Robert Pickton: The Final Chapter [1]

Canadian True Crime is a completely independent production, funded mainly through advertising. You can listen to Canadian True Crime ad-free and early on Amazon Music included with Prime, Apple podcasts, Patreon, and Supercast. The podcast often has disturbing content and course language. It's not for everyone. Please take care when listening. Hi, I'm Kristi Lee and welcome to episode 200 of Canadian True Crime. I started this podcast nine years ago as a passion project, and it still is today. So thank you so much for joining me. This special four-part series has been pieced together primarily from the public record, including court documents, newspaper archives, the final report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, and on the farm. The definitive book by the late award-winning investigative journalist Stevie Cameron. Please be aware this series includes distressing details that might be difficult to hear. There's also mention of sexual assault, residential schools, Indigenous issues, child abuse, and suicide. Please see the show notes for crisis referral services. Proceeds are being donated to the Wish drop-in center society, supporting street-based sex workers on Vancouver's downtown east side since 1984. It's a cold night in March of 1997, and a 30-year-old woman named Wendy is working a street corner in Vancouver's downtown east side. Often referred to as the poorest postal code in Canada, the downtown east side is known for high concentrations of poverty, homelessness, mental illness, hazardous substance use, crime, and sex work. A red pickup truck pulls up to the corner. The driver is in his late 40s, balding, with greasy, scraggly hair hanging down the back and sides. He asks Wendy how much she charges for oral sex. She tells him the going rate is $40. He offers her $100 if she comes back to his place in Port Coquitlam. Wendy needs the money, but that's about a 40-minute drive away. Can't they find somewhere closer? The driver insists, promising to drop her back by one in the morning. She gets into the pickup and they drive out of the city. The man doesn't want to make conversation. After a while, the silence starts making Wendy uneasy. She might only be 30, but she's already lived a far heavier life than her years suggest. Wendy started using drugs in her teens and joined forces with two men 10 years older than her with criminal records. They would be arrested for stealing cigarettes and other goods. She gave birth to a daughter with one of those men, but according to a nobituary, their little girl passed away as a toddler. Wendy retreated to drugs for a while, but she pulled herself together. Vancouver is a port city, and she found a job on a local fishing boat as a deckhand and crew cook. She fell into a relationship with the captain and gave birth to two children with him. For a few years, Wendy's life was mostly stable, but the urge to use was not easy to overcome. The relationship broke down, and she left her children with their father to get help for hazardous substance use. Cocaine and heroin were her drugs of choice, but she was also desperate to see her kids again. Wendy ended up living on Vancouver's downtown east side with some of society's most vulnerable, marginalized people, trying and failing miserably to get clean. That cold night in March of 1997, she was stuck in survival mode, sustaining her drug use through stealing and outside sex work. In the red pickup truck, Wendy is feeling increasingly uneasy as they continue driving out to port Coquitlam, or at least that's where the man told her they were going. She asks him to stop at the next gas station so she can use the washroom. He refuses and continues driving silently. The man stops the truck at a property with a padlocked gate. He gets out, unlocks the gate, and drives in. Wendy realizes the man lives on a farm, not a house. There's old cars and junk everywhere. He parks beside a mobile trailer home and usheres Wendy inside. It's filthy in there. The air is stale and there's mess everywhere. She notices a large butcher knife lying on the table as he leads her through the kitchen and into a back room. There's no bed, only a sleeping bag on the floor. The man gives Wendy the hundred dollars and she performs oral sex, followed by intercourse. Nothing out of the ordinary. She gets dressed and asks to use the phone to call a friend. She senses the man behind her and he gently takes her left hand. Then, without warning, he snaps a handcuff onto her wrist. Wendy is jolted by an intense fear for her life. For a split second, she freezes. Then her body's trauma response activates, automatically deferring to habits she learned earlier in life. And Wendy has always been a fighter. She punches and kicks him. She grabs a potted plant and whatever she can reach and swings it at him. As he fights back, she finds herself backing toward that butcher knife she saw on the kitchen table. She grabs it and slashes the man across the neck. He roars as the blood starts flowing, but he grabs a cloth holding it to the wound and keeps fighting. Now there's an intense struggle for the knife and Wendy suddenly feels herself losing consciousness. When she comes to, the man is over her holding her down and then now back outside the pickup truck. She's still gripping the knife in her right hand and jabs at him, screaming at him to let her go. She feels him weakened and ceases an opportunity to slide out from under him. Still holding the knife, she staggers down the driveway, covered in blood. Wendy doesn't realize she has suffered catastrophic injuries because adrenaline has taken over, numbing the pain and keeping her moving with a singular focus, escape. Terrified, he's going to come after her. She limps across the street and knocks on a house. No answer. She tries to break a window to get inside, but then she sees headlights approaching. It's him. She ducks down. But as the car gets closer, she sees it's not him and there's a woman in the passenger seat. Feeling safer, Wendy runs out and screams for help. The car stops. It's an elderly couple, but they hesitate at the sight of this small woman half naked, soaked in blood with her internal organs exposed, holding a knife. Wendy throws it on the ground and the man opens the back door and helps her into the car. As they call 911 for police and an ambulance, Wendy points toward the farm. She tells the couple that if anything happens to her, the man living in the trailer there was responsible, and he's been injured too. Wendy is rushed to emergency surgery with significant blood loss, deep stab wounds to her abdomen and a punctured lung. She's lucky to be alive. Wendy would have known that an increasing number of women just like her had been disappearing from the downtown Eastside in recent years. That's why she was on high alert. What she didn't know was that the DNA or remains of at least seven of those women were already on the farm she just escaped from, waiting to one day be discovered, and there would be more to come. Years later, when Robert Picton was identified as the man now considered Canada's worst serial killer, the remains or