Speaker 1: Hi everyone, This is Steve Fishman from Orbit Media and
Speaker 1: just a quick announcement. Our new series Lives of Crime,
Speaker 1: True Crime from True Criminals drops March twenty fourth. Meantime,
Speaker 1: we're bringing you episodes from some of our favorite podcasters today.
Speaker 1: It's the first episode of a new series from our friendsic,
Speaker 1: Canadian True Crime. It's called Robert Picton the Final Chapter.
Speaker 1: Some of you will recall Robert Picton, the Canadian pig
Speaker 1: farmer who confessed to murdering forty nine women on his farm.
Speaker 1: In this special mini series, Alsie Canadian host Christy Lee
Speaker 1: revisits the case with tons of new information. There's much
Speaker 1: we didn't know about mister Picton.
Speaker 2: He was a.
Speaker 1: Killer made, not born. In his childhood, cruelty and violence
Speaker 1: were daily fair and now there's new evidence Picton may
Speaker 1: not have acted alone, just one of the things the
Speaker 1: police missed. And then in this series there are the women,
Speaker 1: the victims. Finally, this series tells their stories. Here's the
Speaker 1: first episode of Robert Picton the Final Chapter. The second
Speaker 1: episode is available now at Canadian True Crime wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Enjoy Canadian True Crime is a completely independent production. The
Speaker 2: podcast often has disturbing content and course language. It's not
Speaker 2: for everyone. Please take care when listening.
Speaker 3: Hi. I'm Christy Lee and welcome to episode two hundred
Speaker 3: of Canadian True Crime. I started this podcast nine years
Speaker 3: ago as a passion project and it still is today,
Speaker 3: so thank you so much for joining me. This special
Speaker 3: four part series has been pieced together primarily from the
Speaker 3: public record, including court documents, newspaper archives, the final report
Speaker 3: of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, and On the Farm,
Speaker 3: the definitive book by the late award winning investigative journalist
Speaker 3: Stevie Cameron. Please be aware this series includes distressing details
Speaker 3: that might be difficult to hear. There's also mention of
Speaker 3: sexual assault, residential schools, Indigenous issues, child abuse, and suicide.
Speaker 3: Please see the show notes for crisis referral services. Proceeds
Speaker 3: are being donated to the Wish Drop In Center, society
Speaker 3: supporting street based sex workers on Vancouver's downtown east Side
Speaker 3: since nineteen eighty four. It's a cold night in March
Speaker 3: of nineteen ninety seven, and a thirty year old woman
Speaker 3: named Wendy is working a street corner in Vancouver's downtown
Speaker 3: east Side, often referred to was the poorest postal code
Speaker 3: in Canada. The downtown Knee Side is known for high
Speaker 3: concentrations of poverty, homelessness, mental illness has it a substance
Speaker 3: use crime and sex work. A red pickup truck.
Speaker 4: Pulls up to the corner.
Speaker 3: The driver is in his late forties, baulding with greasy,
Speaker 3: scraggly hair hanging down the back and sides. He asks
Speaker 3: Wendy how much she charges for oral sex. She tells
Speaker 3: him the going rate is forty dollars. He offers her
Speaker 3: one hundred dollars if she comes back to his place
Speaker 3: in Port Equitlam. Wendy needs the money, but that's about
Speaker 3: a forty minute drive away. Can't they find somewhere closer,
Speaker 3: The driver insists, promising to drop her.
Speaker 4: Back by one in the morning.
Speaker 3: She gets into the pickup and they drive out of
Speaker 3: the city. The man doesn't want to make conversation. After
Speaker 3: a while, the sie violence starts, making Wendy uneasy. She
Speaker 3: might only be thirty, but she's already lived a far
Speaker 3: heavier life than her years suggest. Wendy started using drugs
Speaker 3: in her teens and joined forces with two men ten
Speaker 3: years older than her with criminal records. They would be
Speaker 3: arrested for stealing cigarettes and other goods. She gave birth
Speaker 3: to a daughter with one of those men, but according
Speaker 3: to an obituary, their little girl passed away as a toddler.
Speaker 3: Wendy retreated to drugs for a while, but she pulled
Speaker 3: herself together. Vancouver is a port city, and she found
Speaker 3: a job on a local fishing boat as a deckhand
Speaker 3: and crew cook. She fell into a relationship with the
Speaker 3: captain and gave birth to two children with him. For
Speaker 3: a few years, Wendy's life was mostly stable, but the
Speaker 3: urge to use was not easy to overcome. The relationship
Speaker 3: broke down, and she left her children with their father
Speaker 3: to get help for hazardous substance use. Cocaine and heroine
Speaker 3: were her drugs of choice, but she was also desperate
Speaker 3: to see her kids again. Wendy ended up living on
Speaker 3: Vancouver's downtown east Side with some of society's most vulnerable
Speaker 3: marginalized people, trying and failing miserably to get clean. That
Speaker 3: cold night in March of nineteen ninety seven, she was
Speaker 3: stuck in survival mode, sustaining her drug use through stealing
Speaker 3: an outside sex work.
Speaker 4: In the red.
Speaker 3: Pickup truck Wendy is feeling increasingly uneasy as they continue
Speaker 3: driving out to Port Coquitlam, or at least that's where
Speaker 3: the man told her they were going. She asks him
Speaker 3: to stop at the next gas station so she can
Speaker 3: use the washroom. He refuses and continues driving sallantly. The
Speaker 3: man stops the truck at a property with a padlocked gate.
Speaker 3: He gets out, unlocks the gate, and drives in. Wendy
Speaker 3: realizes the man lives on a farm, not a house.
Speaker 3: There's old cars and junk everywhere. He parks beside a
Speaker 3: mobile trailer home and ushes Wendy inside. It's filthy in there,
Speaker 3: the air is stale and there's mess everywhere. She notices
Speaker 3: a large butcher knife lying on the table as he
Speaker 3: leads her through the kitchen and into a back room.
Speaker 3: There's no bed, only a sleeping bag on the floor.
Speaker 3: The man gives Wendy the hundred dollars and she performs
Speaker 3: oral sex followed by intercourse. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Speaker 3: She gets dressed and asks to use the phone to
Speaker 3: call a friend. She senses the man behind her and
Speaker 3: he gently takes her left hand. Then, without warning, he
Speaker 3: snaps a handcuff onto her wrist. Wendy is jolted by
Speaker 3: an intense fear for her life. For a split second,
Speaker 3: she freezes, Then her body's trauma response activates, automatically, deferring
Speaker 3: to habits she learned earlier in life, and Wendy has
Speaker 3: always been a fighter. She punches and kicks him. She
Speaker 3: grabs a potted plant and whatever she can reach and
Speaker 3: swings it at him. As he fights back, she finds
Speaker 3: herself backing toward that butcher knife she saw on the
Speaker 3: kitchen table. She grabs it and slashes the man across
Speaker 3: the neck. He roars as the blood starts flowing, but
Speaker 3: he grabs a cloth, holding it to the wound and
Speaker 3: keeps fighting. Now there's an intense struggle for the knife,
Speaker 3: and Wendy suddenly feels herself losing consciousness.
Speaker 4: When she comes.
Speaker 3: Too, the man is over her, holding her down, and
Speaker 3: then now back outside the pickup truck, she's still gripping
Speaker 3: the knife in her right hand and jabs at him,
Speaker 3: screaming at him to let her go. She feels him
Speaker 3: weakened and seizes an opportunity to slide out from under him.
Speaker 3: Still holding the knife, she staggers down the driveway covered
Speaker 3: in blood. Wendy doesn't realize she has suffered catastrophic injuries
Speaker 3: because adrenaline has taken over, numbing the pain and keeping
Speaker 3: her moving with a singular focus escape. Terrified he's going
Speaker 3: to come after her, she limps across the street.
Speaker 4: And knocks on a house. No answer.
Speaker 3: She tries to break a window to get inside, but
Speaker 3: then she sees headlights approaching.
Speaker 4: It's him. She ducks down, but.
Speaker 3: As the car gets closer, she sees it's not him
Speaker 3: and there's a woman in the passenger seat. Feeling safer,
Speaker 3: Wendy runs out and screams for help.
Speaker 4: The car stops.
Speaker 3: It's an elderly couple, but they hesitate at the sight
Speaker 3: of this small woman, half naked, soaked in blood, with
Speaker 3: her internal organs exposed.
