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- [00:01]
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- [01:01]
Hannah
Thanks for listening to Red Handed. Make sure you listen to and follow Red Handed on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa. Alexa play the podcast Red Handed on Amazon Music and with Amazon Music Unlimited you can now listen to your favorite music, podcasts and audiobooks all in the Amazon Music app.
- [01:29]
Saroti
They say that pigs will eat anything and in 2002, Vancouver Police learned this eerie truth for themselves when the DNA of over 30 missing women was found on a sprawling hog farm just outside the city. Without a single complete body, the grisly crime scene at Robert Willie Picton's farm quickly became the heart of the largest and most complex homicide investigation in Canadian history. But due to the community in Vancouver's impoverished downtown east side, this horrifying discovery hadn't come out of nowhere. Instead, it was the sickening answer to questions that had been building for years, but law enforcement agencies had systemically failed to answer. Instead, it was the sickening answer to questions that had been building for years, but law enforcement agencies had systemically failed to answer. Because even whilst women were vanishing from the streets every single day, the powers that be refused to admit there was a serial killer operating in Vancouver. As drug addicted sex workers, many from Canada's vulnerable Indigenous community, the victims were invisible and ignored by authorities, chewed up and spat out by the pigs in more ways than one. And the discovery of their partial remains was just the beginning of the twisted story. I'm Hannah, I'm Saroti, and this is Red Handed, where Today we are diving into part one of the disturbing case of Canada's most infamous serial killer, the Butcher of Vancouver.
- [03:23]
Hannah
Back in the 90s, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside had a pretty grim reputation. Dubbed Canada's poorest postcode, it was notorious for high rates of poverty, homelessness, drug abuse and prostitution. 80% of the women engaged in sex work in the area didn't actually come from Vancouver. Many were indigenous and grew up in Canada's rural reserve communities, but had become estranged from their families amid battles with drug addiction. They were isolated, vulnerable and living an incredibly risky and dangerous existence. And despite frequent acts of violence against them, incidents rarely got reported because downtown Eastsiders had an intense distrust of the authorities, who they knew were much more likely to lock them up for working the streets than cracking down on the clients who were abusing them.
- [04:16]
Saroti
Life here was undeniably tough. But by the late 90s, things took an even darker turn. Whilst vulnerable girls had always come and gone from the downtown east side, from 1997 onwards, there was an alarming surgeon of missing persons cases. At least 69 women disappeared from the area between 97 and 2002, a sudden spike that even the police couldn't write off.
- [04:41]
Hannah
That's unbelievable. That's in five years for nearly 70 women. And those are just the ones that they, like, realize have gone missing.
- [04:51]
Saroti
Understandably, fear gripped the community with whispers of a serial killer targeting sex workers. The families of missing women begged the authorities to launch a proper investigation into the suspected murders. But did they? Nope. At multiple press conferences, Vancouver police consistently denied the existence of a potential serial killer at large in the downtown Eastside neighbourhood. They pointed to the lack of bodies and argued that these women often had complicated family relationships that meant they probably wanted to go off grid. Those who actually lived in the area, though, knew that that just wasn't true. Still, without the authorities acknowledging the scale of the problem, and more importantly, refusing to fund a proper investigation, there was nowhere else to turn. The disappearances were labelled missing persons cases and they all swiftly went cold. For the next five years, the community's cries for help would fall on deaf ears. All the while, more and more women vanished without a trace.
- [06:00]
Hannah
It's a really tricky one because, and I'm not going to defend the Vancouver Police Department because, as we will see, they make a lot of mistakes during this investigation. Once it eventually actually turns into an investigation. But I understand at the very start, at the very start, it's the only grain of, like, you know, any sort of leniency that I'm willing to give this department that. They are like, there are no bodies. It's not like we're talking about bodies are turning up dead and even they're just passing them off as, like, ODs or something or accidents or misadventure. There are literally no bodies turning up. There is nothing turning up. There's just women going missing, yes, at alarmingly high rates. But they are living a very, very high risk lifestyle. And as you said, you know, some of them are very, very well, most of them were addicted to drugs. They were in a very difficult time in their lives. And maybe the police can just brush it off as like they're being transient, whatever. One thing we do know here that is different to other cases and it was kind of painted like this at the time, but it's definitely not the case is that nobody was looking for these women. Nobody cared about them, nobody was looking for them. The victims families, they may have been estranged, they may have had difficult relationships because of drug addiction, because of, you know, the working the streets, that kind of thing. But these girls families, these women's families were looking for them. They were pressuring the police. They were out there putting up missing posters. They were demanding answers. There were people looking for them. And we have said this before, serial killer investigations are the hardest investigations that you can possibly imagine because there's often not any connection between the killer and the victims. And then add on top of that a situation in which there's not even bodies, so there's not even a crime scene, there's not anything for them to process. I can understand why they were hesitant at first to admit because it's a big, like, it's a big call to make because then you are looking for a serial killer. Right. But obviously as the case goes on, as the years go by, the sheer number, the sheer volume of people who are going missing, the fact that they did nothing, it really screams of just like abject laziness and an absolute desire to not go anywhere near that can of worms. They did not want to open this up, but I can understand at first why it was such a tricky thing to even know what you were going to be looking into.
- [08:12]
Saroti
Well, yeah, because, you know, taking yourself off as an adult isn't illegal.
- [08:16]
Hannah
Yes, exactly, exactly.
- [08:18]
Saroti
If people want to go missing, they can't. Like you can't stop them.