DNA of 33 missing women would be found on that farm. Most of them were sex workers, disproportionately indigenous and thought of as expendable, disposable, not worthy of care. It's believed there were many more victims than that, and years later, Robert Picton would confirm it himself. When the details began to emerge about how their remains may have been handled and disposed of, the implications were so shocking and grotesque that many struggled to even grasp what they were hearing. This case has been described as a tragedy of epic proportions, leaving the families of all those women with a lasting legacy of grief, at least 98 children without their mother, and a lot of unanswered questions. In 2000, In 2024, Robert Picton became a victim himself of prison vigilante justice. His death might have closed his chapter, but this story is far from over. The evidence suggests that others knew what was happening, and worse, he likely did not act alone. This special four-part series traces the case from the very beginning, right up to where it stands today. From a disturbing childhood on the Picton family farm, where cruelty and exploitation were normalized and morality optional, where Robert and his brother were shown that bad deeds can be covered up, using privilege and intimidation, to the blatant police failures systemic injustice and deep-rooted societal prejudice that enabled that violent culture to continue long after the Picton parents were dead. Most importantly, this series centers the vulnerable women who were targeted, restoring their names, stories and humanity through the personal accounts of those who loved and missed them, making space for the unanswered questions still being asked to this day. We will be back in just a moment to begin. Robert William Picton was born in 1949 to parents Leonard and Louise Picton. They were pig farmers who lived in Portca, Quitlam, a city in the Metro Vancouver area about 35 minutes drive from downtown. They didn't live on the property we now know as the Picton farm though. Leonard had inherited his family's homestead and farm a few kilometres away and worked on it through his 20s and 30s showing no other interests. When he was 47 years old, he surprised his family by bringing home a much younger woman he'd met in a coffee shop. Her name was Louise Arnold. She was 31 years old and from Saskatchewan. They got married and Louise moved into the Picton family homestead. Five years later, the couple had their first child, a daughter Linda in 1948. Then first son Robert followed by second son David a year apart. Peter and David were said to take after their mother Louise, physically anyway, short with round faces. The middle child Robert or Willie as his family started calling him took after father Leonard, tall and slim with a narrow face and a long pointed nose. The Picton family lived in Portca, Quitlam, known as Poco by the locals. Today, the city has a population of almost 60,000 people, but back in 1949, it was around 3,000. It was known for being rural farmland territory. Leonard Picton was reportedly a worker holic who had minimal interaction with any of his three children. He was not an engaged parent. He specialised in livestock in the production of pork and expected sons Robert and David to work on the farm as soon as they were able to, aiding in the slaughtering and butchering of pigs. Some accounts by neighbours and co-workers paint Leonard as a violently abusive and abrasive man, all too ready to doll out punishment to his sons in the form of beatings. It seems that daughter Linda might have been spared from this treatment. In later interviews, she would portray Leonard in a positive light as a respectable father with good intentions, but he said her younger brother Robert was never close to his father. In fact, he seemed a bit scared of him. Linda described Robert as shy and naïve, a mummers boy. Robert himself would later say that he and his mother were like two peas in a pot. The reasons for that label are not entirely clear. In town, residents reported hearing Louise nag and publicly shame Robert in front of other children. He became increasingly withdrawn, often remaining silent for long stretches and hiding when he feared he was in trouble with either parent. The responsibilities of homemaking and child-rearing fell to Louise picked in by default, and she was not a nurturing or maternal presence to any of their three children. Her focus was also on the family business, pigs. Everything else came a distant second. As a mother, Louise was remembered as harsh and abrasive and was frequently heard screeching orders at her children. Those who came into regular contact with her described her as odd, eccentric, and unkempt workaholic who paid little attention to her own health or appearance. Former neighbours recalled her rotting teeth and apparent indifference to personal hygiene. The children were reportedly bathed only about once a week, which wasn't enough to remove the farm stench. Those same neighbours went inside the picked-in home briefly and would describe it as dirty and foul smelling. Farm animals were allowed to wander freely through the farmhouse, relieving themselves indoors without consequence. Louise made little effort to clean, seemingly unfazed by the conditions. She always wore men's rubber gumboots. Louise was strict and demanding. She required her children to spend long hours slopping pigs and caring for animals, sometimes even on school days. To outsiders, the picked-in family appeared to be poor, living below the poverty line. As one local resident put it, everyone knew the picked-ins and no one knew the picked-ins. The reality was they owned the family homestead outright and some additional parcels of land, and the farm was profitable. They just chose to live that way. It was said that the general attitude of the picked-in family was that there was nothing wrong with a bit of mess, or a lot. Many of the memories Robert picked-in would recall from his childhood and early adulthood were disturbing, if true. He would claim that one time his father left him sitting in his truck, and he accidentally moved the gear stick into neutral, which caused the truck to start rolling down a hill and crash. Robert would claim his father beat him severely for not stopping that truck. He was just three years old at the time. In another story, he recalled being about four years old when his mother Louise caught him smoking a cigarette. As punishment, she forced him to smoke a whole cigar, thinking it would cure him for good. And it did. Robert would say it was the last cigarette he ever had. He would also tell a particularly disturbing story later about a pet calf he had when he was young. This was noteworthy because he suddenly became animated when he remembered the calf story and recalled vivid details. According to Robert, when he was about twelve, he developed a close emotional attachment with this calf, spending as much time as he could with it day or night. One day, he came home from school to find his favourite animal was missing. He looked over the house and then the farm, and he asked his family members, "Where's my calf?" He was