Picton Inquiry - Funding Denied for Legal Representation

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 16 Jan 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/More+lawyers+appear+Missing+Women+inquiry+represent+senior+police/6003237/story.html

 

There was a systemic communication breakdown between the RCMP and Vancouver police in the investigation of serial killer Robert Pickton

, the Missing Women investigation was told today.

 

And it was similar to the systemic failure in the investigation of Ontario serial killer Paul Bernardo,

testified Peel Regional Police Deputy Chief Jennifer Evans.

 

Senior police managers of Vancouver police and the RCMP also failed to take ownership of the investigations and make sure enough resources were devoted, Evans testified.

 

"There was a breakdown in communication at the management level, which is not good for an organization," she told Commissioner Wally Oppal.

 

She said the management failure began in the VPD Missing Person unit, which had no senior management overseeing the unit and providing supervision.

 

And it continued on through the Vancouver police investigation and the subsequent RCMP investigation.

 

She said senior police managers should have been properly supervising the investigation to make sure it was moving forward.

 

Instead, the investigation became stalled at times. Evans said.

 

She pointed out that two VPD detectives were showing photos to women working the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and the women identified Pickton as frequenting the area.

 

But that information wasn't being shared with other investigators, she said.

 

"I think it is so critical for investigation teams to share information," Evans told the inquiry.

 

She said Bernardo was a multi-jurisdictional rapist and killer, so that investigation had similar problems of failing to share information between police forces.

 

She said police managers should have ensured information was being shared in the Pickton investigation.

 

She suggested Vancouver's police chief could have picked up the phone and called chiefs of neighbouring jurisdictions to form partnerships.

 

"Police leaders need to be accountable not only for their authority but for the community they serve," Evans said.

 

At one point, she found that then Vancouver police major crime Insp. Fred Biddlecomb's conduct was unprofessional when he chastized another officer in front of other officers, including RCMP members.

 

Evans said commanding officers in the VPD needed to fully understand the missing women problem and make sure investigators had enough resources and tools to do the job.

 

She said Biddlecomb, Insp. Gary Greer and Deputy Chief Brian McGuinness should have been having better communication to keep senior management full informed of the problem, Evans said.

 

She found the lack of leadership and police oversight was "inexcusable."

 

Evans also found in the RCMP file a mention in April 2000 by an officer who said that if Pickton was eventually found to be a serial killer, there would be a public inquiry.

 

At the time, the RCMP's investigation of Pickton had stalled. It was not considered a top priority and tasks were set out but were not completed, Evans found.

 

For example, police surveillance followed Pickton to West Coast Reduction in east Vancouver but no one followed up and investigated what was in the barrels that Pickton was observed dumping at the rendering plant.

 

An informant had told police that Pickton bragged that he used a meat grinder to get rid of bodies.

 

Another informant said he was told by a woman who had been on Pickton's farm when she saw Pickton butchering a woman's body in a barn at the Pickton farm in Port Coquitlam.

 

Evans testified that one of the most compelling documents in the police file was written by a 22-year-old data entry summer student in August 2001, when he suggested Pickton was a serial killer was responsible for women still going missing.

 

The inquiry is probing why it took so long to catch Pickton, who was arrested on Feb. 5, 2002.

 

Cross-examined by lawyer Cameron Ward, who is representing 25 families of murdered and missing women, Evan was asked if the reason why the Pickton case wasn't investigated sooner was because the missing women were seen by male police managers as disposable because they were only "hookers."

 

"No, I saw no evidence of that," she said.

 

Ward suggested the investigation was affected by a male-dominated police culture of sexism and misogyny.

 

"I saw no evidence of that," Evans replied.

 

A number of senior lawyers turned up this morning at the Missing Women inquiry to represent senior Mounties and members of the Vancouver police.

 

The lawyers appeared at the inquiry in anticipation of Evans' testimony.

 

Evans was asked by the inquiry to review the Pickton investigations done by the Vancouver police and RCMP.

 

Before she began her testimony today, Richard Peck appeared at the inquiry and told Commissioner Wally Oppal that he was representing the interests of Gary Bass, the former commanding officer of the RCMP in B.C.

 

Lawyer David Butcher also appeared for Brock Giles, a former Vancouver police staff sergeant.

 

"I'm not ready to cross-examine the witness this week," Butcher told Oppal.

 

The lawyer said he first wanted to hear the testimony of Evans.

 

Lawyer Ravi Hira told Oppal he was representing Earl Moulton, the former RCMP inspector who oversaw the Pickton investigation by the Coquitlam RCMP in 1998 and 1999.

 

Former Vancouver police inspector Gary Greer also has retained a lawyer to represent him at the inquiry.

 

Vancouver police passed along the information to the Coquitlam RCMP to investigate possible murders taking place at the Pickton farm....

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

James Keller reports for the Canadian Press, 20 Jan 2012:

 

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/slow-pace-of-pickton-inquiry-may-cause-public-to-lose-confidence-commissioner-137772528.html

 

The army of lawyers at the inquiry into the Robert Pickton case has received reinforcements, prompting the former judge overseeing the hearings to worry aloud that the public may soon lose confidence in the process.

 

In the past week, lawyers for more than half a dozen current and former Vancouver police and RCMP officers have joined the hearings, arguing their clients' reputations have been put at stake by a report that criticized how both forces investigated missing women and Pickton.

The collection of high-profile criminal lawyers all asked to cross-examine the author of that report, Peel Regional Police Deputy Chief Jennifer Evans, who conducted an external review for the commission. Evans has already been on the stand for five days, and the officers' lawyers want another week with her.

 

Commissioner Wally Oppal, who has until June 30 to complete his report into why Pickton wasn't caught, appeared exasperated Friday as he acceded to the request.

 

"The courts get bogged down by lengthy submissions and lengthy arguments and lengthy trials, and we're falling into the same trap here," Oppal said.

 

"We have to protect the integrity of the process, and that's what I'm concerned with. The public has a stake in this. At some stage, the public loses confidence in the process when it goes on and on and on."

 

Evans will come back at a later date, but it's not clear when.

 

There are already lawyers at the inquiry for 11 participants, including Vancouver police, the local police union, the RCMP, B.C.'s criminal justice branch and a group of the families of Pickton's victims, among others.

 

Each of those participants had to apply last year to participate, a contentious process that saw a dozen other advocacy groups receive standing before withdrawing when the provincial government denied them funding.

 

Oppal has not explained during the hearings why the latest lawyers to arrive were granted participant status without a similar process. Now that they're there, they'll be able to cross-examine witnesses, which will undoubtedly drag testimony on for longer.

 

Oppal opened the hearings last October, but he has yet to hear from a single officer involved in the case. His report is due by the end of June, and he plans to finish formal hearings by April 30.

 

Commission lawyers have drawn up a list of 42 potential witnesses, and the families of Pickton's victims have asked that another 20 be added.

 

Neil Chantler, a lawyer who's representing the families of 25 missing and murdered women, said the additional counsel will make it even more difficult to reach Oppal's fast-approaching deadline.

 

Chantler said the added lawyers will mean the hearings are overwhelmingly dominated by police agencies and their officers.

 

"I suggest that reaching our collective goal of hearing from all of these witnesses is already going to be an immense, if not impossible, challenge," Chantler told the inquiry.

 

"It may also create a public perception that this process favours the interest in the police over the community groups who were not able to participate," Chantler added, referring to the groups that were denied legal funding.

 

David Butcher, one of the new lawyers who is representing Staff Sgt. Brock Giles of the Vancouver police, said officers whose reputations are at stake must be represented.

 

He said the police departments can't be expected to defend each officer who faces criticism at the hearings.

 

"It's simply not possible for them (the Vancouver police) to do that, I represent his reputational interest," Butcher said.

 

Lori-Ann Ellis, whose sister-in-law Cara Ellis's remains were found on Pickton's farm, said she was disheartened that yet more police lawyers were added to the inquiry. Cara Ellis was among the 20 women Pickton was charged with killing before those charges were stayed.

 

Ellis sat in court wearing a shirt emblazoned with a photo of her sister-in-law to mark 15 years to the day that Cara disappeared.

 

"It's really imbalanced," Ellis said in an interview outside the hearings.

 

"If the courtroom was a boat, we would capsize. There's so much weight on the police's side right now, we would just tip right over and be lost in the ocean."

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 24 Jan 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Former+detective+Rossmo+testifies+about+classic+mistakes+serial+killer+probes/6044479/story.html

 

A former Vancouver police officer testified today at the Missing Women inquiry about the "classic mistakes" made in serial killer investigations.

 

"One of the classical mistakes is not involving all the agencies that need to be involved, Kim Rossmo told inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal.

 

Not involving other police agencies and community groups leads to missing pieces of the puzzle, he explained.

 

He said he was first asked in August 1998 to look at the growing number of women going missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES).

 

He said two inspectors at the time, Gary Greer and Doug Mackay-Dunn, who were in charge of District Two, which included the DTES, were concerned that a serial killer may be responsible.

 

Rossmo, a serial murder expert who at the time had a PhD in the field, analyzed the data and wanted to issue a public warning in September 1998 about a serial killer preying on DTES women.

 

But his bosses wouldn't allow him to issue the warning, saying there was no evidence of a serial killer.

 

Rossmo wanted the community to know "we were taking these concerns seriously and were investigating the possibility of a serial killer," he said.

 

"We also had a duty to warn the public," he said.

 

Rossmo said the officer who kiboshed the press release being issued was Insp. Fred Biddlecombe, who was in charge of homicide and the missing person unit.

 

"He had a small temper tantrum," he recalled of the meeting where the news release was discussed, which was attended by VPD members and the RCMP.

 

"He didn't like what we were doing," Rossmo recalled.

 

"I found him arrogant and somewhat egotistical. He wasn't interested in a discussion. He was angry and unreasonable. He didn't want to work with us."

 

Rossmo added that Biddlecombe's negative attitude effectively killed the working group that Greer and Rossmo had assembled.

 

Instead, Biddlecombe wanted Detective Lori Shenher to continue working to try to locate the dozens of missing women who had been reported missing.

 

Rossmo said he didn't like Biddlecombe and had never worked with him before, but felt Biddlecombe honestly believed a serial killer wasn't responsible for the missing women.

 

Now retired, Biddlecombe will testify later at the inquiry.

 

Despite Biddlecombe's negativity, Rossmo said he tried continue working on the missing women case but had difficulty getting any data from major crime.

 

"The level of communication/coorperation was not good," he testified.

 

"I was somewhat frustrated in my efforts to obtain more data or information."

 

He said he didn't receive the data until months later, when he prepared a report on Feb. 9, 1999, which concluded that the number of missing women took a dramatic jump in 1995.

