Latest / Luke's English Podcast / Before He Died Pickton Called Me This Is What He Said

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Before He Died Pickton Called Me This Is What He Said · Luke's English Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Hello, is it Do you prefer Willy or Robert?
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: No, that's the voice of Robert Picton. Before his capture.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: He never had a sensational nickname. There was no citywide manhunt.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: He was simply known by the name he used in life,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: pig farmer Willie. Three years after this call, Pickton will
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: die in prison following a violent encounter. Officials describe it
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: as quote a major assault. He's airlifted to hospital, but
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: passes away days later, on May thirty first, twenty twenty four.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: The first thing I ask him is simple, what do
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: you want people to know? I Pickton's version is that
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: he's innocent, but it's clear he is responsible.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: For the deaths of an unknown number of women.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: He was charged with twenty six counts, and investigators found
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: the DNA of many more across his twenty eight acre
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: pig farm. At one point, he even suggested to an
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: officer that the true number could be much higher. The
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: truth is, we'll never know how many victims there.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Really were, So just to be clear you you didn't
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: kill anyone.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: I'm James Buddy Day. This is unmarked.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: When I spoke with picked In there was no doubt
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: in my mind he was guilty, but I gave him
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: some rope because I wanted to keep him talking.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: How do you feel when people say that you're a
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: serial killer?
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: Hey? Can you do? What can you do? There?
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: He speaks with calm detachment, though much of our conversation
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: is rambling incoherent thoughts, drifting in and out of me.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: I stay with him. Maybe he won't tell me everything,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: maybe he can't, but the story matters.
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: People say you're a monster, Well.
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: Can do Hey?
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Behind Robert Picton is a system that failed, years of
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: police inaction and miss opportunities that allowed a predator to
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: operate unchecked.
• 2:36
  Speaker 6: On behalf of the Vancouver Police Department. I would again
• 2:39
  Speaker 6: like to say we are sorry to the families and
• 2:42
  Speaker 6: friends of the missing and murdered women. We could have,
• 2:46
  Speaker 6: and we should have caught Pickton sooner. And we're committing
• 2:49
  Speaker 6: US police officers to do everything we can, working with
• 2:52
  Speaker 6: our community to make sure a tragy like this does
• 2:55
  Speaker 6: not happen again.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: The story takes place in British column. It's the westernmost
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: province in Canada, perched just above Washington State. It sits
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: at the northern edge of the Pacific Northwest, a region
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: of endless forests, cold rivers, and sprawling wilderness. It's beautiful
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: country and the perfect place to hide a body. Robert
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Picton is born on a pig farm in Port Coquitlam,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: a small community outside Vancouver. He's in the middle of
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: three children. His older sister, Linda, is sent to live
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: with relatives in the city before Robert's even born. From
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: an early age, Robert and his younger brother David work
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: the farm. The brothers are filthy, they reek of manure.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: They're constantly ridiculed at school. Robert even earns the nickname
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: stinky Piggy. I asked picked in, and he recalls those
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: days as.
• 3:56
  Speaker 7: Brutal daturity of the morning and till midnight.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: When I'm speaking to Picton, he is standing in a
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: communal phone location inside a maximum security prison. He's yelling
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: into the phone. I'm yelling into my phone. It's difficult
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: to understand what he says at times, but I want
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: you to hear him. I want you to hear his voice,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: and we will post this entire podcast with transcriptions on
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: our YouTube channel.
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: That's going to judge pick my cad seriously very true. True.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: As a child, Robert's relationship with his parents is distant,
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: His father's abusive, largely absent. His mother Luis is hard, controlling, cold.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: When things get bad, Robert hines, on.
• 4:54
  Speaker 8: Some level, it was just a really horrible, perfect storm
• 4:57
  Speaker 8: of powerlessness.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: And that's Detective Senner. Years later, when women begin to
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: go missing from Vancouver's East Side and no one pays attention,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Schenner is one of the few who refuses to look away.
• 5:13
  Speaker 8: Whether it was his mother, whether it was that his
• 5:16
  Speaker 8: mother didn't protect him from his father, whether I just
• 5:20
  Speaker 8: don't know.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: When Robert turns twelve years old, he has one tender connection,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: a small calf that he saves and raises himself. One
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: day he can't find it. He asks his mother to help,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: and she tells him.