Speaker 4: Holding a knife.
Speaker 3: Wendy throws it on the ground and the man opens
Speaker 3: the back door and helps her into the car.
Speaker 4: As they call.
Speaker 3: Nine one one for police and an ambulance, Wendy points
Speaker 3: toward the farm.
Speaker 4: She tells the couple that if.
Speaker 3: Anything happens to her, the man living in the trailer
Speaker 3: there was responsible.
Speaker 4: And he's been injured.
Speaker 1: Two.
Speaker 3: Wendy is rushed to emergency surgery with significant blood loss,
Speaker 3: deep stab wounds to her abdomen, and a punctured long
Speaker 3: She's lucky to be alive. Wendy would have known that
Speaker 3: an increasing number of women just like her had been
Speaker 3: disappearing from the Downtown east Side in recent years. That's
Speaker 3: why she was on high alert. What she didn't know
Speaker 3: was that the the DNA or remains of at least
Speaker 3: seven of those women were already on the farm she
Speaker 3: just escaped from, waiting to one day be discovered, and
Speaker 3: there would be more to come. Years later, when Robert
Speaker 3: Picton was identified as the man now considered Canada's worst
Speaker 3: serial killer, the remains or DNA of thirty three missing
Speaker 3: women would be found on that farm.
Speaker 4: Most of them were.
Speaker 3: Sex workers, disproportionately Indigenous and thought of as expendable, disposable,
Speaker 3: not worthy of care. It's believed there were many more
Speaker 3: victims than that, and years later Robert Picton would confirm
Speaker 3: it himself when the details began to emerge about how
Speaker 3: their remains may have been handled and disposed of, the
Speaker 3: implications were so shocking and grotesque that many struggled to
Speaker 3: even grasp what they were hearing. This case has been
Speaker 3: described as a tragedy of epic proportions, leaving the families
Speaker 3: of all those women with a lasting legacy of grief,
Speaker 3: at least ninety eight children without their mother, and a
Speaker 3: lot of unanswered questions. In twenty twenty four, Robert Picton
Speaker 3: became a victim himself of prison vigilante justice. His death
Speaker 3: might have closed his chapter, but this story is far
Speaker 3: from over. The evidence suggests that others knew what was happening,
Speaker 3: and worse, he likely did not act alone. This special
Speaker 3: four part series traces the case from the very beginning
Speaker 3: right up to where it stands today. From a disturbing
Speaker 3: childhood on the Picton family farm where cruelty and exploitation
Speaker 3: were normalized and morality optional, where Robert and his brother
Speaker 3: were shown that bad deeds can be covered up using
Speaker 3: privilege in intimidation, to the blatant police failures, systemic injustice,
Speaker 3: and deep rooted societal prejudice that enabled that violent culture
Speaker 3: to continue long after the Picton parents were dead. Most importantly,
Speaker 3: this series centers the vulnerable women who would targeted, restoring
Speaker 3: their names, stories, and humanity through the personal accounts of
Speaker 3: those who loved and missed them, making space for the
Speaker 3: unanswered questions still being asked to this day. Robert William
Speaker 3: Picton was born in nineteen forty nine to parents Leonard
Speaker 3: and Louise Picton. They were pig farmers who lived in
Speaker 3: pork Equitlam, a city in the Metro Vancouver area, about
Speaker 3: thirty five minutes drive from downtown.
Speaker 4: They didn't live.
Speaker 3: On the property we now know as the Picton Farm,
Speaker 3: though Leonard had inherited his family's homestead and farm a
Speaker 3: few kilometers away and worked on it through his twenties
Speaker 3: and thirties, showing no other interests. When he was forty
Speaker 3: seven years old, he surprised his family by bringing home
Speaker 3: a much younger woman he'd met in a coffee shop.
Speaker 3: Her name was Louise Arnold. She was thirty one years
Speaker 3: old and from Saskatchewan. They got married and Louise moved
Speaker 3: into the Picton family homestead five years later. The couple
Speaker 3: had their first child, a daughter, Linda, in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 3: then first son Robert, followed by second son David, a
Speaker 3: year apart. Linda and David were said to take after
Speaker 3: their mother Louise physically anyway, short with round faces. The
Speaker 3: middle child, Robert or Willie, as his family started calling
Speaker 3: him took after father Leonard. Tall and slim, with a
Speaker 3: narrow face and a long pointed nose. The Picton family
Speaker 3: lived in Port Coquitlam, known as Poco by the locals. Today,
Speaker 3: the city has a population of almost sixty thousand people,
Speaker 3: but back in nineteen forty nine it was around three thousand.
Speaker 3: It was known for being rural farmland territory. Leonard Picton
Speaker 3: was reportedly a workaholic who had minimal interaction with any
Speaker 3: of his three children. He was not an engaged parent.
Speaker 3: He specialized in livestock and the production of pork, and
Speaker 3: expected sons Robert and David to work on the farm
Speaker 3: as soon as they were able to, aiding in the
Speaker 3: slaughtering and butchering of pigs. Some accounts by neighbors and
Speaker 3: co workers paint Leonard as a violently abusive and abrasive man,
Speaker 3: all too ready to dole out punishment to his sons.
Speaker 4: In the form of beatings.
Speaker 3: It seems that daughter Linda might have been spared from
Speaker 3: this treatment. In later interviews, she would portray Leonard in
Speaker 3: a positive light as a respectable father with good intentions.
Speaker 3: But she said her younger brother Robert was never close
Speaker 3: to his father. In fact, he seemed a bit scared
Speaker 3: of him. Linda described Robert as shy and naive, a
Speaker 3: mumma's boy. Robert himself would later say that he and
Speaker 3: his mother were like two peas in a pod. The
Speaker 3: reasons for that label are not entirely clear. In town,
Speaker 3: residents reported hearing Louise nag and publicly sham Robert in
Speaker 3: front of other children. He became increasingly withdrawn, often remaining
Speaker 3: silent for long stretches, and hiding when he feared he
Speaker 3: was in trouble with either parent. The responsibilities of homemaking
Speaker 3: and child wearing fell to Louise, picked in by default,
Speaker 3: and she was not a nurturing or maternal presence to
Speaker 3: any of their three children.
Speaker 4: Her focus was also.
Speaker 3: On the family business, pigs. Everything else came a distant second.
Speaker 3: As a mother, Louise was remembered as harsh and abrasive,
Speaker 3: and was frequently heard screeching orders at her children. Those
Speaker 3: who came into regular contact with her described her as odd, eccentric,
Speaker 3: and unkempt workaholic who paid little attention to her own
Speaker 3: health or appearance. Former neighbors recalled her rotting teeth an
Speaker 3: apparent indifference to personal hygiene. The children were reportedly bathed
Speaker 3: only about once a week, which wasn't enough to remove
Speaker 3: the farm stench. Those same neighbors went inside the pict
Speaker 3: In home briefly and would describe it as dirty and
Speaker 3: foul smelling. Farm animals were allowed to work wonder freely
Speaker 3: through the farmhouse, relieving themselves indoors without consequence. Louise made
Speaker 3: little effort to clean, seemingly unfazed by the conditions. She
Speaker 3: always wore men's rubber gum boots. Louise was strict and demanding.
Speaker 3: She required her children to spend long hours slopping pigs
Speaker 3: and caring for animals, sometimes even on school days. To outsiders,
Speaker 3: the Picton family appeared to be poor, living below the
Speaker 3: poverty line. As one local resident put it, everyone knew
Speaker 3: the Pictons and no one knew the Pictins. The reality
Speaker 3: was they owned the family homestead outright and some additional
Speaker 3: parcels of land, and the farm was profitable. They just
Speaker 3: chose to live that way. It was said that the
Speaker 3: general attitude of the Picton family was that there was
Speaker 3: nothing wrong with a bit of mess or a life.
Speaker 3: Many of the memories Robert Pickton would recall from his
Speaker 3: childhood and early adulthood were disturbing if true. He would
Speaker 3: claim that one time his father left him sitting in
Speaker 3: his truck and he accidentally moved the gearstick into neutral,
Speaker 3: which caused the truck to start rolling down a hill
Speaker 3: and crash. Robert would claim his father beat him severely
Speaker 3: for not stopping that truck. He was just three years
Speaker 3: old at the time. In another story, he recalled being
Speaker 3: about four years old when his mother, Louise, caught him
Speaker 3: smoking a cigarette. As punishment, she forced him to smoke
Speaker 3: a whole cigar, thinking it would cure him for good,
Speaker 3: and it did. Robert would say it was the last
Speaker 3: cigarette he ever had. He would also tell a particularly
Speaker 3: disturbing story later about a pet calf he had when.