 

Rossmo recalled there was a meeting to discuss this report with Biddlecombe, Insp. Brian McGuinness and a sergeant from major crime, Geramy Field.

 

"The meeting was somewhat strange in that Biddlecombe acted like I wasn't in the room," he added.

 

Biddlecombe was dismissive of Rossmo's report, saying the missing women would be found eventually.

 

"I said, Let's find out how long missing people stay missing," Rossmo recalled of the meeting.

 

"Insp. Biddlecombe was very angry at me for keeping this thing alive."

 

"One of the common mistakes made by police is the initial denial that there is a serial killer," added Rossmo, now is a professor at Texas State University, where he is the director of Geospacial Intelligence and Investigation.

 

He served 20 years with the Vancouver police, including two tours of duty in the Downtown Eastside, which he referred to as Skid Road.

 

He said the area was a vibrant community, despite have a high rate of crime, violence and disease.

 

In his last five years at the VPD, he was a detective-inspector in charge of the geographic profiling unit, which assisted in serial crime investigations of rape, robbery and murders.

 

Rossmo testified that street prostitutes in the DTES were vulnerable to extreme violence because they would get into cars with complete strangers and would be driven to dark alleys.

 

"Street prostitutes are the perfect victims," he told the inquiry, which is probing why it took so long to catch serial killer Robert Pickton....

 

Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal said this morning that he believes systemic failures within the VPD and RCMP were the real cause behind the failures in the Pickton case.

 

"What happened here can never happen again," Oppal said.

 

The commissioner said he plans to make a number of recommendations to government to prevent another tragedy such as the Pickton case.

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

The Canadian Press reports, 26 Jan 2012:

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/01/26/bc-pickton-inquiry-rossmo-biddlecombe.html

 

A former Vancouver police inspector who has faced intense criticism at the Robert Pickton inquiry is disputing some of the allegations against him, rejecting claims he ruled out the possibility of a serial killer and suggesting one of his fiercest critics is biased.

 

Several witnesses have singled out Insp. Fred Biddlecombe, who was in charge of the force's major crime section during the late 1990s as the force received reports of sex workers disappearing from the city's Downtown Eastside.

 

Biddlecombe has been accused of being a hot-headed, arrogant manager quick to dismiss evidence that a serial killer could be at work and instead clinging to the belief that the women weren't actually missing.

 

Those criticisms have been amplified this week with the testimony of former detective Kim Rossmo, a geographic profiler who was among the first to warn that a serial killer was responsible.

 

Rossmo has testified Biddlecombe was immediately confrontational when a working group suggested the serial killer angle, having a "temper tantrum" at a September 1998 meeting and effectively disbanding the team.

 

Tense cross-examination

 

Biddlecombe's lawyer, David Neave, questioned Rossmo during a tense cross-examination Thursday.

 

Neave pointed to a newspaper article in September 1998 in which Biddlecombe was quoted as saying he hadn't ruled out the possibility of a serial killer. In the article, Biddlecombe also repeated the force's position at the time that there was nonetheless no evidence police were dealing with a serial killer case.

 

Vancouver police Insp. Fred Biddlecombe, now retired, talks to news media in an undated photo. (CBC)"Insp. Biddlecombe was not ruling out the possibility of a serial killer -- fair?" Neave asked Rossmo.

 

"Based on his actions and what he said in the meeting on the 22nd of September [1998], I felt that he had effectively ruled it out," replied Rossmo.

 

"If the statement is correct [in the newspaper article], Insp. Biddlecombe was not ruling out the possibility of a serial killer," Neave repeated.

 

"This is a newspaper story," replied Rossmo. "You're acting like police departments are always truthful with the media."

 

That prompted laughter from the public gallery.

 

News release quashed

 

Rossmo and his working group were preparing to issue a news release later that month telling the public about their work, specifically that they were looking into whether "a serial murderer is preying upon people in the Downtown Eastside."

 

Rossmo has said he hoped the news release would also serve as a public warning.

 

But Biddlecombe nixed the release, complaining to a colleague that it was "inaccurate and quite inflammatory," the inquiry has heard.

 

In the meantime, Biddlecombe was ordering the force's chief spokeswoman, Const. Anne Drennan, to tell reporters there was no evidence of a serial killer, according to an internal Vancouver police report. Drennan didn't publicly acknowledge the possibility of a serial murderer until November 1999.

 

Neave also pointed out that in May of 1999, Biddlecombe assigned more than half a dozen investigators to what's become known as the missing women review team, or Project Amelia.

 

The way Rossmo tells it, he and Biddlecombe had a caustic working relationship. After the meeting in September 1998, which some lawyers at the inquiry have started to refer to as the "temper tantrum meeting," Rossmo said Biddlecombe refused to interact with him.

 

Neave suggested Rossmo's beef with the force extended beyond Biddlecombe.

 

Rossmo left the force in December 2000, after the department declined to extend his contract as a geographic profiler.

 

Rather than accept a lesser-paying position of constable, Rossmo sued the force for wrongful dismissal. Rossmo lost at trial, and again on appeal.

 

Biddlecombe to testify

 

Neave read from portions of the B.C. Supreme Court decision until he was ordered to stop by Commissioner Wally Oppal.

 

Rossmo now teaches at Texas State University and was qualified as an expert witness in geographic profiling and criminal investigations.

 

Neave had nothing to say about accusations that Biddlecombe lost his temper at the September 1998 meeting, nor did he address accusations that Biddlecombe directed the investigation on the premise that the women weren't missing

 

Rossmo and others have argued the failure of senior Vancouver police officials to accept the serial killer theory early on was a key reason Pickton wasn't caught sooner.

 

Biddlecombe is expected to testify later....

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 28 Jan 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/RCMP+apologizes+first+time+failures+Pickton+case/6066727/story.html

 

The RCMP apologized Friday for the first time for failing to catch serial killer Robert Pickton sooner.

 

"On behalf of the RCMP, I would like to express to the families of the victims how very sorry we are for the loss of your loved ones, and I apologize that the RCMP did not do more," Assistant Commissioner Craig Callens said at a news conference at RCMP headquarters in Vancouver.

 

"Let me be clear," he said. "As the commanding officer of the RCMP in British Columbia I believe that, with the benefit of hindsight and when measured against today's investigative standards and practices, the RCMP could have done more."

 

Callens said the former commanding officer of the B.C. Mounties, Gary Bass, had expressed his deep regret in August 2010 that the RCMP was unable to gather the evidence necessary to charge serial killer Robert Pickton sooner.

 

But it recently came to his attention "that the issue of an apology remains in question."

 

Callens said he plans to meet with families of Pickton's victims to offer a personal apology on behalf of the force.

 

The Vancouver police has repeatedly apologized, saying the VPD could have and should have done more.

 

Alberta RCMP Supt. Bob Williams, who was asked to do an independent review of the force's investigation of Pickton, declined during his testimony two weeks ago to offer an apology on behalf of the RCMP.

 

Williams deferred the decision to the senior managers of the RCMP in B.C.

 

Callens pointed out that the RCMP remains fully committed to cooperating with the Missing Women inquiry, which resumes on Monday.

 

The inquiry is expected to hear next week from two key RCMP investigators - Mike Connor and Don Adam - in the Pickton case.

 

The first witness scheduled for Monday is Lori Shenher, the Vancouver police constable who handled the first tip about Pickton being the possible killer of dozens of women who had disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

 

Women continued to disappear until Pickton was finally arrested on Feb. 5, 2002. He was eventually charged with 27 counts of first-degree murder.

 

The inquiry has heard that Vancouver police regarded Pickton as the prime suspect after receiving tips about Pick-ton in 1998 and 1999.

 

Vancouver police investigated the information, including a claim that a woman saw Pick-ton butchering a woman in a barn on the Pickton farm.

 

The VPD passed along the information to the RCMP because the allegations were that Pickton had killed women at his farm in Port Coquitlam, which was the policing jurisdiction of the Mounties.

 

Coquitlam RCMP had previously investigated Pickton for a 1997 attack on a Vancouver prostitute at the farm.

 

The women survived a knife attack after running to the street and flagging down a passing car.

 

Pickton was charged with unlawful confinement and attempted murder, but the Crown dropped the charges in 1998.

 

The reasons for the Crown staying the charges will be examined later at the inquiry, which is probing the systemic problems that prevented police from catching Pickton sooner.....

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 28 Jan 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Officer+shocked+when+detectives+didn+believe+witness+Robert+Pickton+case/6079766/story.html

 

The first officer assigned to investigate the missing women case became choked with emotion and began crying when asked how the case affected her personal and professional life.

 

"I think it affected me a great deal, it was very hard," Vancouver police Const. Lori Shenher told the Missing Women inquiry, which is probing why serial killer Robert Pickton wasn't caught sooner.

 

"I was so completely disillusioned with police work," she said, adding she thought about quitting the VPD.

 

But, she added in a halting voice, what she experienced paled in comparison to what the families of the missing women.

 

Shenher has spent two days testifying about how she was initially the sole investigator of the dozens of women who were reported missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

 

The investigation was plagued by a shortage of manpower because senior managers within the B.C. wouldn't take the matter seriously and assign the resources the case needed.

 

Shenher testified she believed Pickton fit the profile of a serial killer and gathered information from informants who suggested Pickton was responsible for the women going missing.

 

And she was shocked when she got the call in early 2002, telling her that Pickton had been arrested and police were searching his farm.

 

"I can't even tell you how shocked I was," Shenher told the inquiry.

 

"If it was someone really tricky or skilled, I could handle that, but the fact that it was a person so in my sights the whole time," she said.

 

"I was counting how many women went missing from September '99, when I felt we were closing in on him," Shenher recalled. "I felt very much grief stricken."

 

Shenher said she had to go on sick leave but has since recovered and still is working.

 

She advised Commissioner Wally Oppal that in police culture you either sink or swim, and she felt she did a "damned good job" on the investigation, "with what we had to work with."

 

Shenher is continuing her testimony today, which is being streamed live at the inquiry's website:

http://www.missingwomeninquiry.ca/

 

Shenher earlier told the inquiry that when she was first assigned in August 1998 to the VPD's Missing Person Unit, she worked alone and had no computer to keep track of details of the missing women and the tips that came in.

 

At one point, when Shenher and others felt the women's disappearances were the result of a serial killer preying on women, she asked for an additional six experienced detectives to be assigned to the case, but was told the force was short-staffed and was given three people.

 

She recalled she was shocked and frustrated in September 1999 when two detectives interviewed a key witness and made a decision that derailed Pickton as a serial killer suspect.

