whole picture of what is going on here.”

“Absolutely,” Fordy replied. “Do you want me to leave you with him?”

Adam indicated that he did not mind if Fordy stayed, then greeted Pickton.

“Hi, Bob,” Adam said. “Or Robert? Which do you prefer to be called?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Pickton quietly replied.

Adam introduced himself and shook hands with Pickton as he momentarily stood up. He motioned for him to remain seated, and attempted to make his presence with Pickton seem as amiable as possible.

“I have heard some people say you prefer to be called Robert,” Adam stated matter-of-factly. “I knew you as Willie. I used to be stationed in Coquitlam back in the early 1980s…back in the days when…you guys were burying equipment and doing that kind of stuff.”

Adam was referring to how Pickton and others had buried equipment and machinery that had purportedly been stolen and possibly fenced to Pickton and others on the farm. After reminding Pickton how he had first come to know of him, he settled on calling him Bob.

“Bob, I’m in charge of this investigation,” Adam told him. “I’m a sergeant. And even though Bill’s gone over some of this stuff with you, I think that maybe you need to hear the overall picture. I’m not going to spend a lot of time with you, but I want to just set things out, sort of make them crystal clear as to how this comes together.”

Pickton sat quietly, listening intently.

“Okay, the first thing you need to know is this,” Adam continued. “Right now, we can associate you to twelve of these women, and that’s two weeks into the investigation. Twelve of them. Next you need to know is that relative to Sereena Abotsway, and I’m not a front-line investigator, right—I direct the guys. Relative to her, we have Linda Dick, who will state last summer that she met you and Sereena together and Sereena introduced you as Robert, and Sereena said you were going out to your farm.”

Pickton began shaking his head no in disagreement.

“No, no, no, just wait and listen,” Adam said.

Adam explained to Pickton that he had his people tracking Sereena Abotsway’s moves during her final days. He said that he knew when she picked up her welfare payments of approximately $35 every three days, and that even though she was not very good with managing what little money she received, she always seemed to be able to get her asthma medication, which was dispensed in the form of an inhaler. He explained that he knew that Fordy had spoken with him about the asthma inhalers found on the farm, and how they were identified as having belonged to Sereena Abotsway. He depicted the inhalers as a major problem for Pickton.

“We have statements from people, including your brother, where you say, ‘Yes, it was a shiny case, I brought it into the house,’” Adam stated. “Willie, that’s gonna be the evidence, all right. ‘A shiny case I brought into the house.’ You discussed it with a whole bunch of people, and we have that. You can’t move away—that’s your position…. Willie, you need to understand something. That inhaler was not found by itself in your house. It was found in a tote bag belonging to Sereena Abotsway. Inside that tote bag are her shoes, her clothes, a needle, and on that needle is her DNA and your DNA, together. Okay?”

Pickton began shaking his head again in disagreement, but he said nothing.

Adam further described how the investigators had gone through Pickton’s garbage, layers of it, that was situated right below a window of his trailer, and had found three additional inhalers belonging to Abotsway, bringing the total found on Pickton’s property to four, and that each bore the dates when the dispensing pharmacy had filled them.

“Yeah, we got four of them,” Adam emphasized. “All right, Willie, you need to understand you told a lie to try and justify how that inhaler got into your house…. Oh yeah, Willie. There’s no point shaking your head. Just listen to me, so you know what the evidence is, in case you need to know where you are. Because only by knowing where you are, Willie, by knowing exactly how locked-in you are, will you realize how the lies are dragging you down like a stone.”

Pickton began wiping his eyes to remove an occasional tear, and at times it seemed as if he was about to begin sobbing. But he held his composure and continued to listen to Adam.

