00:00:00
make stay an up toate part of your daily rhythm with the Atlanta Journal Constitution Savor your morning coffee
00:00:06
and catch up on the latest on the AJC app enrich your commute with our engaging podcast on politics Sports and
00:00:14
culture whether at work or on the move our timely newsletters bring you midday updates anytime anywhere and as your day
00:00:22
winds down dive deep into our captivating articles and videos subscribe now on ajc.com
00:00:28
[Music] the Honda you want is here so Drive in the moment with the versatile CRV or a
00:00:36
cord both named A Car and Driver 10 best and when you're driving a Honda you're driving the brand named Kelly blue books
00:00:43
kbb.com best value brand for [Music] 20123 see dealer for financing details Car and Driver December 2023 based on
00:00:55
2023 brand image Wars from Kelly blook visit kbb.com for more information [Music]
00:00:59
[Applause] n [Music] [Music] welcome to True crb garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
00:01:46
listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who loves sandal season here is the captain just don't
00:01:54
mind my toe fungus it's good to be seen and good to see you thanks for listening
00:01:59
thanks for on a [Music] friend this week we are excited to be featuring bat Squatch by the good Folks
00:02:10
at Rogue alses and Spirits bat Squatch is a delicious hazy India Pale Ale with a 6.7% ABV for years rumors have circled
00:02:21
that deep in the woods on Mount St Helens lives the Fable bat Squatch while there are many tales of bat Squatch they
00:02:29
are all a bit hazy on the details which makes the truth such a juicy mystery this beer is dedicated to the Legend
00:02:37
Garage grade five out of five bottle caps and let's toast and cheers some of our good garage friends first up we have
00:02:45
a cheers to Raquel Hato from Vancouver Washington and a big we like your jib goes out to Rachel in Highland Park
00:02:53
Illinois next we have a double fisted cheers to the hinger twins from Madison Wisconsin and last last but certainly
00:03:00
not least here is a big cheers to the late great FBI agent Brent Frost who is now in a better place agent Frost spent
00:03:08
his life fighting for victims and in one particular case moved mountains to catch
00:03:13
a killer and get Justice for a young woman agent Brent Frost is a hero and we pour a little out for him today cheers
00:03:21
to agent Frost and his family and cheers to everyone who contributed to the Beer
00:03:25
front yeah BW R and beer Ron would you like to hear us talk more about the case the boys on the tracks well you can do
00:03:33
so if you're signed up on patreon or apple subscription and Colonel that's enough of the beers all right everybody
00:03:40
gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime serial killer Robert pton six
00:03:48
counts of second degree murder serial killer 26 women serial killer pig farm pig farm
00:03:56
serial killer p [Music] serial killer our true crime story this week starts off with the missing women from
00:04:13
the low track one by one the women vanished one day they're on the street struggling to eek out an existence
00:04:22
despite obstacles confronting their daily lives and then the next day they are gone
00:04:30
at first maybe it was five women but then five became 10 and 10 became 20 and the cycle
00:04:38
continued new girls and women found themselves on the streets of the low track and then they too vanished the
00:04:46
women continued to disappear Into Thin Air never to be seen again as the years passed 30 missing
00:04:55
became 40 as it turns out some of these women were taken by a monster a serial killer one so evil that he mangled and
00:05:07
disposed of their bodies in unspeakable ways this is true crime garage and this is the case of Canada's
00:05:17
most notorious serial killer serial killer Robert Pon six counts of second degree murder serial
00:05:26
killer 26 women serial killer pig farm pig farm Vancouver Canada a city on Canada's western coast
00:05:36
surrounded by mountains famous for its ethnically diverse population of over 600,000 people within the city limits
00:05:44
and 2.5 million in the Greater Vancouver area like most large cities Vancouver has its seis side but one historic part
00:05:54
of the city the downtown east side is known as being one of the worst inner City environments in North America this
00:06:02
area known as the low track is the poorest neighborhood in all of Canada and it is a hotbed of drugs and abuse
00:06:12
poverty violence mental illness homelessness and sex work this including underage prostitution about 8,000 people
00:06:23
live in this forsaken neighborhood and a large portion of the population of low track area is Aboriginal or First Nation
00:06:31
Canadians the area was described by missing people.net as follows quote no other slum or ghetto in the country
00:06:40
matches the squalor of this 10 block Urban Wasteland with its rundown hotels and pawn shops stained and fractured
00:06:48
sidewalks gutters and Alleyways littered with garbage used condoms and discarded
00:06:54
hypodermic needles end quote the low track is Vancouver's equivalent of the infamous Skid Row drug gangs
00:07:03
stake out their territory drug addicted women sell their bodies to pay for drugs
00:07:08
and the neighborhood has the highest HIV infection rate in North America with an
00:07:13
estimate 25% of the population being infected one of the most disturbing aspects of the
00:07:19
low track is the so-called Kitty stroll where child sex workers walk the streets
00:07:26
prostituting themselves to whoever comes along again again according to missing people.net a 1995 survey of downtown
00:07:34
east sides working Girls Revealed that 73% of them entered the sex trade as children and the same percent were unwed
00:07:43
mothers averaging three children each of those 90% had lost children to the state
00:07:51
fewer than half knew where their children were sometime in the early 1990s no one is really sure exactly when
