Butcher (18 page)

During one segment of Pickton’s lengthy and exhausting interrogation, Inspector Don Adam asked him about Gary Ridgway, who was finally identified as the Green River Killer, whose victims in and around Seattle, Washington, were also prostitutes.

“He may be the only person in North America who’s killed more women than you,” Adam told Pickton. “Right now, we don’t know who’s killed more—whether it’s you or whether it’s him.”

Pickton began to laugh, shaking his head simultaneously.

“Well, Willie, I don’t know,” Adam continued. “I don’t have a crystal ball, Willie. I don’t know whether you’ve been killing for fifteen years, or for ten years. Why are you laughing?”

“Just the way you said it,” Pickton replied. “F***, that’s a lot of people.”

“Well, Willie…you’ve killed a lot of people,” Adam continued. “Let me ask you a question—without you telling me the number. Do you know how many it is (that you’ve killed)? Just take your time and think about it. Do you know the number, or is it…you don’t know anymore?”

“I don’t know,” Pickton said. “I don’t know.”

Adam told Pickton that he understood that he was lying to him because he was scared, afraid of being caught. But he emphasized the fact again that it was all over for Pickton, that
he had been caught
. Nonetheless, he decided to play with Pickton’s ego for a while.

“You wanted to get away with it,” Adam said. “And you did a damn fine job. You completely stumped the police, and basically made them look like fools. All right? And they’re going to take a lot of heat for that, Willie, for why they didn’t catch Willie Pickton quicker. You led them on a merry chase for years. When you’re in prison, the other prisoners are gonna like you for that, ’cause you made the police look stupid. There you sat under their noses, every few months killing a girl, and they didn’t have a clue. Willie, it’s impressive….You say to yourself, ‘I’m a simple pig farmer.’ Do you remember saying that? Well, you’re not. What you’ve done is—it’s horrible, all right. You understand that it’s horrible, but it’s impressive. You may well be the most successful killer on the North American continent. You know right now whether you are or not, because if you are up over fifty, you are. Now I wouldn’t bet against you being over fifty.”

Pickton did not say anything during Adam’s speech about what a great killer Pickton was, but instead he sat there quietly, listening and taking it all in as he occasionally looked up at Adam. It seemed, at times, that Adam was getting through to him, slowly breaking him down. Whether or not he would obtain an outright confession from Pickton remained to be seen. He turned away from the approach of feeding Pickton’s ego and tried another tactic.

“You know, Willie, if a doctor said to me, ‘Don, you got cancer in your right arm,’” Adam said. “If he said to me, ‘Well, I’m gonna chop your arm off.’ Do you think I would want my arm chopped off, Willie? Do you think I would? But if I knew that if I didn’t deal with my arm, if I knew that it was gonna turn into gangrene and I would die, then I’d…logically…make a decision that you know, I’m finished if I don’t do this.”

Adam drove home the point that Pickton had no bargaining power except to confess, and even that small chip was quickly disappearing. He pointed out that if Pickton decided not to talk, the investigation would continue “rolling” and the search would continue, leaving the victims’ families having to needlessly wait for another year or more, living in uncertainty, before they knew the truth about what had happened to their loved ones. While the families waited, the task force would continue digging and sifting, finding DNA, teeth, hair, bones, body parts, and so forth. Pickton just sat there and laughed.

“You laugh,” Adam said, “’cause I know you really don’t care.”

“I don’t think you’ll find anything,” Pickton clarified. “You won’t find anything…’cause there’s nothing there.”

Adam told Pickton that he did not believe him, and said that he was being foolish if he could not see what the police were going to do on his farm. Adam calmly explained the millions of dollars that would be spent as investigators went over the farm with a fine-tooth comb, and that during the process they would find plenty of evidence to obtain multiple convictions against him. Adam conceded to Pickton that he did not know precisely when he began killing women, whether it started in the 1980s or later, perhaps in the early 1990s. He said that he believed that Pickton was “full blown into it” by 1997, and that it would not be difficult to associate him with twelve of the missing women right then and there.