• 5:37
  Speaker 8: To check the barn, and his dad had slaughtered his
• 5:42
  Speaker 8: prize calf, his pet calf.
• 5:44
  Speaker 9: And he was devastated.
• 5:46
  Speaker 8: And even in the you know, in the interrogation, he
• 5:48
  Speaker 8: was in his sixties and he was still to that
• 5:52
  Speaker 8: day he was devastated by that and that his dad
• 5:55
  Speaker 8: would do that, and he felt and that was kind
• 5:57
  Speaker 8: of he said when he started started to learn how
• 6:01
  Speaker 8: to slaughter animals himself.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: When I talked to pict in, I hear the same dichotomy.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: The man who took so many lives feels nothing for
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: the people he killed, no empathy, no remorse. But when
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: he talks about animals on his farm, his voice changes.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: He fixates on These are pigs and hogs and calves
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: that have been dead for decades. But it's one of
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: the few things that stirs emotion in him, and.
• 6:27
  Speaker 10: It's telling over the animal. There nothing or almost but
• 6:37
  Speaker 10: that mud. They cut me and you couldn't have baby,
• 6:43
  Speaker 10: and they don't care for me. I can't go on
• 6:49
  Speaker 10: the property and can't beat him to get anyway.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: I can't do.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: That's picked In rambling about these animals. But for picked In,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: they're not animals. They're jects of control. That's what he's
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: attached to. Back in nineteen sixty seven, Robert's brother David
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Picton is sixteen years old. He's driving their father's truck
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: and strikes a teenager named Timothy Barrett who's walking along
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: the side of the road in pork Quitlam. David flees
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: the scene. He drives home and he tells his mother.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Instead of calling the police, his mother drives him back
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: and allegedly rolls the body into a ditch. They then
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: go home and say nothing. The injuries from the accident
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: are severe, but they're not fatal. The corner discovers that
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: the boy drowned in a nearby puddle after the crash.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: David Picton is eventually convicted in juvenile court for failing
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: to remain at the scene. He loses his license until
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: he turns twenty one.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: David remains a sore.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Spot for Robert Picton, and when I ask him about it,
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: he says they haven't spoken in more than twenty years.
• 8:01
  Speaker 10: I had gone out that they can't talk to him. Hey,
• 8:05
  Speaker 10: we want that we don't together.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: David Picton has never been charged in connection with Robert's crimes,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: though speculation has followed him for decades. In nineteen seventy eight,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: their parents both die and the farm is passed down
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: to all three siblings. Linda, the Picton's sister, wants nothing
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: to do with it.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: David takes the.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: House and Robert moves into a trailer on the property
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: and takes over the farm. This farm becomes Picton's refuge
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: and his prison. As Picton recalls, the farm became empty
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: and he would go days without speaking to a single person.
• 8:50
  Speaker 10: No big fire day long. Nobody you could drive it
• 8:54
  Speaker 10: out there. Everything else, They're not a person that fol there.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: By the mid nineteen nineties, David It works in construction
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: and salvage. Robert becomes a local butcher, still raising pigs
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: on the farm. When he needs to dispose of his
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: animal's remains, he starts visiting West Coast Reduction, a rendering
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: plant on Vancouver's east Side. That's when he starts spending
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: more and more time on Vancouver's skid Row. It's a
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: ten blocks stretch known as the Low Track, a neighborhood
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: of poverty, addiction, and survival sex work. This again is
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Detective Senner.
• 9:33
  Speaker 8: Walk those two or three blocks into the downtown Eastside
• 9:36
  Speaker 8: from any direction.
• 9:37
  Speaker 9: And you're in.
• 9:38
  Speaker 8: You know, just what feels like a war zone of
• 9:43
  Speaker 8: really dispossessed people, mentally ill people, people with a lot
• 9:48
  Speaker 8: of physical injuries and ailments, just addiction issues, crime filth.
• 9:56
  Speaker 9: I mean, it's just it's hard to describe when you
• 9:59
  Speaker 9: have been there.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty six, World Expo turned Vancouver into a
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: global showpiece and accidentally created the perfect environment for a predator.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: The year before the city had evicted hundreds of Low
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: income residents to make.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: Room for tourists.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: When the visitors arrived, sex work and drugs explode, feeding
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: a black market economy that never goes away. It's there
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: that he starts offering women rides, money, and drugs, and
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: then he starts.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: Bringing them home.