00:07:59
men but female sex workers Andor drug addicted women started disappearing from the low track of course it is impossible
00:08:08
to say when the first disappearance occurred or who was the first victim to vanish this area was constantly seeing
00:08:17
transient people coming in and out dying of disease or drug overdoses and living
00:08:23
under the radar with no fixed addresses and sometimes evading law enforcement themselves of course some women surely
00:08:30
just moved away without leaving a forwarding address died of natural or from drugs but eventually around the
00:08:38
mid90s people familiar with the low track began to notice that there was seemingly a discernible pattern of
00:08:45
downtown Eastside women disappearing Without a Trace specifically in September of 1998 an
00:08:53
Aboriginal group sent The Vancouver Police Department a list of victims alleged edly murdered in downtown east
00:09:01
side with a demand for a thorough investigation authorities examined the 40 person list and ruled out some as
00:09:11
some of the listed victims had died from disease or drugs and others had left Vancouver and were found to be alive and
00:09:21
elsewhere but Vancouver PD detective Dave Dixon Drew up a smaller list of low trck women
00:09:29
who seem to have simply vanished many of them had disappeared in 1997 and the summer of
00:09:37
1998 he came up with 17 names then detective Dave Dixon inspired the VPD to create an investigative task
00:09:47
force the official search for Vancouver's missing women began so like you were saying some of these
00:09:55
individuals were found so the question becomes do we actually have a problem so in July of
00:10:01
1998 they are going to open up an investigation to figure out do we have a problem that's exactly right and the
00:10:08
person that's going to head up this investigation her name is Lori shener she's a Vancouver detective Constable
00:10:15
that had experience with the sex workers of the low track Lori had worked the streets posing as a prostitute to catch
00:10:23
and arrest John's who canvased the low track she had seen the worst of it by this time the violence and degradation
00:10:30
these women were subjected to on a daily basis she also was acutely aware that the Vancouver Police Department officers
00:10:39
who were assigned to the rundown area were generally callous to the situations of the women they were supposed to
00:10:47
protect often ignoring their complaints as either deserved or simply collateral to their chosen Lifestyles but by late
00:10:57
1998 the situation could no longer be ignored we already talked about detective Dixon well Dixon continued to
00:11:05
update his list and reported that the list now contained the names of 35 missing women every one of these women
00:11:14
was a sex worker or drug addict and many were of indigenous descent keep in mind
00:11:20
this is a detective who has already sorted out the persons who died of natural causes or died from disease or
00:11:26
drugs or moved out of the area he's only putting people on this list that are truly missing detective Lori Shiner no
00:11:35
longer with The Vancouver Police Department now goes by the name Laurer shener would later write a book about
00:11:43
the years spent on the missing women investigation and one of the assertions made in the book called The Lonely
00:11:51
section of hell is that few in the VPD appear to take these missing women cases seriously the low track was a non
00:12:00
priority area and these women considered to be the dregs of society were just not
00:12:06
important but the citizens the good citizens in the area were convinced that there was a malevolent Force at work and
00:12:16
they were scared in December of 1995 a young drug addicted sex worker named Sarah D wrote in her Diary quote am I
00:12:27
next is he watching me now stalking me like a predator in its prey waiting for some perfect spot time or my stupid
00:12:37
mistake how does one choose a victim good question if I knew that I would never get snuffed Sarah was reported
00:12:46
missing in April of 1998 and her name became the 17th on the list of truly missing
00:12:55
women it's not clear when thoughts of a serial killer began to materialize detective Lori shener says
00:13:04
now that at the time VPD did not believe that one person was responsible for the
00:13:10
disappearances of all of these women the only Common Thread between the victims were that they were engaged in the sex
00:13:17
trade and had drug dependencies there did not seem to be any other similarities and The Vancouver Police
00:13:26
Department stated publicly that they did did not believe a serial killer was responsible but according to the BBC
00:13:34
despite the lack of any tangible evidence whatsoever several officers within the Vancouver Police Department
00:13:42
began to suspect that a serial killer was in fact at work one of them was detective inspector Dr Kim
00:13:51
rosmo the first police officer in Canada to obtain a doctorate in criminology Ross was the creator of
00:14:01
geographic profiling technique designed to map unsolved crimes and highlight any
00:14:06
pattern or criminal signature that might have gone overlooked by detectives assigned to individual
00:14:14
cases by mid 1998 rosmo noticed that the number of missing women had started to grow to Anonymous levels in 1996 1997
00:14:25
and 1998 and he felt that the increases were statistically significant he said quote I thought the
00:14:35
only explanation for this was a Serial murder case end quote but when rosmo took his findings to the officer in
00:14:44
charge of the major crimes division he was told that because the women tended to live transient lives it
00:14:53
was more likely that they had just drifted away rosmo didn't buy this explanation his experience was that
00:15:00
although the women were drug users and poor they still maintained strong ties to families friends and the community
00:15:09
and they did not typically just disappear but those are haunting statements from the sex worker when she
