Six women, six lives

Little testimony was devoted to the six women at the centre of Robert Pickton’s murder trial, where they were often referred to in clinical terms — as particles of DNA or bone fragments — and their lives reduced to harsh descriptive labels: drug addict, prostitute, victim.

Back in May, the jury heard from people who knew the women, and learned more about their last movements in the Downtown Eastside before they vanished.

In recent weeks, the women’s families packed the courthouse to watch the final days of the trial, sharing stories of their loved ones as they anxiously awaited the verdict.

Marnie Frey

Ten years ago, Campbell River’s Marnie Frey was the first of the six women to go missing.

A friendly, “good kid” growing up, she was generous to a fault and loved animals. She got hooked on drugs as a teen. She left Vancouver Island to live in the Downtown Eastside, but she always called home.

She’d been to rehab but the drugs lured her back.

When she called home on her 24th birthday, her father Rick and step-mom Lynn promised to send her a package — food and other items.

But she never called to say the package had arrived.

“The next day we were frantic,” Frey said.

Marnie was reported missing Dec. 29, 1997.

Judge slams Pickton with maximum sentence

Serial killer Robert “Willie” Pickton will serve the maximum 25 years in jail before becoming eligible to apply for parole.

The 58-year-old Port Coquitlam man, convicted by jury Dec. 9 on six counts of second-degree murder, will have no chance of leaving prison before he’s 83.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice James Williams handed down the sentence Tuesday afternoon after the emotionally wrenching readings of victim impact statements.

“What happened to these women was senseless and despicable,” the judge told the court.

“Mr. Pickton there is really nothing I can say to adequately express the revulsion the community feels about these killings.”

Williams said Pickton showed no remorse and that was one of the factors he took into account.

Sisters of victim Georgina Papin clasped each other’s hands and closed their eyes as the judge read the sentence.

Screams of joy erupted in the courtroom when Williams said Pickton must serve the harshest penalty possible.

Pickton stood motionless and without reaction, with his head bowed, as the sentence was read.

‘All we have are bone fragments’

Brenda Wolfe’s mother Brenda Belanger said it is impossible to forgive Robert “Willie” Pickton for killing her daughter.

“If the teardrops I shed made a pathway to heaven, I would walk all the way,” she wrote in her victim impact statement.

Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie paused after he read those words in New Westminister Supreme Court today.

Seconds passed while Petrie collected his emotions, then resumed, “and bring you home again and hold you in my arms again Brenda and never let you go.”

In 2002, part of Wolfe’s jaw was found at the Pickton property. “I really want to know what happened to my daughter in the final hour of her life,” her mother said. Now that the trial is over, her relatives want to bring her remains home.

Petrie read 13 statements from family members.

Five relatives chose to deliver their victim impact statements in person.

Georgina Papin’s brother George was tormented by losing his sister in a grotesque and violent way.

“I dream of Georgina crying for help,” he said in a statement read by Petrie. “My sister is gone and I could never forgive you, Willie Pickton.”

“She was energetic – a ball of fire with a heart of gold,” wrote Randall Knight, an adopted brother who only reunited with Papin and his other siblings as an adult.

‘I still feel your touch in my dreams’

The brother of slain Surrey woman Sereena Abotsway says he will never know what she endured at the hands of serial murderer Robert Pickton.

Jay Draayers said he will be haunted by what happened for the rest of his life.
“Sereena did not deserve to be dishonoured, disrespected the way she was,” Draayers said in a victim impact statement read for him at Pickton’s sentencing hearing Tuesday. “Nobody should meet death the way she did.”

For the families of the six women Pickton killed, it was their only chance to describe just how profoundly their lives have been altered by the brutal murders of their loved ones.

Justice James Williams is expected to decide later today how many years Pickton will serve before he’s eligible to apply for parole. He can impose a period of 10 to 25 years. The Crown urged the judge to impose the maximum penalty.

The women were not disposable people because they were drug addicts and prostitutes living in the Downtown Eastside, prosecutor Mike Petrie said. “For them to have been murdered in the circumstances of this case makes their already tragic lives more tragic.”

Foster parent Antoinette Zanda, who cared for Mona Wilson when the girl was five, searched for years after her 2001 disappearance. “Having someone you care about deeply cut into pieces is still a fact that I have trouble coming to terms with,” she said in a statement read by Petrie.