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: Did you know the women personally? Any of them?
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: And even when the evidence is overwhelming, many psychopathic offenders
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: will minimize, lie, and deny any connection to their victims.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: It's a pattern of habitual deceit. It's about positioning themselves
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: as the center of gravity.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: In their own personal story.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: I press Robert Picton to talk about these women, talk
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: about these interactions, but the only person he's willing to
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: talk about is Gina Houston. Gina isn't one of the
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: missing women. She's a longtime friend of Picton's and later
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: she'll help the rs MP arrange an interview with him.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: When he brings her name up, he lights up truck
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: and he talks for several minutes about all the wonderful
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: things he did for Gina, as if lending her his
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: truck redeems him somehow. But despite his denials, we know
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: where Picton was spending his nights. By the late eighties
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: and early nineties. Pickton is a regular in Vancouver's downtown
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: east Side. The earliest victim investigators can connect to Robert
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Picton is Nancy Clark, a sex worker. Her last scene
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: around midnight on August twenty.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: Second, nineteen ninety one.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: She didn't return home the next day to care for
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: her two daughters, who are eight.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: And eight months old.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Her DNA will later be found on Picton's farm. Two
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: women go missing in nineteen ninety four, two more in
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, three in nineteen ninety six, including Tanya Hollick.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: She's twenty three. She's last seen on October twenty ninth,
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six. Her family searches the east Side for
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: weeks before they report her missing. Police close the case
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: almost immediately. According to the police report, the lead investigator
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: writes her off as quote just partying, saying she probably
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: left to avoid taking care of her infant son. Years later,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: her DNA is found inside a freezer at the back
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: of Picton's workshop. After Tanya's disappearance, sixteen more women vanish
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: in the next two years, sixteen from a neighborhood that
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: once averaged one a year. In the decades previous, Yet
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: the Vancouver Police do almost nothing. There's no database and
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: only one officer is assigned. There's no question picked and
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: killed many of those women, DNA, bone fragments, personal effects.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: They were all later recovered from his farm. But according
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: to Picton, he has no idea what happened.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: I haven't got a mcgivenaire.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: The evidence says otherwise. It's more denial from Pickton to
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: maintain control. It's March twenty third, nineteen ninety seven. Pickton
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: picks up a sex worker named Anderson in the Downtown
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: east Side and takes her to his farm. This again
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: is Detective Schenner.
• 13:59
  Speaker 8: Picked in a picture up on somewhere in the downtown
• 14:03
  Speaker 8: east Side.
• 14:04
  Speaker 9: He took her to his farm. She wanted to leave,
• 14:08
  Speaker 9: and he wouldn't let her leave.
• 14:11
  Speaker 8: She picked up a knife as she cut him across
• 14:14
  Speaker 8: the neck, and he grabbed the knife from her and
• 14:16
  Speaker 8: he cut her straight up, sort of the midsection.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Anderson runs from the trailer, clutching her abdomen.
• 14:26
  Speaker 8: She was holding her organs together. She flagged down a
• 14:35
  Speaker 8: young couple on a date in their car.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: The couple drive her to safety flag police and an ambulance.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: Rushes her to hospital.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: What they don't realize is that Robert Picton has been
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: admitted to the same er for stab wants. When police
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: search picked In, they find a key in his pocket.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: It's a key to.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: The handcuff still attached to Anderson's wrist. She barely survives.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Picton is finally arrested. When I press picked In about this,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: his answer is unsatisfied. He claims he was framed, that
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: the police told Anderson what.
• 15:14
  Speaker 10: To say, what to say, and what they want to
• 15:21
  Speaker 10: say is the police.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety seven, Pickton lies just as badly to police,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: but it doesn't matter. The charges are dropped. I have
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: a review of the case written decades later. It reads,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: in part, the Anderson case was stayed because of her
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: perceived lack of dependability due to her drug dependency. Police
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: just don't believe.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: What's right in front of them, and.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Because of that, Robert Picton walks free and kills again
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: and again and again.
• 15:54
  Speaker 8: If it had been a murder, it would have been
• 15:56
  Speaker 8: a slam dun murder conviction.
• 15:59
  Speaker 9: The idea that.
