Missing and Murdered Women

Friday, June 10

Rene Gunning’s father mourns lost daughter

Remains discovered near Grande Prairie identified as young woman missing since 2005

BY BRENT WITTMEIER, EDMONTONJOURNAL.COM JUNE 10, 2011

Rene Gunning disappeared with 16-year-old Krystle Knott from West Edmonton Mall on Feb. 18, 2005.

Photograph by: Supplied, edmontonjournal.com

EDMONTON - Jo Gunning was at work Thursday afternoon when two police officers approached him with the news he had been dreading.

The remains of his daughter — missing for over six years — had been found.

Rene Gunning disappeared Feb. 18, 2005. She was 19 when she was last seen outside West Edmonton Mall with 16-year-old Krystle Knott. The two girls told friends of plans to hitchhike to either Fort St. John or Dawson Creek, B.C.

They were never seen again.

“I’ve been living with this for the last six and a half years, every day, and trying to prepare myself,” Gunning said Thursday night.

“I thought I was prepared for it, but I’m not. The emotions are pretty overwhelming.”

On the May long weekend, a group of campers from Grande Prairie discovered two skulls in a well-known area a half-hour southeast of the city.

Police began days of forensic work at the scene. The skulls were sent to the medical examiner’s office in Edmonton.

Police notified Project Kare, an RCMP-led police team investigating deaths and disappearances of women living high-risk lifestyles. Project Kare had taken on the cases of Gunning and Knott in July 2007 because they regularly hitchhiked. The pair were not believed to be involved in prostitution.

RCMP spokesman Tim Taniguchi confirmed Thursday that one of the skulls was positively identified by the medical examiner as Rene Gunning. The second skull would require more tests before it could be identified, Taniguchi said.

After getting the news, Gunning immediately drove 170 kilometres home to be with family in Fort St. John. Visitors came to his home. They held a smudging ceremony, sang and beat a drum.

He spent the rest of the evening on the phone, listening to friends and family tell him how his daughter had touched their lives.

“It’s overwhelming,” said Gunning. “People were telling me different things, and the biggest thing was that she was a caring, loving person.”

Gunning admits he’s still in shock. It will take days to process what happened before he can work “on the closure part of this.”

There will be a memorial service in Fort St. John, Rene’s hometown. Gunning will also come to Edmonton and walk the grounds of Henrietta Muir Edwards Park, where investigators recently believed his daughter might be buried.

And after the remains are released, the family will plan a summer trip to Rene’s resting place near Grande Prairie to hold a vigil.

In all of this, Gunning wants to celebrate his daughter, “her personality, her vibrancy, the way she handled things.”

Jo saw glimpses of Rene Thursday evening in his seven-year-old grandson D’Andre, who was just over a year old when his mother disappeared. D’Andre has his mom’s eyes, Gunning said, and was hugging distraught family members. It was just like Rene, who knew how to make things better.

Gunning has been looking after D’Andre since his daughter disappeared.

“My daughter gave me this gift. I get a daily reminder of Rene; there’s a piece of her right there with me,” said Gunning. “As D’Andre gets older, I’ll be able to tell him stories to keep her memory alive.”

Gunning and Knott disappeared two months before 13-year-old Nina Courtepatte was lured from West Edmonton Mall, raped and left for dead on a Stony Plain golf course.

Five people were later charged in Courtepatte’s death.

bwittmeier@edmontonjournal.com

twitter.com/wittmeier

Wednesday, June 8

Missing Women inquiry to discuss AG’s denial of funding for participants

BY NEAL HALL, VANCOUVER SUN JUNE 7, 2011

Missing Women inquiry commissioner Wally Oppal at a community forum in Vancouvers' Downtown Eastside on Jan. 19, 2011.

Photograph by: Gerry Kahrmann, PNG files

VANCOUVER -- The Missing Women inquiry will hold a pre-hearing conference Monday to hear from groups who want to take part in the inquiry but whose request for legal funding has been denied by B.C.'s attorney-general.

