Robert Pickton /// Part 1 /// 768 | Forensic Files

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[Applause] n [Music] [Music] welcome to True crb garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who loves sandal season here is the captain just don't
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front yeah BW R and beer Ron would you like to hear us talk more about the case the boys on the tracks well you can do
so if you're signed up on patreon or apple subscription and Colonel that's enough of the beers all right everybody
gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime serial killer Robert pton six
counts of second degree murder serial killer 26 women serial killer pig farm pig farm
serial killer p [Music] serial killer our true crime story this week starts off with the missing women from
the low track one by one the women vanished one day they're on the street struggling to eek out an existence
despite obstacles confronting their daily lives and then the next day they are gone
at first maybe it was five women but then five became 10 and 10 became 20 and the cycle
continued new girls and women found themselves on the streets of the low track and then they too vanished the
women continued to disappear Into Thin Air never to be seen again as the years passed 30 missing
became 40 as it turns out some of these women were taken by a monster a serial killer one so evil that he mangled and
disposed of their bodies in unspeakable ways this is true crime garage and this is the case of Canada's
most notorious serial killer serial killer Robert Pon six counts of second degree murder serial
killer 26 women serial killer pig farm pig farm Vancouver Canada a city on Canada's western coast
surrounded by mountains famous for its ethnically diverse population of over 600,000 people within the city limits
and 2.5 million in the Greater Vancouver area like most large cities Vancouver has its seis side but one historic part
of the city the downtown east side is known as being one of the worst inner City environments in North America this
area known as the low track is the poorest neighborhood in all of Canada and it is a hotbed of drugs and abuse
poverty violence mental illness homelessness and sex work this including underage prostitution about 8,000 people
live in this forsaken neighborhood and a large portion of the population of low track area is Aboriginal or First Nation
Canadians the area was described by missing people.net as follows quote no other slum or ghetto in the country
matches the squalor of this 10 block Urban Wasteland with its rundown hotels and pawn shops stained and fractured
sidewalks gutters and Alleyways littered with garbage used condoms and discarded
hypodermic needles end quote the low track is Vancouver's equivalent of the infamous Skid Row drug gangs
stake out their territory drug addicted women sell their bodies to pay for drugs
and the neighborhood has the highest HIV infection rate in North America with an
estimate 25% of the population being infected one of the most disturbing aspects of the
low track is the so-called Kitty stroll where child sex workers walk the streets
prostituting themselves to whoever comes along again again according to missing people.net a 1995 survey of downtown
east sides working Girls Revealed that 73% of them entered the sex trade as children and the same percent were unwed
mothers averaging three children each of those 90% had lost children to the state
fewer than half knew where their children were sometime in the early 1990s no one is really sure exactly when
men but female sex workers Andor drug addicted women started disappearing from the low track of course it is impossible
to say when the first disappearance occurred or who was the first victim to vanish this area was constantly seeing
transient people coming in and out dying of disease or drug overdoses and living
under the radar with no fixed addresses and sometimes evading law enforcement themselves of course some women surely
just moved away without leaving a forwarding address died of natural or from drugs but eventually around the
mid90s people familiar with the low track began to notice that there was seemingly a discernible pattern of
downtown Eastside women disappearing Without a Trace specifically in September of 1998 an
Aboriginal group sent The Vancouver Police Department a list of victims alleged edly murdered in downtown east
side with a demand for a thorough investigation authorities examined the 40 person list and ruled out some as
some of the listed victims had died from disease or drugs and others had left Vancouver and were found to be alive and
elsewhere but Vancouver PD detective Dave Dixon Drew up a smaller list of low trck women
who seem to have simply vanished many of them had disappeared in 1997 and the summer of
1998 he came up with 17 names then detective Dave Dixon inspired the VPD to create an investigative task
force the official search for Vancouver's missing women began so like you were saying some of these
individuals were found so the question becomes do we actually have a problem so in July of
1998 they are going to open up an investigation to figure out do we have a problem that's exactly right and the