Pickton just rubbed his eyes as he listened.

He reminded Pickton that blood soaked into the wood paneling behind the wallpaper in his trailer, and would “last there for five hundred years in that state.” He said that they would pull off the wallpaper, just to see what was behind it. He also told Pickton that investigators knew that he had changed the carpet in his motor home, and that they had interviewed the person who changed it out.

Adam also conceded that not everyone who had been speaking with the police about the case had said that Pickton was a bad person. In fact, some people had spoken of good things that Pickton had done in his life. Despite the good side of his interviewee, however, Adam told Pickton that something had gone haywire somewhere along the way because, Adam emphasized, it was
not
normal to kill women. He was attempting to cajole Pickton into telling him what had caused his hatred toward women, and what had driven him to the point where he wanted to kill them.

“If you don’t take the chance and the opportunity to try and explain things, then every good thing you’ve done in your life, all the things that your mother would be proud of, and your dad would have been proud of, are gone, are lost,” Adam said. “If people can paint you, Willie, as just a…simple, evil…hideous creature, who not only probably killed all of these women, but maybe…would have sexually assaulted the kids that came around the park…. We know that you did nice things for some of the kids. You gave them riding lessons…. You were good to some people, weren’t you? Do you want people saying that ‘well, so and so used to go over to Willie Pickton’s—well, he probably had sex with her when she was a little girl.’ He…was probably screwing little boys. You know, gee…the next story will be that you were near schools, stalking kids. That’s how people are, Willie…. Take ownership of the mistakes you’ve made, but don’t take ownership of everyone else’s horrible thoughts. Willie, people are gonna be looking for answers, and if you don’t give them the answers, they’re gonna make up a thousand stories.”

Adam explained how years earlier he had worked as a polygraph examiner and had become an expert at being able to determine whether someone was telling the truth or not. Pickton indicated that he did not know what a lie detector test was, so Adam explained it to him. He also explained how when someone looked him straight in the eye and told him the truth about something, there was a certain “ring” or believability to what was shown in a person’s eyes. He told Pickton that he had not seen that “ring of truth” in his eyes when Pickton denied being involved in the missing women’s murders. Adam also said that he would know it if Pickton told the truth about something, anything, and that sometimes, because of fear, people only told what they knew in small increments.

At another point Adam again mentioned the allegations that had been made about Pickton having sex with some of the women after they were dead, which Pickton denied, and indicated that it was understandable that he would not want to admit to such horrible things. He also said that people were beginning to make him out to be a “horrible creature” by saying that Pickton enjoyed torturing the women, and enjoyed hearing their screams and seeing the agony that he put them through, perhaps over many long hours. If Pickton chose not to talk, Adam indicated that people would likely portray him as having done those things, and that was how he would be remembered. Anything good that he had done in his life, even if made public, would quickly be forgotten. He pointed out that some serial killers had done the types of things that Pickton had been accused of—such as torturing the victims and enjoying their agony—and wondered aloud why Pickton should not be portrayed in a similar manner. He explained that many serial killers exhibit a progressive and driven behavior, increasing torture, for instance, with each successive victim until things get very much out of control.

Adam asked Pickton whether, perhaps a year or so down the road after he had closed Pickton’s case, he would have to begin looking for another perpetrator who had killed some of the earlier missing women, or would Pickton make a confession to clear many of the cases. Pickton indicated that Adam would have to look for another killer besides him. After seeing Pickton’s reaction, he asked him whether a biker, a Hells Angel who knew Pickton and his brother, was involved in any of the killings.

“I don’t know.” Pickton shrugged.

“Or you don’t want to say?”

“I don’t know, but there [are] so many people involved in this, it’s way over. Way over.”

“Let me ask you this question, Willie,” Adam continued. “Right now, we’re lookin’ at you and probably, maybe, three of the girls…bringing the prostitutes out to you. Are there other people? Is this bigger than we think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Willie, did you keep them alive and torture them?”

“Well, I shouldn’t answer that question because I am not even in court yet,” Pickton said after a short pause.