00:15:16
is saying questioning herself is this individual looking at me are we being hunted and I think what makes this even
00:15:26
more and I think what would make it even more frightening for these workers would
00:15:33
be the idea that you don't know if you know this individual or not has this person been a JN with you before or or
00:15:42
is this a mysterious person that once you get in their car you never return whoever it is if it's one person or
00:15:48
multiple people they are taking people that you know these people however you want to describe their Lifestyles or
00:15:57
their occupation if you will these are essentially their colleagues people that they see day in and day out
00:16:03
night after night and they're Vanishing and the problem here though for law enforcement and as far as you
00:16:13
know law enforcement has things to be concerned with victims in the community are their number one concern or should
00:16:21
be but they also are concerned with things like budgets resources Manpower women power that kind of thing and so
00:16:29
they have a lot of things to that are Incorporated in the business that they are running of keeping the streets safe
00:16:37
and keeping the community safe so the problem for law enforcement will be even though a couple detectives are pointing
00:16:43
out hey this is this is a problem that we need to address and it also seems like a problem that's ramping up yes but
00:16:52
for the higher ups truly no bodies meant no victims and no victims meant no crimes
00:16:59
these women were unpredictable the victims were unpredictable and rootless it seems now and there are many that
00:17:07
will agree with this statement in Canada from the BBC and persons in law enforcement in the Vancouver area that
00:17:16
they simply believed that it wasn't worth dedicating resources to trying to find them or to figure out if there
00:17:23
truly was someone or someone's killing these individuals because again no bodies meant no victims
00:17:32
no victims meant no crime we have other things and other problems to be concerned about as we noted as it seems
00:17:41
these women were considered to be very low priority by VPD and they were hard to track because of their homelessness
00:17:49
addiction issues and transient Lifestyles the most that VPD was willing to do was to offer up a reward for
00:17:56
information on the missing women on the vpd's list and provide a skeleton staff for a new missing persons review team
00:18:06
established in May of 1999 and this was headed up by Lori stener rosmo was demoted eventually
00:18:15
resigned from the force after voicing his concerns about a possible serial killer despite detectives like Shiner
00:18:23
and rosmo the missing women investigation remained underfunded underst staffed and under prioritized
00:18:30
this remained the case even though detective Dixon's list contained the names of
00:18:36
330 plus women who were never seen again and that number as the captain pointed out kept growing it wasn't just that the
00:18:47
VPD wasn't committed to finding these women that impeded the investigation into the disappearances there were often
00:18:54
no specific dates for when these women went missing their pimps fellow sex workers and dealers refused to cooperate
00:19:02
with police making tracking the women almost impossible there were no bodies there was no evidence and there was no
00:19:10
indication even that Foul Play had occurred all the detectives had was a list of names establishing a pattern and
00:19:19
a hunch and yet the list continued to grow to over 40 women by the early 2000s women were taken at an alarming
00:19:28
rate between 1997 and 2001 and no signs of them or their bodies were ever seen again and what a odd situation you seems
00:19:38
like you have half the police department where they're like doesn't matter who cares and the other half going hey
00:19:44
something's not right here but I can't prove to the other side that something's not right there's no body that I could
00:19:53
point to to say look we have somebody kidnapping these victims and killing them so this is a very odd situation
00:20:02
well and not only do you have this list of names that keeps growing of these missing women but think about everything
00:20:08
that's going on in this neighborhood right in this world and the lives that are being led by the victims and the bad
00:20:17
guys that are their dates right so within this group you are going to have men that will victimize these women in
00:20:27
other ways that don't lead to them being missing or murdered right so when you look at this and you try to establish is
00:20:34
there a problem here you have no bodies you have no dates specific dates for one
00:20:40
when a person goes missing and then to top that off you have all these Johns who a percentage of that that
00:20:47
population is victimizing these women in other ways so now if there is a suspect
00:20:54
or you're looking for a suspect you've got a giant group of people that that pool is tooo large even more frustrating
00:21:01
to the police were the attacks by Anonymous Johns who could not be identified right so you have Johns that
00:21:08
you've identified and Johns that are unidentified who may have smacked a woman around beat up a girl on August
00:21:15
10th of 2001 Vancouver Police announced their search for an unidentified rapist who attacked a
00:21:22
38-year-old victim outside of her low trck Hotel a week earlier during the attack police spokesman said the man
00:21:32
claimed responsibility for sexually assaulting and killing other women in the downtown Eastside area the victim
00:21:40
had escaped by leaping from her rapist car she was able to offer a description to authorities but they were unable to
00:21:48
find him he was just one of the many Faceless Men Who visited the low trck area for drugs and anonymous sex
00:21:58
Detectives also looked extensively at known serial killers from other areas who could possibly be responsible for at