horrified when they suggested he look in the barn, knowing that's where the animals were slaughtered. It seemed his family wanted him to discover his pet calf, hanging upside down in a shed, slaughtered and disemboweled. It would tell investigators he was distraught at the site, and refused to speak to his family for four days. They promised to buy him a new calf, but he didn't want a new one. He wanted his pet back. He was traumatised by the incident, and even as an adult, it was only something he would share with people he'd become close to. After that, he seemed to develop the sentiment that life goes around and around with little meaning. Robert and younger brother David were being groomed by their father Leonard to take over the family farm. He taught them animal husbandry and butchering, and when they weren't at school, they were expected to work. But Linda, the eldest of the three picked in children, wasn't much of a fan of farm life and wanted to be as far away from it as possible. She was always described as the smart one, according to Stevie Cameron's book on the farm. When she was in grade 9, Linda decided to move in with relatives closer to Vancouver. She was away from the farm, and after that she reportedly had an as little to do with her family as possible. Leonard and Louise purchased more land just a few kilometers away on Dominion Avenue and moved over there with their sons. This is the property that would come to define the Picton family far more than they could have ever imagined. (dramatic music) If Robert Picton were in school today, he might well have been diagnosed with a learning disorder and offered support and treatment. People who knew him would say he was far more intelligent than he was given credit for. But back in the 1960s when he started high school, he was labeled slow and placed in special education classes at school. This embarrassed him and made him an easy target for bullies. His severe lack of personal hygiene combined with a ratty, stinky clothes he wore did not help. Robert dropped out of high school as soon as he could in grade eight. Louise was not at all troubled by her son's decision. She put him to work right away full time on the farm. She told him he needed to learn how to slaughter the pigs himself. And at first he said he didn't want to, but he eventually relented and began learning the trade. This was Robert's life. He'd never really known anything else, but school and the farm. (dramatic music) An October of 1967, 14-year-old Timothy Barrett left home at about 8 p.m. to walk to a friend's place. It wasn't a long walk, just up the road and down Dominion Avenue, the same street as the new Picton Farm. Timothy put on his jacket and told his parents he'd be home later. He never returned home. After a few hours, his parents found out that Timothy never actually arrived at the friend's home. They panicked and started checking in with neighbors to see if anyone had seen him or knew where he might be. At about 1 a.m., Timothy's parents reported him missing to the local RCMP and the search continued throughout the night with no sign of him. In the early daylight hours, Timothy's father was still on Dominion Avenue searching alongside the road with a neighbor when he spotted a shoe on the side of the road. It looked like Timothy's. About 10 feet away was a deep ditch running alongside the road. He walked over and peered down. Submerged in several feet of water was his 14-year-old son. Timothy Barrett was dead. The RCMP quickly developed a theory that Timothy must have been walking along the road when he was struck from behind by either a car or a truck and then hurled over into the ditch. The car was probably speeding and Dominion Avenue was poorly lit. The houses were sparse because it wasn't a developed area. As the body was sent for autopsy, the RCMP received a phone call from a local mechanic who said he'd seen the news reports of a hit and run and had something strange to report. He said the son of one of his regular clients had shown up the night before wanting a fast repair to an old red beaten up farm truck. Specifically, he wanted the smashed front indicator light repaired along with a dent on the front fender which he also wanted to be painted over. The young man told him a log had fallen on the truck back at the farm, but the mechanic looked at the dent and was suspicious. Also, the entire truck was old and completely banged up. Why the sudden request to repair this one area? Hours later, that mechanic saw the news about Timothy Barrett and contacted the police, giving them the name of the young man who requested the repairs. David Picton. That's Robert Picton's younger brother. At the time, David was 16 and had just earned his driver's license. David Picton was charged in juvenile court with failing to remain at the scene of an accident. He would be placed on indefinite probation and his driver's license suspended for five years. As far as the criminal justice system was concerned, Timothy Barrett's death was the result of a careless accident. Partial blame was assigned to Timothy himself for walking on the side of the road where cars would be coming up behind him, wearing dark clothing on a dimly lit night. A coroner's inquiry concluded that David Picton was the one most at fault for driving the truck that hit Timothy from behind and for not stopping as Timothy was hurled into the water filled ditch. The autopsy confirmed Timothy suffered a fractured skull and a broken pelvis, but those injuries would not have been fatal. The actual cause of his death was drowning in the water. But there was more to the story. It began as whispers among neighbors, but some 25 years later, it was confirmed to journalist and author Stevie Cameron. Robert Picton himself would later tell a friend that he knew exactly what happened that night. At the time, he was 17 years old and he recalled David bursting into the farmhouse saying he'd hit someone with his car and they were probably badly hurt. He pointed to the red truck. Robert saw a new dent in the front right fender with marks and what looked to be blood. Mother Louise sprang into action. She ordered 16 year old David to clean the blood off and drive the truck straight to their mechanic for a rush repair job. She told him to tell the mechanic that he'd hit a pole, a story that would have been slightly more believable than the one he actually told of a log falling on the truck. Then Louise got into another vehicle to look for the person that David hit. She later told her son, Robert, and at least one other person, that she was driving down the road and around the corner when she spotted Timothy Barrett lying injured at the side of the road. He was there because of her son's actions, but instead of helping the 14 year old, she said she dragged him 10 feet over to the water-filled ditch and pushed him in. Robert and David Picton were still teenagers themselves learning how the world worked. Their mother had just shown them that basic morality could be overridden if self-preservation was at stake. That responsibility for causing serious harm, even death, could be managed by cleaning evidence and coordinating