 

She said the Coquitlam RCMP Cpl. Mike Connor was also upset after two detectives from the Unsolved Homicide Unit, Cpl. Frank Henley and Bruce Ballantyne, interviewed Lynn Ellingsen on Aug. 10, 199 and believed her when she said she never saw Pickton with the dead body of a woman.

 

Shenher recalled that other detectives had previously interviewed a police informant, who said Ellingsen had told friends that she had been at Pickton's farm one night and walked into a barn and was horrified to find Pickton butchering a woman's body.

 

The informant also said that Ellingsen was extorting money from Pickton to stay quiet about what she saw.

 

Ellingsen told the detectives that she never saw a woman's body in the barn, so the detectives concluded that they didn't believe the veracity of the dead-body story.

 

After that, Shenher said, the investigation of Pickton as a suspect stalled and lost momentum.

 

"We felt it died and we couldn't understand why," she told the inquiry, which is probing why police didn't catch Pickton sooner.

 

Shenher said she transferred out of the missing persons unit in 2000.

 

Connor is scheduled to testify next at the inquiry, which began Oct. 11.

 

Shenher testified earlier that she received tips from informants in 1998 and 1999, who suggested Pickton may be a serial killer.

 

They said Pickton had bloody clothing in bags, women's identification and purses, and he had bragged about how he could dispose of bodies.

 

Vancouver police passed along the information to the RCMP because Pickton lived in Port Coquitlam, the jurisdiction of the RCMP.

 

Shenher said the decision regarding Ellingsen affected the morale of the investigators working on the missing women case...

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Sam Cooper reports for The Province, 1 Feb 2012

 

http://www.theprovince.com/news/missing+women+probe+afflicted+inertia+after+1999+inquiry+hears/6086434/story.html

 

Cameron Ward, lawyer for 25 families of murdered or disappeared women, grilled the Vancouver Police Department's lead missing-women investigator Wednesday on whether B.C.'s top justice officials were warned that Robert Pickton was the prime suspect in the disappearances at a series of meetings starting in April 1999.

 

Det. Const. Lori Shenher's last two days of testimony at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry pointed to badly flawed efforts by the VPD and RCMP, which possibly allowed drug-addicted prostitutes to die needlessly.

 

On Wednesday Shenher testified that after she and RCMP investigators homed in on Pickton in the spring of 1999, an "inertia" fell onto the investigation, and somewhere up the chain in the RCMP a decision seemed to be made to halt the joint-forces investigation into Pickton in the fall of 1999.

 

In cross-examination, Ward suggested to Shenher that for five years Pickton was permitted to bring as many as 49, and "maybe many more" women to his farm and kill them, and asked her why.

 

"I don't believe it was a lack of management will at VPD," Shenher said. She said it was "a total lack of someone picking up a phone and going to someone in authority in RCMP (to) move (the Pickton case) forward."

 

Ward pressed Shenher for details about a meeting involving then-B.C. attorney general Ujjal Dosanjh, a number of provincial cabinet ministers and aides, plus a handful of the most senior officers from the RCMP and VPD, which occurred on April 9, 1999. Pickton was the focus of that meeting as well as another multi-department meeting on May 13, 1999, according to Shenher.

 

Shenher in a previous statement said she believed her memo to Dosanjh, distributed at the April meeting, specifically included Pickton's name, but that a copy of the memo that is reproduced for evidence in the current hearing appears to have been altered.

 

However, under cross-examination from Ward, she said she now believes the memo was not altered.

 

Shenher said she can't recall if the aides or officers present took notes of her presentation at the April meeting.

 

Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal clashed with Ward on the relevance of who attended the meeting and what was recorded at the meeting.

 

Ward charged that Oppal's commission has so far failed to produce documents, and it is crucial to know whether the top justice officials in B.C. who were in attendance "all knew about Pickton but didn't motivate any response."

 

"This committee has had an ongoing duty to get the notes," Shenher said. "We should have records of that meeting."

 

Ward also questioned Shenher on flaws in her own investigation, and about why Pickton was not stopped sooner given what police knew about him.

 

Ward asked Shenher if Coquitlam RCMP Cpl. Mike Connor, who investigated Pickton for years starting with an attempted murder charge in 1997, had told her that the RCMP knew that Pickton and his brother Dave were involved in illegal activity and associated with members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club.

 

Shenher said she was aware. She said that starting in July 1998 she drove by the Pickton farm with her source, Bill Hiscox, and Connor, several times. She described a number of earth mounds on the property about 15 feet high and 30-40 feet across, and said she considered whether Pickton was keeping live women captive in the earth formations.

 

"It made me think of a bunker, torture chamber type place," she said.

 

Ward suggested that Shenher had actually entered the property on one occasion with Hiscox. She denied that she did.

 

Shenher was also asked why, when she claimed to have been traumatized by the case, she wrote a book on the case which was put forward to a publisher, and worked on scripts for the CBC crime show Da Vinci's Inquest, prior to 2003.

 

Shenher said the writing was "cathartic."

 

Ward said if the book manuscript is disclosed as he has demanded, he will ask to re-examine Shenher on the contents.

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Terri Theodore reports for the Canadian Press, 6 Feb 2012:

 

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120206/bc_missing_women_inquiry_120206/20120206/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

 

A retired RCMP officer says police were forced to stop surveillance on now-convicted serial killer Robert Pickton after the Port Coquitlam, B.C. pig farmer was tipped off.

 

Mike Conner told the missing women's inquiry Monday he learned from a civilian employee that Pickton had become aware of police surveillance by Aug. 9, 1999 -- a development that affected the course of the investigation.

 

"We'd have to discontinue surveillance," said Conner, who was the first RCMP officer to investigate Pickton. "If he was aware of it he wouldn't be in our view, or my view, conducting criminal activity."

 

"And, in fact, was surveillance then discontinued within a few days," asked commission counsel Art Vertlieb.

 

"Within a few day I think, yes," said Conner.

 

Just how Pickton found out about the surveillance remains unclear, but Vertlieb read into the record part of a report by Jennifer Evans, deputy chief of the Peel Regional Police.

 

Evans conducted an external review of the Pickton murder investigation, and in her report stated that three people Conner had interviewed at the time had "a very close association to Pickton and were more than likely to talk to Pickton..."

 

 

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 6 Feb 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Interview+with+serial+killer+1999+wasn+handled+properly+former+Mountie/6109807/story.html

 

An interview with serial killer Robert Pickton in 2000 wasn't handled properly, the former lead investigator of Pickton told the Missing Women inquiry Monday.

 

Mike Connor, who retired as a staff-sergeant last year, recalled that the interview required someone who was experienced in interrogation.

 

"Interviewing a suspect is an art," he explained to the inquiry, which is probing why Pickton wasn't caught until Feb. 5, 2002.

 

Connor recalled that Pickton was allowed to bring his friend Gina Houston to the interview and she would intervene and answer questions for Pickton.

 

The inquiry was told that the officer who handled the interview, Ruth Yurkiw, had called Pickton in September 1999 to arrange an interview but Pickton's brother, Dave Pickton, persuaded the investigator to put off the interview until the rainy season, when the brothers wouldn't be so busy so busy with their demolition business.

 

Yurkiw then waited until January 2000 to do the interview.

 

Connor testified he had Pickton on his radar beginning in 1998 and through 1999, when he was promoted to a sergeant and taken off the case.

 

He recalled talking to a supervisor at the time, asking if he could remain on the Pickton investigation, but he was told he had to take his new assignment, supervising about 20 uniformed patrol officers at the Coquitlam RCMP detachment.

 

Connor apologized for not :"catching a lucky break and solving the Pickton case.

 

"I think about this file every day," he told the inquiry. I live with the fact that 13 women, roughly, disappeared from the DTES since my involvement."

 

Connor said he wished he would have put Pickton behind bars.

 

"For that, I'm sorry. I did what I could," said Connor, who said he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder from his years of policing.

 

Connor recalled Pickton was already on the police radar because he and his brother ran an after-hours club, Piggy's Palace, located about a block from the Port Coquitlam farm where the brothers lived -- Dave Pickton lived in a house and Robert, known as Willy by his friends, lived in a trailer on the property beside a barn, where Willy often butchered pigs.

 

Willy Pickton also had been charged in 1997 with attempted murder for a knife attack on a prostitute at Pickton's trailer. The woman escaped and ran to the street, where she flagged down a passing car. But the charges were dropped in 1998.

 

Connor recalled the prosecutor said the charges were stayed because the victim was a drug addict who had missed appointments and wasn't considered credible.

 

In August 1998, Connor recalled, he was contacted by Vancouver police Const. Lori Shenher, who explained she had an informant who believed Pickton was responsible for the dozens of women who had gone missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside over the years.

 

The informant, Bill Hiscox, said he had been told Willy had bags of women's bloody clothing, ID and purses that he kept as "trophies," and that Pickton bragged how he could dispose of bodies.

 

Connor went with Shenher and talked to Hiscox. Afterward, he said, he started surveillance of Pickton. The initial surveillance did not confirm Pickton frequented the DTES of Vancouver or had contact with women working in the sex trade.

 

"It certainly heightened our interest in Pickton," Connor told the inquiry, which is probing why it took so long to catch Pickton, who wasn't arrested until 2002.

 

"Until I was in a position to eliminate him, he was going to remain on my radar," he said.

 

Connor said he wanted to use Hiscox as police agent in an undercover operation to gather more information on Pickton.

 

But Hiscox couldn't be found for a period of time and then couldn't be used as an agent because he was having personal problems, Connor recalled.

 

"He fell off the map for a long period," he told Commissioner Wally Oppal.

 

Connor said Hiscox first contacted Vancouver police Const. Lori Shenher in August 1998.

 

He added he considered Shenher as Hiscox's handler - a police term used to describe an informant.

 

Hiscox was passing along to police information he was told by Lisa Yelds, who was described as a cop-hating biker Nazi who was a friend of Pickton.

 

Connor said the Hiscox information about Pickton added to what Coquitlam RCMP already had on Pickton, who had been charged in 1997 for the attempted murder of a prostitute who had escaped a knife attack on Pickton's farm in Port Coquitlam.

 

The charges were dropped by the Crown in 1998 because the victim was deemed not credible because she was a drug addict.

 

Pickton's clothing seized after the 1997 attack were tested for DNA years later and revealed evidence of other women who had been killed on the farm. Shenher testified earlier that Hiscox was a bit hard to find, but was he was located he was willing and able to help police catch Pickton.

 

"He was angry Pickton was involved," Connor recalled about Hiscox.

 

"He wanted to do what was necessary to see he was put in jail."

 

Connor testified he used surveillance on Pickton several times in 1998 and 1999.

 

In August 1999, undercover officers followed Pickton driving a truck that brought barrels to a rendering plant, West Coast Reduction, in Vancouver's east side.