person that's going to head up this investigation her name is Lori shener she's a Vancouver detective Constable
that had experience with the sex workers of the low track Lori had worked the streets posing as a prostitute to catch
and arrest John's who canvased the low track she had seen the worst of it by this time the violence and degradation
these women were subjected to on a daily basis she also was acutely aware that the Vancouver Police Department officers
who were assigned to the rundown area were generally callous to the situations of the women they were supposed to
protect often ignoring their complaints as either deserved or simply collateral to their chosen Lifestyles but by late
1998 the situation could no longer be ignored we already talked about detective Dixon well Dixon continued to
update his list and reported that the list now contained the names of 35 missing women every one of these women
was a sex worker or drug addict and many were of indigenous descent keep in mind
this is a detective who has already sorted out the persons who died of natural causes or died from disease or
drugs or moved out of the area he's only putting people on this list that are truly missing detective Lori Shiner no
longer with The Vancouver Police Department now goes by the name Laurer shener would later write a book about
the years spent on the missing women investigation and one of the assertions made in the book called The Lonely
section of hell is that few in the VPD appear to take these missing women cases seriously the low track was a non
priority area and these women considered to be the dregs of society were just not
important but the citizens the good citizens in the area were convinced that there was a malevolent Force at work and
they were scared in December of 1995 a young drug addicted sex worker named Sarah D wrote in her Diary quote am I
next is he watching me now stalking me like a predator in its prey waiting for some perfect spot time or my stupid
mistake how does one choose a victim good question if I knew that I would never get snuffed Sarah was reported
missing in April of 1998 and her name became the 17th on the list of truly missing
women it's not clear when thoughts of a serial killer began to materialize detective Lori shener says
now that at the time VPD did not believe that one person was responsible for the
disappearances of all of these women the only Common Thread between the victims were that they were engaged in the sex
trade and had drug dependencies there did not seem to be any other similarities and The Vancouver Police
Department stated publicly that they did did not believe a serial killer was responsible but according to the BBC
despite the lack of any tangible evidence whatsoever several officers within the Vancouver Police Department
began to suspect that a serial killer was in fact at work one of them was detective inspector Dr Kim
rosmo the first police officer in Canada to obtain a doctorate in criminology Ross was the creator of
geographic profiling technique designed to map unsolved crimes and highlight any
pattern or criminal signature that might have gone overlooked by detectives assigned to individual
cases by mid 1998 rosmo noticed that the number of missing women had started to grow to Anonymous levels in 1996 1997
and 1998 and he felt that the increases were statistically significant he said quote I thought the
only explanation for this was a Serial murder case end quote but when rosmo took his findings to the officer in
charge of the major crimes division he was told that because the women tended to live transient lives it
was more likely that they had just drifted away rosmo didn't buy this explanation his experience was that
although the women were drug users and poor they still maintained strong ties to families friends and the community
and they did not typically just disappear but those are haunting statements from the sex worker when she
is saying questioning herself is this individual looking at me are we being hunted and I think what makes this even
more and I think what would make it even more frightening for these workers would
be the idea that you don't know if you know this individual or not has this person been a JN with you before or or
is this a mysterious person that once you get in their car you never return whoever it is if it's one person or
multiple people they are taking people that you know these people however you want to describe their Lifestyles or
their occupation if you will these are essentially their colleagues people that they see day in and day out
night after night and they're Vanishing and the problem here though for law enforcement and as far as you
know law enforcement has things to be concerned with victims in the community are their number one concern or should
be but they also are concerned with things like budgets resources Manpower women power that kind of thing and so
they have a lot of things to that are Incorporated in the business that they are running of keeping the streets safe
and keeping the community safe so the problem for law enforcement will be even though a couple detectives are pointing
out hey this is this is a problem that we need to address and it also seems like a problem that's ramping up yes but
for the higher ups truly no bodies meant no victims and no victims meant no crimes