stories that human life was disposable. It's telling that Robert Picton later expressed a deep admiration for his mother's strength and discipline. There were never any consequences for Louise Picton's alleged actions by the time this all came to light decades later. She would be dead. Father Leonard was in his late 70s by this point. His health was deteriorating and he couldn't work the farm like he used to. Now it was up to his wife Louise, their two sons, and whoever else they could find to help. On a regular basis, Louise sent Robert to the Woodland School in New Westminster for children with developmental disabilities, runaways, and wards of the state. The school allowed Robert to pick up children, drive them back to the farm, and use them as cheap or unpaid farm labor for the day before returning them in the evening. Years later, an investigation would expose rampant abuse of children at the Woodland School. It shut down in the '90s. But perhaps the big takeaway for Robert Picton was reinforcement of his mother's message that some lives carried less value than others, that vulnerable people could be exploited, harmed and discarded for personal gain with little risk of consequence, simply because they existed on the margins and no one cared enough to intervene. (dramatic music) (dramatic music) By the early 1970s, the Picton brothers were in their early 20s. David was the more outgoing one and was now dating regularly, but Robert did not have much luck. He didn't smoke, drink. think or do drugs and didn't hang out at bars or nightclubs like others his age. And even if his hygiene and appearance issues had been taken care of, which they weren't, he was socially awkward. He was never seen dating or with a girlfriend, but instead had pen pals all over the country. He was starting to feel a certain way about one of them. Her name was Connie and she lived in Pontiac, Michigan. At 24 years old, Robert decided it was time to take his first ever vacation so he could meet Connie in person. He booked a bus ticket and told his mother he'd be gone for six weeks. If Louise tried to stop him from leaving, it didn't work. By this point, Robert had gained some confidence and was able to talk back to her and assert himself when needed. The bus ride would have been close to 40 hours one way and it took Robert across America, stopping in several cities along the way. He would later tell a different female pen pal that at some point he was stopped by a scout and offered $40 an hour to be a male model, the equivalent of about $240 an hour in today's currency. It seems a pretty unlikely story, but he claimed he wasn't interested and turned the opportunity down. He eventually arrived in Pontiac, Michigan and met Connie. He claimed they were engaged by the time he caught the bus back to British Columbia, even calling her the love of his life. But Connie did not want to move to Port Coquitlam and Robert could not leave the pig farm. That's as far as it went. He threw himself back into the farm while also dabbling in horses and truck driving to supplement his income. Robert still did not date, but his siblings had each found partners and careers outside the farm. Older sister Linda was married and lived in a well-to-do area in Vancouver. She continued to avoid the farm and the family unless she was needed for business decisions. Brother David lived on the farm with his girlfriend and their two young children. While Louise had David's girlfriend working long hours on the farm, David was not interested. He was into truck driving, construction and demolition and other women besides his girlfriend. They broke up and she moved out with their kids. The next big family event was in 1977 when family patriarch Leonard was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died at age 82. A little over a year later Louise also passed away from cancer, aged 67. It was a shock for Robert to lose both parents so quickly, but perhaps the bigger shock was in his mother's will. The Picton estate included the farm and several other parcels of land plus some cash. Leonard's idea of dividing it among their children showed his preference. Older would receive was a lump sum payment of $20,000 and everything else would be divided between the two sons. But after Leonard passed away, Louise changed things around, dividing the estate equally between the three children but with a twist. Linda and David were each given about $88,000 immediately, but Louise's will stipulated her middle son Robert would have to wait until he was 40 years old to receive his share. For now, he was given an additional lump sum of $20,000. The way Louise structured this suggests she did not trust Robert with that money now and he was devastated. At the time, he was 30 years old, it would be 10 more years until he turned 40. And even though in the end he'd receive more money than either of his siblings, he needed it now. They earned their own money and didn't care for the farm. It was up to him alone to keep it going, which was not easy because a recent fire had destroyed one of their piggery barns along with 600 pigs. The barn needed to be rebuilt. He'd be trying to do it himself but would never finish. He saw the whole thing as a betrayal by his mother. Robert took his $20,000 and drowned his sorrows by purchasing a nearly new Ford truck. He got into junking old cars, selling the usable parts, separating the copper and selling it to scrapyards. Whatever he couldn't get rid of remained on the farm. Before long, there was a growing collection of old cars and machines along with random scraps of wood and metal cropped up around the outskirts. In the meantime, Robert's brother David had seen an untapped opportunity to profit from the farm without actually having to do farming work. The surrounding area of Port Coquitlam was rapidly being developed into housing and shops and there was strong demand for topsoil for landscape structure and one place that had plenty of topsoil was the farm. David picked and started a business ripping up the farm with a bulldozer collecting the topsoil and selling it to local developers. What was once a series of green fields was torn up. The farmland turned into dirt pits with trucks, bulldozers and other heavy equipment. Fortunately, neither David nor Robert cared about aesthetics. David had also started making friends with the Halls Angels. It was now the early 80s and the first Biker War was winding up. The Halls Angels had established dominance over rival club the outlaws and were now focused on expanding across the country. David Picton had already started making friends with the new Vancouver chapter. He wasn't a biker himself but he was keen to get in on whatever they were doing. All along, David roped Robert into letting the Halls Angels use the farm as a chop shop. He'd already been junking old cars, some of them were stolen and there was a lot more room on the farm so it was a natural fit. Besides, Robert was fascinated with outlaw biker culture. He ended up running the chop shop completely which included managing and arranging payment for a gang of teens he'd hired to steal cars. Robert also dabbled in cockfights and selling