The testimony became meaningless babble to outsiders during a parade of drug-addled recollections. Some of the variations induced by the defense were making Willy Pickton burst into laughter at the witnesses from inside the glass-encased prisoner’s box during cross examinations. (And this avuncular chap faces 26 murder charges!) The defense implicated one of the witnesses in sex-trade homicides around Edmonton until Mr. Justice James Williams slammed the door on it.
If they want to wrap this up fast the work of the prosecution becomes difficult for despite initial suggestions by the defense it appears Willy Pickton is far from a clinical idiot. The defendant realizes unless the IOC makes serial killing an Olympic event for 2010, the Crown, and indeed the society in general, prefers an end to dredging up details leaving major parts of the story to historians.
Perhaps the future holds either a long stay in proceedings of this trial, or a mistrial, because Willy Pickton would be smart to prolong the defense into the next decade and probably will, as Pickton appears comfortable in the milieu of the court and custody and so forth.
The Downtown Eastside of Vancouver remains a mysterious neighbourhood to most Canadians (and entirely understood by the amalgam of people in it). Most DES residents are raised in poverty, many on Indian Reserves and transplant ‘poverty’ along with ‘an Indian reserve’ to the city.
It is North America’s worst slum, over a dozen square blocks reserved for an overwhelmingly victimized hoard, of whom dozens (possibly hundreds) of women were led to grisly deaths, some dying at the hands of an indubitable madman and allegedly the madman is Willy Pickton.
Justice Williams decided to split the case in two parts, proceeding on six charges for the murders of Georgina Papin, Serena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, and Marnie Frey.
So much DNA was everywhere it became confounding to the peaked capped authorities assigned to stopping this macabre conduct who upon entering the premises immediately found body parts including skulls, hands, and feet, stuffed in slop buckets. The farm went on lock down and other bones were found and Willy Pickton had nothing to say, except, “I didn’t do it,” which he's been telling the court.
On the other hand, in video-taped evidence, showing him during the opening hours of Jan 22 07, the Crown said, Willy Pickton confessed to forty-nine murders and rolled the tape of a policeman ‘planted’ in the cell. The conversation centred on why they were in lock-up. Willy proved cagey with the cop but he slyly suggested he was going to be to 'stopping' at 50. Then, suddenly, Willy Pickton was famous, face splashed across newspapers the world over.
Then he was in police interrogation, and he replied, "You're making me more of a mass murderer than I am," mocking interrogators having difficulty distinguishing DNA in the quagmire of his farm sheds and dwelling. Once he muttered, "I was gonna stop at five-0.” They showed him newspapers and Willy Pickton parried, "That don't mean I did it.”
He may have admitted something but added to his confession that others were doing some of the killing, namely, "Dinah did some of it." Regarding victims, Willy Pickton refused to admit feeding the pigs their remains. Others said he fed the pigs and disposed of other parts through a Pickton family garbage collection company (supplying truck driving jobs).
Crown Counsel Derrill Prevett presented a chain of evidence linked to Pickton's property, including skulls cut in half with hands and feet stuffed in them. Crown Counsel John Ahern described six women living troubled lives. The defense have agreed wholeheartedly, noting each victim had literally dozens of ‘encounters’ with police, social workers, hospitals, clinics, outreach centres, and detox units. These women seemed to making frantic rounds in the social services dragnet. Pickton’s defense touched lightly on the subject but the dates for each disappearance can be recounted precisely by the Crown. Many victims were known for trying to leave the mean streets to return to motherhood or families.
Six victims known to be missing from particular dates are joined by many others who circulated through the over-crowded DES out to the over-crowded Piggy Palace and back to the DES. Regular contact with victims stopped abruptly (only in rare instances reports of a disappearance arrived a long time later).
These victims disappeared from ‘96 to ‘01 and police implicate Willy Pickton in missing persons related to the Lower Mainland sex trade as far back to ‘83, implying he started at age 33. On the other hand, police candidly admit Willy Pickton is joined by other suspects,. To conceive of a mob of serial killers working as a team is strange indeed, for what is the motivation?
Willy Pickton and Dinah Taylor were both heard ranting about drug debts. History informs that street level situations of mayhem often involve drugs by and large. Scott Chubb, key prosecution witness, gave hearsay testimony to gross indignity to human remains and alluded to cannibalism, in relation to Willy Pickton selling meat over the fence. This takes the killer’s motive into the realm of strange psychosis.
Chubb refrained from eating at the farm, noteworthy for a starving man at the end of a drug binge, but once informed of the horrors in his midst he apparently balked at the pig farmer’s generosity. It was he who initially reported in ’02 the property patrolled by an aggressive 600 lb. Boar, that it was terrifying.
Police say Chubb broke the case after working as Willy Pickton’s employee on a garbage truck with extended periods at the wheel. Chubb’s solid work history was matched by zealous use of drugs, but he testified to seeing Willy Pickton visit a shopping mall with Georgina Papin.
