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Robert William Pickton was born in 1949 to parents Leonard and Louise Pickton. They were pig farmers who lived in Port Coquitlam, a city in the metro vancouver area about 35 minutes drive from downtown. They didn't live on the property we now know as the Picton Farm, though Leonard had inherited his family's homestead and farm a few kilometres away and worked on it through his 20s and 30s, showing no other interests. When he was 47 years old, he surprised his family by bringing home a much younger woman he'd met in a coffee shop. Her name was Louise arnall. She was 31 years old and from Saskatchewan. They got married and Louise moved into the Picton family homestead five years later. The couple had their first child, a daughter Linda, in 1948. Then first son Robert, followed by second son David, a year apart. Linda and David were said to take after their mother, Louise, physically anyway, short with round faces. The middle child, Robert, or Willie as his family started calling him, took after father Leonard. Tall and slim with a narrow face and a long pointed nose. The Picton family lived in Port Coquitlam, known as Poco by the locals. Today the city has a population of almost 60,000 people, but back in 1949 it was around 3,000. It was known for being rural farmland territory. Leonard Pickton was reportedly a workaholic who had minimal interaction with any of his three children. He was not an engaged parent. He specialised in livestock and the production of pork and expected sons Robert and David to work on the farm as soon as they were able to, aiding in the slaughtering and butchering of pigs. Some accounts by neighbours and co workers paint Leonard as a violently abusive and abrasive man, all too ready to dole out punishment to his sons in the form of beatings. It seems that daughter Linda might have been spared from this treatment. In later interviews, she would portray Leonard in a positive light, as a respectable father with good intentions. But she said her younger brother Robert was never close to his father. In fact, he seemed a bit scared of him. Linda described Robert as shy and naive, a mummer's boy. Robert himself would later say that he and his mother were like two peas in a pod. The reasons for that label are not entirely clear. In town, residents reported hearing Louise nag and publicly shame Robert in front of other children. He became increasingly withdrawn, often remaining silent for long stretches and hiding when he feared he was in trouble with either parent. The responsibilities of homemaking and child rearing fell to Louise Picton by default, and she was not a nurturing or maternal presence to any of their three children. Her focus was also on the family business pigs. Everything else came a distant second. As a mother, Louise was remembered as harsh and abrasive and was frequently heard screeching orders at her children. Those who came into regular contact with her described her as odd, eccentric and unkempt workaholic who paid little attention to her own health or appearance. Former neighbours recalled her rotting teeth and apparent indifference to personal hygiene. The children were reportedly bathed only about once a week, which wasn't enough to remove the farm stench. Those same neighbours went inside the Picton home briefly and would describe it as dirty and foul smelling. Farm animals were allowed to wander freely through the farmhouse, relieving themselves indoors without consequence. Louise made little effort to clean, seemingly unfazed by the conditions. She always wore men's rubber gumboots. Louise was strict and demanding. She required her children to spend long hours slopping pigs and caring for animals, sometimes even on school days. To outsiders, the Picton family appeared to be poor, living below the poverty line. As one local resident put it, everyone knew the Pictons and no one knew the Pictons. The reality was they owned the family homestead outright and some additional parcels of land, and the farm was profitable. They just chose to live that way. It was said that the general attitude of the Picton family was that there was nothing wrong with a bit of mess or a lot. Many of the memories Robert Pickton would recall from his childhood and early adulthood were disturbing, if true. He would claim that one time his father left him sitting in his truck and he accidentally moved the gear stick into neutral, which caused the truck to start rolling down a hill and crash. Robert would claim his father beat him severely for not stopping that truck. He was just three years old at the time. In another story, he recalled being about 4 years old when his mother, Louise, caught him smoking a cigarette. As punishment, she forced him to smoke a whole cigar, thinking it would cure him for good. And it did. Robert would say it was the last cigarette he ever had. He would also tell a particularly disturbing story later about a pet calf he had when he was young. This was noteworthy because he suddenly became animated when he remembered the calf story and recalled vivid details. According to Robert, when he was about 12, he developed a close emotional attachment with this calf, spending as much time as he could with it, day or night. One day he came home from school to find his favourite animal was missing. He looked over the house and then the farm and he asked his family members, where's my calf? He was horrified when they suggested he look in the barn, knowing that's where the animals were slaughtered. It seemed his family wanted him to discover his pet calf hanging upside down in a shed, slaughtered and disemboweled. Robert would tell investigators he was distraught at the sight and refused to speak to his family for four days. They promised to buy him a new calf, but he didn't want a new one. He wanted his pet back. He was traumatised by the incident, and even as an adult, it was only something he would share with people he'd become close to. After that he seemed to develop the sentiment that life goes around and around with little meaning. Robert and younger brother David were being groomed by their father, Leonard, to take over the family farm. He taught them animal husbandry and butchering and when they weren't at school, they were expected to work. But Linda, the eldest of the three Picton children, wasn't much of a fan of farm life and wanted to be as far away from it as possible. She was always described as the smart one. According to Stevie Cameron's book On the Farm, when she was in grade