illegal cigarettes and alcohol. The Picton brothers became known to local gangs and other crime syndicates in Port Coquitlam and soon the police were eyeing them up too. They came out to investigate rumors that the farm was being used as a Halls Angels chop shop but ultimately decided to focus on a more urgent priority catching a psychopathic serial killer who'd been praying on local children in the area. Clifford Olson was arrested in 1982 and would confess to murdering 11 children and sexually assaulting others. For a time he was known as Canada's most prolific serial killer. It is until another took his place. In the 1980s indigenous women were showing up dead in Vancouver's downtown east side at an increasing rate. Many were sex workers. It was too easy for the police to dismiss each death as lifestyle related. This is one of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, just east of the financial district and once described by the Vancouver sun as "four blocks from hell". The downtown east side is a small area with a high concentration of poverty, homelessness, drug use, mental illness, sex work and social exclusion but it wasn't always like that. Indigenous communities were stewards of the land for thousands of years long before the Europeans arrived. The colonizers had set their sights on Vancouver's deep natural harbour as the perfect shipping hub for the British Empire. The indigenous communities were forcibly displaced from the area. By the early 1900s the downtown east side was the bustling commercial and retail heart of Vancouver with city hall, the city courthouse, libraries, banks and shops. It was a hub for transportation and hospitality with lots of hotels to serve transient workers. But then came the Great Depression, causing a surge of unemployment and poverty worldwide in the 1930s. Many people came to Vancouver looking for work and many became stranded there without jobs. The Depression set in and the downtown east side became increasingly defined by alcohol, brothels and general survival. Then the city started relocating key institutions and services. First, City Hall was moved. moved away. Then, the main library, the street car route disappeared and foot traffic followed. Local businesses started failing. Those hotels, once built for workers, were converted into single-room occupancy housing for people with nowhere else to go. Instead of investing in safety, housing and social supports, government and city officials looked away. Once the bustling city center, the downtown east side was now treated as a containment zone of poverty, trauma and marginalization. Then, came World Expo 86. Predicting an influx of tourists with their wallets open, landlords evicted more than a thousand low-income residents, pushing many of them onto the streets or early death. Housing became even more unaffordable, and those decades of neglect had created conditions on the downtown east side, where predators could prey on the area's most vulnerable residents, largely unchecked. So, in the 1980s, when indigenous women started showing up dead in the downtown east side, the police were apathetic, just another naked body in a low-rent hotel room with no visible injuries and dangerously high blood alcohol levels. The police perceived it as the proverbial "trash" taking itself out. What was really happening was darker than anyone could imagine. A sadistic man was targeting vulnerable women he thought no one would miss. He would pick up an indigenous woman at a bar, take her to a city hotel, pay her for sex and then pay or force her to drink lethal amounts of alcohol until she died of alcohol poisoning, and then he would slip away unnoticed. In 1988, the police finally caught up with him. Gilbert Paul Jordan was a local barber in his late 50s, known to drink more than a bottle of vodka a day. The so-called boozing barber would only be convicted for the manslaughter of one woman, but he was linked to the deaths of another nine. Gilbert Paul Jordan was not the only killer trolling the downtown east side in the 80s. More than a dozen more sex workers were murdered that decade. Their bodies found dumped in back alleys, bushes nearby industrial sites. Several women had been mutilated with a knife. Some had been viciously stabbed, strangled and beaten by a killer who was clearly out of control. The police would describe it as overkill. Most of these murders remained unsolved. And among the rising number of murdered sex workers, there were others who just disappeared one day, never to be seen again. In 1987, the Vancouver Police Department finally set up a task force to focus on solving these and other cases of missing and murdered women from the Vancouver area. After a little over a year, the task force disbanded. They had helped solve two cases, but left the majority of them still unsolved. The police had all but given up and sex workers continued to be targeted. Journalist Neil Hall and Kim Pemberton had been reporting on the issue for years for the Vancouver Sun, gathering information to show these women were not just another sex worker, they were loved and cherished by someone. A 1989 feature article included profiles of 19 women who'd been murdered in the Vancouver area since 1982. Some had been sexually assaulted, all unsolved at the time. The authors posed the question, "Is there a Ted Bundy or Green River style killer on the loose praying on women?" A spokesperson from Vancouver Police's major crimes unit was quoted, reiterating the task forces conclusion that there was no evidence to suggest another serial killer was running a mark in the area. This was seen by some as a baffling comment. The victims were all women, and most were sex workers living on the margins of society. Many were indigenous and many struggled with hazardous substance use. The more likely story was that these vulnerable women were thought of as expendable, not worth the resources needed to investigate their cases properly. Back in Port Coquitlam, Robert Picton had taken on the full weight of the farm operation since his parents passed away in the late 70s, from managing the pigs and maintaining equipment to slaughtering and butchering and servicing the client list. After all the parts of the animal that could be used for profit were removed, the carcass and other animal waste needed to be disposed of. Sometimes he would bury it in pits on the farm, but as the 80s progressed, Robert started disposing of the waste at a rendering plant in Vancouver called West Coast Reduction. This plant processed the remains and retained the grease to reuse and products like soap, candles, and plastics. Best practice for storing biological waste is to keep it secure, cool, and contained, and sealed containers to prevent leaks, odors, pests, and contamination before it can be hygienically disposed of. Robert Picton didn't do that. He was foul, his truck was foul, and so were his open barrels of rancid smelling waste. But there were no issues. The rendering plant would allow small operators to drive right in and dump their animal remains themselves. It was later established that there was a complete lack of oversight at the plant that meant