these women were unpredictable the victims were unpredictable and rootless it seems now and there are many that
will agree with this statement in Canada from the BBC and persons in law enforcement in the Vancouver area that
they simply believed that it wasn't worth dedicating resources to trying to find them or to figure out if there
truly was someone or someone's killing these individuals because again no bodies meant no victims
no victims meant no crime we have other things and other problems to be concerned about as we noted as it seems
these women were considered to be very low priority by VPD and they were hard to track because of their homelessness
addiction issues and transient Lifestyles the most that VPD was willing to do was to offer up a reward for
information on the missing women on the vpd's list and provide a skeleton staff for a new missing persons review team
established in May of 1999 and this was headed up by Lori stener rosmo was demoted eventually
resigned from the force after voicing his concerns about a possible serial killer despite detectives like Shiner
and rosmo the missing women investigation remained underfunded underst staffed and under prioritized
this remained the case even though detective Dixon's list contained the names of
330 plus women who were never seen again and that number as the captain pointed out kept growing it wasn't just that the
VPD wasn't committed to finding these women that impeded the investigation into the disappearances there were often
no specific dates for when these women went missing their pimps fellow sex workers and dealers refused to cooperate
with police making tracking the women almost impossible there were no bodies there was no evidence and there was no
indication even that Foul Play had occurred all the detectives had was a list of names establishing a pattern and
a hunch and yet the list continued to grow to over 40 women by the early 2000s women were taken at an alarming
rate between 1997 and 2001 and no signs of them or their bodies were ever seen again and what a odd situation you seems
like you have half the police department where they're like doesn't matter who cares and the other half going hey
something's not right here but I can't prove to the other side that something's not right there's no body that I could
point to to say look we have somebody kidnapping these victims and killing them so this is a very odd situation
well and not only do you have this list of names that keeps growing of these missing women but think about everything
that's going on in this neighborhood right in this world and the lives that are being led by the victims and the bad
guys that are their dates right so within this group you are going to have men that will victimize these women in
other ways that don't lead to them being missing or murdered right so when you look at this and you try to establish is
there a problem here you have no bodies you have no dates specific dates for one
when a person goes missing and then to top that off you have all these Johns who a percentage of that that
population is victimizing these women in other ways so now if there is a suspect
or you're looking for a suspect you've got a giant group of people that that pool is tooo large even more frustrating
to the police were the attacks by Anonymous Johns who could not be identified right so you have Johns that
you've identified and Johns that are unidentified who may have smacked a woman around beat up a girl on August
10th of 2001 Vancouver Police announced their search for an unidentified rapist who attacked a
38-year-old victim outside of her low trck Hotel a week earlier during the attack police spokesman said the man
claimed responsibility for sexually assaulting and killing other women in the downtown Eastside area the victim
had escaped by leaping from her rapist car she was able to offer a description to authorities but they were unable to
find him he was just one of the many Faceless Men Who visited the low trck area for drugs and anonymous sex
Detectives also looked extensively at known serial killers from other areas who could possibly be responsible for at
least some of the missing women they were particularly interested in Gary Ridgeway the Green River Killer who was
responsible for The Disappearance of 49 women with a similar victimology in Seattle he was identified through DNA in
2001 the VPD discovered that he had visited Vancouver but were unable to establish any connection between
Ridgeway in the missing low track women authorities also took a hard look at Keith Hunter jesperson jerson a long
haul trucker who traveled widely across North America and killed at least eight female sex workers and transients he
encountered while on the road jerson was nicknamed The Happy Face Killer for The
Smiling cartoon signature on letters he sent to police and the media at one point he claimed to be responsible for
160 murders describing his female victims as piles of garbage dumped on the roadside once again however no link
could be found between jerson and the vanished low trck women and the disappearances continued after the Happy
Face Killer was put away police also considered Robert Yates who was convicted in October of 2000 of
killing 13 prostitutes around the Spokane Washington area he was also suspected of two more murders in the