- [08:21]
Hannah
And if the police can also point to the fact that you were also leading a high risk lifestyle with substance abuse and all of that, then it makes it more likely that, yes, maybe you did just go off again. I'm not making excuses for the Vancouver Police Department, but I can understand that it was a very tricky thing to get off the ground in the initial stages. Now, during this time that all of these women were going missing, one man was a regular face in the Downtown Eastside area. His name was Robert Willie Picton, a pig farmer in his 40s who often visited the area to dispose of animal parts at a local rendering plant. But Picton was there for pleasure as well as business. He'd regularly cruise the 10 block strip known as the Low Track, picking up women to take back to his farm for sex, getting them to call him Uncle Willy. Picton seemed to consider himself a sort of guardian angel to these desperate women. He gave them money for drugs, offered them odd jobs on his sprawling farm just outside of the city, and even offered them accommodation if they were kicked out of local hostels. And we've seen this before, We've seen this before. This kind of man who's like inserting himself into the lives of sort of street level sex workers, who's like, I can save you, I can help you. And it's just a way for them to disarm them, to disarm their potential victims to make them think that they're helpful. Now, unsurprisingly, uncle fucking Willy was far from a kindly old tom. He was a predator operating in plain sight.
- [09:58]
Saroti
I also think if he hadn't, I'm writing about another serial killer at the moment, and he managed to evade capture for so long because he was operating in different areas. And I think if Willie Picton hadn't just stuck to one place, I think he would have got away with it for even longer.
- [10:19]
Hannah
Oh, my God. Absolutely. If you want to be a serial killer. Well, if you want to be a killer, the best thing is to, yes, obviously, as we've said time and time before, kill victims who you have no connection to. That's what serial killers do. That's why those investigations are particularly hard. The second thing, leave no bodies behind, which is what Willie Picton did, because he found a horrendously, I don't want to say genius plan. He grew up on a pig farm, as we're going to see, so he knew what the situation was there with those animals. But he found this disgusting way in which he was able to rid himself of the bodies to dispose of, and of course, like you said, be transient. That's the one thing Willie Picton doesn't do because he, as we will find out, I don't know, I, I don't, I, I hesitate to call Willie Pickton stupid. I don't think he's stupid. But he lives a very like lifestyle. He lives a very like, nothing's gonna happen to me. He's got that mindset.
- [11:11]
Saroti
So let's go back to where it all began for Willie Picton, who was born on 24th October 1949 as the second of three kids born to pig farmers Leonard and Louise Picton in port Coquitlam, roughly 17 miles east of Vancouver, but banish any romantic notions of an idyllic childhood growing up on a farm in rural Canada. Because whilst their eldest sister, Linda was sent to live with relatives in a more suitable environment for a little girl, Willy and his younger brother David, were expected to follow in their father's footsteps by toiling for long hours on the farm. Leonard, Willie's dad, was distant and abusive, leaving the childcare responsibilities entirely to his wife, Louise, a woman described as eccentric and demanding, which, gauging, from what I'm about to tell you, is quite the understatement. We don't know exactly what life was like on the farm whilst the boys were growing up under their mother's iron fist. But those who knew the family paint a picture of a domineering woman who had more than just a nasty streak. She was even linked to a local death. In October 1967, a teenage David accidentally hit one of the neighbor's kids, 14 year old Tim Barrett, with the family's truck after he freaked out and summoned his mum. Local legend has it that Louise, in an attempt to protect her son, shoved the boy's crumpled body deep into a ditch at the side of the road. Tim wasn't discovered until the next morning and by then he was long dead.
- [12:57]
Hannah
And just so we're all clear, he wasn't dead when Louise allegedly pushed his body into that ditch. Because as it turned out, little Tim, the official cause of death was ruled as drowning, which doesn't tend to happen when you get hit by a truck. It tends to happen when you get pushed into a ditch by the killer's mother by Louise. The pathologist also noted that the victim had sustained several brutal injuries, likely from being hit by a vehicle, including a skull fracture, brain haemorrhage and broken pelvis. Despite this, in a very 60s fashion, the death was ruled an accident and so David was sent to juve with a slap on his wrist. While Louise was never even actually charged with anything.
- [13:47]
Saroti
David's not going to dob her in, is she? Terrifying.
- [13:51]
Hannah
Absolutely not.
- [13:55]
McDonald's Advertiser
All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with Popping Boba. To crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six. All new drinks are here now at McDonald's.
- [14:22]
Thumbtack Advertiser
Refreshers contain caffeine.
- [14:25]
Hannah
Three decades ago, a young woman named Angie Dodge is found brutally murdered in Idaho Falls. Police put a man behind bars. But as the years pass, doubts emerge about whether the real killer was ever caught. That's when Angie's own mother embarks on a decades long mission to uncover the truth. Listen to the Snare, a new series from ABC Audio. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. We think that this incident really paints a clear picture of the kind of woman who would go on to shape Willie Picton's life as especially in those early years. It's also said that while Louise taught the boys hard work, she totally neglected their personal and emotional needs, sending them to school in dirty clothes, reeking of manure, which earned them both the harsh but predictable nickname Stinky Piggy from their peers. In spite of this mum's, shall we say, overbearing personality, Willy was said to be a total mummy's boy. He had an unnaturally strong attachment to Louise.
- [15:31]
Saroti
Ding, ding, ding.
- [15:32]
Hannah
Yeah, absolutely. And rarely interacted with his father. Willy even struggled in special ed classes at school and was known by his peers as a socially outcast oddball, which, like, sure, like a lot of kids, struggle to fit in at school. But where things go pretty swiftly off the deep end is that when Willi wanted to avoid people and yeah, brace yourself for this, he'd allegedly hide inside the gutted carcasses of the massive hogs kept on the family farm. Like Bear Grylls, like a piggy revenant. It's disgusting. And in another particularly grim little incident from his childhood, Willie Picton obviously has very few friends. And at the age of 12, he grew particularly attached to. To a calf that he started raising as his pet. I think you can probably all guess where this is going because his parents were like, no, fuck that, and slaughtered that calf that Willy had grown attached to just two weeks later, presumably to teach him a lesson about the cruel circle of life on a farm. And yeah, so far I think we can say so. Ed Gein. Right, that's what this reminds me of.
- [16:46]
Saroti
Yeah. And I suppose as a parent, you can't really use the. Your pet's gone to the big farm upstate when you already are on the big farm upstate.