The government decided last month that it would only provide funding to lawyer Cameron Ward, who is representing the families of victims of serial killer Robert Pickton.

Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal issued a statement Tuesday saying he has instructed Art Vertlieb, the lawyer acting for the inquiry, to consider how the provincial government's funding decision will affect those wishing to take part in the inquiry.

"As a result of his discussions, Mr. Vertlieb has advised me to hold a pre-hearing conference to give all participants an opportunity to make submissions directly to me about how the funding decision by the government affects their clients' involvement in the hearing portion of the inquiry and the operation of the commission," Oppal said.

The pre-hearing conference is set for 9:30 a.m. on Monday on the 12th floor of 1125 Howe St.

Attorney General Barry Penner said Tuesday that there was no money in the budget to provide taxpayer funding for groups that wanted to hire lawyers to participate in the public inquiry.

"There is no legal right that groups have for legal funding for public inquiries," he added, pointing out that the government only provided funding for Robert Dziekanski's mother at the public inquiry into the death of the Polish man at Vancouver's airport in 2007.

The attorney general said the Missing Women inquiry has seven lawyers and 17 staff, who should be able to assist those who want to participate in the inquiry.

Penner said he earlier got a cabinet order granting the broadening of the scope of the Missing Women inquiry to include a study commission, which plans to probe the issue of the rising number of missing and murdered woman along Highway 16, called the Highway of Tears, which runs from Prince Rupert to Prince George and into Alberta.

That phase of the inquiry was scheduled to begin in Vanderhoof on Monday but has been delayed by the government denial of legal funding to some participants.

The study commission now is expected to begin next month.

The inquiry's initial terms of reference last September only included a hearing commission, a formal hearing with lawyers allowed to cross-examine witnesses who will testify about events before the arrest of serial killer Robert Pickton, who preyed on woman living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

The study commission is expected to spend two weeks hearing submissions from people living in four or five cities along Highway 16.

The inquiry will move into its second phase — the hearing commission — in September.

The inquiry can make findings of fact, including possible misconduct in the police handling of reports of the women who disappeared from Vancouver streets between Jan. 23, 1997 until Pickton was arrested on Feb. 5, 2002.

The hearing commission will also review the January 1998 decision by the criminal justice branch of the attorney-general's ministry to stay charges against Pickton for the assault of a Downtown Eastside sex trade worker.

Pickton was eventually charged with 27 counts of first-degree murder. He was convicted by a jury in 2007 on six counts of second-degree murder. The Crown decided not to proceed with a second trial on the murders of another 20 women.

One of the charges was stayed by the trial judge because it involved an unknown woman known as Jane Doe.

nhall@vancouversun.com

Lawyers’ feeding frenzy has missing women inquiry costs ballooning

BY MICHAEL SMYTH, THE PROVINCE JUNE 8, 2011 6:02 PM

Michael Smyth

Photograph by: Ginger Sedlarova, The Province

When the B.C. government announced a public inquiry into the Willy Pickton serial killings, they estimated it would cost between $3- and $5 million.

But according to the ministry of the attorney-general, the inquiry has already cost taxpayers $1.3 million — and the formal hearings have not even started.

The money has gone to ramping up the sprawling inquiry into how police and the Crown handled the investigation of the missing-women case, which ended with the arrest and conviction of Pickton on multiple murder charges.

The inquiry is headed by former attorney-general Wally Oppal, who commands a staff of 17 people, including six lawyers.

Keep in mind those six lawyers are only working for the commission itself. There will be many more lawyers charging billable hours at the inquiry.

According to a cabinet order dated last September, Oppal himself is being paid $1,500 a day. He has granted “standing” at the inquiry to 25 groups and individuals, along with the families of eight of Pickton’s victims.

Some have been granted “full participant” status, while others are “limited participants.” Some have been grouped together as co-participants.

The lawyers for full participants can cross-examine witnesses, make submissions and access all documents. Limited participants can access documents and make final submissions, but can also apply to Oppal to cross-examine witnesses.

