Question hangs over courtroom:
Could Willie walk?
By Ethan Baron
Vancouver Province
Sunday, June 24, 2007
WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT
As the serial-murder trial of Robert "Willie" Pickton enters its sixth month, one big question hangs over the courtroom: Could Willie walk?
Charged with 26 killings, Pickton is on trial for the first six counts.
When the trial opened Jan. 22, prosecutor Derrill Prevett presented what appeared to be a powerful case against the Port Coquitlam pig man. Pickton had actually boasted to an undercover cop that he killed 49 women and had planned to "make it an even 50," Prevett told court. During Pickton's police interrogation, he admitted to being "sloppy" about cleaning up blood, and said, "You make me more of a mass murderer than I am."
He also told an officer he had "one more planned" then he was "gonna shut it down." Pickton said there were "two . . . maybe three" women killed in a motorhome on the farm.
Police discovered a handgun in Pickton's laundry room with a phallic sex toy over the end, bearing the DNA of Pickton and Mona Wilson, Prevett said to the jury. Two syringes with DNA from the accused and Sereena Abotsway were found in his trailer, Prevett said.
After Pickton's arrest, his brother Dave told police he knew it was "over" for Pickton, and added, "There's bodies," an officer testified.
The physical evidence against Pickton looked compelling. Women's heads, sawn in half, in a workshop freezer and the slaughterhouse. Bullets found with heads, and a pistol of the same calibre in Pickton's laundry room. Bloodstains suggesting a vicious attack in a beat-up motorhome parked on the farm. Items and DNA linked to victims, in Pickton's trailer and slaughterhouse.
The Crown had witnesses who had been close to Pickton. Early in the trial, the prosecution played a video of Pickton's interrogation, which included a clip of his former employee Scott Chubb saying Pickton told him a good way to kill a heroin addict was to inject her with windshield fluid or antifreeze. Police found a syringe containing windshield fluid on a console in Pickton's office.
In another clip from Pickton's interrogation, former Pickton associate Andrew Bellwood said Pickton told him about killing prostitutes and feeding their bodies to pigs.
Body parts. DNA. Alleged boasts of murder. An open-and-shut case?
Not so fast. Pickton's high-end defence team has spent the past five months planting seeds of doubt.
Yes, Pickton made incriminating statements to an undercover policeman in a jail cell, and to officers during interrogation. But, argued his lawyers, their client is "slow," a "simple fellow" prone to spinning outlandish yarns. He claimed to have lived in a chicken coop at age two, and said he was offered a job as a male model in his 20s.
Then there are the heads, the hands and feet, the teeth and bones, found within a stone's throw of Pickton's trailer. Over and over, lawyers for the accused have focused on the large number of people who came and went from the Pickton farm at all hours, some even using the slaughterhouse for butchery.
And although the self-described "pig man" is the only one charged, three other people were arrested on suspicion of murder in the missing-women case, but never charged. Pat Casanova bought pigs from Pickton, which the two slaughtered and butchered together. Casanova testified that he used prostitutes, even in Pickton's bed. This is a man skilled with knife and saw, who spent a great deal of time in the slaughterhouse, and had access to the workshop freezers. He was arrested in January 2003 on suspicion of killing 15 women, including five of the six for which Pickton is now standing trial.
Also arrested but never charged was Dinah Taylor, Pickton's friend. According to witness testimony, Taylor brought drug-addicted women to Pickton, and lived for a time in Pickton's trailer. Her DNA was found on a pair of handcuffs in a workshop, and on lipstick from Pickton's trailer that also bore DNA from Brenda Wolfe.
The third person picked up was Lynn Ellingsen, but after a brief investigation she was not charged.
Defence lawyers have often raised the spectre of Dave, the younger brother said to have dominated the accused. Jurors heard that Dave has been convicted of sexual assault and was suspected of a violent sex attack in his home. An RCMP sergeant testified that Dave remains a "person of interest" rather than a suspect, in spite of the conviction, the allegation, and information that he used prostitutes and had a disdain for women.
As for the DNA evidence, the Pickton team has pointed out that just because Pickton's DNA was found together with victims' DNA, that doesn't link him directly to the women. DNA experts testified that DNA can last for years, and a "mixed" sample such as those on the .22 and the syringes can represent contact with two people at different times. And merely picking up and holding an item can leave DNA, jurors heard.
Analysis of the .22 pistol and sex toy in the laundry room turned up Wilson's DNA, but the strongest statement the RCMP lab expert could make regarding Pickton was that he could not rule out the accused as a possible match to DNA on the item. Police handled the weapon so much without gloves they didn't bother fingerprinting it, court heard. Bullets from a .22 found with women's heads were too badly damaged to be matched to a particular gun.
Prosecutors have focused on pig-butchering methods, seeking to link Pickton's techniques with the women's remains. The three women's feet and hands had been "disarticulated," separated from the body at the joints, Prevett said. However, an RCMP tool-mark expert testified that there was "no particular pattern of agreement" between the women's body parts and partially butchered pig carcasses found at the farm.
The women's heads had been cut in half vertically, with two of them showing marks inside the skull consistent with impressions from the tip of a reciprocating saw. Such a saw was seized from Pickton's farm. Casanova testified that both he and Pickton used the device on pigs.
Several of the prosecution's civilian witnesses have done little to advance the Crown case. Two women have testified that when they were drug addicts in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Pickton brought them to his trailer and they spent the night in his bed, receiving money without providing sex, and leaving unharmed the next day.
Scott Chubb, highlighted by Prevett in his opening statement, claimed on the witness stand that Pickton offered him $1,000 to harm Ellingsen, whom a police officer suggested was blackmailing Pickton because she saw him "skinning a girl." Chubb, a former drug addict with a lengthy criminal record, contradicted himself so often that at times he appeared to be speaking from both sides of his mouth. His testimony was vastly different from what he'd said in the preliminary inquiry and in police statements. He had received thousands of dollars and a van from police for providing information about Pickton, and was after the $100,000 reward in the missing-women case, jurors heard.
Gerald McLaughlin, a young man who lived in the motorhome where a bloodbath allegedly later occurred, said he saw nothing unusual in his two years at the farm, and Pickton was "like a parent" to him.
To convict Pickton, the 12 jurors must unanimously find him guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." Each jury member must be, according to Black's Law Dictionary, the bible of the Canadian legal system, "satisfied to a moral certainty" and "entirely convinced" of the accused's guilt.
If the Crown fails to entirely convince the five women and seven men on Pickton's jury that he killed those six women, Willie could walk.
© Vancouver Province 2007