nine, Linda decided to move in with relatives closer to Vancouver. She was away from the farm and after that she reportedly had as little to do with her family as possible. Leonard and Louise purchased more land just a few kilometres away on Dominion Avenue and moved over there with their sons. This is the property that would come to define the Picton family far more than they could have ever imagined. If Robert Pickton were in school today, he might well have been diagnosed with a learning disorder and offered support and treatment. People who knew him would say he was far more intelligent than he was given credit for. But back in the 1960s, when he started high school, he was labelled slow and placed in special education classes at school. This embarrassed him and made him an easy target for bullies. His severe lack of personal hygiene combined with the ratty, stinky clothes he wore did not help. Robert dropped out of high school as soon as he could in grade eight. Louise was not at all troubled by her son's decision. She put him to work right away, full time on the farm. She told him he needed to learn how to slaughter the pigs himself and at first he said he didn't want to, but he eventually relented and began learning the trade. This was Robert's life. He'd never really known anything else but school and the farm. In October of 1967, 14 year old Timothy Barrett left home at about 8pm to walk to a friend's place. It wasn't a long walk, just up the road and down Dominion Avenue, the same street as the new Picton farm. Timothy put on his jacket and told his parents he'd be home later. He never returned home. After a few hours, his parents found out that Timothy never actually arrived at the friend's home. They panicked and started checking in with neighbours to see if anyone had seen him or knew where he might be. At about 1am, Timothy's parents reported him missing to the local RCMP and the search continued throughout the night with no sign of him. In the early daylight Hours. Timothy's father was still on Dominion Avenue searching alongside the road with a neighbour when he spotted a shoe on the side of the road. It looked like Timothy's. About 10ft away was a deep ditch running alongside the road. He walked over and peered down. Submerged in several feet of water was his 14 year old son. Timothy Barrett was dead. The RCMP quickly developed a theory that Timothy must have been walking along the road when he was struck from behind by either a car or a truck and then hurled over into the ditch. The car was probably speeding and Dominion Avenue was poorly lit. The houses were sparse because it wasn't a developed area. As the body was sent for autopsy, the RCMP received a phone call from a local mechanic who said he'd seen the news reports of a hit and run and had something strange to report. He said the son of one of his regular clients had shown up the night before wanting a fast repair to an old red beaten up farm truck. Specifically, he wanted the smashed front indicator light repaired along with a dent on the front fender with the which he also wanted to be painted over. The young man told him a log had fallen on the truck back at the farm, but the mechanic looked at the dent and was suspicious. Also, the entire truck was old and completely banged up. Why the sudden request to repair this one area? Hours later, that mechanic saw the news about Timothy Barrett and contacted the police, giving them the name of the young man who requested the repairs. David Pickton. That's Robert Pickton's younger brother. At the time, David was 16 and had just earned his driver's licence. David Picton was charged in juvenile court with failing to remain at the scene of an accident. He would be placed on indefinite probation and his driver's licence suspended for five years. As far as the criminal justice system was concerned, Timothy Barrett's death was the result of a careless accident. Partial blame was assigned to Timothy himself for walking on the side of the road where cars would be coming up behind him, wearing dark clothing on a dimly lit night. A coroner's inquiry concluded that David Picton was the one most at fault for driving the truck that hit Timothy from behind and for not stopping as Timothy was hurled into the water filled ditch. The autopsy confirmed Timothy suffered a fractured skull and a broken pelvis, but those injuries would not have been fatal. The actual cause of his death was drowning in the water. But there was more to the story. It began as whispers among neighbours, but some 25 years later it was confirmed to journalist and author Stevie Cameron. Robert Pickton himself would later Tell a friend that he knew exactly what happened that night. At the time he was 17 years old and he recalled David bursting into the farmhouse saying he'd hit someone with his car and they were probably badly hurt. He pointed to the red truck. Robert saw a new dent in the front right fender with marks and what looked to be blood. Mother Louise sprang into action. She ordered 16 year old David to clean the blood off and drive the truck straight to their mechanic for a rush repair job. She told him to tell the mechanic that he'd hit a pole. A story that would have been slightly more believable than the one he actually told of a log falling on the truck. Then Louise got into another vehicle to look for the person that David hit. She later told her son Robert and at least one other person that she was driving down the road and around the corner when she spotted Timothy Barrett lying injured at the side of the road. He was there because of her son's actions. But instead of helping the 14 year old, she said she dragged him 10ft over to the water filled ditch and pushed him in. Robert and David Pickton were still teenagers themselves, learning how the world worked. Their mother had just shown them that Ben basic morality could be overridden if self preservation was at stake. That responsibility for causing serious harm, even death, could be managed by cleaning evidence and coordinating stories that human life was disposable. It's telling that Robert Pickton later expressed a deep admiration for his mother's strength and and discipline. There were never any consequences for Louise Picton's alleged actions. By the time this all came to light, decades later, she would be dead. Father Leonard was in his late 70s by this point. His health was deteriorating and he couldn't work the farm like he used to. Now it was up to his wife Louise, their two sons and whoever else they could find to help on a regular