“If you pick up a great big boulder, Willie, and step into a deep lake, what happens to you?” Adam asked. “You go to the bottom, don’t you? And the lies that you’ve told, the little cover-ups you’ve tried to create, are stones that are going to carry you to the bottom, Willie. All right, so you need to listen to me, ’cause I am not here to lie, and Bill got a bit of the evidence confused…and it’s not his intention to lie, and I’m gonna straighten up that confusion right here and now. ’Cause we are not here to lie to you about the evidence, and we’re not here to exaggerate the evidence, Willie. We don’t have to. Do you understand? So, where Bill has made mistakes or got confused, I’m going to straighten you out on that.”

In an insistent tone Adam told Pickton that a jury would convict him of Sereena Abotsway’s murder.

“You will be convicted of that, all right,” Adam continued. “On the tote bag, Willie, is her blood. And, Willie, you are locked into all of your stories about finding that one inhaler. Not a tote bag with blood. Not extra inhalers in your garbage, not any of that stuff, Willie. You are completely finished on that case.”

Following a brief pause, but without missing a beat, Adam began detailing for Pickton all of the evidence and witness statements that had so far been obtained regarding Mona Wilson. Pickton occasionally looked up, like he wanted to say something, but decided to remain quiet. He began to look beaten, defeated, and he instinctively knew that there was little point in attempting to refute Adam as he recounted the details of the case to him. There would be time for that later, after he had learned everything that the cops knew about him.

“Mona Wilson, that is a murder site inside that motor home,” Adam said. “We have got tons of witnesses talking about you in that motor home. There are tons of them. I’ve got forty-five guys out taking statements, and they have been working day and night. I’ve got a roomful of statements, videos, Dictaphone taped statements—everybody talking about you. It is an army of investigators, and they are the best in the province and we are not making mistakes, Willie. It is coming down on you like an avalanche, and you’ve helped bring it down by your little stories.”

At one point Adam launched into a tirade about how many of the witnesses who were providing information to the police were fearful of Pickton, but they were coming forward just the same. He indicated that as long as Pickton remained behind bars, it was likely that additional people would come forward.

“Mona Wilson, that’s a murder scene, all right, no doubt about it,” Adam continued. “There’re drag marks, where you dragged her out of there. There’s the fact that you’ve got the dildo with the gun and your DNA mixed with hers on that dildo. How do you think a jury is going to look at a dildo on the end of a gun, Willie, that has DNA of you and her connected with a murder scene? What are they going to think?

“It doesn’t end there,” he continued. “We’ve got the ID of Heather Bottomley, all right, another girl there. We got the witness statements. Your friend, he likes you, he talks about liking you. But he is not willing to sit by, Willie, when you murder somebody.”

Adam had apparently been referring to Scott Chubb, who had worked for Pickton on the farm. Chubb, of course, had been an informant to RCMP constable Nathan Wells, a rookie officer, prior to Pickton’s arrest. It had been Wells who had obtained a search warrant to look for guns on Pickton’s farm, and in the end had found much more than he had expected to find.

“People aren’t willing to stand by you when…they know you’re a killer,” Adam said. “And, you know, he talks about the needle with the windshield washer fluid.”

“I don’t know nothing about that,” Pickton replied.

“You don’t know anything about that,” Adam said. “Well, Willie, I got bad news for you because inside your entertainment unit or whatever it is, a chest of drawers inside your trailer…guess what’s there? A needle with windshield washer fluid. Yes, Willie, absolutely.”

“I know nothing about that,” Pickton said.

“Willie, tell me your story,” Adam urged.

“I’m honest with you,” Pickton insisted.

“Well, you want to know something,” Adam continued, trying to break Pickton’s calm demeanor. “I haven’t even started…but you want to know how bad it is? Your brother, Dave, is talking to…two policemen he’s been dealing with. He told them today, ‘I know it’s over for Willie, I know there are bodies.’”

Adam calmly explained to Pickton that his brother had implicated other people in the killings, including Dinah Taylor, who had lived with Pickton for a year and a half and was frequently seen in the company of many of the women who began vanishing from the Downtown Eastside region. He explained that people were saying that Pickton had killed all of the women, but that he had help disposing of their bodies. He told Pickton that people were going to come forward with that evidence. Adam attributed much of what he was explaining to Pickton to his brother, Dave. He said that he was also aware that Pickton was being blackmailed.

