Testimonies were missing details and therefore open to reasonable doubt, and some prosecution witnesses testified on behalf of the defendant! Bystanders were wont to ask, "Do prosecutors have the actual person who committed the murders?" after listening to the testimonies.
Robert William Pickton had been cloyingly admitting to knowing about body parts on the premises but pleading he killed no one. He faced seemingly terrified witnesses who are resigned to small comprehension of events. One prosecution witness expressed warm feelings for Willy Pickton.
To be honest the testimony became meaningless babble to outsiders during a parade of drug-addled recollections. Some of the variations induced by the defence were making Willy Pickton burst into laughter at the witnesses from inside the glass-encased prisoner’s box during cross examinations. This avuncular chap faced 26 murder charges! The defense implicated one of the witnesses in sex-trade homicides around Edmonton until Mr. Justice James Williams slammed the door on it.
If they wanted to wrap this trial up fast, the work of the prosecution had become difficult, for despite initial suggestions by the defense it appears Willy Pickton was far from a clinical idiot.
The Downtown Eastside of Vancouver remains a mysterious neighbourhood to most Canadians (and entirely understood by the amalgam of people in it). It is North America’s worst slum, over a dozen square blocks reserved for an overwhelmingly victimized hoard, of whom dozens (possibly hundreds) of women were led to grisly deaths, dying at the hands of an madman and the court found the madman is Willy Pickton.
Justice Williams had decided to split the case in two parts, proceeding on six charges for the murders of Georgina Papin, Serena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, and Marnie Frey.
So much DNA was everywhere it became confounding to the peaked capped authorities tasked with investigated this macabre conduct, who upon entering the premises immediately found body parts including skulls, hands, and feet, stuffed in slop buckets. The farm went on lock down and other bones were found and Willy Pickton had nothing to say, except, “I didn’t do it.”
On the other hand, video-taped evidence showed him confessing to forty-nine murders in the cell. The conversation centred on why they were in lock-up. Willy proved cagey with the cop but slyly suggested he was going to be to 'stopping' at 50. Then, suddenly, Willy Pickton was famous, name and face splashed onto newspapers the world over.
When he was in police interrogation, he said, "You're making me more of a mass murderer than I am," mocking the interrogators having difficulty distinguishing DNA in the quagmire of his farm sheds and dwelling. Once he muttered, "I was gonna stop at five-0.” They showed him newspapers and Willy Pickton parried, "That don't mean I did it.” He may have admitted something but added to his confession that others were doing some of the killing, namely, "Dinah did some of it."
Regarding victims, Willy Pickton refused to admit feeding the pigs their remains. Others said he fed the pigs and disposed of other parts through a Pickton family garbage collection company (supplying truck driving jobs). Crown Counsel Derrill Prevett presented a chain of evidence linked to Pickton's property, including skulls cut in half with hands and feet stuffed in them.
Crown Counsel John Ahern described six women living troubled lives. The defence agreed wholeheartedly noting each victim had literally dozens of ‘encounters’ with police, social workers, hospitals, clinics, outreach centres, and detox units. These women seemed to be making frantic rounds in the social services dragnet. Pickton’s defence touched lightly on the subject but the dates for each disappearance can be recounted precisely by the Crown. Many victims were known for trying to leave the mean streets to return to motherhood or families.
Six victims known to be missing from particular dates are joined by many others who circulated through the over-crowded DES out to the over-crowded Piggy Palace and back to the DES. Regular contact with victims stopped abruptly (only in rare instances reports of a disappearance arrived a long time later).
These victims disappeared from ‘96 to ‘01 and police implicate Willy Pickton in missing persons related to the Lower Mainland sex trade as far back to ‘83, implying he started at age 33. On the other hand, police candidly admit Willy Pickton is joined by other suspects. To conceive of a mob of serial killers working as a team is strange indeed, for what is the motivation?
Willy Pickton and Dinah Taylor were both heard ranting about drug debts. History informs that street level situations of mayhem often involve drugs by and large. Scott Chubb, key prosecution witness, gave hearsay testimony to gross indignity to human remains and alluded to cannibalism, in relation to Willy Pickton selling meat over the fence. This takes the killer’s motive into the realm of strange psychosis.
Chubb refrained from eating at the farm, noteworthy for a starving man at the end of a drug binge, but, once informed of the horrors in his midst, he apparently balked at the pig farmer’s generosity. It was he who initially reported in ’02 that the property was patrolled by an aggressive 600 lb. Boar, that it was terrifying.
Police say Chubb broke the case after working as Willy Pickton’s employee on a garbage truck with extended periods at the wheel. Chubb’s solid work history was matched by zealous use of drugs, but he testified to seeing Willy Pickton visit a shopping mall with Georgina Papin.
As time wore on between the two in the late 90’s Willy Pickton offered Chubb a moonlighting job, suggesting, 'Kill them with a syringe filled with windshield washer fluid,' because drug addicts never get autopsied."
Chubb fled when upon learning about the inhuman conduct. He added penetrating testimony about a serial killing machinery facing exposure by David Francis Pickton, Willy Pickton's brother. Chubb reported the brother’s threat against a conspiracy of killers if Willy Pickton was convicted of murder.
Then came Gina Houston discussing a conversation with Pickton, in Feb. 20, '02, after it was established he was the primary suspect. Pickton might have been entering the denial phase of an alleged killing spree (if such a phase exists), and prosecution witness Houston agreed with defence lawyer Marilyn Sandford, stating, “Pickton said, ‘I did not kill Mona,’” or anyone else.
Instead, said defence attorney Sandford, he pointed the finger at Dinah Taylor, a pig farm roommate of 18 months who was once investigated but never charged. Houston said Pickton said Dinah Taylor shot some of the girls, and Houston testified Willy Pickton was unable to stop events occurring down on the pig farm. The killing swirling around the place was beyond Willy Pickton's control.
She described a telephone conversation with a mellow Willy Pickton interrupted by a screaming woman followed by another screaming woman, then a screaming man, and a plea from Willy Pickton, “Don’t do it here,” and finally, possibly, a life-emitting gasp.
The prosecution’s problem lay in the credibility of witnesses. The defence asked if they were lying and about the accuracy of memories. Piggy Palace Good Time Society facilities hosted recurring drug-drenched orgies, entree into which did not permit those of a clear head. Some nights this Pickton property held over 2,000 drug-crazed denizens. Police forced Piggy's Palace to scale back in ’98 after a rape victim escaped, partially shackled, but police never stopped it completely.
Gina Houston returned to testify about continued affection for Willy Pickton. She said it was his close friend Dinah Taylor killing women on his property.
A word about Dinah Taylor, she is from a central Canadian First Nation who vehemently, categorically, and dismissively denies involvement in murder. She lived on the pig farm for 18 months at the height of disappearances and knew several victims from shared experiences in the DES.
It was the testimony of Lynn Ellingsen placing Willy Pickton “standing covered in blood next to a dead woman who was hanging from a chain." Defence lawyer Richard Brooks wanted Ellingsen to admit to suffering psychotic episodes of drug-induced hallucination instead of seeing Willy Pickton in the barn with a dead Georgina Papin. Questions fell upon Ellingsen in two separate times on the witness stand to explain dates, which she found impossible to remember.
Demonstrating a classic case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Ellingsen wept through much of her testimony. She was bad at remembering dates and testified Willy Pickton took her on a ride in his magic bus to the DES in Vancouver. They picked up Georgina Papin and together the crack cocaine use rose to a fever pitch (Ellingsen was the first to say Willy Pickton directly influenced her drug use).
After all of these sketchy descriptions are taken together Willy Pickton emerges as a pretty generous guy, perhaps an enabler of drug use, doling out portions to maintain control over situations and people. Most witnesses were in a state of denial about his role in the drug frenzy but Ellingsen testified Willy Pickton managed the drug program down on the pig farm and at the registered charitable Piggy Palace.
Here was a world disguised by 'philanthropy' with needy addicts the potential volunteers. Ellingsen testified she had fallen for this philanthropy and one night Georgina Papin, too, fell to a different level. First they shared a crack pipe in Willy’s company at Willy Pickton’s behest. Ellingsen said Georgina was alive and wiped on crack cocaine in the evening but dead and mutilated before the crack of dawn.
Ellingsen alone spoke to these monstrous details. "I saw this body. It was hanging. Willy pulled me inside behind the door. Walked me over to the table. Made me look. Told me if I was to say anything, I'd be right beside her." The defence implied Ellingsen was coached to say what police wanted because she has long been a dependent of theirs and would say whatever they needed.
Before the trial wound down, 37 year old Andrew Bellwood was prosecution witness 97 and the last long-time crack-cocaine addict to testify. He was down and out meeting Willy Pickton in Jan ‘99 at the Pickton farm, then hanging around the property from Feb ‘99 to mid-Mar ‘99, and, on a couple of occasions, staying over in Willy Pickton's trailer.
The guy-talk was over the top with Pickton telling Bellwood about prostitutes being “sometimes hesitant about leaving the DES,” so he offered incentives like a choice of drugs, heroin or cocaine, or more money. It was Bellwood who testified how Willy Pickton demonstrated a modus operandi for sex and murder, and Willy finished with Bellwood by saying he gutted the bodies and fed the remains to the pigs. Still nobody declared why the rampant killing spree might have occurred. He was convicted of six and proceedings on 20 more murder charges were stayed.
Freelance Writing by Mack McColl in 2008
INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
Robert Willy Pickton, Canadian Serial Killer, Convicted of Six Murders on Pickton farm
Faced 26 Charges of Murder