Butcher (23 page)

On Monday, January 22, 2007, the eagerly anticipated trial for Robert Pickton finally got under way in the New Westminster courtroom of Justice James Williams. Pickton arrived in a caravan of three police vehicles amid a high level of security rarely seen in New Westminster after a short drive from the North Fraser Pretrial Center, where he had been held for the past two years. Just like he had told his pen pal in California, he was in the middle car. It was a few minutes before 9:30
A.M
. when he was escorted inside the building through a secure area. Even though Justice Williams had declared that there would be no publication ban for Pickton’s actual trial, there would be a number of bans imposed later on, intended to protect the identity of certain witnesses, particularly the undercover officer who had shared a cell with Pickton shortly after his arrest. There was a media circus of sorts outside the courthouse that resembled a feeding frenzy in which reporters working for virtually every media type, from television to tabloid, scavenged for any morsel of information they could get, but the media activity was not as heavy as had been expected. As it was, there were approximately three hundred reporters and photographers present representing such media outlets as Court TV, BBC Radio and Television, the
Washington Post,
the
New York Times,
ARD television from Germany, the British Press Association, and
The Economist
magazine. Canadian television news and press agencies were also present, along with a number of technical and support personnel.

After Pickton had settled into the prisoner’s box inside the courtroom, similar to that in London’s Old Bailey, and the courtroom brought to order, Justice Williams admonished the jury of seven men and five women that some of the evidence they would hear would be shocking and disturbing, and cautioned them to avoid all forms of news coverage of the trial and to rely only on the evidence that would be presented in court.

“Where evidence is particularly distressing,” Williams said, “there is concern that it may arise feelings of revulsion and hostility, and that can overwhelm the objective and impartial approach jurors are expected to bring to their task…. I ask each of you to deal with that as best you can…. You should be aware of that possibility and make sure it does not happen to you.”

Crown attorney Derrill Prevett began his opening statement by telling the jury that the six women that Pickton stood accused of murdering—Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin, and Marnie Frey—were all drug-addicted prostitutes who frequently worked the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He said that the Crown intended to prove that Pickton lured the women with drugs and money to his farm in Port Coquitlam, where “he murdered them, butchered them, and disposed of their remains” in a variety of ways. In addition to providing graphic details about the case to the jury, Prevett described how Pickton had admitted that he had killed forty-nine women but had wanted to continue with one more to make it an even fifty. Prevett also told the jury about Pickton’s conversations with the undercover officer in his jail cell.

“During the afternoon and evening of February 22, 2002, Mr. Pickton and the undercover officer came to know each other,” Prevett said. “The officer related his cover story to the effect that he was in custody awaiting transport back east to face outstanding charges for violent offenses. Mr. Pickton explained that he’d been arrested for two murder charges and that the police are looking at him for forty-seven others. In the course of telling about his past, Mr. Pickton repeatedly tells his cellmate that he believes he is ‘nailed to the cross.’ He also tells him he is being considered as a mass murderer—his words, you’ll hear them…. In furthering his cover story, [the cellmate] tells Mr. Pickton that the police have him on an attempted murder charge and are investigating him for others as well. Mr. Pickton responds, ‘But you’re nothing like mine.’ The officer tells him he is looking at some serious time if the police are able to put things together. Mr. Pickton then gestures with his hands, showing five with the fingers on one hand and a zero on the other. The officer asks, ‘What’s that? Five? Zero? Fifty, ha-ha.’ Moments later, Mr. Pickton verbalizes what he had earlier gestured. He says, ‘I was going to do one more. Make it an even fifty.’”

Prevett took the jury through a detailed outline of the gruesome evidence found on Pickton’s farm, including the buckets containing the heads that had been sawed in half and the hands and feet of some of the victims, the revolver with a spent casing and a dildo attached to its barrel, the various finger, heel and jawbones, teeth, and so forth, and how DNA analysis had identified the six aforementioned women. He also explained that additional bones found near Pickton’s slaughterhouse did not match anyone that the task force had listed as missing.

“These murders of these six women were the work of one man, the accused, Robert Pickton,” Prevett said. “He had the expertise and equipment for the task. He had the means of transportation available and the means for disposal of their remains.”

Prevett also explained that the jury would hear the interviews that the police had conducted with Pickton. He explained how the interview began with Sergeant Bill Fordy.

