Project Even Handed and Final Arrest

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See optimum. com for details Thanks for listening to Rd Hed Make sure you listen to and follow red handed on Amazon Music, or just ask Alexa Alexa, play the podcast red handed on Amazon Music And with Amazon Music Unlimited, you can now listen to your favorite music, podcasts, and audioobooks all in the Amazon Music app They say that pigs will eat anything. And in two thousand two, Vancouver pololice learned this eerie truth for themselves. When the DNA of over thirty missing women was found on a sprawling hog farm just outside the city out a single body The Grizzly crime scene at Robert Willy Pictton's Fm quickly became the heart of the largest and most complex homicide investigation in Canadian history. due to the community in Vancouver's impoverished downtown East Side. This horrifying discovery hadn't come out of nowhere Instead, it was the sickening answer to questions that had been building for years Law enforcement agencies had systemically failed to answer Instead, it was the sickening answer to questions that had been building for years. law enforcement agencies had systemically failed to answer Because even whilst women were vanishing from the streets every single day. The powers that B refused to admit there was a serial killer operating in Vancouver As drug addicted sex workers, many from Canada's vulnerable indigenous community The victims were invisible. and ignored by authorities shot up and spat out by the pigs in more ways than one and the discovery of their partial remains was just the beginning. twisted story I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti And this is reed handed Where today we are diving into part one. of the disturbing case of Canada's most infamous serial killer Butcher of Vancouver. Back in the nineties, Vancouver's downtown East Side had a pretty grim reputation dubbed Canada's poorest postcode It was notorious for high rates of poverty, homelessness, drug abuse and prostitution eighty percent of the women engaged in sex work in the area didn't actually come from Vancouver Many were indigenous and grew up in Canada's rural reserve communities become estranged from their families amid battles with drug addiction They were isolated, vulnerable and living an incredibly risky and dangerous existence and despite frequent acts of violence against them inccidents rarely got reported Because downtown Eastiders had an intense distrust of the authorities who they knew were much more likely to lock them up for working the streets than cracking down on the clients who were abusing them. Life here was undeniably tough, but by the late nineties, things took an even darker turn Whilst vulnerable girls had always come and gone from the downtown east side from nineteen ninety seven onwards, there was an alarming surge of missing persons cases. At least sixty nine women disappeared from the area between ' ninety seven and two thousand two a sudden spike that even the police couldn't write off. That's unbelievable that's aren in five years for nearly seventy women. and those are just the ones that they like Reize have gone missing Understandably, fear gripped the community of a serial killer targeting sex workers The families of missing women begged the authorities to launch a proper investigation into the suspected murders Did they Nope multiple press conferences, Vancouver pololice consistently denied the existence of a potential serial killer at large in the downtown East side neighborhood pointed to the lack of bodies and argued that these women often had complicated family relationships That meant they probably wanted to go off grid those who actually lived in the area though, knew that that just wasn't true Still, without the authorities acknowledging the scale of the problem and more importantly, refusing to fund a proper investigation There was nowhere else to turn The disappearances were labelled missing persons cases And they all swiftly went cold. For the next five years, the community's cries for help would fall on deaf ears All the while More and more women vanished without a trace. It's a really tricky one because And I'm not going to defend the Vancouver Police Department because as we will see, they make a lot of mistakes. during this investigation once it eventually actually turns into an investigation. But I understand at the very start, at the very start it's the only grain of like, you know any sort of leniency that I'm willing to give this department that they are like There are no bodies. It's not like we're talking about bodies are turning up dead and even they're just passing them off as like ODs or something or accidents or misadventure. There are literally no bodies turning up. There is nothing turning up. There's just women. goingo missing Yes at alarmingly high rates, but they are living very, very high risk lifestyle. and as you said You know, some of them are very, very well most of them were addicted to drugs They were in a very difficult time in their lives and maybe the police can just brush it off as like they're being transient, whatever One thing we do know here that is different to other cases and it was kind of painted like this at the time, but it's definitely not the case is that nobody was looking for these women. Nobody cared about them, noody was looking for them. The victims' families They may have been estrangeed. They may have had difficult relationships because of drug addiction because of you know the working in the streets, that kind of thing. But these girls' families, these women's families were looking for them. They were pressuring the police. They were out there putting up missing posters. They were demanding answers. There were people looking for them And we have said this before. Serial killer investigations are the hardest investigations that you could possibly imagine. because there's often not any connection between the killer and the victims And then add on top of that, a situation in which there's not even bodies. so there's not even a crime scene. there's not anything for them to process I can understand why They were hesitant at first to admit because it's a big like it's a big call to make because then you are looking for a serial killer But obviously, as the case goes on, as the years go by, the sheer number, the sheer volume of people who are going missing The fact that they did nothing, it really screams of just like abject laziness and an absolute desire to not go anywhere near that can of worms. They did not want to open this up. But I can understand at first why it was such a tricky thing to even know what you were going to be looking into Well yeah, because You know, taking yourself off as an adult isn't illegal. Yes, exactly, exactly. If people want to go missing, they can't, like you can't stop