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Speaker 1: Hi everyone, This is Steve Fishman from Orbit Media and

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Speaker 1: just a quick announcement. Our new series Lives of Crime,

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Speaker 1: True Crime from True Criminals drops March twenty fourth. Meantime,

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Speaker 1: we're bringing you episodes from some of our favorite podcasters today.

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Speaker 1: It's the first episode of a new series from our friendsic,

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Speaker 1: Canadian True Crime. It's called Robert Picton the Final Chapter.

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Speaker 1: Some of you will recall Robert Picton, the Canadian pig

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Speaker 1: farmer who confessed to murdering forty nine women on his farm.

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Speaker 1: In this special mini series, Alsie Canadian host Christy Lee

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Speaker 1: revisits the case with tons of new information. There's much

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Speaker 1: we didn't know about mister Picton.

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Speaker 2: He was a.

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Speaker 1: Killer made, not born. In his childhood, cruelty and violence

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Speaker 1: were daily fair and now there's new evidence Picton may

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Speaker 1: not have acted alone, just one of the things the

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Speaker 1: police missed. And then in this series there are the women,

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Speaker 1: the victims. Finally, this series tells their stories. Here's the

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Speaker 1: first episode of Robert Picton the Final Chapter. The second

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Speaker 1: episode is available now at Canadian True Crime wherever you

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Speaker 1: get your podcasts.

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Speaker 2: Enjoy Canadian True Crime is a completely independent production. The

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Speaker 2: podcast often has disturbing content and course language. It's not

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Speaker 2: for everyone. Please take care when listening.

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Speaker 3: Hi. I'm Christy Lee and welcome to episode two hundred

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Speaker 3: of Canadian True Crime. I started this podcast nine years

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Speaker 3: ago as a passion project and it still is today,

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Speaker 3: so thank you so much for joining me. This special

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Speaker 3: four part series has been pieced together primarily from the

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Speaker 3: public record, including court documents, newspaper archives, the final report

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Speaker 3: of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, and On the Farm,

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Speaker 3: the definitive book by the late award winning investigative journalist

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Speaker 3: Stevie Cameron. Please be aware this series includes distressing details

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Speaker 3: that might be difficult to hear. There's also mention of

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Speaker 3: sexual assault, residential schools, Indigenous issues, child abuse, and suicide.

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Speaker 3: Please see the show notes for crisis referral services. Proceeds

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Speaker 3: are being donated to the Wish Drop In Center, society

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Speaker 3: supporting street based sex workers on Vancouver's downtown east Side

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Speaker 3: since nineteen eighty four. It's a cold night in March

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Speaker 3: of nineteen ninety seven, and a thirty year old woman

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Speaker 3: named Wendy is working a street corner in Vancouver's downtown

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Speaker 3: east Side, often referred to was the poorest postal code

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Speaker 3: in Canada. The downtown Knee Side is known for high

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Speaker 3: concentrations of poverty, homelessness, mental illness has it a substance

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Speaker 3: use crime and sex work. A red pickup truck.

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Speaker 4: Pulls up to the corner.

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Speaker 3: The driver is in his late forties, baulding with greasy,

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Speaker 3: scraggly hair hanging down the back and sides. He asks

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Speaker 3: Wendy how much she charges for oral sex. She tells

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Speaker 3: him the going rate is forty dollars. He offers her

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Speaker 3: one hundred dollars if she comes back to his place

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Speaker 3: in Port Equitlam. Wendy needs the money, but that's about

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Speaker 3: a forty minute drive away. Can't they find somewhere closer,

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Speaker 3: The driver insists, promising to drop her.

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Speaker 4: Back by one in the morning.

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Speaker 3: She gets into the pickup and they drive out of

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Speaker 3: the city. The man doesn't want to make conversation. After

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Speaker 3: a while, the sie violence starts, making Wendy uneasy. She

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Speaker 3: might only be thirty, but she's already lived a far

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Speaker 3: heavier life than her years suggest. Wendy started using drugs

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Speaker 3: in her teens and joined forces with two men ten

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Speaker 3: years older than her with criminal records. They would be

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Speaker 3: arrested for stealing cigarettes and other goods. She gave birth

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Speaker 3: to a daughter with one of those men, but according

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Speaker 3: to an obituary, their little girl passed away as a toddler.

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Speaker 3: Wendy retreated to drugs for a while, but she pulled

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Speaker 3: herself together. Vancouver is a port city, and she found

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Speaker 3: a job on a local fishing boat as a deckhand

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Speaker 3: and crew cook. She fell into a relationship with the

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Speaker 3: captain and gave birth to two children with him. For

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Speaker 3: a few years, Wendy's life was mostly stable, but the

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Speaker 3: urge to use was not easy to overcome. The relationship

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Speaker 3: broke down, and she left her children with their father

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Speaker 3: to get help for hazardous substance use. Cocaine and heroine

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Speaker 3: were her drugs of choice, but she was also desperate

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Speaker 3: to see her kids again. Wendy ended up living on

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Speaker 3: Vancouver's downtown east Side with some of society's most vulnerable

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Speaker 3: marginalized people, trying and failing miserably to get clean. That

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Speaker 3: cold night in March of nineteen ninety seven, she was

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Speaker 3: stuck in survival mode, sustaining her drug use through stealing

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Speaker 3: an outside sex work.

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Speaker 4: In the red.

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Speaker 3: Pickup truck Wendy is feeling increasingly uneasy as they continue

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Speaker 3: driving out to Port Coquitlam, or at least that's where

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Speaker 3: the man told her they were going. She asks him

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Speaker 3: to stop at the next gas station so she can

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Speaker 3: use the washroom. He refuses and continues driving sallantly. The

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Speaker 3: man stops the truck at a property with a padlocked gate.

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Speaker 3: He gets out, unlocks the gate, and drives in. Wendy

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Speaker 3: realizes the man lives on a farm, not a house.

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Speaker 3: There's old cars and junk everywhere. He parks beside a

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Speaker 3: mobile trailer home and ushes Wendy inside. It's filthy in there,

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Speaker 3: the air is stale and there's mess everywhere. She notices

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Speaker 3: a large butcher knife lying on the table as he

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Speaker 3: leads her through the kitchen and into a back room.

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Speaker 3: There's no bed, only a sleeping bag on the floor.

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Speaker 3: The man gives Wendy the hundred dollars and she performs

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Speaker 3: oral sex followed by intercourse. Nothing out of the ordinary.

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Speaker 3: She gets dressed and asks to use the phone to

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Speaker 3: call a friend. She senses the man behind her and

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Speaker 3: he gently takes her left hand. Then, without warning, he

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Speaker 3: snaps a handcuff onto her wrist. Wendy is jolted by

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Speaker 3: an intense fear for her life. For a split second,

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Speaker 3: she freezes, Then her body's trauma response activates, automatically, deferring

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Speaker 3: to habits she learned earlier in life, and Wendy has

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Speaker 3: always been a fighter. She punches and kicks him. She

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Speaker 3: grabs a potted plant and whatever she can reach and

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Speaker 3: swings it at him. As he fights back, she finds

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Speaker 3: herself backing toward that butcher knife she saw on the

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Speaker 3: kitchen table. She grabs it and slashes the man across

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Speaker 3: the neck. He roars as the blood starts flowing, but

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Speaker 3: he grabs a cloth, holding it to the wound and

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Speaker 3: keeps fighting. Now there's an intense struggle for the knife,

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Speaker 3: and Wendy suddenly feels herself losing consciousness.

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Speaker 4: When she comes.

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Speaker 3: Too, the man is over her, holding her down, and

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Speaker 3: then now back outside the pickup truck, she's still gripping

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Speaker 3: the knife in her right hand and jabs at him,

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Speaker 3: screaming at him to let her go. She feels him

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Speaker 3: weakened and seizes an opportunity to slide out from under him.

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Speaker 3: Still holding the knife, she staggers down the driveway covered

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Speaker 3: in blood. Wendy doesn't realize she has suffered catastrophic injuries

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Speaker 3: because adrenaline has taken over, numbing the pain and keeping

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Speaker 3: her moving with a singular focus escape. Terrified he's going

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Speaker 3: to come after her, she limps across the street.

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Speaker 4: And knocks on a house. No answer.

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Speaker 3: She tries to break a window to get inside, but

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Speaker 3: then she sees headlights approaching.

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Speaker 4: It's him. She ducks down, but.

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Speaker 3: As the car gets closer, she sees it's not him

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Speaker 3: and there's a woman in the passenger seat. Feeling safer,

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Speaker 3: Wendy runs out and screams for help.

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Speaker 4: The car stops.

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Speaker 3: It's an elderly couple, but they hesitate at the sight

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Speaker 3: of this small woman, half naked, soaked in blood, with

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Speaker 3: her internal organs exposed.

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Speaker 4: Holding a knife.

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Speaker 3: Wendy throws it on the ground and the man opens

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Speaker 3: the back door and helps her into the car.

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Speaker 4: As they call.

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Speaker 3: Nine one one for police and an ambulance, Wendy points

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Speaker 3: toward the farm.

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Speaker 4: She tells the couple that if.

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Speaker 3: Anything happens to her, the man living in the trailer

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Speaker 3: there was responsible.

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Speaker 4: And he's been injured.

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Speaker 1: Two.

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Speaker 3: Wendy is rushed to emergency surgery with significant blood loss,

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Speaker 3: deep stab wounds to her abdomen, and a punctured long

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Speaker 3: She's lucky to be alive. Wendy would have known that

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Speaker 3: an increasing number of women just like her had been

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Speaker 3: disappearing from the Downtown east Side in recent years. That's

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Speaker 3: why she was on high alert. What she didn't know

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Speaker 3: was that the the DNA or remains of at least

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Speaker 3: seven of those women were already on the farm she

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Speaker 3: just escaped from, waiting to one day be discovered, and

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Speaker 3: there would be more to come. Years later, when Robert

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Speaker 3: Picton was identified as the man now considered Canada's worst

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Speaker 3: serial killer, the remains or DNA of thirty three missing

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Speaker 3: women would be found on that farm.

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Speaker 4: Most of them were.

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Speaker 3: Sex workers, disproportionately Indigenous and thought of as expendable, disposable,

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Speaker 3: not worthy of care. It's believed there were many more

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Speaker 3: victims than that, and years later Robert Picton would confirm

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Speaker 3: it himself when the details began to emerge about how

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Speaker 3: their remains may have been handled and disposed of, the

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Speaker 3: implications were so shocking and grotesque that many struggled to

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Speaker 3: even grasp what they were hearing. This case has been

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Speaker 3: described as a tragedy of epic proportions, leaving the families

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Speaker 3: of all those women with a lasting legacy of grief,

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Speaker 3: at least ninety eight children without their mother, and a

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Speaker 3: lot of unanswered questions. In twenty twenty four, Robert Picton

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Speaker 3: became a victim himself of prison vigilante justice. His death

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Speaker 3: might have closed his chapter, but this story is far

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Speaker 3: from over. The evidence suggests that others knew what was happening,

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Speaker 3: and worse, he likely did not act alone. This special

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Speaker 3: four part series traces the case from the very beginning

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Speaker 3: right up to where it stands today. From a disturbing

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Speaker 3: childhood on the Picton family farm where cruelty and exploitation

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Speaker 3: were normalized and morality optional, where Robert and his brother

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Speaker 3: were shown that bad deeds can be covered up using

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Speaker 3: privilege in intimidation, to the blatant police failures, systemic injustice,

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Speaker 3: and deep rooted societal prejudice that enabled that violent culture

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Speaker 3: to continue long after the Picton parents were dead. Most importantly,

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Speaker 3: this series centers the vulnerable women who would targeted, restoring

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Speaker 3: their names, stories, and humanity through the personal accounts of

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Speaker 3: those who loved and missed them, making space for the

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Speaker 3: unanswered questions still being asked to this day. Robert William

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Speaker 3: Picton was born in nineteen forty nine to parents Leonard

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Speaker 3: and Louise Picton. They were pig farmers who lived in

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Speaker 3: pork Equitlam, a city in the Metro Vancouver area, about

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Speaker 3: thirty five minutes drive from downtown.

