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CANADA - JULY, END OF, '07 - At opposite ends of Canada this year are two gruesome trials underway, each one searching ever deeper into the workings of a human heart, a misunderstood part of mankind’s nature (apparently people cannot live without one, but it appears some people get by without one for extended periods, while committing atrocities). Both trials are imbuing Canadians with horror; one is the trial of Desire Munyaneza for Rwandan crimes against humanity (under Canadian law) on a break in Montreal until Sep ‘07.
In New Westminster, BC, summer heralded only a brief stop of two weeks (until Aug 7 07) in the trial of Robert William (Willy) Pickton, Port Coquitlam, BC, the ‘uptown’ pig farmer accused of first degree murder of 26 women. To paint a believable picture of an unbelievable event remains a challenge for Willy Pickton’s prosecutors.
With confusion over forensic evidence as intended by the accused or not, prosecutors resorted to a cast of least-credible witnesses imaginable for primary testimony. No matter how long the witnesses testify, every drug-addled story is bizarre, often unreal, and hardly makes sense of time and circumstances on the farm, in the slaughterhouse, or surrounding the deaths.
Testimonies have missing details and this suggests reasonable doubt, and some prosecution witnesses testify on behalf of the defendant! After listening to them all, bystanders are wont to ask, 'Do prosecutors have the actual person who committed the murders?'
Willy Pickton himself has been cloying, admitting to knowing of body parts on the Pickton pig farm premises but pleading he killed no one. He faces terrified witnesses who seem resigned to small comprehension of events. One prosecution witness expressed warm feelings for Willy Pickton.
The testimony became meaningless to outsiders during a parade of drug-addled recollections. As the summer heat rose Canadians tuned out and many details failed to register with the public. Some of the variations introduced by the defence made Willy Pickton burst into laughter at the witnesses from inside the glass-encased prisoner’s box.
(And this avuncular chap faces 26 murder charges!) The defence implicated one of the witnesses in sex-trade homicides around Edmonton until Mr. Justice James Williams slammed the door on it.
If they want to wrap this up fast the work of the prosecution becomes difficult, for despite initial suggestions by the defence it appears Willy Pickton is far from a clinical idiot. The defendant realizes unless the IOC makes serial killing an Olympic event for 2010, the Crown, and indeed society in general, might prefer to end the dredging of details (leaving parts of the story to historians?)
Perhaps the future holds either a long stay in proceedings of this trial or a mistrial, because Willy Pickton would be smart to prolong the defence into the next decade and probably will, and probably has money to do it. Furthermore, he's not cracking, and frankly Willy Pickton appears comfortable in the milieu of the court.
The DES (of Vancouver) remains a mysterious neighbourhood to most Canadians (and entirely understood by the amalgam of 70 percent Aboriginal people in it). Most DES residents are raised in poverty, many on Indian Reserves, and these folks have transplanted their archetypal 'poverty' along with a neighbourhood resembling an Indian Reserve, which puts them in places like the DES.
North America’s worst slum is ten square blocks reserved for an overwhelmingly Aboriginal citizenry. From this space dozens (possibly hundreds) of women were led away to grisly deaths, some dying at the hands of an indubitable madman allegedly Willy Pickton.
Justice Williams decided to split the case in two, to proceed 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 assigned to stopping this macabre conduct, who 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.”
During the opening hours of Jan 22 07 the Crown stated Willy Pickton confessed to forty-nine murders and rolled videotape of a policeman ‘planted’ in the cell. The conversation centred on why they were in lock-up. Willy proved cagey with the cop. Then, suddenly, Willy Pickton was famous; his face splashed across newspapers the world over.
And then he was under police interrogation, and, Willy Pickton replied, "You're making me more of a mass murderer than I am," mocking the interrogators having problems distinguishing DNA. Once, he muttered, "I was gonna stop at 5-0." They showed him newspapers, and Willy Pickton parried, "That don't mean I did it."