them. And if the police can also point to the fact that you were also leading a high risk lifestyle with substance abuse and all of that, makes it more likely that yes, maybe you did just go off. Again, I'm not making excuses for the Vancouver Police Department But I can understand, it was a very tricky thing to get off the ground in the initial stages Now during this time that all of these women were going missing O man was a regular face in the downtown Eastide area His name was Robert Willy Pickton farmer in his forties who often visited the area to dispose of animal parts at a local rendering plant Titon was there for pleasure, as well as business He'd regularly cruise the ten block strip known as the Low track picking up women to take back to his farm for sex Getting them to call him Uncle Willy Pictton seemed to consider himself a sort of guardian angel to these desperate women He gave them money for drugs, offered them odd jobs on his sprawling farm just outside of the city. and even offered them accommodation if they were kicked out of local hostels And we've seen this before. we've seen this before this kind of man who's like inserting himself into the lives of sort of street level sex workers who's like, I can save you, I can help you and it's just a way for them to Disarm them, to disarm their potential victims to make them think that they're helpful Now unsurprisingly, Uncle fucking Willy was far from a kindly old Tom. He was a predator operating in plain sight. I also think If you hadn't and'm writing about another serial killer at the moment and He managed to evade capture for so long because he was operating in different areas And I think if Willie Pickton hadn't to one place, I think he would have got away with it for even longer Absolutely. If you want tona be serial killer, well, if you want tona be a killer, the best thing is to, yes, obviously, as we've said time and time before kill victims who you have no connection to. That's what serial killers do. That's why those investigations are particularly hard The second thing, leave no bodies behind, which is what Willie Pictton did because he found a Horrendously I don't want to say genius plan. He grew up on a pig farm as we werere going to see, so he knew what the situation was there with those animals But he found this disgusting way in which he was able to rid himself of the bodies to dispose of And and of course, like you said, be transient. That's the one thing Willy Pictum doesn't do because as we will find out I don't know. I't I hesitate to call Willy Picton stupid I don't think he's stupid But he lives a very like Lifestyle. He lives a very life. That's as good happenort to be. He's got that mindset So let's go back to where it all began for Willy Pickton. born on the twenty fourth of october nineteen forty nine as the second of three kids born to pick farmers, Leonard and Louise Pickton Port toQuickam Roughly seventeen miles east of Vancouver Banish any romantic notions of an idyllic childhood growing up on a farm in rural Canada Because whilst their eldest sister, Linda, was sent to live with relatives in a more suitable environment for a little girl, Willie and his younger brother, David were expected to follow in their father's footsteps Tiling long hours on the farm Leonard, Willie's dad was distant and abusive, leaving the childcare responsibilities entirely to his wife, Louise A woman described as eccentric. and demanding which Gauging from what I'm about to tell you The understatement. We don't know exactly what life was like on the farm whilst the boys were growing up under their mother's iron fist But those who knew the family paint picture of a domineering woman who had more than just a nasty streak She was even to a local death In october nineteen sixty seven, a teenage David accidentally hit one of the neighbor's kids fourteen year old Tim Barrett with the family's truck After he freaked out and summonered his mum, local legend has it Louise in an attempt to protect her son Shove the boy's crumpled body. into a ditch at the side of the road Tim wasn't discovered until the next morning, and by then he was long dead And just so we're all clear. He wasn't dead when Louise allegedly pushed his body into that ditch because As it turned out Little Tim. the official cause of death was ruled as drowning. which doesn't tend to happen when you get hit by a truck. It tends to happen when you get pushed into a ditch By the killer's mother By the w The pathologist also noted that the victim had sustained several brutal injuries likely from being hit by a vehicle, including a skull fracture brain hemorrhage and broken. this in a very sixties fashion The death was ruled an accident And so, David was sent to Juvy with a slap on his wrist W Louise. was never even actually charged with anything David's not going to dob her in is terrifying Carly not It only happens every four years, and this time it's here. the biggest tournament in the world. Stadium shaking, flags waving. This is history. and you want to be there. But real life can make it tough, work, busy schedules and The price. That's where Priceline comes in. Priceline has millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars so you can go see it live. So find a great deal and make the trip happen. Rally the crew, go see the game live, turn your dream trip into reality. Book now with Priceline I'm Keiana and I leveveled up my business with Shopify Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turn back. I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business, but Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like I can't stop I'm addicted Start your free trial at shhopify. com Three decades ago, a young woman named Angie Dodge is found brutally murdered in Idaho Falls. Police put a man behind bars. But as the years pass, doubts emerge about whether the real killer was ever caught That's when Angie's own mother embarks on a decades long mission to uncover the truth Listen to the Snare, a new series from ABC Audio Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts We think that this instance paints a clear picture of the kind of woman who would go on to shape Willie Pictton's life, especially in those early years. It's also said that while Louise taught the boys hard work totally neglected their personal and emotional needs sending them to school in dirty clothes reeking of manure which earned them both the harsh but predictable nickname Stinky piggy from their pers In spite of this mom's, shall we say, overbearing personality Willie was said to be a total mummy's boy He had an unnaturally strong attachment to Louise. Ding ding ding. Yeah, absolutely and rarely interacted with his father. Willie even struggled in special ed classes at school and was known by his peers as a socially outcast ouddible whichich like sure, like a lot of kids