basis. Louise sent Robert to the Woodlands School in New Westminster for children with developmental disabilities, runaways and wards of the state. The school allowed Robert to pick up children, drive them back to the farm and use them as cheap or unpaid farm labour for the day before returning them in the evening. Years later, an investigation would expose rampant abuse of children at the Woodlands School. It shut down in the 90s. But perhaps the big takeaway for Robert Pickton was reinforcement of his mother's message that some lives carried less value than others. That vulnerable people could be exploited, harmed and discarded for personal gain with little risk of consequence simply because they existed on the margins and no one cared enough to intervene. Foreign. Hi there. I've got a quick podcast recommendation for you. Valley of Shadows, an eight part investigative podcast that starts with a missing deputy and unravels into something much bigger. In 1998, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy, John Orjay, went for a trail run in California's Devil's Punch bowl and never came back. Nearly 30 years later, he's still missing. But this isn't just a wilderness mystery. It leads to the Mojave Desert's hidden meth epidemic, outlaw biker networks supplying it, and shocking allegations of police corruption and coverups inside his own department. Reporters Haley Fox and Betsy shepherd bring exclusive interviews, wiretaps and buried case files to light, pushing the investigation further than it's ever gone before. New episodes drop Monday. Search Valley of Shadows Wherever you listen.

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B (32:52)

By the early 1970s, the Picton brothers were in their early 20s. David was the more outgoing one and was now dating regularly. But Robert did not have much luck. He didn't smoke, drink or do drugs and didn't hang out at bars or nightclubs like others his age. And even if his hygiene and appearance issues had been taken care of, which they weren't, he was socially awkward. He was never seen dating or with a girlfriend, but instead had pen pals all over the country. He was starting to feel a certain way about one of them. Her name was Connie and she lived in Pontiac, Michigan. At 24 years old, Robert decided it was Time to take his first ever vacation so he could meet Connie in person. He booked a bus ticket and told his mother he'd be gone for six weeks if Louise tried to stop him from leaving. It didn't work. By this point, Robert had gained some confidence and was able to talk back to her and assert himself when needed. The bus ride would have been close to 40 hours one way and it took Robert across America, stopping in several cities along the way. He would later tell a different female pen pal that at some point he was stopped by by a scout and offered $40 an hour to be a male model, the equivalent of about $240 an hour in today's currency. It seems a pretty unlikely story, but he claimed he wasn't interested and turned the opportunity down. He eventually arrived in Pontiac, Michigan and met Connie. He claimed they were engaged by the time he caught the bus back to British Columbia, even calling her the love of his life. But Connie did not want to move to Port Coquitlam and Robert could not leave the pig farm. That's as far as it went. He threw himself back into the farm while also dabbling in horses and truck driving to supplement his income. Robert still did not date, but his siblings had each found partners and careers outside the farm. Older sister Linda was married and lived in a well to do area in Vancouver. She continued to avoid the farm and the family unless she was needed for business decisions. Brother David lived on the farm with his girlfriend and their two young children, while Louise had David's girlfriend. Working long hours on the farm, David was not interested. He was into truck driving, construction and demolition and other women besides his girlfriend. They broke up and she moved out with their kids. The next big family event was in 1977 when family patriarch Leonard was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died at age 82. A little over a year later, Louise also passed away from cancer, aged 67. It was a shock for Robert to lose both parents so quickly. But perhaps the bigger shock was in his mother's will. The Picton estate included the farm and several other parcels of land, plus some cash. Leonard's idea of dividing it among their children showed his preference. All Linda would receive was a lump sum payment of $20,000 and everything else would be divided between the two sons. But after Leonard passed away, Louise changed things around, dividing the estate equally between the three children, but with a twist. Linda and David were each given about $88,000 immediately. But Louise's will stipulated her middle son Robert would have to wait until he was 40 years old. To receive his share for now, he was given an additional lump sum of $20,000. The way Louise structured this suggests she did not trust Robert with that money now, and he was devastated. At the time, he was 30 years old. It would be 10 more years until he turned 40. And even though in the end he'd receive more money than either of his siblings, he needed it now. They earned their own money and didn't care for the farm. It was up to him alone to keep it going, which was not easy because a recent fire had destroyed one of their piggery Barns along with 600 pigs. The barn needed to be rebuilt. He'd been trying to do it himself, but would never finish. He saw the whole thing as a betrayal by his mother. Robert took his $20,000 and drowned his sorrows by purchasing a nearly new Ford truck. He got into junking old cars, selling the usable parts, separating the copper and selling it to scrapyards. Whatever he couldn't get rid of remained on the farm. Before long, there was a growing collection of old cars and machines, along with random scraps of wood and metal crack cropped up around the outskirts. In the meantime, Robert's brother David had seen an untapped opportunity to profit from the farm without actually having to do farming work. The surrounding area of Port Coquitlam was rapidly being developed into housing and shops. And there was strong demand for topsoil, for landscape structure. And one place that had plenty of topsoil was was the farm. David Picton started a business ripping up the farm with a bulldozer, collecting the topsoil and selling it to local developers. What was once a series of green fields was torn up. The