it was possible for unauthorized material to be dumped straight into the massive slurry of decomposing remains and leftover restaurant kitchen grease never to be seen again. West Coast Reduction happened to be right next to a certain Vancouver neighborhood known as the Downtown East Side, and Robert Picton had heard all about it from David and his Hells Angels friends. They spoke often about going to bike bars there and taking their pick of the women on the streets engaged in survival sex work. Robert was still a massive loner, and he was intrigued, so he started to develop a little routine. After driving into Vancouver to dump his waste at West Coast Reduction, he would treat himself to a drive around the downtown East Side before returning to Port Kirkwitlam. Women continued to go missing. Teresa and Williams grew up in semi-amo first nation and gave birth to twin sons in 1988 when she was just 14 years old. She ran away soon after. Leaving her baby sons with her family. Just a few months after that, in early July of 1988, Teresa phoned home to say she was planning to catch a bus home to see her sons. That was the last time her family ever heard from her. She was just 15 years old when she disappeared. About a month later, a local park groundskeeper made a horrific discovery. He found a plastic bag that contained a decomposed section of human thigh and bone. The park was Grandview Park, which happened to be right next door to West Coast Reduction. Years later, through DNA advances, those remains were confirmed to belong to Teresa and Williams. The Vancouver Police Department would later state that while there was no tangible evidence linking these and other disappearances to Robert Picton, he cannot be ruled out. The following year, 1989, 34-year-old Elaine Dunbar dropped off the face of the earth. A white woman, originally from Regina Saskatchewan, Elaine was troubled and she began using drugs at around the age of 14. She moved to British Columbia in the early 1980s and lived in Port Coquitlam with her common law partner and their new baby daughter. Elaine's sister moved in with them and would report that Elaine was struggling with hazardous use of heroin. The couple broke up and after returning to Saskatchewan for a few years with their daughter, Elaine came back to live with her sister and Port Coquitlam once again. But that stability did not last. At some point a lane left and began spending time in Vancouver's downtown east side. The sisters lost contact. Elaine Dunbar was last seen in 1989 at a liquor store in North Vancouver. She was 34 years old. Her sister and father looked for her in the downtown east side, but there was no trace. That same year, 30-year-old Ingrid Soet disappeared. She was a white woman from Vancouver with a long history of mental health issues. She'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was a known drug user who had recently given birth and placed the baby for adoption. In 1989, Ingrid was living in one of the city hotels on the downtown east side. That is, until she got evicted. She visited her family and told them she was going to visit someone else. After months without contact, her mother reported her missing in December of 1990. There have been no confirmed sightings of Ingrid Soet since 1989. The women of the downtown east side were terrified. They banded together to share information about bad experiences with clients and warn each other of men to be wary of. This was the start of what would be known as the bad trick list. At this point, Robert Picton did not appear on the list. The women passed these bad trick lists over to the police and started lobbying for more action. When they suspected someone else had gone missing, they checked in with the police, they asked for more updates and generally tried to keep the situation top of mind. The Vancouver police decided to try again and see what they could uncover with criminal profiling, a new investigative technique at the time. We'll be back in just a moment. Criminal profiling is the process of examining crime scene evidence for patterns that might help predict an unknown offender's personality, behavioural and demographic characteristics, particularly in cases of serial offences and the hope it will lead them to the offender. Criminal profiling is widely used today and often assumed to be effective, but it should be noted there is actually little scientific evidence to support its accuracy. Researchers found that much of its credibility is anecdotal, built on selective success stories and vague predictions that only seem accurate in hindsight and all reinforced by pop culture portrayals like mind hunter. Critics note that much like polygraph tests, profiling can mislead investigations when treated as reliable science rather than a limited investigation tool. It can delay the identification of the real offender and even contribute to wrongful convictions. It should be approached with caution. In 1991, the Vancouver police department put together a team of criminal profilers alongside existing homicide detectives and tasked them with analysing 25 unsolved cases of women murdered in and around the downtown east side. The team was called Project Eclipse and grew to include several profilers from the FBI, as well as a young Canadian from the Vancouver police department named Kim Rosmo. He had eight years experience in the downtown east side and was described as a brilliant analytical thinker, skilled at math and working with computers. Rosmo was developing a new practice known as geographic profiling, which involved analyzing the crime locations and connecting them in an attempt to learn more about a predator. His theory was that serial killers worked in areas they were familiar with and felt comfortable in. Project Eclipse gathered for a week-long conference to analyse the known data and information. Reportedly, the first time a group of international profilers had brainstormed together to try and advance an investigation. The team started the murdered women into different groups and found that with a cluster of four linked murders, there was at least one serial killer at work, with a possible two others out there as well. They presented their findings to the Vancouver police department who owned the jurisdiction, hoping that there would be action taken based on it. It fell flat. Kim Rosmo would later say he believed this response stemmed from laziness and lack of resources in time, but he also suspected that the department had no idea what to do with this information. It was unprecedented research and required out of the box thinking. It appears the police effectively put it in the too hard basket and went back to business as usual as women continued to be targeted. Back on the Picton Farm, Robert and David continued their association with the Hals Angels and the Decheveled Property became a central meeting place. There were parties, barbecues, lots of drinking and lots of women. But Robert remained an outsider. By this point, the brothers were in their early 40s and while David had had a lot of different girlfriends, Robert never dated anyone. He didn't even interact much with their biker