• 16:02
  Speaker 8: Anderson wasn't credible because of her addiction was shocking to me,
• 16:07
  Speaker 8: because coming from the downtown East side. If every victim
• 16:11
  Speaker 8: in court was considered not credible because they had a
• 16:14
  Speaker 8: drug addiction, there would be nobody in court.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: By nineteen ninety seven, more than thirty women are missing.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Most are sex workers, most have drug issues, and most
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: are Indigenous. In Canada, Indigenous women are the most vulnerable population,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: and unlike other groups, they're more likely to be victimized
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: by men outside their own race. Frustrated by an action,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: a local resident named Wayne Lane creates a website and
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: a one eight hundred tip line for information about the
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: missing women. One day, Wayne gets a tip from a
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: day laborer who works on a pig farm in Port Coquitlam.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: We track down Wayne, still living in British Columbia.
• 17:00
  Speaker 11: I ended up getting a phone call from a guy
• 17:02
  Speaker 11: by the name of Bill Hysscocks, who had worked for
• 17:05
  Speaker 11: Willie Picton. Bill told me that Willie had been charged
• 17:08
  Speaker 11: with stabbing a girl in ninety seven.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: His Cox tells Wayne that others on the farm have
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: seen evidence in Picton's trailer that cannot be explained.
• 17:18
  Speaker 11: They were talking about women's identifications, women's clothes, some with
• 17:24
  Speaker 11: blood on them, being in Willie strainer. You should see
• 17:28
  Speaker 11: what that guy has in his trainer. That information came
• 17:31
  Speaker 11: secondhand to him.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: He says, picked In jokes about killing women and says
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: he feeds their remains to his pigs. Wayne brings this
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: information immediately to police, another opportunity to stop Pickton, and.
• 17:47
  Speaker 11: I never heard any more about it. That was the
• 17:48
  Speaker 11: end of it.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: They dismiss it as nonsense. A farmer feeding people to pigs.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Police say it's too ridiculous to believe. But Wayne doesn't stop.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: He goes public and soon the media starts asking questions
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: about the missing women and the police silence. This is
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: when the Vancouver Police assigned Detective Lorimer Schenner to investigate.
• 18:13
  Speaker 9: I had a weird.
• 18:15
  Speaker 8: Sense when I took the missing person job. In fact,
• 18:21
  Speaker 8: probably a weird sense when I got into policing that
• 18:23
  Speaker 8: at some point I was going to be working on
• 18:26
  Speaker 8: something big and that was going to.
• 18:32
  Speaker 9: Be really difficult. I don't know why. I just always
• 18:34
  Speaker 9: had that sense.
• 18:36
  Speaker 8: Did I think it was going to end up being
• 18:37
  Speaker 8: the largest case in Canadian history? No?
• 18:40
  Speaker 9: I mean no.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: In August nineteen ninety eight, Detective Shanner takes charge of
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: the missing person's files. He's one of the department's brightest
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: and He's about to uncover what others refuse to see.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Detective Shanner now see's picked in as the top suspect.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: He tracks down the day laborer who called Wayne Lang's
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: tip line.
• 19:04
  Speaker 9: It was hard for me to find Bill his Cox.
• 19:06
  Speaker 8: He was.
• 19:08
  Speaker 9: In detox or in jail. He was hard to reach.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: I did get in touch when I asked Pickton about it.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: He's dismissive of Bill his Cocks. Ironically, he calls him
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: a nutcase.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: He's a real medicator. You can't believe anything.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Picked In rambles about his cocks for a long time,
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: and it's telling. Psychopathic offenders often develop an intense, almost
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: obsessive fixation on the people who inform on them. And
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: it's because informants create these real world consequences, which is
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: something psychopaths rarely anticipate. It's through Bill his Cocks that
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Detective Shanner learns another name, Lynn Ellingson, a single mother
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: and friend of Picton's, who allegedly witnessed him disposing of
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: a body.
• 19:57
  Speaker 8: We got a tip in July nineteen ninety nine of
• 20:02
  Speaker 8: that a woman had seen Picked in skinning of a
• 20:07
  Speaker 8: woman's body that was hanging in his slaughterhouse. Lenn Allison
• 20:13
  Speaker 8: was the person who witnessed this in the barn. She
• 20:16
  Speaker 8: was one of I guess several friends, mostly women that
• 20:21
  Speaker 8: would sort of hang around picked In. He would pay
• 20:24
  Speaker 8: them to bring women to the farm. He would, and
• 20:28
  Speaker 8: he would give them drugs.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: With this information, Shenner presses his superiors to act. It's
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: another chance to stop picked In. The RCMP agree to
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: bring Pickton in for an interview, which takes place on
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: January nineteenth, two thousand, at the Coquitlam RCMP detachment. This
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: is a portion of the actual interview later released in court,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: in which investigators press picked In on the nineteen ninety
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: seven stabbing.