farmland turned into dirt pits with trucks, bulldozers and other heavy equipment. Fortunately, neither David nor Robert cared about aesthetics. David had also started making friends with the Howells Angels. It was now the early 80s and the first biker war was winding up. The Howls Angels had established dominance over rival club the Outlaws and were now focused on expanding across the country. David Picton had already started making friends with the new Vancouver chapter. He wasn't a biker himself, but he was keen to get in on whatever they were doing. Before long, David roped Robert into letting the Hells Angels use the farm as a chop shop. He'd already been junking old cars. Some of them were stolen. And there was a lot more room on the farm, so it was a natural fit. Besides, Robert was fascinated with outlaw biker culture. He ended up running the chop shop completely, which included managing and arranging payment for a gang of teens he'd hired to steal cars. Robert also dabbled in cock fights and selling illegal cigarettes and alcohol. The Picton brothers became known to local gangs and other crime syndicates in Port Coquitlam, and soon the police were eyeing them up too. They came out to investigate rumours that the farm was being used as a Hell's Angels chop shop, but ultimately decided to focus on a more urgent priority catching a psychopathic serial killer who'd been preying on local children in the area. Clifford Olson was arrested in 1982 and would confess to murdering 11 children and sexually assaulting others. For a time, he was known as Canada's most prolific serial killer. That is, until another took his place. In the 1980s, indigenous women were showing up dead in Vancouver's downtown Eastside at an increasing rate. Many were sex workers. It was too easy for the police to dismiss each death as lifestyle related. This is one of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, just east of the financial district and once described by the Vancouver sun as four blocks from hell. The downtown east side is a small area with a high concentration of poverty, homelessness, drug use, mental illness, sex work and social exclusion. But it wasn't always like that. Indigenous communities were stewards of the land. For thousands of years, long before the Europeans arrived, the colonisers had set their sights on Vancouver's deep natural harbour as the perfect shipping hub for the British Empire. The Indigenous communities were forcibly displaced from the area. By the early 1900s, the Downtown Eastside was the best bustling commercial and retail heart of Vancouver, with City hall, the city courthouse, libraries, banks and shops. It was a hub for transportation and hospitality, with lots of hotels to serve transient workers. But then came the Great Depression, causing a surge of unemployment and poverty worldwide. In the 1930s, many people came to Vancouver looking for work and many became stranded there without jobs. Depression set in and the downtown Eastside became increasingly defined by alcohol, brothels and general survival. Then the city started relocating key institutions and services. First, City hall was moved away, then the main library. The streetcar route disappeared and foot traffic followed. Local businesses started failing. Those hotels, once built for workers, were converted into single room occupancy housing for people with nowhere else to go. Instead of investing in safety, housing and social supports, government and city officials looked away. Once the bustling city centre, the downtown Eastside was now treated as a containment site of poverty, trauma and marginalization. Then came World Expo 86.

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Join the fun. What a city. Predicting an influx of tourists with their wallets open, landlords evicted more than 1,000 low income residents, pushing many of them onto the streets or early death. Housing became even more unaffordable. And those decades of neglect had created conditions on the downtown east side, where predators could prey on the area's most vulnerable residents, largely unchecked. So in the 1980s, when Indigenous women started showing up dead in the downtown eastside, the police were apathetic. Just another naked body in a low rent hotel room with no visible injuries and dangerously high blood alcohol levels. The police perceived it as the proverbial trash taking itself out. What was really happening was darker than anyone could imagine. A sadistic man was targeting vulnerable women he thought no one would miss. He would pick up an indigenous woman at a bar, take her to a seedy hotel, pay her for sex, and then pay or force her to drink lethal amounts of alcohol until she died of alcohol poisoning. And then he would slip away unnoticed. In 1988, the police finally caught up with him. Gilbert Paul Jordan was a local barber in his late 50s, known to drink more than a bottle of vodka a day. The so called boozing barber would only be convicted for the manslaughter of one woman, but he was linked to the Deaths of another 9. Gilbert Paul Jordan was not the only killer trolling the downtown Eastside in the 80s. More than a dozen more sex workers were murdered that decade, their bodies found dumped in back alleys, bushes, nearby industrial sites. Several women had been mutilated with a knife. Some had been viciously stabbed, strangled and beaten by a killer who was clearly out of control. The police would describe it as overkill. Most of these murders remained unsolved. And among the rising number of murdered sex workers, there were others who just disappeared one day, never to be seen again. In 1987, the Vancouver Police department finally set up a task force to focus on solving these and other cases of missing and murdered women from the Vancouver area. After a little over a year, the task force disbanded. They had helped solve two cases, but left the majority of them still unsolved. The police had all but given up, and sex workers continued to be targeted. Journalists Neil hall and Kim Pemberton had been reporting on the issue for years for the Vancouver sun, gathering information to show these women were not just another sex worker. They were loved and cherished by someone. A 1989 feature article included profiles of 19 women who'd been murdered in the Vancouver area since 1982. Some had been Sexually assaulted, all unsolved at the time. The authors posed the question, is there a Ted Bundy or Green river style killer on the loose preying on women? A spokesperson from Vancouver Police's Major Crimes