Speaker 4: He was young.
Speaker 3: This this was noteworthy because he suddenly became animated when
Speaker 3: he remembered the calf story and recalled vivid details. According
Speaker 3: to Robert, when he was about twelve, he developed a
Speaker 3: close emotional attachment with this calf, spending as much time
Speaker 3: as he could with it day or night. One day,
Speaker 3: he came home from school to find his favorite animal
Speaker 3: was missing. He looked over the house and then the farm,
Speaker 3: and he asked his family members, where's my calf. He
Speaker 3: was horrified when they suggested he look in the barn,
Speaker 3: knowing that's where the animals were slaughtered. It seemed his
Speaker 3: family wanted him to discover his pet calf hanging upside
Speaker 3: down in a shed, slaughtered and disembowed. Robert would tell
Speaker 3: investigators he was distraught at the site and refused to
Speaker 3: speak to his family for four days. They promised to
Speaker 3: buy him a new calf, but he didn't want an
Speaker 3: He wanted his pet back. He was traumatized by the incident,
Speaker 3: and even as an adult, it was only something he
Speaker 3: would share with people he'd become close to. After that,
Speaker 3: he seemed to develop the sentiment that life goes.
Speaker 4: Around and around with little meaning.
Speaker 3: Robert and younger brother David were being groomed by their father, Leonard,
Speaker 3: to take over the family farm. He taught them animal
Speaker 3: husbandry and butchering, and when they weren't at school, they
Speaker 3: were expected to work. But Linda, the eldest of the
Speaker 3: three picked in children, wasn't much of a fan of
Speaker 3: farm life and wanted to be as far away from
Speaker 3: it as possible. She was always described as the smart one,
Speaker 3: according to Stevie Cameron's book on the Farm. When she
Speaker 3: was in grade nine, Linda decided to move in with
Speaker 3: relatives closer to Vancouver. She was away from the farm,
Speaker 3: and after that she reportedly had as little to do
Speaker 3: with her family as possible. Leonard and Louise purchased more
Speaker 3: land just a few kilometers away on Dominion Avenue and
Speaker 3: moved over there with their sons. This is the property
Speaker 3: that would come to define the Picton family far more
Speaker 3: than they could have ever imagined. If Robert Picton were
Speaker 3: in school today, he might well have been diagnosed with
Speaker 3: a learning disorder and offered support and treatment. People who
Speaker 3: knew him would say he was far more intelligent than
Speaker 3: he was given credit for. But back in the nineteen
Speaker 3: sixties when he started high school, he was labeled slow
Speaker 3: and placed in special education classes at school. This embarrassed
Speaker 3: him and made him an easy target for bullies.
Speaker 4: His severe lack of.
Speaker 3: Personal hygiene, combined with the ratty, stinky clothes he wore,
Speaker 3: did not help. Robert dropped out of high school as
Speaker 3: soon as he could in grade eight. Louise was not
Speaker 3: at all troubled by her son's decision. She put him
Speaker 3: to work right away full time on the farm. She
Speaker 3: told him he needed to learn how to slaughter the
Speaker 3: pigs himself, and at first he said he didn't want to,
Speaker 3: but he eventually relented and began learning the trade. This
Speaker 3: was Robert's life. He'd never really known anything else but
Speaker 3: school and the farm. In October of nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 3: fourteen year old Timothy Barrett left home at about eight
Speaker 3: pm to walk to a friend's place. It wasn't a
Speaker 3: long walk, just up the road and down Dominion Avenue,
Speaker 3: the same street as the new Pigton farm. Timothy put
Speaker 3: on his jacket and told his parents he'd be home later.
Speaker 3: He never returned home. After a few hours, his parents
Speaker 3: found out that Timothy never actually arrived at the friend's home.
Speaker 3: They panicked and started checking in with neighbors to see
Speaker 3: if anyone had seen him or knew where he might be.
Speaker 3: At about one am, Timothy's parents reported him missing to
Speaker 3: the local RCMP, and the search continued throughout the night
Speaker 3: with no sign of him. In the early daylight hours,
Speaker 3: Timothy's father was still on Dominion Avenue searching alongside the
Speaker 3: road with a neighbor when he spotted a shoe on
Speaker 3: the side of the road. It looked like Timothy's. About
Speaker 3: ten feet away was a deep ditch running alongside the road.
Speaker 3: He walked over and peered down. Submerged in several feet
Speaker 3: of water was his fourteen year old son. Timothy Barrett
Speaker 3: was dead. The RCMP quickly developed a theory that Timothy
Speaker 3: must have been walking along the road when he was
Speaker 3: struck from behind by either a car or a truck
Speaker 3: and then hurled over into the ditch. The car was
Speaker 3: probably speeding and Dominion Avenue was poorly lit. The houses
Speaker 3: were sparse because it wasn't a developed area. As the
Speaker 3: body was sent for autopsy, the RCMP received a phone
Speaker 3: call from a local mechanic who said he'd seen the
Speaker 3: news reports of a hit and run and had something
Speaker 3: strange to report. He said the son of one of
Speaker 3: his regular clients had shown up the night before wanting
Speaker 3: a fast repair to an old, red, beaten up farm truck. Specifically,
Speaker 3: he wanted the smashed front indicator light repaired, along with
Speaker 3: a dent on the front fender, which he also wanted
Speaker 3: to be painted over. The young man told him a
Speaker 3: log had fallen on the truck back at the farm,
Speaker 3: but the mechanic looked at the dent and was suspicious. Also,
Speaker 3: the entire truck was old and completely banged up. Why
Speaker 3: the sudden request to repair this one area. Hours later,
Speaker 3: that mechanic saw the news about Timothy Barrett and contacted
Speaker 3: the police, giving them the name of the young man
Speaker 3: who requested the repairs, David Picton. That's Robert Picton's younger brother.
Speaker 3: At the time, David was sixteen and had just earned
Speaker 3: his driver's license. David Picton was charged in juvenile court
Speaker 3: with failing to remain at the scene of an accident.
Speaker 3: He would be placed on in definite probation and his
Speaker 3: driver's license suspended.
Speaker 4: For five years. As far as the.
Speaker 3: Criminal justice system was concerned, Timothy Barrett's death was the
Speaker 3: result of a careless accident. Partial blame was assigned to
Speaker 3: Timothy himself for walking on the side of the road
Speaker 3: where cars would be coming up behind him, wearing dark
Speaker 3: clothing on a dimly lit night. A coroner's inquiry concluded
Speaker 3: that David Picton was the one most at fault for
Speaker 3: driving the truck that hit Timothy from behind and for
Speaker 3: not stopping as Timothy was hurled into the water filled ditch.
Speaker 3: The autopsy confirmed Timothy suffered a fractured skull and a
Speaker 3: broken pelvis, but those injuries would not have been fatal.
Speaker 4: The actual cause of his death.
Speaker 3: Was drowning in the water, but there was more to
Speaker 3: the story. It began as whispers among names, but some
Speaker 3: twenty five years later it was confirmed to journalist and
Speaker 3: author Stevie Cameron. Robert Pickton himself would later tell a
Speaker 3: friend that he knew exactly what happened that night. At
Speaker 3: the time, he was seventeen years old, and he recalled
Speaker 3: David bursting into the farmhouse saying he'd hit someone with
Speaker 3: his car and they were probably badly hurt. He pointed
Speaker 3: to the red truck. Robert saw a new dent in
Speaker 3: the front right fender with marks and what.
Speaker 4: Looked to be blood.