• 20:56
  Speaker 10: No, you've never taken any of the prostituts back to trailer,
• 21:00
  Speaker 10: not since this incident, but for that incident.
• 21:04
  Speaker 7: Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope nope.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: A comprehensive report from the Vancouver Police later describes what
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: happens in that interview, and I have a quote from
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: it right here.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Quote.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: The interview is poorly conducted and largely unproductive. Pickton denies
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: killing sex trade workers, but gives an evasive answer about
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: whether DNA from any of the missing women might be
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: found on his property. The constables don't ask follow ups.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Picked In consents to a search of his property, but
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: that offer is not followed up on.
• 21:38
  Speaker 8: The RCMP just weren't taking it very seriously, and they
• 21:41
  Speaker 8: didn't believe that he was a killer. And so this
• 21:46
  Speaker 8: whole opportunity to further the investigation and get on the
• 21:51
  Speaker 8: farm and search the farm was squandered.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Once again. Police simply do not believe the witness and
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: and they fail to go to Picton's farm and follow
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: up on his invitation to search. We know now that
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: if they had, they would have seen evidence lying in
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: plain sight. I asked Pickton about this years later, and
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: he goes off. He says Lynn Ellingson was a drug
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: addicted schizophrenic.
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: On them.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Garmer more rambling from Picton. His psychopathy is on full display,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: and it makes me ask the question, how could any
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: police officer sit down with this man and find him credible.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Under mounting pressure and amid a growing body count, Detective
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Schenner suffers a nervous breakdown. He's removed from the file
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: and submits a status report naming Robert Picton as the
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: top suspect. Though it's not followed up. Meanwhile, a rookie
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: RCMP officer named Nathan Wells gets a tip about illegal
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: guns at Robert Picton's farm. Though he's not involved with
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: a missing women investigation in any.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: Way for the first time.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: He takes the tip seriously and applies for a search warrant.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: When he arrives on the property, he sees it in disarray.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Robert Picton lives alone in a trailer at the edge
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: of the lot. Nathan Wells goes there looking for guns
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: and finds something else. Entirely. He sees an asthman hailer
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: prescribed to one of the missing women from Vancouver's East Side,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: a woman named Serena Abbotsway. It's a serial killer's trophy.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: Inside Picton's trailer, officers recover handcuffs with pink fur, women's clothing, jewelry,
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: night vision goggles, a bottle of Spanish fly, and a
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: twenty two Revolt with one round fired. Its barrel has
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: been converted into a sex toy. Piece by piece, a
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: disturbing profile emerges, setting off the largest investigation in Canadian history.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Years later, when I asked picked In about this, he's
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: concerned only for the trailer, which he claims took him
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: two years to build. He's upset that the police leveled it.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: This is the same trailer in which he killed dozens
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: of women.
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean they won't out and Brandy and get
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: heard it. The build years to build it and.
• 24:40
  Speaker 10: Get it right over with every and they left it there.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: The search of the Picton farm lasts for almost two years.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Officers recover the heads, hands and feet of Picton's final
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: three victims. From his outbuildings. They find two five Allen
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: plastic pails used for pig feed. Both are tipped on
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: their sides, inside or more human remains. The search becomes
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: a nightmare. Crews bring in heavy equipment, including two fifty
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: foot conveyor belts, soil runs over sifters fragment after fragment appear.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Archaeologists join the team to identify decomposed and mutilated remains.
