Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Pig Farmer” Pt. 2 - Robert "Willie" Pickton

Episode Date: June 10, 2019

In the early 90s, vulnerable women around Vancouver were disappearing at an alarming rate, but the authorities had yet to recognize the crisis, or even admit that there was a likely killer on the loose. Meanwhile, “Willie” Pickton’s nefarious reputation continued to grow in his hometown. Sponsors! Ring Neighbors - Go to Ring.com/SERIAL to download the free Neighbors app from iOS or Android app stores today. Zola - To start your free wedding website and also get $50 off your registry on Zola, go to Zola.com/KILLERS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You in? Must be 21 to enter. Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussion. of murder, rape, assault, cannibalism, and cruelty to animals that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. It wasn't a date, but the red-headed farmer seemed to wish it was. He had greeted the young journalist a little too warmly.

As he took a seat across from her, his smell hit her like a slap in the face. In her words, it was like if metal could rot. The farmer was also an amateur photographer, and she had agreed to meet him to consider some of his photographs for a newspaper story. A decision the journalist was beginning to regret. There was something unsettling about the way he smirked as he revealed each photograph in turn. Some of the photographs were individual portraits. Others were candid group shots. The subjects were all women.

Many wore lost vacant expressions. The young reporter grew nervous. The man's smell was overwhelming, and she couldn't shake a sense that something was off. She tried to extract herself from the conversation by selecting two photographs she liked. But the farmer kept pressuring her to visit his farm for a barbecue. He raised the best pork in Canada, he insisted. She just had to try it. When she finally insisted upon leaving the cafe, he followed her.

When she went across town to a diner, the farmer circled the block in his car. It took hours and a cross-town bus ride in the wrong direction before she could be sure she'd lost him. It took 14 years before she learned how narrowly she escaped the most prolific serial killer in Canadian history, and that the pork he offered her might have been the ground-up flesh of his victims. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is Serial Killers, a Parcast original. Every Monday, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today is our second and final episode on Robert Willie Picton,

the Canadian pig farmer who prayed for decades on downtown Vancouver's most vulnerable women. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. At Parcast, we're grateful for you, our listeners. You allow us to do what we love. let us know how we're doing. Reach out on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter

at Parcast Network. And if you enjoy today's episode, the best way to help us is to leave a five-star review wherever you're listening. It really does help. We also now have merchandise. Head to Parcast.com slash merch

for more information. Officially, Robert Willie Pickton began killing in 1991 and continued until he was captured by police in 2002, but he's suspected of and takes credit for murders that happened as early as 1979. Last week, we delved into Willie Pickton's tumultuous childhood on his family's Vancouver Pig Farm. We also covered a rash of disappearing sex workers in the area and police reluctance to investigate what are now believed to be some of Willie's earliest crimes.

This week will wrap up our deep dive into the killing spree of Willie Pickings. and follow the outrageous circumstances that allowed him to operate undetected for years. We'll also investigate the salacious rumor that some of the meat leaving the Picton farm was locally sourced human. The Picton boys, Willie and his older brother David, were notorious in Vancouver, British Columbia, throughout the 80s and 90s. They ran with biker gangs, operated a chop shop, and threw huge parties on the Picton Pig Farm, where drugs and alcohol flowed freely. It was David who really loved to party,

but Willie was always in attendance, said David's ragers. Willie was also irregular at another nearby social scene, the downtown East Side, known as the Seedy Underbelly of Vancouver, where a social crisis that would last more than three decades was brewing. It's unclear when Willie Picton began visiting sex workers, although investigators believe it could be as early as night. He likely started seeing sex workers because he had little success with women going the old-fashioned route. As we covered last week, Willie was an introvert who largely kept to himself. He was bullied as a child and largely friendless.

The only close relationship he really had was with his domineering mother, Louise. When Willie was 29, Louise grew sick and frail. Willie took care of her, changing her diet. and feeding her until she finally passed away later that year in 1978. Sex workers began disappearing from the downtown East Side shortly after in 1979. Many police officers and psychologists speculate the two events are related. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here. Just a reminder, she's not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show.