Wilson’s sister, Lisa Bigjohn, described living in a dark world of grief filled with horrifying reminders. When she hears a scream now, “I hear her screaming and begging for her life.”

Karin Joesbury’s family is “living in an ongoing nightmare”. She is tormented by the gruesome details surrounding her “baby girl” Andrea’s death in a “place of horror” – Pickton’s Port Coquitlam farm.

Crown will prepare for second trial

Relatives clapped and cheered when they learned Crown prosecutors still want to go ahead with a second multiple murder trial in the case against Robert Pickton.

It was the news families of the other women Pickton is charged with killing had been waiting to hear.

Many relatives of the dead women in the remaining 20 counts had camped out at the New Westminster courthouse with other family members during 10 anxious days of jury deliberations.

Sunday, they stood arm in arm to share their reactions to the verdict, and the prospect of another trial to find the answers they’ve sought for so long.

Marilyn Kraft’s daughter Cindy Feliks is count number 19 in the outstanding murder indictment against Pickton. Cindy went missing 10 years ago, in 1997.

“During that 10 years a lot of girls could have been saved,” Kraft said.

Pickton is still to be tried for the deaths of Tiffany Drew, Sherry Irving, Diana Melnick, Wendy Crawford, Inga Hall, Tanya Holyk, Angela Jardine, Heather Bottomley, Jennifer Furminger, Patricia Johnson, Debra Jones, Diane Rock, Sarah de Vries, Cara Ellis, Kerry Koski, Jacqueline McDonell, Andrea Borhaven, Cynthia Feliks, Helen Hallmark and Heather Chinnock.

Police have been criticized for not taking reports of missing women seriously, and for not acting sooner in the search for a serial killer.

The Vancouver Police Department says once the pending legal proceedings against Robert Pickton are resolved, there will be a complete review of how police conducted themselves during the years when numbers of women were missing but a suspect had not been charged.

Kraft watched Pickton closely for his reaction as the verdict was read in courtroom 102.

Dressed in a grey sweater, his long lanky hair so greasy it looked wet, Pickton just stood there without any noticeable reaction, hands clasped together behind his back.

“Even through the pretrial and the trial, he hasn’t changed his expression,” Kraft said. “There’s no remorse. There’s nothing there.”

Pickton guilty

Robert Pickton is guilty of second-degree murder in the deaths of all six women whose remains were found at his Port Coquitlam farm.

The jury delivered the stunning verdict at 11:40 a.m. Sunday in New Westminster at Pickton’s sensational multiple murder trial.

Cries and groans rippled through a tense courtroom as families reacted with shock and disbelief as the six separate verdicts were read.

An anguished shout: “No!” rang through the courtroom, as the clerk read out the verdict “not guilty” for first-degree murder on count one, Sereena Abotsway. The same voice sounded surprised when the clerk read the verdict of “guilty” for second degree murder.

Pickton, accused of being Canada’s worst serial killer, awaits sentencing Tuesday on the six counts of second-degree murder.

Jurors deliberated Pickton’s fate for 10 days before deciding his guilt had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

But many family members are upset that Pickton, 58, has not been convicted on the charges of first-degree murder of six women who vanished from Vancouver’s drug and crime-ridden Downtown Eastside between 1997 and 2001.

Justice James Williams will hear from victims’ families on Tuesday before deciding the minimum jail term Pickton must serve – between 10 and 25 years – before he is eligible for parole.

“I’m really pleased that at least he’s not going to get out of jail for a while,” Gladys Radek, of Terrace said moments later. She is a friend of some of the missing women, and her niece vanished in northern B.C. along what has been dubbed the Highway of Tears.

“I think that he should have been convicted with first-degree murder,” she said. “He knew what he was doing. It’s pretty hurtful to the family members.”

Pickton still faces another 20 counts of first-degree murder in the case.

“It’s going to leave us with the $1-million question – is there going to be a second trial,” wondered Murray Watson, who grew up with one of the women who are missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and knew Sarah de Vries, one of the remaining alleged murder victims.

Judge regrets misinforming jury

Justice James Williams has apologized to jurors in the Robert Pickton murder trial and revised his instructions on how to weigh the case against the accused serial killer.

“I was in error,” Justice Williams said in court Thursday. “I regret that I misinformed you. It was inadvertent.”