friends. He was often seen tending to the barbecue and the pig roasts. That seemed to be where he was comfortable. He'd become friendly with a Filipino immigrant named Pat Casanova who helped him butcher pigs on the farm and had a very good recipe for barbecued pork. Together, they started a profitable side business. The local RCMP continued to keep an eye on the Picton Brothers as rumours persisted about a Hals Angels chop shop on the farm. David Picton drew additional attention of his own. He was a bad driver who had racked up a lot of traffic incidents, including several crashes where he was at fault ensued for damages. He was also known to cruise the downtown east side to bring women back to the farm. Many people would later say that while David Picton acted like, well, a dickhead, underneath at all he was quite intelligent. He ran several successful businesses by this point and would often bid on large demolition jobs in Vancouver and surrounding areas. He frequently won those contracts. In August of 1991, a young woman named Nancy Clarke disappeared, but she was far from Vancouver's downtown east side. She went missing from Vancouver Island, the city of Victoria. 25-year-old Nancy was a caring and sensible woman, as described by those who knew her, and a devoted mother to two daughters aged eight and almost one. She was also an outside sex worker, providing for her children by soliciting clients from a street corner in Victoria. One night, she never returned home from work, and her mother was immediately concerned. That day, it was Nancy's eldest daughter's birthday, and she was always there for her children no matter what. She would never have missed their birthday. Her mother reported her missing. At the time, Nancy Clarke's disappearance from Vancouver Island was determined to be likely not related to the growing list of women going missing on the mainland. But what law enforcement didn't know at the time was that David Picton was working a demolition job on the island, and that his brother Robert had gone with him to help. They were both on Vancouver Island at the very same time that Nancy Clarke went missing in 1991. And more than 10 years later, Nancy's DNA would be found on their farm on the mainland. Of the 33 women to be forensically linked to the Picton farm, Nancy Clarke was the earliest to disappear. But this number is only a reflection of what could still be found by that point. The following year, David Picton found himself on the police's radar yet again. A female employee at one of his excavation sites reported to police that she encountered David inside an on-site trailer. He pushed her up against a wall and groped her genitals over her jeans, but another employee entered the trailer and interrupted him. According to the woman, as David picked and left the trailer, he threatened to rape and kill her. Quote, "He said, 'I'm going to weep you.' He couldn't say the word with an R. He said it twice. He was laughing like crazy." David claimed he only slapped the woman on the butt and denied threatening her. He was charged with sexual assault. The woman would report that after that, another employee warned her to leave town, saying, "They're going to kill you. They're going to cut you up and spread you all over where you won't be found." Terrified, she left town. David picked and was found guilty of sexual assault, but the jury noted it was "moderate." He got away with a year probation and a fine of $1,000. That was 1992. The poor woman lived in fear for many years. She would later be awarded $45,000 in damages after suing David Pickton for inflicting psychological trauma. Back at the farm, Roberts trips to the downtown east side were becoming second nature, and he looked for more opportunities to visit. When his brother got a demolition contract in North Vancouver, he saw his chance. He would be driving near the downtown east side on the way, and with just a slight detour, he could buy himself the company of a sex worker or two. But after a while, Robert got tired of the daily commute. He had an old motorhome parked on the farm, so he gave it a tune up and drove it to the demolition site. He lived there for the duration of the job, saying he was acting as a site security officer out of hours. Now, living much closer to the downtown east side, Robert began spending more time there. He frequented local bars, places where many of the area's most vulnerable residents gathered. He settled into a routine. He didn't do alcohol or drugs, so only drank soda himself. But when he found a sex worker he was interested in, he would give her money to buy drugs for herself as an incentive. Then, he would persuade her to go with him back to his farm to keep partying. The situation on the ground in the downtown east side was becoming a crisis. Sex workers were organizing to try and keep themselves safe. They gathered at the Women's Information Safehouse, also known as Wish, a nonprofit organization that operated a drop-in center on the downtown east side right in the middle of the main strip, where sex workers could get a hot meal, a space to rest and get ready and access nursing and counseling services. While at Wish, these women traded stories about their clients and updated their list of Johns or tricks who had given them the creeps or shown violent or perverse tendencies. They passed their bad trick list to the police, with descriptions of the men and in many cases license plate numbers. It's at this time that the name "Willie Picton" started appearing on this bad trick list. The police promised to review the information, but women continued to go missing or turn up murdered in some alleyway. Kathleen Watley was known as a vivacious black woman, petite in stature. She lived in the United States for some years before she moved to Vancouver, and she lived a difficult life. About five years earlier, she survived an attempted murder during a shooting stemming from cocaine news. She gave birth to two young children with a common law partner in Vancouver, but the couple had recently separated, and Kathleen was relying on sex work to help make ends meet. In June of 1992, 39-year-old Kathleen Watley left her two young children with a babysitter and went to meet a client on the downtown east side. She was never seen again. Then, there was LC Sebastian Jones, a member of the Pachydat First Nation on the west coast of Vancouver Island. LC was among the 150,000 Indigenous children sent to a residential school. Often underfunded and overcrowded, the residential school's program was government sponsored and run by religious organizations, with the goal to eradicate Indigenous culture and replace it with the Western culture of European settlers. Thousands of students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse and experimentation, and thousands died right on their school grounds, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The residential school system is often associated with Canada's early history, but these schools actually ran for more than a century until the last one closed in 1996. LC Sebastian Jones suffered repeated physical abuse during her years at residential school, leaving