Vancouver women warned as Downtown Eastside killer released

By Katie Mercer, The Province

December 10, 2009 8:38 PM

Vancouver police fear Paul Richard Haley may kill women after his release from prison. The murderer served his full sentence.

Photograph by: Handout , For The Province

Vancouver Police are warning the public that a violent offender who poses a risk to women is living in the city.

Paul Richard Haley, 40, was released from federal custody after serving his full six-year sentence for the 2003 murder of his girlfriend.

Police say Haley “poses a risk of significant harm to female acquaintances and prospective intimate partners.”

While in custody, Haley was assessed as a high risk to reoffend against women.

He also has a history of domestic violence, including assault, mischief and theft charges.

Haley was deemed too dangerous to be released on parole and such was held in custody for the entirety of his sentence.

Haley had been living with his 19-year-old girlfriend in the Downtown Eastside's Regent Hotel when he killed her with a blunt object in May 2003.

He was originally charged with second-degree murder which was later downgraded to manslaughter.

Police describe him as a white male, five foot nine and 170 pounds. He has brown hair, blue eyes and tattoos of a dragon and a skull on either side of his neck.

Haley is ordered to abstain from drugs and alcohol, cannot enter any licensed establishment, cannot have contact with sex-trade workers, cannot possess any weapons and must obey a 10 p.m to 6 a.m. curfew.

Anyone witnessing Haley in violation of any of these conditions is asked to call 911.

© Copyright (c) The Province

http://www.theprovince.com/Vancouver+women+warned+Downtown+Eastside+killer+released/2327027/story.html

Supreme Court asked to allow more bail information

Monday, November 16, 2009

Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service

Felicity Don/Reuters

OTTAWA -- Lawyers from the Edmonton Journal and other media organizations on Monday asked the Supreme Court of Canada to loosen restrictions on what the public has the right to know about evidence presented at bail hearings.

The case was launched following a publication ban at a hearing in which an Edmonton man accused of killing his pregnant wife was granted bail.

"Keeping the public in the dark, in my opinion, can be a recipe for uninformed speculation, fuelling widely publicized concern in the community [and] a far greater risk to the fair trial rights of the accused and the Crown," said Fred Kozak who is representing CBC, CTV and the Journal.

Mr. Kozak said that the publication ban on details presented at the bail hearing deprived the public from being informed in the media about why the suspect, Michael White, had been granted bail at the time.

"People were outraged when he was released on bail," said Mr. Kozak. "People wanted to know the reason why he was released, distressed neighbours feared for their safety and the safety of their children, and others circulated petitions asking that bail laws be changed."

During a bail hearing, the Crown prosecutor will typically outline the nature of the case and the evidence gathered by police, and in some instances, will refer to the accused person's criminal record.

In deciding whether to grant bail, a judge considers whether the accused is likely to return to court or is a danger to the public. The judge also strives to maintain public confidence in the justice system.

Lawyers for some of the suspects arrested in connection with an alleged terrorism plot in Toronto also supported the media's case, arguing that the media ban in their cases prevented them from publicly countering allegations made by police.

The lawyers, including Paul Schabas, who represented the Toronto Star, said the public would have more confidence in the justice system if judges published reasons for their decisions and as much information as possible. But they recognized that they should still be able to ban specific evidence that would affect an accused's fair trial rights.

Lawyers representing the federal government and provincial attorneys general from Alberta and Ontario argued that the existing laws should be upheld to ensure fair trials in the system. They noted that suspects generally don't have a great deal of information about the evidence or the capacity to respond to allegations at bail hearings which are in the early stages of their case, following an arrest.

Jolaine Antonio, who represented the Alberta government, said society would lose if it allowed excessive pre-trial publicity that could potentially influence a jury prior to its selection.

"The Crown at least, doesn't want to meet that first case, where a fair trial is not available." Ms. Antonio said. "That is a situation to be avoided at all costs."

While the media lawyers argued that juries were selected quickly in high-profile murder cases with extensive pre-trial media coverage, such as those of Robert Pickton and Paul Bernardo, the government lawyers argued that the existing laws were the ones that ensured fair trials.

"The very remedy which these opponents seeks would have made that jury selection substantially more difficult, substantially longer and placed under a substantially crumbling cloud, which thankfully, we don't have," said David Lepofsky, who represented the Ontario government.

© 2009 The National Post Company. All rights reserved. Unauthorized distribution, transmission or republication strictly prohibited.

How Angel found her wings

www.thestar.com

November 07, 2009

Diane Flacks

Angel Wolfe, 16, has found that lost lives are given dignity when they are understood in all their complexity.

CARLOS OSORIO / TORONTO STAR

Angel Wolfe is only 16 but her life has already been marked by tragedy. Eight years ago, she learned that her mother was one of the victims of serial killer Robert Pickton.

Brenda Wolfe's remains were discovered on Pickton's pig farm, her jawbone stuck in mud in a pigsty.

Now her daughter is trying to go beyond the shallowness of notoriety, to appreciate the complexity of the lives that were lost, and to ease the burden of the other relatives of Pickton's victims.

Angel was 5 when she last saw her mother.

At age 8, after three years living with a foster family in Vancouver, police brusquely took a sample of Angel's DNA in order to help identify her dead mother. The encounter with authorities left her shocked and scared.

"It added a rough layer to me – on the outside," Angel says. "On the inside, a huge anger toward my mom grew."

Today, she has transformed that anger into a desire to effect change. In a whirlwind few months starting in August, she began connecting with her mother's native roots and then participated in a Truth and Reconciliation workshop with Governor General Michaëlle Jean.

This meeting inspired Angel to tell her story, to help other native women and youth to avoid her mother's path.

"I want to work toward making an awareness about native women and the stereotypes – `Oh, they're on the streets' – that go with them."

A Grade 11 student who now lives in Toronto, Angel has a steady voice as she speaks candidly about being the daughter of a well-known murder victim and how she has come to love the mother she became reacquainted with second hand.

"Today was my mother's 41st birthday," she says in a phone interview, "so this is a bit emotional."

When asked where she got the fortitude to move beyond her anger, she credits Brenda. "She's on my shoulder giving me the strength she had."

But when the news first broke, she judged her mother harshly. Pickton's victims were on the margins of society – described as drug-addicted denizens of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside sex trade. Many were aboriginal.

Angel feels the view was that they were "disposable" – and so were their relatives. That explains why authorities treated her so badly – as a part of a police investigation, not as a grieving 8-year-old.

Among the haunting pictures of the dozens of missing women that police suspected Pickton of murdering is one of Brenda Wolfe. She is looking at the camera with her head tilted back, wary. The resemblance to her daughter is obvious. "It drove me nuts," Angel says of the initial publicity. "People were calling me – mothers of my friends, `Is Angel's mom in the newspaper?'"