Speaker 3: Mother Louise sprang into action. She ordered sixteen year old
Speaker 3: David to clean the blood off and drive the truck
Speaker 3: straight to their mechanic for a rush repair job. She
Speaker 3: told him to tell the mechanic that he'd hit a pole,
Speaker 3: a story that would have been slightly more believable than
Speaker 3: the one he actually told of a log falling on
Speaker 3: the truck. Then Louise got into another vie called to
Speaker 3: look for the person that David hit. She later told
Speaker 3: her son, Robert, and at least one other person that
Speaker 3: she was driving down the road and around the corner
Speaker 3: when she spotted Timothy Barrett lying injured at the side
Speaker 3: of the road. He was there because of her son's actions,
Speaker 3: but instead of helping the fourteen year old, she said,
Speaker 3: she dragged him ten feet over to the water filled
Speaker 3: ditch and pushed him in. Robert and David Peckton were
Speaker 3: still teenagers themselves learning.
Speaker 4: How the world worked.
Speaker 3: Their mother had just shown them that basic morality could
Speaker 3: be overridden if self preservation was at stake, that responsibility
Speaker 3: for causing serious harm, even death, could be managed by
Speaker 3: cleaning evidence and coordinating stories that human life was disposable.
Speaker 3: It's telling that Robert Picton later expressed a deep admiration
Speaker 3: for his mother's strength and discipline. There were never any
Speaker 3: consequences for Louise Picton's alleged actions. By the time this
Speaker 3: all came to light decades later, she would be dead.
Speaker 3: Father Leonard was in his late seventies by this point.
Speaker 3: His health was deteriorating and he couldn't work.
Speaker 4: The farm like he used to.
Speaker 3: Now it was up to his wife Louise, their two sons,
Speaker 3: and whoever else they could find to help on a
Speaker 3: regular basis. Louise sent Robert to the Woodland School in
Speaker 3: New Westminster for children with developmental disabilities, runaways and wards
Speaker 3: of the state. The school allowed Robert to pick up children,
Speaker 3: drive them back to the farm and use them as
Speaker 3: cheap or unpaid farm labour for the day, before.
Speaker 4: Returning them in the evening.
Speaker 3: Years later, an investigation would expose rampant abuse of children
Speaker 3: at the Woodland School.
Speaker 4: It shut down in the nineties.
Speaker 3: But perhaps the big takeaway for Robert Picton was reinforcement
Speaker 3: of his mother's message that some lives carried less value
Speaker 3: than others, that vulnerable people could be exploited, harmed and
Speaker 3: discarded for personal gain with little risk of consequence, simply
Speaker 3: because they existed on the margins and no one cared
Speaker 3: enough to intervene. By the early nineteen seventies, the Picton
Speaker 3: brothers were in their early twenties. David was the more
Speaker 3: outgoing one and was now dating regularly, but Robert did
Speaker 3: not have much luck. He didn't smoke, drink, or do drugs,
Speaker 3: and He didn't hang out at bars or nightclubs like
Speaker 3: others his age, and even if his hygiene and appearance
Speaker 3: issues had been taken care of, which they weren't, he
Speaker 3: was socially awkward. He was never seen dating or with
Speaker 3: a girlfriend, but instead had penpals all over the country.
Speaker 3: He was starting to feel a certain way about one
Speaker 3: of them. Her name was Connie, and she lived in Pontiac, Michigan.
Speaker 3: At twenty four years old, Robert decided it was time
Speaker 3: to take his first ever vacation so he could meet
Speaker 3: Connie in person. He booked a bus ticket and told
Speaker 3: his mother he'd be gone for six weeks. If Louise
Speaker 3: tried to stop him from leaving, it didn't work. By
Speaker 3: this point, Robert had gained some confidence and was able
Speaker 3: to talk back to her and assert himself when needed.
Speaker 3: The bus ride would have been close to forty hours
Speaker 3: one way, and it took Robert across America, stopping in
Speaker 3: several cities along the way. He would later tell a
Speaker 3: different female penpal that at some point he was stopped
Speaker 3: by a scout and offered forty dollars an hour to
Speaker 3: be a male model, the equivalent of about two hundred
Speaker 3: and forty dollars an hour intoday's currency. It seems a
Speaker 3: pretty unlikely story, but he claimed he wasn't interested and
Speaker 3: turned the opportunity down. He eventually arrived in Pontiac, Michigan,
Speaker 3: and met Connie. He claimed they were engaged by the
Speaker 3: time he caught the bus back to British Columbia, even
Speaker 3: calling her the love of his life. But Connie did
Speaker 3: not want to move to Pork Coquitlam and Robert could
Speaker 3: not leave the pig farm. That's as far as it went.
Speaker 3: He threw himself back into the farm while also dabbling
Speaker 3: in horses and truck driving to supplement his income. Robert
Speaker 3: still did not date, but his siblings had each found
Speaker 3: partners and careers outside the farm. Older sister Linda was
Speaker 3: married and lived in a well to do area in Vancouver.
Speaker 3: She continued to avoid the farm and the family unless
Speaker 3: she was needed for business decisions. Brother David lived on
Speaker 3: the farm with his girlfriend and their two young children,
Speaker 3: while Louise had David's girlfriend working long hours on the farm.
Speaker 3: David was not interested. He was into truck driving, construction
Speaker 3: and demolition, and other women besides his girlfriend. They broke
Speaker 3: up and she moved out with their kids. The next
Speaker 3: big family event was in nineteen seventy seven, when family
Speaker 3: patriarch Leonard was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died at
Speaker 3: age eighty two. A little over a year later, Louise
Speaker 3: also passed away from cancer age sixty seven. It was
Speaker 3: a shock for Robert to lose both parents so quickly,
Speaker 3: but perhaps the bigger shock was in his mother's will.
Speaker 3: The Picton estate included the farm and several other parcels
Speaker 3: of land, plus some cash. Leonard's idea of dividing it
Speaker 3: among their children showed his preference. All Linda would receive
Speaker 3: was a lump sum payment of twenty thousand dollars, and
Speaker 3: everything else would be divided between the two sons. But
Speaker 3: after Leonard passed away, Louise changed things around, dividing the
Speaker 3: estate equally between the three children, but with a twist.
Speaker 3: Linda and David were each given about eighty eight thousand
Speaker 3: dollars immediately, but Louise's will stipulated her middle son, Robert,
Speaker 3: would have to wait until he was forty years old
Speaker 3: to receive his share. For now, he was given an
Speaker 3: additional lump sum of twenty thousand dollars the way Louise
Speaker 3: structured this suggests she did not trust Robert with that
Speaker 3: money now, and he was devastated. At the time he
Speaker 3: was thirty years old. It would be ten more years
Speaker 3: until he turned forty, and even though in the end
Speaker 3: he'd receive more money than either of his siblings, he
Speaker 3: needed it now. They earned their own money and didn't
Speaker 3: care for the farm. It was up to him alone
Speaker 3: to keep it going, which was not easy because a
Speaker 3: recent fire had destroyed one of their piggery barns along
Speaker 3: with six hundred pigs. The bar needed to be rebuilt.
Speaker 3: He'd be trying to do it himself, but would never finish.
Speaker 3: He saw the whole thing as a betrayal by his mother.
Speaker 3: Robert took his twenty thousand dollars and drowned his sorrows
Speaker 3: by purchasing a nearly new Ford truck. He got into
Speaker 3: junking old cars, selling the usable parts, separating the copper,
Speaker 3: and selling it to scrap yards. Whatever he couldn't get
Speaker 3: rid of remained on the fire. Before long, there was
Speaker 3: a growing collection of old cars and machines, along with
Speaker 3: random scraps of wood and metal, cropped up around the
Speaker 3: outskirts in the meantime, Robert's brother David had seen an
Speaker 3: untapped opportunity to profit from the farm without actually having
Speaker 3: to do farming work. The surrounding area of pork Equitlam
Speaker 3: was rapidly being developed into housing and shops, and there
Speaker 3: was strong demand for topsoil for landscape structure, and one
Speaker 3: place that had plenty of topsoil was the farm. David
Speaker 3: pied and started a business ripping up the farm with
Speaker 3: a bulldozer, collecting the topsoil and selling it to local developers.
Speaker 3: What was once a series of green fields was torn up.
Speaker 3: The farmland turned into dirt pits with trucks, bulldozers and
Speaker 3: other heavy equipment. Fortunately, neither David nor Robert cared about esthetics.
Speaker 3: David had also started making friends with the Hawlls Angels.
Speaker 3: It was now the early eighties and the first Biker
Speaker 3: War was winding up. The Hawl's Angels had established dominance
Speaker 3: over rival club, the Outlaws, and were now focused on
Speaker 3: expanding across the country. David pict In had already started
Speaker 3: making friends with the new Vancouver chapter. He wasn't a
Speaker 3: biker himself, but he was keen to get in.
