DNA of murdered women found on Langley man's car, shoes, trial told

BY LORI CULBERT, VANCOUVER SUN
May 26, 2010

METRO VANCOUVER -- The DNA of two murdered sex-trade workers was found in Davey Butorac's car and on his shoes, the Crown said in its opening address to the jury.

Butorac's murder trial began Wednesday in New Westminster Supreme Court before a jury of six men and six women.

Butorac, 31, of Langley, was arrested in January 2008 and charged with second-degree murder in the deaths of two women, Gwendolyn Jo Lawton and Sheryl Lynn Koroll.

Crown Attorney Matthew Stacey laid out for the jury the evidence the prosecution expects its witnesses will testify about during the trial.

Stacey said the Crown's case will be based on forensic evidence found in Butorac's Chevrolet Cavelier and on his shoes.

Stacey said the jury would hear that "Gwendolyn Lawton's blood was found at several locations in the trunk of Mr. Butorac's Cavelier."

The jury would also hear, the prosecutor said, that Koroll's DNA was found in the trunk, on the passenger-side door, and on Butorac's shoes.

Furthermore, the Crown will try to prove that a tire mark left on Koroll's wrist came from the Cavelier.
Stacey said the Crown would call several witnesses, including Butorac's father Frank, to testify that the accused never let anyone else drive his car.

The defence did not make an opening statement. Butorac has pleaded not guilty.

Forty-six-year-old Lawton, of Abbotsford, was found dead off a gravel road in Abbotsford in March 2007.
The body of Koroll, 50, of Langley, was found in an industrial area of Langley on July 7, 2007. Both women were involved in the sex trade and struggled with a drug addiction

Butorac listened closely this morning from the prisoner's box, wearing a white patterned dress shirt, as the trial began with the judge giving opening directions to the jury.

The first witness, a RCMP officer with the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, described the rural scene where Lawton's body was found.

The trial continues Thursday.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

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Missing and Murdered Women along the Highway of Tears – reporter Lori Culbert will host a live chat at noon on Tuesday, December 15.

Deputy Managing Editor Paul Bucci and reporter Lori Culbert will host a live chat at noon on Tuesday, December 15. In the meantime, you can post questions for Lori in advance or discuss the case and your memories of the women and girls who vanished along B.C. and Alberta highways below.

VANISHING POINT
Women Missing or Murdered
A Five-Part Investigative series

A Vancouver Sun investigation tells the full story, for the first time, of the Highway of Tears victims and raises questions about other similar unsolved cases.

Deputy Managing Editor Paul Bucci and reporter Lori Culbert will host a live chat at noon on Tuesday, December 15. In the meantime, you can post questions for Lori in advance or discuss the case and your memories of the women and girls who vanished along B.C. and Alberta highways below.

VANISHING POINT - The Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/vanished/chatroom/index.html

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• Vigils remember killed, missing aboriginal women (cbc.ca)

How the Vanishing Point series developed

December 11, 2009

Many women have vanished or been found murdered along the highways of B.C. and Alberta over the past 40 years.

Photograph by: Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun

For the first time, a Vancouver Sun investigation reveals the full story behind the Highway of Tears victims and raises questions about other similar unsolved cases in B.C. and Alberta.

The cases date back to the murder of Gloria Levina Moody in 1969 and end with the murder of a 14-year-old Prince George high school student in 2006. The youngest victim to meet violence along the province's highway was 12.

Neal Hall has covered many high-profile cases for the Vancouver Sun, including the court proceedings in the Clifford Olson case. He teamed up with Lori Culbert on the Robert Pickton case and has been reporting on the Highway of Tears since the beginning.

Hall and Culbert joined forces for the Vancouver Sun's investigative series on the missing and murdered women along the highways of B.C. and Alberta. Culbert recently travelled to northern B.C. with photographer Ian Smith for the series.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/Vanishing+Point+series+developed/2280893/story.html

Cloak of mystery still surrounds Virginia Sampare’s disappearance

By Lori Culbert, Vancouver Sun

December 11, 2009

Siblings Roddy and Winnie Sampare hold a photograph of their sister Virginia Sampare.

Photograph by: Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun

GITSEGUKLA — On October 14, 1971, teenager Virginia Sampare and her cousin Alvin were hanging out near an old bridge on Highway 16, outside their home town of Gitsegukla.