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Speaker 4: They didn't live.

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Speaker 3: On the property we now know as the Picton Farm,

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Speaker 3: though Leonard had inherited his family's homestead and farm a

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Speaker 3: few kilometers away and worked on it through his twenties

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Speaker 3: and thirties, showing no other interests. When he was forty

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Speaker 3: seven years old, he surprised his family by bringing home

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Speaker 3: a much younger woman he'd met in a coffee shop.

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Speaker 3: Her name was Louise Arnold. She was thirty one years

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Speaker 3: old and from Saskatchewan. They got married and Louise moved

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Speaker 3: into the Picton family homestead five years later. The couple

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Speaker 3: had their first child, a daughter, Linda, in nineteen forty eight,

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Speaker 3: then first son Robert, followed by second son David, a

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Speaker 3: year apart. Linda and David were said to take after

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Speaker 3: their mother Louise physically anyway, short with round faces. The

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Speaker 3: middle child, Robert or Willie, as his family started calling

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Speaker 3: him took after father Leonard. Tall and slim, with a

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Speaker 3: narrow face and a long pointed nose. The Picton family

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Speaker 3: lived in Port Coquitlam, known as Poco by the locals. Today,

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Speaker 3: the city has a population of almost sixty thousand people,

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Speaker 3: but back in nineteen forty nine it was around three thousand.

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Speaker 3: It was known for being rural farmland territory. Leonard Picton

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Speaker 3: was reportedly a workaholic who had minimal interaction with any

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Speaker 3: of his three children. He was not an engaged parent.

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Speaker 3: He specialized in livestock and the production of pork, and

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Speaker 3: expected sons Robert and David to work on the farm

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Speaker 3: as soon as they were able to, aiding in the

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Speaker 3: slaughtering and butchering of pigs. Some accounts by neighbors and

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Speaker 3: co workers paint Leonard as a violently abusive and abrasive man,

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Speaker 3: all too ready to dole out punishment to his sons.

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00:15:01,720 --> 00:15:03,320
Speaker 4: In the form of beatings.

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00:15:03,880 --> 00:15:07,280
Speaker 3: It seems that daughter Linda might have been spared from

223
00:15:07,280 --> 00:15:11,600
Speaker 3: this treatment. In later interviews, she would portray Leonard in

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00:15:11,680 --> 00:15:16,240
Speaker 3: a positive light as a respectable father with good intentions.

225
00:15:16,760 --> 00:15:19,840
Speaker 3: But she said her younger brother Robert was never close

226
00:15:19,880 --> 00:15:22,880
Speaker 3: to his father. In fact, he seemed a bit scared

227
00:15:22,880 --> 00:15:27,120
Speaker 3: of him. Linda described Robert as shy and naive, a

228
00:15:27,200 --> 00:15:31,440
Speaker 3: mumma's boy. Robert himself would later say that he and

229
00:15:31,480 --> 00:15:35,560
Speaker 3: his mother were like two peas in a pod. The

230
00:15:35,640 --> 00:15:39,840
Speaker 3: reasons for that label are not entirely clear. In town,

231
00:15:40,360 --> 00:15:44,960
Speaker 3: residents reported hearing Louise nag and publicly sham Robert in

232
00:15:45,040 --> 00:15:50,600
Speaker 3: front of other children. He became increasingly withdrawn, often remaining

233
00:15:50,760 --> 00:15:54,320
Speaker 3: silent for long stretches, and hiding when he feared he

234
00:15:54,440 --> 00:15:59,239
Speaker 3: was in trouble with either parent. The responsibilities of homemaking

235
00:15:59,360 --> 00:16:02,720
Speaker 3: and child wearing fell to Louise, picked in by default,

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00:16:03,080 --> 00:16:06,520
Speaker 3: and she was not a nurturing or maternal presence to

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00:16:06,720 --> 00:16:08,320
Speaker 3: any of their three children.

238
00:16:08,920 --> 00:16:10,640
Speaker 4: Her focus was also.

239
00:16:10,640 --> 00:16:15,800
Speaker 3: On the family business, pigs. Everything else came a distant second.

240
00:16:16,800 --> 00:16:20,360
Speaker 3: As a mother, Louise was remembered as harsh and abrasive,

241
00:16:20,680 --> 00:16:25,320
Speaker 3: and was frequently heard screeching orders at her children. Those

242
00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:30,160
Speaker 3: who came into regular contact with her described her as odd, eccentric,

243
00:16:30,400 --> 00:16:34,360
Speaker 3: and unkempt workaholic who paid little attention to her own

244
00:16:34,480 --> 00:16:39,280
Speaker 3: health or appearance. Former neighbors recalled her rotting teeth an

245
00:16:39,280 --> 00:16:44,880
Speaker 3: apparent indifference to personal hygiene. The children were reportedly bathed

246
00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:48,600
Speaker 3: only about once a week, which wasn't enough to remove

247
00:16:48,720 --> 00:16:53,240
Speaker 3: the farm stench. Those same neighbors went inside the pict

248
00:16:53,320 --> 00:16:56,760
Speaker 3: In home briefly and would describe it as dirty and

249
00:16:56,960 --> 00:17:00,880
Speaker 3: foul smelling. Farm animals were allowed to work wonder freely

250
00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:07,200
Speaker 3: through the farmhouse, relieving themselves indoors without consequence. Louise made

251
00:17:07,280 --> 00:17:12,520
Speaker 3: little effort to clean, seemingly unfazed by the conditions. She

252
00:17:12,760 --> 00:17:18,480
Speaker 3: always wore men's rubber gum boots. Louise was strict and demanding.

253
00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:23,000
Speaker 3: She required her children to spend long hours slopping pigs

254
00:17:23,040 --> 00:17:29,160
Speaker 3: and caring for animals, sometimes even on school days. To outsiders,

255
00:17:29,280 --> 00:17:33,080
Speaker 3: the Picton family appeared to be poor, living below the

256
00:17:33,119 --> 00:17:37,720
Speaker 3: poverty line. As one local resident put it, everyone knew

257
00:17:37,720 --> 00:17:42,119
Speaker 3: the Pictons and no one knew the Pictins. The reality

258
00:17:42,320 --> 00:17:46,480
Speaker 3: was they owned the family homestead outright and some additional

259
00:17:46,560 --> 00:17:50,639
Speaker 3: parcels of land, and the farm was profitable. They just

260
00:17:50,840 --> 00:17:53,720
Speaker 3: chose to live that way. It was said that the

261
00:17:53,840 --> 00:17:56,800
Speaker 3: general attitude of the Picton family was that there was

262
00:17:56,920 --> 00:18:01,200
Speaker 3: nothing wrong with a bit of mess or a life.

263
00:18:01,359 --> 00:18:04,280
Speaker 3: Many of the memories Robert Pickton would recall from his

264
00:18:04,440 --> 00:18:09,320
Speaker 3: childhood and early adulthood were disturbing if true. He would

265
00:18:09,359 --> 00:18:12,600
Speaker 3: claim that one time his father left him sitting in

266
00:18:12,640 --> 00:18:17,160
Speaker 3: his truck and he accidentally moved the gearstick into neutral,

267
00:18:17,400 --> 00:18:20,200
Speaker 3: which caused the truck to start rolling down a hill

268
00:18:20,359 --> 00:18:24,600
Speaker 3: and crash. Robert would claim his father beat him severely

269
00:18:24,760 --> 00:18:28,520
Speaker 3: for not stopping that truck. He was just three years

270
00:18:28,520 --> 00:18:34,359
Speaker 3: old at the time. In another story, he recalled being

271
00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:37,640
Speaker 3: about four years old when his mother, Louise, caught him

272
00:18:37,680 --> 00:18:42,000
Speaker 3: smoking a cigarette. As punishment, she forced him to smoke

273
00:18:42,080 --> 00:18:45,240
Speaker 3: a whole cigar, thinking it would cure him for good,

274
00:18:45,960 --> 00:18:49,400
Speaker 3: and it did. Robert would say it was the last

275
00:18:49,440 --> 00:18:54,080
Speaker 3: cigarette he ever had. He would also tell a particularly

276
00:18:54,119 --> 00:18:58,400
Speaker 3: disturbing story later about a pet calf he had when.

277
00:18:58,200 --> 00:18:58,879
Speaker 4: He was young.

278
00:18:59,760 --> 00:19:03,640
Speaker 3: This this was noteworthy because he suddenly became animated when

279
00:19:03,640 --> 00:19:09,080
Speaker 3: he remembered the calf story and recalled vivid details. According

280
00:19:09,119 --> 00:19:12,520
Speaker 3: to Robert, when he was about twelve, he developed a

281
00:19:12,600 --> 00:19:17,000
Speaker 3: close emotional attachment with this calf, spending as much time

282
00:19:17,040 --> 00:19:20,440
Speaker 3: as he could with it day or night. One day,

283
00:19:20,560 --> 00:19:23,600
Speaker 3: he came home from school to find his favorite animal

284
00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:27,399
Speaker 3: was missing. He looked over the house and then the farm,

285
00:19:27,720 --> 00:19:32,040
Speaker 3: and he asked his family members, where's my calf. He

286
00:19:32,119 --> 00:19:35,200
Speaker 3: was horrified when they suggested he look in the barn,

287
00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:39,800
Speaker 3: knowing that's where the animals were slaughtered. It seemed his

288
00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:44,360
Speaker 3: family wanted him to discover his pet calf hanging upside

289
00:19:44,400 --> 00:19:49,360
Speaker 3: down in a shed, slaughtered and disembowed. Robert would tell

290
00:19:49,400 --> 00:19:53,399
Speaker 3: investigators he was distraught at the site and refused to

291
00:19:53,440 --> 00:19:57,159
Speaker 3: speak to his family for four days. They promised to

292
00:19:57,160 --> 00:19:59,879
Speaker 3: buy him a new calf, but he didn't want an

293
00:20:00,880 --> 00:20:05,120
Speaker 3: He wanted his pet back. He was traumatized by the incident,

294
00:20:05,400 --> 00:20:08,080
Speaker 3: and even as an adult, it was only something he

295
00:20:08,119 --> 00:20:12,399
Speaker 3: would share with people he'd become close to. After that,

296
00:20:12,840 --> 00:20:16,040
Speaker 3: he seemed to develop the sentiment that life goes.

297
00:20:15,800 --> 00:20:18,439
Speaker 4: Around and around with little meaning.

298
00:20:26,280 --> 00:20:30,440
Speaker 3: Robert and younger brother David were being groomed by their father, Leonard,

299
00:20:30,440 --> 00:20:34,080
Speaker 3: to take over the family farm. He taught them animal

300
00:20:34,200 --> 00:20:37,600
Speaker 3: husbandry and butchering, and when they weren't at school, they

301
00:20:37,600 --> 00:20:41,560
Speaker 3: were expected to work. But Linda, the eldest of the

302
00:20:41,640 --> 00:20:44,679
Speaker 3: three picked in children, wasn't much of a fan of

303
00:20:44,800 --> 00:20:47,760
Speaker 3: farm life and wanted to be as far away from

304
00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:52,160
Speaker 3: it as possible. She was always described as the smart one,

305
00:20:52,440 --> 00:20:56,240
Speaker 3: according to Stevie Cameron's book on the Farm. When she

306
00:20:56,400 --> 00:20:59,560
Speaker 3: was in grade nine, Linda decided to move in with

307
00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:03,879
Speaker 3: relatives closer to Vancouver. She was away from the farm,

308
00:21:04,119 --> 00:21:07,359
Speaker 3: and after that she reportedly had as little to do

309
00:21:07,480 --> 00:21:12,640
Speaker 3: with her family as possible. Leonard and Louise purchased more

310
00:21:12,760 --> 00:21:16,879
Speaker 3: land just a few kilometers away on Dominion Avenue and

311
00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:20,639
Speaker 3: moved over there with their sons. This is the property

312
00:21:20,840 --> 00:21:24,119
Speaker 3: that would come to define the Picton family far more

313
00:21:24,200 --> 00:21:35,120
Speaker 3: than they could have ever imagined. If Robert Picton were

314
00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:38,520
Speaker 3: in school today, he might well have been diagnosed with

315
00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:42,840
Speaker 3: a learning disorder and offered support and treatment. People who

316
00:21:42,920 --> 00:21:46,000
Speaker 3: knew him would say he was far more intelligent than

317
00:21:46,040 --> 00:21:49,320
Speaker 3: he was given credit for. But back in the nineteen

318
00:21:49,440 --> 00:21:53,080
Speaker 3: sixties when he started high school, he was labeled slow

319
00:21:53,400 --> 00:21:58,360
Speaker 3: and placed in special education classes at school. This embarrassed

320
00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:01,400
Speaker 3: him and made him an easy target for bullies.