She suffered depression and was given medication. That made her wonder if her mother had an undiagnosed mental illness and perhaps was self-medicating on the streets.

This and other questions provoked Angel to discover who her mother was before addiction took her away. "I started talking to my grandma. I saw these old, old pictures of my mom. She always had this great smile."

The pictures triggered flashes of memory: Brenda loved the ocean and jazz music. She liked to dance and had long, beautiful, curly hair. There were dark memories, too: of Brenda being addicted to over-the-counter pills; of "a man with a tattoo on his neck" offering heroin.

"It all went downhill from there," Angel recalls.

As she learned more about her mother, she began to feel compassion. "An addiction will make you forget who you are," she says. "My mom forgot where she could have gone. All she had were her drugs."

Angel kept a scrapbook of all the newspaper clippings that mentioned her mother. "With me, I cannot heal without knowing all of the truth before I can get my own opinion," she explains.

When she finally burned it, "it was my own version of getting rid of the negative and turning it to ashes."

Angel now feels she was lucky in that Pickton was convicted of second-degree murder in her mother's death.

He faced murder charges regarding 26 missing women, but most of those cases were not resolved.

"I got my closure with the trial. I know who took my mother's life," Angel says. "So many people, they don't know who took their sister or mother or aunt. More needs to be done to find them so their families can move on and make a difference."

As her understanding grew, Angel formed a desire to create a legacy for them all.

So, this summer, despite having little connection with her native heritage (her foster family are non-native) and having never even been fond of camping, Angel literally jumped into the water.

A friend referred her to the Canadian Roots Exchange, an agency created to connect native and non-native youth to native traditions. Angel joined them on a six-day canoe trip through Algonquin Park, to the Silver Lake Pow Wow.

She says she felt a kinship and a sense of pride where before there had been fury and secrets.

Then, in October, she and five other youth from Canadian Roots were invited to meet the Governor General.

"One of the things she told us was that even though she was just talking with a small group of kids, it will make a huge difference for tomorrow in eliminating that gap between non-native and native youth today," Angel says.

She felt she had found a mission, to show native youth that people care, there are options, services, hope.

"I am living proof that you can reach out for help and community, find it and keep your head up high, and good things will happen."

Angel hopes that by speaking out as Brenda Wolfe's daughter, she will also be able to offer optimism to the families of all the missing women.

"Let my mother rest in peace with the truth, and have those other women rest in peace or be found with the truth....They really do deserve some dignity and respect."

DNA of Sharon Abraham found on Pickton farm

Police to recommend Pickton be charged for deaths of six more women

The DNA of 32 women has been seized from Pickton’s Port Coquitlam farm.

By LORI CULBERT, Vancouver Sun

October 29, 2009 3:02 PM

Sharon Abraham with her daughters in 1990.

Photograph by: Teresa Hardy, submitted

METRO VANCOUVER -- Twenty years ago, Sharon Abraham was a “confident, outgoing” woman and the doting mother of two beautiful daughters, her former friend says.

But the RCMP has now confirmed that ongoing testing of evidence seized from serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton’s farm has found the DNA of Abraham and another missing woman, Stephanie Lane.

The development means the DNA of 32 women has been seized from Pickton’s farm — half the names on a police poster of 64 women who vanished from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside from 1978 to 2001.

Pickton was convicted of killing six of those women, and is charged with killing another 20 — but any second trial is on hold pending the appeal of his first trial.

Abraham and Lane join four other women, Yvonne Boen, Jackie Murdock, Dawn Crey and Nancy Clark, whose DNA police previously said was found on the farm.

RCMP Const. Annie Linteau said the Missing Women Task Force is preparing a report to Crown counsel recommending charges against Pickton for those six women, even though police have been told verbally by the Crown that the charges will likely never be laid.

Linteau said police are still sending the report to conclude their investigation, and to be prepared in case a new trial against Pickton is ordered by the Supreme Court of Canada, which will hear his appeal in March.

“We are sending all the findings of our investigation to the Crown for their consideration, even though we have been told by Crown and the public has been told by Crown they would not proceed with additional charges,” Linteau said.

Crown spokesman Neil Mackenzie said prosecutors will look at the police report when it arrives, but reiterated if Pickton loses his appeal then no additional charges will be taken to trial against the former Port Coquitlam pig farmer, who is serving a life sentence.

The Crown’s decision has disappointed many families.

Very little has ever been published about Abraham, but her friend Teresa Hardy contacted The Vancouver Sun to share memories of her former roommate in happier times.

The two women lived together in 1989, after meeting in a Lower Mainland transition house. Abraham, who had a toddler and a baby, was starting her life over after leaving an abusive relationship.

“She never drank when she was with me, never did drugs. We didn’t go to bars. We did things with the kids,” Hardy said. “She always made sure the kids had diapers. She wasn’t out buying cigarettes and beer. She always made sure the rent was paid and there was food in the house.”

Hardy last saw her friend in 1990, when Abraham and her girls had their own apartment, and was shocked to learn her friend disappeared in 2000.

“The three of them were such a happy family unit,” Hardy said. ... I’d like to tell her kids some day that their mom was pretty cool. It breaks my heart because she loved them so much."

lculbert@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/Police+recommend+Pickton+charged+deaths+more+women/2159939/story.html

Pickton charges will get “full scrutiny”

Crown says new Pickton charges will get "full scrutiny"

By Suzanne Fournier, The Province

October 29, 2009 6:02 PM

Troy Boen and his aunt -Debra Benning with the last photo of his mom Yvonne Boen, in Benning's Langley home on Wednesday october 28, 2009.Yvonne Boen, (in photo), is one of the missing women, who RCMP confirm will soon be named as subject of "new" murder charges against Pickton, along with five other women.

Photograph by: Les Bazso, The Province

B.C. criminal justice branch spokesman Neil MacKenzie said Thursday full scrutiny will be given to an anticipated RCMP report recommending six new charges be filed against serial killer Robert Pickton.

“I understand the RCMP will be providing a formal supplementary report with respect to these six counts,” said Mackenzie, a lawyer who speaks for B.C. Crown counsel, in an interview from Victoria.

“The Criminal Justice Branch will look at the material provided by the police and these six additional cases will go through the usual charge assessment process.”

RCMP Cpl. Annie Linteau said this week that police are recommending Pickton be charged with six more murders: Yvonne Boen, last seen in March 2001; Dawn Crey, who would have been 51 last Monday but disappeared in November, 2000; Sharon Abraham, who also disappeared in late 2000; Yvonne Boen, last seen in March 2001; Jacqueline Murdock who vanished in August 1997 and Stephanie Lane, who was 20 when she vanished in 1997, and Nancy Clark, who was last seen in Victoria on Aug. 22, 1991.

All of the women disappeared from Vancouver’s drug-infested Downtown Eastside, except for Clark.