The day was cool, so Alvin hopped on his bicycle to go home and get a jacket. He told Virginia he'd return shortly.

On his way back, as he cycled toward the highway, he heard a pickup door close; by the time he reached the road, Virginia was nowhere in sight.

She has never been seen again.

That is all that her brother and sister, Winnie and Roddy Sampare, have been able to piece together about the mysterious disappearance of their younger sibling nearly four decades ago.

"It was just so strange how she disappeared. Everyone looked and they didn't find anything. Not a piece of clothing," Winnie said in a recent interview in Gitsegukla, a native community between Terrace and Smithers.

"It still feels like it just happened yesterday."

According to brief stories in The Vancouver Sun in 1971, RCMP officers, civil defence personnel and local residents began searching the dense bush around the village about a week after Virginia vanished.

No trace of the pretty teenager with the delicately chiselled features and almond-shaped brown eyes was found.

After eight days, the effort was called off.

Her brother Roddy, who was then 23, helped with the official search, and also combed the local river and nearby mountains.

"I think the whole community took part in that search. There were people cooking, and others in the bush," Roddy recalled. "They came up with nothing."

Virginia was born in 1953, one of six kids in her family. She was a quiet girl who loved to sing teasing songs to her sisters, Winnie recalled. She worked at a cannery.

Winnie said her sister would usually let someone know her plans, and it would have been out of character for her to run away.

Sampare's file was re-opened in 2001. New Hazelton RCMP Cpl. Don Wrigglesworth re-interviewed her family and some witnesses, and gathered samples to create a DNA profile for the missing woman.

Wrigglesworth noted that Virginia vanished after the sudden disappearance of her boyfriend, and before his body was found drowned in the Skeena River. Virginia was upset that cold day and had left the house without a jacket.

"No one knows where she went or what she did: If she committed suicide. If she relocated herself back to Vancouver. She's had no contact with anyone," Wrigglesworth said. "There is speculation of wrong-doing, but no proof."

Virginia was depressed at the time by the disappearance of her boyfriend, Roddy concurred, but he doesn't believe his sister committed suicide. "My mom and dad were always preaching we couldn't do anything to harm ourselves."

The Sampares feel someone must know something about their sister, and are begging that person to come forward. "We just keep hoping and praying she's alive," Winnie said.

They believe adding Virginia to the official Highway of Tears list could bring a break in the case and possibly generate some new tips. "We asked the police when we went to Prince George, and we didn't get any response," Roddy said.

Sampare's file meets two of the three pieces of criteria required for an unsolved case to be put on the Highway of Tears list: She is female and she was last seen within a mile of the highway.

However, Staff Sgt. Bruce Hulan, who runs the E-Pana investigation which is looking into the Highway of Tears cases, said foul play had to be confirmed in a case before it was considered for the official list.

In five of the 18 cases on the list no body has been found but, Hulan said, in each of those files investigators are convinced the victim was murdered.

Roddy Sampare said he was pleased with the initial police response to his sister's disappearance, but he remains frustrated that he doesn't have more answers. He is determined to keep searching.

In recent years, the RCMP collected DNA from Virginia's family members, in the off chance they might find evidence of her on Port Coquitlam serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton's farm.

Roddy hopes the expansion of DNA science will lead to answers for his family. "That is the biggest thing I keep hoping with the new technology that is out there now," Roddy said.

Virginia's disappearance hit their parents hard, Roddy said.

When their mother was dying in 2001, she kept thinking Virginia would visit her on her death bed. Their father is haunted by his daughter's ghost, often thinking that he's caught a glimpse of her or had a conversation with her.

When Roddy and other family members visit Vancouver, they search the sea of faces for a middle-aged woman who resembles Virginia, or a younger woman who could be her daughter.

"It would be nice for us to have closure. If she's alive it would be nice to see her again. And if she's gone, it would be nice to put her to rest and have a feast and put a marker up."

lculbert@vancouversun.com

lculbert@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/Cloak+mystery+still+surrounds+Virginia+Sampare+disappearance/2330765/story.html

Daughter searches for answers in mother’s 1978 murder

By Lori Culbert, Vancouver Sun

December 11, 2009

Vicki Hill in front of a picture of her mother Mary Jane Hill when she was three years old.

Photograph by: Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun

PRINCE RUPERT — Vicki Hill was just six-months old when her mother was found dead along Highway 16.