 

He said he knew Pickton was followed to the rendering plant, but wasn't told by the surveillance that Pickton had barrels.

 

He said he didn't learn about the barrels until a few weeks ago.

 

Around that time, police received a tip from another informant that he had a friend who witnessed Pickton butchering a woman's body one night.

 

Connor said the new information seemed credible but when two detectives interviewed the woman who allegedly witnessed Pickton with the body, she denied ever seeing a body.

 

Connor said he was not happy with how that interview of Lynn Ellingsen was conducted on Aug. 10, 1999.

 

He said he felt the woman was lying because another informant told police that Ellingsen was blackmailing Pickton for money to stay quiet.

 

Connor recalled he was promoted later that month to sergeant on Aug. 20, 1999, which ended his role as lead investigator of Pickton.

 

He said he wasn't happy with how the Ellingsen interview was handled, which he described as going "sideways." "

 

"Lynn Ellingsen, in my view, was a participant in a homicide," Connor said.

 

"My thought was to undertake an undercover operation with Lynn Ellingsen," he added.

 

After his transfer, he said, he would sit outside Pickton's home at night for hours, looking for something out of the ordinary.

 

Ellingsen was called as a witness at Pickton's trial. She testified she was with Pickton when he picked up a woman in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and he brought the woman back to his residence to have sex for money.

 

Ellingsen recalled she was doing drugs in her room, she heard a scream and went to the kitchen and saw the woman's purse but the woman and Pickton weren't there.

 

She noticed a light on in the barn next door and went to investigate.

 

Ellingsen said she was horrified to see the woman hanging in the barn and Pickton chopping up the body.

 

She testified that Pickton warned if she said anything, Ellingsen would end up dead as well.

 

She said she feared Pickton, which is why she never went to police.

 

Earlier Monday, Cameron Ward had an outburst, accusing the inquiry of being a "cover-up" by refusing to make sure all documents have been disclosed.

 

Ward, a lawyer for 28 years who is representing 25 families of murdered women, told Oppal that he'd never encountered a case where he's been so distressed by the lack of timely disclosure.

 

The lawyer still is seeking the unpublished book written by Shenher about her frustrating experiences with the Vancouver police investigation ...

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 8 Feb 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Creepy+video+serial+killer+Robert+Pickton+released+inquiry/6121521/story.html

 

The former lead RCMP investigator of serial killer Robert Pickton testified today that the police interview of Pickton in 2000 was not the best example of good police work.

 

"It certainly wasn't a textbook case on how to do an interview," Mike Connor told the Missing Women inquiry, which is probing why police didn't end Pickton's killing spree until 2002.

 

"It seemed a little strange to me," he said of the Jan. 19, 2000 interview done by RCMP Constables Ruth Yurkiw and John Cater.

 

"It was not how I would conduct the interview," Connor testified.

 

Connor recalled Pickton was his only suspect in the disappearance of dozens of women who vanished from the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

 

He said he wished he would have caught "the break" that would have allowed him to put Pickton behind bars, but it never came before he was promoted on Aug. 20, 1999, when he was reluctantly taken off the case.

 

Even after he was no longer the lead investigator, Connor told the inquiry Wednesday, he sat in his car up to 30 times after midnight outside Pickton's farm in Port Coquitlam, hoping to catch Pickton in the act.

 

Connor recalled he watched the officers questioning Pickton in 2000 on a TV monitor in another room at the Coquitlam RCMP detachment.

 

Lawyer Cameron Ward, who is representing 25 families of murdered women, played a portion of the video this week at the inquiry.

 

The two-hour interview video was publicly released for the first time Wednesday.

 

It was never viewed by the jury at Pickton's murder trial in 2007, which ended with six murder convictions and Pickton being sent to prison for life.

 

The video showed Pickton was "creepy, lying, manipulative and self-serving," Ward suggested to Connor during cross-examination.

 

"All the above," the retired Mountie said. "I walked out of there knowing he wasn't telling the truth."

 

In the video, Pickton has a beard, long stringy hair and he's wearing a baseball cap and dirty sweater.

 

When he was asked about a 1997 knife attack of a Vancouver prostitute at his residence on his Port Coquitlam farm, Pickton blamed the woman for trying to steal his money - he said he had $3,500 cash on him.

 

"It was a terrifying event for me," Pickton told police, appearing irritated when talking about being stabbed by the woman.

 

"The little bitch almost killed me," Pickton said during the interview, using his hands to show police how the woman grabbed a knife and slashed him across the neck.

 

Pickton denied he ever took another prostitute to his residence, a filthy industrial-style trailer on a property littered with machinery, old vehicles and junk.

 

"That's the only time," Pickton said on the video.

 

Cater and Yurkiw told Pickton that a woman named Lynn Ellingsen said she saw Pickton one night butchering a women in a barn, located beside his trailer on the farm.

 

Pickton said he didn't know "nothin'" about that and suggested Ellingsen was just trying to get more money out of him, saying he had given her money in the past.

 

Before the interview, police had been told by an informant that Ellingsen was blackmailing Pickton for money to stay quiet about what she saw in the barn.

 

Police were also told by an informant that Pickton wanted to get someone to kill Ellingsen.

 

Yurkiw asked Pickton if he would allow police to search his trailer.

 

"Whatever," Pickton said. "Feel free...I'm not hiding anything."

 

He also agreed to allow police to take soil samples if they wanted.

 

"Bring boots," Pickton advised the officers, who never took Pickton up on his offer.

 

Connor had been the lead investigator on the knife attack by Pickton on March 23, 1997, which resulted in Pickton being charged with attempted murder and unlawful confinement.

 

Connor said he felt it was a "slam-dunk" case until the prosecutor, Randi Connor, phoned days before trial and said she was dropping the charges because the victim was back addicted to heroin, making her unreliable.

 

Ward pointed out Wednesday that during the 2000 police interview with Pickton, the officer allowed Pickton's friend, Gina Houston, to sit in and was "getting in the way." Connor conceded "she was certainly answering questions on his behalf."

 

Yurkiw had tried to arrange an interview with Pickton in September 1999 but his brother, Dave Pickton, successfully put off the interview for four months.

 

Dave Pickton told Yurkiw police would have to wait until the rainy season, when the Pickton brothers weren't so busy with their demolition business.

 

At the time of the Pickton interview in 2000, police had received tips from three informants who suggested Pickton was responsible for the dozens of women going missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

 

The informants said that Pickton had bragged he could get rid of bodies and had bags of women's clothing, jewelry and purses, which he kept as "trophies."

 

Another informant told police that a woman named Lynn Ellingsen had stumbled on Pickton butchering a woman in his barn one night.

 

Ellingsen was interviewed by police on Aug. 10, 1999, when she denied seeing Pickton with a dead body.

 

Vancouver police Const. Lori Shenher, who worked on the case from 1998 to 2000, said the Ellingsen interview effectively killed the RCMP investigation.

 

Connor, however, said the Mounties continued working on the case.

 

A rookie RCMP officer not working on the Pickton investigation executed a search warrant on Pickton's trailer on Feb. 5, 2002, to look for illegal guns.

 

The officer found the guns and the identification and personal items belonging to several missing women.

 

The search of the farm, the largest forensic police operation in Canadian history, found the remains and DNA of 33 women...

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 16 Feb 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Police+were+watching+many+ball+serial+killer+suspects+inquiry+told/6164567/story.html

 

Police were watching too many 'red ball' serial killer suspects, inquiry told

 

The former team commander of a serial killer investigation continued with his "red ball" analogy when trying to describe what it was like having so many suspects.

 

"It's the balls that you're not watching that hurt you," Don Adam testified Thursday at the Missing Women inquiry, which is probing why police didn't catch serial killer Robert Pickton sooner.

 

He said police at the time didn't realize they were investigating an active serial killer until August 2001.

 

A day earlier, Adam testified that as the joint forces investigation known as Project Evenhanded got going in early 2001, the list of suspects started expanding beyond Pickton, who had been the prime suspect of Vancouver police in 1998.

 

"If you think of Mr. Pickton as a bright red ball, you can move that ball anywhere in this room and none of us will miss where it is," Adam explained at the inquiry.

 

"But if you brought in 30 red balls, suddenly it's not so easy. By February (2001), there are 60 of them. When Evenhanded had fully assessed everyone, there are 374 of those balls."

 

The families of the murdered women, who are attending the inquiry, feel police dropped the ball.

 

Adam, who retired last year after 40 years with the force, said many of the suspects were considered capable of being serial killers.

 

"This file was full of hideous human beings, and they needed to be looked at," the former staff-sgt. testified...

 

The inquiry won't be sitting Friday and Adam's cross-examination is expected to take place next week.

 

Former Vancouver police chief Terry Blythe, now retired, will testify Monday.

 

Blythe has retained Toronto lawyer Eddie Greenspan to represent him at the inquiry.

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 16 Feb 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Former+chief+offended+claim+that+enough+done+investigate+missing+women/6180635/story.html

 

Former VPD chief offended by claim that not enough done to investigate missing women

 

A former police chief said today he was offended by the suggestion that police didn't do enough to investigate the women who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

 

"I do find it offensive for all the good work we did and the efforts we made in a troubled neighbourhood," Terry Blythe told the Missing Women inquiry.

 

He also took issue with the suggestion that the Vancouver police management was disengaged with the missing women investigation in the DTES, so didn't provide enough resources.

 

Blythe recalled that the Vancouver police force was short-staffed at the time and he would have ensured more manpower was available.

 

"I believe we did everything we were capable of doing," the former chief testified.

 

Blythe recalled he did not know Vancouver police had Robert Pickton as a suspect in 1998.

 

He said he wasn't made aware of Pickton being under investigation by Vancouver police until just before Pickton was arrested on Feb. 5, 2002.

 

Blythe also said he was never aware at the time that former geographic profile Kim Rossmo wanted to issue a public warning on Sept. 30, 1998, about a possible serial killer preying on women in the Downtown Eastside.

 

Blythe was VPD chief from July 1999 until his retirement in August 2002.

 

Blythe, 63, had joined the force in 1969 when he was 20 and worked his way to the top.

 

He said he never forgot where he came from - he grew up on Vancouver's west side and was the son of a VPD officer.

 

Blythe is being questioned at the inquiry by his lawyer, Eddie Greenspan of Toronto, one of Canada's most well-known and expensive lawyers.

 

Greenspan charges up to $1,200 an hour for legal fees.

 

Blythe has two lawyers at the inquiry.

 

Many former police officers recently have hired lawyers to represent them at the inquiry because allegations have been made that police should have done more to stop Pickton's killing spree....