00:22:05
least some of the missing women they were particularly interested in Gary Ridgeway the Green River Killer who was
00:22:12
responsible for The Disappearance of 49 women with a similar victimology in Seattle he was identified through DNA in
00:22:20
2001 the VPD discovered that he had visited Vancouver but were unable to establish any connection between
00:22:27
Ridgeway in the missing low track women authorities also took a hard look at Keith Hunter jesperson jerson a long
00:22:35
haul trucker who traveled widely across North America and killed at least eight female sex workers and transients he
00:22:42
encountered while on the road jerson was nicknamed The Happy Face Killer for The
00:22:47
Smiling cartoon signature on letters he sent to police and the media at one point he claimed to be responsible for
00:22:55
160 murders describing his female victims as piles of garbage dumped on the roadside once again however no link
00:23:03
could be found between jerson and the vanished low trck women and the disappearances continued after the Happy
00:23:11
Face Killer was put away police also considered Robert Yates who was convicted in October of 2000 of
00:23:20
killing 13 prostitutes around the Spokane Washington area he was also suspected of two more murders in the
00:23:28
neighboring County but Yates could not be placed in the city of Vancouver for any of the low trck disappearances so
00:23:37
law enforcement had some suspects to look into but they weren't local but they did find a local guy that they
00:23:43
thought was a decent suspect yeah looking closer to home they were very suspicious of 47-year-old Ronald Richard
00:23:50
mccaulay who had spent a decent amount of time in prison about 17 years this for a 19 1982 conviction he was paroled
00:24:00
in 1994 and so that lines up with the timeline that they are looking at here he's out on the streets for the time in
00:24:10
question and he falls on their list because he had several sexual assaults for rape uh beating up sex workers and
00:24:21
he was declared by the state a dangerous offender eventually he does return to prison in the mid to late 90s though so
00:24:32
he's one of these guys that he's only out for a period of time he's on their list one because of his background his
00:24:38
previous crimes but there were four women whose bodies actually were found right we're we're talking about a
00:24:46
list of women whose bodies that were not found being the concern in trying to develop some type of investigation on
00:24:56
that front but in this case as as far as this suspect's concerned he is in question for four women's bodies that
00:25:04
were found near where he lived in July of 1997 Vancouver Police declared mcau a suspect in the 1995 disappearances of
00:25:15
those four women whose names were part of this list of missing low trck women but again bodies that were actually
00:25:23
found well that's a difficult thing when you have a list that's growing you you have to start asking yourself as law
00:25:30
enforcement is this one individual that's responsible for all these disappearance or is it more than one
00:25:38
well and that's going to be an issue that will never really fully resolve itself in this case there's still good
00:25:46
reason to have questions about this even as everything sits today they couldn't prove a case for murder against mcau in
00:25:55
the in the disappearances of these four women but what does take place as this investigation kind of drags on and drags
00:26:03
on another suspect emerged that Drew in everyone's focus in late 1998 Lor shener
00:26:12
the detective who was leading the early stage limited resource missing persons investigation learned that the Crim
00:26:21
Stoppers tip line had recently received a call with a tip the tipster was William Cox a
00:26:30
37-year-old widower who had turned to drugs and alcohol before finding a job at a place called P andb Salvage this
00:26:39
was a business owned by Robert Pickton who was known to many as Willie this business is owned by Robert pikon known
00:26:49
as Willie and his brother David pikon both who lived in Port Coquitlam his cock's foster sister was dating Robert
00:26:59
pikon at some period and that's how he gets the job so in a follow-up call to this tipster the tipster named pikon as
00:27:08
someone who could be responsible for all of the missing Vancouver women th this tip isn't saying you know one or two of
00:27:15
the women on your list this guy that I'm calling about could be responsible for all of the missing Vancouver women
00:27:22
hiscox described the pikon brothers pig farm as a creepy looking place which was
00:27:28
patrolled by a vicious 600lb [Music] boore every great romance story has a happily ever after two people meet fall
00:27:47
in love and end up together for the rest of their days Nancy and Dan broy were one of those couples Dan was a chef who
00:27:55
taught at a Portland culinary school n n was a romance writer who filled her novels with sexy fantasies betrayals and
00:28:03
murder when Dan ends up dead details of his murder that could have been ripped right from the pages of nany's novels
00:28:11
become Clues and Nancy becomes a main suspect so this isn't a romance story it starts with a happily ever after but it
00:28:21
doesn't end with one was Nancy just researching her next novel or was she planning a murder
00:28:28
this is a story about what happens when the lines blur between fiction and reality follow Happily Never After Dan
00:28:37
and Nancy wherever you get your podcast this show is sponsored by better help this year has gone so quickly I had
00:28:48
so many things on my list of goals to accomplish this year and I'm still getting to a few of those items when
00:28:56
life goes so fast it's important to take a moment to celebrate your wins and make
00:29:01
adjustments for the rest of the year therapy can help you take stock of your progress and set achievable goals for
00:29:08
the next six months if you're thinking of starting therapy give better help a try it's entirely online designed to be
