David Carrigg
The Province
Monday, January 29, 2007
NEW WESTMINSTER - Police lied to Robert Pickton several times during the accused mass murderer's post arrest interview, the court heard this afternoon.
Defence lawyer Peter Ritchie asked police witness Insp. Don Adam to confirm that interviewing officer Bill Fordy lied to Pickton when he told him he would "promise to tell the truth."
During the Feb. 23, 2002, interview, Pickton was told police had heard he had sex with dead bodies.
"That's an absolute lie, isn't it?," Ritchie said.
Adam confirmed the statement wasn't true and that it was a "test to see
(Pickton's) reaction."
Fordy also told Pickton that his mom had died of cancer, which is also not true. Pickton's mom died of cancer in 1979.
Ritchie pointed out that the police did not use satellites in the investigation, despite telling Pickton they had.
Adam said he made a mistake when he told Pickton during the interview that he had heard that Pickton contracted Hep C from a sex worker.
"I knew he had Hep C and I thought he got that from one of the sex workers.
When I reviewed that I found out it was inaccurate," Adam said.
Ritchie asked Adam whether police were telling the truth when they told Pickton they heard from several sex workers that Pickton would not look at sex workers when he had sex with them.
At that point, Adam became agitated.
"Mr. Ritchie. I made 100 statements during the interview against a backdrop of a massive investigation," Adam said.
Today's hearing ended on that note.
Ritchie will continue questioning Adam tomorrow.
Adam, the RCMP officer who masterminded the Pickton interrogation, earlier detailed the interview process in court.
Adam was questioned at length by defence lawyer Peter Ritchie about the interview team that talked with Pickton for 11 hours following his arrest on murder charges on Feb. 22, 2002.
Adam said the team comprised police from various RCMP detachments and the Edmonton Police Service.
The Pickton interview was observed via a live feed in a room nearby at the Surrey RCMP detachment. There were two criminal psychologists and a "criminal profiler" in the observation room, as well as Adam, who took over the interview at the 11th hour.
Adam is credited with making the breakthrough in the marathon Pickton interview. The interview was played to the jury last week and contained a series of stunning admissions, including that Pickton "got sloppy with the last one."
Adam said he was running on three hours sleep a night in the two weeks between Pickton's Feb. 5 weapons-related arrest and his arrest on murder charges.
Ritchie also asked Adam to show the jury a photo of the 16-acre Pickton farm. He pointed out that Dave Pickton's home was at the other end of the property from Robert Pickton's trailer, which was only 30 metres from a row of newly developed townhouses.
The entire property was surrounded by an eight-foot high metal ring-lock fence in the days after Pickton's arrest.
This morning, Ritchie asked RCMP Insp. Don Adam to confirm that three Pickton associates- Lynn Ellingsen, Dinah Taylor and Pat Casanova - were arrested on suspicion of murder following Pickton's arrest in Feb. 2002.
Casanova had been suspected of 15 killings, including the deaths of five of the six women Pickton is now standing trial for killing. No charges were laid against the trio.
Police have suggested Ellingsen and Taylor lured sex workers from the Downtown Eastside to Pickton's Port Coquitlam farm. Casanova was a Pickton employee who helped butcher pigs.
Adam explained to Ritchie how information related to the Pickton file was gathered and stored and who the key investigators were.
Adam said after Pickton's arrest the number of people working the file, including civilians and science students, went rapidly from 30 to 300.
Ritchie asked Adam about the forensic and blood splatter experts the Crown would call as witnesses.
He told Adam that this afternoon he will be asking him a lot of questions about the RCMP interview team that interrogated Pickton after he was charged with murder.
Adam earlier told the court forensic experts took over 400,000 DNA swabs from the Pickton farm and sifted through 383,000 cubic metres of soil.
"You don't rush around like an Easter egg hunt looking for a piece of evidence. You take baby steps. We started at (Pickton's) trailer and went out methodically from there," Adam said.
Outside the courthouse a dozen Native drummers turned out, lining the entrance to the building.
"We are here to support the families, to give them strength to protect themselves," said Seis'lam, of the Lil'wat First Nation.
"We are here to honour women, all women, as lifegivers." Many of Pickton's alleged victims were First Nations.
Inside the court, Adam talked about the 30-person missing women's taskforce formed in the spring of 2001.
Today, Adam said Pickton was a person of interest in the investigation prior to his arrest on a gun charge in early February. Police had gone to the farm acting on a tip Pickton had a gun in his trailer.
During that raid police found the gun with a sex toy attached to it and several items belonging to two of the missing women.
"On the morning of the sixth (of February) when I discovered what had been located I knew we needed to do a search," Adam said.
Pickton was released the following day on the firearms arrest and police began tracking him.
"If (Pickton) was in fact a serial killer then that release posed a huge threat to the public," Adam said.
Adam said police went to great lengths not to contaminate evidence with DNA from the forensic search crew.
Nine trailers were brought onto the farm as well as bulldozers.
Homicide investigators from various municipal detachments began work talking to people who knew Pickton and his associates, including sex workers in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
"We knew someone was going there and taking them out," Adam said.
In the interview played last week, Pickton also said "you're making me out to be more of a murderer than I really am," and when Adam asks Pickton what he should tell the victim's families, Pickton responds "shit happens".
During the interview Pickton was shocked to see one of his employees, Scott Chubb, told police his former boss boasted he could kill a drug addict by injecting them with windshield wiper fluid.
Police later found a windshield wiper fluid filled syringe in Pickton's trailer.
Pickton also requested several times to talk to Taylor.
Adam tells Pickton another of his female associates Ellingsen "talks about coming in when you were skinning a girl while she was hanging from a hook."
Adam told the court today that a comment he made to Pickton during the interview that he had heard Pickton had sex with corpses was a lie.
Adam said Pickton "came to life" during the latter part of the 11-hour interview.
"He had no trouble understanding what I was saying to him, but he was toying with me," Adam said.
Pickton, 57, who ran a pig-butchering business on his family's Port Coquitlam farm, is on trial in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster for the first six of the 26 first-degree murders he's now charged with.
Within six months of the February 2002 interview, police found three of the missing women's heads and their hands and feet.
Police also recovered DNA from bones on the farm that matched the DNA from a skull found on the side of the road in Mission in 1985.
Pickton accepts those body parts were found on the property but he denies he killed the women.
Pickton is currently being tried for the murder of Andrea Joesbury, Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin and Brenda Wolfe.
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