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Suzanne Fournier reports for The Province, 27 Feb 2012:

 

http://www.theprovince.com/news/workers+lost+trust+police+missing+women+inquiry+told/6218060/story.html

 

Activist Jamie Lee Hamilton told the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry that sex trade workers displaced into the "killing fields" of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in the mid-1980s lost their trust in police who became enforcers rather than protectors.

 

The commission, at the first of a series of panels, heard emotional evidence Monday from Hamilton, sex worker client and then-Missing Women website master Wayne Leng and also from Maggie de Vries.

 

De Vries, a teacher and children's author, also wrote a book about her sister Sarah, who entered the downtown street life and the sex trade as a young teen. Sarah, of mixed black, Mexican and indigenous heritage, was fleeing racism and cruelty from other kids that she experienced in Vancouver's West Point Grey neighbourhood and felt excitement and belonging in the street community, Maggie told the commission.

 

A prolific writer and poet, Sarah wrote in a poem included in Maggie's book that she wasn't accepted by either Caucasian or black society. "I have no people, I have no nation and I am alone," she wrote.

 

The commission also viewed a chilling five-minute CBC interview from 1993 in which Sarah shoots up heroin on-camera but warns others to "stay away" from heroin addiction.

 

Sarah got caught up in heroin addiction while involved in the dangerous Downtown Eastside sex trade and disappeared at age 29, in 1998. A well-loved and respected resident of the area, Sarah had strong ties to her friends, family and her two children and could not have disappeared on her own. Her disappearance galvanized family and friends who searched tirelessly, put up posters about Sarah and other missing women and called on the Vancouver Police Department to offer a reward for information on who was preying on the women.

 

De Vries said that only three years ago, after her book was published, she learned that Sarah appeared to have been repeatedly victimized and sexually abused when she was as young as eight or nine years old by a pedophile who lived near their family home.

 

De Vries also related a horrific incident in which her sister was raped and almost killed by a man from whom she escaped, almost naked, in a Vancouver suburb, sometime in the early 1990s. Sarah made her way to a police station where she was humiliated and given no help. Hitchhiking, she was picked up by another, unrelated assailant who also tried to sexually assault her and finally by a kindly cab driver, who drove her home.

 

De Vries and Hamilton agreed that police in that case lost "a very precious moment," by throwing away a chance to help a desperate young woman who never again would trust them. "She shared that story . . . warning about a man who beat her almost to death," said de Vries. Sarah also learned, tragically, "that you can't trust police to help you even if you're a victim of extreme violence, if you look like a prostitute,"said Maggie. "She learned it was better to go out to the highway and stick out her thumb than turn to police."

 

Hamilton said all police agencies must learn to respond promptly to vulnerable women. "It's very important for the police to respond appropriately, give her a blanket, a safe space, bring in a female officer. How do you explain to a male officer that you've just been violated?"

 

Hamilton, who entered sex work at age 15, in 1971, said that until a 1984 court injunction forced sex workers to Vancouver's isolated and dangerous Eastside, police were either "protective" or just left working women alone.

 

"Women had worked in clusters and had a good relationship with police before but then we were displaced to dangerous, isolated areas, we couldn't protect each other and the police just dumped us there and did nothing to protect women," said Hamilton, referring to the zone north of Vancouver's Hastings Street as well as the Downtown Eastside.

 

Trust broke down between women on the streets and the Vancouver police as "a different kind of violent customer" began to prey unchecked on women who increasingly used hard drugs to cope, Hamilton told an intently listening Commissioner Wally Oppal.

 

"Many women turned to drugs, who before the 1984 injunction (clearing sex workers out of residential areas) weren't involved with drugs,"said Hamilton. "I lost many friends to drugs and then in the late 80s, early 90s, women started disappearing and some, like Cheryl Ann Joe, were found brutally murdered."

 

Sex workers set up what Hamilton called a "meaningful dialogue" with the Vancouver Police Department that met as often as once a week, but at the same time, she said "there was a lot of mistrust because police were enforcing a law that turned us into criminals."

 

Vancouver police also were "in denial" about the soaring numbers of women going missing in the Downtown Eastside, said Hamilton. But she said when she tried to provide a safe place for sex trade workers to do business and get food and clothing, by opening Grandma's House at Princess and East Hastings Street, the police shut the house down, calling it a brothel.

 

Both de Vries and Hamilton said the Vancouver police have reached out recently to women in the Downtown Eastside, through a female sex trade liaison officer and regular neighbourhood meetings, but much more has to be done.

 

Oppal has said he hopes the panels will help him write meaningful recommendations in his final report, due in June 2012 ...

[Kate von Katz 49953]

This whole thing makes me so angry, and disgusted in the government.

 

They have a chance to at least try to smooth things over by just giving a bit of funding and some respect to these grassroots groups. And to stop acting like street girls are garbage.

 

They messed up by not acting on Picton fast enough. They are making it worse by handling the fallout with such ... distance. At the risk of sounding cliche: where is the humanity?

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for Postmedia News, 7 Mar 2012:

 

http://www.canada.com/Pickton+inquiry+orders+disclosure+vetted+version+detective+manuscript/6266841/story.html

 

The unpublished book written by the first Vancouver police officer to investigate tips about serial killer Robert Pickton was ordered disclosed Wednesday at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry.

 

But first it should be vetted to exclude the private thoughts of Det. Const. Lori Shenher, inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal ruled.

 

"It's a lengthy one - 370 pages," Oppal said.

 

He said Shenher's unpublished book contains opinions of various people within the management of the Vancouver police department.

 

The book "deals with former police chiefs and her private thoughts about former police chiefs," Oppal said.

 

Shenher also offers her opinions on why Pickton wasn't caught sooner, he added.

 

Shenher testified earlier at the inquiry that she almost quit because she found it frustrating investigating the missing women case. She testified that she felt Pickton was the only viable suspect after receiving tips about Pickton in 1998 and 1999.

 

One of the tips was that a woman had witnessed Pickton butchering a woman's body in his barn, where he often butchered pigs.

 

Cameron Ward, the lawyer for the families of 25 murdered women, made an application last January for Shenher's unpublished book to be disclosed.

 

Ward argued there should be no privacy issue because Shenher planned to publish the book and had a contract with McClelland & Stewart.

 

Oppal read the manuscript before making his ruling.

 

Ward said he would like the full manuscript marked as an exhibit and put in a sealed envelope, because he plans to appeal the ruling.

 

"I'm going to seek a judicial review," Ward said.

 

David Crossin, the lawyer representing the Vancouver Police Union at the inquiry, told Oppal that he will contact Shenher and together they will vet the document and return it for review by Oppal.

 

Ward pointed out that "time is of the essence" and he would like to have the document before he begins his cross-exam of VPD managers, including a deputy chief, next week.

 

Starting Monday, the inquiry heard the testimony of four Vancouver police managers.

 

On Wednesday, the inquiry is resuming the cross-examination of Don Adam, the former team commander of Project Evenhanded, the joint VPD-RCMP investigation started in January 2001.

 

Adam maintains that the investigation at first reviewed what the VPD had done and then began compiling a list of potential serial killer suspects, which included Pickton.

 

A review by Vancouver police Deputy Chief Doug LePard was critical of Project Evenhanded for failing to properly assess Pickton as a suspect sooner.

 

Adam said his mandate was to review the VPD's investigation of the missing women from the Downtown Eastside, along with a number of unsolved murders to determine whether they were the work of one or more serial killers.

 

He pointed out that it wouldn't make sense for Project Evenhanded to begin focusing on Pickton or another suspect before the review was completed.

 

"That would have spun out of control and been a disaster," Adam told the inquiry Wednesday

....

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 8 Mar 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/managers+felt+DTES+officer+suffered+from+Stockholm+Syndrome+inquiry+told/6272862/story.html

 

Senior Vancouver police managers thought Const. Dave Dickson, the officer who first brought a list of missing women to their attention, suffered from Stockholm Syndrome because he worked with activist groups in the Downtown Eastside.

"Most of the bosses thought he had been Stockholmed," retired Vancouver police Staff Sgt. Doug MacKay-Dunn recalled today at the Missing Women inquiry.

 

The managers felt that Dickson, who was the VPD's community liaison officer for Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES), had worked too long in the district and begun to identify more with the activist groups he dealt with.

 

Senior VPD managers felt that Dickson suffered Stockholm Syndrome, a term used to describe a psychological condition in which kidnapped hostages begin feeling empathy for their kidnappers.

 

MacKay-Dunn was trying to explain why the original list of missing women wasn't taken seriously.

 

Another factor, he said, is that an activist group had earlier presented a list of missing women, but police had investigated and accounted for all the women.

 

So police managers didn't want to take Dickson's list seriously and allocate resources until it could be proved they were really missing and not another false alarm.

 

"It wasn't believed, which was a problem," MacKay-Dunn recalled.

 

He said he took the list seriously, mainly because Dickson said the list of women had stopped picking up their welfare cheques. Dickson felt the women had met foul play, and MacKay-Dunn said he held the same view.

 

"I thought he was invaluable," he said of Dickson's work in the DTES.

 

MacKay-Dunn said he asked Kim Rossmo, who was in charge of the department's geographic profiling unit, to look at the issue of missing women to prove it wasn't a figment of Dickson's imagination.

 

Rossmo found that there was a suspicious spike in the number of women being reported missing in the DTES. He wanted the VPD to issue a warning that there was a possible serial killer preying on women.

 

But the warning was nixed by Insp. Fred Biddlecombe, then in charge of the homicide squad and the missing persons unit.

 

Biddlecombe, who will testify next week, felt there wasn't any evidence of a serial killer.

 

MacKay-Dunn testified that if two dozen women had been reported missing from a wealthy neighbourhood such as Shaughnessy, there would have been political pressure from city council and the mayor, who is chairman of the police board, to solve the problem.

 

But there was a pervasive attitude among senior VPD managers that the women reported missing were "just hookers" who were transient and would be found eventually, he said.

 

Police assigned only one officer, Constable Lori Shenher, to try to find the missing women. The VPD later added two detectives to the investigation but it became stalled, the inquiry was told...

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 4 Apr 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Probe+look+into+Missing+Women+inquiry+staff+harassment+allegations/6410597/story.html

 

The head of the Missing Women inquiry announced Wednesday he has appointed an independent investigator to probe allegations of workplace harassment made by former inquiry staff.

 

"I am outraged by these anonymous allegations and I take them very seriously," Wally Oppal said in a statement.

 

He was responding to allegations made in a National Post story, which alleged that five former inquiry staff were subjected to demeaning, sexist and disrespectful comments.

 

Oppal said commission counsel Art Vertlieb was shocked by the accusations and made Oppal aware of the matter after he was interviewed last Friday by a National Post reporter.