Jurors resumed their deliberations this afternoon after an unusual suspension that came after the jury asked a question of the judge.

The jury’s query Thursday morning referred to one of the five elements that must be proven to deliver a conviction—whether or not Pickton was the person who killed the women.

Don’t let Pickton ‘put one over on you,’ jurors urged

Nov. 26, 2007 – ALL EVIDENCE points to Robert Pickton as the only person who could have killed the six women he is accused of murdering, the lead prosecutor at his multiple murder trial said Monday.

Crown lawyer Mike Petrie urged jurors not to be fooled. Pickton, now 58, was able to murder women “repeatedly, yet invisibly” without detection at his Port Coquitlam property because nobody suspected “a poor old farm boy” with low intelligence – a hillbilly.

But “he got sloppy, and he got caught,” Petrie said, speaking slowly and deliberately as he wrapped up his closing argument to the jury.

“He wants to put one over on you,” he said. “You shouldn’t let him.”

Pickton is on trial for six counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin, Mona Wilson and Brenda Wolfe, women who disappeared from Vancouver’s seedy Downtown Eastside in the late 1990s to 2001.

Petrie said the evidence points to Pickton’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on “each and every one of these six counts.”

The Crown says Pickton brought women back to his farm, killed them, butchered them and disposed of their remains.

“The accused is the unluckiest man alive, if in fact he is not the one responsible, because he has the remains of not one, not two, but six women on his property within metres of his home.”

Families watch final days of Pickton trial with sadness

Nov. 25, 1007 – “FREE WILLIE!” a young man yells from a car zooming past the New Westminster law courts, hoping to get a rise from the crowd of media and family members waiting outside. Rick Frey just laughs it off.

In the five years since the arrest of Robert “Willie” Pickton, the pig butcher who stands accused of being Canada’s worst serial killer, Frey has grown used to bad jokes and hurtful comments.

Have you heard about the punk band that put a picture of Pickton on their CD cover? he asks. A bow-tied Pickton is shown sitting down to dinner with U.S. President George Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Some of the family members of the missing women are upset.

Frey’s daughter Marnie went missing in 1997. Five years ago, a small piece of her jawbone was found at the Pickton farm in Port Coquitlam – not far from the location of the Supreme Court murder trial that began Jan. 22 of this year and is finally in the home stretch after nearly 11 months.

The Freys, including Marnie’s 15-year-old daughter, Brittney, have travelled from Campbell River to hear the closing arguments in the marathon trial.

Pickton is accused of killing 26 women who vanished from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He’s currently on trial for six murders, including Marnie’s.

Crown starts final arguments

Nov. 22, 2007 – IT’S TIME FOR a reality check in the Robert Pickton murder trial, Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie said Thursday, beginning his final summation to the jury.

The facts fit together like pieces of a puzzle, forming a clear picture of the man responsible for the deaths of six women whose remains were found on the Port Coquitlam farm – Pickton’s “backyard,” Petrie said.

Despite what the defence has said this week, the Crown’s case against Pickton is “very strong,” Petrie said, facing the jury of seven and five women.

Pickton, a pig butcher who lived in a remote, isolated part of the property, had the means and ability necessary to carry out the crimes, Petrie said.

The alleged victims each fit a similar profile.

“They all had connections to the Downtown Eastside. They were all drug-addicted prostitutes,” he said. Their lives were such “that they would do anything to better their situation money-wise, security-wise, that they would take chances that many of us could barely understand.”

It’s the Crown’s theory that one man – Pickton – brought women from the Downtown Eastside back to his property, killed them, then butchered and disposed of their remains.

“Whatever else we might think of these women’s lifestyles, they ended up dead in Port Coquitlam in the accused’s back yard,” he said.

Defence begins final arguments

Nov. 19, 2007 – THREE KEY witnesses for the prosecution were drug addicts and criminals who lied to incriminate accused serial killer Robert “Willie” Pickton, making their testimony worthless, his defence lawyers said as closing arguments in the marathon murder trial got underway Monday.

Nor does the defence consider statements Pickton made to police in videotaped evidence shown to jurors as a confession, lawyer Adrian Brooks told the jury in in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster.

Those tapes, made in 2002 after Pickton’s arrest, are expected to play an important role in the Crown’s summation, which will begin later this week.