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: Whatever your pravity, don't get involved, I'm there.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Pict In is now in custody and police now understand
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: the pattern. Using money and drugs, picked In targeted women
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: from the downtown East Side, almost all addicted, many sex workers,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: mostly Indigenous, the most vulnerable population in the country. Upon
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: his arrest, picked and endures an eleven hour interrogation. He's
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: shown photos of missing women, but he stays vague. He
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: calls them pretty. He laughs off his involvement as hogwash.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: He calls himself a plain, little farmboy. Investigators interrogate picked In,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: but get very little. Instead, the RCMP place an undercover
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: officer inside of Picton's cell on hidden camera. Picked In
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Braggs Picton tells the officer that he is in fact
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: a serial killer who has killed more than forty nine
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: women and planned to kill one more to make it
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: a quote even fifty. He tells the officer that some
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: of his victims remains ended up in a rendering plant
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: in Vancouver. He admits getting caught because he'd become quote sloppy.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: Towards the end, I confronted Pickton about this. If his
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: claims of innocence are so legitimate, how did he know
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: all the details to tell the undercover officer in his cell.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: For his part, he says that he.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Learned all the details in his initial interrogation, and that
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: he was just telling this undercover office sir what he
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: wanted to hear.
• 27:02
  Speaker 10: Turn to the interrogation, I knew nothing or very well
• 27:07
  Speaker 10: told you in the corupture, what's taking place?
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: Nothing? Nothing? W a hit.
• 27:13
  Speaker 10: I just cut it out, cut it out, nothing, I.
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: Mean go line.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Faced with this overwhelming evidence, the Vancouver Police compile a
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: list of seventy one missing and murdered women in Greater Vancouver.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: Representatives from the First Nation Summit write letters and lobby leadership,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: initially submitting a list of forty eight homicide victims of
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Indigenous ancestry. In the end, the search uncovers sixty thousand
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: pieces of evidence, along with the undercover recording from pict
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: and cell. It's more than enough to take him to
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: trial on this number twelfth, two thousand and six. A
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: jury selected. They're told to prepare for a year long trial.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Pickton pleads not guilty to twenty seven counts.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: A first degree murder.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Ironically, one is dismissed for lack of evidence, and the
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: remaining twenty six are severed into two groups of six
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: and twenty.
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: I was taking for court many a time, many a time.
• 28:24
  Speaker 10: They charges the one all the other one. They're walking around.
• 28:36
  Speaker 10: I'm not charging for them because they're amitting.
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: They presume none, their duty is not even there. They're
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: just be.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Sad for the first time the women are named and
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: heard in a court well, Picton's guilt is undeniable. As
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: proceedings unfold, the defense floats an alternative. During the two
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: year excavation, police had recovered a massive amount of DNA
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: profiles eighty additional unidentified people, roughly half mail. The defense
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: argues the farm was a dump site for multiple killers,
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: maybe even connected to organized crime. The prosecution acknowledges that
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: a larger criminal ecosystem exists in Vancouver, but Picton is
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: explicitly guilty.
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: So you don't feel like you got a good defense.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: He Pickton is found guilty of the first six murders,
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: but remarkably, no trial is ever held for the rest
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: of the victims.
• 29:45
  Speaker 7: The interrogation went through.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: And.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: After Picton's initial conviction, the prosecutor stays all the charges,
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: saying any new conviction would not increase his sentence. Some
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: families are relieved that it's over, but most are enraged
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: they see another example of Picton evading justice. The case
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: shakes the country. A public inquiry cites blatant failures by
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: the Vancouver Police Department and quote a tragedy of epic proportions.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Investigators point to a systemic prejudice against sex workers, drug users,
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: and Indigenous women. The case becomes a landmark in the
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: national crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women. In all,
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: sixty seven women when missing from the Downtown east Side.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: How many of them are Picton's victims remains unknown. After
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: speaking with Picton, I came away with the confirmation that
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: he didn't feel guilt or remorse. He only felt ownership
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: about the farm, about the women, about the story. He
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: was still trying to control the narrative of decades later
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: from inside a prison cell. But that's what psychopathy sounds like.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: It's the absence of empathy disguised as reason.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: And that's the person I spoke to.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: That was Robert Picton. If you go to our social
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: channels YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, you'll see additional content
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: about this episode, more phone calls, insights, and interviews, and
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: we'll be posting daily from the last decade of our
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: true crime reporting. This season on Unmarked, you'll hear exclusive
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: audio and interviews, calls and content, including the last interview
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: with Charles Manson. We're opening our archives one case at
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: a time. Subscribe to Unmarked so you don't miss what
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: we reveal next. This episode of Unmarked is produced by
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: John Dedoe, edited by Dave Alderson, and our additional producers
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: are Jesse Demray and Steve McClellan.
• 31:51
  Speaker 10: WO