Speaker 4: On whatever they were doing.
Speaker 3: Before long, David roped Robert into letting the Hall's Angels
Speaker 3: use the farm as a chop shop. He'd already been
Speaker 3: junking old cars, some of them were stolen, and there
Speaker 3: was a lot more room on the farm, so it
Speaker 3: was a natural fit. Besides, Robert was fascinated with outlaw
Speaker 3: biker culture. He ended up running the chop shop completely,
Speaker 3: which included managing and arranging payment for a gang of
Speaker 3: teens he'd hired to steal cars. Robert also dabbled in
Speaker 3: cock fights and selling illegal cigarettes and alcohol. The Picton
Speaker 3: brothers became known to local gangs and other crime syndicates
Speaker 3: in Port Equitlam, and soon the police were eyeing them
Speaker 3: up too. They came out to investigate rumors that the
Speaker 3: farm was being used as a Halls Angels chop shop,
Speaker 3: but ultimately decided to focus on a more urgent priority,
Speaker 3: catching a psychopathic serial killer who'd been preying on local
Speaker 3: children in the area. Clifford Olson was arrested in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two and would confess to murdering eleven children and
Speaker 3: sexually assaulting others. For a time, he was known as
Speaker 3: Canada's most prolific serial killer. That is until another took
Speaker 3: his place. In the nineteen eighties, Indigenous women were showing
Speaker 3: up dead in Vancouver's Downtown east Side at an increasing rate.
Speaker 3: Many were sex workers. It was too easy for the
Speaker 3: police to dismiss each death as lifestyle related. This is
Speaker 3: one of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, just east of the
Speaker 3: Financial District, and once described by the Vancouver Sun as.
Speaker 4: Four blocks from Hell.
Speaker 3: The Downtown east Side is a small area with a
Speaker 3: high concentration of poverty, homelessness, drug use, mental illness, sex work,
Speaker 3: and social exclusion. But it wasn't always like that. Indigenous
Speaker 3: communities were stewards of the land for thousands of years,
Speaker 3: long before the Europeans arrived. The colonizers had set their
Speaker 3: sights on Vancouver's deep natural harbour as the perfect shipping
Speaker 3: hub for the British Empire. The Indigenous communities were forcibly displaced.
Speaker 4: From the area.
Speaker 3: By the early nineteen hundreds. The Downtown east Side was
Speaker 3: the bustling commercial and retail heart of Vancouver, with City Hall,
Speaker 3: the City Courthouse, libraries, banks and shops. It was a
Speaker 3: hub for transportation and hospitality, with lots of hotels to
Speaker 3: serve transient workers. But then came the Great Depression, causing
Speaker 3: a surge of unemployment and poverty worldwide. In the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 3: many people came to Vancouver looking for work, and many
Speaker 3: became stranded.
Speaker 4: There without jobs.
Speaker 3: Depression set in and the downtown east Side became increasingly
Speaker 3: defined by alcohol, brothels, and general survival. Then the city
Speaker 3: started relocating key institutions and services. First City Hall was
Speaker 3: moved away, then the main library. The streetcar route disappeared,
Speaker 3: and foot traffic followed. Local businesses started failing. Those hotels,
Speaker 3: once built for workers were converted into single room occupancy
Speaker 3: housing for people with nowhere else to go. Instead of
Speaker 3: investing in safety, housing and social supports, government and city
Speaker 3: officials looked away once the bustling city center, the downtown
Speaker 3: east Side was now treated as a containment zone of poverty, trauma,
Speaker 3: and marginalization. Then came World Expo eighty six, Expo eighty.
Speaker 5: Six and Vancouver a spectacular national celebrations on equood since
Speaker 5: Expo sixty seven in Montreal, an incredible vacation experience for.
Speaker 2: The whole family. Come on, join the fun.
Speaker 5: What a city?
Speaker 2: Three day tickets and information.
Speaker 3: Predicting an influx of taurists with their wallets open. Landlords
Speaker 3: evicted more than a thousand low income residents, pushing many
Speaker 3: of them onto the streets or early death. Housing became
Speaker 3: even more unaffordable, and those decades of neglect had created
Speaker 3: conditions on the Downtown east Side where predators could prey
Speaker 3: on the area's most vulnerable residence largely unchecked. So in
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties, when Indigenous women started showing up dead
Speaker 3: in the Downtown east Side, the police were apathetic. Just
Speaker 3: another naked body in a low rent hotel room with
Speaker 3: no visible injuries and dangerously high blood alcohol levels. The
Speaker 3: police perceived it as the proverbial trash taking itself out.
Speaker 3: What was really happening was darker than anyone could imagine.
Speaker 3: A sadistic man was targeting vulnerable women, and he thought
Speaker 3: no one would miss. He would pick up an Indigenous
Speaker 3: woman at a bar, take her to a cedy hotel,
Speaker 3: pay her for sex, and then pay or force her
Speaker 3: to drink lethal amounts of alcohol until she died of
Speaker 3: alcohol poisoning, and then he would slip away unnoticed. In
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight, the police finally caught up with him.
Speaker 4: Gilbert Paul Jordan was.
Speaker 3: A local barber in his late fifties, known to drink
Speaker 3: more than a bottle of vodka a day. The so
Speaker 3: called boozing barber would only be convicted for the manslaughter
Speaker 3: of one woman, but he was linked to the deaths
Speaker 3: of another nine. Gilbert Paul Jordan was not the only
Speaker 3: killer trolling the downtown eat side in the eighties. More
Speaker 3: than a dozen more sex workers were murdered that decade,
Speaker 3: their bodies found dumped in back alleys, bushes nearby industrial sites.
Speaker 3: Several women had been mutilated with a knife. Some had
Speaker 3: been viciously stabbed, strangled, and beaten by a killer who
Speaker 3: was clearly out of control. The police would describe it
Speaker 3: as overkill.
Speaker 4: Most of these.
Speaker 3: Murders remained unsolved, and among the rising number of murdered
Speaker 3: sex workers, there were others who just disappeared one day,
Speaker 3: never to be seen again. In nineteen eighty seven, the
Speaker 3: Vancouver Police Department finally set up a task force to
Speaker 3: focus on solving these and other cases of missing and
Speaker 3: murdered women from the Vancouver area.
Speaker 4: After a little over a year.
Speaker 3: The task force disbanded. They had helped solve two cases,
Speaker 3: but left the majority of them still unsolved, the police
Speaker 3: had all but given up, and sex workers continued to
Speaker 3: be targeted. Journalists Neil Hall and Kim Pemberton had been
Speaker 3: been reporting on the issue for years for The Vancouver Sun,
Speaker 3: gathering information to show these women were not just another
Speaker 3: sex worker. They were loved and cherished by someone. A
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine feature article included profiles of nineteen women
Speaker 3: who had been murdered in the Vancouver area since nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two, Some had been sexually assaulted, all unsolved at
Speaker 3: the time. The authors pose the question, is there a
Speaker 3: Ted Bundy or Green River style killer on the loose
Speaker 3: preying on women? A spokesperson from Vancouver Police's Major Crimes
Speaker 3: Unit was quoted reiterating the task forces conclusion that there
Speaker 3: was no evidence to suggest another serial killer was running
Speaker 3: a mark in the area. This was seen by some
Speaker 3: as a baffling comment. The victims were all women, and
Speaker 3: most were sex workers living on the margins of society.
Speaker 3: Many were Indigenous, and many struggled with hazardous substance use.
Speaker 3: The more likely story was that these vulnerable women were
Speaker 3: thought of as expendable, not worth the resources needed to
Speaker 3: investigate their cases properly. Back in pork equitlam. Robert Picton
Speaker 3: had taken on the full weight of the farm operations
Speaker 3: since his parents passed away in the late seventies, from
Speaker 3: managing the pigs and maintaining equipment to slaughtering and butchering
Speaker 3: and servicing the client list. After all the parts of
Speaker 3: the animal that could be used for profit were removed,
Speaker 3: the carcass and other animal waste needed to be disposed of.
Speaker 3: Sometimes he would bury it in pits on the farm,
Speaker 3: but as the eighties progressed, Robert started disposing of the
Speaker 3: waste at a rendering plant in Vancouver called West Coast Reinsduction.