“Now, I don’t know if your brother knows where the bodies are,” Adam continued, “but he’s…just gotta work out the final arrangements to give that up. Willie, maybe you didn’t kill every single one of them, maybe Dinah…is involved in some of it, maybe you were getting blackmailed. We know that Lynn Ellingsen was blackmailing you. We know that. Do you understand?”

Adam told Pickton that if he had been used, drawn into the murderous scenario by others, perhaps even pressured by others, that he needed to explain it all so that everyone could understand. Otherwise, he might take the fall for everything alone when others might have been involved. He explained how Dinah Taylor had taken off when things began to heat up and went back east to the Indian Reserve of her people of the Ojibway Nation in the province of Ontario, and how he had sent RCMP officers out to find her. He described how the officers had gone to her mother and father’s home and how they had helped convince her to cooperate with the investigation.

“She said that she had phoned you and tried to cook up a story with you about some sort of a duffel bag, that it came from some hotel, the Cobalt,” Adam said. “She gave that up.”

“That’s true,” Pickton said, not acknowledging the alleged story that he had fabricated with Taylor, but instead trying to say that the bag came from the Cobalt.

“Yeah, well, she did phone you, because she told us that,” Adam said.

“That’s true, it came from the Cobalt,” Pickton said.

“No, no, no,” Adam said, getting irritated. “She told our people that was a story you guys agreed to tell.”

“No.”

“Well, I’m telling you that’s…where we are now, Willie. You need to understand this. Lynn Ellingsen, who was blackmailing you, is now negotiating with her lawyer to give you up right now so she doesn’t go down for whatever her involvement was. Right now, her lawyers have called us and are negotiating.”

Adam asked Pickton if he had ever heard of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, and without waiting for him to respond, he explained that the couple killed young girls in Ontario. He said that Bernardo and Homolka were the first man-woman team in Canada involved in serial killings, at least as far as the police knew. He was attempting to draw a comparison between them and Pickton and possibly another woman, possibly two, to infer that Pickton may have had assistance luring the women out to his farm. He was, of course, thinking of Dinah Taylor and Lynn Ellingsen, and he let Pickton know that in an attempt to shake him up a bit more.

“Now running this file, Willie, I can tell you that I…don’t know how involved, or uninvolved, Taylor and Ellingsen were with you,” Adam said. “I know they were bringing girls out to you. I’ve got tons of evidence of that. I know that Ellingsen has talked about blackmailing you. She talks about coming in when you were skinning a girl, hanging on a hook.”

“That’s not true,” Pickton said.

“Listen to me for a second, you know how bad it is. I know that you were angry against the girls. I know that you blame one of these girls for giving you hepatitis C, that’s true, isn’t it?”

Pickton did not respond verbally, but simply shook his head no.

Adam explained to Pickton that he had witnesses who would testify that Pickton had expressed his anger to them for contracting hepatitis C from one of the prostitutes, and that he was also angry over having been stabbed by Wendy Eistetter, indicating possible motives for why he had become a serial killer. Adam continued to urge him to come clean, and stressed that he needed to begin thinking about the long term and whether or not he wanted to be despised for the rest of his life. Although there were not any deals being offered to Pickton, Adam indicated that it would be better for him if he helped clear the air by showing the world that he was not really the monster that was being portrayed in the media. The implication was that if he showed some compassion and admitted to what he had done, people would not think so badly of him.

“What’s in this for us?” Adam asked. “Why do we care? Two reasons, Willie. Number one is that I know these families. I met them, I know them, and I know that these ladies’ lives went wrong. I know that you have nothing but contempt for them, and I know that in my life, before I got involved in this file…I would just ignore them. I wouldn’t think about it. But I’ve met their families, and they didn’t end up wanting their kids to be that way, and your mom and dad didn’t want you to end up being a serial killer. Do you understand, Willie? That’s not what we want for our kids.”