321
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:03,480
Speaker 4: His severe lack of.

322
00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:07,760
Speaker 3: Personal hygiene, combined with the ratty, stinky clothes he wore,

323
00:22:08,240 --> 00:22:12,080
Speaker 3: did not help. Robert dropped out of high school as

324
00:22:12,119 --> 00:22:15,639
Speaker 3: soon as he could in grade eight. Louise was not

325
00:22:15,760 --> 00:22:19,240
Speaker 3: at all troubled by her son's decision. She put him

326
00:22:19,240 --> 00:22:22,879
Speaker 3: to work right away full time on the farm. She

327
00:22:23,040 --> 00:22:25,480
Speaker 3: told him he needed to learn how to slaughter the

328
00:22:25,520 --> 00:22:29,520
Speaker 3: pigs himself, and at first he said he didn't want to,

329
00:22:29,920 --> 00:22:34,680
Speaker 3: but he eventually relented and began learning the trade. This

330
00:22:34,920 --> 00:22:38,919
Speaker 3: was Robert's life. He'd never really known anything else but

331
00:22:39,040 --> 00:22:58,320
Speaker 3: school and the farm. In October of nineteen sixty seven,

332
00:22:58,640 --> 00:23:02,240
Speaker 3: fourteen year old Timothy Barrett left home at about eight

333
00:23:02,320 --> 00:23:05,520
Speaker 3: pm to walk to a friend's place. It wasn't a

334
00:23:05,600 --> 00:23:09,400
Speaker 3: long walk, just up the road and down Dominion Avenue,

335
00:23:09,760 --> 00:23:13,960
Speaker 3: the same street as the new Pigton farm. Timothy put

336
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:17,200
Speaker 3: on his jacket and told his parents he'd be home later.

337
00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:23,120
Speaker 3: He never returned home. After a few hours, his parents

338
00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:27,320
Speaker 3: found out that Timothy never actually arrived at the friend's home.

339
00:23:27,920 --> 00:23:31,640
Speaker 3: They panicked and started checking in with neighbors to see

340
00:23:31,640 --> 00:23:34,720
Speaker 3: if anyone had seen him or knew where he might be.

341
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:40,040
Speaker 3: At about one am, Timothy's parents reported him missing to

342
00:23:40,119 --> 00:23:44,480
Speaker 3: the local RCMP, and the search continued throughout the night

343
00:23:44,800 --> 00:23:49,480
Speaker 3: with no sign of him. In the early daylight hours,

344
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:54,439
Speaker 3: Timothy's father was still on Dominion Avenue searching alongside the

345
00:23:54,520 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 3: road with a neighbor when he spotted a shoe on

346
00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:02,400
Speaker 3: the side of the road. It looked like Timothy's. About

347
00:24:02,440 --> 00:24:06,600
Speaker 3: ten feet away was a deep ditch running alongside the road.

348
00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:11,639
Speaker 3: He walked over and peered down. Submerged in several feet

349
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:16,760
Speaker 3: of water was his fourteen year old son. Timothy Barrett

350
00:24:16,880 --> 00:24:21,840
Speaker 3: was dead. The RCMP quickly developed a theory that Timothy

351
00:24:22,040 --> 00:24:24,439
Speaker 3: must have been walking along the road when he was

352
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:27,600
Speaker 3: struck from behind by either a car or a truck

353
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:31,560
Speaker 3: and then hurled over into the ditch. The car was

354
00:24:31,600 --> 00:24:36,680
Speaker 3: probably speeding and Dominion Avenue was poorly lit. The houses

355
00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:41,000
Speaker 3: were sparse because it wasn't a developed area. As the

356
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:45,200
Speaker 3: body was sent for autopsy, the RCMP received a phone

357
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:48,359
Speaker 3: call from a local mechanic who said he'd seen the

358
00:24:48,400 --> 00:24:51,520
Speaker 3: news reports of a hit and run and had something

359
00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:55,119
Speaker 3: strange to report. He said the son of one of

360
00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:58,800
Speaker 3: his regular clients had shown up the night before wanting

361
00:24:58,840 --> 00:25:04,639
Speaker 3: a fast repair to an old, red, beaten up farm truck. Specifically,

362
00:25:04,920 --> 00:25:08,800
Speaker 3: he wanted the smashed front indicator light repaired, along with

363
00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:12,080
Speaker 3: a dent on the front fender, which he also wanted

364
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:15,679
Speaker 3: to be painted over. The young man told him a

365
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:18,439
Speaker 3: log had fallen on the truck back at the farm,

366
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 3: but the mechanic looked at the dent and was suspicious. Also,

367
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:27,920
Speaker 3: the entire truck was old and completely banged up. Why

368
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:33,040
Speaker 3: the sudden request to repair this one area. Hours later,

369
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:37,200
Speaker 3: that mechanic saw the news about Timothy Barrett and contacted

370
00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 3: the police, giving them the name of the young man

371
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:46,040
Speaker 3: who requested the repairs, David Picton. That's Robert Picton's younger brother.

372
00:25:46,960 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 3: At the time, David was sixteen and had just earned

373
00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:55,439
Speaker 3: his driver's license. David Picton was charged in juvenile court

374
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:58,120
Speaker 3: with failing to remain at the scene of an accident.

375
00:25:58,720 --> 00:26:02,000
Speaker 3: He would be placed on in definite probation and his

376
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 3: driver's license suspended.

377
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:06,840
Speaker 4: For five years. As far as the.

378
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:11,040
Speaker 3: Criminal justice system was concerned, Timothy Barrett's death was the

379
00:26:11,080 --> 00:26:15,439
Speaker 3: result of a careless accident. Partial blame was assigned to

380
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:18,800
Speaker 3: Timothy himself for walking on the side of the road

381
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:22,359
Speaker 3: where cars would be coming up behind him, wearing dark

382
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 3: clothing on a dimly lit night. A coroner's inquiry concluded

383
00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:31,159
Speaker 3: that David Picton was the one most at fault for

384
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 3: driving the truck that hit Timothy from behind and for

385
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 3: not stopping as Timothy was hurled into the water filled ditch.

386
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 3: The autopsy confirmed Timothy suffered a fractured skull and a

387
00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:48,360
Speaker 3: broken pelvis, but those injuries would not have been fatal.

388
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:51,280
Speaker 4: The actual cause of his death.

389
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:56,480
Speaker 3: Was drowning in the water, but there was more to

390
00:26:56,640 --> 00:27:01,120
Speaker 3: the story. It began as whispers among names, but some

391
00:27:01,280 --> 00:27:05,119
Speaker 3: twenty five years later it was confirmed to journalist and

392
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 3: author Stevie Cameron. Robert Pickton himself would later tell a

393
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:14,720
Speaker 3: friend that he knew exactly what happened that night. At

394
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 3: the time, he was seventeen years old, and he recalled

395
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:22,399
Speaker 3: David bursting into the farmhouse saying he'd hit someone with

396
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:26,600
Speaker 3: his car and they were probably badly hurt. He pointed

397
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 3: to the red truck. Robert saw a new dent in

398
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:33,120
Speaker 3: the front right fender with marks and what.

399
00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:34,520
Speaker 4: Looked to be blood.

400
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:39,600
Speaker 3: Mother Louise sprang into action. She ordered sixteen year old

401
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 3: David to clean the blood off and drive the truck

402
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 3: straight to their mechanic for a rush repair job. She

403
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:49,160
Speaker 3: told him to tell the mechanic that he'd hit a pole,

404
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 3: a story that would have been slightly more believable than

405
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:55,840
Speaker 3: the one he actually told of a log falling on

406
00:27:55,960 --> 00:28:00,439
Speaker 3: the truck. Then Louise got into another vie called to

407
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:04,040
Speaker 3: look for the person that David hit. She later told

408
00:28:04,040 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 3: her son, Robert, and at least one other person that

409
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 3: she was driving down the road and around the corner

410
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:14,160
Speaker 3: when she spotted Timothy Barrett lying injured at the side

411
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 3: of the road. He was there because of her son's actions,

412
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:22,200
Speaker 3: but instead of helping the fourteen year old, she said,

413
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:25,600
Speaker 3: she dragged him ten feet over to the water filled

414
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 3: ditch and pushed him in. Robert and David Peckton were

415
00:28:33,520 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 3: still teenagers themselves learning.

416
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:37,680
Speaker 4: How the world worked.

417
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 3: Their mother had just shown them that basic morality could

418
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 3: be overridden if self preservation was at stake, that responsibility

419
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:52,200
Speaker 3: for causing serious harm, even death, could be managed by

420
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 3: cleaning evidence and coordinating stories that human life was disposable.

421
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 3: It's telling that Robert Picton later expressed a deep admiration

422
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 3: for his mother's strength and discipline. There were never any

423
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 3: consequences for Louise Picton's alleged actions. By the time this

424
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:17,320
Speaker 3: all came to light decades later, she would be dead.

425
00:29:18,960 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 3: Father Leonard was in his late seventies by this point.

426
00:29:22,520 --> 00:29:25,520
Speaker 3: His health was deteriorating and he couldn't work.

427
00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:26,960
Speaker 4: The farm like he used to.

428
00:29:27,800 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 3: Now it was up to his wife Louise, their two sons,

429
00:29:31,600 --> 00:29:34,880
Speaker 3: and whoever else they could find to help on a

430
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 3: regular basis. Louise sent Robert to the Woodland School in

431
00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 3: New Westminster for children with developmental disabilities, runaways and wards

432
00:29:44,800 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 3: of the state. The school allowed Robert to pick up children,

433
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:52,200
Speaker 3: drive them back to the farm and use them as

434
00:29:52,320 --> 00:29:56,360
Speaker 3: cheap or unpaid farm labour for the day, before.

435
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:57,640
Speaker 4: Returning them in the evening.

436
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:04,200
Speaker 3: Years later, an investigation would expose rampant abuse of children

437
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 3: at the Woodland School.

438
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:08,000
Speaker 4: It shut down in the nineties.

439
00:30:08,680 --> 00:30:13,200
Speaker 3: But perhaps the big takeaway for Robert Picton was reinforcement

440
00:30:13,320 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 3: of his mother's message that some lives carried less value

441
00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 3: than others, that vulnerable people could be exploited, harmed and

442
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:26,480
Speaker 3: discarded for personal gain with little risk of consequence, simply

443
00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:29,960
Speaker 3: because they existed on the margins and no one cared

444
00:30:30,080 --> 00:30:46,680
Speaker 3: enough to intervene. By the early nineteen seventies, the Picton

445
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 3: brothers were in their early twenties. David was the more

446
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:54,920
Speaker 3: outgoing one and was now dating regularly, but Robert did

447
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 3: not have much luck. He didn't smoke, drink, or do drugs,

448
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:02,320
Speaker 3: and He didn't hang out at bars or nightclubs like

449
00:31:02,440 --> 00:31:06,200
Speaker 3: others his age, and even if his hygiene and appearance

450
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:09,760
Speaker 3: issues had been taken care of, which they weren't, he

451
00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 3: was socially awkward. He was never seen dating or with

452
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:18,280
Speaker 3: a girlfriend, but instead had penpals all over the country.

453
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:21,600
Speaker 3: He was starting to feel a certain way about one

454
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 3: of them. Her name was Connie, and she lived in Pontiac, Michigan.