Thirty years later, the case remains unsolved.

Vicki, now 32, is now trying to piece together what she can about the mother she never knew.

Three decades after her mother's death, Vicki tracked down a copy of her mother's death certificate at a Prince Rupert funeral home. It notes Mary Jane Hill died on Highway 16 on March 26, 1978 at the age of 31.

In 2004, a victims' services worker helped Vicki get a copy of the findings of a coroner's inquest into her mothers death.

The five jurors ruled the cause of death for Mary Jane, whose body was found 21 km east of Prince Rupert, was bronchitis and bronchopneumonia.

But the one-page document eerily adds: "We then find that the death of Mary Jane Hill as a result of manslaughter."

There are no further details. Vicki believes that someone left her mother on the highway to die.

Mary Jane was buried in an unmarked grave in a Prince Rupert cemetery. With the help of a caring outreach worker, Vicki has uncovered the coordinates of the plot. She must now find the exact location of the piece of grass under which her mother's remains lie.

"I would say this is a puzzle that I'm on, and there's pieces I don't have. But they are all the pieces I could find of her," Vicki said during a recent interview.

She wore a community event T-shirt that reads "Take Back the Highway" on the front and "There's a killer on the highway" on the back.

Although Vicki's mother was found dead along Highway 16, her name has not been added to the Highway of Tears list.

Vicki doesn't know why. She is frustrated by the Prince Rupert RCMP investigation that, in three decades, has produced no answers.

About two years ago a support worker helped Vicki contact Tony Romeyn, a Prince George businessman who runs a website dedicated to the Highway of Tears case. Romeyn added a photo and story about Mary Jane to his memorial page.

Mary Jane's file meets two of the three pieces of criteria required for an unsolved case to be put on the Highway of Tears list: She is female and she was last seen or her body was found within a mile of the highway.

However, Staff Sgt. Bruce Hulan, who runs the E-Pana investigation that is looking into the Highway of Tears cases, says the uncertainty of foul play eliminates this file a candidate for the official list.

While the coroner's jury concluded Mary Jane died of manslaughter, the autopsy results, Hulan said, leaned more towards death by natural causes.

He added that the original investigators could not determine how Mary Jane got to the spot on the highway where her body was found.

Vicki hopes to find one of the coroner's jurors, who she understands is still living in Prince Rupert, to find out if he remembers more information.

"The RCMP, I don't think myself, they are really looking into these old cases," she said quietly. "I'm quite sure they will find something along the line if they look into it. I want to find out where is my mom's evidence? . Where are her clothes? Was anything done? I'm sure she would have fought. Where is the DNA, the blood samples?"

Vicki remains disappointed by what she perceives as a lack of interest by politicians, native leaders, the public and the media in her mother's file and those of other unsolved cases in northern BC.

"I think it is important that there should be more attention to all these women who are gone, because I know what it's like to lose a loved one. Because I know the pain," said Vicki, who was born in Prince Rupert and was raised by her father's family after her mother's death.

In one of a handful of photos that Vicki has, her mother Mary Jane, a Nisga'a, stands on the government dock in Kinkolithis. She is smartly dressed in stylish clothes, wearing glasses and a short haircut that was popular in the 1960s.

During Vicki's childhood, including some unhappy years in the native town of Gitsegukla, she was not told much about her mother. Then, when she was in her early 20s, an uncle finally told her that he and her mother attended a concert on the evening she disappeared, and that he turned around and she was gone.

"They said I looked like her. She loved to play sports," Vicki said.

"Growing up without her was really hard. Especially around this time of year. I never even got to see her," added Vicki, the mother of two children, Erik, 12, and Zoey, 7. "It's not fair.... I just wish she was here to see my kids."

Hill is determined to soldier on in her search for answers, out of respect for her mother and the other missing and murdered women from Northern BC.

"I want justice. And more awareness of all the missing and murdered women. They are all human. They all had heart beats."

lculbert@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/Daughter+searches+answers+mother+1978+murder/2330781/story.html

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

‘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

First of 69 missing women portraits unveiled by Vancouver artist

By LORI CULBERT, VANCOUVER SUN
June 23, 2009 5:27 PM

VANCOUVER -- A Vancouver artist painting massive portraits of women who vanished from the Downtown Eastside is nearly finished the four-year-long project, and announced Tuesday she plans to create an art program for women at the Union Gospel Mission.