Linteau would not say what evidence led RCMP to recommend the new charges but police labs across Canada still had more than 100,000 forensic samples to process at the time Pickton’s first trial on six charges began in 2007.

In December, 2007, Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe, Andrea Joesbury, Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

Last June 25, Pickton’s conviction was upheld by the B.C. Court of Appeal in a 2-1 decision, which gave Pickton the automatic right to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

That appeal is expected to be heard next March. If Pickton’s appeal is dismissed, the B.C. Criminal Justice Branch has made it clear that it will not proceed with an additional 20 murder charges, which were severed in August 2006 from the first trial.

However, MacKenzie said the charge approval process for these six new cases does not have to wait for the outcome of the Supreme Court appeal.

Linteau noted the RCMP’s recommendation was made “out of an abundance of caution” so that Crown counsel would be ready to immediately file up to 32 murder charges against Pickton, if his appeal should succeed.

© Copyright (c) The Province

Six more charges likely for Pickton

Recommendations going to prosecutors to pursue cases of missing women

Suzanne Fournier, The Province: Thursday, October 29, 2009 9:58 AM

New RCMP evidence has police recommending charges against Robert Pickton in the cases of six more missing women (clockwise from top left): Yvonne Boen, Dawn Crey, Stephanie Lane, Nancy Clark, Sharon Abraham and Jacqueline Murdock.

Photo Credit: Handouts, RCMP

The RCMP are recommending that six new first-degree murder charges be filed against convicted serial killer Robert Pickton.

"We're in the process of sending a report to Crown counsel for their consideration. We're recommending six more charges related to Robert Pickton and the Port Coquitlam property," RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Annie Linteau told The Province Wednesday.

Linteau noted that all six women appear on the police task force's official list of 63 missing women. Pickton, now 60, was not charged in connection with the death of these six, who went missing between January 1997 and March 2001.

Linteau listed the women as: Yvonne Boen, born on Nov. 30, 1967, who was last seen March 2001; Dawn Crey, whose birthday was Oct. 26, 1958, and was last seen in November 2000; Sharon Abraham, whose date of birth was Sept. 15, 1965, and went missing in December 2000; Stephanie Lane, born on May 28, 1976, who went missing Jan. 10, 1997; and Jacqueline Murdock, born Jan. 28, 1971, and was last seen in August 1997.

Those five women, all of whom were mothers, went missing from Vancouver's drug-infested Downtown Eastside The sixth woman, Nancy Clark, who was born July 29, 1966, was last seen Aug. 22, 1991, in Victoria.

The news that the RCMP will finally recommend charges was cathartic to some of the women's family members.

Yvonne Boen's son, Troy Boen, 23, exploded in anger and relief when told of the RCMP's decision.

"About f---ing time, but why did it take them so long?" demanded Troy, who was the last member of his family to see his mother alive.

"My mum deserves her day in court . . . I'm glad the RCMP are finally saying Pickton should be charged with my mum's death." Troy, the eldest of Boen's three sons, attended many gruelling days of Pickton's long trial in B.C. Supreme Court.

In December 2007, Pickton was convicted of counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin, Sereena Abotsway, Brenda Wolfe and Mona Wilson. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

Troy Boen was also present when three B.C. Appeal Court judge's upheld Pickton's conviction last June 25 in a 2-1 split decision that also gave Pickton the automatic right to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

That appeal is expected to be heard this spring. If the appeal is dismissed, B.C.'s Criminal Justice Branch has made it clear that it will not proceed with an additional 20 murder charges, which were severed in August 2006 from the first trial.

Linteau said that the RCMP is recommending another six new charges be laid now "out of an abundance of caution." "We are carrying on with the assumption there could be further judicial proceedings and we are putting everything that could be done back on the table, rather than being unprepared if further trials are required." Should Pickton's appeal be upheld by Canada's top court, prosecutors would move quickly to ask for a new trial on all 32 murder charges.

Linteau said families of all six women have been told in the past that their loved one's DNA was "tied to the Pickton farm," but they won't be officially notified yet of possible charges "because it is up to the Crown to decide whether to proceed." A massive RCMP-Vancouver Police Department task force began searching the ramshackle Pickton pig farm in Port Coquitlam in February 2002.

On Feb. 22, 2002, Pickton was charged with the first two murders of what would become a lengthy list of 26 homicides.

The vehicle-strewn farm, full of human and animal burial sites, was examined by experts down to bedrock, and Pickton soon gained the notorious reputation of being Canada's worst accused serial killer.

Debra Benning was a longtime friend of Boen who believes Pickton should be "held accountable" for Yvonne's death.

"In my heart, I know she's gone, but I think everyone should know if Pickton was responsible," said Benning.

Ernie Crey, a Sto:lo Nation leader, has fought tirelessly for justice for his troubled sister Dawn, whose DNA was confirmed on the Pickton farm in 2004 but whose name was left off the list of those who Pickton would be charged with murdering.

"There's never emotional, psychological or spiritual closure for any of the family members of the missing women, we're always left with the history and the loss of our loved ones, but I am still seeking legal closure," said Crey.

Jacqueline Murdock, a Carrier First Nation mother of four, is still mourned by her large family, said her aunt Elizabeth Murdock, 68, in an interview from Fort St. James.

"It's good if they charge that man finally with Jackie's death. We all want answers."

© Copyright (c) CW Media Inc.

RCMP to recommend six more murder charges against Robert Pickton

Police will ask B.C. Crown prosecutors to move ahead although appeal on conviction of six second-degree murder charges will not be heard until March.

Robert Matas

Vancouver — Globe and Mail Update Published on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 1:56PM EDT Last updated on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 2:31PM EDT

The RCMP intends to recommend six additional murder charges against convicted killer Robert Pickton, RCMP spokesperson Corporal Annie Linteau says.

In a surprising development in the sensational murder case, Cpl. Linteau said this morning that the RCMP intends to ask B.C. Crown prosecutors to move ahead with more charges against Mr. Pickton although the appeal on his conviction of six second-degree murder charges will not be heard until next March. Crown prosecutors have said they will not consider other charges until the appeal has been resolved.

“Even though we have been informed by the Crown, verbally, that they would not be proceeding with the six [new] charges . . . we are still sending a report to crown counsel to complete the process. We still have a responsibility to fully investigate these cases and send the Crown all the information,” Cpl. Linteau said.

“Of course, we are fully aware and cognizant of what Crown said publicly,” she added.

“But by not sending that information [to Crown prosecutors], it could leave us, the police, unprepared and Crown [prosecutors] not fully informed, should further trials be required.”