- [16:57]
Hannah
Where else would they go? Yeah, it's much more. This little piggy went to market for all of the piggies and the calves. Look, if you put it into perspective, Willie Picton's childhood, not ideal it's not that we can see, like, full of actual outright abuse of any sort. It's like kind of this classic childhood of, like, neglect. But, like, is that so different to what a lot of people growing up in the 60s would have faced? Probably not. I think it's his weird, like, interest with the dead bodies of animals. Like, if it is true, and we can't say for sure, but if it is true that he was hiding inside the dead carcasses of pigs to find comfort when he felt socially ostracized, do we need to do a lot of psychological unpacking there about what he does later on? Probably not.
- [17:43]
Saroti
It's quite Dennis Nilsson, isn't it?
- [17:44]
Hannah
Yeah.
- [17:45]
Saroti
Portrait of a Drowning Boy. Picton dropped out of school in 1963, and he got a job as a meat cutter and also continued working on the family farm. I don't think he would have been given a choice. After their parents died in the late 70s, the Picton siblings inherited the farm and sold most of it off for urban development, making a cool 5.6 million between them. Brothers Willie and David kept the farm going as a smaller livestock operation, along with a salvage business that they co ran in charge of the farming side of things. Willy lived alone in his own trailer on the land with all of his millions. And even as an adult, he never quite got the hang of personal hygiene. He always looked bedraggled and unkempt and notoriously carried the stench of the pig farm with him everywhere he went. To put it bluntly, if you were going to guess that anyone was a creepy serial killer just based on their looks, you would probably put your money on Willie Picton. If you cast your mind back to the Silence of the Lamb's Buffalo Bill, based on Ed Gein. Actually, Picton is his Canadian doppelganger. He kind of looks so like a serial killer, you don't suspect him for sure?
- [19:08]
Hannah
For sure. When people are like, oh, you know, you never know. You never know. Sometimes you do.
- [19:17]
Saroti
But despite all of that, Willie Picton, amazingly didn't find himself lacking a social life. In fact, he was often surrounded by people whom he hired to live and work on the farm. These were often drug addicts who'd fallen on hard times, who picked and liked to think he was throwing a lifeline to by offering them gainful employment in return. These pals would hang out with Picton and nag him to take care of himself and have a bath whenever he started to smell even worse than the pigs he raised. And we're going to return to that point a little bit later on, because whatever those guys saw or pretended not to see would be a crucial element of unravelling this case. Yeah.
- [20:03]
Hannah
And I think for Willie Pickton, the farm inheritance and his ability to keep running it, even in a smaller operation and make that extra money really allowed him to overcome the social challenges of his childhood and adolescence and early adulthood. Because it's classic manipulation. Right. And this is why I don't think Willie Picton is that stupid. I don't know if he's like some mastermind behind everything, but I don't think he's that stupid. He's well aware that he does want companionship. He's not such a social recluse like Ed Gein. I don't think Ed Gein actually wanted to hang out with people. I really don't think he did. I think he really did just want to live in that house with his mum's, like, weird nipple belt and all of that weird shit that he had going on. I don't think he actually wanted to hang out with people. I think he was very, very much like, in that schizotypical space. Like, I don't think companionship meant that much to him. Willie Picton's not the same. He wants it and he knows how to get it. And it's through manipulating people, offering them drugs, offering them money, offering them employment, offering them a place to stay, and then he knows that he buys their loyalty that way. And then he pushes the boundaries further and further and further for what he can get away with, because he knows that these people are so desperate they're not going to turn him in. And sadly, he's right. So Willy remained close to his brother David, who was a regular presence around the property. And as time went on, this dynamic duo developed bigger dreams than managing a humble pig farm. In the mid-90s, the brothers started running an ad hoc nightclub that they named Piggies palace from their converted slaughterhouse, hosting raucous parties full of booze, drugs and sex workers.
- [21:46]
Saroti
I can't remember whether this was someone we met when we were on tour in America or whether it was someone who's just sent us a message on some sort of socials platform.
- [21:55]
Hannah
But I'm sure we met her when we were on tour.
- [21:58]
Saroti
That's it. I cannot remember her name, but we met someone who used to go to these parties.
- [22:04]
Hannah
Oh, my God. It's just. It's crazy. And look, mid-90s, I feel like there was a space, there was a niche
- [22:13]
Saroti
in the mid-90s where the maternity ward of rave.
- [22:18]
Hannah
Like, I think it would have seemed really like cool and avant garde and fucking just wild and weird to go to a rave at an old slaughterhouse in the middle of nowhere. And people were fucking loving it. These parties were, you know, these parties were popping. Piggy palace was popping, let's just put it like that. And naturally it caught the attention of authorities and it was eventually shut down by the council for breaching agricultural zoning regulations, which, like, yes, given that the slaughterhouse was not built to host parties, makes sense. They shut it down. But the Pictons were not giving up without a fight. They reinvented the club as Piggies Palace. Good Times Society, a registered charity.
- [23:02]
Saroti
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [23:04]
Hannah
That claimed to raise money for local service organisations through social events. And these wild nights proved especially popular with Hell's Angels bikers and even local cops who were said to party into the early hours down on the old Picton Farm, raising money for charity.
- [23:22]
Saroti
Well, it's the Scientology model. It works.
- [23:26]
Hannah
It does work. And you know, we've all been to places where they're like, yeah, we don't have a booze license, but we can sell raffle tickets. And guess what? With every raffle ticket, everyone's a winner. And you win a drink. So what do you want? It's one. It's like, you know, £3.50 for a raffle ticket. Oh, you want a drink? What would you like? So, yeah, they're very much. Again, this is what I'm saying. I don't think they're stupid. I do not think they're stupid. Don't go by their appearance. These guys know what they're fcking doing. And yeah, I guess the fact that these parties were so popping, maybe people were raising questions about what's going on in Vancouver at the time. But it's the 90s. It's the 90s. It doesn't last long because by the millennium, the charity's dubious non profit status was revoked after they failed to provide any sort of viable financial statements.
- [24:12]
Saroti
Ah, see, that's where you have to start a religion. That's the next step.
- [24:16]
Hannah
Yeah, yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna do this kind of thing.
- [24:19]
Thumbtack Advertiser
Do it.
