Butcher (13 page)

“You got it.”

Pickton said that one of the most important qualities that he looks for in a friend is that of honesty.

“What do you like in your friends?” Fordy questioned.

“It doesn’t matter…. I don’t knock anybody down.”

“That’s a good quality to have.”

“Thank you. Because someday you expect the same in return. Even if they steal from you,” Pickton responded.

They continued small talk for some time about stealing and why people steal from each other, but Pickton reiterated that he has always been able to overlook such a flaw in people.

“If you haven’t got money out there, if you don’t have money to buy it, you don’t need it,” Pickton said. “But otherwise that, like I says, we all wake up in the morning, go to sleep at night…always in the same bed…. Someday you don’t wake up…but the sun still comes up.”

“It doesn’t come up on you, that’s the only difference,” Fordy offered.

“No, not necessarily,” Pickton countered. “It still comes up if I’m ten feet under. It’s still gonna come up…it’s still gonna come up. My mom’s gonna shine.”

“Now, you said to me the worst thing that ever happened to you was getting stabbed,” Fordy said, obviously trying to change the subject.

“Yeah, that wasn’t the worse thing.”

“What was the worst thing?”

“Tore apart by two pigs.”

“Tell me about that.”

“It was ’75. I was trying to breed a sow. She was in heat. I got the boar in there to breed it. The boar didn’t want any part of it. I brought another boar in. They started fighting. Just about killed each other. Then they turned on me. Ripped me up. I went down to the hospital. Was in July 1975. Went to the hospital. Got to get sewn up. They got me half sewed up and asked me what happened. I said I was mauled by wild boars. They took the stitches apart and said we can’t do anything for you. Said go home, rest. I said I can’t, I got to farm. I had to use my hands to push my knee down to activate the break on the tractor. I had people coming in to look after the animals. I couldn’t get off the tractor—my leg all swolled up. It was so hot. I took my clothes off. Pus was running down my leg. I stayed on the tractor. Got burnt. Heat from the wound. Heat from the tractor. Heat from the sky. It hurt just to cough. Another time…I got mauled by a big Angus bull. Summer 1978. That was a scary feeling one time there. See the grass coming off the ground right in front of your feet. But those are the good old days. I got scars. I couldn’t work for three to four days that time. I was all black-and-blue. I got crushed under my truck once. I was working on a hubcap. Thought I had it on safety—guess I didn’t. Come down and crushed my hard hat. I barely got out.”

“Tell me about your horse,” Fordy said. He seemed to be focusing his line of inquiry on things that mattered to Pickton, and at times appeared to be attempting to arouse the murder suspect’s emotions.

“I bought her in…1977. I killed it December 21,1981. First day of winter. Reason? It had hurt itself.”

Pickton went on to explain that a horse, an eight-hundred-pound mare that belonged to another person, had kicked his horse, a 1,400-pound stallion, in the back leg, and that it would have cost $5,000 to get it the veterinary attention it needed to mend its leg, but it would have been a gamble. He explained that he couldn’t actually kill the horse himself, but instead had a veterinarian destroy it.

“You can’t baby it,” he added. “If it twists its leg the wrong way, it’s broken again. December 21, 1981, five thirty-five
P.M
. I tried to get another horse—nothing.”

“What was its name?”

“Goldie.”

“Fourteen-hundred-pound stallion,” Fordy said. “I bet you never dreamt it could get hurt by those little things.”

“Eight-hundred-pound fillies. But again, it was an accident. The best go first.”

“How did you get into pig farming?” Fordy asked as the interview with Robert Pickton continued. “Your dad?”

“Yeah, many years ago,” Pickton responded. “Many years ago. 1957 to 1958. Opened the first butcher shop. Twenty-four twenty-six Pitt River Road. That’s where the house came from.”