Thanks, Greg. According to psychologist, Tamara McClintock Greenberg, it can be a traumatic experience to become a caregiver for one's own parent. Oftentimes, the role reversal brings up a myriad of experiences from childhood, especially the more traumatic and haunting memories wherein the child felt they had no control. For Willie, this could have been constant reminders of Luis's verbal and emotional abuse and overall feelings of powerlessness when he was bullied at school. Willie was not particularly bright and didn't have the resources

to deal with the complex emotions he was likely experiencing while caring for his dying mother. This new wave of helplessness might have coaxed him to seize power however he could. In other words, reliving trauma might have been the thing that finally made him snap

and then escalate to killing the women he paid for sex. Unfortunately, this is where Willie's story gets murky. Between 1979 and 2002, 62 sex workers went missing from the downtown east side. Willie has alluded to having killed 49 of them, but he has never identified any victims. The rest is largely guesswork, although police are fairly certain about a few dozen disappearances being Willie's handiwork. The first of these is Laura Ma, who was reported missing in August 1985.

She was 42 years old. Like many women living in the downtown East Side area, Ma was an indigenous Canadian. In Canada, members of indigenous tribes are referred to as Aboriginal Canadians, or First Nations people. Aboriginal women in Canada suffer from widespread poverty, heightened rates of domestic and sexual violence, and a lack of educational opportunity. In 2009, the Missing Women Task Force would track Ma down and determine that she was, not one of Picton's victims. But it is still worth noting that for 24 years, on the basis of no evidence other than her ethnicity and gender,

Ma was classified by police as a probable sex worker and addict. Her face appeared on posters listing missing drug users. When her loving sons protested that Laura had never used drugs, they were pointedly ignored by Vancouver Police. Then, in March of 1986, 21-year-old sex worker Elaine Allenback also vanished from the downtown east side. In July of 1988, Teressa Ann Williams followed. A chunk of human leg bone found in a park the same year was later identified as Teresa's.

34-year-old Elaine Dumba was the next sex worker to vanish in 1989. In August of the same year, Ingrid's suit followed her, although she was not a sex worker or addict. Ingrid lived with a serious mental illness. Like the other victims, she was stigmatized and therefore uniquely vulnerable. At this point, one might assume that the Vancouver police force would be in an all-out panic over the growing number of missing sex workers, but that was far from the case. Police maintain that these women led high-risk lifestyles and would show up eventually.

Meanwhile, sex workers crowded in the shelters where they lived and whispered about a serial killer stalking Vancouver streets. It became commonplace for women to muse, I'm next. If I don't come back tonight, he got me. Vancouver's sex worker community rallied for police action on the cases of their missing friends, but they were rebuffed at every turn. The Vancouver Police Department's Missing Persons Unit often refused to even take reports of missing sex workers. The prevailing belief among law enforcement at the time, was that missing sex workers were probably just on lengthy drug binges or had moved out of town in search of new customers.

This prejudice thinking continued even after the arrest of serial killer Gilbert Paul Jordan, who preyed on native sex workers from 1965 to 1988. Vancouver Police had a pet term for his victims, Jordan-esque. In February of 1991, local sex workers and their allies held a remembrance walk that doubled as a protest against police inaction. Thankfully, it got the attention of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Mounties created a special team called Project Eclipse to aid the Vancouver Police in investigating the women's disappearances.