He may have admitted something, but in doing so he added to a 'confession' others did some of the killing, namely, "Dinah did some of it." [Dinah's note: 'Willy: TAKE A BATH! It's been SEVEN days!'] Regarding the victims Willy Pickton refused to admit feeding pigs their remains. Others have said he described doing it, feeding pigs and disposing of other parts through a Pickton family garbage collection company (whose trucks create driving jobs).
Crown Counsel Derrill Prevett presented a chain of evidence from the Pickton's property, including skulls cut in half with hands and feet stuffed in them. Crown Counsel John Ahern described six women living deeply troubled lives. The defence must have agreed wholeheartedly, noting each victim had literally dozens of encounters with either police, social workers, hospitals, clinics, outreach centres, and detox units.
The women were seen making these frantic rounds, chased by demons or real flesh and blood threats, while Pickton’s defence would probably touch lightly on the subject. The dates for disappearances can be precisely recounted by police. Many victims were known for trying to leave the mean DES streets to return to motherhood or families.
The six victims in these proceedings were known as missing from exact dates, and 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 these victims stopped abruptly. (It is rare instances that reports of a disappearance arrived a long time later).
These six victims had suddenly disappeared between ‘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, from a minimum 50 to a couple hundred. 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 underway, 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 the property patrolled by an aggressive 600 lb. boar, that it was terrifying.
Police say Chubb broke the case after working as a Pickton employee on a garbage truck for an extended period at the wheel. Chubb’s solid work history was matched by zealous use of drugs. It was his testimony that puts Willy Pickton on a visit to a shopping mall with Georgina Papin at the time immediately prior to her disappearance.
As time wore on between the two Willy Pickton offered Chubb a moonlighting job in the late 90's, suggesting, 'Kill them with a syringe filled with windshield washer fluid,' because drug addicts never get autopsied.
Chubb fled the pig farm situation upon learning about the inhuman conduct, and 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 is convicted of murder. Chubb openly expressed the physical threat felt by all these street-level witnesses.
Next came Gina Houston discussing a conversation with Willy Pickton after it was established, in Feb. 20 02, he was the primary suspect. Willy 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 again pointed the finger at Dinah Taylor, a pig farm roommate of 18 months once investigated but never charged. Houston said Willy 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 crediblity of the testimony may come into doubt because of Houston competing for Pickton's affections with Dinah Taylor.
She described a telephone conversation with a chatty 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 lies in credibility of these witnesses. The defence keeps asking each of them over and over if they are lying, and, what exactly are they remembering, about the accuracy and veracity of these memories. Piggy Palace Good Time Society facilities hosted recurring drug-drenched orgies, entree into which does not permit those of a clear head. Some nights this Pickton property held over 2,000 drug-crazed denizens. Police forced Piggy 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. Dinah Taylor (no pictures available) is from a central Canadian First Nation presently living without police protection 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. Perhaps in the eyes of some, maybe police, she was incredibly lucky and dodgy to survive.
The Lynn Ellingsen testimony placed Willy Pickton on the killing floor with a victim, "standing covered in blood, next to a dead woman who was hanging from a chain." Defence lawyer Richard Brooks wanted Ellingsen to admit 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 occasions on the witness stand) to explain dates, which she finds impossible to remember.
In a classic case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Ellingsen wept through much of her own 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 all together the crack cocaine use rose to a fever pitch, and Ellingsen was the first to say Willy Pickton directly influenced her drug use.
In fact, aside from the horrific sidebars in all these sketchy descriptions Willy Pickton emerges as a pretty generous guy, but perhaps an enabler of drug use, doling out portions to maintain control over situations and people. Even so, most witnesses are 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 his 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 has spoken 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 want, because she has long been a dependent of theirs and will say whatever they need.
Before the two week break, 37 year old Andrew Bellwood became prosecution witness number 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, Pickton telling Bellwood about prostitutes, "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 finished by saying he gutted the bodies and fed the remains to the pigs.
The trial adjourned for a two-week break after Bellwood’s testimony concluded. Still nobody has testified about why the rampant killing spree might have occurred.
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