Pickton jurors never heard from sex-trade worker taken to the farm

Pickton jurors never heard from sex-trade worker taken to farm

 

 

BY LORI CULBERT, VANCOUVER SUNAUGUST 4, 2010 6:19 PM

 

 

 

The jurors at Robert (Willie) Pickton's trial never heard the testimony of a sex-trade worker who alleged the accused took her to his Port Coquitlam farm for sex, slapped handcuffs on one wrist and stabbed her nearly to death.

Photograph by: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun

VANCOUVER — The jurors at Robert (Willie) Pickton's trial never heard the testimony of a sex-trade worker who alleged the accused took her to his Port Coquitlam farm for sex, slapped handcuffs on one wrist and stabbed her nearly to death.

"I was fighting him, I was, like, going backwards so I could get to this knife," the woman testified in 2003 at Pickton's preliminary hearing. "I was begging him to let me go, telling him I had a family.

"And then I leaped at him, I slit his throat... I remember him grabbing a rag and going, 'You f---ing bitch, you got me good,' and he put the rag on his neck. And then he had a big long stick and I remember just picking up plants, everything I could get a hold of and throwing it at him."

During that violent struggle in March 1997, the woman said she slashed Pickton's jugular vein and was able to escape, flagging down a passing car for help.

She had lost three litres of blood and had no pulse when she arrived at Royal Columbian Hospital with stab wounds to the upper chest, the abdomen, hands and arms. The woman, who was then 30, remained unconscious in hospital for four days.

Pickton, who also lost three litres of blood that evening, drove himself to Eagle Ridge Hospital, and was then transferred to Royal Columbian. The two stabbing victims were in separate operating rooms when a handcuff key was found in the pocket of Pickton's pants. It was taken to the woman's room and used to unlock the cuffs dangling from her wrist.

Pickton was charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon and forcible confinement following the incident, but the charges were eventually stayed because the Crown considered the woman too unstable to testify in court at the time.

The stabbing that occurred 13 years ago predates the disappearance of all six women Pickton was convicted of murdering at his 2007 trial - and also predates the disappearance of 15 of the other 20 women he was accused of murdering.

However, the jurors were not allowed to hear the woman's story because the judge, B.C. Supreme Court Justice James Williams, ruled in late September 2006 — just months before Pickton's trial was to begin — that it was merely speculation that Pickton planned to murder and dismember her in the same fashion as the other women.

It was a huge victory for the defence, because the knife-fight survivor was the only Crown witness prepared to testify at Pickton's trial that she had been brutally attacked by the accused, but lived to tell about it.

Another startling revelation in the woman's story is that while Pickton was being treated in the same hospital that night, police seized his jacket, sweatshirt, T-shirt, jeans, underwear, socks and rubber boots. They were put in a storage locker and forgotten for several years until after his 2002 arrest in the missing women case.

When Pickton's clothes were tested in the RCMP forensics lab in 2004, a gruesome discovery was made — the DNA from Andrea Borhaven was on Pickton's rubber boots and DNA matching Cara Ellis was on his nylon jacket. Both women vanished from the Downtown Eastside in early 1997, just before the knife attack on the woman.

During the long search of Pickton's pig farm, police found an earring bearing Borhaven's DNA under the floor boards of his trailer; they also discovered several items linked to Ellis, such as her prayer card on a shelf in his slaughterhouse and her DNA on plastic sheet liners in a freezer. Pickton would later be charged with their murders, and they are among the 20 murder charges that have now been stayed.

However, the shocking revelation about the clothes was also kept a secret from the 12 jurors because it pertained to two of the 20 women who were not subject to the first trial.

During pretrial arguments, the Crown and defence agreed that Pickton and the woman stabbed each other severely on March 22, 1997, but they disagreed on who started the fight and why. And, therefore, also took opposite positions on whether the woman should be allowed to testify at Pickton's trial.

Crown attorney Michael Petrie argued that the woman's evidence was necessary because it helped prove who killed the six victims at the centre of the trial who, like the knife-attack survivor, were all drug-addicted sex-trade workers with a link to Pickton's farm.

"The biggest significant difference" between the woman and the others, Petrie argued before the judge, is that she survived to testify and the others did not. None of the 98 witnesses called by the Crown testified that they had been attacked by Pickton, and some insisted he was not violent at all.

Petrie wanted to use the woman's evidence, as well, to support the testimony of a key Crown witness, Andrew Bellwood, who told the jury that Pickton once confessed to handcuffing women before killing them.