The Port Coquitlam pig farmer, who stands accused of 26 counts of first degree murder, is currently standing trial on six of those charges in the deaths of women who vanished from Vancouver’s seedy Downtown Eastside.

He has pleaded not guilty.

Pickton’s defence team rejects the Crown’s theory that Pickton alone is responsible for killing these women and disposing of their remains.

Brooks said the trial has garnered a lot of media and public attention, but it will be up to jurors to decide Pickton’s fate.

“While there are public opinions out there, you can safely rest assured that you can ignore them all, because none of them will be as good as your opinion,” he said.

Pickton defence wraps up

Oct. 17, 2007 – JURORS IN THE Robert “Willie” Pickton murder trial will begin deliberating the fate of the accused serial killer next month.

His defence lawyers wrapped up their case in New Westminster Supreme Court on Tuesday, a significant milestone in the marathon trial, Justice James Williams said.

Lawyers for both sides will submit final arguments to the jury on Nov. 13.

Those submissions are expected to last about 1½ days each. After that, the trial judge will deliver his instructions to the jury of seven men and five women, who will then be sequestered until they reach a verdict.

Pickton spoke ‘like a hillbilly’

Sept. 23, 2007 – ACCUSED KILLER Robert (Willie) Pickton was too dim to laugh at a punchline and had a “limited” vocabulary, but he wasn’t exactly a moron, his former sister-in-law testified last week in B.C. Supreme Court.

Sandy Humeny, 51, the closest relative to testify at Pickton’s eight-month-long trial, said she used plain, clear words when they talked – nothing “too elaborate.” She noticed Pickton had trouble understanding jokes but wouldn’t let on, changing the subject instead.

The testimony prompted prosecutor Mike Petrie to wonder if she meant Pickton was “a little bit of a moron.”

“I wouldn’t use those words,” Humeny replied.

“I would suggest he wasn’t a moron at all,” Petrie continued, before asking her how often Humeny, as office administrator for the brothers’ Surrey-based salvage company, saw Pickton on the Port Coquitlam farm. She agreed it was infrequently.

But a business woman who dealt with the Picktons on a regular basis offered a much harsher assessment of Pickton’s language skills.

“He spoke like a hillbilly,” Langley resident Audrey Stebanuk testified in New Westminster Thursday, calling Pickton “backward” and “not as intelligent as most of us.”

She saw blood, but not much else

Sept. 5, 2007 – A KEY WITNESS for Robert “Willie” Pickton’s defence team testified she once saw a lot of blood inside his trailer.
But otherwise, she never noticed anything out of the ordinary at his Port Coquitlam residence, Ingrid Fehlauer testified at his multiple murder trial Tuesday, day two of the defence’s case.
The statement contradicted earlier testimony in which Fehlauer had answered questions about what she’d seen in Pickton’s trailer.
When asked if anything had struck her as unusual, she’d replied, “The amount of dirt on the carpet.”
Later, under cross-examination, Fehlauer agreed when Crown prosecutor Michael Petrie asked, “In fact, on one occasion you saw lots of blood everywhere.”
“Yes,” she said.
Fehlauer said two defence lawyers had told her that “this [issue] would not be brought up.”
Justice James Williams then told the jury the defence had not done anything improper.
In addition to being Pickton’s former neighbour – Fehlauer originally said she lived across the street from 1994 to 1998 but later changed her story and her address – she was once his sister-in-law, a fact only revealed under cross-examination. Her sister is Dave Pickton’s ex-common law wife.

Defence lays out its strategy

Sept. 4, 2007 – LAWYERS FOR accused serial killer Robert “Willie” Pickton will seize on his simple intelligence, and continue to attack the credibility of key Crown witnesses, as they attempt to dismantle the prosecution’s case in the coming weeks.
Lawyer Adrian Brooks opened the defence’s case Tuesday, providing jurors with a broad, 25-minute outline of which witnesses will be called and what “areas of evidence” the jury will be asked to consider.
It’s not known how many witnesses Pickton’s defence plans to call – or if Pickton himself will take the stand – but his lawyers have indicated their case will take about three weeks to unfold.
After weeks of frustrating delays due to legal arguments the jury has not heard, proceedings got off to an efficient start Tuesday, with the defence calling its seventh witness by the end of the day.