Unit was quoted reiterating the task force's conclusion that there was no evidence to suggest another serial killer was running amok in the area. This was seen by some as a baffling comment. The victims were all women and most were sex workers living on the margins of society. Many were indigenous and many struggled with hazardous substance use. The more likely story was that these vulnerable women were thought of as expendable, not worth the resources needed to investigate their cases properly. Back in Port Coquitlam, Robert Pickton had taken on the full weight of the farm operation since his parents passed away in the late 70s. From managing the pigs and maintaining equipment to slaughtering and butchering and servicing the client list. After all the parts of the animal that could be used for profit were removed, the carcass and other animal waste needed to be disposed of. Sometimes he would bury it in pits on the farm, but as the 80s progressed, Robert started disposing of the waste at a rendering plant in Vancouver called Water West Coast Reduction. This plant processed the remains and retained the grease to reuse in products like soap, candles and plastics. Best practice for storing biological waste is to keep it secure, cool and contained in sealed containers to prevent leaks, odours, pests and contamination before it can be hygienically disposed of. Robert Pickton didn't do that. He was foul. His truck was foul and so were his open barrels of rancid smelling waste. But there were no issues. The rendering plant would allow small operators to drive right in and dump their animal remains themselves. It was later established that there was a complete lack of oversight at the plant. That meant it was possible for unauthorised material to be dumped straight into the massive slurry of decomposing remains and leftover restaurant kitchen grease, never to be seen again. West Coast Reduction happened to be right next to a certain Vancouver neighbourhood known as the downtown east side. And Robert Pickton had heard all about it from David and his Hell's Angels friends. They spoke often about going to biker bars there and taking their pick of the women on the streets engaged in survival sex work. Robert was still a massive loner and he was intrigued. So he started to develop a little routine. After driving into Vancouver to dump his waste at West Coast Reduction, he would treat himself to a drive around the downtown east side before returning to Port Coquitlam. Women continue to go missing. Teresa Ann Williams grew up in semi amo First Nation and gave birth to Twin Sons in 1988 when she was just 14 years old. She ran away soon after leaving her baby sons with her family. Just a few months after that, in early July of 1988, Teresa phoned home to say she was planning to catch a bus home to see her sons. That was the last time her family ever heard from her. She was just 15 years old when she disappeared. About a month later, a local park groundskeeper made a horrific discovery. He found a plastic bag that contained a decomposed section of human thigh and bone. The park was Grandview park, which happened to be right next door to west coast reduction. Years later, through DNA advances, those remains were confirmed to belong to Theresa Ann Williams. The Vancouver police department would later state that while there was no tangible evidence linking these and other disappearances to Robert Pickton, he cannot be ruled out. The following year, 1989, 34 year old Elaine Dunbar dropped off the face of the earth. A white woman originally from Regina, Saskatchewan, Elaine was troubled and she began using drugs at around the age of 14. She moved to British Columbia in the early 1980s and lived in Port Coquitlam with her common law partner and their new baby daughter. Elaine's sister moved in with them and would report that Elaine was struggling with hazardous use of heroin. The couple broke up and after returning to Saskatchewan for a few years with their daughter, Elaine came back to live with her sister in Port Coquitlam once again. But that stability did not last. At some point, Elaine left and began spending time in Vancouver's downtown Eastside. The sisters lost contact. Elaine Dunbar was last seen in 1989 at a liquor store in North Vancouver. She was 34 years old. Her sister and father looked for her in the downtown east side, but there was no trace. That same year, 30 year old Ingrid Sowet disappeared. She was a white woman from Vancouver with a long history of mental health issues. She'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was a known drug user who had recently given birth and placed the baby for adoption. In 1989, Ingrid was living in one of the seedy hotels on the downtown east side. That is, until she got evicted. She visited her family and told them she was going to visit someone else. After months without contact, her mother reported her missing in December of 1990. There have been no confirmed sightings of Ingrid Soed since 1989. The women of the downtown Eastside were terrified. They banded together to share information about bad experiences with clients and warn each other of men to be wary of. This was the start of what would be known as the bad trick list. At this point, Robert Pickton did not appear on the list. The women passed these bad trick lists over to the police and started lobbying for more action. When they suspected someone else had gone missing, they checked in with the police. They asked for more updates and generally tried to keep the situation top of mind. The Vancouver police decided to try again and see what they could uncover with criminal profiling, a new investigative technique at the time. We'll be back in just a moment. Hi there. I've got a quick podcast recommendation for you. Valley of Shadows, an eight part investigative podcast that starts with a missing deputy and unravels into something much bigger. In 1998, a Los Angeles county sheriff's deputy, John Orjay, went for a trail run in California's Devil's Punch bowl and never came back. Nearly 30 years later, he's still missing. But this isn't just a wilderness mystery. It leads to the Mojave Desert's hidden meth epidemic. Outlaw biker networks support applying it and shocking allegations of police corruption and cover ups. Inside his own department, reporters Haley Fox and Betsy shepherd bring exclusive interviews, wiretaps and buried case files to light, pushing the investigation further than it's ever gone before. New episodes drop Monday. Search Valley of Shadows Wherever you listen.