The Crown also argued the woman's story pertained to one of the six women on the indictment - Brenda Wolfe - whose DNA was found on a handcuff key ring in a loft in one of Pickton's outbuildings.

However, defence lawyer Peter Ritchie maintained that the survivor, who he noted had a severe substance abuse problem and a criminal record that spanned two decades, attacked Pickton that night during a drug binge. Pickton, his lawyers argued, was just trying to control the woman when he put a handcuff on her wrist and tried unsuccessfully to attach it to something in his trailer.

Ritchie also told the judge that Pickton could have defended himself in a separate trial over the 1997 allegation, but it had been stayed and it wasn't fair to now lump it into the missing women "mega-trial." 

Paraphrasing Shakespeare, Ritchie told Williams that allowing the woman's testimony at Pickton's trial would be so unfair it would be tantamount to dropping poison into the jurors' ears.

In a written ruling following the heated pretrial arguments, Williams sided with the defence, deciding the knife-attack incident could not be considered similar to what happened to the other women because there was no proof she was to be killed and dismembered following the attack. (All six of the women Pickton was convicted of killing were dismembered, and at least three of them were killed by gunshot wounds.)

"I find that there is simply not anywhere near the required degree of similarity to permit the conclusion that it is likely that the same individual committed both the 1997 incident and the murders of the six women," Williams wrote.

Williams added his conclusion "may seem to offend common sense," but he was required to strictly follow the law. "To do otherwise is to imperil the fair trial rights of the accused," he wrote.

lculbert@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Pickton murders: Bloody knife fight left one victim barely alive

 

 

BY LORI CULBERT, VANCOUVER SUNAUGUST 4, 2010 5:59 PM

 

 

 

There was only one Crown witness prepared to testify at Robert (Willie) Pickton's trial that she had been brutally attacked by the accused and lived to tell about it. Pickton was charged with attempted murder following the 1997 incident, but the charges were stayed because the Crown considered the woman too unstable to testify.

Photograph by: File, Vancouver Sun

There was only one Crown witness prepared to testify at Robert (Willie) Pickton's trial that she had been brutally attacked by the accused and lived to tell about it. Pickton was charged with attempted murder following the 1997 incident, but the charges were stayed because the Crown considered the woman too unstable to testify. At Pickton's 2007 murder trial, prosecutors argued the jury should hear the woman's evidence because it would help prove who killed the six victims on the indictment who, like her, were all drug-addicted sex-trade workers with a link to Pickton's farm. However, defence lawyers maintained that the woman, who they noted had a severe substance abuse problem and a criminal record that spanned two decades, attacked Pickton that night during a drug binge and that he was acting in self-defence. The trial judge ruled the jury should not hear her story, saying it was merely speculation that Pickton planned to murder and dismember her in the same fashion as the other victims. Even though the jury never heard her speak, the woman did take the stand twice during Pickton's pretrial hearings: during his 2003 preliminary hearing and a 2006 voir dire. Here is the story she previously told to police and in court (although its veracity has never been challenged or defended in open court):

The woman was working at the corner of Princess and Cordova late on the evening of March 22, 1997 when she said Robert (Willie) Pickton pulled up in a red pickup truck and asked her how much for oral sex.

"$40," replied the woman, who was then 30.

"How about a little more?" Pickton asked her.

He suggested she come to his place in Port Coquitlam, but she thought it was too far away.

He offered her $100 and said he would have her back downtown by 1 a.m. She accepted.

While sitting in the pickup truck, she saw a bra and asked Pickton whose it was. He said it belonged to a "working girl."

Just off the Mary Hill Bypass, the woman asked Pickton to pull over at a gas station so she could use the bathroom, but he indicated his place was nearby.

The woman recalls driving through the gate at 953 Dominion Ave., and going down a long driveway until they reached a trailer with a barking dog on the porch.

Pickton checked his messages on the answering machine, and then the woman followed him past the kitchen and into a bedroom.

"As we were going, I was just looking around, checking the place out. And the kitchen was "it was a pigsty" and I noticed a big butcher knife on the kitchen table 'cause it was just plain as day," she testified.

The woman said there was no bed in the back room, just a sleeping bag on the floor and a big roll of plastic that resembled a roll of carpeting.

"He went into his pocket, took out his wallet, handed me five 20s," she recalled.