Legal arguments bog down trial

Aug. 27, 2007 – THERE’S BEEN a delay in the Robert Pickton murder trial.
Lawyers for the accused serial killer had planned to begin presenting their case Aug. 27.
Instead, the jury won’t be returning until after the Labour Day weekend while the trial judge hears legal arguments.
It took an apologetic Justice James Williams less than 40 seconds on Monday to let jurors know they were being sent home again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “These things happen. It’s no one’s fault.”
He’d originally told the jury they’d be back the following morning. The seven men and five women on the jury have now been told to report back to court Sept. 4.
Proceedings in the complex trial have been on hold since the Crown rested its case Aug. 13, shortly after the jury returned from a two-week summer break.

Witness tried to forget

July 3, 2007 – A KEY witness in Willie Pickton’s murder trial forced herself to remember nightmarish details about seeing the accused serial killer in his barn with a woman’s body – even though it meant facing the truth about what she saw.
That’s how Lynn Ellingsen explained contradictions between her testimony at the Port Coquitlam pig farmer’s ongoing murder trial and statements she’s made previously.
“I try to forget,” she said Tuesday as she was being questioned about details in a Feb. 24, 2002 statement to police.
“It’s a nightmare to me and it’s something that I’ve had to accept that I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life and sometimes I do, I try to put it behind me.”
Ellingsen said she was trying her best to recall the events of 1999, but said it’s been difficult.
The 37-year-old Surrey resident, who briefly lived in Pickton’s trailer at his Port Coquitlam farm, has admitted her addictions to crack cocaine and alcohol left her with no memory for dates.
She has also admitted to lying to police. She is the only witness who has testified to seeing Pickton with a body.

Drug use, memory problems plagued star witness

June 25, 2007 – Jurors in the Robert “Willie” Pickton murder trial are being asked to consider the credibility and character of a key Crown witness who describes herself as a crack addict and who freely admits she can’t remember dates.
Lynn Ellingsen, 37, who briefly lived in Pickton’s trailer when she worked at his Port Coquitlam farm, took the stand this week.
During tearful, halting testimony inside a hushed New Westminster courtroom Monday, Ellingsen described seeing Pickton with a woman’s body hanging inside the barn where he butchered pigs.

Casanova downplays his time at pig farm

June 4, 2007 – A MAN who butchered pigs with Robert Pickton said he paid for sexual favours with one of the women the Port Coquitlam farmer is accused of killing.
Pat Casanova told a Supreme Court jury Tuesday a woman known as “Angel” performed oral sex on him in Pickton’s bedroom.
The 67-year old man then identified her photograph on a poster board showing 48 women who went missing from Vancouver’s seedy Downtown Eastside.
He pointed to photo No. 3, which has been identified as Andrea Joesbury, one of six women whose remains were discovered at Pickton’s farm.
The startling claim came during Casanova’s second day on the stand at the Pickton trial, where he spent hours answering questions about his testimony.
Casanova, married for 47 years, also admitted to having sex with other women who were brought out to the farm, where he regularly worked with Pickton in the slaughterhouse, butchering pigs for sale in a cash business that operated until Pickton’s February 2002 arrest.
A year later, Casanova was arrested in connection with 15 murders, including five of the six for which Pickton is currently standing, but he was never charged.

Pig-butchering associate never saw women harmed

June 4, 2007 – The man who was once arrested in connection with the murders of 15 missing women who vanished from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside has denied killing them, the jury in the Robert Pickton murder trial was told Monday.
Pat Casanova, a man who knew Pickton for more than 18 years and helped him with his pig butchering business, never saw anyone else harm women at the farm, he said on the witness stand in New Westminster Supreme Court.
The 67-year-old Surrey resident did reveal that he paid for sex with women connected to the farm, naming several he was with during 2000 or 2001, including two at Pickton’s farm.

Pickton spoke of bodies before arrest, friend says

ROBERT “WILLIE” Pickton spoke of striking a suicide pact and of bodies buried at his farm during a desperate conversation that took place two days before his murder arrest, a close friend said at his trial Tuesday.
On Feb. 20, 2002, the Port Coquitlam pig farmer told his friend Gina Houston there was only one way out. They had to commit double suicide.
“He didn’t want to go to jail,” she told jurors, vividly describing the scene during her lengthy testimony at his serial killer trial.
“I thought he was joking but he had a tear running out of his eye.’’
At the time, police had already sealed off his 6.8-hectare farm in their search for clues in the Missing Women’s case.
Houston, 39, told the jury she was aware her friend had become the focus of the investigation.