neighboring County but Yates could not be placed in the city of Vancouver for any of the low trck disappearances so
law enforcement had some suspects to look into but they weren't local but they did find a local guy that they
thought was a decent suspect yeah looking closer to home they were very suspicious of 47-year-old Ronald Richard
mccaulay who had spent a decent amount of time in prison about 17 years this for a 19 1982 conviction he was paroled
in 1994 and so that lines up with the timeline that they are looking at here he's out on the streets for the time in
question and he falls on their list because he had several sexual assaults for rape uh beating up sex workers and
he was declared by the state a dangerous offender eventually he does return to prison in the mid to late 90s though so
he's one of these guys that he's only out for a period of time he's on their list one because of his background his
previous crimes but there were four women whose bodies actually were found right we're we're talking about a
list of women whose bodies that were not found being the concern in trying to develop some type of investigation on
that front but in this case as as far as this suspect's concerned he is in question for four women's bodies that
were found near where he lived in July of 1997 Vancouver Police declared mcau a suspect in the 1995 disappearances of
those four women whose names were part of this list of missing low trck women but again bodies that were actually
found well that's a difficult thing when you have a list that's growing you you have to start asking yourself as law
enforcement is this one individual that's responsible for all these disappearance or is it more than one
well and that's going to be an issue that will never really fully resolve itself in this case there's still good
reason to have questions about this even as everything sits today they couldn't prove a case for murder against mcau in
the in the disappearances of these four women but what does take place as this investigation kind of drags on and drags
on another suspect emerged that Drew in everyone's focus in late 1998 Lor shener
the detective who was leading the early stage limited resource missing persons investigation learned that the Crim
Stoppers tip line had recently received a call with a tip the tipster was William Cox a
37-year-old widower who had turned to drugs and alcohol before finding a job at a place called P andb Salvage this
was a business owned by Robert Pickton who was known to many as Willie this business is owned by Robert pikon known
as Willie and his brother David pikon both who lived in Port Coquitlam his cock's foster sister was dating Robert
pikon at some period and that's how he gets the job so in a follow-up call to this tipster the tipster named pikon as
someone who could be responsible for all of the missing Vancouver women th this tip isn't saying you know one or two of
the women on your list this guy that I'm calling about could be responsible for all of the missing Vancouver women
hiscox described the pikon brothers pig farm as a creepy looking place which was
patrolled by a vicious 600lb [Music] boore every great romance story has a happily ever after two people meet fall
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story of pig B cheers to you all talk hands in the air according to this tipster the pikon brothers also ran a
supposed charity that they had created the piggy Palace good time society which was in fact registered with the Canadian
government in 1996 as a nonprofit Society intended to quote organize coordinate manage and operate special
events functions dances shows and exhibitions on behalf of service organizations Sports organizations and
other worthy groups end quote hiscox the tipster said the special events that took place at the piggy Palace which was
really just a converted building on the hog farm he's saying these special events were really just drunken and drug
fueled Raves attended by hundreds of parters including members of the Hell's Angels and the entertainment that was
provided it was by downtown Eastside sex workers that were brought in in Mass for
these parties hiscock said that he had been told by a female friend that she had seen random women's handbags
identification cards and bloody clothing at pik's Farm The Source was a woman named Lisa yields who told his Coxs that
pikon was creepy and could be responsible for the missing women that the public and the media were talking
about Lisa yields told his Cox that pikon had a bunch of syringes even though he didn't use drugs and that the
items she had seen on his farm were quote his trophies but this is beyond bizarre I mean can you imagine work in
the streets and the next thing you you know you're on this creepy Farm going into the piggy Palace this is just
beyond bizarre unfortunately this has happened in multiple cities around the world and more
commonplace than any of us would like to think and I've talked about this before
and it's the God's honest truth drugs are fueling for some of these persons that end up there for this party or the
Raves drugs are fueling and driving and steering the ship on a lot of the decisions being made so being told that