struggle to fit in at school thingsings go pretty swiftly off the deep end is that when Willie wanted to avoid people And yeah, brace yourself for this He'd allegedly hide inside the gutted carcasses of the massive hogs kept on the family farm Bag ralls Piggy revenant. It's disgusting. And in another particularly grim little instant from his childhood Willie Pictton obviously has very few friends and at the age of twelve, he grew particularly attached to a calf that he started raising as his pet. I think you can probably all guess where this is going. because his parents were like, No, fuck that and slaughtered that calf that Willie had grown attached to. just two weeks later, presumably to teach him a lesson about the cruel circle of life on a farm And yeah, so far, I think we can say So Edgin, right? That's what this reminds me of Yeah, and I suppose there's a parent, you can't really use the Pets gone bigig farm upstate when you already are on the big farm upstate. you can whereere el with Yeah, it's much more this little piggy went to market for all of the piggies and the cves. If you put it into perspective, Willie Pickton's childhood notot ideal. It's not that we can see like full of actual outright abuse of any any sort. It's like I of this classic childhood of like neglect. Is that so different to what a lot of people growing up in the sixties would have face? Probably not I think it's his weird like red with the dead bodies of animals. Like if it is true and we can't say for sure, but if it is true that it was hiding inside the dead carcasses of pigs to find comfort when he felt socially ostracised Do we need to do a lot of psychological unpacking there about what he does later on Probably not. It's quite Denis Nilson, isn't it? Yeah portrait of a drowning boy M Pickton dropped out of school in nineteen sixty three And he got a job as a meat cutter And also continued working on the family farm, I don't think he would have been given a choice. After their parents died in the late seventies, the Picton siblings inherited the farm and sold most of it off for urban development, making a cool five point six million between them Brothers Willie and David kept the farm going as a smaller livestock operation, along with a salvage business that they co ran In charge of the farming side of things, Willie lived alone in his own trailer on the land. with all of his millions And even as an adult He never quite got the hang of personal hygiene He always looked bedraggled and unkempt and notoriously carried the stench of the pig farm with him everywhere he went to put it bluntly If you were going to guess that anyone was a creepy serial killer just based on their looks. Put your money on Willie Pickton If you cast your mind back to the silence of the Lamb's Buffalo bill Based on Ed Gean actually Picked in is his Canadian dopelgaria He kind of looks so like a serial killer, you don't suspect him For sure, for sure. When people are like, oh, you know, you never know, you never know. sometometimes you do. Yeah. Despite All of that, Willie Pickton amazingly didn't find himself lacking a social life He was often surrounded by people whom he hired to live and work on the farm These were often drug addicts who'd fallen on hard times, who picked and liked to think he was throwing a lifeline to by offering them gainful employment In return, these pals would hang out with Picton. and nag him to take care of himself and have a bath whenever he started to smell even worse than the pigs he raised We're going to return to that point a little bit later on Because whatever those guys saw teended not to see crucial element of unraveling this case. Yeah. And I think for Willy Picton, the farm inheritance and his ability to keep running it even in a smaller operation and make that extra money really allowed him to overcome the social challenges of his childhood and adolescence and early adulthood. Because it's classic manipulation, right? And this is why I don't think Willy Picton is that stupid. I don't know if he's like some mastermind behind everything But I don't think he's that stupid. He's well aware that he does want companionship. He's not such a social recluse. Like Edgin, I don't think Edgin actually wanted to hang out with people. I really don't think he did. I think he really did just want to live in that house with his momums like weird nipple and all of that weird shit that he had going on. I don't think he actually wanted to hang out with people I think he was very, very much like in that schizopypical space. I don't think companionship meant that much to him 's not the same. He wants it and he knows how to get it and it's through. manipulating people, offering them drugs, offering them money, offering them employment, offering them a place to stay And then he knows that he buys their loyalty that way. and then he pushes the boundaries further and further and further for what he can get away with because he knows that these people are so desperate, they're not going to turn him in And sadly, he's right So Willie remained close to his brother, David, who was a regular presence around the property. And as time went on, this dynamic duo developed bigger dreams than managing a humble pig farm In the mid nineties, the brothers started running an ad hoc nightclub They named Higgies. Palas from their converted slaughterhouse. hosting rawous parties full of booze, drugs, and sex workers I can't remember whether this was someone we met when we were on tour in America or whether it was someone who's just sent us a message on some sort of socials platform, but I'm sure we met her when we were on tour. That's it. I cannot remember her name, but we met. someone who used to go to these parties Oh my god, it's just it's crazy. And look Mid nineties, I feel like There was a there was a space. There was a, there was a niche in in the mid nineties where? The maternity ward of rave I think it would have seemed really like Cool and avantarde and fucking just wild and weird to go to a rave at an old slaughter house in the middle of nowhere People were fucking loving it. These parties were, you know? These guysies were popping. Piggy Palace was popping. Let's just put it like that. I naturally It caught the attention of authorities and it was eventually shut down by the council for breaching agricultural zoning regulations Which like, yes, given that the slaughterhouse was not built to host parties, makes sense. They shut it down, but the Pictons were not giving up without a fight. They reinvented the club as Piggy's Palace Good Time Society, a registered child. Oh yeah Yeah, that claim to raise money for local service organizations through social events And these wild nights proved especially popular with Hell's Angels bikers and even local cops who, were set to party into the early hours down on the old Picton farm, raising