T
he Pickton brothers were well
known to the police. David had
been convicted of sexual assault in
1992, fined Can$1,000 (about £615)
and given 30 days’ probation for
attacking a prostitute in his trailer at the
farm. She had only managed to escape
when someone arrived and distracted
him. Four other livestock and traffic
offences were settled out of court.
In 1997, Robert was charged with
the attempted murder of prostitute
junkie Wendy Lynn Eisetter whom he
handcuffed and stabbed several times
during a wild party at the pig farm. She
managed to escape after disarming him
and stabbing him with his own knife. A
motorist found her bleeding from thestomach beside the road and took her to
hospital for emergency treatment. The
charge against Pickton was dismissed
without explanation in January 1998.
That same year, detectives got
their best lead yet from Bill Hiscox
who worked for the Pickton brothers.
Worried by
the number
of reports
of missing
women, he told
police about
“all the purses,
women’s
clothes and ID
cards” he had
seen in Robert
Pickton’s
trailer. Police
responded
by searching
the farm
three times.
Apparently,
they found
nothing.
At the same
time, the
brothers were in trouble with the law
for running a supposed charity called
the Piggy Palace which was registered
as a non-profit society pledged to
co-ordinate special events for worthy
organisations.
The Piggy Palace was a convertedbarn a mile from the farm and it
hosted two kinds of party: respectable
functions for local dignitaries to
sample Pickton pork, and debauched,
drug-fuelled raves with hired prostitutes,
junkies and Hells Angels. In 1998,
the authorities closed down the PiggyPalace.
Three years later, they were back
at the pig farm with a warrant to
search the premises for an illegal
firearm. Ironically, as it turned out, the
search was totally unconnected with
continuing inquiries into the missing
women. But the arrival of the two
detectives took Pickton by surprise, and
he had no time to prepare for them.
They found several highly significant- and unexpected – items, including
a prescription asthma inhaler bearing
the name of one of the missing women,
and some ID cards belonging to
women who had disappeared.
A task force from the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police and
Vancouver Police Department
immediately sealed off the farm, and a
forensic army descended on it. Mona’s
head and hands were among the
first body parts discovered, and tests
showed the blood on Pickton’s mattress
matched her DNA.
Experts quickly
identified other remains
as those of Sereena
Abotsway who had gone
missing only a few months
after leading a protest
march against police
inaction over the killings.
On February 22nd,
Robert Pickton was
charged with the murders
of Mona Wilson and
Sereena Abotsway. In
the month that followed,
investigators dug up the
remains of one woman
after another, from body
parts to minute traces of
DNA. The count came
eventually to 30. Four
could not be identified.
The other 26 were among
the names of 67 women who had
disappeared from the streets of Low
Track.
Excavations at the site continued for
more than two years. Forensic analysis
was very difficult as bits of the bodies
had been left to decompose, been eatenAbove, the inside of the
motorhome on Pickton’s farm
where Mona Wilson’s blood
was found. Below, the kitchen
in the trailer and the door into
the laundry room where police
discovered a .22-calibre revolver
with a dildo attached to the barrel- bearing the DNA of both Mona
Wilson and Pickton
Above left, murder victim
Andrea Joesbury. Above right,
murder victim Marnie Lee Frey.
Below left to right, murder
victims Brenda Ann Wolfe and
Georgina Faith Papin