 

"Neither I, nor senior counsel had any knowledge of this kind of behaviour at the Commission," Oppal said.

 

"There have been no formal complaints made and no former employees have come forward with allegations," he said.

 

"Had anyone come to me or to senior counsel, we would have immediately launched an investigation and the person responsible would have been dealt with accordingly," Oppal added. "Upon learning of these allegations, we engaged the services of an experienced independent investigator (Delayne Sartison, Q.C.) to look into the allegations."

 

Oppal made the announcement before the inquiry began Wednesday morning.

 

Cameron Ward, the lawyer representing the families of Pickton's victims at the inquiry, said his clients were shocked by the allegations.

 

"I'm very disturbed by this, given the nature of the inquiry's work" he told reporters during a break in the inquiry. "I hope it gets resolved quickly . . . These recent allegations come out of the blue and are appalling."

 

Ravi Hira, a lawyer at the inquiry representing Earl Moulton, a retired RCMP assistant commissioner, said the allegations also took him by surprise.

 

"I have seen no evidence of that in the course of my involvement in the inquiry," he said.

 

Lilliane Beaudoin, the sister of one of Pickton's victims, said she hoped the latest allegations are untrue.

 

She said the allegations serve to further undermine the credibility of the inquiry, which has been beset by a series of problems from the start.

 

"We're frustrated," Beaudoin added. "With all the ups and downs, it's like being on a roller-coaster."

 

The inquiry was to hear the resumption of testimony Wednesday of Vancouver police Const. Lori Shenher, the first officer to investigate the women being reported missing.

 

Her testimony was adjourned after Ward applied to have access to an unpublished book Shenher wrote about the Pickton case.

 

The inquiry has heard how Shenher was frustrated while working on the case back in 1998 and 1999, when she received credible tips about Pickton, who became the prime suspect.

 

The Missing Women inquiry, which began last Oct. 11, is probing why it took so long to catch serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton, who is believed to have killed more than four dozen women before he was arrested in 2002.

 

The inquiry has heard how police did not properly investigate the women disappearing from the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

 

Police refused to believe at the time that a serial killer was preying on women.

[SamanthaEvans 166766]

I've gotta say, from my perspective here in Vancouver, this inquiry looks more and more like a circus as the weeks go by. In my admittedly limited circle, people are asking questions about who benefits most from these claims of sexual harassment and how these allegations may be used as yet one more way to discredit what has been a profoundly flawed inquiry from before it started. It looks very much like, rather than setting things to rest for the victims' families and the general public, it will increase anxiety.

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 10 Apr 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/Pickton+victim+survived+1997+attack+testify+Missing+Women+inquiry/6437410/story.html

 

A woman who survived a 1997 knife attack by serial killer Robert Pickton won't be testifying at the Missing Women inquiry.

 

Art Vertlieb, counsel for the commission of inquiry, told Commissioner Wally Oppal today that the woman wants to get on with her life and doesn't want to relive the horror of what she went through.

 

"It's clear she has turned her life around," Vertlieb told the inquiry.

 

He said the women is married and has children and is concerned about her privacy.

 

"She very much wants to put this behind her," Vertlieb said.

 

"She suffered a horrific event, knifed multiple times, facing certain death," he added.

 

"We don't want to in any way to add to her burden," Vertlieb said.

 

He said the inquiry can meet its mandate, to examine why charges against Pickton were dropped in 1998, by calling the prosecutors who handled the case: Richard Romano, now a judge, and Randi Connor, who joined the prosecution service in 1980.

 

Cameron Ward, the lawyer at the inquiry representing 25 murdered and missing women, said his clients respect the victim's decision not to testify.

 

"We appreciate the difficult circumstances she might find herself in," he said.

 

Still, Ward said, his clients see the Crown stay of charges against Pickton, which occurred on Jan. 27, 1998, as a pivotal event requiring more witnesses, including the testimony of Peter Ritchie, Pickton's defence lawyer at the time.

 

Ward said the Crown decision is very important to the families of Pickton's victims because "19 or 20 of their loves ones were killed after that."

 

He added: "Had he (Pickton) been prosecuted, many of their loved ones might be alive today."

 

The 1997 victim's name was banned by the Pickton trial judge to protect her right to privacy, and continues to this day.

 

She is referred to as Ms. Anderson at the inquiry or Victim '97.

 

Pickton had picked up the woman, at the time a sex worker in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, on March 23, 1997 and took her to his farm in Port Coquitlam.

 

After having sex, Pickton slapped a handcuff on one wrist of the woman, who began freaking out and throwing anything she could find at Pickton to keep him from getting her other wrist handcuffed.

 

They began to fight and the woman told police she feared for her life, so grabbed a kitchen knife and slashed Pickton across the neck.

 

Pickton got the knife and repeated stabbed the woman.

 

She told police that when Pickton loosened his grip on her, she ran out of his place to the street and flagged down a passing car.

 

The woman later died twice at the hospital but was revived and survived.

 

Pickton was charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon, aggravated assault and unlawful confinement.

 

The charges were approved by then prosecutor Richard Romano, now a judge.

 

Connor recalled she was assigned to take over the file sometime after Oct. 22, 1997.

 

She said the victim needed to testify at the trial, which was set for five days, starting Feb. 2, 1998.

 

The inquiry's mandate is to investigate why Pickton wasn't caught by police sooner.

 

Part of the inquiry's mandate is to probe why charges were stayed by the Crown against Pickton.

 

Connor testified that Pickton had no previous criminal record and was released on $2,000 bail after the 1997 attack, despite a Crown notation that Pickton was an associate of the Hells Angels.

 

The inquiry heard earlier that police had been told that the Hells Angels, which had a "booze can" across the street from the Pickton farm, had killed a full-patch Hells Angels member one night and his body was disposed of on the Pickton farm.

 

Pickton's farm was cluttered with old cars, machinery and piles of dirt, which the Pickton brothers sold as topsoil.

 

It also had a barn where Pickton often butchered pigs at night.

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/groups+boycott+policy+forums+flawed+Missing+Women+inquiry/6436495/story.html

 

Fifteen groups, including aboriginal organizations, plan to boycott the policy forums next month of the "flawed" Missing Women inquiry, it was announced today.

 

"The commission has lost all credibility among aboriginal, sex work, human rights and women's organizations that work with and are comprised of the very women most affected by the issues this inquiry is charged with investigating," the groups said in an open letter sent today to Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal.

 

"We are not prepared to lend the credibility of our respective organizations' names and expertise to this inquiry, which can only be described as a deeply flawed and illegitimate process," the letter said.

 

"When this inquiry was finally called, we fully expected it to be a meaningful and inclusive process..." the letter added. "However, it has become painfully clear over the course of the inquiry's proceedings that this inquiry is not a meaningful and inclusive process.

 

"Instead, it has served to repeat the same discrimination and exclusion that we had hoped it would uncover."

 

The letter was signed by the Aboriginal Front Door Society, Amnesty International Canada, Atira Women's Resources Society, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, Battered Women's Support Services, Carrier Sekani Tribal Council, Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United against Violence Society, Ending Violence Association of B.C., Feb. 14 Women's Memorial March Committee, First Nations Summit, Providing Alternatives Counselling & Education Society, Pivot Legal Society, Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, Union Gospel Mission, West Coast LEAF and WISH Drop-in Centre Society.

 

All the groups, along with the Native Women's Association of Canada, were granted standing at the inquiry but withdrew last year when the provincial government refused to provide legal funding for the groups to hire lawyers to examine documents and cross-examine witnesses at the inquiry, which is probing why police didn't catch serial killer Robert Pickton earlier.

 

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said at a news conference in Vancouver today that the inquiry has been a complete failure.

 

"Mr. Oppal is beating a dead horse," he told reporters.

 

"This inquiry is not working and we're moving on," said Lisa Yellow-Quill of Battered Women's Support Services.

 

She said they are now asking for a national inquiry to look into the issues of systemic racism and sexism when dealing with aboriginal people and other marginalized people, such as sex workers.

 

Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, also issued a statement today, saying that as the Missing Women inquiry is approaching its end, "we feel deep regret that no measure of justice has been achieved. We had hoped important lessons could have been learned, which may have served to prevent similar harm and tragedy from occurring in the future."...

 

The inquiry plans to hold policy forums next month before Oppal hands in his final report to government by June 30.

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 16 Apr 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/Missing+Person+file+closed+days+after+opened+inquiry+told/6467655/story.html

 

The civilian working in the Vancouver police Missing Persons unit closed a file days after it was opened for a young woman who disappeared and was a victim of serial killer Robert Pickton.

 

Lila Purcell recalled that her older sister, Dorothy, who died in 2006, was very upset with Sandy Cameron, the civilian working in the missing person unit, who said she was closing the file in November 1996.

 

Dorothy had told Cameron she had received a hang-up call one night and passed the number along to Cameron, who called the number - the women who answered said Tanya had been partying the night before at the house.

 

"She (Cameron) went on and on about Tanya abandoning her child," the sister recalled, adding Cameron threatened to call social services to take Tanya's 11-month-old baby, who was being cared for by Dorothy.

 

Cameron told Tanya's mother that she was closing the file because Tanya was just partying, which is what Cameron suspected from the start, the sister recalled.

 

She said her sister wrote a letter of complaint about how the missing person report was handled.

 

Tanya Holyk was reported missing on Nov. 3, 1996.

 

Her DNA was found at the Pickton farm seven months after his arrest in 2002.

 

Pickton was charged with Tanya's murder but was part of the second trial, which resulted in charges stayed in 2010.

 

"I just wish the investigation had gone deeper," Lila Purcell said.

 

"I wish more had been done," she added.

 

"She had become a file, a number, that was just put aside," the aunt said.

 

"I believe if it was done properly, this man (Pickton) would have been caught sooner and perhaps a few lives would have been saved."

 

Purcell said she helped raise Tanya, who was very close to Purcell's own daughter.

 

"She was like a daughter to me," she said of Tanya.

 

She added that no one from the Vancouver police department contacted her about Tanya's disappearance.

 

Purcell and her sister were from a family of 14 children.

 

Tanya was reported missing after she failed to show up for her birthday on Oct. 22, 1996, which was out of character for her.

 

Dorothy began phoning people to locate Tanya and eventually called the VPD missing person unit.

 

At the time, Dorothy thought that she was speaking to police and didn't realize that Cameron was a civilian in the missing persons unit.

 

The inquiry has heard that Cameron offended many families who reported their loved ones missing.

 

Cameron was often dismissive of families of missing women and sometimes made racist comments.

 

Purcell said her niece had a happy childhood and grew up in east Vancouver but started doing cocaine after she met her boyfriend, Gary, and eventually began working as a street sex worker.