The new charges to be recommended by the police would be for the alleged first degree-murder of the following six women:

- Yvonne Boen, who was 33 years old when she was last seen on March 16 or 17, 2001;

- Sharon Abraham, who was 35 when last seen when last seen in December, 2000;

- Dawn Crey, when was 42 when last seen on November 1, 2000;

- Jacqueline Murdock, who was 26 when last seen when last seen on August 14, 1997;

- Stephanie Lane, who was 20 when last seen on January 19, 1997;

- Nancy Clarke, who was 25 when last seen on August 22, 1991;

Cpl. Linteau said the DNA of the six women was located on the farm. The women were associated with Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, were involved in prostitution and were dependent on alcohol or drugs.

She added that the decision to lay criminal charges in B.C. is made by Crown prosecutors, not by police. The recommendation to lay charges has not yet been sent, she also said. She did not know when the RCMP report would be sent.

Gil McKinnon, Mr. Pickton's lawyer in his appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, refused to comment.

Peter Wilson, Mr. Pickton's trial lawyer, was not available this morning for an interview.

Mr. Pickton was convicted of second-degree murder of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Marnie Frey, Brenda Wolfe and Georgina Papin. The women disappeared between 1997 and 2001. Mr. Pickton is also charged with the murder of 20 additional women.

Crown prosecutors have said they will not proceed with the 20 additional charges if Mr. Pickton's conviction is upheld at the Supreme Court.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/rcmp-to-recommend-six-more-murder-charges-against-robert-pickton/article1344004/

Pickton faces 6 more charges

By Suzanne Fournier, Canwest News Service
October 29, 2009 4:22 AM

Serial killer Robert Pickton should be charged with killing six more women who disappeared from B.C., RCMP said yesterday.

"We're in the process of sending a report to Crown counsel for their consideration," said RCMP Cpl. Annie Linteau. "We're recommending six more charges related to Robert Pickton and the Port Coquitlam property."

Linteau said that all six victims appear on police's official list of 63 missing women.

Pickton, 60, has never been charged in connection with the death of these six women, who went missing between January 1997 and March 2001.

The women are: Yvonne Boen, 33, who went missing in 2001; Dawn Crey, 42, who went missing in 2000; Sharon Abraham, 35, who went missing in 2000; Stephanie Lane, 20, who went missing in 1997; Jacqueline Murdock, 26, who went missing in 1997; and Nancy Clark, 25, who went missing in 1991.

Clark was last seen in Victoria. The other five, who were all mothers, went missing from Vancouver's drug-infested Downtown Eastside.

In December 2007, the B.C. pig farmer was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin, Sereena Abotsway, Brenda Wolfe and Mona Wilson. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

‘I love you’ – a missing mother’s last words to her son

By Lori Culbert, Vancouver Sun

October 21, 2009

It has now been more than three years since anyone — her husband of 30 years, her three siblings, her five children — has seen Shirley Cletheroe, who vanished June 9, 2006.

Photograph by: Vancouver Sun, Canwest News Service

VANCOUVER — Back in June 2006, Shirley Cletheroe was raising her five children, working at a mill in Fort St. John, and leading a middle-class life.

One night she didn't come home after attending a house party. At first, family members thought she was staying at her sister's place, which she did from time to time. Then she didn't show up for work.

It has now been more than three years since anyone — her husband of 30 years, her three siblings, her five children — has seen the aboriginal woman, who vanished June 9, 2006.

Cletheroe's file is classified as a missing person's case, although police say foul play has not been ruled out.

Cletheroe, 45 years old when she vanished, is one of more than 1,500 women across Canada — many of them aboriginal — who the RCMP has classified as missing.

Perhaps because there are so many of these women, or perhaps because British Columbia just lived through the Robert (Willie) Pickton murder trial, there has been little media attention to Cletheroe's case.

But she, like every other woman who has disappeared, leaves behind a trail of tears and questions.

"My dad's had a hard time since my mom went missing. For him to work and try to keep the family together is challenging," said Brent Cletheroe, Shirley's oldest child.

"My little sister just had her 14th birthday."

Brent Cletheroe, 29, said his faith in God has given him comfort over the last three years as he has grappled with dread and doubt.

"My brothers and sisters have wept on my shoulder and said, 'I know God is looking out for us,'" said Cletheroe, who is a youth pastor at the Fort St. John Pentecostal church and the Zamboni driver at the local ice rink.

The last time Brent spoke to his mother was just a few days before she vanished.

"She phoned and said, 'I love you.' It was really random. I said, 'I know you love me, Mom,'" he recalled. "She said, 'That girl that you're dating . . . That's the one that you need to marry.' My mom had never said that about any of my girlfriends. She said, 'I love you.' And that's the last time I heard her voice."

Brent, who did marry his girlfriend and is now the father of a one-year-old daughter, said his mother was a loving but no-nonsense parent who raised her children while their father worked on oil rigs. She would be proud today, he said, to see his four siblings navigating through life's difficult obstacles.

"In every single one of their lives, I can say I see her in them. And I know they have what I have, what has steered me through the hard times on my path in life. And I owe it all to my mother," he said.

His mother, he said, does not fit the stereotypical profile that many people think of when they hear about an aboriginal woman going missing: she was not a drug user or a sex-trade worker.

She was, however, going through a depression and drinking a bit too much in the weeks before she vanished, he said. The family does not believe Cletheroe disappeared intentionally, but that something bad happened to her at the house party she attended across the street from her sister's house — the last place any one saw her alive.

Brent Cletheroe said he understands his mother had an argument with the owner of the home where the party was held, who the family claims meticulously cleaned up his house and car after the party. However, Brent said police will only tell the family that the case is under investigation, a response he finds frustrating.

"It's three years now and (the police) have given up, really. That's how we feel."

The RCMP appealed to the public for more tips in the case in June, saying they had followed all the leads they had received from the family and the public.

"Nobody just disappears. I think there's somebody out there that has information that can help us. I think somebody could have heard something," said Fort St. John RCMP Const. Jackelynn Passarell.

"There is hope that this can be solved, but it will require that piece of information to come forward."

She said Cletheroe is still considered a missing person, unless "hard fact evidence" is uncovered to suggest otherwise.

"Because foul play hasn't been ruled out, that means it is something that might have occurred here, so we have to keep all avenues of investigation open," Passarell said.

She would not say whether police believe Cletheroe is still alive.

Officers have conducted numerous searches, some in the rural areas surrounding Fort St. John.

"Shirley's family has been holding on for three years, just having that looming question: Where is Shirley? We'd like to solve that for them," Passarell added.

Brent Cletheroe maintains some hope that his mother may still be alive but he cannot, he said, be consumed by "the anxiety of always wondering if she is going to call." Through his faith in God, he has also found the ability to face the fact she may never come home.

He does not, however, have the strength to join other members of his family, who have conducted their own searches of forests and rivers looking for clues.