“Mr. Pickton…explains to Sergeant Fordy that his trade is a butcher, he butchers pigs, he has been doing it since he was thirteen years old and he describes roughly how he does it,” Prevett said. “When you see and hear this portion of the interview, you’ll see it’s marked by the accused’s denial. He claims he knows none of the women with whom he is being investigated. He states that he knows nothing and that he is just a pig farmer.”

Pickton’s account changed, however, later on during the interrogation, particularly when Staff Sergeant Don Adam took over the questioning.

“Staff Sergeant Adam asked him about the photos of women displayed on a large poster board, which has been brought into the interview room, and asks him, ‘How many do you think you recognize? Like if you were free to talk right now, how many could you reach out and touch? No. But I mean, that you killed.’ Mr. Pickton responds, ‘You make me more of a mass murderer than I am.’”

Prevett explained that later in the interview Adam suggested to Pickton that the reason he found himself in his situation was that he did not do a very good job when he cleaned up one of the girl’s blood.

“You’ll hear Mr. Pickton respond, ‘That’s right, I was sloppy.’ Mr. Pickton goes on to say that bad policing is the reason why it took so long to catch him,” Prevett continued. “Staff Sergeant Adam questions him about his motives for killing and whether he ever thought of quitting, and Mr. Pickton states that he had one more planned, but that was the end of it. ‘I was going to shut it down. That’s when I was just sloppy, just the last one.’”

Prevett said that Pickton told an RCMP officer: “I should be on death row.”

Several members of the victims’ families were listening from the gallery. As Pickton sat mostly expressionless in the prisoner’s box, some of the family members could be heard sobbing as they broke into tears. It would be an understatement to say that the trial would be difficult for the victims’ families. Dressed in a long-sleeved gray shirt, black denim jeans, and white running shoes, Pickton avoided looking at anyone in the courtroom, choosing instead to peer downward toward a pad of white paper on which he wrote, or printed, occasional notes. Members of Pickton’s family did not attend the trial.

Among the details heard by the jury at the trial’s onset were descriptions of the decomposed severed heads, hands, and feet found inside the five-gallon plastic pails, and how the women had died. Prevett described how Andrea Joesbury’s head had been cut vertically in two, and that she had been shot in the right rear part of her head. The bullet had exited through her left eye. He described how her jaw had been cut up through the face to the top of her head, and how another cut had been made from the rear of her skull all the way to the top of the head. A fracture was present between where the two cuts nearly met, as if the head and skull had been separated the rest of the way manually, perhaps by hand—at least that was the presumption to be made from the description of the cuts and the fracture. One of her teeth had also been found inside the bucket.

The jury heard that there were differences in the manner that Sereena Abotsway’s skull had been cut. Her skull had been cut from the rear of her head, up across the top of the skull to an area on her forehead, just above her right eye. Another cut had been made up through the center of her face to the middle of her forehead. She had been shot in the head near one of her ears. The .22-caliber bullet, which had been found in the bucket with her head, had passed through the brain and into the lower section of the skull. She had been decapitated between the second and third vertebrae. The information, not to mention the evidence photos, was not for the squeamish.

Prevett told the jury about the jawbone fragments of Marnie Frey and Brenda Wolfe, as well as the teeth and other bones, including Georgina Papin’s hand bones, that were found on the property. He also described how investigators had found many of the victims’ personal belongings in Pickton’s trailer and at other locations on the farm, and how many of those personal items had yielded DNA from the victims. Prevett was adamant that the Crown would prove its case against Pickton.

When the defense team made its opening statement, Peter Ritchie told the jury that he and his team would vigorously disprove the Crown’s case, and that they would contest the Crown’s alleged facts of the case.

“The defense position in this trial is clear and it is that Mr. Pickton did not kill or participate in the killing of the six women he is accused of murdering,” Ritchie said.

Ritchie asked that when the jury was afforded the opportunity to listen to Pickton in the police interview that they listen very carefully, not only to what Pickton said but to the interview in general.

“Don’t forget that the Crown will be pointing you to ultimately only relatively brief courses of these very long interviews where the Crown is relying on significant words being spoken by Mr. Pickton, and that these words took place at the end of a very long interview. In addition, and I ask you to pay particular close attention to this, when considering the statements, the conversations that Mr. Pickton is engaged in with both the interview team and with the undercover police officer, pay particularly close attention to the evidence relating to his intellectual competence and close attention to his level of understanding. When you watch the videotapes, when you listen to them, pay close attention to what Mr. Pickton says and the manner in which he expresses himself…. When you first hear the statements, focus on these areas that I suggest may be of great importance in this case. Keep in mind what you hear through the course of the police interviews about Mr. Pickton’s level of sophistication.”