He explained that his mother had been pregnant with his brother, Dave, when his family had opened their first butcher shop. He said that his father’s uncle Clifford lived with them at the time. He explained that he was close to Clifford, who had been hit by a drunk driver when Pickton was a little older, but he wasn’t sure about his age at the accident’s time. He indicated that as a result of the accident involving his uncle, he didn’t drink alcohol.

“I got drunk once,” Pickton clarified. “I was twenty-four years old. On my birthday. Maybe twenty-three. I had seven screwdrivers. I said I wanted orange juice. I said that’s pretty strong orange juice. I wanted to drive and they said you’ve had seven drinks. I said orange juice. They said orange juice and vodka. I felt a bit light-headed. When I was four, my mother said, ‘Do you want to smoke? Be a man.’ She gave me a cigar. She made me smoke a cigar. That’s the last…I ever had.”

“Who taught you to butcher pigs?” Fordy asked.

Pickton described a family friend, and said that he, Pickton, had been thirteen when he first learned how to slaughter and butcher a pig. Following a long pause, he began talking about the calf that he had purchased at an auction, at about the same time.

“I got a calf,” he continued. “I said I’m keeping this calf for the rest of my life. I slept with that calf. I was twelve or thirteen. Then I came home from school and the calf was gone. ‘Where’s my calf? Where’s my calf?’ Dad says maybe it went for a walk around back. No way. They kill animals down there. No way. I told him (the calf) not to go down there. They butcher animals down there. I looked all over, everywhere else. Maybe it did go down there. Maybe I’ll go around back. I’ll sneak around, to the butchering. Anyway, my calf was there. I couldn’t talk to anybody for four days. They said you can have another one. ‘No, I want that one.’ That’s when I realized, we’re not here forever. We’re here for a time. We’re here for a time…that hurt. But life goes on.”

“Everything happens for a reason,” Fordy offered.

“Yeah, everything happens for a reason.”

“Are you hungry?” Fordy asked. It must have been close to lunchtime.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“What would you like?”

“I don’t eat anything fancy.”

“I’m allergic to chicken, believe it or not,” Fordy said. “Do you want a sub? I could get us subs?”

“I don’t eat no lettuce, no mayo, no celery, nothing…. How’d I get into butchering pigs?” Pickton went back to Fordy’s question about butchering. “Just did. Did thirty-four head in a day. December twenty-third, right through to December twenty-fourth. I think it was in 1977. Thirty-four in a day.”

“How’d you learn to do that? Somebody must have taught you…. What’s the fastest you ever done?”

“Nothing fast about it. The problem is, you got to do it. Got to do it right, gotta make it respectable because people are going to eat it…. Has to be a clean job because this is for the public.”

“I wasn’t raised on a farm,” Fordy said. “How do you do it? How do you kill them?”

“You got to make sure the pot has the right temperature water. That’s half the battle…. If you don’t have the temperature, don’t do anything. You put the pig in there till the hair comes off, hair loosens up. That’s about it.”

“They still alive when you put them in the water?”

“No, you use a handgun. They’re big boars. One hundred eighty pounds.”

“What is it you enjoy about pig farming?”

“Nothing. Make money. I want to get out. Everyone else is asking, ‘Do this one for me’ or ‘Do that one for me.’ It’s all favors.”

“How many have you killed? Ten thousand? Five thousand?”

“Yeah, five thousand, ten thousand.”

“More than ten [thousand] you think?”

“Possible.”

“Who’s the best butcher you’ve ever seen?”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to…. Everybody’s got their own special ways of doing things. I don’t know who is better than the next. Lots of people out there doing it.”

“Killing animals. That’s what they’re for, right?”

“Well…I guess so. I guess so.”

“How do you feel about sitting in here talking to me?”

“All right….”

“I don’t have to tell you how big an investigation this is,” Fordy said.

“I don’t know about that.”