The first of 69 portraits by artist Pamela Masik was unveiled Tuesday at a press conference in Gastown, revealing a starkly life-like image of Mona Wilson, who disappeared in November 2001 at the age of 26.

Wilson’s remains were later found on the Port Coquitlam farm of Robert (Willie) Pickton, who has been convicted in her murder.

Below Wilson’s piercing dark eyes and high cheek bones are slash marks in the canvas and newspaper articles woven into the texture of the 2.4-metre wide and three-metre tall (eight-by-10 feet) artwork.

The knife wounds represent the fate Wilson met at the hands of her killer, Masik said; the newspaper clippings indicate her story became a very public one, only after society collectively shrugged when the women first started disappearing.

“They were real people, just like you and me. It’s a tragedy that so many women can go missing and be murdered,” Masik said. “Everyone deserves a dignified life.”

The Vancouver Sun first chronicled Masik’s “Forgotten Faces” project when she started it in 2006. She has completed 59 of the portraits, and said she is finalizing plans for all 69 to be displayed “at a major public institution,” likely in 2011.

In the meantime, Masik is donating proceeds from her landscape paintings to fund a new arts program for women who rely on the services at the Union Gospel Mission in the Downtown Eastside.

UGM Rev. Bruce Curtiss hopes the art classes will be a healing influence.

“It will help these women on their journey, who were friends — who literally knew these [missing] women before they were taken,” he said.

Also at the unveiling Tuesday was Susie Kinshella of Chilliwack, the sister of missing woman Wendy Crawford. She said she visited Masik’s downtown studio last month to see the “amazing” portrait of her sister.

“It was the innocence Pamela captured that she gave back to my sister, that she gave back to me,” Kinshella said. “It put sunshine on the rain from [Pickton’s 2007] trial. ... This is just the greatest gift.”

The police list of missing women contained 69 names a few years ago, but now sits at 64 after the whereabouts of five women were found.

Pickton was convicted of killing six of the missing women and was charged with the first-degree murder of 20 more, including Crawford.

The B.C. Court of Appeal will rule Thursday on Pickton’s appeal of his conviction.

lculbert@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/First+missing+women+portraits+unveiled+Vancouver+artist/1725697/story.html

Mystery of missing woman solved

By Lori Culbert, Vancouver Sun
April 2, 2009

METRO VANCOUVER - Marie Laura Mah’s is one of the 65 faces on the police missing women poster, and she has not been seen since 1985, according to the tiny bit of information under her black-and-white photo.

But the Missing Women Task Force visited Mah’s son in Alberta this week to tell him officers have confirmed his mother is not, in fact, missing, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

Mah died 23 years ago in Burnaby General Hospital, but her identity remained a mystery until recently because of confusion over names and birthdates.

The surprise discovery was a relief for Daryl Chase, who now knows his long-lost mother died of natural causes and wasn’t the victim of a predator.

“It is better that she didn’t lose her life to someone else’s hand, that she died in the hospital,” Chase, an oil-field worker, said in an interview. “We’re happy that she didn’t end up on somebody’s farm, buried.”

The discovery puts to rest Chase’s constant worrying about Mah’s whereabouts, as well as his anger over his mother’s inclusion on a poster often depicted as a group of sex-trade workers with drug problems.

“She was always a loving mother to me and my sister,” he said, adding that her death certificate indicated Mah had a Burnaby address and a job as a cook when she died at age 42.

Chase said there has been no evidence that Mah was involved in the sex trade or drugs.

Chase and his sister were raised by their mother and father in a Vancouver house until his parents separated when he was seven. He last saw his mother three years later, in 1975, when she was going through difficult times and drinking.

He lived in foster homes, but has since been granted access to his child-welfare records, which show his mother regularly wrote letters to her children and to the ministry about trying to get her kids back.

Mah’s estranged sister reported her missing in 1999.

But police had few leads, said RCMP Cpl. Annie Linteau.

Mah had not been heard from since Christmas 1984 or 1985, her last address was not known, no birth date was provided, and her name was given as Laura Kathleen Mah, even though it was really Marie Laura Mah.

No one connected the woman who died in Burnaby in 1986 with the one reported missing in 1999 until the Missing Women Task Force recently made inquiries with vital statistics, which tracks births and deaths in B.C., Linteau said.