455
00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:30,120
Speaker 3: At twenty four years old, Robert decided it was time

456
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:33,320
Speaker 3: to take his first ever vacation so he could meet

457
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:37,080
Speaker 3: Connie in person. He booked a bus ticket and told

458
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:40,960
Speaker 3: his mother he'd be gone for six weeks. If Louise

459
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 3: tried to stop him from leaving, it didn't work. By

460
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:48,120
Speaker 3: this point, Robert had gained some confidence and was able

461
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:51,280
Speaker 3: to talk back to her and assert himself when needed.

462
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 3: The bus ride would have been close to forty hours

463
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 3: one way, and it took Robert across America, stopping in

464
00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 3: several cities along the way. He would later tell a

465
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 3: different female penpal that at some point he was stopped

466
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:09,480
Speaker 3: by a scout and offered forty dollars an hour to

467
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:12,920
Speaker 3: be a male model, the equivalent of about two hundred

468
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:17,280
Speaker 3: and forty dollars an hour intoday's currency. It seems a

469
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:21,200
Speaker 3: pretty unlikely story, but he claimed he wasn't interested and

470
00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 3: turned the opportunity down. He eventually arrived in Pontiac, Michigan,

471
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:30,280
Speaker 3: and met Connie. He claimed they were engaged by the

472
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 3: time he caught the bus back to British Columbia, even

473
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:38,040
Speaker 3: calling her the love of his life. But Connie did

474
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:41,200
Speaker 3: not want to move to Pork Coquitlam and Robert could

475
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:44,560
Speaker 3: not leave the pig farm. That's as far as it went.

476
00:32:45,360 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 3: He threw himself back into the farm while also dabbling

477
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 3: in horses and truck driving to supplement his income. Robert

478
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:57,000
Speaker 3: still did not date, but his siblings had each found

479
00:32:57,040 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 3: partners and careers outside the farm. Older sister Linda was

480
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 3: married and lived in a well to do area in Vancouver.

481
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:10,000
Speaker 3: She continued to avoid the farm and the family unless

482
00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 3: she was needed for business decisions. Brother David lived on

483
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 3: the farm with his girlfriend and their two young children,

484
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:22,479
Speaker 3: while Louise had David's girlfriend working long hours on the farm.

485
00:33:23,040 --> 00:33:27,520
Speaker 3: David was not interested. He was into truck driving, construction

486
00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 3: and demolition, and other women besides his girlfriend. They broke

487
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 3: up and she moved out with their kids. The next

488
00:33:38,240 --> 00:33:42,560
Speaker 3: big family event was in nineteen seventy seven, when family

489
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 3: patriarch Leonard was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died at

490
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 3: age eighty two. A little over a year later, Louise

491
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:57,240
Speaker 3: also passed away from cancer age sixty seven. It was

492
00:33:57,320 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 3: a shock for Robert to lose both parents so quickly,

493
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:04,280
Speaker 3: but perhaps the bigger shock was in his mother's will.

494
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:08,800
Speaker 3: The Picton estate included the farm and several other parcels

495
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:13,400
Speaker 3: of land, plus some cash. Leonard's idea of dividing it

496
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:17,680
Speaker 3: among their children showed his preference. All Linda would receive

497
00:34:17,840 --> 00:34:21,319
Speaker 3: was a lump sum payment of twenty thousand dollars, and

498
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:25,200
Speaker 3: everything else would be divided between the two sons. But

499
00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:30,319
Speaker 3: after Leonard passed away, Louise changed things around, dividing the

500
00:34:30,480 --> 00:34:34,240
Speaker 3: estate equally between the three children, but with a twist.

501
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 3: Linda and David were each given about eighty eight thousand

502
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:44,360
Speaker 3: dollars immediately, but Louise's will stipulated her middle son, Robert,

503
00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 3: would have to wait until he was forty years old

504
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 3: to receive his share. For now, he was given an

505
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:55,880
Speaker 3: additional lump sum of twenty thousand dollars the way Louise

506
00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:59,440
Speaker 3: structured this suggests she did not trust Robert with that

507
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:04,400
Speaker 3: money now, and he was devastated. At the time he

508
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:07,840
Speaker 3: was thirty years old. It would be ten more years

509
00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:11,799
Speaker 3: until he turned forty, and even though in the end

510
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:15,440
Speaker 3: he'd receive more money than either of his siblings, he

511
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 3: needed it now. They earned their own money and didn't

512
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:22,040
Speaker 3: care for the farm. It was up to him alone

513
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 3: to keep it going, which was not easy because a

514
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 3: recent fire had destroyed one of their piggery barns along

515
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:33,080
Speaker 3: with six hundred pigs. The bar needed to be rebuilt.

516
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:37,120
Speaker 3: He'd be trying to do it himself, but would never finish.

517
00:35:37,480 --> 00:35:40,600
Speaker 3: He saw the whole thing as a betrayal by his mother.

518
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 3: Robert took his twenty thousand dollars and drowned his sorrows

519
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:49,480
Speaker 3: by purchasing a nearly new Ford truck. He got into

520
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 3: junking old cars, selling the usable parts, separating the copper,

521
00:35:54,520 --> 00:35:58,200
Speaker 3: and selling it to scrap yards. Whatever he couldn't get

522
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:02,440
Speaker 3: rid of remained on the fire. Before long, there was

523
00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:06,200
Speaker 3: a growing collection of old cars and machines, along with

524
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 3: random scraps of wood and metal, cropped up around the

525
00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:16,160
Speaker 3: outskirts in the meantime, Robert's brother David had seen an

526
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:20,600
Speaker 3: untapped opportunity to profit from the farm without actually having

527
00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 3: to do farming work. The surrounding area of pork Equitlam

528
00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:29,799
Speaker 3: was rapidly being developed into housing and shops, and there

529
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:34,399
Speaker 3: was strong demand for topsoil for landscape structure, and one

530
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:39,000
Speaker 3: place that had plenty of topsoil was the farm. David

531
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:42,080
Speaker 3: pied and started a business ripping up the farm with

532
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:47,360
Speaker 3: a bulldozer, collecting the topsoil and selling it to local developers.

533
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 3: What was once a series of green fields was torn up.

534
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 3: The farmland turned into dirt pits with trucks, bulldozers and

535
00:36:56,360 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 3: other heavy equipment. Fortunately, neither David nor Robert cared about esthetics.

536
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:07,680
Speaker 3: David had also started making friends with the Hawlls Angels.

537
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:11,640
Speaker 3: It was now the early eighties and the first Biker

538
00:37:11,719 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 3: War was winding up. The Hawl's Angels had established dominance

539
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 3: over rival club, the Outlaws, and were now focused on

540
00:37:20,160 --> 00:37:24,760
Speaker 3: expanding across the country. David pict In had already started

541
00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 3: making friends with the new Vancouver chapter. He wasn't a

542
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:31,720
Speaker 3: biker himself, but he was keen to get in.

543
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 4: On whatever they were doing.

544
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:38,280
Speaker 3: Before long, David roped Robert into letting the Hall's Angels

545
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:41,759
Speaker 3: use the farm as a chop shop. He'd already been

546
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:45,239
Speaker 3: junking old cars, some of them were stolen, and there

547
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:47,640
Speaker 3: was a lot more room on the farm, so it

548
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 3: was a natural fit. Besides, Robert was fascinated with outlaw

549
00:37:52,600 --> 00:37:57,399
Speaker 3: biker culture. He ended up running the chop shop completely,

550
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 3: which included managing and arranging payment for a gang of

551
00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:05,880
Speaker 3: teens he'd hired to steal cars. Robert also dabbled in

552
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:10,760
Speaker 3: cock fights and selling illegal cigarettes and alcohol. The Picton

553
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:14,839
Speaker 3: brothers became known to local gangs and other crime syndicates

554
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:19,040
Speaker 3: in Port Equitlam, and soon the police were eyeing them

555
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:23,200
Speaker 3: up too. They came out to investigate rumors that the

556
00:38:23,239 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 3: farm was being used as a Halls Angels chop shop,

557
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:30,840
Speaker 3: but ultimately decided to focus on a more urgent priority,

558
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 3: catching a psychopathic serial killer who'd been preying on local

559
00:38:35,239 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 3: children in the area. Clifford Olson was arrested in nineteen

560
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 3: eighty two and would confess to murdering eleven children and

561
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:48,759
Speaker 3: sexually assaulting others. For a time, he was known as

562
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:54,719
Speaker 3: Canada's most prolific serial killer. That is until another took

563
00:38:54,760 --> 00:39:06,040
Speaker 3: his place. In the nineteen eighties, Indigenous women were showing

564
00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:10,400
Speaker 3: up dead in Vancouver's Downtown east Side at an increasing rate.

565
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:14,319
Speaker 3: Many were sex workers. It was too easy for the

566
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 3: police to dismiss each death as lifestyle related. This is

567
00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:23,080
Speaker 3: one of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, just east of the

568
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:27,640
Speaker 3: Financial District, and once described by the Vancouver Sun as.

569
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 4: Four blocks from Hell.

570
00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:32,839
Speaker 3: The Downtown east Side is a small area with a

571
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:38,800
Speaker 3: high concentration of poverty, homelessness, drug use, mental illness, sex work,

572
00:39:38,840 --> 00:39:44,399
Speaker 3: and social exclusion. But it wasn't always like that. Indigenous

573
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 3: communities were stewards of the land for thousands of years,

574
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:52,719
Speaker 3: long before the Europeans arrived. The colonizers had set their

575
00:39:52,800 --> 00:39:57,280
Speaker 3: sights on Vancouver's deep natural harbour as the perfect shipping

576
00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:03,240
Speaker 3: hub for the British Empire. The Indigenous communities were forcibly displaced.

577
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 4: From the area.

578
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:08,880
Speaker 3: By the early nineteen hundreds. The Downtown east Side was

579
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:13,880
Speaker 3: the bustling commercial and retail heart of Vancouver, with City Hall,

580
00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:18,480
Speaker 3: the City Courthouse, libraries, banks and shops. It was a

581
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:23,040
Speaker 3: hub for transportation and hospitality, with lots of hotels to

582
00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:28,680
Speaker 3: serve transient workers. But then came the Great Depression, causing

583
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:33,360
Speaker 3: a surge of unemployment and poverty worldwide. In the nineteen thirties,

584
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 3: many people came to Vancouver looking for work, and many

585
00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:39,919
Speaker 3: became stranded.

586
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:40,719
Speaker 4: There without jobs.

587
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:46,080
Speaker 3: Depression set in and the downtown east Side became increasingly

588
00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:52,040
Speaker 3: defined by alcohol, brothels, and general survival. Then the city

589
00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:58,239
Speaker 3: started relocating key institutions and services. First City Hall was

590
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:03,120
Speaker 3: moved away, then the main library. The streetcar route disappeared,

591
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:08,919
Speaker 3: and foot traffic followed. Local businesses started failing. Those hotels,

592
00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 3: once built for workers were converted into single room occupancy

593
00:41:13,680 --> 00:41:17,520
Speaker 3: housing for people with nowhere else to go. Instead of

594
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:22,480
Speaker 3: investing in safety, housing and social supports, government and city

595
00:41:22,520 --> 00:41:27,960
Speaker 3: officials looked away once the bustling city center, the downtown

596
00:41:28,040 --> 00:41:32,840
Speaker 3: east Side was now treated as a containment zone of poverty, trauma,

597
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:40,400
Speaker 3: and marginalization. Then came World Expo eighty six, Expo eighty.

598
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:44,719
Speaker 5: Six and Vancouver a spectacular national celebrations on equood since

599
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:51,759
Speaker 5: Expo sixty seven in Montreal, an incredible vacation experience for.

600
00:41:51,760 --> 00:41:54,319
Speaker 2: The whole family. Come on, join the fun.

601
00:41:55,040 --> 00:41:55,840
Speaker 5: What a city?

602
00:41:57,680 --> 00:41:59,840
Speaker 2: Three day tickets and information.

603
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 3: Predicting an influx of taurists with their wallets open. Landlords

604
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:08,400
Speaker 3: evicted more than a thousand low income residents, pushing many

605
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:12,480
Speaker 3: of them onto the streets or early death. Housing became

606
00:42:12,600 --> 00:42:17,120
Speaker 3: even more unaffordable, and those decades of neglect had created

607
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:21,120
Speaker 3: conditions on the Downtown east Side where predators could prey

608
00:42:21,239 --> 00:42:26,960
Speaker 3: on the area's most vulnerable residence largely unchecked. So in

609
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:31,360
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties, when Indigenous women started showing up dead

610
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:35,799
Speaker 3: in the Downtown east Side, the police were apathetic. Just

611
00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:39,719
Speaker 3: another naked body in a low rent hotel room with

612
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:45,440
Speaker 3: no visible injuries and dangerously high blood alcohol levels. The

613
00:42:45,520 --> 00:42:49,879
Speaker 3: police perceived it as the proverbial trash taking itself out.

614
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 3: What was really happening was darker than anyone could imagine.

615
00:42:57,120 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 3: A sadistic man was targeting vulnerable women, and he thought

616
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 3: no one would miss. He would pick up an Indigenous

617
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:07,239
Speaker 3: woman at a bar, take her to a cedy hotel,

618
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 3: pay her for sex, and then pay or force her

619
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:14,080
Speaker 3: to drink lethal amounts of alcohol until she died of

620
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:20,400
Speaker 3: alcohol poisoning, and then he would slip away unnoticed. In

621
00:43:20,520 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight, the police finally caught up with him.

622
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:26,239
Speaker 4: Gilbert Paul Jordan was.

623
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:29,760
Speaker 3: A local barber in his late fifties, known to drink

624
00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:32,960
Speaker 3: more than a bottle of vodka a day. The so

625
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:37,319
Speaker 3: called boozing barber would only be convicted for the manslaughter

626
00:43:37,480 --> 00:43:40,680
Speaker 3: of one woman, but he was linked to the deaths

627
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 3: of another nine. Gilbert Paul Jordan was not the only

628
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:49,120
Speaker 3: killer trolling the downtown eat side in the eighties. More

629
00:43:49,160 --> 00:43:52,480
Speaker 3: than a dozen more sex workers were murdered that decade,

630
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:58,080
Speaker 3: their bodies found dumped in back alleys, bushes nearby industrial sites.

631
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:02,480
Speaker 3: Several women had been mutilated with a knife. Some had

632
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:06,839
Speaker 3: been viciously stabbed, strangled, and beaten by a killer who

633
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:10,560
Speaker 3: was clearly out of control. The police would describe it

634
00:44:10,600 --> 00:44:11,560
Speaker 3: as overkill.

635
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:13,280
Speaker 4: Most of these.

636
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:18,440
Speaker 3: Murders remained unsolved, and among the rising number of murdered

637
00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:22,479
Speaker 3: sex workers, there were others who just disappeared one day,

638
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:29,120
Speaker 3: never to be seen again. In nineteen eighty seven, the

639
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:33,160
Speaker 3: Vancouver Police Department finally set up a task force to

640
00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:36,719
Speaker 3: focus on solving these and other cases of missing and

641
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:39,040
Speaker 3: murdered women from the Vancouver area.

642
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:42,160
Speaker 4: After a little over a year.

643
00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:46,680
Speaker 3: The task force disbanded. They had helped solve two cases,

644
00:44:47,040 --> 00:44:51,440
Speaker 3: but left the majority of them still unsolved, the police

645
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:54,840
Speaker 3: had all but given up, and sex workers continued to

646
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:59,960
Speaker 3: be targeted. Journalists Neil Hall and Kim Pemberton had been

647
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:03,560
Speaker 3: been reporting on the issue for years for The Vancouver Sun,

648
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:07,720
Speaker 3: gathering information to show these women were not just another

649
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 3: sex worker. They were loved and cherished by someone. A

650
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine feature article included profiles of nineteen women

651
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:20,600
Speaker 3: who had been murdered in the Vancouver area since nineteen

652
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:25,680
Speaker 3: eighty two, Some had been sexually assaulted, all unsolved at

653
00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:29,839
Speaker 3: the time. The authors pose the question, is there a

654
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:33,320
Speaker 3: Ted Bundy or Green River style killer on the loose

655
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:39,360
Speaker 3: preying on women? A spokesperson from Vancouver Police's Major Crimes

656
00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 3: Unit was quoted reiterating the task forces conclusion that there

657
00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:48,040
Speaker 3: was no evidence to suggest another serial killer was running

658
00:45:48,040 --> 00:45:51,359
Speaker 3: a mark in the area. This was seen by some

659
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:55,799
Speaker 3: as a baffling comment. The victims were all women, and

660
00:45:55,920 --> 00:45:59,400
Speaker 3: most were sex workers living on the margins of society.

661
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:04,479
Speaker 3: Many were Indigenous, and many struggled with hazardous substance use.

662
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:08,440
Speaker 3: The more likely story was that these vulnerable women were

663
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:12,560
Speaker 3: thought of as expendable, not worth the resources needed to

664
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:25,240
Speaker 3: investigate their cases properly. Back in pork equitlam. Robert Picton

665
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:28,319
Speaker 3: had taken on the full weight of the farm operations

666
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 3: since his parents passed away in the late seventies, from

667
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:36,520
Speaker 3: managing the pigs and maintaining equipment to slaughtering and butchering

668
00:46:36,680 --> 00:46:40,360
Speaker 3: and servicing the client list. After all the parts of

669
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:43,400
Speaker 3: the animal that could be used for profit were removed,

670
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 3: the carcass and other animal waste needed to be disposed of.

671
00:46:48,400 --> 00:46:51,280
Speaker 3: Sometimes he would bury it in pits on the farm,

672
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:55,960
Speaker 3: but as the eighties progressed, Robert started disposing of the

673
00:46:56,000 --> 00:47:00,440
Speaker 3: waste at a rendering plant in Vancouver called West Coast Reinsduction.

674
00:47:01,080 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 3: This plant processed the remains and retained the grease to

675
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:10,360
Speaker 3: reuse in products like soap, candles, and plastics. Best practice

676
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:14,240
Speaker 3: for storing biological waste is to keep it secure, cool

677
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:19,320
Speaker 3: and contained and sealed containers to prevent leaks, odours, pests,

678
00:47:19,400 --> 00:47:24,720
Speaker 3: and contamination before it can be hygienically disposed of. Robert

679
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 3: Picton didn't do that.

680
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 4: He was foul.

681
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:31,360
Speaker 3: His truck was foul, and so were his open barrels

682
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 3: of rancid smelling waste, but there were no issues. The

683
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 3: rendering plant would allow small operators to drive right in

684
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:44,759
Speaker 3: and dump their animal remains themselves. It was later established

685
00:47:44,800 --> 00:47:47,440
Speaker 3: that there was a complete lack of oversight at the

686
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:51,880
Speaker 3: plant that meant it was possible for unauthorized material to

687
00:47:51,920 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 3: be dumped straight into the massive slurry of decomposing remains

688
00:47:56,600 --> 00:48:00,520
Speaker 3: and leftover restaurant kitchen grease, never to be seen again.

689
00:48:01,719 --> 00:48:05,000
Speaker 3: West Coast Reduction happened to be right next to a

690
00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:10,000
Speaker 3: certain Vancouver neighborhood known as the Downtown east Side, and

691
00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:13,600
Speaker 3: Robert Picton had heard all about it from David and

692
00:48:13,680 --> 00:48:17,840
Speaker 3: his halls Angel's friends. They spoke often about going to

693
00:48:17,920 --> 00:48:20,760
Speaker 3: biker bars there and taking their pick of the women

694
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:25,440
Speaker 3: on the streets engaged in survival sex work. Robert was

695
00:48:25,480 --> 00:48:29,120
Speaker 3: still a massive loaner and he was intrigued, so he

696
00:48:29,200 --> 00:48:33,600
Speaker 3: started to develop a little routine. After driving into Vancouver

697
00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:37,120
Speaker 3: to dump his waist at West Coast Reduction, he would

698
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:40,480
Speaker 3: treat himself to a drive around the Downtown east Side

699
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 3: before returning to pork Equitlam women continued to go missing.

700
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:55,960
Speaker 3: Teressa Anne Williams grew up in Semiamo First Nation and

701
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:59,399
Speaker 3: gave birth to twin sons in nineteen eighty eight when

702
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:03,680
Speaker 3: she was just fourteen. Years old. She ran away soon after,

703
00:49:04,000 --> 00:49:07,479
Speaker 3: leaving her baby sons with her family. Just a few

704
00:49:07,520 --> 00:49:11,439
Speaker 3: months after that, in early July of nineteen eighty eight,

705
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:14,759
Speaker 3: Teressa phoned home to say she was planning to catch

706
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:17,880
Speaker 3: a bus home to see her sons. That was the

707
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:21,319
Speaker 3: last time her family ever heard from her. She was

708
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:26,720
Speaker 3: just fifteen years old when she disappeared. About a month later,

709
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:32,440
Speaker 3: a local park groundskeeper made a horrific discovery. He found

710
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:36,840
Speaker 3: a plastic bag that contained a decomposed section of human

711
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:41,960
Speaker 3: thigh and bone. The park was Grandview Park, which happened

712
00:49:41,960 --> 00:49:47,280
Speaker 3: to be right next door to West Coast Reduction. Years later,

713
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:52,239
Speaker 3: through DNA advances, those remains were confirmed to belong to

714
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:58,760
Speaker 3: Teressa Ann Williams. The Vancouver Police Department would later state

715
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:02,239
Speaker 3: that while there was no tangible evidence linking these and

716
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 3: other disappearances to Robert Picton, he cannot be ruled out.

717
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:13,399
Speaker 3: The following year, nineteen eighty nine, thirty four year old

718
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:17,080
Speaker 3: Elaine Dumbar dropped off the face of the earth. A

719
00:50:17,120 --> 00:50:22,200
Speaker 3: white woman originally from Regina, Saskatchewan, Elaine was troubled and

720
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:25,400
Speaker 3: she began using drugs at around the age of fourteen.

721
00:50:26,440 --> 00:50:30,000
Speaker 3: She moved to British Columbia in the early nineteen eighties

722
00:50:30,360 --> 00:50:33,680
Speaker 3: and lived in pork Equitlam with her common law partner

723
00:50:33,760 --> 00:50:37,920
Speaker 3: and their new baby daughter. Elaine's sister moved in with

724
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 3: them and would report that Elaine was struggling with hazardous

725
00:50:41,640 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 3: use of heroine. The couple broke up, and after returning

726
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:49,320
Speaker 3: to Saskatchewan for a few years with their daughter, Elaine

727
00:50:49,400 --> 00:50:52,359
Speaker 3: came back to live with her sister and pork Equitlam

728
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:58,000
Speaker 3: once again, but that stability did not last. At some point,

729
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:02,960
Speaker 3: Elaine left and began spending time in Vancouver's Downtownee Side.

730
00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:08,759
Speaker 3: The sisters lost contact. Elaine Dunbar was last seen in

731
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:12,200
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine at a liquor store in North Vancouver.

732
00:51:12,719 --> 00:51:16,320
Speaker 3: She was thirty four years old. Her sister and father

733
00:51:16,520 --> 00:51:19,399
Speaker 3: looked for her in the downtown Knee Side, but there

734
00:51:19,480 --> 00:51:25,000
Speaker 3: was no trace. That same year, thirty year old Ingrid's

735
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:29,239
Speaker 3: sowet disappeared. She was a white woman from Vancouver with

736
00:51:29,320 --> 00:51:33,440
Speaker 3: a long history of mental health issues. She'd been diagnosed

737
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:36,759
Speaker 3: with schizophrenia and was a known drug user who had

738
00:51:36,800 --> 00:51:41,160
Speaker 3: recently given birth and placed the baby for adoption. In

739
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:44,239
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine, Ingrid was living in one of the

740
00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:48,600
Speaker 3: seedy hotels on the Downtown Knees Side. That is, until

741
00:51:48,600 --> 00:51:52,480
Speaker 3: she got evicted. She visited her family and told them

742
00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:57,279
Speaker 3: she was going to visit someone else. After months without contact,

743
00:51:57,480 --> 00:52:02,040
Speaker 3: her mother reported her missing in December nineteen ninety. There

744
00:52:02,040 --> 00:52:06,200
Speaker 3: have been no confirmed sightings of Ingrid Seward since nineteen

745
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:13,719
Speaker 3: eighty nine. The women of the Downtown east Side were terrified.

746
00:52:14,239 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 3: They banded together to share information about bad experiences with

747
00:52:18,719 --> 00:52:22,200
Speaker 3: clients and warn each other of men to be wary of.

748
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:25,600
Speaker 3: This was the start of what would be known as

749
00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:30,120
Speaker 3: the Bad Trick List. At this point, Robert Picton did

750
00:52:30,120 --> 00:52:34,240
Speaker 3: not appear on the list. The women passed these bad

751
00:52:34,320 --> 00:52:37,960
Speaker 3: Trick Lists over to the police and started lobbying for

752
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:42,040
Speaker 3: more action. When they suspected someone else had gone missing,

753
00:52:42,320 --> 00:52:45,680
Speaker 3: they checked in with the police. They asked for more updates,

754
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:49,840
Speaker 3: and generally tried to keep the situation top of mind.

755
00:52:50,840 --> 00:52:54,399
Speaker 3: The Vancouver Police decided to try again and see what

756
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:59,600
Speaker 3: they could uncover with criminal profiling, a new investigative technique

757
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 3: at the time. Criminal profiling is the process of examining

758
00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:07,839
Speaker 3: crime scene evidence for patterns that might help predict an

759
00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:14,440
Speaker 3: unknown offender's personality. Behavioral and demographic characteristics, particularly in cases

760
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:17,399
Speaker 3: of serial offenses, in the hope it will lead them

761
00:53:17,440 --> 00:53:22,680
Speaker 3: to the offender. Criminal profiling is widely used today and

762
00:53:22,760 --> 00:53:25,960
Speaker 3: often assumed to be effective, but it should be noted

763
00:53:26,040 --> 00:53:30,319
Speaker 3: there is actually little scientific evidence to support its accuracy.

764
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:35,000
Speaker 3: Research has found that much of its credibility is anecdotal,

765
00:53:35,239 --> 00:53:39,560
Speaker 3: built on selective success stories and vague predictions that only

766
00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:44,320
Speaker 3: seem accurate in hindsight, and all reinforced by pop culture

767
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:49,840
Speaker 3: portrayals like mind Hunter. Critics note that much like polygraph tests,

768
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:55,760
Speaker 3: profiling can mislead investigations. When treated as reliable science rather

769
00:53:55,840 --> 00:53:59,880
Speaker 3: than a limited investigation tool, it can delay the identify

770
00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:04,880
Speaker 3: of the real offender and even contribute to wrongful convictions.

771
00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:10,200
Speaker 3: It should be approached with caution. In nineteen ninety one,

772
00:54:10,520 --> 00:54:14,160
Speaker 3: the Vancouver Police Department put together a team of criminal

773
00:54:14,239 --> 00:54:20,359
Speaker 3: profilers alongside existing homicide detectives and tasked them with analyzing

774
00:54:20,480 --> 00:54:24,480
Speaker 3: twenty five unsolved cases of women murdered in and around

775
00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:28,880
Speaker 3: the downtown Knee Side. The team was called Project Eclipse

776
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:33,040
Speaker 3: and grew to include several profilers from the FBI, as

777
00:54:33,080 --> 00:54:36,640
Speaker 3: well as a young Canadian from the Vancouver Police department

778
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:40,759
Speaker 3: named Kim Rossmo. He had eight years experience in the

779
00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:45,080
Speaker 3: downtown Knee Side and was described as a brilliant analytical thinker,

780
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:50,440
Speaker 3: skilled at math and working with computers. Rossmo was developing

781
00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:55,600
Speaker 3: a new practice known as geographic profiling, which involved analyzing

782
00:54:55,640 --> 00:54:59,200
Speaker 3: the crime locations and connecting them in an attempt to

783
00:54:59,280 --> 00:55:03,400
Speaker 3: learn more about a predator. His theory was that serial

784
00:55:03,520 --> 00:55:07,000
Speaker 3: killers worked in areas they were familiar with and felt

785
00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:11,880
Speaker 3: comfortable in. Project Eclipse gathered for a week long conference

786
00:55:11,960 --> 00:55:16,640
Speaker 3: to analyze the known data and information, reportedly the first

787
00:55:16,680 --> 00:55:21,160
Speaker 3: time a group of international profilers had brainstormed together to

788
00:55:21,239 --> 00:55:25,520
Speaker 3: try and advance an investigation. The team sorted the murdered

789
00:55:25,560 --> 00:55:29,280
Speaker 3: women into different groups and found that with a cluster

790
00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:33,080
Speaker 3: of four linked murders, there was at least one serial

791
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:36,799
Speaker 3: killer at work, with a possible two others out there

792
00:55:36,840 --> 00:55:41,880
Speaker 3: as well. They presented their findings to the Vancouver Police Department,

793
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:45,240
Speaker 3: who owned the jurisdiction, hoping that there would be action

794
00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:50,279
Speaker 3: taken based on it. It fell flat. Kim Rossmo would

795
00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:54,400
Speaker 3: later say he believed this response stemmed from laziness and

796
00:55:54,560 --> 00:55:58,560
Speaker 3: lack of resources and time, but he also suspected the

797
00:55:58,640 --> 00:56:02,319
Speaker 3: department had no eye idea what to do with this information.

798
00:56:03,120 --> 00:56:07,480
Speaker 3: It was unprecedented research and required out of the box thinking.

799
00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:11,439
Speaker 3: It appears, the police effectively put it in the too

800
00:56:11,600 --> 00:56:15,359
Speaker 3: hard basket and went back to business as usual. As

801
00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:29,040
Speaker 3: women continued to be targeted. Back on the Picton farm,

802
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:33,640
Speaker 3: Robert and David continued their association with the Howls Angels,

803
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:37,839
Speaker 3: and the dishevelled property became a central meeting place. There

804
00:56:37,880 --> 00:56:42,040
Speaker 3: were parties, barbecues, lots of drinking, and lots of women,

805
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:47,000
Speaker 3: but Robert remained an outsider. By this point, the brothers

806
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:50,239
Speaker 3: were in their early forties, and while David had had

807
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:54,960
Speaker 3: a lot of different girlfriends, Robert never dated anyone. He

808
00:56:55,040 --> 00:56:58,840
Speaker 3: didn't even interact much with their biker friends. He was

809
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:02,680
Speaker 3: often seen tending to the barbecue and the pig roasts

810
00:57:03,120 --> 00:57:06,680
Speaker 3: that seemed to be where he was comfortable. He'd become

811
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:11,240
Speaker 3: friendly with a Filipino immigrant named Pat Casanova, who helped

812
00:57:11,280 --> 00:57:14,120
Speaker 3: him butcher pigs on the farm and had a very

813
00:57:14,160 --> 00:57:19,280
Speaker 3: good recipe for barbecued pork. Together, they started a profitable

814
00:57:19,400 --> 00:57:24,560
Speaker 3: side business. The local RCMP continued to keep an eye

815
00:57:24,560 --> 00:57:28,520
Speaker 3: on the Picten brothers as rumors persisted about a Howl's

816
00:57:28,560 --> 00:57:33,040
Speaker 3: Angels chop shop on the farm. David Picton drew additional

817
00:57:33,120 --> 00:57:36,800
Speaker 3: attention of his own. He was a bad driver who

818
00:57:36,840 --> 00:57:40,720
Speaker 3: had racked up a lot of traffic incidents, including several

819
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:44,240
Speaker 3: crashes where he was at fault and sued for damages.

820
00:57:44,920 --> 00:57:47,800
Speaker 3: He was also known to cruise the downtown east Side

821
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:51,360
Speaker 3: to bring women back to the farm. Many people would

822
00:57:51,440 --> 00:57:55,680
Speaker 3: later say that while David Picton acted like well a dickhead,

823
00:57:56,120 --> 00:58:00,000
Speaker 3: underneath it all he was quite intelligent. He ran several

824
00:58:00,200 --> 00:58:03,960
Speaker 3: successful businesses by this point and would often bid on

825
00:58:04,200 --> 00:58:09,640
Speaker 3: large demolition jobs in Vancouver and surrounding areas. He frequently

826
00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:15,760
Speaker 3: won those contracts. In August of nineteen ninety one, a

827
00:58:15,840 --> 00:58:20,320
Speaker 3: young woman named Nancy Clark disappeared, but she was far

828
00:58:20,440 --> 00:58:25,320
Speaker 3: from Vancouver's downtown east Side. She went missing from Vancouver

829
00:58:25,440 --> 00:58:29,560
Speaker 3: Island the city of Victoria. Twenty five year old Nancy

830
00:58:29,920 --> 00:58:33,680
Speaker 3: was a caring and sensible woman, as described by those

831
00:58:33,720 --> 00:58:37,400
Speaker 3: who knew her, and a devoted mother to two daughters,

832
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:42,040
Speaker 3: aged eight and almost one. She was also an outside

833
00:58:42,080 --> 00:58:46,480
Speaker 3: sex worker, providing for her children by soliciting clients from

834
00:58:46,520 --> 00:58:48,360
Speaker 3: a street corner in Victoria.

835
00:58:50,680 --> 00:58:51,280
Speaker 4: One night.

836
00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:54,520
Speaker 3: She never returned home from work, and her mother was

837
00:58:54,600 --> 00:59:00,480
Speaker 3: immediately concerned. That day, it was Nancy's eldest daughter's birth birthday,

838
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:03,920
Speaker 3: and she was always there for her children no matter what.

839
00:59:04,520 --> 00:59:08,840
Speaker 3: She would never have missed their birthday. Her mother reported

840
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:14,520
Speaker 3: her missing. At the time, Nancy Clark's disappearance from Vancouver

841
00:59:14,600 --> 00:59:18,120
Speaker 3: Island was determined to be likely not related to the

842
00:59:18,200 --> 00:59:21,440
Speaker 3: growing list of women going missing on the mainland.

843
00:59:22,040 --> 00:59:23,000
Speaker 4: But what law.

844
00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:26,680
Speaker 3: Enforcement didn't know at the time was that David Picton

845
00:59:26,960 --> 00:59:30,200
Speaker 3: was working a demolition job on the island, and that

846
00:59:30,280 --> 00:59:34,120
Speaker 3: his brother Robert had gone with him to help. They

847
00:59:34,120 --> 00:59:38,280
Speaker 3: were both on Vancouver Island at the very same time

848
00:59:38,440 --> 00:59:42,760
Speaker 3: that Nancy Clark went missing in nineteen ninety one, and

849
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:47,040
Speaker 3: more than ten years later, Nancy's DNA would be found

850
00:59:47,120 --> 00:59:52,120
Speaker 3: on their farm on the mainland. Of the thirty three

851
00:59:52,240 --> 00:59:56,360
Speaker 3: women to be forensically linked to the Picton farm, Nancy

852
00:59:56,480 --> 01:00:01,480
Speaker 3: Clark was the earliest to disappear. This number is only

853
01:00:01,520 --> 01:00:10,840
Speaker 3: a reflection of what could still be found by that point.

854
01:00:11,960 --> 01:00:16,200
Speaker 3: The following year, David Picton found himself on the police's

855
01:00:16,360 --> 01:00:17,600
Speaker 3: raidar yet again.

856
01:00:18,360 --> 01:00:20,560
Speaker 4: A female employee.

857
01:00:19,880 --> 01:00:23,560
Speaker 3: At one of his excavation sites reported to police that

858
01:00:23,640 --> 01:00:28,480
Speaker 3: she encountered David inside an on site trailer. He pushed

859
01:00:28,520 --> 01:00:31,800
Speaker 3: her up against a wall and groped her genitals. Over

860
01:00:31,840 --> 01:00:37,080
Speaker 3: her genes, but another employee entered the trailer and interrupted him.

861
01:00:37,440 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 3: According to the woman, as David Picton left the trailer,

862
01:00:41,440 --> 01:00:45,840
Speaker 3: he threatened to rape and kill her. He said, I'm

863
01:00:45,880 --> 01:00:49,000
Speaker 3: going to wape you. He couldn't say the word with

864
01:00:49,040 --> 01:00:49,440
Speaker 3: an R.

865
01:00:49,680 --> 01:00:52,880
Speaker 4: He said it twice. He was laughing like crazy.

866
01:00:55,280 --> 01:00:58,120
Speaker 3: David claimed he only slapped the woman on the butt

867
01:00:58,400 --> 01:01:03,080
Speaker 3: and denied threatening her. He was charged with sexual assault.

868
01:01:04,040 --> 01:01:08,560
Speaker 3: The woman would report that after that, another employee warned

869
01:01:08,600 --> 01:01:12,320
Speaker 3: her to leave town, saying they're going to kill you.

870
01:01:12,640 --> 01:01:15,040
Speaker 3: They're going to cut you up and spread you all

871
01:01:15,080 --> 01:01:16,920
Speaker 3: over where you won't be found.

872
01:01:17,960 --> 01:01:19,920
Speaker 4: Terrified, she left town.

873
01:01:21,080 --> 01:01:24,840
Speaker 3: David Picton was found guilty of sexual assault, but the

874
01:01:24,920 --> 01:01:28,440
Speaker 3: jury noted it was moderate. He got away with a

875
01:01:28,520 --> 01:01:32,720
Speaker 3: year probation and a fine of one thousand dollars. That

876
01:01:33,000 --> 01:01:37,040
Speaker 3: was nineteen ninety two. The poor woman lived in fear

877
01:01:37,240 --> 01:01:41,400
Speaker 3: for many years. She would later be awarded forty five

878
01:01:41,560 --> 01:01:46,440
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in damages after suing David Picton for inflicting

879
01:01:46,600 --> 01:01:57,000
Speaker 3: psychological trauma back at the farm. Robert's trips to the

880
01:01:57,040 --> 01:02:00,960
Speaker 3: downtown east Side were becoming second nature, and he looked

881
01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:04,880
Speaker 3: for more opportunities to visit. When his brother got a

882
01:02:04,920 --> 01:02:09,800
Speaker 3: demolition contract in North Vancouver, he saw his chance. He

883
01:02:09,840 --> 01:02:13,000
Speaker 3: would be driving near the downtown Eese Side on the way,

884
01:02:13,360 --> 01:02:16,720
Speaker 3: and with just a slight detour, he could buy himself

885
01:02:16,800 --> 01:02:21,520
Speaker 3: the company of a sex worker or two. But after

886
01:02:21,560 --> 01:02:25,240
Speaker 3: a while Robert got tired of the daily commute. He

887
01:02:25,320 --> 01:02:28,240
Speaker 3: had an old motor home parked on the farm, so

888
01:02:28,280 --> 01:02:30,400
Speaker 3: he gave it a tune up and drove it to

889
01:02:30,520 --> 01:02:34,480
Speaker 3: the demolition site. He lived there for the duration of

890
01:02:34,520 --> 01:02:38,920
Speaker 3: the job, saying he was acting as a site security officer.

891
01:02:38,640 --> 01:02:39,520
Speaker 4: Out of hours.

892
01:02:40,840 --> 01:02:45,440
Speaker 3: Now living much closer to the downtownees Side, Robert began

893
01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:50,680
Speaker 3: spending more time there. He frequented local bars, places where

894
01:02:50,720 --> 01:02:55,480
Speaker 3: many of the area's most vulnerable residents gathered. He settled

895
01:02:55,520 --> 01:02:59,200
Speaker 3: into a routine. He didn't do alcohol or drugs, so

896
01:02:59,360 --> 01:03:02,960
Speaker 3: only during soda himself, but when he found a sex

897
01:03:03,000 --> 01:03:06,080
Speaker 3: worker he was interested in, he would give her money

898
01:03:06,120 --> 01:03:10,120
Speaker 3: to buy drugs for herself as an incentive. Then he

899
01:03:10,160 --> 01:03:12,640
Speaker 3: would persuade her to go with him back to his

900
01:03:12,760 --> 01:03:19,640
Speaker 3: farm to keep partying. The situation on the ground in

901
01:03:19,720 --> 01:03:24,200
Speaker 3: the downtown east Side was becoming a crisis. Sex workers

902
01:03:24,200 --> 01:03:28,320
Speaker 3: were organizing to try and keep themselves safe. They gathered

903
01:03:28,360 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 3: at the Women's Information Safehouse, also known as WISH, a

904
01:03:32,840 --> 01:03:36,640
Speaker 3: non profit organization that operated a drop in center on

905
01:03:36,720 --> 01:03:39,360
Speaker 3: the downtown east Side, right in the middle of the

906
01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:42,800
Speaker 3: main strip, where sex workers could get a hot meal,

907
01:03:43,080 --> 01:03:47,040
Speaker 3: a space to rest and get ready, and access nursing.

908
01:03:46,600 --> 01:03:48,080
Speaker 4: And counseling services.

909
01:03:49,040 --> 01:03:53,320
Speaker 3: While at WISH, these women traded stories about their clients

910
01:03:53,560 --> 01:03:56,600
Speaker 3: and updated their list of johns or tricks who had

911
01:03:56,600 --> 01:04:00,560
Speaker 3: given them the creeps or shown violent or perverse ten tes.

912
01:04:01,280 --> 01:04:04,760
Speaker 3: They passed their bad trick lists to the police, with

913
01:04:04,920 --> 01:04:09,240
Speaker 3: descriptions of the men and in many cases, license plate numbers.

914
01:04:10,000 --> 01:04:14,000
Speaker 3: It's at this time that the name Willie Picton started

915
01:04:14,040 --> 01:04:14,960
Speaker 3: appearing on this.

916
01:04:15,080 --> 01:04:16,200
Speaker 4: Bad Trick list.

917
01:04:17,000 --> 01:04:21,200
Speaker 3: The police promised to review the information, but women continued

918
01:04:21,240 --> 01:04:24,880
Speaker 3: to go missing or turn up murdered in some alleyway.

919
01:04:27,800 --> 01:04:32,280
Speaker 3: Kathleen Watley was known as a vivacious black woman, petite

920
01:04:32,400 --> 01:04:35,640
Speaker 3: in stature. She lived in the United States for some

921
01:04:36,000 --> 01:04:39,520
Speaker 3: years before she moved to Vancouver, and she lived a

922
01:04:39,600 --> 01:04:44,440
Speaker 3: difficult life. About five years earlier, she survived in attempted

923
01:04:44,520 --> 01:04:48,880
Speaker 3: murder during a shooting stemming from cocaine use. She gave

924
01:04:48,960 --> 01:04:52,120
Speaker 3: birth to two young children with a common law partner

925
01:04:52,200 --> 01:04:56,800
Speaker 3: in Vancouver, but the couple had recently separated and Kathleen

926
01:04:56,960 --> 01:05:00,800
Speaker 3: was relying on sex work to help makends meet. In

927
01:05:00,960 --> 01:05:04,960
Speaker 3: June of nineteen ninety two, thirty nine year old Kathleen

928
01:05:05,080 --> 01:05:08,880
Speaker 3: Watley left her two young children with a babysitter and

929
01:05:08,960 --> 01:05:12,320
Speaker 3: went to meet a client on the downtown east Side.

930
01:05:12,360 --> 01:05:13,920
Speaker 4: She was never seen again.

931
01:05:15,160 --> 01:05:19,240
Speaker 3: Then there was Elsie Sebastian Jones, a member of the

932
01:05:19,320 --> 01:05:23,560
Speaker 3: pache Dat First Nation on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

933
01:05:24,440 --> 01:05:28,440
Speaker 3: Elsie was among the one hundred and fifty thousand Indigenous

934
01:05:28,520 --> 01:05:34,400
Speaker 3: children sent to a residential school. Often undefunded and overcrowded.

935
01:05:34,680 --> 01:05:38,560
Speaker 3: The residential schools program was government sponsored and run by

936
01:05:38,600 --> 01:05:43,880
Speaker 3: religious organizations with the goal to eradicate Indigenous culture and

937
01:05:44,000 --> 01:05:49,160
Speaker 3: replace it with the Western culture of European settlers. Thousands

938
01:05:49,200 --> 01:05:54,280
Speaker 3: of students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse and experimentation,

939
01:05:54,840 --> 01:05:58,960
Speaker 3: and thousands died right on their school grounds. According to

940
01:05:59,000 --> 01:06:03,800
Speaker 3: the Truth and reconcs Conciliation Commission, the Residential school system

941
01:06:03,920 --> 01:06:08,360
Speaker 3: is often associated with Canada's early history, but these schools

942
01:06:08,400 --> 01:06:11,680
Speaker 3: actually ran for more than a century until the last

943
01:06:11,720 --> 01:06:17,520
Speaker 3: one closed in nineteen ninety six. Elsie Sebastian Jones suffered

944
01:06:17,600 --> 01:06:22,520
Speaker 3: repeated physical abuse during her years at residential school, leaving

945
01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:26,560
Speaker 3: lasting emotional scars that shaped most of her adult life.

946
01:06:27,600 --> 01:06:30,960
Speaker 3: She gave birth to the first of four children when

947
01:06:30,960 --> 01:06:36,000
Speaker 3: she was just sixteen. She also struggled with depression, substance

948
01:06:36,080 --> 01:06:41,120
Speaker 3: use disorder, unstable relationships, and many periods of instability in

949
01:06:41,160 --> 01:06:46,720
Speaker 3: her life. After attending several treatment programs followed by relapse,

950
01:06:47,000 --> 01:06:50,680
Speaker 3: her children eventually went to live with relatives and Elsie

951
01:06:50,800 --> 01:06:55,040
Speaker 3: moved to Vancouver. Her daughters would say she always kept

952
01:06:55,080 --> 01:06:59,240
Speaker 3: in touch with them, later describing their mother as a smart,

953
01:06:59,400 --> 01:07:03,920
Speaker 3: beautiful woman who endured racism throughout her life and fell

954
01:07:04,040 --> 01:07:07,360
Speaker 3: through the cracks of a system that failed to support her.

955
01:07:10,000 --> 01:07:14,000
Speaker 3: One night in nineteen ninety two, Elsie cooked dinner for

956
01:07:14,080 --> 01:07:18,240
Speaker 3: her daughters, then left to get drugs. She was never

957
01:07:18,320 --> 01:07:23,080
Speaker 3: seen again. She was forty years old. The following year,

958
01:07:23,320 --> 01:07:28,680
Speaker 3: Teresa Louise Triff vanished. Very little is known about Teresa,

959
01:07:28,720 --> 01:07:31,040
Speaker 3: other than the fact that she was a thirty one

960
01:07:31,120 --> 01:07:35,240
Speaker 3: year old white woman with blonde, curly hair and blue eyes.

961
01:07:36,520 --> 01:07:40,680
Speaker 3: All in all, fifteen women had vanished from the downtown

962
01:07:40,720 --> 01:07:44,840
Speaker 3: east Side in the fourteen years between nineteen seventy nine

963
01:07:45,080 --> 01:07:53,120
Speaker 3: and nineteen ninety three. By this point, the Picton brothers

964
01:07:53,160 --> 01:07:56,800
Speaker 3: were not getting along at all. Their living arrangements had

965
01:07:56,840 --> 01:08:00,720
Speaker 3: always been tumultuous, with both Robert and Da David living

966
01:08:00,760 --> 01:08:06,040
Speaker 3: in the rambling farmhouse sharing the one bathroom. In many respects,

967
01:08:06,080 --> 01:08:09,680
Speaker 3: they were different. David was the short and stocky brother,

968
01:08:09,880 --> 01:08:12,800
Speaker 3: thought of as a foul mouthed jerk who liked having

969
01:08:12,920 --> 01:08:16,799
Speaker 3: lots of people over to party, whereas Robert was lanky

970
01:08:16,960 --> 01:08:21,559
Speaker 3: and slim, not very social, and he often creeped people out.