00:29:17
convenient flexible and suited to your schedule just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a
00:29:23
licensed therapist and switch therapist at any time for no additional charge take a moment visit betterhelp.com
00:29:32
Garay to get 10% off your first month that's betterhelp hp.com [Music] garage all right we are back tell the
00:29:57
story of pig B cheers to you all talk hands in the air according to this tipster the pikon brothers also ran a
00:30:05
supposed charity that they had created the piggy Palace good time society which was in fact registered with the Canadian
00:30:13
government in 1996 as a nonprofit Society intended to quote organize coordinate manage and operate special
00:30:21
events functions dances shows and exhibitions on behalf of service organizations Sports organizations and
00:30:29
other worthy groups end quote hiscox the tipster said the special events that took place at the piggy Palace which was
00:30:38
really just a converted building on the hog farm he's saying these special events were really just drunken and drug
00:30:46
fueled Raves attended by hundreds of parters including members of the Hell's Angels and the entertainment that was
00:30:53
provided it was by downtown Eastside sex workers that were brought in in Mass for
00:31:00
these parties hiscock said that he had been told by a female friend that she had seen random women's handbags
00:31:10
identification cards and bloody clothing at pik's Farm The Source was a woman named Lisa yields who told his Coxs that
00:31:20
pikon was creepy and could be responsible for the missing women that the public and the media were talking
00:31:26
about Lisa yields told his Cox that pikon had a bunch of syringes even though he didn't use drugs and that the
00:31:35
items she had seen on his farm were quote his trophies but this is beyond bizarre I mean can you imagine work in
00:31:42
the streets and the next thing you you know you're on this creepy Farm going into the piggy Palace this is just
00:31:49
beyond bizarre unfortunately this has happened in multiple cities around the world and more
00:31:58
commonplace than any of us would like to think and I've talked about this before
00:32:04
and it's the God's honest truth drugs are fueling for some of these persons that end up there for this party or the
00:32:12
Raves drugs are fueling and driving and steering the ship on a lot of the decisions being made so being told that
00:32:21
you're going to get paid a little bit of money to go to a party and get drunk and
00:32:25
party with some people or being told that you'll be given Dr drugs or there free drugs there will bring people to
00:32:33
this piggy Palace how however undesirable it is so they start doing some digging on this pikon he's got an
00:32:40
arrest record they start checking out the police run-ins with the piggy Palace and detective shinner becomes convinced
00:32:49
that Robert pikon was a good suspect for at least some of the missing women so she contacts the Royal Canadian Mounted
00:32:57
Police specifically the officer who had arrested and charge Pon in a 1997 attack
00:33:03
on a sex worker this is when pikon had stabbed a sex worker on his farm so the farm is under mounty
00:33:12
jurisdiction nothing had come of this attack though prosecutors eventually refused to press charges because they
00:33:18
felt that the victim was not convincing she was a heroin addict detective CER pushed for picked in to be arrested but
00:33:27
only got an agreement to place pikon under surveillance for 3 days during a period from October 1 to October 10 of
00:33:36
1998 so 3-day period during that period of time on the RCMP surveillance request
00:33:43
form picton's suspected criminal activity offense is listed as information of unknown
00:33:50
reliability reveals that this subject is responsible for The Disappearance of female prostitutes in Vancouver Barnaby
00:33:59
and New Westminster he apparently brings them to his residence whereupon they are
00:34:04
killed unfortunately Captain nothing came of this surveillance RCMP continued to surveil pedon on and off observing
00:34:12
him driving in slow circles in downtown Port Coquitlam visiting a rendering facility and going into a hotel but
00:34:20
nothing criminal was observed during these surveillance periods eventually police became aware that pikon knew he
00:34:29
was under surveillance it'd be hard to run surveillance on pikon because one the the farm land is large and there's
00:34:40
probably a lot of places to hide and he probably knows these little shortcuts from one building to the
00:34:47
next so if he if he doesn't want you to know where he's at on that farm I'm sure
00:34:52
he could disappear pretty quickly the easy part of the surveillance is is you only need to patrol and catch him
00:35:01
picking up a sex worker downtown because that is what the the inquest form the inquiry form is stating we believe this
00:35:11
guy's picking up sex workers downtown taking him back to the farm and then they're never seen again so that's what
00:35:18
you're hoping to catch him in the act of because that well not not completely right I hope the detectives aren't going
00:35:24
well if she never comes back we know we got guy just picking up the sex worker would still be a crime and you're hoping
00:35:33
that that would give you the opportunity to investigate and search that large area like you pointed out because that's
00:35:40
what you really need to do is get your feet on that ground and be looking around to figure out what is going on
00:35:47
there when when he wasn't surveilled or could not be surveilled like you're pointing out in early November of 1998
00:35:54
our good detective gave two photos of pikon to the DC this is deter and identified sex
00:36:03
trade customers to show to women engaged in the sex trade to see if any could identify him as quote a bad date okay so
00:36:14
this is a good technique but it's a little bit flawed because a bad date somebody could get that title numerous