- [24:19]
Hannah
You can probably get away with it, but you've got to make sure your papers are there. Oh, yeah, you got to make sure the accounts are there.
- [24:24]
Saroti
The accountants will always get you.
- [24:27]
Hannah
Exactly. And in 2000, the city finally shut down Piggy's palace for good after serving an injunction banning public gatherings after complaints over noise, alcohol and drug use. Which you have to ask, how loud was this? Because this farm was out in the fucking middle of nowhere. But, you know, so unless, I guess, they did sell off huge chunks of their farmland that their parents had left them for urban development. So did they just build in that 10 years that they were getting away with this Piggy palace thing, they managed to build, like, some actually nice, like, urban homes for, like, you know, the. The young couples out of Vancouver. And then they were like, what the fuck is going on down at that farm in that slaughterhouse? So, yeah, all of it banned. And the good times might have been over at Piggy's palace, but the bad times, well, as we will find out, they'd been happening all along, and they weren't about to stop.
- [25:19]
Saroti
Now, back in 1997, just as women were starting to vanish in higher numbers from the downtown east side, police made one of the biggest blunders in this whole saga. And there are a lot of them. So that's. That's not an insignificant thing to say. On the 22nd of March that year, Picton picked up a sex worker known on the streets as Stitch, although her real name was Wendy Lynn Isetter. He picked her up and he drove her to his farm for sex. Despite her gut instinct telling her not to go, Stitch was desperate for drugs, so she ignored that feeling. And it was almost the last mistake she ever made. After they'd had sex on a dirty mattress on the trailer floor, Stitch tried to use Picton's phone to call for a ride. And that is where things got ugly. Picton handcuffed Stitch's hands, but Stitch managed to grab a knife and fought back.
- [26:23]
Hannah
In the tussle that followed, Stitch miraculously managed to slash Picton in the face and knock him down. Getting herself a brief window to try and escape, Stitch ran out onto the main road and flagged down a young couple in a car who called 911. Stitch was then rushed to a local hospital by ambulance for emergency surgery. Because she had also been stabbed repeatedly in the struggle with Picton, she almost died on the table multiple times before narrowly pulling through. Meanwhile, Picton was literally at the same exact hospital being treated for his own injuries. And this is the bit that. It's just like, if you saw it in a movie, you'd be like, fuck off. Because an orderly, who had thankfully been paying attention, found a key on Willie Picton that matched the handcuff that was on Stitch's wrists when she had been admitted to hospital. And so they called the police and the Royal Canadian Mounted police, AKA the Mounties, joined the dots and arrested Willie Picton. I think that is unbelievable. I like cannot believe that anybody connected those dots. Fantastic.
- [27:34]
Saroti
Right?
- [27:35]
Hannah
Well, Picton was charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon and forcible confinement. Great.
- [27:42]
Saroti
Right.
- [27:43]
Hannah
Well, Picton was let out on a measly $2,000 bail, which is nothing for him and basically making him a free man whilst awaiting trial. And just three days before that trial was meant to start in January 1998, Crown attorneys ruled that Stitch was an unreliable witness due to her drug addiction. So the charges fell apart and the case was closed. In other words, nothing fucking happened. Willie Picton came out of that whole situation without so much as a blot on his criminal record. The authorities didn't know it yet, but this was a fuck up that would cost countless women their lives.
- [28:24]
Saroti
Meanwhile, rumours were intensifying about the dark clouds gathering in Vancouver's downtown east side. Sex workers grew fearful and began operating in groups, avoiding getting into strangers cars and reporting unfamiliar number plates.
- [28:39]
Hannah
And I totally understand why they're doing that. Of course they are. There's like nothing else they can do other than obviously stop working the streets, which they're so desperate they're not even going to comprehend that right now. But if you sort of think about cases like this, it's typically not going to be a stranger or like a car, an unusual car or an unusual client that's suddenly going to turn up. It's going to be a man who's very comfortable operating in that area. It's going to be someone like Willie Picton who's like playing nice old Uncle Willie, like get in the car and let's go. Like it's not going to be that unfamiliar license plate. But again, what are they to know? They're terrified. But as like if a law enforcement agency had been involved in this point, that's what they should have been looking at. It's the man who's always there, if anything.
- [29:19]
Saroti
Yeah. But without the cooperation of the police, who were still refusing to acknowledge any crimes had taken place at all, it was down to the community to take justice into their own hands. However they could enter Wayne Leng, unexpected vigilante king, as a former client and close friend of local sex worker Sarah DeVries, who had gone missing in April 1998, Wayne set up a tip off line off his own back. Amid the crank callers, he received a genuinely startling piece of intel. A guy calling himself Bill warned Wayne about Willie Picton, claiming that a woman who lived on the farm had reported Seeing female clothing and IDs on the property. The man was Bill Hiscox, a contractor who'd previously worked for the Picton brothers. Hiscox had actually tried to escalate the matter himself by reporting it to the rcmp, but he just hadn't got very far.
- [30:25]
Hannah
Quick sidebar. Before we carry on, just in case we need to explain how Canada's complicated policing structure works, it is worth getting into this for a second because it does have a huge impact on how this case was handled. So depending on where you are in the country, crimes either fall under the jurisdiction of the city police force, like the Vancouver Police Department or the rcmp, AKA the Mounties. Now, the RCMP are Canada's federal law enforcement agency, basically a mix of the FBI and a national police force who also serve more rural areas that don't have their own police department. So in this case, women were disappearing from the downtown Eastside area of Vancouver, but Picton's farm was sat outside of the city's limits in an area policed by the rcmp. The two agencies aren't especially known for their great communication. Surprise, surprise. Especially not back in the 90s. So again, I'm not putting this down to Willie Picton being some sort of mastermind, but this does massively work in his favour. The fact that he's picking up the women that he is killing in one jurisdiction but killing them in a totally different jurisdiction. This does work in his favour because of, like we said, the lack of joined up working between these two agencies.