lasting emotional scars that shaped most of her adult life. She gave birth to the first of four children when she was just 16. She also struggled with depression, substance use disorder, unstable relationships and many periods of instability in her life. After attending several treatment programs, followed by relapse, her children eventually went to live with relatives and LC moved to Vancouver. Her daughters would say she always kept in touch with them, later describing their mother as a smart, beautiful woman who endured racism throughout her life and fell through the cracks of a system that failed to support her. One night in 1992, LC cooked dinner for her daughters, then left to get drugs. She was never seen again, she was 40 years old. The following year, Theresa Louise Triff vanished, very little is known about Theresa, other than the fact that she was a 31-year-old white woman with blonde curly hair and blue eyes. All in all, 15 women had vanished from the downtown east side in the 14 years between 1979 and 1993. By this point, the Picton brothers were not getting along at all. Their living arrangements had always been tumultuous, with both Robert and David living in the rambling farmhouse, sharing the one bathroom. In many respects, they were different. David was the short and stocky brother, thought of as a foul-mouthed jerk who liked having lots of people over to party, whereas Robert was lanky and slim, not very social, and he often creeped people out. They both had bad tempers and bad hygiene, although Roberts was said to be much worse. Overall, it was not working in the farmhouse, there was no privacy and no escape from each other. After a massive blow-up, Robert decided to move into the old motorhome on the other side of the property, and David stayed in the farmhouse. Despite the filthy conditions, they always seemed to have women around that needed housing, and were willing to do domestic work like laundry and cleaning if they could stay on the farm. A woman named Tanya would later testify that she needed a place to stay, and knew the Pictons because her stepfather worked on the farm's laudaring pigs. Robert ushered her into his motorhome and allowed her to stay there with him. Tanya described their relationship as like uncle and niece. They slept in separate areas in the motorhome, and there was no sex. She liked and trusted Robert so much that she ended up staying there for a year and a half. Tanya said there was a constant stream of people coming and going from the farm, and she often returned to the motorhome very late at night to find that Robert wasn't there. She would testify she'd just assumed he was working late. She had no idea that he was meeting sex workers on the downtown east side. The list of missing women continued to grow. Lee Minor grew up near San Francisco, one of four children. Her family would describe her as charismatic and fiercely loyal, with striking, orban hair and a magnetic personality. As a teenager, Lee's life was upended when her father died suddenly of a heart attack, and years later, her own husband would die by suicide in her arms. The compounded grief left her devastated, and she began using heroin to cope. Lee became a mother in 1986 and moved to Edmonton for a fresh start. He tried to stop using drugs, but it proved that it wasn't. proved difficult, and her child eventually went to live with family. In 1993, she moved to the downtown east side and engaged in sex work to survive and fund her substance use disorder. That December of 1993, 34-year-old Lee phoned her sister to ask for money to visit their mother for Christmas. Her family waited for her all day, gifts unopened, but she never arrived. At first, they assumed she just hadn't kept her promise, but when weeks went by with no word, Lee's mother went looking for her on the downtown east side and reported her missing. She would later say the police showed little interest. Then, there's Angela Asano, who was just 17 years old when she disappeared. Angela grew up with her mother and stepfather, moving several times before eventually settling in the Vancouver area. Angela reportedly started using drugs in high school and dropped out in grade 9. Her mother would later tell the Suri leader that she left home and briefly became involved in sex work on the downtown east side, but her boyfriend helped her get off the streets. Angela was street smart and capable of looking after herself, but she was also being harassed by a pimp who wanted her to return to sex work. In August of 1994, Angela spoke with her mother on the phone, making plans to go shopping for shower curtains. She was living with her boyfriend by this time, and that night they met downtown for dinner and shopping with another friend. She caught the bus home by herself for some reason. When her boyfriend arrived home later, Angela's purse, ID, cash and shopping bags were there, but the 17-year-old was missing, she was never seen again. During this time, Robert Picton had continued his trips into West Coast reduction to dump his barrels of waste and remains. Sometimes he wasn't able to make the trip himself, and West Coast would send a truck out to pick them up. He didn't really need an excuse to go to the downtown east side anymore, so this arrangement became more and more frequent. One driver would later testify that he made regular trips out to the Picton farm for four years in the early to mid-90s. He remembered glancing into the barrels periodically and was often surprised to see chunks of meat in it. Some of them, quite big chunks. Just struck him as unusual. Most farmers and butcher's carved off every piece of meat they could find. That's where the money was. But Robert Picton was just throwing it away. Thanks for listening. In part two, there's an alarming spike in vulnerable women going missing from the downtown east side. Two would live to tell their stories. We'll circle back to Wendy, who escaped from the farm after a vicious knife fight with Robert Picton and was rushed to emergency surgery, still with a handcuffs he put around her wrist. Meanwhile, the Picton brothers become officially wealthy and opened the infamous party venue known as Piggy's Palace, serving alcohol and barbecue pork to bikers, sex workers and even local city officials. The next episode will be available in a week. You can listen ad-free and early on our premium feeds. For the full list of resources, sources, research studies and anything else you want to know about the podcast, see the show notes or visit canadiantruecrime.ca. We donate monthly to those facing injustice. Proceeds from this series are going to the Wish Drop-in Center Society, supporting street based sex workers on Vancouver's downtown east side since 1984. Special thanks to Danielle Parade for family outreach and additional research. Audio editing was by Crosby Audio and Eric Crosby voiced the disclaimer. Our senior producer is Lindsey Eldridge and Carol Weinberg is our script consultant. Research, writing, narration and sound design was by me and the theme songs were composed by We Talk of Dreams. I'll be back soon with another Canadian True Crime episode. See you then. [Music]