The woman said she supplied a condom and they had sex for "all of five minutes" and then got dressed and returned to the entranceway.

After the sex, however, something went terribly wrong. The woman fled the farm bleeding profusely, with a handcuff attached to her wrist. Both she and Pickton were eventually treated in the same hospital for potentially life-threatening stab wounds.

The beginning and ending of the story is agreed upon by both the Crown and defence; it is what happened in between that remains unresolved. No jury has ever decided the issue because the woman wasn't allowed to testify at Pickton's trial.

After the sex, the woman asked Pickton if she could use the telephone, but he refused.

"He told me that other girls had made long-distance [calls], and he said he would stop at Mohawk, there was a pay phone there."

The woman went into the bathroom to inject a speedball ?a mixture of heroin and cocaine. But she said she missed the vein and didn't get high.

"When I came out, I asked him for a telephone book and he showed me a telephone book. And I was leaning over the desk looking up a phone number and I could feel ? feel him behind me."

The woman said she turned around and Pickton grabbed her left hand, caressed it and then slapped a handcuff on it.

"Then I just started fighting him. And then the first thing I remember was a knife on the kitchen table. So as I was fighting him, I was, like, going backwards so I could get to this knife, and then I reached for the knife.

"And then I leaped at him, I slit his throat.

"And then I remember him grabbing a rag and going, 'You f---ing bitch, you got me good,' and he put the rag on his neck. And then he had a big long stick and I remember just picking up plants, everything I could get a hold of and throwing it at him."

The woman said she tried to open the door and break a window to escape, but couldn't. At some point Pickton got the knife from her and stabbed her in the abdomen.

She said she must have blacked out at some point, because the next thing she remembers they were outside the trailer, standing beside his pickup truck. Pickton was holding her, she had the knife again in her right hand, and her left hand was split open.

"I was begging him to let me go, telling him I had a family and I told him I'd give $1,000 if he'd let me go."

The woman said she could feel all his weight coming down on her. "So I think he was going under, losing consciousness."

She recalled sliding out from under Pickton and staggering down the driveway. She ran across the road and knocked on the door of a neighbour's house but nobody answered. She tried to break the little window on the door with the knife and eventually smashed the picture window with her elbow.

Then she saw car lights approaching. At first she ducked, fearing it was Pickton coming after her, but she saw two heads in the car and recognized that one was a woman. The car drove to the end of the dead-end street, and turned around to drive past the house again.

"I smashed the other glass 'cause it was double ? double pane and I yelled, 'Help!'" the woman recalled. "And then they stopped and I went running out there."

The car's passenger, Maria Mills, told police in a statement read out in court that she recalled the woman "coming down the driveway -- sort of walking, staggering down the driveway -- and we heard, 'Help me, help me.'"

The car's driver, Brian Strilesky, told police: "She was covered in blood. She had a large kitchen type knife in her right hand and what appeared to be a handcuff on her left wrist. She pleaded for us to help her, that she had been stabbed."

Strilesky told the woman to drop the knife and put her in the back seat. "The girl was very concerned that she was going to be dying and she said, 'In case I die, tell them that I stabbed him in the neck,'" Strilesky told police.

The woman also pointed to Pickton's laneway, and said that was "where the accused lived," the witnesses told police.

She arrived by ambulance about 2 a.m. at Royal Columbian Hospital, where she was treated for two stab wounds to her abdomen, slashes to her hands and arms, and a knife wound to her right side, which had punctured her lung. She had lost three litres of blood and had no pulse.

Just over an hour later, Pickton was transferred to Royal Columbian from a smaller hospital, where he had driven himself. He had also lost three litres of blood, and had a large cut to the left side of his neck and to the top of his left arm.

Pickton was taken into a trauma room, where the handcuff key in his pants pocket was taken to the woman's operating room to remove the handcuffs still attached to her wrist.

According to the defence, the woman and Pickton were both slashed so badly that one or both of them could have died without medical intervention.

Defence lawyer Peter Ritchie maintained the woman had a "severe" 10-year cocaine and heroin addiction, and chronicled several run-ins with police and ambulance attendants, as well as episodes of bizarre and "psychotic" behaviour that could only be controlled by restraining her.

The defence contends that the woman did hit her vein with the speedball that night, after taking more drugs earlier in the day, and that she attacked Pickton with a knife because she was "going crazy" on a drug binge.