you're going to get paid a little bit of money to go to a party and get drunk and
party with some people or being told that you'll be given Dr drugs or there free drugs there will bring people to
this piggy Palace how however undesirable it is so they start doing some digging on this pikon he's got an
arrest record they start checking out the police run-ins with the piggy Palace and detective shinner becomes convinced
that Robert pikon was a good suspect for at least some of the missing women so she contacts the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police specifically the officer who had arrested and charge Pon in a 1997 attack
on a sex worker this is when pikon had stabbed a sex worker on his farm so the farm is under mounty
jurisdiction nothing had come of this attack though prosecutors eventually refused to press charges because they
felt that the victim was not convincing she was a heroin addict detective CER pushed for picked in to be arrested but
only got an agreement to place pikon under surveillance for 3 days during a period from October 1 to October 10 of
1998 so 3-day period during that period of time on the RCMP surveillance request
form picton's suspected criminal activity offense is listed as information of unknown
reliability reveals that this subject is responsible for The Disappearance of female prostitutes in Vancouver Barnaby
and New Westminster he apparently brings them to his residence whereupon they are
killed unfortunately Captain nothing came of this surveillance RCMP continued to surveil pedon on and off observing
him driving in slow circles in downtown Port Coquitlam visiting a rendering facility and going into a hotel but
nothing criminal was observed during these surveillance periods eventually police became aware that pikon knew he
was under surveillance it'd be hard to run surveillance on pikon because one the the farm land is large and there's
probably a lot of places to hide and he probably knows these little shortcuts from one building to the
next so if he if he doesn't want you to know where he's at on that farm I'm sure
he could disappear pretty quickly the easy part of the surveillance is is you only need to patrol and catch him
picking up a sex worker downtown because that is what the the inquest form the inquiry form is stating we believe this
guy's picking up sex workers downtown taking him back to the farm and then they're never seen again so that's what
you're hoping to catch him in the act of because that well not not completely right I hope the detectives aren't going
well if she never comes back we know we got guy just picking up the sex worker would still be a crime and you're hoping
that that would give you the opportunity to investigate and search that large area like you pointed out because that's
what you really need to do is get your feet on that ground and be looking around to figure out what is going on
there when when he wasn't surveilled or could not be surveilled like you're pointing out in early November of 1998
our good detective gave two photos of pikon to the DC this is deter and identified sex
trade customers to show to women engaged in the sex trade to see if any could identify him as quote a bad date okay so
this is a good technique but it's a little bit flawed because a bad date somebody could get that title numerous
ways some of them just don't pay the sex worker some of them Rob the sex that's not what we're looking for we're looking
for someone that is causing them to disappear and never come back but like you said he had these parties and girls
would go out and work the party and then they'd come back yes they're I mean they're showing up in in droves to some
of these parties and there's Robert pikon and his brother are not the only two being entertained at these parties
in 99 another source came forward with a gruesome story this one also about Robert pikon which verified much of what
had been related to them by the previous tipster this individual is named Ross Caldwell The Source said he had seen
handcuffs in pickton's bedroom and a special freezer in his barn from which he had served quote strange meat which
he believed could have been human this Source also referenced a female friend Lynn
Ellingson who had regularly accompanied pikon to the downtown east side to help him pick up women
apparently pikon had more luck getting women to accompany him if he had a female accomplice he added that pikon
would often wear wigs when he went to the low track area to pick up prostitutes now whether this is because
pikon was balding or in an attempt to disguise his identity we we just don't know and called well didn't know as well
well you know how somebody works at a pizza shop or some fast food restaurant that they
end up kind of stinking and it's like it might be kind of a pizza smell but it's
overwhelming I couldn't imagine what an individual would smell like working on a
pig farm all day exactly well the part of this tip too the the most alarming part of this tip and it has some
credibility and I can explain why but Caldwell the tipster is saying that his female friend the one that gave him
the information Ellingson had told him that she walked into Robert pickton's slaughterhouse and instead of an animal
she sees a female body hanging from a meat hook pikon is there in the slaughterhouse standing beside it