money for charity. Well That's the scientology model, it works It does work. And you know, we've all been to places where they're like, yeah, we don't have a booze license, but we can sell raaffle tickets And guess what? withith every raaffle ticket, everyone's a winner and you win a drink. So what do you want?'s one it's like, you know, three pound fifty for a raffle ticket. Oh, you've won a drink. What would you like So yeah, they're very much again, this is what I'm saying. I don't think they're stupid. I do not think they're stupid. Don't go by their appearance. These guys know what they're fucking doing And yeah, I guess the fact that these parties were so popping mayaybe people are raising questions about what's going on in Vancouver at the time It's the nineties, it's the nineties It doesn't last long because by the millennium the charity's dubious nonprofit status was revoked after they failed to provide anyy sort of viable financial statement? See, that's where you have to start a religion That's the next step. Yeah, you're gonna do this kind of thing. Do it. You can probably get away with it, but youve got to make sure your papers are Oh, you' got to make sure the accounts the accountants will always get you Exactly And in two thousand, the city finally shot down Piggy's Palace for good After serving an injunction, banning public gatherings after complaints over noise, alcohol and drug use, whichich you have to ask how loud was this because this farm is out in the fucking middle of nowhere. but inact So unless I guess, they did sell off huge chunks of their farmland that their parents had left them for urban development. So did they just build in that ten years that they were getting away with this piggy palace thing? They managed to build like some actually nice like urban homes for like you know, the the young couples out of Vancouver and then they were like What the fuck is going on down at that farm in that slaughter house All of it banned And the Good times might have been over at Piggy's palace As we willll find out, they'd been happening all along and they weren't about to stop now Back in nineteen ninety seven, just as women were starting to vanish in higher numbers from the downtown Eastide Police made one of the biggest blunders in this whole saga And there are a lot of them. so that's that's not an insignificant thing to say On the twenty second of March that year, Pictton picked up a sex worker, known on the streets as Stitch her real name was Wendy Lynn Iisetter. He picked her up and he drove her to his farm for sex Despite her gut instinct telling her not to go was desperate for drugs, so she ignored that feeling And it was almost The last mistake she ever made After they'd had sex on a dirty mattress on the trailer floor, Stitch tried to use Pictton's phone to call for a ride is where things got ugly Picked in handcuff stitches hands Stitch managed to grab a knife and fought back In the tussle that followed, Stitch miraculously managed to slash Pictton in the face and knock him down Getting herself a brief window to try and escape Stitch ran out onto the main road and flagged down a young couple in a car who called nine hundred eleven Stitch was then rushed to a local hospital by ambulance for emergency surgery because she had also been stabbed repeatedly. in the struggle with Pikon She almost died on the table multiple times before narrowly pulling through Meanwhile, Pictton was literally at the same exact hospital. being treated for his own injuries And this is the bit that it's just like. If you saw her it in a movie, you'd be like, fuck off Orderly fully been paying attention Ky on Willie Pickton matched the handcuff was on stitch' wrists when she had been admitted to hospital. And so they called the police and the Royal Canadian mounted police, AKA the mountys. Join the dots and arrested Willie Pickton. I think that is unbelievable. I like cannot believe that anybody connected those dots Fantastic, right Cton was charged with attempted murder assault with a weapon and forcible confinement. Pictim was let out on a measly two thousand dollars bail which is nothing for him and basically making him a free man whilst awaiting trial And just three days before that trial was meant to start in january nineteen ninety eight Crown attorneys ruled that Stitch was an unreliable witness due to her drug addiction So the charges fell apart and the case was closed In other words, Nothing fucking happened Willie Pickton came out of the whole situation. without so much as a blot on his criminal record. The authorities didn't know it yet this was a fuck up that would cost less women their lives Meanwhile, rumors were intensifying about the dark clouds gathering in Vancouver's downtown Eastide. sex workers grew fearful. and began operating in groups, avoiding getting into strangers' cars and reporting unfamiliar number plates totally understand why they're doing that. Of course they are. There's like nothing else they can do other than obviously stop working the streets, which they're so desperate. they're not even going to comprehend that right now If you sort of think about cases like this, it's typically not going to be a stranger or like a car an unusual car or an unusual client that's suddenly going to turn up It's going to be a man who's very comfortable operating in that area. It's going to be someone like Willy Pictton who's like playing nice old uncle Willie like get in the car and let's go. It's not going to be that unfamiliar license plate. But again What are they to know? They're terrified But as if a law enforcement agency had been involved in this point That's what they should have been looking at. It's the man who's always there, if anything. Yeah But without the cooperation of the police who were still refusing to acknowledge any crimes had taken place at all, It was down to the community to take justice into their own hands however they could Metter Wayne Lang unexpected vigilante king. As a former client and close friend of local sex worker Sarah DeVriis who had gone missing in april, nineteen ninety eight Wayne set up a tip offline off his own back Amid the crank callers, he received a genuinely startling piece of intel A guy calling himself Bill warned Wayne about Willie Pictton claiming that a woman who lived on the farm had reported seeing female clothing and IDs on the property. The man was Bill Hiscocks contractor who' previously worked for the Pictton Brothers Hiscox had actually tried to escalate the matter himself by reporting it to the RCMP but he just hadn't got very far side bath before we carry on Just in case we need to explain how Canada's complicated policing structure works It is worth getting into this for a second because it does have a huge impact on how this case was handled Depending on where you are in the country either fall under the