"I would never want to find my mom like that . . . I apologized (to my auntie) that I was not a part of it, but I was not strong enough," he said. "I have peace. I know that we've done all that we can do."

lculbert@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Families of missing women march on

By Suzanne Fournier, The Province

October 21, 2009

Tamara Chipman was just 22 when she disappeared while trying to hitchhike along Highway 16.

Photograph by: The Province, Canwest News Service

VANCOUVER — Despite the striking colours along B.C.'s northern Highway 16, fall is not a good time for the grieving family that on Sept. 21 marked the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of Tamara Chipman.

Chipman, just 22 when she disappeared while trying to hitchhike along Highway 16 from Prince Rupert to her home in Terrace, was an attractive, tall, slim young woman who "could have been a model, she could have had the world wrapped around her finger," says her aunt Gladys Radek.

"Tamara had a black belt in ju-jitsu — she was a strong woman who adored her little boy, but she was also really loving and compassionate and supported me through the toughest time of my life.

"There's not a day goes by that I don't think of Tamara, but this time of year is especially hard because it was when she disappeared and it's also (her) birthday in October, which is the same day as my daughter Rachel."

Radek has kept the memory of Chipman alive with tireless activism on behalf of her niece and the dozens of women who Radek says have disappeared or been found murdered along B.C.'s lonely northern Yellowhead Highway, the 16 West which runs between Prince George and Prince Rupert, B.C.

So many women have vanished in the last two decades that the Yellowhead has been dubbed the Highway of Tears. RCMP doubled its official number of missing women to 18 in October 2007, but activists like Radek say the real number of missing women is far higher.

She puts the Highway of Tears toll at 46 women. Police recognize 13 deaths and five unsolved disappearances for a total of 18 women vanished on northern highways.

For the last two years, Radek and a small group of activists have led the Walk For Justice — in 2008 from Vancouver to Ottawa, and in 2009, a 1,500-kilometre trek from Vancouver to Terrace, B.C. — to get political action and a more active police investigation into the hundreds of missing women who have vanished without a trace in B.C.

The Sisters in Spirit report, released in March, found that the majority of missing or murdered women cases occurred in B.C., identifying a total of 137 cases or 26 per cent of the national average. It's one of the reasons why Radek, a grandmother of five and a Wet'suwet'en First Nation member, has become so vocal in standing up for the rights of missing women, the majority of whom are aboriginal.

On Oct. 4, Radek held up a photo of Tamara at the waterfront Crab Park, close to where dozens more women vanished in Vancouver's ugly Downtown Eastside, 26 of them now believed to be the victims of Canada's worst serial killer, Robert William Pickton.

Pickton, 56, was convicted on Dec. 9, 2007 of six counts of second-degree murder involving women who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside: Mona Wilson, Brenda Wolfe, Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Marnie Frey and Georgina Papin.

He still faces trial on another 20 counts of first-degree murder, but the Crown does not plan to proceed on that second trial if Pickton's convictions are upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, which has set a tentative date of next March 25 to begin hearing the Pickton appeal of his first set of convictions.

The 20-count indictment has been set down for trial on Sept. 13, 2010, although the B.C. Criminal Justice Branch has made it clear that if Pickton's appeal is denied, it will not proceed with the trial on 20 more charges.

That is a decision that has angered families of the 20 victims, but there is also an even more grim category in which the RCMP have identified another six victims.

They are women whose DNA was found in the exhaustive forensic search of the Pickton farm, but neither Pickton nor anyone else has been charged in their deaths.

Another 39 women remain on the list of unsolved disappearances of women who were drug-addicted and worked in the Downtown Eastside's sex trade, says RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Annie Linteau.

It is for all the women — missing, murdered, remembered or forgotten by authorities — that Radek marches, but Tamara is always close to the top of her mind.

As the cool autumn weather lead to shorter days and fainter hopes, Tamara Chipman's family is recalling for the fourth fall the "sassy" young woman, who had a smile to light up the darkest corners.

"We won't accept that she's gone, and we find it really hard to believe the RCMP have really put a lot of time lately into investigating her disappearance," says Radek. "As we walked across the country, and along the Highway of Tears for the last two years, we felt people's pain and saw their tears — so many came to tell us that they had a missing daughter or mum or sister that the police had never listed as missing.

"The real number of missing and murdered women, the vast majority of them First Nations, has got to be Canada's national disgrace."

When the RCMP began searching a rural northern property this summer, after a tip that Nicole Hoar's remains might lie there, it awoke memories of the Pickton farm search launched in 2002, that turned up dozens of human remains.

That search is complete, but RCMP won't say what they found.

"They haven't said there was nothing there, either, which brings back pretty awful fears for all of us family members," says Radek.

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Highway of Tears

RCMP step up investigation into 18 dead or missing women along Highway 16 in northern B.C.

Part I: Our national tragedy

By Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service October 20, 2009

Dozens of women have gone missing along the so-called Highway of Tears.

Photograph by: Mikael Kjellstrom, Calgary Herald

They disappear from small towns and big cities, from native reserves in the north and affluent suburbs in the south. They drift away and they abruptly vanish. And they leave, in their wake, broken-hearted families, confounded investigators and gaping holes in the communities where they grew up, forged friendships, held jobs, raised children.

At this moment in Canada, there are 1,573 missing women on file with the Canadian Police Information Centre, a national case-tracking database maintained at the RCMP's Ottawa headquarters.

The number sheds only a partial light on this dark story. It doesn't include the lost or stolen girls under the age of 18 who may have lived to become missing women. It doesn't account, anymore, for those who were once missing but have since been proven dead.

It doesn't embrace women who are gone but not reported missing.

Yet great depths of misery and mystery underlie even this imperfect figure. The stories of Canada's lost women — enough to equal the population of a small town, or the entire staff of a large urban hospital — would fill many mournful volumes.

The stories include some particularly shocking narratives in which a multitude of the missing disappear from a single area — such as B.C.'s "Highway of Tears," a lonely stretch of road between Prince Rupert and Prince George where five of those women were last seen and 13 others are known to have been murdered.

A high-profile search in late August for the remains of Nicole Hoar — one of Hwy. 16's 18 unsolved cases — sparked extensive news coverage and prompted some nationwide soul-searching, at least briefly, about Canada's missing women.

Then, within days, came an overdue pledge by Manitoba RCMP and Winnipeg city police to more closely collaborate in probing a series of disappearances and deaths of aboriginal women in that province.

Similar concentrations of missing or murdered women in Alberta and Saskatchewan were noted, too, along with the single most horrific chapter in the whole sorrowful saga: the dozens of vanished women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside linked to the predatory B.C. pig farmer Robert Pickton.

But there are tears staining village streets, rural sideroads and inner-city avenues across the country. No province or territory is beyond the scope of a tragedy that encompasses every corner of Canada and which — for all of the individual instances of anguish — is made especially plain with a single, breathtaking number: 1,573.

There are thousands of missing men in the country — more than 5,000, in fact, are listed at CPIC — but the spotlight has turned to Canada's lost women because of the clusters of disappearances throughout the West and the sense that predatory men lurk behind the grim statistics.

Even 1,573 strikes Gladys Radek as a low estimate.

A member of the Gitksan Nation of northern B.C. who now lives in Vancouver, Radek has emerged as a leading voice for the lost. It's an angry voice, and the word "racism" rolls easily from her tongue as she discusses the pain of her own family's loss and the disproportionate toll among aboriginal communities like hers.

But the 59-year-old activist, now studying aboriginal law at a Vancouver native college, has called for governments, police agencies and the public to devote more attention to all of Canada's missing women — "red, black, white and yellow," as she puts it — with greater investigative resources to solve existing cases and strengthened social services to prevent new ones.

"It pissed me off that these women were going missing without anybody saying or doing anything about it," says Radek, recalling her gathering awareness of the crisis in the wake of her own niece's unexplained disappearance in September 2005 along the Highway of Tears.

Tamara Chipman — 22 at the time, and the mother of a two-year-old boy — was hitchhiking outside Prince Rupert when she vanished.

"She was just beginning her life," says Radek. "Tamara was a beautiful, spunky girl."

The tragedy sparked a vision. Radek imagined a cross-Canada pilgrimage linking families and communities across the country struggling to cope with missing and murdered women.

Last year, with a Vancouver-to-Ottawa trek she called Walk4Justice, Radek's vision was realized, drawing widespread media coverage and galvanizing public awareness of Canada's lost women.

The number 4 in the name "covers all the races, and all four directions," says Radek. "Before we did that walk, there wasn't really that much attention paid to the missing and murdered women. That's when the families started coming together more and more.

"It was a pretty powerful journey."

Earlier this year, Radek organized a second Walk4Justice between Vancouver and Prince Rupert to spotlight the suffering of families — including her own — who've lost loved ones along the Highway of Tears.

She isn't convinced police in B.C. or elsewhere are doing enough to probe the hundreds of unsolved cases, or that governments are sufficiently seized by the need to invest more in vulnerable communities and demographic groups — native and non-native — to prevent numbers like 1,573 from growing larger.

"We need better services so women don't get caught in such desperate situations," she argues. "We're pushing for a lot more shelters, even in the smallest communities. There's often nowhere for women to go when they're running from violent situations."

RCMP Staff Sgt. Wayne Clary defends the efforts of police in B.C. and across the country in probing missing-women cases. In his experience, he says, police agencies "bend over backwards" to co-operate across jurisdictional boundaries, comparing notes and sharing clues to try to solve what are often the toughest cases in police work to crack.

But he does agree with Radek about one thing when it comes to the CPIC total of 1,573 missing women in Canada.

"I thought it would be higher," he says.

Perhaps it's a worldview shaped by his immersion in scores of missing-women cases — most notably the Pickton-linked disappearances of up to 60 sex-trade workers and other high-risk targets in Vancouver — during a 29-year career as one of B.C.'s leading investigators.

The province has emerged as the country's main stage in this long-running tragedy, and Clary wonders aloud if Vancouver's history as a key Pacific port — a magnet not just for tourists and immigrants who've brought prosperity to B.C., but also for criminals — has contributed to the crisis.

Resources, he notes, are not boundless when it comes to investigating missing women, or any crime for that matter. But as a key player in the high-profile and well-funded Project Evenhanded investigation that ultimately unraveled Pickton's crimes, Clary says he sympathizes with isolated investigators across the country, who inevitably have a multitude of other open files on their desks in addition to time-consuming missing-person cases.

"If you have a crime scene and no body — no person — that's easy. You just roll it out like it's a homicide. It's when you don't have a crime scene, it's harder. Because obviously you're adjusting resources and files just never stop coming in," he says.

"I've been on a project here, so we just deal with the one issue — which is easier to handle because there's dedicated resources. But when you're investigating with a detachment or a municipal PD, there's stuff coming your way every day. And, of course, it never ends."

The principal strategy for probing the case of a missing woman is simple enough, he says.

"You identify who their associates are, where they work, and you just start asking questions. Generally, that will lead you somewhere. But there's many cases where you just don't know, and where do you go next?"

Bank accounts, credit cards and cellphones are probed because they're likely to record a person's movements, says Clary.

"You can see them existing in society, and then all of a sudden everything stops," he says. "Whether it's the methadone clinic, or their doctor, or their welfare cheque — it just stops. And you have to ask yourself, why did that happen?"

In so many cases, he says, it's what you can't do for desperate families — the anguished ones seeking closure years or decades after a sister or daughter has vanished — that haunts him and other officers assigned to search for the missing.

Too often, he says bluntly, "you can never give it to them. It's difficult to convey to them that there's nothing more you can do."

And the sad reality, he says, is that the disappeared — in many or even most of the cases on file — are dead.

But without evidence to prove that a missing woman was murdered or otherwise lost her life, families are naturally reluctant to turn the page. The word "missing," for all of its horrifying connotations, preserves at least a shred of hope.

One weekend in September, in the remote woods near Thunder Bay, an Ontario family and a team of volunteer searchers were clinging to such hope.

They scoured the forests of Rainbow Falls Provincial Park looking for clues that might point to the whereabouts of Christina Calayca, a vivacious, 20-year-old childcare worker from Toronto who disappeared — literally "without a trace," a police spokesperson says — after setting off for a morning jog from a campsite on Aug. 6, 2007.

Was the young Filipina-Canadian woman snatched by an unknown assailant or human trafficker? Did she intentionally vanish to create a new life and identity? Or did she simply lose her way in the trees, slip into a stream, fall from a rock ledge?

Police do not have evidence pointing to foul play, says Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Shelley Garr, but they just don't know.

"There are a number of possibilities," she says, "but we don't speak to hypotheticals."

There's a website, www.findchristinacalayca.com, that details a 2008 fundraising gala, holds a cache of news stories, promotes a CD — "Missing You" — that's dedicated to Calayca.

The site exudes affection for the lost woman.

"Each day since her disappearance months ago, Christina's loved ones have hoped and prayed that she would return to us safely," a message states. "If hope alone were enough, she would already be home; but she unfortunately is not."

There have now been six searches — three led by the OPP, three organized by Calayca's family, including one with sniffer dogs supplied by a benevolent search-and-rescue specialist from the U.S.

"She went missing and there's been nothing since," Garr said in a recent interview. "Christina's mother was up again this past weekend. They are still actively searching for answers. But it must be frustrating for them."

The best chance for discovery, she adds, might have been during the initial 17-day search in August 2007, a full-scale operation involving aerial crews and extensive grid-pattern sweeps by emergency personnel on the ground.

"But then we got into fall," says Garr, "and fall turns into winter."

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

How does society think about murdered, missing women?

THE CANADIAN PRESS

EDMONTON – A University of Alberta PhD student says society has made progress, but has a long way to go when it comes to how we think about missing and murdered women.

Amber Dean is studying the lives and deaths of women involved in prostitution, drugs and other high-risk, vulnerable lifestyles to see ‘‘what they can tell us about the way our society is organized.’’

Dean says she became interested while living in Vancouver and noticed how the way the missing women were described changed over time.

She said at first, there was a lot of talk about how they were involved in prostitution and their addiction to drugs.

But Dean said at the conclusion of the trial of Robert Pickton, there was a lot of emphasis put on the victims and an attempt to tell ‘‘at least some aspect’’ of their stories.

Dean said her thesis also looks at the pictorial representations of the Vancouver women by a group of forensic artists on the website of Project EDAN – which stands for Everyone Deserves a Name.

Organized by Wayne Leng, the site features somewhat idealized portraits of the slain and missing women, including Georgina Papin of the Enoch Cree First Nation near Edmonton.

Pickton, of Port Coquitlam, B.C., was convicted in December of killing Papin and five other women and sentenced to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 25 years.

He faces trial next year on another 20 counts of first-degree murder.
‘‘The artists were upset because the pictures in the missing posters seemed to present the women as more criminal than victim in a way because they look like mug shots,’’ she said.

‘‘So, they’ve attempted to create portraits that, in their words, are gentler and softer.’’

The last time I saw Sarah de Vries before she vanished off the streets of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

In Memory of Sarah Jean de Vries, gone but not forgotten.

Sarah de Vries, a true friend, who is believed to have been murdered by Robert Pickton vanished off the streets of the Downtown Eastside April 13, 1998. The last time I saw Sarah, she had called on that day wanting to come over and get some clothes and have some clothes and have something to eat.

I picked her up at the infamous Beacon Hotel and drove home. She bagged some of her clothes from her closet and then had something to eat, it was Fruit Loops, wow, she loved those. We talked for a while as she was getting ready to go out on the streets to work. I asked her if she need something money and she said yes and I gave her all I had on me which was $27.00. That would help her she said. As I drove her back and left her off at the Beacon, I said be cool my friend, she said I'll call you, and that was the last I ever saw of her. She went missing sometime in the early morning hours of April 14, 1998. And now Robert Pickton is charged with 1st degree murder in her case. I miss her and I love her and she will always be in my heart.

Wayne

PHS to operative renovated Downtown Eastside Hotel
By Cheryl Chan, The Province, September 14, 2009

The Downtown Eastside’s most notorious hotel re-opened for business Monday with a new mandate: providing safe, clean rooms for 40 homeless people.

The Backpackers Inn on 7 West Hastings Street — a crime and drug haven singled out by Vancouver Police as the worst-run SRO in the city — was purchased by the provincial government in January for approximately $3-million.

“I wasn’t sure this one could actually get done,” said housing minister Rich Coleman, referring to the deplorable conditions the hotel was in before renovations began.

“I’m just thrilled and impressed at how it’s turned out.”

The former owner completed renovations on the three-storey brick building as part of the sale conditions before the province took possession in July and put in fire and safety upgrades.

Re-christened the Beacon Hotel, the building will be operated by the PHS Community Services Society, which is also set to provide support to the new tenants — many of them from the New Fountain shelter a block away who often struggle with drug addiction and mental illness.

PHS operates the New Fountain as well as a string of other DTES hotels, the Insite supervised injection site and a lifeskills centre.

The society will operate housing in the new Woodward's development and is set to renovate a heritage building it owns at Carrall and Hastings - the old Merchant Bank building at Pigeon Park.

PHS recently opened the renovated Pennsylvania Hotel at Carrall and Hastings and will operate the $21.6-million Station Street supportive-housing development.

The Beacon Hotel is the latest SRO to be unveiled out of the 23 hotels purchased and renovated by the province at a cost of $138-million.

Other recent openings include the 25-unit Savoy and the 63-room Dominion Hotel. Renovations at two more buildings — the 40-room Orwell Hotel and the 138-room Marble Arch — are expected to be completed in late fall.

Michael Shadbolt, who had been homeless in the Downtown Eastside for two years, said he’s happy to finally have a roof over his head.

“It’s a complete change of life for me, a place to re-charge my batteries. It’s just safe, clean housing,” said Shadbolt, 47.

Coleman said safeguards such as 24/7 staffing, secure entrances, surveillance cameras and a police liaison officer have been put in place to make sure the building doesn’t revert back to its former state.

© Copyright (c) The Province

The Search for Sarah

Life on the Street - By Sarah de Vries

Missing People Net - Downtown Eastside missing women's website: 1999 - 2009

Pickton appeal hearing set for next March 25 in nation’s top court

Thursday, September 17th, 2009 | 1:50 pm

Canwest News Service

VANCOUVER – The Supreme Court of Canada has set a tentative date of next March 25 to begin hearing the appeal of serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton.

Pickton, 56, was convicted on Dec. 9, 2007, of six counts of second-degree murder involving women who disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside: Mona Wilson, Brenda Wolfe, Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Marnie Frey and Georgina Papin.

He still faces trial on another 20 counts of first-degree murder, but the Crown does not plan to proceed on that second trial if Pickton’s convictions are upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Still, the 20-count indictment was in court today and the second trial has been set to begin Sept. 13, 2010.

The date was set anticipating it may take months for a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada on Pickton’s appeal.

Last June 25,the B.C. Court of Appeal denied Pickton’s bid for a new trial, but a dissseting judgment by one judge of the three-judge panel gave Pickton an automatic right to appeal his case before the nation’s highest court in Ottawa.

In a 2-1 split decision, Chief Justice Lance Finch and Richard Low turned down Pickton’s bid for a new trial, largely rejecting many of the defence arguments.

The Crown, Pickton’s defence had argued on appeal, pursued a theory during the trial that Pickton had acted alone, but as a result of a question by the jury during deliberations switched gears and suggested he could have had an accomplice.

Pickton’s defence also alleged the trial judge, B.C. Supreme Court Justice James Williams, erred in his response to a jury question.

However, Justice Ian Donald disagreed with his colleagues, saying that Williams made “a serious error of law” and that there was a “miscarriage of justice.”

Donald did not think it was fair for the Crown to introduce the possibility Pickton acted with someone else so late in the trial.

“I view the Crown’s behaviour as scrambling to recover ground,” he wrote.

The confusion could have led to the jury’s verdict of second-degree murder, instead of first-degree, Donald wrote.

“Despite the body of evidence against Pickton, the jury deliberated over nine days and reached the somewhat curious result of second-degree murder.”