Ritchie contended that the picture that the Crown had painted of his client and the evidence found at the farm was not the full picture.

“It is the Crown’s contention they can prove those facts,” Ritchie said, “but at this stage it is only a contention that the Crown can prove these facts…. The evidence is unquestionably shocking and difficult for jurors to deal with, as it is for everyone in connection with the trial. I would ask that you approach your analysis of this evidence dispassionately and objectively. There is no question but that this evidence is difficult and disturbing.”

Defense lawyer Adrian Brooks told the jury in his part of the opening statement that Pickton was innocent, and cautioned the jurors that any conclusions they may have already reached about Pickton’s guilt or innocence were premature. He said there was much evidence to hear, and contended that there was also “reasonable doubt” attached to the case. He indicated that the defense would focus on Pickton’s statements to investigators, as well as the ones he made to the undercover officer.

“The evidence that we are going to be calling in relation to those statements relates to Mr. Pickton’s intelligence,” Brooks said.

Brooks stressed that Pickton’s own mother called into question the degree of her son’s intelligence, which was one of the reasons she stipulated in her will that his share of the inheritance be held in trust until he turned forty years old. Brooks said that a psychologist would testify that he had performed an IQ test on Pickton, and from another psychologist who had analyzed aptitude examinations that he had taken in school.

“The school records will show you that Mr. Pickton repeated grade two, and that he went into the occupational program,” Brooks said.

The defense would also refute the Crown’s contention that a heavily stained mattress from Pickton’s motor home had Mona Wilson’s DNA on it, even though a lab technician had come up with those results. Brooks said that the defense would show that the stain on the mattress did not contain Wilson’s DNA, nor, for that matter, the DNA of any other human. Instead, he said, the stain was “from the urea-formaldehyde line of products.” Brooks said that the defense had an expert who would testify that the inside of Pickton’s motor home was not a crime scene at all, but it was consistent with “intravenous drug use.”

For three days, beginning January 23, 2007, the jury watched and listened to Pickton’s videotaped interview with the interrogation team, including the parts where he said that he thought that the fact he was being investigated in Vancouver’s missing women was “hogwash” and his insistence that he was being set up to take the fall for crimes that he did not commit.

The first witness called by the Crown was RCMP Inspector Don Adam. Adam testified that initially, prior to the Joint Missing Women Task Force being formed, the Vancouver Police Department had put together “Project Amelia” when they began investigating Vancouver’s missing women—initially there had been ten women who had disappeared. However, by 1999, Adam said, the police had determined that nine of the women had only moved out of the area and were not actually missing. He said that the officers who were working on Project Amelia believed that the disappearances had stopped. Since no bodies had turned up, and because there was no evidence to indicate foul play, the investigators did not believe there was any reason to continue with the investigation. Their efforts, Adam said, had also been hampered by the fact that the DNA data bank at that time was insufficient. He confirmed the complaints from family members and others—including activists that were attempting to get the police to understand that they had a big problem that was not being adequately dealt with—that the police at that time had not been taking the disappearances seriously enough.

Adam said that by the time the Vancouver police had disbanded Project Amelia because they thought that the women had simply stopped vanishing, he believed otherwise—he suspected that the missing women, which consisted of more than the ten women investigated under Project Amelia, were homicide victims. After the RCMP and the VPD teamed up and formed “Project Evenhanded” under the guidance of the Joint Missing Women Task Force, which was after he had been asked to look into Vancouver’s “stalled” investigation in late 2000, Adam and his team concluded that the numbers of missing women that they were dealing with in Vancouver simply did not exist in other locales.

“I concluded they were murder victims,” Adam testified. “Unless they could be found, the evidence was that there was an ongoing serial killer active.”

At one point during his testimony, Adam said that three other people besides Pickton had been arrested in connection with the homicides, two of whom were arrested prior to Pickton. However, he said, none of the three people had been charged with any of the murders.

During questioning by Peter Ritchie, it was brought out that Adam and Fordy had told a number of lies to Pickton during their interrogation. The jury heard that lies are sometimes used as an interrogation technique that aids an investigator in creating a relationship with the suspect.

“You said, ‘I’m not here to lie,’” Ritchie quoted Adam as saying to Pickton in the interrogation room. “Was that a lie?”