cutting strips of Flesh off of the legs Jesus The credibility or what would make
this seem to be a credible tip was that Ellington explained to Caldwell that she
up until this point in her life did not realize that human fat was yellow in color and which in fact it is pig fat is
white so that gives us a little bit of credibility here and in the wake of this tip the mounties attempted to question
Lynn Ellingson twice the person that provided the information to Caldwell who eventually went to the police right but
both times she refused to talk and denied the story about the body in the barn it turns out she probably afraid
for her life well I thought that initially as well but it turns out that she had attempted to Blackmail pikon so
she's she's going to try to make some money off of what she's seen yeah if I saw a woman hanging by
meet hooks I don't think I would be trying to Blackmail that guy she tells the police that when she was on the farm
every time that she was on the farm she was high on cocaine or some form of narcotic I guess this is a way for her
her to explain away what Caldwell is reporting to them yeah I might have told him that but I
was high every time I was messed up every time I was on that farm you know so they
I'm not saying that they look the other way because the RCMP officers did visit picton's Farm after receiving this
information to interview him this took place on September 1st 1999 he wasn't home but when they reached him by phone
he agrees to be interviewed but it would have to be at night he says because he worked constantly during the day now
this this is where you get angry right like you're okay well your hunch tells you I should investigate this even
though the witness claims to be high all the time when while on the farm he's a piece of [ __ ] I don't know how much
credibility to give to this claim and now she's kind of refusing to talk so I don't have a lot of information here but
they must have had a hunch if they went to the farm they must have had a hunch if they get him on the phone he says yes
I can talk to you in the evening these detectives say well we don't work in the evening yeah it's it's absolutely
ridiculous you lazy fat pieces of [ __ ] do your job it seemed like that was going to be the major speed bump in
talking to this individual now David pikon the brother intervened and the negotiations about the when and where of
said interview he put in his two cents saying you know what officers you can come back during the raining the rainy
season because right now we're just too busy working all the time so for some reason it appears that the RCMP complied
with this request from the pikon brothers and this caused a big delay in talking to them so 4 months later on
January 19th of 2000 RCMP officers finally interviewed Robert pikon he denied of course any involvement with
the missing women much less killing anyone what is most shocking is that pikon did consent to a search of his
property at that time but for reasons that are unknown the RCMP failed to take him up on this invitation Robert pikon
stayed under the radar and women Contin to disappear that's in January of 2000 another officer interviewed pikon on his
farm in March of 2001 but nothing came of this either it came out much later that a 911 hang-up call from pickton's
Trailer had been received on August 12th 1998 but the responding officer decided
that everything appeared fine and concluded that it was simply an error a second 911 call came in in May of 1999
from pickton's property police investigated but saw nothing out of the ordinary so question do you think these
911 calls are coming from victims yeah I'm I wonder what poor woman or or both cases what poor woman had a
moment to get her hands on a phone to call for help only to be cut off right the the call is cut off and then simply
forgotten about as law enforcement you have this suspect but he's he's being cooperative he's saying I'll talk to you
but it's going to have to be at night cuz I I work and you would love to get a search warrant but if the only
eyewitness is saying well I was I was on drugs I I was just making [ __ ] up it's
probably pretty hard to go to a judge and get a search warrant with those types of claims by February of 2000 The
Vancouver Police Department and the RCMP continued to focus on their list of Persons of Interest so they are looking
in it um you know we can we we can and should critique that investigation along the way but they're
they're they're also receiving a lot of criticism in a public uproar for a real investigation to take place about the
all of these missing women so it's almost like reaching a crisis Point by February of 2000 this is when finally
fin Vancouver Police Department and the mounties formed a Joint Task Force titled project evenhanded this was to
coordinate and facilitate this investigation into the missing women this was the task force that interviewed
Gary Ridgeway and the other serial killers that we spoke about the task force notes indicate that they had some
serious suspicions about Robert pikon he had been the subject of those two tips that we talked about he had been accused
of assault in 1997 he had a known History of Violence towards sex workers he tended to pick up prostitutes in one