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B (57:31)

Criminal profiling is the process of examining crime scene evidence for patterns that might help predict an unknown offender's personality, behavioral and demographic characteristics, particularly in cases of serial offences in the hope it will lead them to the offender. Criminal profiling is widely used today and often assumed to be effective, but it should be noted there is actually little scientific evidence to support its accuracy. Research has found that much of its credibility is anecdotal, built on selective success stories and vague predictions that only seem accurate in hindsight, and all reinforced by pop culture portrayals like Mindhunter. Critics note that much like polygraph tests, profiling can mislead investigations when treated as reliable science rather than a limited investigation tool, it can delay the identification of the real offender and even contribute to wrongful convictions. It should be approached with caution. In 1991, the Vancouver Police Department put together a team of criminal profilers alongside existing homicide detectives and tasked them with analysing 25 unsolved cases of women murdered in and around the downtown Eastside. The team was called Project Eclipse and grew to include several profilers from the FBI as well as a young Canadian from the Vancouver Police Department named Kim Rossmo. He had eight years experience in the downtown Eastside and was described as a brilliant analytical think thinker, skilled at math and working with computers. Rossmo was developing a new practice known as geographic profiling which involved analysing the crime locations and connecting them in an attempt to learn more about a predator. His theory was that serial killers worked in areas they were familiar with and felt comfortable in. Project Eclipse gathered for a week long conference to analyze the known data and information, reportedly the first time a group of international profilers had brainstormed together to try and advance an investigation. The team sorted the murdered women into different groups and found that with a cluster of four linked murders there was at least one serial killer at work with a possible two others out there as well. They presented their findings to the Vancouver Police Department who owned the jurisdiction, hoping that there would be action taken based on fell flat. Kim Rossmo would later say he believed this response stemmed from laziness and lack of resources and time, but he also suspected the department had no idea what to do with this information. It was unprecedented research and required out of the box thinking. It appears the police effectively put it in the too hard basket and and went back to business as usual as women continued to be targeted. Back on the Picton farm, Robert and David continued their association with the Howells Angels and the dishevelled property became a central meeting place. There were parties, barbecues, lots of drinking and lots of women, but Robert remained an outsider. By this point the brothers were in their early 40s and while David had Had a lot of different girlfriends. Robert never dated anyone. He didn't even interact much with their biker friends. He was often seen tending to the barbecue and the pig roasts. That seemed to be where he was comfortable. He'd become friendly with a Filipino immigrant named Pat Casanova who helped him butcher pigs on the farm and had a very good recipe for barbecued pork. Together they started a profitable side business. The local RCMP continued to keep an eye on the Picton brothers. As rumours persisted about a Howells Angels chop shop on the farm, David Picton drew additional attention of his own. He was a bad driver who had racked up a lot of trouble. Traffic incidents, including several crashes where he was at fault and sued for damages. He was also known to cruise the downtown east side to bring women back to the farm. Many people would later say that while David Pickton acted like, well, a dickhead, underneath it all, he was quite intelligent. He ran several successful businesses by this point and would often bid on large demolition jobs in Vancouver and surrounding areas. He frequently won those contracts. In August of 1991, a young woman named Nancy Clark disappeared. But she was far from Vancouver's downtown eastside. She went missing from Vancouver island, the city of Victoria. 25 year old Nancy was a caring and sensible woman as described by those who knew her, and a devoted mother to two daughters aged eight and almost one. She was also an outside sex worker providing for her children by soliciting clients from a street corner in Victoria. One night she never returned home from work and her mother was immediately concerned. That day. It was Nancy's eldest daughter's birthday and she was always there for her children, no matter what. She would never have missed their birthday. Her mother reported her missing. At the time, Nancy Clarks disappearance from Vancouver island was determined to be likely not related to the growing list of women going missing on the mainland. But what law enforcement didn't know at the time was that David Picton was working a demolition job on the island and and that his brother Robert had gone with him to help. They were both on Vancouver island at the very same time that Nancy Clark went missing in 1991. And more than 10 years later, Nancy's DNA would be found on their farm on the Mainland. Of the 33 women to be forensically linked to the Picton farm, Nancy Clark was the earliest to disappear. But this number is only a reflection of what could still be found by that point. The following year, David Pickton found himself on the police's radar yet again. A female employee at one of his excavation Sites reported to police that she encountered David inside an on site trailer. He pushed her up against a wall and groped her genitals over her jeans. But another employee entered the trailer and interrupted him. According to the woman, as David Pickton left the trailer he threatened to rape and kill her. He said