971
01:08:22,320 --> 01:08:26,559
Speaker 3: They both had bad tempers and bad hygiene, although Roberts

972
01:08:26,680 --> 01:08:30,200
Speaker 3: was said to be much worse. Overall, it was not

973
01:08:30,479 --> 01:08:33,960
Speaker 3: working in the farmhouse. There was no privacy in no

974
01:08:34,240 --> 01:08:38,519
Speaker 3: escape from each other. After a massive blow up, Robert

975
01:08:38,520 --> 01:08:41,080
Speaker 3: decided to move into the old motor home on the

976
01:08:41,120 --> 01:08:44,920
Speaker 3: other side of the property, and David stayed in the farmhouse.

977
01:08:45,640 --> 01:08:49,639
Speaker 3: Despite the filthy conditions, they always seemed to have women

978
01:08:49,680 --> 01:08:53,200
Speaker 3: around that needed housing and were willing to do domestic

979
01:08:53,280 --> 01:08:56,559
Speaker 3: work like laundry and cleaning if they could stay on

980
01:08:56,600 --> 01:09:01,240
Speaker 3: the farm. A woman named Tanya would testify that she

981
01:09:01,400 --> 01:09:04,799
Speaker 3: needed a place to stay and knew the Pictons because

982
01:09:04,800 --> 01:09:09,719
Speaker 3: her stepfather worked on the farm slaughtering pigs. Robert ushered

983
01:09:09,720 --> 01:09:12,840
Speaker 3: her into his motor home and allowed her to stay

984
01:09:12,880 --> 01:09:17,200
Speaker 3: there with him. Tanya described their relationship as like uncle

985
01:09:17,320 --> 01:09:20,719
Speaker 3: and niece. They slept in separate areas in the motor

986
01:09:20,760 --> 01:09:24,599
Speaker 3: home and there was no sex. She liked and trusted

987
01:09:24,680 --> 01:09:27,720
Speaker 3: Robert so much that she ended up staying there for

988
01:09:27,760 --> 01:09:30,800
Speaker 3: a year and a half. Tanya said there was a

989
01:09:30,880 --> 01:09:34,519
Speaker 3: constant stream of people coming and going from the farm,

990
01:09:34,920 --> 01:09:37,880
Speaker 3: and she often returned to the motor home very late

991
01:09:37,920 --> 01:09:42,040
Speaker 3: at night to find that Robert wasn't there. She would

992
01:09:42,040 --> 01:09:46,080
Speaker 3: testify she just assumed he was working late. She had

993
01:09:46,160 --> 01:09:49,360
Speaker 3: no idea that he was meeting sex workers on the

994
01:09:49,439 --> 01:09:55,799
Speaker 3: downtown east Side. The list of missing women continued to grow.

995
01:09:56,800 --> 01:10:01,440
Speaker 3: Lee Minor grew up near San Francisco, one of four children.

996
01:10:01,800 --> 01:10:06,000
Speaker 3: Her family would describe her as charismatic and fiercely loyal,

997
01:10:06,200 --> 01:10:11,400
Speaker 3: with striking auburn hair and a magnetic personality. As a teenager,

998
01:10:11,680 --> 01:10:15,280
Speaker 3: Lee's life was uphended when her father died suddenly of

999
01:10:15,320 --> 01:10:19,040
Speaker 3: a heart attack, and years later her own husband would

1000
01:10:19,040 --> 01:10:24,000
Speaker 3: die by suicide in her arms. The compounded grief left

1001
01:10:24,080 --> 01:10:28,760
Speaker 3: her devastated, and she began using heroin to cope. Lee

1002
01:10:28,920 --> 01:10:32,320
Speaker 3: became a mother in nineteen eighty six and moved to

1003
01:10:32,479 --> 01:10:36,919
Speaker 3: Edmonton for a fresh start. She tried to stop using drugs,

1004
01:10:37,120 --> 01:10:40,920
Speaker 3: but it proved difficult, and her child eventually went to

1005
01:10:40,960 --> 01:10:44,880
Speaker 3: live with family. In nineteen ninety three, she moved to

1006
01:10:44,920 --> 01:10:48,519
Speaker 3: the Downtown east Side and engaged in sex work to

1007
01:10:48,600 --> 01:10:53,439
Speaker 3: survive and fund her substance use disorder. That December of

1008
01:10:53,560 --> 01:10:57,439
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety three, thirty four year old Lee phoned her

1009
01:10:57,479 --> 01:11:01,439
Speaker 3: sister to ask for money to visit their mother for Christmas.

1010
01:11:01,960 --> 01:11:06,880
Speaker 3: Her family waited for her all day, gifts unopened, but

1011
01:11:07,120 --> 01:11:11,759
Speaker 3: she never arrived. At first, they assumed she just hadn't

1012
01:11:11,880 --> 01:11:15,799
Speaker 3: kept her promise, but when weeks went by with no word,

1013
01:11:16,200 --> 01:11:19,559
Speaker 3: Lee's mother went looking for her on the downtown east

1014
01:11:19,600 --> 01:11:23,200
Speaker 3: Side and reported her missing. She would later say the

1015
01:11:23,280 --> 01:11:31,920
Speaker 3: police showed little interest. Then there's Angela Arsenal, who was

1016
01:11:32,040 --> 01:11:36,320
Speaker 3: just seventeen years old when she disappeared. Angela grew up

1017
01:11:36,360 --> 01:11:40,960
Speaker 3: with her mother and stepfather, moving several times before eventually

1018
01:11:41,040 --> 01:11:46,360
Speaker 3: settling in the Vancouver area. Angela reportedly started using drugs

1019
01:11:46,360 --> 01:11:50,000
Speaker 3: in high school and dropped out in grade nine. Her

1020
01:11:50,040 --> 01:11:53,400
Speaker 3: mother would later tell The Surrey Leader that she left

1021
01:11:53,439 --> 01:11:56,920
Speaker 3: home and briefly became involved in sex work on the

1022
01:11:57,000 --> 01:12:00,960
Speaker 3: downtown Knees Side, but her boyfriend helped her get off

1023
01:12:01,000 --> 01:12:05,679
Speaker 3: the streets. Angela was street smart and capable of looking

1024
01:12:05,720 --> 01:12:09,400
Speaker 3: after herself, but she was also being harassed by a

1025
01:12:09,479 --> 01:12:13,280
Speaker 3: pimp who wanted her to return to sex work. In

1026
01:12:13,320 --> 01:12:17,120
Speaker 3: August of nineteen ninety four, Angela spoke with her mother

1027
01:12:17,200 --> 01:12:21,480
Speaker 3: on the phone, making plans to go shopping for shower curtains.

1028
01:12:22,040 --> 01:12:24,960
Speaker 3: She was living with her boyfriend by this time, and

1029
01:12:25,080 --> 01:12:28,519
Speaker 3: that night they met downtown for dinner and shopping with

1030
01:12:28,600 --> 01:12:32,519
Speaker 3: another friend. She caught the bus home by herself for

1031
01:12:32,520 --> 01:12:38,519
Speaker 3: some reason. When her boyfriend arrived home later, Angela's purse, ID,

1032
01:12:38,880 --> 01:12:42,519
Speaker 3: cash and shopping bags were there, but the seventeen year

1033
01:12:42,520 --> 01:12:54,080
Speaker 3: old was missing. She was never seen again. During this time,

1034
01:12:54,360 --> 01:12:58,479
Speaker 3: Robert Picton had continued his trips into West Coast Reduction

1035
01:12:58,840 --> 01:13:02,840
Speaker 3: to dump his barrels of waste and remains. Sometimes he

1036
01:13:02,960 --> 01:13:06,320
Speaker 3: wasn't able to make the trip himself, and West Coast

1037
01:13:06,320 --> 01:13:07,800
Speaker 3: would send a truck out to.

1038
01:13:07,760 --> 01:13:08,479
Speaker 4: Pick them up.

1039
01:13:09,000 --> 01:13:11,280
Speaker 3: He didn't really need an excuse to go to the

1040
01:13:11,320 --> 01:13:15,479
Speaker 3: downtown east Side anymore, so this arrangement became more and

1041
01:13:15,600 --> 01:13:19,960
Speaker 3: more frequent. One driver would later testify that he made

1042
01:13:20,080 --> 01:13:23,639
Speaker 3: regular trips out to the Picton farm for four years

1043
01:13:23,800 --> 01:13:27,800
Speaker 3: in the early to mid nineties. He remembered glancing into

1044
01:13:27,840 --> 01:13:32,080
Speaker 3: the barrels periodically and was often surprised to see chunks

1045
01:13:32,120 --> 01:13:35,559
Speaker 3: of meat in it, some of them quite big chunks.

1046
01:13:36,360 --> 01:13:41,040
Speaker 3: This struck him as unusual. Most farmers and butchers carved

1047
01:13:41,080 --> 01:13:44,599
Speaker 3: off every piece of meat they could find. That's where

1048
01:13:44,600 --> 01:13:48,799
Speaker 3: the money was, but Robert Picton was just throwing it away.

1049
01:13:59,520 --> 01:14:03,439
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. In Part two, there's an alarming spike

1050
01:14:03,560 --> 01:14:07,519
Speaker 3: and vulnerable women going missing from the downtown Knee Side.

1051
01:14:07,720 --> 01:14:11,280
Speaker 3: Two would live to tell their stories. We'll circle back

1052
01:14:11,320 --> 01:14:14,759
Speaker 3: to Wendy, who escaped from the farm after a vicious

1053
01:14:14,840 --> 01:14:19,360
Speaker 3: knife fight with Robert Pickton and was rushed to emergency surgery,

1054
01:14:19,640 --> 01:14:23,600
Speaker 3: still with the handcuffs he put around her wrist. Meanwhile,

1055
01:14:23,760 --> 01:14:28,000
Speaker 3: the Picton brothers become officially wealthy and opened the infamous

1056
01:14:28,040 --> 01:14:33,080
Speaker 3: party venue known as Piggy's palace, serving alcohol and barbecue

1057
01:14:33,160 --> 01:14:37,720
Speaker 3: pork to bikers, sex workers, and even local city officials.

1058
01:14:39,240 --> 01:14:42,080
Speaker 3: The next episode will be available in a week. You

1059
01:14:42,120 --> 01:14:45,519
Speaker 3: can listen ad free and early on our premium feeds.

1060
01:14:45,680 --> 01:14:49,640
Speaker 3: For the full list of resources, sources, research studies, and

1061
01:14:49,760 --> 01:14:52,720
Speaker 3: anything else you want to know about the podcast, see

1062
01:14:52,760 --> 01:14:57,240
Speaker 3: the show notes or visit Canadian Truecrime dot caa we

1063
01:14:57,280 --> 01:15:01,919
Speaker 3: donate monthly to those facing injustice. Proceeds from this series

1064
01:15:01,960 --> 01:15:05,520
Speaker 3: are going to the Wish Drop In Center, society supporting

1065
01:15:05,600 --> 01:15:09,759
Speaker 3: street based sex workers on Vancouver's downtown east Side since

1066
01:15:09,920 --> 01:15:14,679
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four. Special thanks to Danielle Parody for family

1067
01:15:14,720 --> 01:15:19,200
Speaker 3: outreach and additional research. Audio editing was by Crosby Audio

1068
01:15:19,479 --> 01:15:23,640
Speaker 3: and Eric Crosby voiced the disclaimer. Our senior producer is

1069
01:15:23,720 --> 01:15:29,519
Speaker 3: Lindsey Eldridge and Carol Weinberg is our script consultant. Research writing,

1070
01:15:29,840 --> 01:15:33,120
Speaker 3: narration and sound design was by me and the theme

1071
01:15:33,240 --> 01:15:36,640
Speaker 3: songs were composed by We Talk of Dreams. I'll be

1072
01:15:36,720 --> 01:15:39,880
Speaker 3: back soon with another Canadian True Crime episode.

1073
01:15:40,280 --> 01:16:02,320
Speaker 4: See you then,