jurisdiction of the city police force, like the Vancouver Police Department, or the RCMP. AKA, the Mounties Now the RCMP are Canada's federal law enforcement agency, basically a mix of the FBI and a national police force who also serve more rural areas that don't have their own police department So in this case, women were disappearing from the downtown east Side area of Vancouver. but on's farm was sat outside of the city's limits in an area policed by the RCMP The two agencies aren't especially known for their great communication, surprise, surprise, especially not back in the nineties. So again, I'm not putting this doubt to Willy Pictton being some sort of mastermind, but this does massively work in his favour. The fact that he is picking up the women that he is killing in one jurisdiction killing them in a totally different jurisdiction does work in his favor because of like we said, the lack of joined up working between these two agencies When Bill Hiscockx told Port CoQuitlam RRCMP officers about his suspicions of Picked in in nineteen ninety eight They did at least attempt to investigate pulled in, Lisa yells, the woman his cocks named as his source Questioning at a local Mounty HQ Lisa was a close friend of Pikton's and had allegedly gossiped to his cocks about seeing women's clothing, IDs and personal items in his squalid trailer home Her eyewitness testimony was absolutely crucial to establishing a link between this creepy pig farmer and the wave of missing women from the city During her interview yelds, absolutely refused to cooperate and denied everything She would later claim that the reason she stonewalled was because She hates cops and feared that they would twist her words We'll come back to this later on But without an eyewitness account from Lisa Yelds Hiscox's report was legally considered no more than hearsay and insufficient grounds for the mounties to get a search warrant. And so once again, Nothing fucking happen The rumor mill did not stop there Willie Pictton continued to employ people who struggle to find work elsewhere And one of these guys was a man named Andy Bllwood who just finished six months of rehab when he started working at the farm doing odd jobs Like many who joined the piggy Farm crew, Andy got the gig through a woman called Gina Houston pal of picts Gina Houston is another person on our side eye list in this case, but we're gonna to come back to her later. By started working at the farm in early nineteen ninety nine and quickly became one of Pictton's most trusted employees Captain revealed one day that he had murdered multiple women almost casually revealing that he would ake them up to the barn, hang 'em, gutem and feed them to the pigs And he realized that he was perhaps in way too deep with his oddible new boss. I mean Yeah If anything, it's going to push poor Andy who's just on six months of rehab back into some sort of horrible haze. It's listening to Willy Pictton tell him what the fuck he's been up to Now Andy reckons that Pictton told him because he thought he would go along with it. And maybe even get involved himself. He feels like that was the kind of tone or the vibe in which it was said. It was like, Hey, there's this fun thing I do on the farm. Do you want to get involved But Andy's reaction must have let slip that he wasn't exactly on the same page and he claims that some of Pictton's henchmen beat him up four days later and accused him of stealing from the farm in what he believes was an intimidation tactic to scare Andy off from ever speaking out Which like I believe. I absolutely believe. Picton's very calculated. I think he pushes the button, he pushes the envelope a little bit, a little bit, a little bit with people to see how much he can get away with, to see how desperate they are, to see how much they'll play along with him. And then if he gets a bad vibe like, I've gone too far He's going to have tactics. Obviously for how to keep themselves safe Pictton didn't just get away with this for as long as he did because of the ineptor Juda Vancouver Police Department. It's also because he was quite cculated and what he was doing So yeah. If this was an intimidation tactic It worked because a shit scared Andy Bllwood left the farm and fled to start a new life on Vancouver Island ever going to the police if Andy had gone to the mounties with what he had heard. thingsings could have turned out differently But then again. Perhaps they wouldn't have. Yeah, I wouldn't count on it. No. Because the issue wasn't that the RCMP weren't aware about the whispers around Pictton. It's that nothing quite stuck out enough for them to fully investigate And it's in that limbo Cton was given free range to kill Meanwhile, in the city, public fears were intensifying to a boiling point. as the millennium approached with countless girls, still unaccounted for, community action just wasn't enough Police needed to acknowledge the scale of the problem and focus their efforts on finding the serial killer who was obviously targeting this vulnerable community Public pressure exploded With hundreds of people turning up to a memorial march in may nineteen ninety nine demanding that the police take action A vocal figure at the march was a woman named Serena Abbotsway, a sex worker who was well known in the downtown Eastide area She hadd only just returned to the streets after being nearly beaten to death by an aggressive client Serena was interviewed on the news where she insisted that she relied on her sixth sense to keep her safe And from now on be able to see another attack coming. two years later Serena two would disappear The crisis in Vancouver attracted international attention with the segment on America's mostost wanted, even publicizing Wward for finding the culprit ember this is all w. The Vancouver Police Department are like refusing to even admit that there is a culprit. This is already being taught like across the world as there is one, let's find it. Oh, it's terrible PR, isn't it? Oh it really is, it really is So yeah, the Vancouver Police Department has still sat around, refusing to acknowledge that there was even a killer to find. or that there was even anything unusual going on on Vancouver's downtown East Side. One police constable dismissively told a local news channel ote We don't have a suspect, in fact, we don't even have a crime. Like I said at the start of the episode, I can understand why for a while You can say that. You can say that you don't think anything is going on this point, with the rumors swirling around pict and the fact that people have come forward to you And yes, the fact that it didn't go on his record because he wasn't convicted of it, but the fact of everything that happened with Stitch They are still ignoring the possibility that something is going on s pretty mind blowing to me. Now the party line. Vancouver Police