Witnesses reveal women’s lives

May 18, 2007 – BALANCED ON a tiny pair of high-heeled shoes and wrapped in a black blazer against the chill January evening, Georgina Papin downed a couple of beers at the Balmoral Hotel with an old friend, got up from the table and rushed off to work.
“She had no money. I gave her 10 bucks,” Papin’s long-time friend Evelyn Youngchief recalled for jurors in the Robert Pickton murder trial last week.
“She couldn’t sit still. She had to go to work.”
That was the last time she saw Papin, a mother of seven whom police say was a sex trade worker who disappeared from Vancouver’s seedy Downtown Eastside in March 1999. She was 35.
Three years later, a bone from her hand was discovered inside the slaughterhouse at Pickton’s farm.
During their investigation – the largest in Canadian history – police asked Youngchief to look at photos of clothing, jewelry and shoes found on Pickton’s farm. She didn’t recognize anything.
Since the former Port Coquitlam pig farmer’s murder trial began in January, the six women he’s accused of killing have been referred to in clinical terms – as particles of DNA or bone fragments – and their lives reduced to harsh descriptive labels: drug addicts, prostitutes, victims.
Jurors at the massive trial have now heard from witnesses who knew some of the women, offering up revealing portraits of their lives.

DNA trail laid out for jurors

April 10, 2007 – Sereena Abotsway’s DNA was found on a black blouse seized from Robert Pickton’s home, jurors in his murder trial were told Tuesday.
An RCMP lab employee also described how a swab taken from a stained orange plastic bag found inside the pig farmer’s slaughterhouse contained DNA that matched a second alleged victim, Andrea Joesbury.
The jury has previously heard that the partial remains of both women were found at the farm.
More than 50 of the expected 240 Crown witnesses have testified so far in the murder trial of Robert Pickton, nearing its third month.
Most of those testifying so far were involved in the massive police search for evidence at Pickton’s Port Coquitlam farm.
Pickton is being tried on six counts of first degree murder in the deaths of Abotsway, Joesbury, Mona Wilson, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey.
The accused serial killer’s DNA was found on the strap of a pair of night vision goggles seized from his home, a police laboratory technician said in New Westminster Supreme Court.
A DNA sample taken from the goggles also matched that of a DNA sample exhibit of Pat Casanova, an acquaintance of Pickton’s who helped with his pig-butchering business.

‘I wanted to make the big five-oh’

Feb. 9, 2007 – ACCUSED SERIAL killer Robert Pickton made several startling claims following his police interrogation to an undercover officer planted in his cell, the final hour of a surveillance video showed.
Jurors this week watched as Pickton ate dinner, laughed, and talked about “doing one more, make it an even 50,” as he chatted inside the Surrey RCMP lockup with a man he believed was a criminal.
At the time of his Feb. 22, 2002 arrest, Pickton was charged with two counts of first degree murder, but police had informed him more murder charges were pending in connection with the Vancouver missing women case.
At the time, investigators had not yet discovered human remains during their search of his Port Coquitlam farm.
“They want me bad,” he told his cellmate, returning from a nearly 12-hour interrogation with police the following evening.
“I told them already – I’m not the only one if I go down,” he said. “This time, I’m not going to walk. I won’t even come up for bail.”

Chatty Pickton opens up to cell plant

Feb. 7, 2007 – JURORS IN the Robert William Pickton trial, now into their third week, are intently watching a videotaped conversation that took place five years ago between the accused serial killer and an undercover police officer inside a Surrey holding cell.
The Crown says the lengthy videotape – expected to take the remainder of this week to view – is a key piece of evidence in the murder trial.
The video portrays a much different side of the Port Coquitlam man than the quiet pig farmer jurors witnessed during the police interrogation.
At the time, the 57-year-old Pickton was charged with first degree murder for the deaths of two women, Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson.
The video shows an unshaven, dishevelled-looking Pickton speaking at length to his cellmate, an undercover police officer who can’t be identified because of a publication ban. During the first portion shown to jurors Monday, Pickton expressed surprise by his arrest, and that police had told him 50 counts in all were pending.
“I can’t believe this, I can’t believe this,” he said, appearing to laugh.