00:36:23
ways some of them just don't pay the sex worker some of them Rob the sex that's not what we're looking for we're looking
00:36:30
for someone that is causing them to disappear and never come back but like you said he had these parties and girls
00:36:36
would go out and work the party and then they'd come back yes they're I mean they're showing up in in droves to some
00:36:44
of these parties and there's Robert pikon and his brother are not the only two being entertained at these parties
00:36:53
in 99 another source came forward with a gruesome story this one also about Robert pikon which verified much of what
00:37:00
had been related to them by the previous tipster this individual is named Ross Caldwell The Source said he had seen
00:37:09
handcuffs in pickton's bedroom and a special freezer in his barn from which he had served quote strange meat which
00:37:18
he believed could have been human this Source also referenced a female friend Lynn
00:37:25
Ellingson who had regularly accompanied pikon to the downtown east side to help him pick up women
00:37:33
apparently pikon had more luck getting women to accompany him if he had a female accomplice he added that pikon
00:37:41
would often wear wigs when he went to the low track area to pick up prostitutes now whether this is because
00:37:48
pikon was balding or in an attempt to disguise his identity we we just don't know and called well didn't know as well
00:37:58
well you know how somebody works at a pizza shop or some fast food restaurant that they
00:38:05
end up kind of stinking and it's like it might be kind of a pizza smell but it's
00:38:13
overwhelming I couldn't imagine what an individual would smell like working on a
00:38:19
pig farm all day exactly well the part of this tip too the the most alarming part of this tip and it has some
00:38:27
credibility and I can explain why but Caldwell the tipster is saying that his female friend the one that gave him
00:38:36
the information Ellingson had told him that she walked into Robert pickton's slaughterhouse and instead of an animal
00:38:46
she sees a female body hanging from a meat hook pikon is there in the slaughterhouse standing beside it
00:38:54
cutting strips of Flesh off of the legs Jesus The credibility or what would make
00:39:01
this seem to be a credible tip was that Ellington explained to Caldwell that she
00:39:08
up until this point in her life did not realize that human fat was yellow in color and which in fact it is pig fat is
00:39:17
white so that gives us a little bit of credibility here and in the wake of this tip the mounties attempted to question
00:39:25
Lynn Ellingson twice the person that provided the information to Caldwell who eventually went to the police right but
00:39:33
both times she refused to talk and denied the story about the body in the barn it turns out she probably afraid
00:39:39
for her life well I thought that initially as well but it turns out that she had attempted to Blackmail pikon so
00:39:47
she's she's going to try to make some money off of what she's seen yeah if I saw a woman hanging by
00:39:57
meet hooks I don't think I would be trying to Blackmail that guy she tells the police that when she was on the farm
00:40:05
every time that she was on the farm she was high on cocaine or some form of narcotic I guess this is a way for her
00:40:13
her to explain away what Caldwell is reporting to them yeah I might have told him that but I
00:40:22
was high every time I was messed up every time I was on that farm you know so they
00:40:27
I'm not saying that they look the other way because the RCMP officers did visit picton's Farm after receiving this
00:40:35
information to interview him this took place on September 1st 1999 he wasn't home but when they reached him by phone
00:40:43
he agrees to be interviewed but it would have to be at night he says because he worked constantly during the day now
00:40:51
this this is where you get angry right like you're okay well your hunch tells you I should investigate this even
00:40:57
though the witness claims to be high all the time when while on the farm he's a piece of [ __ ] I don't know how much
00:41:03
credibility to give to this claim and now she's kind of refusing to talk so I don't have a lot of information here but
00:41:09
they must have had a hunch if they went to the farm they must have had a hunch if they get him on the phone he says yes
00:41:17
I can talk to you in the evening these detectives say well we don't work in the evening yeah it's it's absolutely
00:41:23
ridiculous you lazy fat pieces of [ __ ] do your job it seemed like that was going to be the major speed bump in
00:41:30
talking to this individual now David pikon the brother intervened and the negotiations about the when and where of
00:41:38
said interview he put in his two cents saying you know what officers you can come back during the raining the rainy
00:41:45
season because right now we're just too busy working all the time so for some reason it appears that the RCMP complied
00:41:53
with this request from the pikon brothers and this caused a big delay in talking to them so 4 months later on
00:42:01
January 19th of 2000 RCMP officers finally interviewed Robert pikon he denied of course any involvement with
00:42:09
the missing women much less killing anyone what is most shocking is that pikon did consent to a search of his
00:42:16
property at that time but for reasons that are unknown the RCMP failed to take him up on this invitation Robert pikon
00:42:24
stayed under the radar and women Contin to disappear that's in January of 2000 another officer interviewed pikon on his
00:42:32
farm in March of 2001 but nothing came of this either it came out much later that a 911 hang-up call from pickton's
00:42:41
Trailer had been received on August 12th 1998 but the responding officer decided
00:42:46
that everything appeared fine and concluded that it was simply an error a second 911 call came in in May of 1999
00:42:55
