It's like a lot of historical landmarks: it's a place where you know terrible things happened, but a lot has changed," said Lorimer Shenher, a former Vancouver Police Department detective. Shenher was assigned to look into women missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in the late s. Today he is on medical leave, still feeling the impact of the countless stories he heard and the things he saw. Shenher remembers going out to the farm for the very first time in , after receiving information that pointed to Pickton as a person of interest in the disappearances.
Pickton to the disappearance of sex workers from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside years before his arrest, area locals say the Pickton case is now firmly a part of history. Despite working mere metres away from the property, the murders have rarely crossed Mr. Novotny's mind. The vast lot, where investigators found the remains or DNA of 33 women, is now enclosed by a chain-link fence. It stands almost entirely empty, save for two dirt mounds about two storeys high and a barn. The space served as a grazing area for cows following the Pickton case, but its only tenants now are Canada geese.
Lauren Delory, a resident living near the new developments, said neighbours haven't talked about the incident in a while. Over the years, as the rate of disappearances escalated, rumours of a serial killer began to circulate in the Downtown Eastside. Sex trade workers began walking the Low Track in groups and writing down the licence plate numbers of cars that picked women up.
But the disappearances continued. They demanded a thorough investigation, but the police response was sluggish. The Vancouver police refused to say that a serial killer was at work, or even consider that the missing women were dead. There were no bodies to warrant an investigation that would be a strain on police resources. To police, it seemed reasonable to presume that some of the women had moved away and others had died from drug overdoses. There were complaints of police apathy, particularly from the Vancouver Sun newspaper.
It accused the police of giving low priority to crimes committed against sex trade workers. The Vancouver Police Department was also hampered by its reluctance to adopt newly emerging methods of investigation, such as psychological criminal profiling and geoprofiling. Many of the missing women were also Indigenous. As the Pickton case unfolded — with its many Indigenous victims — it focused public attention on the wider issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.
This in turn led to a national government inquiry into the issue, beginning in On 22 March , a woman Pickton had taken to his farm fought back when he tried to handcuff her. She seized a kitchen knife, and in the ensuing struggle, both received serious stab wounds. The woman ran to the road and waved down a car whose occupants called an ambulance.
While the woman was undergoing emergency surgery, Pickton was receiving treatment for his injuries in the same hospital. Pickton was arrested and charged with attempted murder , assault with a weapon, and forcible confinement. The charges were stayed and eventually dropped because the woman — whose name was placed under the protection of a publication ban by the courts — was not considered a competent witness due to drug addiction.
Pickton claimed she was a hitchhiker who had attacked him. When questioned by police, Ellingsen initially denied the story. Only much later did she admit that on 20 March she had in fact seen the body.
She did not report it because she feared Pickton and depended on him for money for drugs. Hiscox believed they were the property of the missing women. Police questioned Yelds, but she was uncooperative. It was the second time Hiscox had contacted police about his suspicions, but they could not obtain a search warrant based on hearsay evidence verbal information reported by someone who was not directly a witness to it.
They required an eyewitness report of criminal activity, or the existence of physical evidence. That information met the official requirement for a search warrant. On 5 February, officers of the task force raided the pig farm.
In addition to several illegal and unregistered guns, they found items connecting missing women to the property. Pickton was arrested on weapons charges, and then released on bail. He was kept under surveillance and was not permitted to return to the pig farm while police conducted a thorough search under a second warrant.
DNA testing of blood found in a motorhome on the property proved to be that of Mona Wilson.
0コメント