I'm going to wipe you. He couldn't say the word with an R. He said it twice. He was laughing like crazy. David claimed he only slapped the woman on the butt and denied threatening her. He was charged with sexual assault. The woman would report that. After that, another employee warned her to leave town, saying theyre going to kill you. They're going to cut you up and spread you all over where you won't be found. Terrified, she left town. David Picton was found guilty of sexual assault, but the jury noted it was moderate. He got away with a year probation and a fine of $1,000. That was 1992. The poor woman lived in fear for many years. She would later be awarded $45,000 in damages after suing David Pickton for inflicting psychological trauma. Back at the farm, Robert's trips to the downtown Eastside were becoming second nature and he looked for more opportunities to visit. When his brother got a demolition contract in North Vancouver, he saw his chance. He would be driving near the downtown Eastside on the way and with just a a slight detour he could buy himself the company of a sex worker or two. But after a while, Robert got tired of the daily commute. He had an old motorhome parked on the farm so he gave it a tune up and drove it to the demolition site. He lived there for the duration of the job, saying he was acting as a site security officer out of hours. Now living much closer to the downtown eastside, Robert began spending more time there. He frequented local bars, places where many of the area's most vulnerable residents gathered. He settled into a routine. He didn't do alcohol or drugs, so only drank soda himself. But when he found a sex worker he was interested in, he would give her money to buy drugs for herself as an incentive. Then he would persuade her to go with him back to his farm to keep partying. The situation on the ground in the downtown east side was becoming a crisis. Sex workers were organising to try and keep themselves safe. They gathered at the Women's Information Safe House, also known as wish, A non profit organisation that operated a drop in centre on the downtown east side died right in the middle of the main strip where sex workers could get a hot meal, a space to rest and get ready and access nursing and counselling services. While at wish, these women traded stories about their clients and updated their list of johns or tricks who had given them the creeps or shown violent or perverse tendencies. They passed their bad trick list to the police with descriptions of the men and in many cases, license plate numbers. It's at this time that the name Willie Picton started appearing on this bad trick list. The police promised to review the information, but women continue to go missing or turn up murdered in some alleyway. Kathleen Whatley was known as a vivacious black woman, petite in stature. She'd lived in the United States for some years before she moved to Vancouver and she'd lived a difficult life. About five years earlier, she survived an attempted murder during a shooting stemming from cocaine use. She gave birth to two young children with a common law partner in Vancouver. But the couple had recently separated and Kathleen was relying on sex work to help make ends meet. In June of 1992, 39 year old Kathleen Whatley left her two young children with a babysitter and went to meet a client on the downtown east side. She was never seen again. Then there was Elsie Sebastian Jones. A member of the Pachedat First Nation on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Elsie was among the 150,000 indigenous children sent to a residential school. Often underfunded and overcrowded, the residential schools program was government sponsored and run by religious organisations with the goal to eradicate Indigenous culture and replace it with the Western culture of European settlers. Thousands of students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse and experimentation, and thousands died right on their school grounds. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the residential school system is often associated with Canada's early history, but these schools actually ran for more than a century until the last one closed in 1996. Elsie Sebastian Jones suffered repeated physical abuse during her years at residential school, leaving lasting emotional scars that shaped most of her adult life. She gave birth to the first of four children when she was just 16. She also struggled with depression, substance use disorder, unstable relationships and many periods of instability in her life. After attending several treatment programs followed by relapse, her children eventually went to live with relatives and Elsie moved to Vancouver. Her daughters would say she always kept in touch with them, later describing their mother as a smart, beautiful woman who endured racism throughout her life and fell through the cracks of a system that failed to support her. One night in 1992, Elsie cooked dinner for her daughters, then left to get drugs. She was never seen again. She was 40 years old. The following year Teresa Louise Triff vanished. Very little is known about Teresa other than the fact that she was a 31 year old white woman with blonde curly hair and blue eyes. All in all, 15 women had vanished from the Downtown Eastside in the 14 years between 1979 in 1993. By this point the Picton brothers were not getting along at all. Their living arrangements had always been tumultuous with both Robert and David living in the rambling farmhouse sharing the one bathroom. In many respects they were different. David was the short and stocky brother, thought of as a foul mouthed jerk who liked having lots of people over to party, whereas Robert was lanky and slim, not very social and he often creeped people out. They both had bad tempers and bad hygiene, although Robert's was said to be much worse. Overall, it was not working in the farmhouse. There was no privacy and no escape from each other. After a massive blow up, Robert decided to move into the old motorhome on the the other side of the property and David stayed in