“Yes,” Adam responded.

Ritchie also elicited information from the witness that showed that the boxes in the interrogation room with Pickton were “props.” He pointed out that the boxes labeled
Informant, DNA, Toxicology,
and so forth were either empty or filled with old binders or blank papers. Ritchie asked Adam if the boxes had been placed there to make Pickton think that his fate had been sealed.

“Exactly,” Adam said.

It was clarified at one point by the Crown that lies told by investigators during an interrogation are admissible in court. Adam’s testimony, as well as that of others, including Fordy’s, took up much of the trial’s second week. Also during that second week, the jury saw and heard the surreptitiously recorded videotape that depicted the damning conversations between Pickton and the undercover officer in his cell.

As the trial moved into its third week, RCMP corporal Howard Lew testified how he, as part of a team sent to Pickton’s farm to search for illegal firearms, discovered evidence that incriminated Pickton in the missing women investigation. He described the items that he found inside the sports bag in Pickton’s trailer: “Some novels, small running shoes, and a respirator with the name of Sereena Abotsway on it,” Lew said.

He said that the name had not meant anything to him, but that Sergeant John Cater had recognized it right away and reported it to his superiors. The discovery resulted in aborting the firearms search, and literally catapulted the investigation to a new level. Cater later testified that the first weapon found on Pickton’s farm was the revolver with the dildo attached to its barrel. It was during that search, the jury heard, that police found the sex toys, fur-lined handcuffs, and jewelry items in the headboard of Pickton’s bed.

The trial’s fourth week consisted of considerable testimony about blood evidence, particularly that found inside the motor home. A blood spatter expert delivered meticulous descriptions of how the blood evidence in the motor home was indicative of a lengthy attack that appeared to have started on the “passenger side, rear corridor area of the motor home” that concluded with a bleeding victim being dragged through the motor home. The expert, sometimes using photographs, said that he had found “cast-off” bloodstains, which occur when blood on an object or person is rapidly shaken off, as well as single blood droplets and transfer wipe stains. Transfer wipe stains, he explained, occur when a bloodied hand or other bloodied body part touches or is moved across a surface. He said that he had found cast-off stains on the walls, carpet, and the bed’s headboard, and bloody handprints were found in the passageway from the sleeping area to the front of the vehicle. He said that he could tell that the struggle began in the sleeping area and moved toward the front of the motor home based on the direction of the blood droplets that were found on the floor and on the walls.

Because it had been shown that Pickton neither drank alcohol nor took drugs, defense attorney Brooks at one point elicited information that alcohol bottles, as well as a crack pipe, had been found in the motor home. It was obviously an attempt to open up the possibility that perhaps someone other than Pickton had used the motor home.

Later, Peter Samija, manager of the RCMP’s forensic lab in the province of British Columbia, testified about the daunting task involved in collecting more than two hundred thousand samples from Pickton’s property for DNA testing. He explained that the procedure involved in collecting such samples is very detailed, and that each item has to be carefully handled and labeled in order to ensure the integrity of the evidence. Samija described how CSI investigators, wearing latex gloves and masks, used tweezers to pick up items for later analysis, and cotton swabs were often used to extract potential evidence and placed inside sterile tubes and labeled. Much of their work also entailed the use of alternative light sources, such as black light, that could illuminate stains that might otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. They often used a grid pattern of search when using swabs to collect evidence to make sure that areas did not overlap.

Constable Daryl Hetherington testified how a number of officers had begun feeling ill early in the search for evidence, and that by the time they found the pails containing decomposing body parts, the human remains had begun to liquefy. She said that police had to use a strainer to separate the liquid material from the victims’ heads and limbs.

Sergeant Tim Sleigh also testified about finding the body parts inside the freezer in the back room of Pickton’s workshop.

“I saw a human head, hair, an ear, skin that was purpling, and what I believe was a jaw,” Sleigh said. He said they had determined later that those remains were Andrea Joesbury’s.

He described how the heads had been cut, and said that the flesh was by then in an advanced state of decomposition. He said that the remains found inside the second bucket in the freezer were not as decomposed as the first, and how investigators later learned that those remains were Sereena Abotsway’s. Members of the jury had their own folders containing the crime scene photographs, and followed along as Sleigh and others testified.