Adam told Pickton that everything they had said to each other, so far, would obviously end up in court, but he stressed the point to Pickton that they were past the point of whether or not Pickton had committed a number of killings. Adam insisted that Pickton had murdered several women and that he was obtaining the evidence to prove it. What he wanted to focus on now, Adam told Pickton, was whether or not Pickton had killed the women quickly and whether he had drugged them, perhaps so that they would not feel the pain inflicted upon them. Pickton would not respond to Adam’s continued probing, at least not by providing specific information.

“I made my own grave,” Pickton said. “Now I’m gonna sleep in it…for the rest of my life.”

“I know,” Adam said. “But I’d like to be able to look at the brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers of these women and, if it’s the truth, let them know that it’s not a situation where you kept them chained up and tortured them and—and reveled in their screams, that you did find a way of either choking them quickly and painlessly, and that they went fast. ’Cause that’s important to them…. Did they go quickly, Willie? I know you gave them drugs. I know you bought lots of drugs for people before they went out there. Did you allow them to shoot up and—”

“I give ’em money for drugs or whatever, but the problem is…whatever they do with the money is up to them.”

“Yeah. But…when everything is out in the open, are we gonna be looking at stories of days of torture and cutting their fingers off…their bodies while they’re still alive? Is it gonna be that sort of a thing, Willie?”

Pickton shook his head no.

“Willie, only you can tell me how much these people suffered…. Did any of them stay alive for days? Hours?”

“I don’t know,” Pickton said. “I mean, we are going over our heads here.”

“Why do you say that, Willie?”

“’Cause I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

“When I talk to these families, how bad is this gonna be, Willie? Give me that. How bad is it gonna be?”

“How bad is what gonna be?”

“How bad is their deaths? Are they tortured? Are you a sadist? Do you know what that means?”

Pickton shook his head no.

Adam reminded Pickton of a conversation that Pickton had had with a younger policeman that Adam worked with during the investigation. The policeman had asked Willie what the best day in his life had been. Adam asked Pickton if he recalled his answer. When Pickton indicated that he did not, Adam recounted what Pickton had told the younger policeman, that the best day of his life had been a day in which he had slaughtered forty to fifty pigs. Pickton had said that he began the slaughter at 7:00
A.M
., and continued until about 1:00 or 2:00
A.M
.

“Do you remember that day?” Adam asked.

“Yeah, that…was a good day at work, but that’s not the best day.”

“One of the things that people say about you is you know the pig business. Is that true?”

“Um-hum.”

“That you are good at slaughtering, you take pride in your work, you do it well.”

“And do it clean.”

“And you enjoy it.”

“I do it clean.”

“Willie, do you enjoy it?”

“I don’t know if I enjoyed it or not. I just did it for a job.”

“You know, Willie, I think there’s a part of you that likes killing.”

“Hum?”

Adam started in on the numbers again, wanting to know how many women Pickton thought he might have killed over whatever time period, which was still unknown, in which he had been active. Pickton, at one point, wanted to know what was in it for him if he talked and told Adam what he wanted to hear. He made it clear to Adam that he wanted to negotiate a deal to get the police off his farm, but it was not clear why he wanted them to leave. Was it because he felt violated having his property torn up in such a manner? Or did he fear that what they would find might implicate others? Adam told him without hesitation that he was not prepared to make any deals with him.

“The reason is this,” Adam said. “I know there’s going to be some full bodies buried in there.”

“Well, I wish you luck,” Pickton said.

“You’re saying they all went to the rendering plant?” Adam asked.

“The rendering plant?”

“Well, wherever you took them.”

Pickton asked again if the police would leave if he told them everything they wanted to know.

“You want me,” Pickton said. “You got me already.”

“Yeah, I got you,” Adam agreed. “You’re absolutely right.”

After going back and forth with the reasons why Adam could not make a deal with Pickton, he finally told him that he could not make a deal with him because, if he did, their conversation would not be admissible in court. Pickton said that he simply wanted to help put everyone’s lives back together, presumably meaning his brother’s and sister’s, and that was why he had wanted to make a deal.