 

"We were not able to save her from the life she fell into," Purcell said.

 

She recalled Tanya went into rehab when she learned she was pregnant.

 

Tim Dickson, the lawyer at the inquiry representing Vancouver police, apologized to Purcell for how her family was treated by police.

 

"The Vancouver police truly regrets how your niece's missing report was handled and Pickton wasn't caught sooner," the lawyer said.

 

Dickson told Purcell that her niece's file was not closed but was later investigated by detectives in the Missing Person unit.

 

The inquiry was told earlier that Cameron was eventually transferred out of the unit, almost four years after the VPD received the first complaint about her.

 

The inquiry first heard from families of Pickton's victim last October, when the inquiry began.

 

Daphne Pierre, the sister of Jackie Murdock, whose DNA was found on the Pickton farm, reported her 25-year-old sister missing on Aug. 14, 1997.

 

She went to see the RCMP in Prince George, which said they would send the report to Vancouver police.

 

But the RCMP never sent the file until a year later.

 

"I assumed Vancouver police were looking for her," recalled Pierre.

 

At the time she reported her sister missing, Pierre was living in Prince George.

 

And when she moved to Surrey in 1998, she learned the VPD didn't receive the missing report from the RCMP.

 

She said she would have appreciated more frequent contact by police.

 

But she didn't hear until 2004 that Jackie's DNA was found on Pickton's farm, but didn't have enough to charge him

 

In 2010, she said, police revealed that her Jackie's DNA was found on a used condom wrapper and police believed she was killed by Pickton.

 

"I don't think they did a very good job," Pierre said.

 

"They didn't even ask for a picture of her," she recalled.

 

Pierre said Jackie had five children and left home in July 1996 and hitchhiked to Vancouver.

 

Pierre and her husband went looking for Jackie three months later and found her across the street from the Balmoral Hotel.

 

"What are you doing down here?" Pierre recalled asking her sister.

 

"Mom wants you home for Christmas. Your kids miss you," Pierre told Jackie, who was doing cocaine, alcohol and pills.

 

She said the last time she heard from Jackie was in November 1996.

 

Jackie called and was with a male friend, who was driving in Surrey, where Pierre and her husband were living at the time.

 

"Come here and have coffee," Pierre recalled saying to Jackie.

 

She could hear Jackie ask her male friend if they could drop by to visit her oldest sister.

 

"No, we don't have time," she heard the man say.

 

"That was the last time I talked to her," Pierre said.

 

She added she hasn't given up in her search to locate her sister's remains.

 

Janet Henry was reported missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside by her sister, Sandra Gagnon.

 

The sister called 911, saying her sister may be suicidal because she had been raped.

 

Even though a man had been charged for the rape, Henry was feeling down after the crime committed against her.

 

Gagnon recalled her sister had previously been the victim of another serial killer, Clifford Olson.

 

"He drugged her and she didn't remember what happened," she told the inquiry.

 

"She was fortunate to get away," she said, adding her sister may have become one of Pickton's victim."

 

Janet's DNA was never found at Pickton's farm.

 

Gagnon, in her first contact with police, asked them to check Janet's room at 367 E. Hastings.

 

But police didn't check her room for 19 days, the inquiry was told.

 

Gagnon, who said she talked to her sister almost every day, had heard her 36-year-old sister was working the streets at the time she disappeared.

 

Janet had a daughter who is now 27, she said, and she promised the daughter she would do everything she could to find Janet.

 

"Why didn't they take it seriously?" Gagnon said of the police response.

 

"Police didn't do a lot of things they were supposed to be doing," she said, crying.

 

Gagnon did credit one Vancouver police officer, Det.-Const. Lori Shenher.

 

"She was always there to listen," she said.

 

Police told her that they believe Janet ended up on Pickton's farm.

 

"It was hard to go home to Alert Bay with no body," she said.

 

She said she had another sister raped and murdered, "so that's why I became a fighter for Janet."

 

She recalled the night the family heard about Robert Pickton's arrest, Gagnon's son took his own life.

 

Gagnon said one of her brothers drank himself to death, and her twin bother was killed after being struck by a police car.

 

"It's been tough," she said.

 

"I hope one day we'll find answers for Janet."

 

Here are the other family witnesses to be heard this week: Marilyn Kraft step-mother of Cindy Feliks, deceased; Bonnie Fowler (sister of Georgina Papin, deceased); and Lisa Bigjohn (sister of Mona Wilson, deceased).

 

On Wednesday the inquiry is expected to hear the testimony of Roxanne Smith, the victims services worker who was present in 1998 when Crown counsel Randi Connor interviewed a women called Ms. Anderson at the inquiry.

 

Pickton was charged with the attempted murder of Anderson after a knife attack in 1997.

 

Anderson survived after she slashed Pickton with the knife and ran to the street and flagged down a passing car.

 

Connor testified last week that she decided to stay the charges on Jan. 26, 1998, because she felt Anderson could not testify because she was too high on drugs.

 

She recalled she felt it was up to police to reactivate the charges if Anderson was in better shape.

 

Anderson did testify in 2003 against Pickton at his preliminary hearings, where he was accused of multiple murders.

 

Richard Romano, now a judge, is set to testify Thursday about his role in staying the charges against Pickton in 1998.

 

At that time, Romano was the administrative Crown for Port Coquitlam...

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 17 Apr 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/Mother+tells+inquiry+about+shocking+phone+call+2002+about+missing+daughter/6474068/story.html

 

After Marilyn Renter's daughter Cindy Feliks was reported missing in 1999, the first contact she had with police came in 2002 with a shocking phone call.

 

"They said Cindy's DNA was found at the [Pickton] farm," the mother told the Missing Women inquiry Tuesday.

 

"That floored me," she said, adding she found it reprehensible that police informed her by phone

while she was living in Calgary.

 

"They should have called Calgary police and asked them to come tell me about it," Renter said. "It would have been nice because I didn't have any support at home at the time."

 

Even more shocking was the evidence that emerged at Pickton's trial in 2007 about where Cindy's DNA was found -- in packages of meat in a freezer at the Port Coquitlam farm of serial killer Robert Pickton.

 

She said she almost collapsed when she heard the evidence.

 

Renter recalled her daughter Cindy was one of four children of her husband Don, whom she married in 1960 in Vancouver. Don and his kids were from Detroit and Renter said she adopted all the kids, who lived in Vancouver for many years.

 

She split up with her husband when Cindy was in her teens, when Cindy's father moved to Florida, she said.

 

Cindy ran away from home and went to Florida to visit her dad, who gave his daughter alcohol and marijuana and convinced Cindy to have sex with him, the mother recalled.

 

"Needless to say, that's what started it all," Renter explained about Cindy's drug use.

 

"I sent her money to come back."

 

She recalled Cindy's youngest sister, Audrey, also got into drugs. Audrey had said she reported Cindy missing to police in 1997, her mother said, but the record shows the Vancouver police missing person report wasn't filed until Feb. 5, 1999.

 

Audrey had asked police not to contact her stepmother, which led to Renting having no contact from police until December 2002.

 

"I was her mother," she testified. "Her stepmother, but I raised her since she was five."

 

Tim Dickson, the lawyer representing Vancouver police at the inquiry, apologized to Renter on behalf of police that serial killer Robert Pickton wasn't caught sooner.

 

"I hope with all my heart that you apology is heartfelt," Renter responded. "I thank you for that."

 

Pickton was charged with the first-degree murder of Cindy Feliks but the charge was stayed in 2010 after the Crown decided not to proceed with a second trial.

 

Pickton was found guilty of six murders at his first trial in 2007.

 

Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal thanked Renter "for the strength you have shown for coming here and sharing what you went through...it's unfortunate you have to live with the tragedy, pain and suffering that you've gone through."

 

Renter became choked with emotion.

 

"As you can see, after 15 years it still hurts," she said.

 

Renter had some advice for changes to police procedure.

 

"If women go missing, don't wait till 20 people are missing before you start investigating just because there are no bodies," she said.

 

"Don't treat drug addicts and prostitutes as they're throwaway people, they're not. They have children of their own, daughters of their own that we're left to raise, and it's a tragedy," Renter said.

 

Her advice was met by applause by families of victims attending the inquiry, which is probing why Pickton wasn't caught before February 2002.

 

After his arrest, he told an undercover officer that he killed 49 women.

 

He was convicted in 2007 of the murders of six women, including Mona Wilson, whose eldest sister Lisa Bigjohn testified Tuesday about the pain she went through when Mona disappeared.

 

"The system failed her as well as the other missing women," she said. "I didn't want her to die like that."

 

At one point, she turned to Oppal and asked: "You understand how I feel? How I live in hell?"

 

Bigjohn added she wanted to know why police failed to protect her sister.

 

"That's why we're here -- to find out what happened," Oppal said. "I wish I had some easy answers."

 

Oppal must conclude his final report to government by June 30.

 

Earlier in the day, three sisters of Georgina Papin -- Bonnie Fowler, Elena Papin and Cynthia Cardinal -- told the inquiry about their troubled younger years, when they siblings were separated and placed in foster care.

 

Fowler told Oppal that Georgina was put in an Indian residential school and ran away from home at 14 to live in Las Vegas, where she became involved in the sex trade.

 

Georgina had seven children, including a daughter in Las Vegas, and led a fairly normal life in Mission until a breakup with her boyfriend in 1999, which triggered her fall into drug use, the loss of her children and doing sex work in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

 

She was reported missing in 2001. Her DNA was later found on the Pickton farm.

 

On Wednesday, the inquiry will return to probing the Crown decision in 1998 to stay charges against Pickton, including aggravated assault and attempted murder arising from a March 1997 knife attack on a Downtown Eastside sex worker.

 

Pickton had brought the woman to his farm and tried to handcuff her. She fought him off and grabbed a kitchen knife, slashing his neck.

 

Pickton stabbed her a number of times before the woman, known as Ms. Anderson, managed to run to the street and pass down a passing car.

 

Roxanna Smith, a victim services worker who was present during the Crown's interview of the woman in 1998, will testify Wednesday, to be followed Thursday by the testimony of Judge Richard Romano, who in 1998 was the administrative Crown who oversaw the decision by Crown counsel Randi Connor to stay the charges against Pickton...

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 18 Apr 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/Former+Crown+worker+memory+meeting+Pickton+attack+victim+inquiry+told/6480551/story.html

 

The Missing Women inquiry heard today that a former Crown victim services worker who met with a victim of a 1997 knife attack by Robert Pickton had no memory of the meeting.

 

Roxana Smith testified that she recalled attending the meeting in January 1998, but could not recall the condition of the crime victim, whose name is banned and is referred to as Ms. Anderson at the inquiry.