The woman told police shortly after the incident in 1997 that Pickton continued to try to hook the second handcuff to an object in the room, Ritchie said, rather than her right wrist. "He was trying to hook me to something and I just kept fighting. I was putting my elbow through his windows trying to get out, and he was holding his neck and I could see the blood gushing out. I was going at him, like trying to stab him some more. He gave up," Ritchie read from her police statement during a 2006 voir dire.

During a police interrogation following his arrest in the missing women case in 2002, Pickton told a police officer that he was trying to handcuff the woman to a door in self-defence and that she wanted the $3,500 he had in his pocket. (When police seized his clothes that night they noted he actually had $920 in his wallet.)

"I was gonna take her back [downtown] that same night but she went bananas. She went bananas," Pickton told the interrogator.

Two weeks after the knife-attack incident, Pickton was charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon and forcible confinement. He told an undercover police officer posing as his cellmate in 2002 that he had been arrested, instead of the woman, because "I'm male."

However, all charges were stayed Jan. 27, 1998 because the woman was addicted to drugs and a Crown attorney thought she was too unstable to testify.

The woman, who was unconscious in hospital for four days after the knife attack, continued to struggle with her addictions for years.

She testified in 2003 that the attack had long-lasting effects on her and that she later had drug-induced flashbacks where she feared that "Willy" was after her. Twice, she said, she stole police cars in an attempt to flee the hallucinations and ended up in jail.

Because there had been no litigation in the courts to prove what happened between Pickton and the woman in 1997, Pickton's defence lawyer persuasively argued that it would be inappropriate for the woman to testify at the high-profile missing-women trial.

The trial judge, B.C. Supreme Court Justice James Williams, ultimately agreed, ruling the jury would never hear from the only Crown witness prepared to testify that she had been attacked by Pickton.

In a written ruling following the heated pretrial arguments, Williams decided the knife-attack incident could not be considered similar to what happened to the other women because there was no proof she was to be killed and dismembered following the knife attack. (All six of the women Pickton was convicted of killing were dismembered, and at least three of them were killed by gunshot wounds.)

"I find that there is simply not anywhere near the required degree of similarity to permit the conclusion that it is likely that the same individual committed both the 1997 incident and the murders of the six women," Williams wrote.

There was more to the woman's story that the jury at Pickton's 2007 trial also did not hear.

A police officer seized Pickton's clothes and rubber boots from the hospital that evening and they were left in an RCMP storage locked for more than seven years. After Pickton's arrest in the missing women case, the clothing was retrieved on June 28, 2004 and submitted for DNA testing.

Shockingly, the lab found evidence of two of the missing women -- Andrea Borhaven's DNA on the sole of Pickton's boots and Cara Ellis's on his jacket. Both women disappeared shortly before the knife-attack incident.

Pickton was charged with murdering Borhaven and Ellis, but the jury never heard about the clothing because these two women were not included in the 2007 trial. Charges involving Ellis, Borhaven and 18 other women were to be heard at a second trial, but those charges have now been stayed.

lculbert@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

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Marches honour missing, slain women

Last Updated: Monday, February 15, 2010 | 12:31 PM PT

CBC News

Winnnipeg's third annual march for missing and murdered women in Manitoba drew about 400 people. (CBC)Thousands of Canadians marched in memory of murdered or missing women on Sunday, part of Valentine's Day rallies held in Vancouver, Calgary and other centres across the country.

Judith Trimble, who waited inside a church gymnasium in southwest Calgary for the march to start, held a picture of her daughter, Cara Ellis.

"My daughter is somewhere looking down on all this and she knows this is for her," Trimble said. "That's why I'm doing it. It's for her. And all the other girls."

Ellis, a 25-year-old addicted to drugs and working as a prostitute, disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in 1997.

"She is the 26th person on the list of indictments against Robert Pickton," Trimble said. "So this is very emotional for me."

Tradition began in Vancouver

Organizers of the Vancouver Valentine's Day march hoped to attract the attention of international media during the Olympics. (Gerry Broome/AP)It is the memory of women like Ellis that the annual march, which began in Vancouver 19 years ago, is meant to honour.

Olympic celebrations paused Sunday as thousands of people paid tribute to missing and slain woman — one of the largest of the annual marches that has taken place in Vancouver over the years.

The group followed the drumbeat of a First Nations elder through the Downtown Eastside and held a news conference, hoping to attract media from around the world on hand for the Olympics.

Leaders in B.C.'s aboriginal community have called for a public inquiry into the deaths of the slain and missing women.

