The Questions Remain

Serial killer Robert William Pickton, a pig farmer who butchered women as if they were animals, has grabbed headlines across the country for almost a decade. We have learned more than many want to know about this wretched man and his depraved killings. But we still do not have a final reckoning. The questions remain: Who did he kill? Could he have been stopped sooner? Why did he do it?

Three years ago, bestselling author Stevie Cameron, who is well known for her writing on politics and on former prime minister Brian Mulroney, shifted to true crime to start a conversation about Pickton. As his trial began in 2007, she came out with The Pickton File, a highly personal account of her efforts to piece together what happened.

With On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing Women, released this summer after his conviction on six murders was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, Cameron has taken herself out of the story and reverted to a more traditional approach of third-person investigative reportage to provide an extensive account of the ghastly killings, the sad lives of the hapless victims, the bungled police investigation and Pickton’s trial. In her highly readable style, she brings us up to date as of early summer 2010, shortly before a full public inquiry was announced.

Her strongest writing is about Vancouver’s drug-addled Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, the difficult lives of the women who worked as prostitutes and their never-ending struggle to conquer their addictions. “People say there is no place on earth like Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and that’s the truth,” Cameron writes. Her compassionate portraits of several women who were killed will not easily be forgotten.

Regrettably we do not learn much more about Pickton than we already know from media reports and evidence at his trial. Maybe no one can make sense of what Pickton did. Was he brain damaged at birth because the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck? Was he forever scarred at the age of twelve when his father sent his favourite calf to the slaughterhouse? Did his mother turn him into a maniac?

Cameron writes that his eccentric mother, Louise Pickton, who was the biggest influence on his life, behaved outside the norms of convention almost all the time. Louise Pickton did not pay any attention to her teeth, which mostly rotted out. She spoke in a high screech. She always wore a cotton housedress over a pair of men’s jeans and men’s thick rubber gumboots. She allowed their farm animals—chickens, ducks, dogs, pigs and cows—to roam in and out of their home, oblivious to the smell or manure they left behind. Meanwhile, his father, Leonard, who was 16 years older than his mother, paid little attention to his son Robert. “As parents, it’s clear that Louise and Leonard were appalling failures,” Cameron writes. But apparently Pickton did not feel that way at all. He was close to his mother, describing their relationship as “two peas in a pod.”

Pickton quit school at 14 years old to work on the farm. He was 29, living in the family farmhouse, when his mother died in 1979. Shortly afterward, his brother Dave booted him out of the house. He moved into a motorhome at the back of the property. Over the next few years, all the elements of the crime fell into place. He had the skills to butcher animals, skills he used to dismember women whom he killed. He knew how to dispose of remains without leaving a trail. He was living alone on a dark isolated patch of farmland. By the early 1990s, he was a familiar figure in the Downtown Eastside, someone who picked up girls outside a beer pub with dormitory-style rooms above, called the Astoria Hotel.

Cameron recounts evidence from Pickton’s trial that showed he went after women who were among the easiest to prey on. He used drugs and money to lure them away from their familiar environment and to his farm of horrors.

But whom exactly did he kill? Cameron does not tell us. Pickton was convicted of second-degree murder of six women who were addicted to drugs and worked as prostitutes. More than 60 women who fit the same profile have gone missing in recent years from the Vancouver area. The DNA profiles of 33 women, including the six he was convicted of murdering, were found on the Pickton farm. Did he kill all 33? He bragged that he killed 49. Who were they?

As the tale unfolds, Cameron recounts the remarks of a woman named Tracey Buyan, whom Pickton attacked in 1996. She escaped but had not previously told her story. Buyan recalled that Pickton said he liked to help prostitutes kick their drug habit but if they went back to dope, “well, then, they don’t deserve to live. They’re useless. They’re better off dead.”

Is this why? Cameron leaves us guessing. Cameron also recounts several moments that could have, should have, alerted authorities. But she does not try to make sense of all this. We are left wondering, could Pickton have been stopped in 1996 after he attacked Buyan? In 1997, after another prostitute was attacked and escaped? Or in 1998, when Vancouver policeman Kim Rossmo first identified the possibility of a serial killer in the Downtown Eastside? Things kept happening that should have set off the alarm bells, but he was not arrested until February 2002.

Cameron weaves the tales of the missing

women into events in Pickton’s life and in between accounts of what the police were doing and, in many instances, not doing. She spends a considerable amount of time on the police investigation. Unfortunately, her account has been quickly overtaken by events. The Vancouver Police Department released a detailed report of what they knew and what they did around the same time that On the Farm was released. The police provided a more complete picture of the investigation than Cameron does. Then, a few weeks after the book was released, the British Columbia government announced plans to hold a full public inquiry into the police investigation of the Pickton case. The inquiry will invariably delve into the internal machinations of policing leading up to Pickton’s arrest.

With all the attention that Cameron puts on the investigation, it is worth remembering that the killing was stopped only after a rookie cop went to the Pickton farm in search of unregistered firearms. He was not stopped as a result of any police investigation. In Pickton’s own words, he was caught because he got sloppy. Cops searching for guns in his home, a filthy trailer at the far reaches of the farm, found personal items belonging to two missing prostitutes. After Pickton was arrested, cops found human remains.

Cameron’s account also raises questions about others who may have known about the serial killing but have avoided the spotlight. Much of the information came out previously in bits and pieces. By bringing it all together, Cameron brings attention to a circle of unusual people.

Two women who knew many of the Downtown Eastside prostitutes—Gina Houston and Dinah Taylor—brought women out to the farm for Pickton. So did his brother Dave, Cameron says. Then there was one of Pickton’s friends who saw women’s identification and clothing strewn around his trailer but refused to cooperate with police when they asked her about the rumours. Others claimed Pickton talked to them about what he did but they did not alert the police. One said Pickton told him that he helped dispose of bodies; another said Pickton once explained how he killed women, showing off the tools he used that were kept under his bed. Lynn Ellingsen, who saw a woman hanging in the barn, blackmailed Pickton while repeatedly refusing to cooperate with police until after Pickton was arrested. What sort of people are these? Cameron does not say it, but at some point, Pickton must have felt that no one could stop him. Pickton managed to murder for years without police, family or friends stepping in. He must have felt invincible.

It is ambitious to publish a book while the target keeps moving. New information about the police investigation and possibly the murders will likely emerge as the inquiry commissioner unravels the mysteries. And then there is Pickton, sentenced to life in prison without parole for 25 years. Cameron writes that Pickton wanted to speak to the court before he was sentenced, but his lawyer, Peter Ritchie, stopped him. Many people may not have an appetite to hear anything Pickton has to say. But until he does—despite the best efforts of Cameron, a public inquiry or police—we may not ever know what really happened.