 

"I cannot recall," she said when asked if the Crown requested to refer Anderson to any services that might assist her, such as drug counselling.

 

Smith said she probably would have taken notes if she had referred the woman to services and assumed those notes would become part of the Crown's file.

 

The inquiry was told earlier that the Crown's file on the 1997 incident was mistakenly destroyed by a mobile shredding service, along with 50 boxes of Crown files.

 

The Crown policy was to preserve the file for 75 because it was a serious crime.

 

After the meeting that Smith attended with Anderson and Crown counsel Randi Connor, the charges of attempted murder, unlawful confinement and aggravated assault were stayed against Pickton.

 

Connor testified last week that she decided to stay the charges on Jan. 26, 1998 -- a week before the five-day trial was to start -- because Anderson attended the meeting high on drugs, was nodding off and couldn't articulate the evidence.

 

Connor pointed out she left the door open -- charges could have been reactivated for up to a year -- for police to try to get Anderson in shape so she could testify against Pickton.

 

The prosecutor said it was not her responsibility to try to get the woman help by making sure she got proper rest or get into a rehab program.

 

On Thursday, the inquiry will hear the testimony of Judge Richard Romano, who in 1998 was the administrative Crown for Port Coquitlam and had approved Connor's staying of charges against Pickton.

 

The charges stemmed from a March 23, 1997, knife attack on Anderson, a Downtown Eastside sex worker who was picked up by Pickton and taken to his farm in Port Coquitlam.

 

The woman recalled that when Pickton put a handcuff on one of her wrists, she began fighting him off and throwing things at him. She told police she grabbed a kitchen knife and slashed Pickton's neck.

 

Pickton got the knife and stabbed Anderson a number of times, she told police. When he loosened his grip on her, Anderson ran to the street and flagged down a passing car.

 

She later died in hospital but was revived. Pickton ended up in the same hospital and police found a handcuff key in his pocket, which was used to remove the handcuff dangling from Anderson's wrist.

 

After the charges were stayed, Pickton went on to kill 19 women, mainly drug-addicted survival sex workers from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

 

Many of the women had children and were loved by their families, the inquiry was told this week by family members of the murdered and missing women.

 

After Pickton's arrest in 2002, police made sure Anderson was fit to testify against Pickton at his preliminary hearing in 2003, when he was facing multiple murder counts...

[Guest dame*****n09*]

Noticed there weren't many replies to this thread. Wanted to let you know I at least am following with interest.

[Guest dame*****n09*]

You're welcome :) The more widely this gets spread around the better.

It's good that these issues of rights and safety - the bad and the good - are being aired in court, a forum where they can be responsibly and rationally discussed. But, wouldn't it be nice if political leaders could discuss them responsibly and rationally?

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 30 Apr 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Keynote+address+tonight+kicks+Missing+Women+inquiry+public+forums/6542128/story.html

 

A member of the Oregon attorney general's sex assault task force will present a keynote address tonight as a lead-in to the Missing Women Inquiry's six public forums, which start Tuesday.

 

Doreen Binder will discuss innovative approaches to protecting vulnerable women at a presentation tonight (April 30) from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Vancouver Public Library, Peter Kaye Room.

 

The lecture is open is to the public and will be streamed live on the Missing Women Inquiry's website (

http://www.missingwomeninquiry.ca

).

 

Binder will discuss such topics as community policing and developing relationships to keep women safe, the importance of holistic programming and cooperation between police and social services, and how to work with women to build trusting communication that helps to meet their needs.

 

She will also talk about her role in developing Portland's first community court, which opens May 4.

 

Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal announced last week that he plans to hear from an additional 13 witnesses at hearings in May, including former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh, former Vancouver mayor Phillip Owen and the former commanding officer of the B.C. RCMP, Gary Bass.

 

He also he wants to hear from Catherine Galliford, the Mountie who has alleged she experienced sexism and sexual harassment in the RCMP.

 

Galliford will not be called as a witness in the formal hearings but Oppal would like to hear from her at a policy forum on May 8, which will address issues relating to police accountability.

 

Galliford, 44, left active duty four years ago and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. She is being treated at an Ontario facility.

 

Her complaint preceded a class-action lawsuit being filed against the RCMP, which alleges women suffered sex harassment within the force over many years.

 

Formal hearings of the Missing Women inquiry will resume May 9

with the testimony of three officers who worked on the missing omen case, to be followed May 11 with a VPD panel, former Vancouver street nurse Bonnie Fournier and a woman sex worker referred to as "Jane Smith," who apparently survived an attack by serial killer Robert Pickton....

 

Here is the schedule of the public policy forums to be held over the next 10 days:

 

Policy Forum 1: Ensuring the Safety of Vulnerable Women, Session A: Preventing Violence Against Sex Trade Workers

 

Date: Tuesday, May 1

 

Time: 9 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

 

Location: Vancouver Public Library, Peter Kaye Room

 

350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver

 

Policy Forum 1: Ensuring the Safety of Vulnerable Women, Session B: Preventing Violence Against Aboriginal and Rural Women

 

Date: Tuesday, May 1

 

Time: 1:30 p.m. - 4 p.m.

 

Location: Vancouver Public Library, Peter Kaye Room

 

350 West Georgia Street,

 

Vancouver

 

Policy Forum 1: Ensuring the Safety of Vulnerable Women, Session C: Building Strong Police-Community Relationships

 

Date: Thursday, May 3

 

Time: 9 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

 

Location: Vancouver Public Library, Peter Kaye Room

 

350 West Georgia Street,

 

Vancouver

 

Policy Forum 2: Vulnerable and Intimidated Witnesses in the Criminal Justice Process

 

Date: Thursday, May 3

 

Time: 1:30 p.m. - 4 p.m.

 

Location: Vancouver Public Library, Peter Kaye Room

 

350 West Georgia Street

 

Vancouver

 

Policy Forum 3: Improving Missing Person Practices, Session A: Accepting and Investigating Missing Person Reports

 

Date: Monday, May 7

 

Time: 9 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

 

Location: Wosk Centre for Dialogue, Room 420

 

580 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

 

Policy Forum 3: Improving Missing Person Practices, Session B: Police Relationships with Victims' Families, the Community, the Public and the Media

 

Date: Monday, May 7

 

Time: 1:30 p.m. - 4 p.m.

 

Location: Wosk Centre for Dialogue, Room 420

 

580 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

 

Policy Forum 4: Inter-jurisdictional Collaboration and Coordination Among Police

 

Date: Tuesday, May 8

 

Time: 9 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

 

Location: Wosk Centre for Dialogue, Room 420

 

580 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

 

Policy Forum 5: Enhancing Police Accountability

 

Date: Tuesday, May 8

 

Time: 1:30 p.m. - 4 p.m.

 

Location: Wosk Centre for Dialogue, Room 420

 

580 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

 

Policy Forum 6: From Report to Substantive Change - Healing, Reconciliation and Implementation

 

Date: Thursday, May 10

 

Time: 9 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. - 4 p.m.

 

Location: Wosk Centre For Dialogue, Room 320

 

580 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

The Canadian Press reports, 1 May 2012:

 

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120501/bc_pickton_inquiry_sex_workers_120501/20120501/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

 

The missing women inquiry has heard that many services meant to help vulnerable women and sex workers aren't given enough funding to properly function.

 

A collection of current and former sex workers, social justice advocates and police officers revealed their ideas for protecting vulnerable sex workers to the commissioner overseeing the inquiry looking at serial killer Robert Pickton's actions.

 

This is the first of several days of informal policy forums at the inquiry, inviting community groups and members of the public to suggest recommendations for the commission's final report.

 

Commissioner Wally Oppal told a packed room in a downtown Vancouver library that the policy forums present an opportunity to move past the failures of the police and look for ways to prevent more women from disappearing.

 

Oppal says many factors contribute to violence against sex workers and make it more difficult to stop, particularly the distrust the women feel towards the police.

 

Oppal heard that some programs have either closed, are considering closing, or have been forced to scale back their work because their funding has been cut or is uncertain.

 

 

Neal Hall reports for the Vancouver Sun, 1 May 2012:

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/workers+police+discuss+ways+prevent+another+Pickton+preying+vulnerable+women/6549218/story.html

 

Sex trade workers and police gathered today in a small room of the Vancouver Public Library to discuss ways to prevent another serial killer such as Robert Pickton from preying on vulnerable women.

 

Susan Davis, a sex worker for 26 years, said sex workers have a traditional distrust of police because of a history of being arrested for drugs and outstanding warrants for failing to show up in court.

 

She and other sex workers suggested women working the streets tend not to report rapes and violent customers to police because of that fear of arrest.

 

"We're trying to break down that distrust," Vancouver police Insp. Mario Giardini told the public forum, one of six being held by the Missing Women inquiry to try to shape recommendations to the government about how to better protect vulnerable sex workers on the street.

 

"Can there be some discretion by officers so the women can report assaults?" asked inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal.

 

"That should be happening," Giardini said.

 

Const. Judy Robertson with the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit suggested there should be an integrated vice section handling the Lower Mainland.

 

She also suggested a voluntary registry of sex workers, including fingerprints and DNA samples, that would only be used if the sex workers were victims of crime.

 

RCMP Staff-Sgt. Gerard MacNeil, the team commander of Project KARE in Alberta, a squad formed in 2003 to probe a number of unsolved homicides of women found murdered or who went missing, told the forum that KARE has collected the voluntary DNA samples of 1,200 vulnerable people in Alberta.

 

"The sample is the property of the person who gives it to us," MacNeil explained. "They can certainly have the sample back at any time."

 

"Sounds to me like you know they'll die," Davis said.

 

It may sound morbid to collect a person's DNA, but pointed out that not have a person's DNA is a significant impediment to a homicide investigation, MacNeil said.

 

Several speakers suggested there needs to be more funding and better resources for the community organizations that provide support and a safe haven for sex workers.

 

Dave Dickson, a retired Vancouver police officer who spent many years working in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, suggested keeping the WISH Drop-in Centre open 24 hours a day, rather than about five hours each evening, would be beneficial.

 

"We need a 24-hour safe place," Davis said.

 

Sex worker advocate Jamie Lee Hamilton said the city also needs to improve the street lighting and improve the conditions of survival sex workers working the dark streets in industrial areas of the Downtown Eastside.

 

"The same conditions exist today that existed when Pickton preyed on women," Hamilton told the forum.

 

"The environment needs to be changed," Oppal said.

 

"This phase of the inquiry is particularly important," he added. ""We have to make some policy recommendations. How do we prevent this from happening in the future?"

 

Oppal pointed out that violence against vulnerable women is a national problem and he hopes to make recommendations that may be adopted by police forces across Canada...