Speaker 3: This plant processed the remains and retained the grease to
Speaker 3: reuse in products like soap, candles, and plastics. Best practice
Speaker 3: for storing biological waste is to keep it secure, cool
Speaker 3: and contained and sealed containers to prevent leaks, odours, pests,
Speaker 3: and contamination before it can be hygienically disposed of. Robert
Speaker 3: Picton didn't do that.
Speaker 4: He was foul.
Speaker 3: His truck was foul, and so were his open barrels
Speaker 3: of rancid smelling waste, but there were no issues. The
Speaker 3: rendering plant would allow small operators to drive right in
Speaker 3: and dump their animal remains themselves. It was later established
Speaker 3: that there was a complete lack of oversight at the
Speaker 3: plant that meant it was possible for unauthorized material to
Speaker 3: be dumped straight into the massive slurry of decomposing remains
Speaker 3: and leftover restaurant kitchen grease, never to be seen again.
Speaker 3: West Coast Reduction happened to be right next to a
Speaker 3: certain Vancouver neighborhood known as the Downtown east Side, and
Speaker 3: Robert Picton had heard all about it from David and
Speaker 3: his halls Angel's friends. They spoke often about going to
Speaker 3: biker bars there and taking their pick of the women
Speaker 3: on the streets engaged in survival sex work. Robert was
Speaker 3: still a massive loaner and he was intrigued, so he
Speaker 3: started to develop a little routine. After driving into Vancouver
Speaker 3: to dump his waist at West Coast Reduction, he would
Speaker 3: treat himself to a drive around the Downtown east Side
Speaker 3: before returning to pork Equitlam women continued to go missing.
Speaker 3: Teressa Anne Williams grew up in Semiamo First Nation and
Speaker 3: gave birth to twin sons in nineteen eighty eight when
Speaker 3: she was just fourteen. Years old. She ran away soon after,
Speaker 3: leaving her baby sons with her family. Just a few
Speaker 3: months after that, in early July of nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 3: Teressa phoned home to say she was planning to catch
Speaker 3: a bus home to see her sons. That was the
Speaker 3: last time her family ever heard from her. She was
Speaker 3: just fifteen years old when she disappeared. About a month later,
Speaker 3: a local park groundskeeper made a horrific discovery. He found
Speaker 3: a plastic bag that contained a decomposed section of human
Speaker 3: thigh and bone. The park was Grandview Park, which happened
Speaker 3: to be right next door to West Coast Reduction. Years later,
Speaker 3: through DNA advances, those remains were confirmed to belong to
Speaker 3: Teressa Ann Williams. The Vancouver Police Department would later state
Speaker 3: that while there was no tangible evidence linking these and
Speaker 3: other disappearances to Robert Picton, he cannot be ruled out.
Speaker 3: The following year, nineteen eighty nine, thirty four year old
Speaker 3: Elaine Dumbar dropped off the face of the earth. A
Speaker 3: white woman originally from Regina, Saskatchewan, Elaine was troubled and
Speaker 3: she began using drugs at around the age of fourteen.
Speaker 3: She moved to British Columbia in the early nineteen eighties
Speaker 3: and lived in pork Equitlam with her common law partner
Speaker 3: and their new baby daughter. Elaine's sister moved in with
Speaker 3: them and would report that Elaine was struggling with hazardous
Speaker 3: use of heroine. The couple broke up, and after returning
Speaker 3: to Saskatchewan for a few years with their daughter, Elaine
Speaker 3: came back to live with her sister and pork Equitlam
Speaker 3: once again, but that stability did not last. At some point,
Speaker 3: Elaine left and began spending time in Vancouver's Downtownee Side.
Speaker 3: The sisters lost contact. Elaine Dunbar was last seen in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine at a liquor store in North Vancouver.
Speaker 3: She was thirty four years old. Her sister and father
Speaker 3: looked for her in the downtown Knee Side, but there
Speaker 3: was no trace. That same year, thirty year old Ingrid's
Speaker 3: sowet disappeared. She was a white woman from Vancouver with
Speaker 3: a long history of mental health issues. She'd been diagnosed
Speaker 3: with schizophrenia and was a known drug user who had
Speaker 3: recently given birth and placed the baby for adoption. In
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine, Ingrid was living in one of the
Speaker 3: seedy hotels on the Downtown Knees Side. That is, until
Speaker 3: she got evicted. She visited her family and told them
Speaker 3: she was going to visit someone else. After months without contact,
Speaker 3: her mother reported her missing in December nineteen ninety. There
Speaker 3: have been no confirmed sightings of Ingrid Seward since nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty nine. The women of the Downtown east Side were terrified.
Speaker 3: They banded together to share information about bad experiences with
Speaker 3: clients and warn each other of men to be wary of.
Speaker 3: This was the start of what would be known as
Speaker 3: the Bad Trick List. At this point, Robert Picton did
Speaker 3: not appear on the list. The women passed these bad
Speaker 3: Trick Lists over to the police and started lobbying for
Speaker 3: more action. When they suspected someone else had gone missing,
Speaker 3: they checked in with the police. They asked for more updates,
Speaker 3: and generally tried to keep the situation top of mind.
Speaker 3: The Vancouver Police decided to try again and see what
Speaker 3: they could uncover with criminal profiling, a new investigative technique
Speaker 3: at the time. Criminal profiling is the process of examining
Speaker 3: crime scene evidence for patterns that might help predict an
Speaker 3: unknown offender's personality. Behavioral and demographic characteristics, particularly in cases
Speaker 3: of serial offenses, in the hope it will lead them
Speaker 3: to the offender. Criminal profiling is widely used today and
Speaker 3: often assumed to be effective, but it should be noted
Speaker 3: there is actually little scientific evidence to support its accuracy.
Speaker 3: Research has found that much of its credibility is anecdotal,
Speaker 3: built on selective success stories and vague predictions that only
Speaker 3: seem accurate in hindsight, and all reinforced by pop culture
Speaker 3: portrayals like mind Hunter. Critics note that much like polygraph tests,
Speaker 3: profiling can mislead investigations. When treated as reliable science rather
Speaker 3: than a limited investigation tool, it can delay the identify
Speaker 3: of the real offender and even contribute to wrongful convictions.
Speaker 3: It should be approached with caution. In nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 3: the Vancouver Police Department put together a team of criminal
Speaker 3: profilers alongside existing homicide detectives and tasked them with analyzing
Speaker 3: twenty five unsolved cases of women murdered in and around
Speaker 3: the downtown Knee Side. The team was called Project Eclipse
Speaker 3: and grew to include several profilers from the FBI, as
Speaker 3: well as a young Canadian from the Vancouver Police department
Speaker 3: named Kim Rossmo. He had eight years experience in the
Speaker 3: downtown Knee Side and was described as a brilliant analytical thinker,
Speaker 3: skilled at math and working with computers. Rossmo was developing
Speaker 3: a new practice known as geographic profiling, which involved analyzing
Speaker 3: the crime locations and connecting them in an attempt to
Speaker 3: learn more about a predator. His theory was that serial
Speaker 3: killers worked in areas they were familiar with and felt
Speaker 3: comfortable in. Project Eclipse gathered for a week long conference
Speaker 3: to analyze the known data and information, reportedly the first
Speaker 3: time a group of international profilers had brainstormed together to
Speaker 3: try and advance an investigation. The team sorted the murdered
Speaker 3: women into different groups and found that with a cluster
Speaker 3: of four linked murders, there was at least one serial
Speaker 3: killer at work, with a possible two others out there
Speaker 3: as well. They presented their findings to the Vancouver Police Department,
Speaker 3: who owned the jurisdiction, hoping that there would be action
Speaker 3: taken based on it. It fell flat. Kim Rossmo would
Speaker 3: later say he believed this response stemmed from laziness and
Speaker 3: lack of resources and time, but he also suspected the
Speaker 3: department had no eye idea what to do with this information.
Speaker 3: It was unprecedented research and required out of the box thinking.
Speaker 3: It appears, the police effectively put it in the too
Speaker 3: hard basket and went back to business as usual. As
Speaker 3: women continued to be targeted. Back on the Picton farm,
Speaker 3: Robert and David continued their association with the Howls Angels,
Speaker 3: and the dishevelled property became a central meeting place. There
Speaker 3: were parties, barbecues, lots of drinking, and lots of women,
Speaker 3: but Robert remained an outsider. By this point, the brothers
Speaker 3: were in their early forties, and while David had had
Speaker 3: a lot of different girlfriends, Robert never dated anyone. He
Speaker 3: didn't even interact much with their biker friends. He was
Speaker 3: often seen tending to the barbecue and the pig roasts
Speaker 3: that seemed to be where he was comfortable. He'd become
Speaker 3: friendly with a Filipino immigrant named Pat Casanova, who helped
Speaker 3: him butcher pigs on the farm and had a very
Speaker 3: good recipe for barbecued pork. Together, they started a profitable
Speaker 3: side business. The local RCMP continued to keep an eye
Speaker 3: on the Picten brothers as rumors persisted about a Howl's
Speaker 3: Angels chop shop on the farm. David Picton drew additional
Speaker 3: attention of his own. He was a bad driver who
Speaker 3: had racked up a lot of traffic incidents, including several
Speaker 3: crashes where he was at fault and sued for damages.
Speaker 3: He was also known to cruise the downtown east Side
Speaker 3: to bring women back to the farm. Many people would
Speaker 3: later say that while David Picton acted like well a dickhead,
Speaker 3: underneath it all he was quite intelligent. He ran several
Speaker 3: successful businesses by this point and would often bid on
Speaker 3: large demolition jobs in Vancouver and surrounding areas. He frequently
Speaker 3: won those contracts. In August of nineteen ninety one, a
Speaker 3: young woman named Nancy Clark disappeared, but she was far
Speaker 3: from Vancouver's downtown east Side. She went missing from Vancouver
Speaker 3: Island the city of Victoria. Twenty five year old Nancy
Speaker 3: was a caring and sensible woman, as described by those
Speaker 3: who knew her, and a devoted mother to two daughters,
Speaker 3: aged eight and almost one. She was also an outside
Speaker 3: sex worker, providing for her children by soliciting clients from
Speaker 3: a street corner in Victoria.
Speaker 4: One night.
Speaker 3: She never returned home from work, and her mother was
Speaker 3: immediately concerned. That day, it was Nancy's eldest daughter's birth birthday,
Speaker 3: and she was always there for her children no matter what.
Speaker 3: She would never have missed their birthday. Her mother reported
Speaker 3: her missing. At the time, Nancy Clark's disappearance from Vancouver
Speaker 3: Island was determined to be likely not related to the
Speaker 3: growing list of women going missing on the mainland.
Speaker 4: But what law.
Speaker 3: Enforcement didn't know at the time was that David Picton
Speaker 3: was working a demolition job on the island, and that
Speaker 3: his brother Robert had gone with him to help. They
Speaker 3: were both on Vancouver Island at the very same time
Speaker 3: that Nancy Clark went missing in nineteen ninety one, and
Speaker 3: more than ten years later, Nancy's DNA would be found
Speaker 3: on their farm on the mainland. Of the thirty three
Speaker 3: women to be forensically linked to the Picton farm, Nancy
Speaker 3: Clark was the earliest to disappear. This number is only
Speaker 3: a reflection of what could still be found by that point.
Speaker 3: The following year, David Picton found himself on the police's
Speaker 3: raidar yet again.
Speaker 4: A female employee.
Speaker 3: At one of his excavation sites reported to police that
Speaker 3: she encountered David inside an on site trailer. He pushed
Speaker 3: her up against a wall and groped her genitals. Over
Speaker 3: her genes, but another employee entered the trailer and interrupted him.
Speaker 3: According to the woman, as David Picton left the trailer,
Speaker 3: he threatened to rape and kill her. He said, I'm
Speaker 3: going to wape you. He couldn't say the word with
Speaker 3: an R.
Speaker 4: He said it twice. He was laughing like crazy.
Speaker 3: David claimed he only slapped the woman on the butt
Speaker 3: and denied threatening her. He was charged with sexual assault.
Speaker 3: The woman would report that after that, another employee warned
Speaker 3: her to leave town, saying they're going to kill you.
Speaker 3: They're going to cut you up and spread you all
Speaker 3: over where you won't be found.
Speaker 4: Terrified, she left town.
Speaker 3: David Picton was found guilty of sexual assault, but the
Speaker 3: jury noted it was moderate. He got away with a
Speaker 3: year probation and a fine of one thousand dollars. That
Speaker 3: was nineteen ninety two. The poor woman lived in fear
Speaker 3: for many years. She would later be awarded forty five
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in damages after suing David Picton for inflicting
Speaker 3: psychological trauma back at the farm. Robert's trips to the
Speaker 3: downtown east Side were becoming second nature, and he looked
Speaker 3: for more opportunities to visit. When his brother got a
Speaker 3: demolition contract in North Vancouver, he saw his chance. He
Speaker 3: would be driving near the downtown Eese Side on the way,
Speaker 3: and with just a slight detour, he could buy himself
Speaker 3: the company of a sex worker or two. But after
Speaker 3: a while Robert got tired of the daily commute. He
Speaker 3: had an old motor home parked on the farm, so
Speaker 3: he gave it a tune up and drove it to
Speaker 3: the demolition site. He lived there for the duration of
Speaker 3: the job, saying he was acting as a site security officer.
Speaker 4: Out of hours.
Speaker 3: Now living much closer to the downtownees Side, Robert began
Speaker 3: spending more time there. He frequented local bars, places where
Speaker 3: many of the area's most vulnerable residents gathered. He settled
Speaker 3: into a routine. He didn't do alcohol or drugs, so
Speaker 3: only during soda himself, but when he found a sex
Speaker 3: worker he was interested in, he would give her money
Speaker 3: to buy drugs for herself as an incentive. Then he
Speaker 3: would persuade her to go with him back to his
Speaker 3: farm to keep partying. The situation on the ground in
Speaker 3: the downtown east Side was becoming a crisis. Sex workers
Speaker 3: were organizing to try and keep themselves safe. They gathered
Speaker 3: at the Women's Information Safehouse, also known as WISH, a
Speaker 3: non profit organization that operated a drop in center on
Speaker 3: the downtown east Side, right in the middle of the
Speaker 3: main strip, where sex workers could get a hot meal,
Speaker 3: a space to rest and get ready, and access nursing.
Speaker 4: And counseling services.
Speaker 3: While at WISH, these women traded stories about their clients
Speaker 3: and updated their list of johns or tricks who had
Speaker 3: given them the creeps or shown violent or perverse ten tes.
Speaker 3: They passed their bad trick lists to the police, with
Speaker 3: descriptions of the men and in many cases, license plate numbers.
Speaker 3: It's at this time that the name Willie Picton started
Speaker 3: appearing on this.
Speaker 4: Bad Trick list.
Speaker 3: The police promised to review the information, but women continued
Speaker 3: to go missing or turn up murdered in some alleyway.
Speaker 3: Kathleen Watley was known as a vivacious black woman, petite
Speaker 3: in stature. She lived in the United States for some
Speaker 3: years before she moved to Vancouver, and she lived a
Speaker 3: difficult life. About five years earlier, she survived in attempted
Speaker 3: murder during a shooting stemming from cocaine use. She gave
Speaker 3: birth to two young children with a common law partner
Speaker 3: in Vancouver, but the couple had recently separated and Kathleen
Speaker 3: was relying on sex work to help makends meet. In
Speaker 3: June of nineteen ninety two, thirty nine year old Kathleen
Speaker 3: Watley left her two young children with a babysitter and
Speaker 3: went to meet a client on the downtown east Side.
Speaker 4: She was never seen again.
Speaker 3: Then there was Elsie Sebastian Jones, a member of the
Speaker 3: pache Dat First Nation on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
Speaker 3: Elsie was among the one hundred and fifty thousand Indigenous
Speaker 3: children sent to a residential school. Often undefunded and overcrowded.
Speaker 3: The residential schools program was government sponsored and run by
Speaker 3: religious organizations with the goal to eradicate Indigenous culture and
Speaker 3: replace it with the Western culture of European settlers. Thousands
Speaker 3: of students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse and experimentation,
Speaker 3: and thousands died right on their school grounds. According to
Speaker 3: the Truth and reconcs Conciliation Commission, the Residential school system
Speaker 3: is often associated with Canada's early history, but these schools
Speaker 3: actually ran for more than a century until the last
Speaker 3: one closed in nineteen ninety six. Elsie Sebastian Jones suffered
Speaker 3: repeated physical abuse during her years at residential school, leaving
Speaker 3: lasting emotional scars that shaped most of her adult life.