"I think having international media in the city today is an opportunity today, is a day that can put greater pressure on our government to take steps, to be seen to take steps," Maggie de Vries said. "We're asking for a commitment to a public inquiry as soon as one is possible."

Hundreds march in Calgary

Hundreds marched down the sidewalk in Calgary, some holding placards lined with black and white photos of murdered or missing Canadian women.

Organizers say one-quarter of Calgary's homicides are related to domestic violence and they hope the march will raise awareness about Alberta's high rate of domestic abuse and inspire people to take a stand against it.

Suzanne Dzus, who organized the rally in Calgary, said as a mother and a grandmother, those statistics are particularly worrisome.

"I want them to be safe," she said. "I want to be safe in this world. And when I look at how violence against women is escalating in Canada and Alberta especially, something needs to change. And somebody has to do something."

This was the second year the march was held in Calgary. The Montreal march focused on missing and slain aboriginal women. Organizer Rachel Alouki Labbe said she does not think police are making enough progress in Quebec investigations.

"I think they just don't care because so far they did not resolve a lot of cases," she said. "So I think that if they really care they can do a little bit more than that," she said.

With files from The Canadian Press

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/02/15/calgary-valentines-day-march-women.html#ixzz0feK2sVtW

Copyright © CBC 2010

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Hundreds in Calgary march in memorial for missing, murdered women

Victims Remembered

By Suzanne Wilton, Calgary Herald February 15, 2010 7:44 AM

Several hundred people took part in the second annual women's memorial march to honour missing and murdered women on Sunday February 14, 2010.

Photograph by: Gavin Young, Calgary Herald

CALGARY - Tears of both grief and joy were shed Sunday as a crowd about 300-strong gathered for an emotional march to honour the murdered and missing women of southern Alberta.

"The tears of the heart are sometimes very painful. We can learn to live with them but they don't leave us," said a native elder who cried as he said a prayer to launch the second-annual local Valentine's Day Memorial March.

Led by a banner bearing 3,000 names of missing or murdered women, the march made its way from the Scarboro Church in the southwest, down 17th Avenue to 14th Street S.W., where participants lined the sidewalks and lingered for several minutes, waving to motorists who honked in support of the cause.

Some carried placards with photos of their dead loved ones while others held paper cut-out hearts with their names written on them.

For Dolores Pepper, events like the Valentine's Day march are a chance to honour the daughter she lost as well as reignite interest in her still unsolved murder. Jennifer Joyes was 17 when she was killed in 1991, her body discarded and not found for several months.

"(These events) bring up my hope, my prayers. I feel like maybe . . . it will jog someone's memory," said Pepper.

Pepper was joined by a large family contingent, including several grandchildren. They were among a diverse crowd, which included a group who travelled by bus from the Siksika reserve east of Calgary.

"I'm dumbfounded with the amount of people who turned out," said an emotional Suzanne Dzus.

Dzus previously participated in memorial marches in Edmonton and in Vancouver, where the event began 19 years ago after the brutal murder of an aboriginal woman.

But when she moved to Calgary, she realized there wasn't an event here, so she set out to organize one and is surprised at how quickly it's grown.

"We've had this amazing response. This is heartwarming to know at least there are a whole group of people who really care."

As someone of aboriginal descent, Dzus said the majority of women in her family have experienced violence in one form or another.

But she said violence against women knows no boundaries.

"It doesn't care if you are rich or poor, black or white or Indian, although I will say that if you are indigenous, you are more likely to be targeted as a victim of violence," said Dzus.

Shelley Long Time Squirrel can certainly attest to that. She's lost four women in her life to murder, three of them killed on downtown Calgary streets and one whose remains were found on serial killer Robert Pickton's farm near Vancouver.

"I want them to be remembered," said Long Time Squirrel.

"They're missed and loved so much."

Judy Trimble walked in memory of her daughter Cara Ellis, whose remains were also found on Pickton's farm in 2004.

"It has been rough going ever since," said Trimble, who was joined by son Steven Ellis and his wife Lori-Ann.

"I'm hoping she's smiling down on us right now."

Trimble said it gives her comfort to march with others who've experienced a similar loss. But she also wants to ensure that people don't forget about women like Cara, who spent five years on a missing person's list before police took seriously her disappearance off downtown Vancouver's east-side streets.

"I hope they receive the message that they cannot drive by and let it keep going. This abuse and violence has to stop."

swilton@theherald.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

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