As time wore on between the two in the late 90’s Willy Pickton offered Chubb a moonlighting job, suggesting, 'Kill them with a syringe filled with windshield washer fluid,' because drug addicts never get autopsied."
Chubb fled when upon learning about the inhuman conduct. He added penetrating testimony about a serial killing machinery facing exposure by David Francis Pickton, Willy Pickton's brother. Chubb reported the brother’s threat against a conspiracy of killers if Willy Pickton was convicted of murder.
Next came Gina Houston discussing a conversation with Willy Pickton, in Feb. 20 02, after it was established he was the primary suspect. Willy Pickton might have been entering the denial phase of an alleged killing spree (if such a phase exists), and prosecution witness Houston agreed with defense lawyer Marilyn Sandford, stating, “Pickton said, ‘I did not kill Mona,’” or anyone else.
Instead, said defense attorney Sandford, he too pointed the finger at Dinah Taylor, a pig farm roommate of 18 months who was once investigated but never charged. Houston said Willy Pickton said Dinah Taylor shot some of the girls, and Houston testified Willy Pickton was unable to stop events occurring down on the pig farm. The killing swirling around the place was beyond Willy Pickton's control.
She described a telephone conversation with a mellow Willy Pickton interrupted by a screaming woman followed by another screaming woman, then a screaming man, and a plea from Willy Pickton, “Don’t do it here,” and finally, possibly, a life-emitting gasp.
The prosecution’s problem lies in credibility of these witnesses. The defense keeps asking if they are lying and about the accuracy of memories. Piggy Palace Good Time Society facilities hosted recurring drug-drenched orgies, entree into which does not permit those of a clear head. Some nights this Pickton property held over 2,000 drug-crazed denizens. Police forced Piggy's Palace to scale back in ’98 after a rape victim escaped, partially shackled, but police never stopped it completely.
Gina Houston returned to testify about continued affection for Willy Pickton. She said it was his close friend Dinah Taylor killing women on his property. Dinah Taylor is from a central Canadian First Nation presently living without police protection who vehemently, categorically, and dismissively denies involvement in murder. She lived on the pig farm for 18 months at the height of disappearances and knew several victims from shared experiences in the DES.
It was the testimony of Lynn Ellingsen placing Willy Pickton “standing covered in blood next to a dead woman who was hanging from a chain." Defense lawyer Richard Brooks wanted Ellingsen to admit to suffering psychotic episodes of drug-induced hallucination instead of seeing Willy Pickton in the barn with a dead Georgina Papin. Questions fell upon Ellingsen in two separate times on the witness stand to explain dates, which she finds impossible to remember.
Demonstrating a classic case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Ellingsen wept through much of her testimony. She was bad at remembering dates and testified Willy Pickton took her on a ride in his magic bus to the DES in Vancouver. They picked up Georgina Papin and together the crack cocaine use rose to a fever pitch, and Ellingsen was the first to say Willy Pickton directly influenced her drug use.
From all of these sketchy descriptions taken together Willy Pickton emerges as a pretty generous guy, perhaps an enabler of drug use doling out portions to maintain control over situations and people. Most witnesses are in a state of denial about his role in the drug frenzy but Ellingsen testified Willy Pickton managed the drug program down on the pig farm and at the registered charitable Piggy Palace.
Here was a world disguised by 'philanthropy' with needy addicts the potential volunteers. Ellingsen testified she had fallen for this philanthropy and one night Georgina Papin, too, fell to a different level. First they shared a crack pipe in Willy’s company at Willy Pickton’s behest. Ellingsen said Georgina was alive and wiped on crack cocaine in the evening but dead and mutilated before the crack of dawn.
Ellingsen alone has spoken to these monstrous details. "I saw this body. It was hanging. Willy pulled me inside behind the door. Walked me over to the table. Made me look. Told me if I was to say anything, I'd be right beside her." The defense implied Ellingsen was coached to say what police want because she has long been a dependent of theirs and will say whatever they need.
Before the two week break, 37 year old Andrew Bellwood was prosecution witness 97 and the last long-time crack-cocaine addict to testify. He was down and out meeting Willy Pickton in Jan ‘99 at the Pickton farm, then hanging around the property from Feb ‘99 to mid-Mar ‘99, and, on a couple of occasions, staying over in Willy Pickton's trailer.
The guy-talk was over the top with Pickton telling Bellwood about prostitutes, “sometimes hesitant about leaving the DES,” so he offered incentives like a choice of drugs, heroin or cocaine, or more money. It was Bellwood who testified how Willy Pickton demonstrated a modus operandi for sex and murder, and Willy finished with Bellwood by saying he gutted the bodies and fed the remains to the pigs.
The trial adjourned for a two-week break after Bellwood’s testimony concluded. Still nobody has testified about why the rampant killing spree might have occurred.