Speaker 3: She gave birth to the first of four children when
Speaker 3: she was just sixteen. She also struggled with depression, substance
Speaker 3: use disorder, unstable relationships, and many periods of instability in
Speaker 3: her life. After attending several treatment programs followed by relapse,
Speaker 3: her children eventually went to live with relatives and Elsie
Speaker 3: moved to Vancouver. Her daughters would say she always kept
Speaker 3: in touch with them, later describing their mother as a smart,
Speaker 3: beautiful woman who endured racism throughout her life and fell
Speaker 3: through the cracks of a system that failed to support her.
Speaker 3: One night in nineteen ninety two, Elsie cooked dinner for
Speaker 3: her daughters, then left to get drugs. She was never
Speaker 3: seen again. She was forty years old. The following year,
Speaker 3: Teresa Louise Triff vanished. Very little is known about Teresa,
Speaker 3: other than the fact that she was a thirty one
Speaker 3: year old white woman with blonde, curly hair and blue eyes.
Speaker 3: All in all, fifteen women had vanished from the downtown
Speaker 3: east Side in the fourteen years between nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 3: and nineteen ninety three. By this point, the Picton brothers
Speaker 3: were not getting along at all. Their living arrangements had
Speaker 3: always been tumultuous, with both Robert and Da David living
Speaker 3: in the rambling farmhouse sharing the one bathroom. In many respects,
Speaker 3: they were different. David was the short and stocky brother,
Speaker 3: thought of as a foul mouthed jerk who liked having
Speaker 3: lots of people over to party, whereas Robert was lanky
Speaker 3: and slim, not very social, and he often creeped people out.
Speaker 3: They both had bad tempers and bad hygiene, although Roberts
Speaker 3: was said to be much worse. Overall, it was not
Speaker 3: working in the farmhouse. There was no privacy in no
Speaker 3: escape from each other. After a massive blow up, Robert
Speaker 3: decided to move into the old motor home on the
Speaker 3: other side of the property, and David stayed in the farmhouse.
Speaker 3: Despite the filthy conditions, they always seemed to have women
Speaker 3: around that needed housing and were willing to do domestic
Speaker 3: work like laundry and cleaning if they could stay on
Speaker 3: the farm. A woman named Tanya would testify that she
Speaker 3: needed a place to stay and knew the Pictons because
Speaker 3: her stepfather worked on the farm slaughtering pigs. Robert ushered
Speaker 3: her into his motor home and allowed her to stay
Speaker 3: there with him. Tanya described their relationship as like uncle
Speaker 3: and niece. They slept in separate areas in the motor
Speaker 3: home and there was no sex. She liked and trusted
Speaker 3: Robert so much that she ended up staying there for
Speaker 3: a year and a half. Tanya said there was a
Speaker 3: constant stream of people coming and going from the farm,
Speaker 3: and she often returned to the motor home very late
Speaker 3: at night to find that Robert wasn't there. She would
Speaker 3: testify she just assumed he was working late. She had
Speaker 3: no idea that he was meeting sex workers on the
Speaker 3: downtown east Side. The list of missing women continued to grow.
Speaker 3: Lee Minor grew up near San Francisco, one of four children.
Speaker 3: Her family would describe her as charismatic and fiercely loyal,
Speaker 3: with striking auburn hair and a magnetic personality. As a teenager,
Speaker 3: Lee's life was uphended when her father died suddenly of
Speaker 3: a heart attack, and years later her own husband would
Speaker 3: die by suicide in her arms. The compounded grief left
Speaker 3: her devastated, and she began using heroin to cope. Lee
Speaker 3: became a mother in nineteen eighty six and moved to
Speaker 3: Edmonton for a fresh start. She tried to stop using drugs,
Speaker 3: but it proved difficult, and her child eventually went to
Speaker 3: live with family. In nineteen ninety three, she moved to
Speaker 3: the Downtown east Side and engaged in sex work to
Speaker 3: survive and fund her substance use disorder. That December of
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety three, thirty four year old Lee phoned her
Speaker 3: sister to ask for money to visit their mother for Christmas.
Speaker 3: Her family waited for her all day, gifts unopened, but
Speaker 3: she never arrived. At first, they assumed she just hadn't
Speaker 3: kept her promise, but when weeks went by with no word,
Speaker 3: Lee's mother went looking for her on the downtown east
Speaker 3: Side and reported her missing. She would later say the
Speaker 3: police showed little interest. Then there's Angela Arsenal, who was
Speaker 3: just seventeen years old when she disappeared. Angela grew up
Speaker 3: with her mother and stepfather, moving several times before eventually
Speaker 3: settling in the Vancouver area. Angela reportedly started using drugs
Speaker 3: in high school and dropped out in grade nine. Her
Speaker 3: mother would later tell The Surrey Leader that she left
Speaker 3: home and briefly became involved in sex work on the
Speaker 3: downtown Knees Side, but her boyfriend helped her get off
Speaker 3: the streets. Angela was street smart and capable of looking
Speaker 3: after herself, but she was also being harassed by a
Speaker 3: pimp who wanted her to return to sex work. In
Speaker 3: August of nineteen ninety four, Angela spoke with her mother
Speaker 3: on the phone, making plans to go shopping for shower curtains.
Speaker 3: She was living with her boyfriend by this time, and
Speaker 3: that night they met downtown for dinner and shopping with
Speaker 3: another friend. She caught the bus home by herself for
Speaker 3: some reason. When her boyfriend arrived home later, Angela's purse, ID,
Speaker 3: cash and shopping bags were there, but the seventeen year
Speaker 3: old was missing. She was never seen again. During this time,
Speaker 3: Robert Picton had continued his trips into West Coast Reduction
Speaker 3: to dump his barrels of waste and remains. Sometimes he
Speaker 3: wasn't able to make the trip himself, and West Coast
Speaker 3: would send a truck out to.
Speaker 4: Pick them up.
Speaker 3: He didn't really need an excuse to go to the
Speaker 3: downtown east Side anymore, so this arrangement became more and
Speaker 3: more frequent. One driver would later testify that he made
Speaker 3: regular trips out to the Picton farm for four years
Speaker 3: in the early to mid nineties. He remembered glancing into
Speaker 3: the barrels periodically and was often surprised to see chunks
Speaker 3: of meat in it, some of them quite big chunks.
Speaker 3: This struck him as unusual. Most farmers and butchers carved
Speaker 3: off every piece of meat they could find. That's where
Speaker 3: the money was, but Robert Picton was just throwing it away.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. In Part two, there's an alarming spike
Speaker 3: and vulnerable women going missing from the downtown Knee Side.
Speaker 3: Two would live to tell their stories. We'll circle back
Speaker 3: to Wendy, who escaped from the farm after a vicious
Speaker 3: knife fight with Robert Pickton and was rushed to emergency surgery,
Speaker 3: still with the handcuffs he put around her wrist. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the Picton brothers become officially wealthy and opened the infamous
Speaker 3: party venue known as Piggy's palace, serving alcohol and barbecue
Speaker 3: pork to bikers, sex workers, and even local city officials.
Speaker 3: The next episode will be available in a week. You
Speaker 3: can listen ad free and early on our premium feeds.
Speaker 3: For the full list of resources, sources, research studies, and
Speaker 3: anything else you want to know about the podcast, see
Speaker 3: the show notes or visit Canadian Truecrime dot caa we
Speaker 3: donate monthly to those facing injustice. Proceeds from this series
Speaker 3: are going to the Wish Drop In Center, society supporting
Speaker 3: street based sex workers on Vancouver's downtown east Side since
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four. Special thanks to Danielle Parody for family
Speaker 3: outreach and additional research. Audio editing was by Crosby Audio
Speaker 3: and Eric Crosby voiced the disclaimer. Our senior producer is
Speaker 3: Lindsey Eldridge and Carol Weinberg is our script consultant. Research writing,
Speaker 3: narration and sound design was by me and the theme
Speaker 3: songs were composed by We Talk of Dreams. I'll be
Speaker 3: back soon with another Canadian True Crime episode.
Speaker 4: See you then,