of his several vehicles and bring them to his property the list goes on and on and on with this individual but it it
seems like in retrospect project evenhanded continued to largely put Robert pikon as a great suspect on the
back burner well old Robert pton is going to go from the back burner to the front burner and
unfortunately and I wish that I wouldn't have to say that this seems to be par for the course for this investigation
but Robert Pickton would eventually be arrested he will be brought down not because of a missing woman he was looked
at because of an illegal gun purchase right they already had all these tips they had evidence seemingly under their
noses but it was because of an illegal gun purchase RCMP conable Nathan Wells was investigating the street drug trade
and he got pik's name from this guy named Scott chub Wells then ran pickton's name through the police
computer and found that pikon the pikon file contained a note to contact Vancouver Police okay so they made a
note on this guy if anybody's looking at him for anything at all contact Vancouver PD the RCMP obtained a warrant
to search his property for an unlicensed firearm or any unlicensed firearm not just the one that they were looking for
and Arrangements were made to have two members of project evenhanded task force on hand for the search this was executed
in February of 2002 February of 2002 this problem's been going on since the mid 90s and
pikon was on their radar since at least 1997 from all the information that I've found RCMP officers and task force
members entered the farm and picked in's trailer one of the officers noted an asthma in Haler labeled with the name of
one of the missing women on the task force list Serena abotsway some other items appearing to
belong to women on the missing women's list were found as well this including wallets and clothing officers stopped
the search immediately and the next day task force officers obtained their own warrant remember I don't know how things
work in Canada but here in the United States your warrants need to be quite specific you don't want this thing to
get jammed up and all gummed up in the court system because you were in there collecting things that weren't on your
original search warrant remember they're only there looking for illegal firearms
and they're finding evidence of other crimes so that search warrant got their Hooves in the door and now they're
finding more evidence to connect him because he's the primary suspect and the missing girls cases so what you're
saying is now they have to go back to the judge and say hey we're not just looking for illegal Firearms we're also
looking for evidence in these other cases yes missing women and potential murder So within hours the pikon
property that address here is 953 Dominion Avenue became the site of the largest crime scene search in Canada
history this Farm was actually not operational despite being referred to as a pig farm for ever since I can remember
much of it was utilized by Mr picton's brother Dave for a top soil business and as a dump site for waste from his
demolition op operation the company's name was DNS bulldozing so this property's filled as
you pointed out Captain it's a large property it's filled with older vehicles that were stripped for their parts these
are just kind of strewn about the property so the property in large resembles a junkyard
with roaming animals garbage and decrepit structures dotting the landscape it's like the Steven Avery
property Robert pikon was as we said arrested but he was originally charged with the weapons offenses this takes
place February 7th but then he's arrested again later that same month and is charged with two counts of
first-degree murder this is for the murders of Serena Abbott way and Mona Wilson both names appeared on the
missing women's list and these women disappeared in 2001 remember he's on their radar at
1997 by the time pikon was arrested in 2002 at least another 14 women had been murdered and by that point we have 5050
women are on that list you know when you're watching a scary movie and you cover your eyes and then
you make a little Gap in your fingers so you can see what's going on that's that's the part of the story I
feel we're at I am there's a part of me that doesn't want to hear the evidence they found on the farm and there's
another part of me that does want to hear it so what did law enforcement find on the pikon farm well you are right to
cover your eyes um but in this situation you probably should cover your ears the
answer is truly horrifying and beyond words in my opinion so during a search of pik's trailer right we're not talking
about the property at large right we're talking about his trailer where he lived
lived and slept they found a loaded 22 revolver with a dildo stretched over the barrel they found boxes of 357 Magnum
Handgun Ammunition night vision goggles two pairs of faux fur lined handcuffs a syringe with 3 ml
of blue liquid inside Spanish Fly aphrodesiac women's clothing and makeup some of it stained with blood duct tape
blood stains four more inhalers all issued to murder victim Serena abbots Way in The Loft so we'll go to his
Workshop in the loft of a workshop on the property investigators found a 357 Magnum handgun so this one's hidden and