Department was that there was no official basis to launch any kind of homicide inquiry No bodies, no suspects, and certainly no investigation So yeah, I think police are not interested in opening that can of worms. I think they were exceedingly lazy did not want to open their eyes to what was right in front of them Because if they did, if they admitted it They would have to open a can of worms that I think they were just not ready to contend with. Like can you imagine Like the unsolved homicide rate in Vancouver Police Department, if they acknowledged that they had a serial killer on the loose for all of this time and they were maybe at this point doens and dozens and dozens of women missing who they were attributing to the work of the serial C collllse You're going to go from like a case close rate of like, I don't know, whatever it was. Let's say let's give him the credit of like of sixty percent case close rate to basically a hundred percent unsolved rate. Like what police department is going to willingly do that And again, I'm not making excuses for them, but I think this is like the inner workings of why they did not do this, of why they did not want to go down this road this isn't new in cases like this, especially when as we have seen time and time again Victims are street level sex workers Often in cases like that, you these women are very estranged. They are living very transient lifestyles. There may not be anybody there to be banging down the door of the police department demanding answers But like we said at the beginning wasasn't the case here. theseese women weren't Ghosts, they were loved. And their families rg the alarm and they kept going, pushing authorities at every stage. Fite knock back after knock backack Clearly the police felt that these were families and communities that they could just ignore, that they could sweep this all under the rug and hopefully it would just go away orr if they really did think that there was a killer that, maybe this killer would just die or get caught for something else and it would just stop And I think the reason that the police thought they could ignore these committeities and these people is because most of them were poor poor families And I think they thought, yeah, they might be kicking up a fast, they might be banging on our door, but what are they really going to do about it With all of that said The Vancouver Police Department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Were't monolith Several officers inside both organizations genuinely did their best to push for a proper investigation, but they were hampered by senior management and It is important to tell the full story of how those officers tried to fight the system becausecause they are some of the real MVPs of this whole case profiler Kim Rossman. He was the very first police officer to raise the alarm internally. killer could be at work in the downtown Eastide After analyzing over two decades worth of data and applying cutting edge geographic profiling techniques Russeo concluded that the spike of disappearances from around nineteen ninety seven was more than just. and anormally only explanation was that there was a serial killer targeting women. Rosmmer actually presented a report to the head of the Major Crime section in nineteen ninety nine that concluded that the majority of the women reported missing were dead with the recommendation to launch an official homicide inquiry But he hit a brick wall with the powers that be who refused to accept the report and closed down Rosmo's entire unit essentially demoting him It really does feel like the attitude is like, o, that's gonna to be a lot of work That's g me quite a lot of reports for me to file and I just don't want to one hundred percent th think that's it. I a hundred percent think that's it At this point, like Kim Rosmo has shown There is no way they can ignore it. They can no way anymore say we don't think there's airicular on the list. We don't think's anything else. L like he's proven with his analysis This is not an anomaly. This is statistically significant. There is something going on here that we should investigate, even if they don't think it's a serial killer Are we not even slightly curious about what's going on? No, because that is going to create a ade of situations that the police in Vancouver cannot be fucking asked with. I think that is the bottom line of this whole story. I think, you know, we'll talk about this more next week and as all of people, a lot of activists who are very much like This was a systemic thing and they were they were ignoring these women because of who they were, because of you know, they were the majority of them were indigenous because the majority of the sex workers who were working in that low track area were from indigenous communities, as we said. Don't even think it's that deep I think it could have been anybody, but they were like these are people we can ignore and we don't need to open this can of worms. I just think it screams of laziness and just absolute ineptitude. And it's so, so sad to see because there were police officers inside fighting and saying, we need to do something But the higher ups are just like sh O you sucked. I need to leave at five. So'm just not no, thank you. I'm not opening it. Exactly, exactly there was Detective Lorima Schenner Shana reviewed a list of missing women provided by a local indigenous activist group and made the official recommendation in august nineteen ninety eight that quote, these cases are related and should be treated as such Just like Rosmo, he too was shut down and told that there were most likely separate explanations as to why each of the women had disappeared Mmm In may nineteen ninety nine, the Vancouver PD established a new squat the missing persononss review team and put Shenner in charge. which was some progress Even this lacked the resources and funding of a homicide investigation with Shennner repeatedly growing frustrated by the red tape that he ran into at every single turn And even that fact, look, they're finally making some progress and they're like, here, can you keep fucking yelling at everybody, have this fucking task force. G do what you want But let's be honest, the amount of resourcing that is going to be provided for a cold case missing persons group, especially a missing persons group that is looking at street level sex workers who have gone missing. majority of them, you know from poor communities, disenfranchised communities Do we really think that's going to be the same level of funding as a homicide investigation? It's just a foob, it's a foob job As a new thing I'm going to start calling. It's a fun job job And obviously it is easy to say all of this now with hindsight, but even still, it is baffling how senior management at the Vancouver Police Department kept refusing to see what was right in