“This is a massive investigation,” Fordy explained. “Huge. In my time with the RCMP, I’ve never seen unlimited people and money like this one. After it broke last week, some of the best cops in the province were brought in. I don’t know if you know how many people are out there. They’ve brought in forensic experts, forensic anthropologists. They’re going through that site and finding all sorts of bones, I guess. They’re able to look at it and say this is from one thing, this is from another. They might even have forensic entomologists, which [is] a person who studies different types of bugs. They’ve brought in experts in blood spatter—people trained by the FBI experts to analyze the bloodstains and patterns and how they work, experts in DNA.”

Fordy took a few moments to explain about DNA, and how it could help solve homicide investigations.

“I don’t know about that,” Pickton said. “I’m just a pig farmer.”

“I’ll help you with questions because I’m here to help you and me understand where you are,” Fordy said. He continued with additional details of what the investigation entailed, and descriptions of the various experts assisting with it.

“As you know, there are people all over your property,” Fordy said. “They’ll be there a year.”

“A year!” Pickton obviously had difficulty believing Fordy’s statement.

“Oh yeah…what they gotta do…they’re going to go through the dirt, go down twenty-five feet. That’s why it’s going to take so long.”

“What are they looking for?”

“They’re looking for evidence. I’ll tell you, some of the people, friends of yours—one of the things police are doing is talking to people who are your associates, talking to them about what’s going on.”

“What is going on?”

“You’re going to be charged and convicted of two murders. The investigation is huge—and is going to identify all the other ones you were involved with. I’m not saying you killed all fifty of those girls. Maybe you killed more, maybe less. You’re the only person who knows. They’re talking to people who were your associates for the past fifteen years…. So if I said I have your DNA on this marker, how would you explain it?”

“I’d have touched it.”

“Yeah, what else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would it have been possible for your DNA to be in this room yesterday?”

“Possible.”

“How?”

“Anything can be set up. Or put in.”

“If you’ve never been in this room, your DNA can’t be here. You have to agree.”

“It could have been set up.”

“All right, in the absence of being set up, yes?”

“Yes.”

“There’s more than one side to a story.”

“Yes, there’s always two sides, and maybe more,” Pickton agreed.

“Think back to the incident with the girl that stabbed you. When she went to police, there were two sides. Your story, and hers. I don’t care what you said to anybody else about the other girls.”

Fordy paused the dialogue between himself and Pickton for a few moments while he brought in a large white poster board with all of the missing women’s photos on it. He took it near where Pickton was seated and displayed it in such a manner that Pickton could easily see it. There were photographs of forty-eight women on the poster at this juncture in the investigation—more women’s photos would be added later. The names identifying the women in the photos were not on the poster.

“I want to walk through them,” Fordy continued. “Tell me which girls that you remember have ever been out to your place. Let’s just walk through them. Number one? Has she ever been to your place?”

Pickton looked at the photos, which were numbered, as Fordy asked him to carefully examine each one.

“I don’t know. There are so many people coming in and out of my place. I don’t know.”

“Okay, what about number two?” Fordy asked.

Pickton shook his head, indicating that he had not, and provided the same response for the third photo.

“Number four, remember her? She’s got a lazy eye. Has she ever been to your place?”

“Her lazy eye,” Pickton said, shaking his head no. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“She’s got a lazy eye,” Fordy said. “See her eye? Do you remember her? If she’d ever been to your place, would you remember her because of her eye? Probably, eh?”

“I wouldn’t,” Pickton said.

“Okay, number six?”

“She’s pretty, that’s all I gotta say.”

On and on it went as they went down through the list, one photo at a time. Pickton complained that there were a lot of people on the poster to remember seeing, and Fordy suggested that he only tell him about the women on the poster that he had taken to his farm.

At one point he motioned with his foot toward number fourteen.

“I think I see her around some whores,” Pickton said.

“Where did you see her?”

Pickton stammered a bit, and said some things that were incomprehensible before suggesting that the woman in the photo was a blonde.

“You know, there’s so many people that look like her,” Pickton said.

“Yeah, well, that’s interesting that you remember her, though,” Fordy said.

“Maybe I seen her around in Vancouver, if I’m right.”

“Has she ever been to your place?”

“No.”

The procedure continued, with Pickton saying no to each photo, indicating that he had not seen the women nor did he know them, until they got to number twenty-three.

“What is she?” Pickton asked. “She’s a dark girl, isn’t she?”

Fordy said that she sometimes looked black, and at other times Spanish. Pickton agreed that she looked Spanish.

“Has she ever been to your place?” Fordy asked. “I believe her name is Sarah. Remember her being there?”

Pickton shook his head no.

When he got to number twenty-six, he paused for a moment and then spoke.

“Twenty-six looks like…Lynn, but that’s—”

“Lynn who?” Fordy interrupted.

“The one that was in my place,” Pickton responded.

“Wish it was her?” Fordy asked, laughing.

They both obviously had been referring to Lynn Ellingsen, the woman who claimed to have seen Pickton skinning a woman hanging from a meat hook years earlier and had kept quiet about it out of fear for her life. However, unknown to Pickton, she had told what she knew after learning of Pickton’s arrest.

“Hmm?” Pickton was laughing again.

“Do you wish it was her?”

“No, it looks something like her,” Pickton said. “I’m bad for remembering faces…but I remember dates real clear. But…there’s so many millions of people out there, they look so much alike….”

As they continued going down the rows of photos on the poster, Pickton suddenly asked which of the women he had been charged with murdering.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Pickton added.

“No, I don’t mind at all,” Fordy said, pointing to Mona Wilson’s photograph.

“That one?” Pickton asked. “Who the hell is she?”

“We’re gonna talk about her,” Fordy said as he went on to the next photo, and the next, and so forth. By the time he got to number forty-eight, Pickton again denied knowing her and denied that she had ever been to his farm. He began yawning as well, as if he had become bored with the process.

“Okay, you’ve just had a chance to look at all those pictures, right?” Fordy said. “Can you give me some sort of explanation as to why any of these women could have been at your place? Why another witness might say they know for sure they were at your place?”

“No way, no
waaay,
” Pickton responded.

“Are you one hundred percent on that?”

“Yup.”

“So you’re telling me none of these women have ever been to your place? Do you want me to leave you alone for a while so you can rack your memory?”

“I don’t know any of them.”

“Have you ever had sex with any of these girls?”

Pickton sat quietly for several moments, as if he were contemplating the question. “Did I? Not that I’m aware of,” he finally responded.

“Have they been…in your car then—that you were alone with them?” Fordy persisted.

“I don’t have a car.”

“Your truck then, your vehicle of transportation.”

“No.”

“Hundred percent on that?” Fordy prodded.

“Yup.”

“Never been to your house, you’ve never had sex with them?”

“No. I had sex with a redhead. She’s not there. I haven’t seen her for a while. What’s her name…Roxanne.”

“She’s a prostitute?”

“She’s a working girl,” Pickton replied.

“Is she the only working girl you been with?”

“No. I’ve had a couple. Don’t know their names. I had Roxanne at my place.”

“When?”

“
Hmmmmm…
a year ago?” Pickton responded.

“Who introduced you?”

“I met her. Nice person. Real nice person.”

“What do you mean you had sex with her?”

“She was at my place. She went back and forth on the bus,” Pickton stated.

“What do you call sex?”

“She was a nice, nice person. Nice everything. I don’t know where she is now.”

“Maybe we got to put her on the poster. Should we?” Fordy posed.

“She was at my place. I don’t know.”

“What do you call your penis—your dick? Your cock?”

Fordy began using a rougher approach, using talk of sex and Pickton’s male anatomy, apparently hoping to shock Pickton so that he might slip up and make a statement that he might not otherwise open up about.

“I don’t know.”

“What did you do?…Put your dick in her?”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

“When you say sex, what do you mean? Some people mean the guy on top, some mean the girl on top,” Fordy pressed.