from pickton's property police investigated but saw nothing out of the ordinary so question do you think these
00:43:01
911 calls are coming from victims yeah I'm I wonder what poor woman or or both cases what poor woman had a
00:43:11
moment to get her hands on a phone to call for help only to be cut off right the the call is cut off and then simply
00:43:22
forgotten about as law enforcement you have this suspect but he's he's being cooperative he's saying I'll talk to you
00:43:28
but it's going to have to be at night cuz I I work and you would love to get a search warrant but if the only
00:43:35
eyewitness is saying well I was I was on drugs I I was just making [ __ ] up it's
00:43:42
probably pretty hard to go to a judge and get a search warrant with those types of claims by February of 2000 The
00:43:51
Vancouver Police Department and the RCMP continued to focus on their list of Persons of Interest so they are looking
00:43:57
in it um you know we can we we can and should critique that investigation along the way but they're
00:44:06
they're they're also receiving a lot of criticism in a public uproar for a real investigation to take place about the
00:44:19
all of these missing women so it's almost like reaching a crisis Point by February of 2000 this is when finally
00:44:27
fin Vancouver Police Department and the mounties formed a Joint Task Force titled project evenhanded this was to
00:44:35
coordinate and facilitate this investigation into the missing women this was the task force that interviewed
00:44:41
Gary Ridgeway and the other serial killers that we spoke about the task force notes indicate that they had some
00:44:48
serious suspicions about Robert pikon he had been the subject of those two tips that we talked about he had been accused
00:44:54
of assault in 1997 he had a known History of Violence towards sex workers he tended to pick up prostitutes in one
00:45:02
of his several vehicles and bring them to his property the list goes on and on and on with this individual but it it
00:45:09
seems like in retrospect project evenhanded continued to largely put Robert pikon as a great suspect on the
00:45:18
back burner well old Robert pton is going to go from the back burner to the front burner and
00:45:25
unfortunately and I wish that I wouldn't have to say that this seems to be par for the course for this investigation
00:45:33
but Robert Pickton would eventually be arrested he will be brought down not because of a missing woman he was looked
00:45:43
at because of an illegal gun purchase right they already had all these tips they had evidence seemingly under their
00:45:51
noses but it was because of an illegal gun purchase RCMP conable Nathan Wells was investigating the street drug trade
00:46:00
and he got pik's name from this guy named Scott chub Wells then ran pickton's name through the police
00:46:08
computer and found that pikon the pikon file contained a note to contact Vancouver Police okay so they made a
00:46:16
note on this guy if anybody's looking at him for anything at all contact Vancouver PD the RCMP obtained a warrant
00:46:24
to search his property for an unlicensed firearm or any unlicensed firearm not just the one that they were looking for
00:46:33
and Arrangements were made to have two members of project evenhanded task force on hand for the search this was executed
00:46:42
in February of 2002 February of 2002 this problem's been going on since the mid 90s and
00:46:49
pikon was on their radar since at least 1997 from all the information that I've found RCMP officers and task force
00:46:58
members entered the farm and picked in's trailer one of the officers noted an asthma in Haler labeled with the name of
00:47:06
one of the missing women on the task force list Serena abotsway some other items appearing to
00:47:15
belong to women on the missing women's list were found as well this including wallets and clothing officers stopped
00:47:23
the search immediately and the next day task force officers obtained their own warrant remember I don't know how things
00:47:31
work in Canada but here in the United States your warrants need to be quite specific you don't want this thing to
00:47:37
get jammed up and all gummed up in the court system because you were in there collecting things that weren't on your
00:47:43
original search warrant remember they're only there looking for illegal firearms
00:47:49
and they're finding evidence of other crimes so that search warrant got their Hooves in the door and now they're
00:47:57
finding more evidence to connect him because he's the primary suspect and the missing girls cases so what you're
00:48:06
saying is now they have to go back to the judge and say hey we're not just looking for illegal Firearms we're also
00:48:12
looking for evidence in these other cases yes missing women and potential murder So within hours the pikon
00:48:19
property that address here is 953 Dominion Avenue became the site of the largest crime scene search in Canada
00:48:28
history this Farm was actually not operational despite being referred to as a pig farm for ever since I can remember
00:48:37
much of it was utilized by Mr picton's brother Dave for a top soil business and as a dump site for waste from his
00:48:45
demolition op operation the company's name was DNS bulldozing so this property's filled as
00:48:54
you pointed out Captain it's a large property it's filled with older vehicles that were stripped for their parts these
00:49:00
are just kind of strewn about the property so the property in large resembles a junkyard
00:49:07
with roaming animals garbage and decrepit structures dotting the landscape it's like the Steven Avery
00:49:15
property Robert pikon was as we said arrested but he was originally charged with the weapons offenses this takes
00:49:22
place February 7th but then he's arrested again later that same month and is charged with two counts of
00:49:29
first-degree murder this is for the murders of Serena Abbott way and Mona Wilson both names appeared on the
00:49:38