The Appeal Court also released a ruling on a separate appeal by the Crown.

The three justices unanimously agreed with the Crown that Williams made several errors in law, included severing the 26 counts into two trials; not allowing a key witness to testify; and prohibiting certain similar fact evidence from being admitted. Most details about this evidence are protected by a publication ban.

Still, they said, “there would be no useful purpose” to remedy these errors by ordering a new trial on 26 counts of first-degree murder if Pickton’s six convictions are upheld and he continues to serve his life sentence.

Pickton was initially charged in February 2002 with two counts of first- degree murder after police raided his Port Coquitlam farm. He was eventually charged with 27 counts.

The trial judge stayed one count involving a Jane Doe, a woman whose identity was never identified.

Pickton’s first murder trial began on Jan. 22, 2007.

nhall@vancouversun.com

© 2009 Kelowna.com. All Rights Reserved.

Pickton to appeal pig farm murders to top court

By Keith Fraser, Vancouver Province
June 26, 2009

VANCOUVER — A day after he lost a bid to overturn his six murder convictions, serial killer Robert Pickton has decided to appeal his case to Canada's highest court.

Pickton's lawyer Gil McKinnon confirmed on Friday that his client will "soon" file an appeal to be heard in the Supreme Court of Canada.

The 59-year-old former pig farmer from the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam was given the automatic right of appeal because the B.C. Court of Appeal ruling upholding the convictions on Thursday was a split decision.

McKinnon said the appeal would be based on the dissenting opinion of B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Ian Donald. He did not say when the appeal might be heard in Ottawa.

In a lengthy ruling, the majority opinion of the B.C. Court of Appeal found that the evidence strongly suggested that Pickton was the killer or one of the killers on all of the murder counts and rejected his appeal arguments.

Donald admitted that the Crown had a "powerful case" but found that errors by the trial judge amounted to a miscarriage of justice and called for a new trial.

McKinnon represented Pickton at the nine-day Appeal Court hearing earlier this year.

In December 2007, a B.C. Supreme Court jury found Pickton guilty of six counts of second-degree murder after being found not guilty of six counts of first-degree murder. Pickton lured the women, all sex-trade workers from Vancouver's drug-plagued Downtown Eastside, to his pig farm and murdered them.

Pickton was initially charged with 26 counts of murder but the Crown has said it will not proceed with the remaining 20 counts if the murder convictions are upheld.

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Murder and racism along the Highway of Tears

By Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun columnist
August 28, 2009 9:01 PM

With the news that RCMP were searching a property near Prince George for the remains of Nicole Hoar, there was in that grisly development in the Highway of Tears investigation something that remained unsaid.

Hoar was an anomaly. She was white.

Of the nine females originally listed by the RCMP as missing along Highway 16 — a list, in retrospect, that now seems laughably small — Hoar was the sole Caucasian, an Alberta girl who was working as a tree planter in the Prince George area. She was also, at 25, the eldest of the nine.

The other eight were aboriginal.

Of those eight, four were 15.

When the RCMP expanded the investigation’s area of interest (reacting, perhaps, to the insistence in the aboriginal community that many more women were missing), the force began looking at similar cases as far afield as Alberta and far northern B.C. Another nine names were added to the list in October 2007, bringing the total to 18.

Aileah Saric-Auger, a high school student from Prince George, became the youngest victim on the revised list, and the most recent. Aileah was 14, and had gone missing in February 2006. Her body was found eight days later in a ditch along Highway 16.

The revised list also expanded the investigation’s time span. The oldest case now went all the way back to 1969 — Gloria Moody, found dead in Williams Lake. Forty years would seem to test the limit of “cold case,” in that the chances of some kind of resolution are now positively frigid. It is this growing distance between crime and the possibility of punishment that is not only a source of frustration for the aboriginal community, but evidence to that community of systemic racism.

In the database of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, there are 520 “known” cases of native women going missing or being murdered, and half of those cases have happened since 2000.

B.C. has the distinction of leading all provinces by a wide margin, with 137.

These murders and disappearances have been going on for decades, however, including in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and critics have charged that investigations into them lapsed because of meagre police resources or, worse, the disinterest of society at large to pursue them. Put more bluntly, racism.

“When I reported my sister missing,” said Lucy Glaim, of Smithers, who was once the youth justice worker for the Wet’sewet’en Unlocking Aboriginal Justice program, “[the RCMP officer] just said something like, ‘She’s just found a party or something, so give her a couple of days.’”

Those couple of days turned into an eternity: Glaim’s sister, Delphine Nikal, disappeared on the morning of June 14, 1990, while hitchhiking from Smithers to a friend’s house in nearby Telkwa. She was never seen again. Glaim had reported her missing the following morning. Delphine was 16.

Glaim’s niece, Cicilia Anne Nikal, had also disappeared a year earlier, and was last seen in Smithers near Highway 16. But her name was not included on the list of 18 because RCMP maintain she was reported missing in Vancouver.

That scenario was contradicted in the 2006 report that came out of the Highway of Tears Symposium in Prince George. The symposium came about because the case file had reached such a critical mass of numbers that it could no longer be ignored. Police, government and media were forced to take notice. It was in that report that Cicilia Anne’s name was included, and that she was “last seen in Smithers near Highway 16.”

There was also this remarkable paragraph in the report’s preamble:

“There is much community speculation and debate on the exact number of women that have disappeared along Highway 16. . . . Many are saying the number of missing women, combined with the number of confirmed murdered women, exceeds 30.”

It then goes on to say that “the exact number of missing women has yet to be determined.”

The exact number? More than 30? The unintended dispassion of those passages screams out at the reader. If there was the possibility of 30 or more women going missing in, say, Dunbar, there wouldn’t be a polite “debate” about numbers. There wouldn’t be a symposium 40 years down the road. There would be immediate wholesale alarm.

Some 33 recommendations came out of that report, some of which have been implemented and some not. A key one — the creation of a shuttle bus service between communities along the highway to remove the need for poor aboriginal women to resort to hitchhiking — has not been realized. Hitchhiking remains common. But one recommendation that did see fruition was the creation of a coordinator for the Highway to Tears program. The coordinator was to act as a liaison between police, affected families and government.

Mavis Erickson, of the Carrier Sekani Family Services in Prince George, is the present coordinator. She is concentrating her efforts, she said, on getting the provincial government to hold an inquiry into the investigations. She has a meeting with Attorney-General Mike de Jong in October.

“It’s been 40 years, and we haven’t had an arrest,” Erickson said. “Many times, we talk to families of women who have been murdered or who have gone missing, and they don’t know what’s going in on the investigations.

“Hopefully, [an inquiry] will answer some questions.”

pmcmartin@vancouversun.com, 604-605-2905

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Highway of Tears

RCMP step up investigation into 18 dead or missing women along Highway 16 in northern B.C.