concealed unlike the dildo covered 22 that we talked about uh this one I presume to be the illegal firearm that
they were looking for because this is the one that was hidden and concealed one of the conses who was present for
the search tried to describe just how horrified she was at the sites and smells I guess coming from
this pig farm that's no longer in operation sty Pig she describes seeing neglected animals on the farm and I'm
not going to go too in detail with that you can find that information if you want to hop on the old computer machine
and do some research but one part in particular and this would be the finding of human remains which
obviously makes him Robert pi than Prime Suspect number one so here's here's a description for you of of this find it's
a graphic photo a picture of the contents of a green garbage can that was found in the
slaughterhouse next to Robert pickton's trailer that he lived in a brown garbage can had been inserted
into the green garbage can and when the brown one was removed they found remains
of Mona Wilson again who disappeared in December of 2001 they're discovered inside submerged in a pink soup of
decomposing human matter there were two halves of Wilson's skull along with her hands and feet and a 22 caliber bullet
was found in the can with her remains in addition to the remains in the garbage can which belonged to who knew
how many women the heads hands and feet of two more women were found in large pales in a freezer in pickton's Workshop
investigators had been drawn to this freezer because of an overpowering smell emanating from it the women's skulls had
been sawed in half and their hands and feet had been stuffed inside those halves the flesh was in advanced stage
of decomposition what a sicko once these absolutely disgusting and mindboggling finds were discovered authorities
swarmed the 17 acre property and then conducted the largest search in Canadian history pikon is like if you take
Buffalo Bill Ed Gan and dmer and roll them all into one well he's got a lot of resources
unfortunately and it seems like he was able to operate without any detection at all I mean yeah we have some
surveillance we have a couple police visits but 17 Acres the shock here and the surprise here is he didn't live
there alone his brother lived there with him and as we talked about there were all these parties at the piggy Palace
right and that's why we sit here and we say even all these years later we do not
know how many people knew exactly what was going on or or had an idea and just chose to either look the other way
because of greed drugs or what have you but in the end Captain it took 22 months
to search this property and the cost to the Canadian government was $70 million Jesus and how many lives could
they have saved immediately and truly about 7 years far too late however you'd like to look at
it an announcement came from Vancouver Police Department about the developments in in the missing women's case and they
announced the arrest of Robert [Music] Pickton join us back here in the garage for part two and until then be good be
kind and don't litter [Music] if you're on the lookout for true crime stories told from a fresh perspective
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Robert Pickton /// Part 1 /// 768

Part 1 of 2

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This week we tell the tale of Robert Pickton, Canada’s most infamous serial killer. Robert Pickton was a pig farmer turned serial killer who hit it big with the sale of a large portion of the family farm. Instead of using his riches for good, he hosted drug and alcohol fueled parties on his disgusting farm at a place called “The Piggie Palace.” Around this same time women started to disappear from a seedy area of Vancouver, known as “The Low Track.” It took the police longer than it should have to learn that they had a problem, a big one. Some mysteries remain with this case. No one is certain how many people Pickton killed. It also would seem like he must have had some help along the way. Who else is responsible?

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Brief Summary

The episode details Robert Pickton's serial killings of women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and the investigation's numerous failures.

Key points

The Disappearance of Women in Vancouver. A chilling account of women vanishing from the low track, raising fears of a serial killer.
Detective's Struggle for Justice. Detective Lori Shiner's fight to bring attention to the missing women cases.
The Emergence of Robert Pickton. A tipster names Robert Pickton as a suspect in the disappearances of women.
The Piggy Palace Parties. The Pikon brothers hosted wild parties that attracted many, including sex workers.
Credibility of a Gruesome Tip. A tipster claims to have seen a female body hanging in Pickton's slaughterhouse.
Largest Crime Scene Search in Canada. The property at 953 Dominion Avenue became the site of the largest crime scene search in Canadian history.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Am I next? Is he watching me now?

A diary entry from a missing woman.

12:20WatchJun 26, 2024

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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