Some of the groups are paying for their own lawyers, such as the government of Canada and the Vancouver Police Department. Of course, that is public money that will be counted separately from the commission costs.

But Oppal is calling on the government to pay for the lawyers for many other groups with standing at the inquiry, including: Amnesty International, the Coalition of Sex Worker-Serving Organizations, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, Walk4Justice, B.C. Civil Liberties Association, Assembly of First Nations and many others.

The government is resisting paying for all these lawyers, fearing the budget for the inquiry will go off the rails, and Oppal will not meet his reporting deadline.

The inquiry was supposed to wrap up by the end of this year. But no testimony has been heard yet, and Oppal has already called a special hearing into the government’s decision not to fund all the intervener groups.

There’s a reason governments often hesitate to call public inquiries — they turn into feeding frenzies for lawyers, last longer than expected and cost taxpayers a fortune.

Still, the government felt the alleged mishandling of the Pickton case warranted an inquiry.

But as costs rise, and the billable hours pile up, you have to wonder if some of that money wouldn’t be better spent on protecting vulnerable women, instead of being spent on platoons of lawyers.

You can forget about $3 million.

Watch for the budget for this inquiry to explode.

msmyth@theprovince.com

twitter.com/MikeSmythNews

Friday, June 3

Jody Paterson: Voices of sex workers are silenced again

BY JODY PATERSON, TIMES COLONIST JUNE 3, 2011

Columnist Jody Paterson.

Photograph by: Darren Stone, Times Colonist

So we've got an inquiry into a B.C. mass murder headed up by a man tainted by his political connections, presiding over a process that shuts out almost everyone on the side of the victims.

Yup, that sounds like a solid way to get at the truth about the Robert Pickton case.

Only sex workers could draw straws this short. Then again, only sex workers would be left to go missing and murdered on our streets for so long in the first place. It's baffling and heartbreaking, this misery we sustain in the name of "morality."

Should we be surprised, then, that the B.C. government has refused to cover legal costs for groups representing the interests of sex workers at the upcoming Robert Pickton inquiry?

It's a more blatant rejection than I'd have expected from a new premier, sure.

But isolated howls of protest aside, the government likely knows it's politically safe to stick it to groups acting in the interests of sex workers.

More than a decade of dead and missing women in the Downtown Eastside wasn't enough to get British Columbians riled enough to change one damn thing for sex workers. Why would they rise up now over a lack of money for legal representation?

The government's denial of support is reprehensible, but you can't argue with its political instincts. It's got the public's number on this one.

Lawyers collected $21 million after Pickton's trial. RCMP rang up $84 million on the investigation. We'll spend many millions more to revisit all of that during the inquiry that former attorney general Wally Oppal will be presiding over.

How far might money like that have gone if used instead to improve the lives of the troubled women Pickton preyed on? It turns my stomach to think of all the desperate women and their children who came looking for help in my three years at PEERS Victoria, and how little was available.

I was in the last year of that nonprofit job when Pickton went on trial. As I've noted in past rants on this subject, media called me from across the country that spring and summer to ask what I thought would change for outdoor sex workers now that "justice" was being done.

What can possibly change when the only time a sex worker gets any consideration is as a dead body?

Women were going missing for a long, long time from the Downtown Eastside before Pickton was ever brought to trial. If British Columbians had wanted to do right by outdoor sex workers, we would have taken preventive steps well before Pickton was even a suspect, and certainly in the years following his conviction. But we didn't.

I hope Pickton's victims are out there right now in some version of an afterlife, having a good, rueful laugh about all of this.

They were universally shafted in life, that's for sure. But I think they'd see the black humour in the small fortune we've lavished on them in death. Do the math on the $102 million in legal and police costs for the Pickton proceedings and it turns out we've spent almost $4 million for each of the 26 women Pickton was charged with killing.

All that for women we didn't have the time of day for back when they were alive. Women who struggled to find housing, support, addiction treatment or even an ounce of public sympathy when they were still walking the stroll.