Mah’s photo will be removed from the poster when a new one is made, she added.
Police continue to investigate 38 of the missing women, while Robert (Willie) Pickton was convicted of killing six woman and charged with killing another 20.
Chase will speak with his sister and extended family about a memorial for his mother, and what to do with the remains that were unclaimed for 23 years.

“There she sat in the crematorium, and still sits there.”

lculbert@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Serial killer Willie Pickton's murder convictions should be overturned, lawyer argues

By Lori Culbert, Vancouver Sun
March 30, 2009 6:51 PM

VANCOUVER - Serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton’s trial “went off the rails” during the jury’s deliberations, and therefore his conviction on six counts of second-degree murder should be overturned, a defence lawyer told the B.C. Court of Appeal on Monday.

It is the constitutional right of any defendant, “no matter how heinous the accusations” against him, to have a fair trial, Pickton’s lawyer, Gil McKinnon, argued during the opening day of the appeal of the high-profile 2007 trial.

Therefore, the former Port Coquitlam pig farmer, who is serving a life sentence for killing six women who disappeared from the Downtown Eastside, should be granted a new trial, McKinnon said.

That request elicited a heavy sigh from one of a dozen relatives who were in the courtroom, where six prosecutors and two defence lawyers will make arguments before three appeal court justices over nine days.

More family members and friends of the six victims, as well as of other women who have vanished from the neighbourhood, chanted, beat drums and called out for justice on the courthouse steps in downtown Vancouver.

Three sisters of Georgina Papin, who disappeared 10 years ago and is one of the women Pickton was convicted of killing, travelled from Edmonton to listen to the appeal.

“Every part of this trial is important, especially for our sister Georgina, and we want to make sure she is represented,” said Cynthia Cardinal. “We’ll live with this for the rest of our lives.”

At the centre of the defence’s appeal is the only question the jury members asked the judge during their nine days of deliberations in December 2007. Although the question was awkwardly worded, the jury appeared to be asking whether they could find Pickton guilty if they determined he had “indirectly” killed one or more of the women.

It is a reasonable interpretation, McKinnon said, to conclude that some members of the jury must have thought someone other than Pickton shot the three victims who died of gunshot wounds and, potentially, killed the other three victims, whose cause of death could not be determined because very little of their remains were found on Pickton’s property.

“One or more members of the jury were having some difficulty with the Crown’s theory that Mr. Pickton was the shooter of the three women and/or the killer of the other three women,” the lawyer told the court.

McKinnon argued that the trial judge, Justice James Williams, made five errors, among them: the way he initially addressed the jurors’ question; changing his mind and creating the “real possibility” that some jurors could conclude Pickton could be convicted for acting as a participant, instead of a sole perpetrator, in the deaths; and giving a charge to the jury that was “incomplete, misleading and wholly inadequate.”

McKinnon alleged the Crown’s theory that Pickton acted alone in the murders never wavered in this case until the jury members asked their question, and then the Crown “backslid” from its previous position to embrace the idea he may have worked with someone else. That, the defence argued, “destroyed the integrity of this trial.”

McKinnon indicated that the Crown, which is expected to start its response to the defence appeal today or Wednesday, will argue it did not change its position.

On Dec. 9, 2007, three days after asking its question, the jury found Pickton not guilty of first-degree murder, but guilty of the lesser charge of second-degree murder in the deaths of Papin, Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe and Marnie Frey.

The Crown has also filed its own appeal, arguing the trial judge made six errors, including rulings on whether the jury heard certain evidence and severing the charges against Pickton into two trials, one of six counts and the other of 20. The Crown’s appeal will likely be presented next week, once argument in the defence appeal is finished.

Pickton, who is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years, was not present in court.

The 50-seat courtroom was packed most of Monday morning with reporters, victims’ supporters, members of the public, and two Missing Women Task Force investigators. The crowd thinned out in the afternoon, as the legal arguments became more technical.

Community activists Bernie Williams and Gladys Radek, who last year walked across Canada to demand a public inquiry in the case, wore distinctive red native robes in the courtroom. Many of the women who disappeared from the Downtown Eastside were aboriginal.

Also in the courtroom were relatives of some of the other 20 women who Pickton is accused of killing. They hope Pickton will face a second trial on those counts, but the Crown has said it will not proceed with that trial if the defence’s appeal bid is unsuccessful.

lculbert@vancouversun.com

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