- [31:43]
Saroti
When Bill Hiscox told Port Coquitlam RRC MP officers about his suspicions of Picton in 1998, they did at least attempt to investigate. They pulled in Lisa Yelds, the woman Hiscox named as his source for questioning at a local Mountie hq. Lisa was a close friend of Picton's and had allegedly gossiped to Hiscox about seeing women's clothing, IDs and personal items in his squalid trailer home. Her eyewitness testimony was absolutely crucial to establishing a link between this creepy pig farmer and the wave of missing women from the city. During her interview, Yelds absolutely refused to cooperate and denied everything. She would later claim that the reason she stonewalled was because she hates cops and feared that they would twist her words. And we'll come back to this later on, but without an eyewitness account from Lisa Yelds, his Cox's report was legally considered no more than hearsay and insufficient grounds for the Mounties to get a search Warrant. And so once again, nothing fucking happen.
- [33:02]
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- [34:04]
Hannah
but the rumor mill did not stop there. Willie Picton continued to employ people who struggle to find work elsewhere. And one of these guys was a man named Andy Bellwood, who just finished six months of rehab when he started working at the farm doing odd jobs. Like many who joined the piggy farm crew, Andy got the gig through a woman called Gina Houston, a pal of Pictons. Gina Houston is another person on our side eye list in this case, but we're going to come back to her later. Andy started working at the farm in early 1999 and quickly became one of Picton's most trusted employees. But when Picton revealed one day that he had murdered multiple women, almost casually revealing that he would, quote, take em up to the barn, hang em gut em and feed em to the pigs, Andy realized that he was perhaps in way too deep with his oddball new boss. I mean, yeah, if anything's gonna push poor Andy, who's just on six months of rehab, back into some sort of horrible haze, it's listening to Willie Picton tell him what the fuck he's been up to. Now. Andy reckons that Picton told him because he thought he would go along with it and maybe even get involved himself. He feels like that was the kind of tone or the vibe in which it was said. It was like, hey, there's this fun thing I do on the farm. Do you want to get involved? But Andy's reaction must have let slip that he wasn't exactly on the same page. And he claims that some of Picton's henchmen beat him up four days later and accused him of stealing from the farm. In what he believes was an intimidation tactic to scare Andy off from ever speaking out. Which, like, I believe, I absolutely believe Picton's very calculated. I think he pushes the button, he pushes the envelope a little bit. A little bit. A little bit with people to see how much he can get away with, to see how desperate they are, to see how much they'll play along with him. And then if he gets a bad vibe like, I've gone too far, he's going to have tactics up his sleeve for how to keep himself safe. Picton didn't just get away with this for as long as he did because of the ineptitude of Vancouver Police Department. It's also because he was quite calculated in what he was doing. So, yeah, if this was an intimidation tactic, it worked. Because a shit scared Andy Bellwood left the farm and fled to start a new life on Vancouver island without ever going to the police. If Andy had gone to the Mounties with what he had heard, perhaps things could have turned out differently. But then again, perhaps they wouldn't have.
- [36:40]
Saroti
Yeah, I wouldn't count on it.
- [36:41]
Jace Medical Advertiser
No.
- [36:42]
Hannah
Because the issue wasn't that the RCMP weren't aware about the whispers around Picton. It's that nothing quite stuck out enough for them to fully investigate. And it's in that limbo that Picton was given free range to kill.
- [36:57]
Saroti
Meanwhile in the city, public fears were intensifying to a boiling point. As the millennium approached with countless girls still unaccounted for, community action just wasn't enough. The police needed to acknowledge the scale of the problem and focus their efforts on finding the serial killer who was obviously targeting this vulnerable community. Public pressure exploded with hundreds of people turning up to a Memorial March in May 1999 demanding that the police take action. A vocal figure at the march was a woman named Serena abbotsway, a sex worker who was well known in the downtown Eastside area. She had only just returned to the streets after being nearly beaten to death by an aggressive client. Serena was interviewed on the news, where she insisted that she relied on her sixth sense to keep her safe. And from now on, she would be able to see another attack coming. But two years later, Serena too would disappear.
- [38:02]
Hannah
The crisis in Vancouver attracted international attention with the segment on America's Most Wanted, even publicizing a reward for finding the culprit. And remember, this is all, well, the Vancouver Police Department are like, refusing to even admit that there is a culprit. This is already being taught it, like, across the world, as there is one. Let's find Him.
- [38:22]
Saroti
Oh, it's terrible pr, isn't it?
- [38:24]
Hannah
Oh, it really is. It really is. So, yeah, the Vancouver Police Department has still sat around refusing to acknowledge that there was even a killer to find or that there was even anything unusual going on on Vancouver's downtown east side. One police constable dismissively told a local news channel, quote, we don't have a suspect. In fact, we don't even have a crime. And look, like I said at the start of the episode, I can understand why for a while you can say that, you can say that you don't think anything is going on at this point with the rumours swirling around picked and the fact that people have come forward to you, and yes, the fact that it didn't go on his record because he wasn't convicted of it, but the fact of everything that happened with Stitch, they are still ignoring the possibility that something is going on is pretty mind blowing to me. Now, the party line at Vancouver Police Department was that there was no official basis to launch any kind of homicide inquiry. No bodies, no suspects and certainly no investigation. So, yeah, I think the police are not interested in opening that can of worms. I think they were exceedingly lazy and did not want to open their eyes to what was right in front of them because if they did, if they admitted it, they would have to open a can of worms that I think they were just not ready to contend with. Like, can you imagine like the unsolved homicide rate in Vancouver Police Department if they acknowledged that they had a serial killer on the loose for all of this time and there were maybe at this point dozens and dozens and dozens of women missing who they were attributing to the work of the serial killer. You're going to go from like a case close rate of like, I don't know, whatever it was, let's say, let's give them the credit of like 60% case close rate to basically 100% unsolved rate. Like what police department is going to willingly do that? And again, I'm not making excuses for them, but I think this is like the inner workings of why they did not do this, of why they did not want to go down this road. And this isn't new in cases like this, especially when, as we have seen time and time again, the victims are street level sex workers. Often in cases like that, you know, these women are very estranged, they are living very transient lifestyles. There may not be anybody there to been banging down the door of the police department demanding answers. But like we said at the beginning, that wasn't the case here. These women weren't ghosts, they were loved. And their families rung the alarm and they kept going, pushing authorities at every stage, despite knockback after knockback. Clearly the police felt that these were families and communities that they could just ignore, that they could sweep this all under the rug and hopefully it would just go away. Or if they really did think that there was a killer there, maybe this killer would just die or get caught for something else and it would just stop. And I think the reason that the police thought they could ignore these committees and these people is because most of them were poor, they were poor families. And I think they thought, yeah, they might be kicking up a fuss, they might be banging on our door, but what are they really going to do about it?
- [41:24]
Saroti
With all of that said, the Vancouver Police Department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police weren't a monolith. Several officers inside both organisations genuinely did their best to push for a proper investigation, but they were hampered by senior management. And it is important to tell the full story of how those officers tried to fight the system, because they are some of the real MVPs of this whole case. Take profiler Kim Rossman. He was the very first police officer to raise the alarm internally that a killer could be at work in the downtown Eastside. After analyzing over two decades worth of data and applying cutting edge geographic profiling techniques, Rossimo concluded that the spike of disappearances from around 1997 was more than just an anomaly. The only explanation was that there was a serial killer targeting women. Rosmo actually presented a report to the head of the Major crime section in 1999 that concluded that the majority of the women reported missing were dead, with the recommendation to launch an official homicide inquiry. But he hit a brick wall with the powers that be who refused to accept the report and closed down Rossmo's entire unit, essentially demoting him. It really does feel like the attitude is like, ooh, that's gonna be a lot of work. That's gonna be quite a lot of reports for me to file and I just don't want to.
- [42:55]
Hannah
I 100% think that's it. I 100% think that's It. At this point, like Kim Rossmo has shown, there is no way they can ignore it. They can no way anymore say, oh, we don't think there's a serial killer on the list. We don't think there's anything else like he's proven with his analysis. This is not an anomaly, this is statistically significant. There is something going on here that we should investigate. Even if they don't think it's a serial killer. Are we not even slightly curious about what's going on? No. Because that is going to create a cascade of situations that the police in Vancouver cannot be fucking arsed with. I think that is the bottom line of this whole story. I think, you know, we'll talk about this more next week. And there's a lot of people, a lot of activists who are very much like, this was a systemic thing and they were, they were ignoring these women because of who they were, because of, you know, that they were. The majority of them were indigenous because the majority of the sex workers who were working in that low track area were from indigenous communities. As we said, I don't even think it's that deep. I think it could have been anybody. But they were like, these are people we can ignore and we don't need to open this can of worms. I just think it screams of laziness and just absolute ineptitude. And it's so, so sad to see because there were police officers inside fighting and saying, we need to do something, but the higher ups are just. Or you're sucked.
- [44:17]
Saroti
I need to leave at 5. So I'm just not. No, thank you. I'm not opening it.
- [44:22]
Hannah
Exactly, exactly.
- [44:24]
Saroti
Then there was Detective Lorima Shenner. Shenner reviewed a list of missing women provided by a local indigenous activist group and made the official recommendation in August 1998 that, quote, these cases are related and should be treated as such. But just like Rossmo, he too was shut down and told that there were most likely separate explanations as to why each of the women had disappeared. In May 1999, the Vancouver PD established a new squad, the Missing Persons Review Team, and put Shena in charge, which was some progress. But even this lacked the resources and funding of a homicide investigation. With Shenna repeatedly growing frustrated by the red tape that he ran into at every single turn.
- [45:14]
Hannah
And even that fact, look, they're finally making some progress and they're like, here, you can. You keep. You keep fucking yelling at everybody. Have this fucking task force go do what you want. But let's be honest, the amount of resourcing that is going to be provided for a cold case missing persons group, especially a missing persons group that is looking at street level sex workers who have gone missing, majority of them, you know, from, from poor communities, disenfranchised communities. Do we really think that's going to be the same level of funding as a homicide investigation? It's just a fob. It's A FOB job as a new thing, I'm going to start calling it's a FOB job.
- [45:51]
Saroti
And obviously, you know, it is easy to say all of this now with hindsight, but even still, it is baffling how senior management at the Vancouver Police Department kept refusing to see what was right in front of them for so long. Long even as multiple police officers knew in their bones that something was seriously wrong. They could only operate within the jurisdiction that they were given by senior leadership.
- [46:19]
Hannah
And in the summer of 1999, there was yet another mischance in connecting Willie Picton to the spate of disappearances in Vancouver. An associate of Picton's, a known drug addict named Ross Caldwell, contacted the RCMP with a troubling story that he'd heard from a woman named Lyn Ellenskin. And she had told Ross that she had seen a woman's dead body at Picton's farm. Now, Lyn, like many of the people who are involved in this case, who have something to say about Willie Picton, had been living and working at the farm as a secretary and was grateful to Picton for giving her a chance after she had been chucked out of a woman's refuge for taking drugs. And apparently, this is a story she told. She went with Picton to the low track, where he picked up a sex worker who agreed to come back to the farm because she felt safer having seen Lin in Picton's car again. This is what makes me think Picton is not that stupid. He is very, very smart in what he is doing here. He knows taking a woman as the fear in the community is ramping up, even him, even Uncle Willy, might attract some, you know, worried looks from some of the women, especially as the rumors are starting to, you know, grow around his involvement with disappearances. So he takes a woman along, and it works. So they pick up the sex worker, they take her back to the farm, and the trio partied there before Willy disappeared to his trailer with the sex worker. But later that night, Lin got a strange feeling and went to go check on them. She found nobody in the trailer, but saw a light on in the barn. That's when Lynn peeked inside and saw the woman's naked body hanging from a hook. According to Lynn, Picton dragged her inside and threatened that if she ever told a soul, she would end up hanging there, too. Face to face with the Butcher of Vancouver, Lynn Ellingson said that she would keep a secret as long as he kept giving her money for drugs, becoming yet another one of his loyal Farmhands who promised not to squeal.
- [48:32]
Saroti
Still, this story made its way down the grapevine to the rcmp and it was the most compelling one they'd heard yet. Not only did it link Willie Picton to the vanished women, but it was the first mention of an actual body in what had so far been only officially been considered a missing persons case. But again, there were serious issues with credibility. Ross Caldwell was a notorious drug addict who had form for telling tales. And during his police interview, he was totally incoherent.
- [49:04]
Hannah
Again, Picton Pickton knows the kind of people to surround himself with. People not only who would be desperate and who would be loyal to him because of what they need from him that they can't get from elsewhere in society, but also people that if they do go and squeal on him, society's not going to take that seriously.
- [49:22]
Saroti
The Mounties needed Lyn to make an official statement for the allegations to stick. Just like Lisa Yelds. She denied, denied, denied. Lyn scoffed that Caldwell was a liar and insisted the whole thing was bullshit. And without her testimony, the Mounties and the Vancouver PD's newly assembled missing persons team were left without enough grounds for a warrant. But there was one comment that Lyn made in passing about how she didn't realise human fat was yellow and that got everyone's ears pricked up. If she hadn't seen the body, why would she make such an eerie and accurate remark? Especially if she hadn't seen Fight Club. Those who spoke to Lyn felt certain that there was more than what she was telling them. Corporal Frank Henley even persuaded Lyn to do a lie detector test. But she disappeared on the day she was meant to take it. So frustratingly, the RCMP investigators and Detective Shenner from the Vancouver PD had to let the whole thing slide. Also, he does well for himself by associating with people who are never gonna cooperate with the police. Yeah, even if sort of set aside that the police are never gonna believe them. Can't even get them down there in the first place. To not be believed.
- [50:54]
Hannah
Yeah, because they got their own fucking issues that they're worried about getting out. I'm not saying they're killing people, but obviously they're just worried about getting locked up for various other things that they might be involved with. So, yeah, it's just like he's created this perfect little microcosm down at the fucking Piggy palace to carry out all sorts of nefarious acts that he is doing. And I have no doubt this is what he was Doing the horrific image. It's like a horror film. I think there was like an actual, like, B film that was made about this. I, like, literally can't remember what it was called, but it was like a guy who wore a pig mask and, like, took women down to his pig farm and locked them up and chopped them up. I've seen a lot of shit and it was definitely on that. But, yeah, imagine. Imagine being Lin and, like, seeing this body hanging from a hook in the fucking slaughterhouse. Even if you were like, I'm gonna do the right thing and go tell the police, you would have to have so much confidence that they're gonna believe you and do something. Otherwise you have dobbed in a man who is capable of doing that and what the fuck is he gonna do to you? Ugh. It's stomach churning.
- [51:56]
Saroti
Years later, Lynn would admit that the reason she didn't tell the police the truth back then was. Was because she had been personally blackmailing Willie Picton herself.
- [52:08]
Hannah
Which is bold. Which is bold.
- [52:12]
Saroti
That is a very risky game. But somehow she managed to play it whilst keeping her life. But if she had come forward, if she had told the truth, at least 11 more women might have kept their lives due to. That's a lot to have on your shoulders, isn't it? Jesus. Yeah.
- [52:37]
Hannah
So after the Lyn Elsingen debacle, Willie Pickton didn't quite fade into the background. RCMP officers actually spoke to Picton multiple times over the following months, where he made a show of being cooperative and claiming that he wanted all of this suspicion, all of this nasty, disgusting suspicion to just come to an end. In January 2000, he showed up at the RCMP HQ voluntarily subjected himself to questioning for six and a half hours, and even offered to let officers come to the farm and see it for themselves. But of course, when they did visit his trailer, there was nothing incriminating on display. And of course, in hindsight, it feels like Picton was toying with the police because he knew they were, for lack of a better word, hogtied by bureaucracy. He knows. He knows what's going on. And I think he is inserting himself into the investigation to see what they've got to see what's going on. I think he was getting off on the power. Can you imagine someone like Willie Picton, someone who, for his entire childhood, his adolescence, under the thumb of his mother, absolutely ostracized by everybody at school and, like, you know, socially speaking, in his peer group, never would have felt a damn second of power? That's no doubt what leads to him becoming a serial killer and exerting this huge amount of power of the women that he takes back. But also now he's got power over the RCMP. Are you fucking kidding? This would have been like 10 kills in one for William Picton. So, yes, he gets away with it. And without that official search warrant, because, remember, he's just like, come down and have a look. They haven't got an official search warrant. So without that, it didn't matter how much of a stink anyone kicked up. Willie Picton was innocent until proven guilty.
- [54:23]
Saroti
For the next two years, the investigation into the missing women stalled until 2001, when at long last, the Vancouver PD and the RCMP joined forces in a joint task force dedicated to investigating the missing women. This was a huge symbolic step for the investigation since the authorities were finally acknowledging a link between the cases. But in practice, it was pretty much still the same old shitshow. Project Even Handed.
- [54:56]
Hannah
Oh, my God.
- [54:57]
Saroti
We haven't managed that one.
- [55:00]
Hannah
I know, I know. I think it was somewhere somebody joked about that, but I can't remember what it was for, but I'm just like, I know. What we've heard from police officers in this country is that they don't get to pick the name. It's just like randomly generated by the Alphabet, even handed. Doesn't fill you with the fact that there's going to be some, like, righteous justice taking place here?
- [55:23]
Saroti
No, but, you know, neither did Operation Wrap It Up. So it's. I think they do get to just pick him. Project evenhanded conducted an in depth review of everything on file so far, which was no mean feat. After almost five years, trawling through thousands of tips and hundreds of persons of interest, investigators made the alarming discovery that there were actually more missing women that hadn't been noted in the records stretching back even earlier than the 90s.
- [55:55]
Hannah
Oh, good. And alongside the frustrating lack of progress with investigating Willie Picton, the depressing truth was that he was far from the only person of interest. In fact, Project Even Handed had a long list of wrong UN's that they suspected of causing harm to the vulnerable women of the downtown Eastside area. Vancouver Police Department's criminal database spewed up hundreds of hits for men convicted of assaulting sex workers in the area. And some of those had even served time for murder. Across the border in Washington, American Police arrested Robert Yates, the Spokane serial killer, in April 2000. And who can forget Gary Leon Ridgway, the Green river killer, in 2001, which cast the Net even wider in terms of possible suspects. And as we mentioned earlier, violence was so normalized and so underreported against sex workers that this was only scratching the surface of what the police knew. Even if the Vancouver Police Department had extended the long arm of the law to a proper murder investigation, it'd be like searching for a needle in a scummy pervert haystack. The problem wasn't the lack of suspects. It was narrowing that shortlist down.
- [57:14]
Saroti
If I open a nightclub, I'm going to call it the pervert haystack.
- [57:17]
Hannah
Nice. Love it. And then you can just round them up when they go in there and be like, you're under arrest.
- [57:23]
Saroti
Invite my gynecologist. So, yes.
- [57:29]
Hannah
Detective Lorimer Sherman, who we met earlier, later criticized the task force for lack of efficiency, which is putting it mildly. But this is what he had to say. What they did was pull in as many sex offenders and predators that they were aware of and put together a list of 100 men, but not rank them in any sort of order of priority. So despite having all of our information about Picton, they didn't put him at number one on the suspect list. Basically, they were playing guess who? With a rogue's gallery of criminals, but failing to ask any of the right questions. Oh, it is so infuriating. They basically have one parameter. Who's a wrong un in the area? Oh, loads. Loads of you. Let's not like, how are we going to narrow this list down? Oh, I don't know.
- [58:16]
Saroti
In spite of Project Evenhanded's admittedly bungled efforts, women were still going missing from the downtown east side at a faster rate than ever. 2001 saw the disappearances of Georgina Faith Papin in March, Andrea Josbury in June, and Serena Abbotsway, the sex worker who defiantly told news crews that she would be able to see a predator coming. She went missing that August. Elaine Allen, who supported vulnerable women at the Women's Information safe house, described the terror of feeling like there was some evil, dark force at work on the streets that they couldn't possibly escape. She said the likelihood of someone going missing was so probable that when I would say goodbye, I often didn't know if I would ever see them again. But the end was in sight, and it came from an unexpected Source.
- [59:11]
Hannah
By early 2002, Project Evenhanded had finally narrowed down Willie Picton as one of the top 40 priority suspects. But his actual arrest didn't come from this investigation. Instead, as Detective Scherner put it, it was purely luck and coincidence. Which, look, again, I am not giving the police involved in this any credit whatsoever, but sometimes with serial killer investigations, you do need some luck and coincidence to take place.
- [59:42]
Saroti
Oh, for sure.
- [59:44]
Hannah
I mean, broken tail light, anything. Take it. Take whatever you can get. So that February, the RCMP received a tip from Scott Chubb. Yeah. A former truck driver for the picton brothers. And Mr. Chubb claimed that he had seen illegal guns inside Willie Picton's trailer. A freshly trained Mountie was sent to check out the claims with an impromptu visit. And one of the first things he noticed was an inhaler with Serena abbotsway's name on it. This was huge. The police could finally place at least one of the suspected victims at the Picton farm. And if their grim suspicions were correct, it was her final destination. They just needed to prove it with cold, hard evidence for murder. And they had over six hectares of land to search for it.
- [60:42]
Saroti
But regardless of what they were expecting to find, nothing could have prepared investigators for the nightmarish horrors that they were about to unearth on that pig farm. So make sure to stay with us for part two of this story in next week's episode, where we'll walk through the mammoth search of the Picton farm and the gruesome discoveries that they made, and the controversial legal proceedings against Willie Picton and the explosive cultural shift this case triggered in Canada. So you'll just have to hold your breath until then.
- [61:24]
Hannah
This is a weird case because I feel like it is well known in true crime circles, but not really outside of that. And I wonder why? Because it is gargantuan in terms of, like, the number of victims, the brutality, the gruesomeness of it. Just how fucking disgusting this pig farm is. Even the setting of it taking place on a rural pig farm in, like, the middle of nowhere Canada. I don't know, is it one of those ones where it's, like. It's just too much for, like, mainstream public consumption, so it gets kind of sideswept? I don't know.
- [61:53]
Saroti
I think it's probably because the, like, film based on it was bad. No one watched it.
- [62:00]
Hannah
Which film was it? I don't think I've ever seen that.
- [62:02]
Saroti
Oh, I thought you were talking about it.
- [62:04]
Hannah
Oh, no, that's just like it was. It's literally just some shitty horror film, like, such.
- [62:10]
Saroti
No, but that's what I mean. Like, the reason that loads of people know about Ed Gein is because of Silence of the Lambs, you know? So I think if there had been a very popular film that was Based on this, people would probably know about it more. I also think that Canada is kind of a bit sort of siloed. It's definitely not covered in the news as much in the UK as the States is not at all. So maybe it's just a bit of a. But it is strange because, I mean, it's got it all.
- [62:39]
Hannah
It really does. And like, ignore the weird pig farm movie that I was talking about. I literally can't even remember what it was called. But I think the best, like TV telling of this story, or at least inspired by this story that I have seen is Criminal Minds. Everyone knows. Big fan of Criminal Minds and they actually did. I'm trying to look up when it was. Okay, season four, episode 25 and episode 26. The whole of those two episodes was inspired by Willie Picton. And it is really, really good. They've done a really great job of like getting it to reflect the real life killings. And it's called To Hell and Back. And that's probably the best thing. But I wonder if people didn't even realize that episode, those two episodes were inspired by Willie Picton. Yeah, you're right. I just don't think he got the right. The right horrible serial killer pr. But here we are giving it to him.
- [63:28]
Saroti
Yeah.
- [63:29]
Hannah
So, yeah, that's it, guys. We will see you next week for part two of Willie Picton. We will see you there.
- [63:35]
Saroti
Oink, oink.