front of them for so L Even as multiple police officers knew in their bones that something was seriously wrong They could only operate within the jurisdiction that they were given by senior leadership. And in the summer of nineteen ninety nine, there was yet another mischance in connecting Willy Pictton to the spate of disappearances in Vancouver An associate of Pictton's, a known drug addict named Ross Caldwell contontacted the RCMP with a troubling story that he'd heard from a woman named Lyn Ellensskin And she had told Ross that she had seen a woman's dead body at Pictton's farm Now thenen, like many of the people, who are involved in this case, who have something to say about Willie Pictton, have been living and working at the farm as a secretary Anne was grateful to Picton for giving her a chance. after she had been chopked out of a woman's refuge for taking drugs Apparently, this is a story she told. She went with Pkton to the Low track of a sex worker who agreed to come back to the farm Puse She felt safer. haaving seen Lynn in Picton's car Again, this is what makes me think Pkon is not that stupid. He's very, very smart in what he is doing here. You know' taking a woman as the fear in like the community is ramping up, even him, even Uncle Willie might attract some, you know worried looks from some of the women, especially as the rumors are starting to, you know grow around his involvement with disappearances So we takeakes some wom men along. And it works So they pick up the sex worker, they take her back to the farm and the trio partied there before Willie disappeared to his trailer with the sex worker But later that night Lynn got a strange feeling and went to go check on them She found nobody in the trailer I saw a light on in the barn. That's when Lynn peeked inside and saw The woman's naked Body Fing from a hook According to Lyin and dragged her inside and threatened that if she ever told a soul she would end up hanging there too. Face to face with the butcher of Vancouver Lynn Ellingson said that she would keep a secret as long as he kept giving her money for drugs. becoming yet another one of his loyal farmhs who promised not to squeal. Still, this story made its way down the grapevine to the RCMP and it was the most compelling one they'd heard yet. Not only did it link Willie Pictton to the vanished womomen, but it was the first mention S body in what had so far only officially been considered a missing persons case But again, there were serious issues with credibility Ross Coldwell was a notorious drug addict who had form for telling tales, and during his police interview, he was totally incoherent Pictton knows the kind of people to surround himself with. peopleeople not only who would be desperate and who would be loyal to him because of what they need from him that they can't get from elsewhere in society, but also people that if they do go and squeal on him, society's not going to take that seriously The mounties needed Lin to make an official statement for the allegations to stick Just like Lisa yelds She denied, denied, denied. Lyn scoffed that Calwell was a liar and insisted the whole thing was bullshit And withithout her testimony, the Mountys and the Vancouver PD's newly assembled missing persersons team were left without enough grounds for a warrant There was one comment that Lynn made in passing about how she didn't realize Human fat was yellow Wh everyone's ears is pricked up If she hadn't seen the body Why would she make such an eerie and accurate remark especially if she hadn't seen Fight Club Those who spoke to Lynn felt certain that there was more than what she was telling them Corporal Frank Henley even persuaded Lynn do a lie detector test She disappeared on the day she was meant to take it. So frustratingly, the RCMP investigators and Detective Shenner from the Vancouver PD The whole thing slide Also, he does well for himself by associating with people who are never going to cooperate with the police. even if set aside that the police are never going to believe them YeahQu even getting them down there in the first place to not be believed because they got their own fucking issues that they're worried about getting out I'm not saying they're killing people, but obviously they're just worried about getting locked up for various other things that they might be involved with. So yeah, it's just like he's created this perfect little microcosm down at the fucking piggy palace to carry out all sorts of nefarious acts that he' doing. and I have no doubt this is what he was doing the horrific image. it's like a horrorilm. I think there was like an actual like film that was made about this. I literally can't remember it was called, but it was like a guy who wore a pig mask and like took women down to his pig farm and locked them up and chopped them up I've seen a lot of shit and it was definitely on that But yeah, imagine, imagine Being and like seeing this body hanging from a hook in the fucking slaughterhouse Even if you were like, I'm going to do the right thing and go tell the police You would have to have so much confidence that they're going to believe you and do something. Owise you have dobbed in a man who is capable of doing that and what the fuck is he going to do to you? Oh. It's stomach churning Years later, Lynn would admit that the reason she didn't tell the police the truth back then because she had been Personally blackmailing Willie Pictton hererself, which is boald which is bod. is a very risky game But somehow, she managed to play it whilst keeping her life if she had come forward, if she had told the truth att least eleven more women might have kept their lives too That's a lot to have on your shoulders, isn't it? Jesus So after the Lynn Ellsingen debacle, Willie Pickon didn't quite fade into the background. RCMP officers actually spoke to Picton multiple times over the following months. where he made a show of being cooperative and claiming that he wanted all of this suspicion, all of this nasty, disgusting suspicion to just come to an end In january two thousand, he showed up at the RCMP HQ voluntarily subjected himself to questioning for six and a half hours and even offered to let officers come to the farm and see it for themselves Of course, when they did visit his trailer There was nothing incriminating on display And of course, in hindsight, it feels like Pictton was toying with the police because he knew They were, for lack of a better word, hogted by bureaucracy. He knows, he knows what's going on And I think he is inserting himself into the investigation to see what they've got, to see what's going on. I think he was getting off on the power. Can you imagine someone like Willy Pickton someone who For his entire childhood it' adolescence under the thumb of his mother. absolutely ostracised by everybody at school and like, you know socially