And the kicker: None of that money altered one thing for the future victims of a future Pickton. It didn't change the law, or make a bit of difference in the lives of the vulnerable, impoverished women still working the grim outdoor strolls in our communities.

Families of Pickton's victims understandably want an inquiry. And they'll have it starting in September, albeit under the direction of a man who presided with indifference over the plight of outdoor sex workers in the years when he was attorney general.

The families will be able to share a lawyer at the government's expense during the inquiry. At least that ensures the voices of the dead are represented.

But the denial of legal aid to the sex workers' coalitions and community advocacy groups silences the voices of the living. Those groups have now withdrawn from the inquiry in protest. Once again, only the dead will be heard.

All that's left to feel is shame.

patersoncommunications@gmail.com

Wednesday, June 1

Libs favour the powerful in Pickton inquiry

BY PAUL WILLCOCKS, TIMES COLONISTJUNE 1, 2011

Christy Clark faced a serious issue in her first question period as premier.

Her response was empty. Attorney General Barry Penner was a more capable government spokesman.

The issue is the missing and murdered women's inquiry.

Commissioner Wally Oppal, a former Liberal attorney general, had to decide who had a right to participate in the inquiry - to question witnesses and play an active role.

Oppal ruled 13 groups had a legitimate interest. They included families of the women killed by Robert Pickton, a coalition of sex-worker groups, several aboriginal organizations and some agencies who worked with the Downtown Eastside people who were Pickton's prey.

And he said that to play their proper role, they would need public funding to help with legal costs.

The government rejected Oppal's recommendation. The families of the missing women would get funding for a shared lawyer. No one else would get public money.

Except, of course, police. They will have a battery of publicly funded lawyers to look after their interests when the botched investigation is examined. Crown prosecutors will have taxpayer-funded lawyers. So will the government and any politicians who might be called as witnesses or even referred to during the inquiry.

But the organizations supporting prostitutes, whose concerns about missing women were ignored, they're shut out. First Nations who want to ask questions to see if racism played in the role in the lack of urgency when women began disappearing, they're on their own.

Oppal said he had only recommended funding for those who had a role to play in getting answers and had "satisfied me that they would not be able to participate fully without financial support."

The government decided to exclude those groups from full participation. Police and politicians would have a battalion of lawyers to protect their interests. Natives, poor women, the disadvantaged - they would have no one.

And it made the decision despite having provided funding for groups with standing at the inquiry into the death of Frank Paul, who died after being left in an alley by Vancouver police.

The NDP basically repeated a single question - would Clark and the government accept Oppal's judgment and fund some legal costs for all parties that should be part of the inquiry.

Clark expressed sympathy. She did a bizarre little riff about families first and the HST rate reduction and B.C. Ferries fares and ICBC, although what that had to do with murdered women was unclear.

But she never addressed the questions or Oppal's recommendations or the issue.

MLA Carole James noted the inquiry would not have been called without the efforts of some of the groups.

Clark responded that "the government said at the time that they would support an inquiry when the legal proceedings were complete. The government kept their promise."

That's not true. The Liberal government consistently refused to commit to an inquiry even when police called for one.

And Clark maintained the groups could participate even if they didn't have lawyers to represent them at the inquiry. Oppal disagrees.

And if Clark is serious, she could prove it by announcing no public funds will be spent on lawyers for politicians, police and prosecutors. But she won't.

Penner at least addressed the issue. It would cost too much to pay for the legal representation. There were parts of the inquiry where people who didn't have lawyers could be heard.

But he also failed to address the fact that insiders - police and prosecutors and politicians past and present - have unlimited public funding for legal representation.

The outsiders get nothing. Inquiries do become costly as legal fees mount. But why not impose limits on all involved, while providing equitable funding?

Instead, the government decided that the powerful would have all the funding needed to protect their interests at the inquiry. The powerless could watch from the spectators' gallery.

And Clark never really defended the decision, or even showed that she understood its significance.

pwillcocks@timescolonist.com