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.
Looking back, Rick Frey says they got the “bum’s rush” from police. He’s convinced nothing has changed and the streets are as dangerous as ever — or worse.
Like many of the women, Marnie was a mother. Her daughter Brittney is now 15.
Brenda Wolfe
Brenda Wolfe’s friend Mary-Lou Wasacase testified they met outside Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings in the 1990s. Wolfe was from Alberta and grew up in Calgary.
She was a strong woman who could take care of herself but was battling an addiction to crack and heroin. She kept an apartment in Richmond.
“When I knew her, she supplemented her welfare with working on the street — for her baby,” Wasacase said.
Records read in court show Dec. 29, 1998, she asked welfare for another cheque because “she had spent all her money on Christmas and needed bread and milk.” She was last seen two months later.
The last time Wasacase saw her, Wolfe had lost a lot of weight, and her hands and fingernails were dirty from using a crack pipe. It was a drastic change.
“In the beginning, she was always dressed up.”
She was 30 when she was last seen in February 1999, the same month she was evicted from her apartment and her children were living with their father in Toronto.
Georgina Papin
Georgina Papin was last seen in March 1999, when she suffered a drug overdose and was treated for pneumonia at St. Paul’s Hospital. She was 35.
In 1997, she’d been living in Mission with her children, making aboriginal crafts and attending pow-wows. Two years later, she was back in the thrall of drug addiction, and would disappear for days, her friend Evelyn Youngchief recalled for jurors.
She loved jewellery and the colour red. The last time Youngchief saw her friend, she was wearing three silver rings she’d given her and a pair of black, size-five heels. Three years later, some bones from her hand were discovered on the Pickton property.
Papin was born in Hobbema, south of Edmonton. She grew up in foster homes, separated from her eight siblings.
Andrea Joesbury
Andrea Joesbury, from Victoria, had regular contact with front-line community workers in the Downtown Eastside. She was a familiar face at WISH, a drop-in centre for sex trade workers, where former staffer Elaine Allan remembered her as quiet and polite.
A local health clinic nurse reported her missing June 8, 2001 after the 22-year-old failed to show up to have a dressing changed on a wound.
Her Pharmanet, MSP and social services records show she filled hundreds of prescriptions between 1995 and June 2001, and her Ministry of Human Resources file dated back to 1995. She was on a methadone program.
During their initial search of Robert Pickton’s bedroom, police found a jacket with an address book in the pocket listing Andrea’s address: room 201 at the Roosevelt Hotel on East Hastings Street.
Sereena Abotsway
Surrey’s Sereena Abotsway grew up in a foster home.
Yolanda Dyck, who met Abotsway at a treatment centre in Vancouver, described her as a “bubbly, very kind-hearted woman” with two missing front teeth and light brown hair she often tucked behind her ears.
A prostitute who battled an addiction to alcohol and other drugs, Abotsway was also a community activist who took part in several marches for the missing women — “She was always looking out for them” — only to vanish herself.
Another trial witness, Tracy Anne Northey, who ran a focus group at a student-run clinic on the Downtown Eastside in summer 2001, portrayed Abotsway as someone who easily made an impression. She last saw her on July 19 of that year.
“She was very opinionated. She had a lot to share,” Northey said, recalling how difficult it was to contain the boisterous woman in the group setting.
Abotsway, 29, was reported missing Aug. 22, 2001.
Mona Wilson
Mona Wilson, 26, a member of the O’Chiese First Nation in Alberta, spent most of her childhood living with her foster family in Langley. They lost touch after she was sent to a different foster home in Vancouver. She wound up on the streets, an addict.
She was a regular drop in to the WISH centre. Her welfare cheques were sent to a society that managed her finances.
She was the last of the six women to go missing. She had been evicted from her apartment a month before.
Her boyfriend reported her missing Nov. 30, 2001, the day after picking up her last prescription. She’d been on a methadone program.
Her silver rosary necklace was found in the office of Pickton’s trailer a few months later.