speaking in his peer group. never would have felt a damn second of power. No doubt what leads to him becoming a serial killer and exerting this huge amount of power over the women that he takes back But also now Power over the RCMP Are you fucking kidd This would have been like ten kills in one for William Pictton So yes. He gets away with it and without that official search warrant. because remember, he's just like, come down and have a look They haven't got an official search warrant So without that, it didn't matter how much of a stink anyone kicked up Willie Pictton was innocent until proven guilty For the next two years, the investigation into the missing women stalled. Until two thousand one, when at long last, the Vancouver PD and the RCMP joined forces in a joint task force dedicated to investigating the missing women This was a huge symbolic step for the investigation since the authorities were finally acknowledging a link between the cases but in practice It was pretty much still the same old chit show Project even handed Oh my go We haven't managed that one I know, I know. I think it was somewhere somebody joed about that, but I can't remember it was for I just like I know What we've heard from police officers in this country is that they don't get to pick the name. It's just like randomly generated like by the alphabet even handed doesn't fill you the fact that there's going to be some like righteous justice taking place. No, but you know, neither did Operation wrap it up. It's tr I think they do get to just pick them Project Even Handed conducted an in depth review of everything on file so far. which was no mean feat after almost five years Strawllling through thousands of tips and hundreds of persons of interest, investigators made the alarming discovery that they were actually More missing women that hadn't been noted in the records. ing back even earlier than the nineties And alongside the frustrating lack of progress with investigating Willy Picton The depressing truth was that he was far from the only person of interest. In fact The project even handed, had a long list of wrongins that they suspected of causing harm to the vulnerable women of the downtown Eastide area Vancouver Police Department's criminal database spewed up hundreds of hits for men convicted of assaulting sex workers in the area And some of those had even served time for murder Across the border in Washington, American police arrested Robert Yates, the Soane serial killer in april two thousand And who can forget Gary Leon Richway. The Green River Killer in two thousand one which casts the net even wider in terms of possible suspects And as we mentioned earlier Violence was so normalized and so under repported against sex workers onlyn scratching the surface of what the police knew even if the Vancouver Police Department had extended the long arm of the law to a proper murder investigation. It'd be like searching for a needle in a scummy perver haystack The problem wasn't the lack of suspects It was narrowing that shortlist down If I open a nightclub, I'm going to call it the pervert Hayack. Nice, love it. Then you can just round them up when they go in there and be like, ye, you're under arrest. And quite my gynecologist So yes, Detective Laura M Shernan, who we met earlier, later criticized the task force for lack of efficiency, which is putting it mildly, but this is what he had to say What they did was pull in as many sex offenders and predators that they were aware of and put together a list of a hundred men but not rank them in any sort of order of priority So despite having all of our information about Pictton, they didn't put him at number one on the suspect list Basically, they were playing guess who with a rogueues gallery of criminals, but failing to ask any of the right questions Oh, it is so infuriating. They basically have one parameter Who's a wrong man in the area Oh loads, loads of you. Let's not how are we gonna narrow this list down? Oh I don't know In spite of Project Even Handed's admittedly bungled efforts, women were still going missing from the downtown east side at a faster rate than ever two thousand one saw the disappearances of Georgina Faith Papppin In March, Andrea Jesbury in June and Serena Abtssway, the sex worker who defiantly told Newscrews that she would be able to see a predator coming She went missing that August Elaine Allen, who supported vulnerable women at the Women's Information Safehouse, described the terror of feeling like there was some evil dark force at work on the streets that they couldn't possibly escape She said The likelihood of someone going missing was so probable that when I would say goodbye, I often didn't know if I would ever see them again But the end was in sight And it came from an unexpected source early two thousand and two Project even handed had finally narrowed down Willy Pickton onene of the top forty priority suspects. But his actual arrest didn't come from this investigation Instead, as Detective Shanner put it It was purely luck and coincidence Wh look, again, I amm not giving police involved in this any credit whatsoever, but sometimes with cyical investigations, you do need some luck and coincidence to take place. Oh for sure. I mean Broken tail lie, anything. takeake it. takeake whatever you can get So that February, the RCMP received a tip From Scott Chub. Yars some's banning A former truck driver for the Picton Brothers And Mr. Charp claimed that he had seen illegal guns inside Willy Pictton's trailer. A freshly trained mounty was sent to check out the claims with an impromptu visit And one of the first things he noticed was an inhaler was Serena Abbottsway's name on it. This was huge The police could finally place at least one of the suspected victims at the Picton farm And if their grim suspicions were correct It was our final destination They just needed to prove it with cold hard evidence for murder And they had over six hectares of land to search for fore But regardless of what they were expecting to find Nothing could have prepared investigators for the nightmarish horrors They were about to unearth on that pig farm So make sure to stay with us for part two of this story In next week's episode, where we'll walk through the mammoth search of the Picton fararm and the gruesome discoveries that they made and the controversial legal proceedings against Willy Pictton And the explosive cultural shift this case triggered in Canada So you'll just have to hold your breath until then This is a weird case because I feel like it is well known in true crime circles, but not really outside of that And I wonder why because it is it went in terms of like the number of victims brutality, the gruesomeness of it, just how fucking disgusting this pig farm is. Even the setting of it taking place on a rural pig farm in the middle of nowhere Canad