At one point the defense team raised questions about the manner in which the search of Pickton’s property had been conducted. According to defense attorney Marilyn Sandford, DNA from an unknown male had been found on the buckets in which the human remains had been found, and it was pointed out that other individuals were still under investigation in connection with the case. The cops provided swabs for DNA analysis to rule them out as contributors of the DNA.

On Thursday, March 8, 2007, Pickton’s audio letter to a woman named Victoria, recorded in 1991, in which Pickton tells portions of his life’s history, was played for the jury. Victoria’s last name remained unknown at the time of the trial, as did her location—believed to be in a country other than Canada. The tape, which was just under an hour in duration, enabled the jurors to hear Pickton, in his own words, tell about his life as a child and some of the “stupid things” he did when he was growing up. Hearing the tape put a broad smile on Pickton’s face as he listened to himself recount his life history and speak about happier times.

During that same time frame of the trial, jurors also heard testimony of how the police had contaminated some of the evidence found on Pickton’s farm, including the dildo on the end of the revolver. DNA from one of the police officers was found on the dildo, as well as on a hair clipper, and a plastic bag, apparently from improper handling. Jurors also heard how security on Pickton’s farm had been breached on at least one occasion, in which a condom had been placed by someone on the roof of a vehicle on the property. The police confirmed that they did not know whether they had lost any evidence on the farm as a result of the security breach. Many items found in vehicles and in buildings on the farm, jurors were told, had been thrown away because the police considered the items debris and not worthy of seizing as evidence.

During much of the month of March, considerable testimony was given by members of the investigative team, and jurors were shown graphic photographic evidence of the remains of the victims, sometimes requiring brief recesses to give jurors time to compose themselves afterward. They also heard testimony from a crime scene technician that investigators had found clumps of hair, a condom, and various other items of evidence that had not previously been mentioned.

Jurors also heard testimony from Bill Wilson, the man who had discovered the skull in the Mission area in 1995 that had never been identified. Wilson, who had not previously been publicly identified, described how he had found the skull while selling wooden craft items along a roadside stand on Highway 7, a frequent activity that he engaged in. On the day that he found the skull, he said, business was slow and he decided to clean his car. He went across the highway to obtain water from the stream for that purpose.

“When I turned around, about forty to fifty feet away from me, was this object on the ground,” Wilson testified. “I thought it looked like it was an old bowl because of the color, and I thought it looked like it maybe could have been an Indian artifact. Then I walked over and realized what it was.”

Wilson explained that he did not report his discovery immediately because he had errands to run, and because he did not have a telephone at his home. He said that when he returned to the same location the following day, the skull was still there. He explained that he drove into Mission and reported it.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Peter Ritchie, Wilson admitted that he had not initially wanted to get involved.

“But you had found it,” Ritchie said. “Did it concern you that you had found a human skull? Did it bother you?”

“Of course, it concerned me,” Wilson said, “but I had hoped it would have floated away, or however it got there, it would have left the same way.”

As the trial moved into its eighth week, the jury was informed that they would hear testimony from a man named Andrew Bellwood, who, Derrill Prevett said, would testify that Robert Pickton had explained to him how he killed prostitutes. Although Bellwood’s name had come up in connection with the case during Pickton’s interrogation, it had not been mentioned publicly until the early part of the trial in January. His testimony at this juncture of the trial, now in April, showed that Bellwood had been a former employee of Pickton’s. Bellwood’s testimony recalled an incident from 1999 in which he had been watching television with Pickton in his trailer when Pickton began talking about prostitutes and how he had lured women to his farm with offers of drugs and money. Bellwood described how Pickton had acted out in detail how he handcuffed the women during sex, and how he would strangle them.

“As he was telling me this,” Bellwood testified, “it was as if he had a woman on the bed, as if it was a play. He was kneeling on the bed and proceeding to stroke the hair of a woman who was not there.”

He explained that Pickton had told him how he would take the dead women into the barn, bleed them, gut them, and then feed them to his pigs, just like he had told the police on the tape that Bill Fordy had played to Pickton during his interrogation.

The defense team was quick to point out that Bellwood had received a number of “benefits” from the RCMP during the investigation, including $1,000 for an eight-day stay at a drug treatment center for Bellwood’s domestic partner, and for paying his rent for several months. The defense also accused him of lying on several occasions.

“I most certainly wouldn’t be sitting here today, after five and a half years, destroying my family’s life, who are sitting at home right now and my kids crying over all the bad publicity, to sit here and not tell the truth,” Bellwood told the jury.