the farmhouse. Despite the filthy conditions. They always seemed to have women around that needed housing and were willing to do domestic work like laundry and cleaning if they could stay on the farm. A woman named Tanya would later testify that she needed a place to stay and knew the Pictons because her stepfather worked on the farm farm slaughtering pigs. Robert ushered her into his motorhome and allowed her to stay there with him. Tanya described their relationship as like uncle and niece. They slept in separate areas in the motorhome and there was no sex. She liked and trusted Robert so much that she ended up staying there for a year and a half. Tanya said there was a constant stream of people coming and going from the flow farm and she often returned to the motorhome very late at night to find that Robert wasn't there. She would testify she just assumed he was working late. She had no idea that he was meeting sex workers on the downtown east side. The list of missing women continued to grow. Leigh Minor grew up near San Francisco, one of four children. Her family would describe her as charismatic and fiercely loyal, with striking auburn hair and a magnetic personality. As a teenager, Lee's life was upended when her father died suddenly of a heart attack and years later her own husband would die by suicide in her arms. The compounded grief left her devastated and she began using heroin to cope. Lee became a mother in 1986 and moved to Edmonton for a fresh start. She tried to stop using drugs, but it proved difficult and her child eventually went to live with family in 1993, she moved to the downtown Eastside and engaged in sex work to survive and fund her substance use dis disorder. That December of 1993, 34 year old Lee phoned her sister to ask for money to visit their mother for Christmas. Her family waited for her all day, gifts unopened, but she never arrived. At first they assumed she just hadn't kept her promise. But when weeks went by with no word, Lee's mother went looking for her on the downtown east side and reported her missing. She would later say the police showed little interest. Then there's Angela Arseneaux, who was just 17 years old when she disappeared. Angela grew up with her mother and stepfather, moving several times before eventually settling in the Vancouver area. Angela reportedly started using drugs in high school and dropped out in grade nine. Her mother would later tell the Surrey Leader that she left home and briefly became involved in sex work on the downtown Eastside. But her boyfriend helped her get off the streets. Angela was street smart and capable of looking after herself. But she was also being harassed, harassed by a pimp who wanted her to return to sex work. In August of 1994, Angela spoke with her mother on the phone, making plans to go shopping for shower curtains. She was living with her boyfriend by this time and that night they met downtown for dinner and shopping with another friend. She caught the bus home by herself for some reason. When her boyfriend arrived home Later, Angela's purse, ID cash and shopping bags were there. But the 17 year old was missing. She was never seen again. During this time, Robert Pickton had continued his trips into west coast reduction to dump his barrels of waste and remains some. Sometimes he wasn't able to make the trip himself and west coast would send a truck out to pick them up. He didn't really need an excuse to go to the downtown east side anymore. So this arrangement became more and more frequent. One driver would later testify that he made regular trips out to the Picton Farm for four years in the early to mid-90s. He remembered glancing into the barrel periodically and was often surprised to see chunks of meat in it. Some of them quite big chunks. This struck him as unusual. Most farmers and butchers carved off every piece of meat they could find. That's where the money was. But Robert Pectin was just throwing it away. Thanks for listening. In part two, there's an alarming spike in vulnerable women going missing from the downtown Eastside. Two would live to tell their stories. We'll circle back to Wendy, who escaped from the farm after a vicious knife fight with Robert Pickton and was rushed to emergency surgery, still with the handcuffs he put around her wrist. Meanwhile, the Picton brothers become officially wealthy and open the infamous party venue known as Piggies palace, serving alcohol and barbecue pork to bikers, sex workers and even local city officials. The next episode will be available in a week. You can listen ad free and early on our premium feed. For the full list of resources, sources, research, studies and anything else you want to know about the podcast, see the show notes or visit canadiantruecrime CA we donate monthly to those facing injustice. Proceeds from this series are going to the Wish Drop in Centre Society, supporting street based sex workers on Vancouver's downtown east side since 1984. Special thanks to Danielle Paradis for family outreach and additional research. Audio editing was by Crosby Audio and Eric Crosby voiced the disclaimer. Our senior producer is Lindsay Eldridge and Carol Weinberg is our script consultant. Research, writing, narration and sound design was by me and the theme songs were composed by We Talk of Dreams. I'll be back soon with another Canadian True Cross Crime episode. See you then.

E (80:38)

This is Paige Desorbo from Giggly Squad. Boost Mobile gives you the same network coverage, speed and service you're used to, just at a more affordable price. Why pay more if you don't have to? Offering reliable nationwide coverage backed by a 30 day money back guarantee. Love your service or get your money back, no questions asked? Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store or head to boostmobile.com to learn more. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers who cancel within 30 days of activation will have Boost service fees refunded, activation fees if applicable, and phone payments will not be refunded.

A (81:17)

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