missing women's list and these women disappeared in 2001 remember he's on their radar at
00:49:45
1997 by the time pikon was arrested in 2002 at least another 14 women had been murdered and by that point we have 5050
00:49:56
women are on that list you know when you're watching a scary movie and you cover your eyes and then
00:50:02
you make a little Gap in your fingers so you can see what's going on that's that's the part of the story I
00:50:10
feel we're at I am there's a part of me that doesn't want to hear the evidence they found on the farm and there's
00:50:17
another part of me that does want to hear it so what did law enforcement find on the pikon farm well you are right to
00:50:27
cover your eyes um but in this situation you probably should cover your ears the
00:50:32
answer is truly horrifying and beyond words in my opinion so during a search of pik's trailer right we're not talking
00:50:41
about the property at large right we're talking about his trailer where he lived
00:50:46
lived and slept they found a loaded 22 revolver with a dildo stretched over the barrel they found boxes of 357 Magnum
00:50:55
Handgun Ammunition night vision goggles two pairs of faux fur lined handcuffs a syringe with 3 ml
00:51:05
of blue liquid inside Spanish Fly aphrodesiac women's clothing and makeup some of it stained with blood duct tape
00:51:14
blood stains four more inhalers all issued to murder victim Serena abbots Way in The Loft so we'll go to his
00:51:24
Workshop in the loft of a workshop on the property investigators found a 357 Magnum handgun so this one's hidden and
00:51:33
concealed unlike the dildo covered 22 that we talked about uh this one I presume to be the illegal firearm that
00:51:43
they were looking for because this is the one that was hidden and concealed one of the conses who was present for
00:51:49
the search tried to describe just how horrified she was at the sites and smells I guess coming from
00:52:00
this pig farm that's no longer in operation sty Pig she describes seeing neglected animals on the farm and I'm
00:52:08
not going to go too in detail with that you can find that information if you want to hop on the old computer machine
00:52:14
and do some research but one part in particular and this would be the finding of human remains which
00:52:24
obviously makes him Robert pi than Prime Suspect number one so here's here's a description for you of of this find it's
00:52:32
a graphic photo a picture of the contents of a green garbage can that was found in the
00:52:42
slaughterhouse next to Robert pickton's trailer that he lived in a brown garbage can had been inserted
00:52:51
into the green garbage can and when the brown one was removed they found remains
00:52:57
of Mona Wilson again who disappeared in December of 2001 they're discovered inside submerged in a pink soup of
00:53:07
decomposing human matter there were two halves of Wilson's skull along with her hands and feet and a 22 caliber bullet
00:53:17
was found in the can with her remains in addition to the remains in the garbage can which belonged to who knew
00:53:27
how many women the heads hands and feet of two more women were found in large pales in a freezer in pickton's Workshop
00:53:38
investigators had been drawn to this freezer because of an overpowering smell emanating from it the women's skulls had
00:53:47
been sawed in half and their hands and feet had been stuffed inside those halves the flesh was in advanced stage
00:53:54
of decomposition what a sicko once these absolutely disgusting and mindboggling finds were discovered authorities
00:54:02
swarmed the 17 acre property and then conducted the largest search in Canadian history pikon is like if you take
00:54:12
Buffalo Bill Ed Gan and dmer and roll them all into one well he's got a lot of resources
00:54:23
unfortunately and it seems like he was able to operate without any detection at all I mean yeah we have some
00:54:29
surveillance we have a couple police visits but 17 Acres the shock here and the surprise here is he didn't live
00:54:36
there alone his brother lived there with him and as we talked about there were all these parties at the piggy Palace
00:54:42
right and that's why we sit here and we say even all these years later we do not
00:54:46
know how many people knew exactly what was going on or or had an idea and just chose to either look the other way
00:54:53
because of greed drugs or what have you but in the end Captain it took 22 months
00:55:02
to search this property and the cost to the Canadian government was $70 million Jesus and how many lives could
00:55:11
they have saved immediately and truly about 7 years far too late however you'd like to look at
00:55:21
it an announcement came from Vancouver Police Department about the developments in in the missing women's case and they
00:55:28
announced the arrest of Robert [Music] Pickton join us back here in the garage for part two and until then be good be
00:55:46
kind and don't litter [Music] if you're on the lookout for true crime stories told from a fresh perspective
00:56:29
with Nuance depth and detail I have a new show for you check out murder true crime stories a Crim housee original
00:56:36
podcast from the shocking Shandra leevy case and Infamous Tylenol murders to the
00:56:41
tragic deaths of the Clutter family each episode focuses on a famous solved or unsolved murder case listen in every
00:56:48
Tuesday as the show dives into the darkest corners of True Crime unraveling chilling narratives examining compelling
00:56:55
Clues and most most importantly seeking the truth what sets murder true crime stories apart is the focus on humanizing
00:57:02
the victims and the effect their deaths had on their families friends and Community we always leave with the
00:57:07
knowledge of why their stories need to be heard there's a story behind every murder but is there an ending new
00:57:13
episodes of murder true crime stories release every Tuesday just search for murder true crime stories on Apple
00:57:19
podcast Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts