Vancouver, British Columbia - The trial for Robert William Pickton, charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of six Vancouver women, starts Monday, Jan. 22, 2007 in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Shown in these handout and file photos are the six victims, Marnie Frey, Sereena Abotsway, Brenda Wolfe, Andrea Joesbury, Georgina Pepin and Mona Wilson, the trial judge Justice James Williams, defense lawyer Peter Ritchie, prosecutor Michael Petrie and Pickton. AP/Canadian Press/BCTV/Vancouver Sun Photo

Four Native women of 26 identified, of 49 victims

by Neal Hall, Lori Culbert

New Westminster, British Columbia

CanWest News Service

A police search of the farm of Robert (Willie) Pickton found the gruesome remains of seven women who were allegedly killed at the farm, the Crown said January 22 during an opening address to the jury.

The evidence was so upsetting for some missing women’s family members that a couple left the New Westminster courtroom sobbing.

Prosecutor Derrill Prevett told the jury that six women who Pickton is charged with killing – Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey – were all drug-addicted prostitutes from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

A heel bone was also found of an unidentified woman called Jane Doe that the Crown plans to introduce evidence about in the B.C. Supreme Court proceeding.

Prevett said the Crown intends to produce evidence that the murders were solely the work Pickton, 57, who has been in custody for five years awaiting trial.

“He murdered them, butchered them and disposed of their remains,” Prevett told the jury.

Prevett said police entered the Pickton farm in Port Coquitlam with a search warrant on Feb. 5, 2002, initially seeking illegal firearms but made a shocking discovery – a blood-stained tote bag was found in Pickton’s mobile home that contained an asthma inhaler that was prescribed in 2001 to one of the missing women, Abotsway.

A swab of the inhaler would later match the DNA profile of Abotsway, Prevett said.

Also found on a laundry room shelf was a .22-calibre Smith & Wesson handgun. The Crown contends Abotsway was shot with a .22-calibre gun, he added.

Police also found blood stains in Pickton’s motor home on the property that would eventually match the DNA profile of Wilson, the Crown said.

Pickton was initially charged on Feb. 22, 2002, with the first-degree murder of Abotsway and Wilson.

Prevett said police later found decomposed partial remains of several women close to Pickton’s home on the farm, including two severed heads found in a freezer chest in a workshop adjacent to a building Pickton used to slaughter pigs.

But that wasn’t until April 2002, he said. Initially, when police arrested Pickton and he gave a police statement over an 11-hour period, police only had evidence related to the murders of Abotsway and Wilson.

During the police interrogation by then Staff-Sgt. Don Adam, Pickton initially said he was just a pig farmer who didn’t know any of the women, Prevett said.

But as the interrogation went on, Adam began confronting Pickton with some of the evidence found at the farm, he added.

At one point, Prevett said, Adam produced a poster of more than 60 missing women and asked Pickton: “How many do you recognize... that you killed?”

Pickton replied: “You make me more of a mass murderer than I am.”

But when Adam suggested he got sloppy toward the end, Pickton replied: “That’s right, I was sloppy.”

Pickton blamed bad policing as the reason it took so long for police to charge him, said Prevett, who told the jurors they will hear and see the videotaped interview.

The Crown said an undercover police officer was also placed in Pickton’s jail cell. The officer told Pickton he had been arrested for attempted murder and was going to be transferred back east.

Prevett said Pickton made a hand signal to the undercover officer using five fingers on one hand and a “zero” with the other that the Crown contends was to indicate 50.

He said Pickton said at that point: “I was going to do one more, make it an even 50.”

The Crown contends he was talking about killing missing women.

Prevett said Pickton admitted to the undercover officer that based on the evidence police had, he was going to be “nailed to the cross.”

Prevett also detailed a number of grisly discoveries made by police during the 18-month search of the farm, which continued until November of 2003, including the discovery of human bones, decomposing remains and personal effects of the missing women whom Pickton is accused of killing.

Defence lawyer Peter Ritchie, in his opening address to the jury, denied that his client killed the six women named in the indictment.

“Mr. Pickton did not kill or participate in the killings of the six women he is accused of murdering,” Ritchie said, often clearing his throat.

He said the defence does not accept the Crown’s case as outlined by Prevett and would be vigorously defending the case against Pickton, including challenging the credibility of some key witnesses.

While admitting the evidence was shocking and there was a “media frenzy” surrounding the case, he asked the jurors not to be blinded by the headlines or let community pressure influence them in any way.

In all, Pickton is charged with 26 counts of first degree murder.

Last summer, the trial judge decided to have two trials because one large trial would take too long and be too onerous for the jury.

A senior RCMP officer, now-Inspector Don Adam, was asked in late 2000 to have a look at the Vancouver police department’s “stalled” investigation into the missing women file, to see if the Mounties could advance the case.

Adam said it became clear to him that Vancouver police and Mission RCMP considered there was a link between the Downtown Eastside missing women and the bodies of sex-trade workers that had been dumped in the mountains near Mission in 1995.

While the Mission case had bodies, Vancouver police “believed they had a serial killer operating” so they thought it made sense to mesh the two investigations, Adam testified Jan. 2 at Pickton’s B.C. Supreme Court murder trial in New Westminster.

But after reviewing both cases, Adam wasn’t convinced the same person was responsible because of the “two different styles” – bodies in Mission, and disappearances in Vancouver.

Vancouver police also told Adam that the Downtown Eastside women had stopped going missing in 1999, and therefore police were not looking for an active killer but one that had moved away or was in jail, he testified.

“What occurred in the briefings that I received was a belief in 2001 that the disappearances had stopped in 1999,” he said. Therefore, the new task force was largely reviewing past files, although Adam said on the witness stand that it kept an open mind to any new missing cases that might arise.

“We were watching for anything because we wanted to be involved in it.”

And by the summer of 2001, Adam’s task force realized that contrary to what it was told, there were a large number of women still going missing.

“Unless they could be found, the evidence was that there was an ongoing serial killer active.”

By the summer of 2001, the task force members had discovered that more women were missing than the 27 photos who were on the official Vancouver police poster.

The task force determined an additional 18 more women were missing, Adam said. He said the belief was that an active serial killer was operating, but the task force didn’t know if there was just one or more.

Since no one on the task force had any experience chasing serial killers, they travelled to Washington State to compare notes with two police departments investigating the murders of prostitutes in Spokane and Seattle.

However, it was not the task force that first entered Pickton’s farm on Feb. 5, 2002, – it was the Coquitlam RCMP armed with a search warrant looking for firearms.

However, those officers stumbled across evidence in the missing women investigation, so they stopped their search so the task force could get its own search warrant.

Pickton was released from jail and under police surveillance until Feb. 22, Adam said, when there was enough evidence for Pickton to be charged with two counts of murder in connection with two of the missing women: Mona Wilson and Sereena Abotsway.

Pickton has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

© Vancouver Sun 2007