While the Mounties continued investigating in August of 1991, another woman vanished. Nancy Clark was 25 when she disappeared on her older daughter. is eighth birthday. The Nancy's younger daughter was just eight months old. She never would have voluntarily left her girls. Her loving family told police, Nancy had stopped working the streets for two weeks after she heard about a possible serial killer in the area, but, desperate for cash, she returned to her usual sex work schedule. On October 23, 1991, Project Ellipse presented their findings to the Victoria Police. The Eclipse team believed that at least one serial killer was operating on the downtown east side, and there might be as many as two or three. They consulted

five additional profilers, all of whom corroborated this belief. Criminal profiling was relatively new at the time. The Vancouver Police didn't think much of the concept. They ignored the RCMP profilers, saying Vancouver didn't have the resources to investigate a serial. killer anyway, Project Eclipse ended with no action taken by the Vancouver Police Department. Willie Picton, on the other hand, was keeping himself busy. He and his older brother, David, expanded their farming operation into cockfighting, a brutal practice illegal in Canada. Cockfights were big business for the Pictons. Hundreds of people showed up to bet and drunkenly carouse after the fights. In North America, cockfighting is just a good guy. In North America, cockfighting is

generally viewed as animal abuse. According to the Journal of Veterinary Pathology, quote, there is overwhelming evidence that when animals are abused, people are at risk. When people are abused, animals are at risk. In other words, whether they start their pattern of abuse with humans or with animals, violently abusive people tend to harm both. A 2009 study in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence found that about 60% of people who reported witnesses, cruelty to animals in their childhood homes also witnessed child abuse or domestic violence. Willie had witnessed both as a child and was now facilitating cockfighting parties as an adult. But life on the farm wasn't all drinking and gambling. The brothers still tried to run a legitimate

butchering business. Despite decades of daily practice, Willie never really got the hang of butchering pigs or cattle. Because of Willie's poor technique, much of the meat produced by the Picton pig farm had an unpleasant stringy texture and grayish color. Dave's girlfriend described the ground meat Willie gave her as, like eating a plate full of earthworms. He also gained a reputation locally for buying sick and diseased animals that other people wouldn't butcher. It's unclear why he fell into this practice, but it almost certainly affected the quality of the meat. On one occasion, Willie offered a pork roast to some heavy equipment operators working on the farm. When they took it home to cook it for dinner, they found that the meat was rancid.

Guests familiar with Willie's butchery often refused to eat anything that came from the huge freezers where Willie kept meat to sell. When the Picton Boys threw parties, they started roasting whole pigs or baby goats for their guests. That way, Willie only had to kill the animals, not carve them up into cuts, of meat. Despite being a loner by nature, Willie seems to have genuinely enjoyed throwing parties and showing off his farm, just so long as nobody entered his private spaces uninvited. It was one of the few things that could set Willie into a rage. Locals thought of Willie as a friendly host, albeit a bit of an oddball.

Additionally, he garnered a reputation as a skilled mechanic. Bikers and professional drivers would bring him their broken-down vehicles and would soon be back on the road. He could fix just about anything at a fraction of the cost. Willie Picton also had one ongoing close friendship with a woman. Her name was Lisa Yelds, and she first met Willie in 1962 when she was five years old. Lisa, who was born to a white father and Chinese mother,

was abandoned by her parents as a small child, and raised by one of her Chinese grandparents. She was a sad, lonesome child, with few friends to speak of. At age five, she remembers visiting the Picton family's farm so her grandparents could purchase meat. Willie, then aged 13, noticed the small, sad girl and gave her a sack of hot dogs to take home. It was an act of kindness that she remembered nearly 30 years later

when she next saw him. Lisa was, by that point, a hardened biker with a deep distaste for the police. Lisa reconnected with Willie in the early 1990s, after her son became friends with Willie's nephew. The boys were drinking and driving together while underage. In a panic, Lisa called Willie. He found the two teens, returned them home safely, and endeared himself to his childhood friend all over again. Willie wasn't everybody's type, but neither was Lisa. She was foul-mouthed, hard drinking and a chain smoker. She had no fear of any of the quirks

that made Willie an unappealing friend to most. If he stank, as he often did, she ordered him to shower. His occupation didn't cause her any concern. In fact, she often joined him in the slaughterhouse. While he killed animals, she chopped the meat. There was no sexual relationship between Willie and Lisa. They sometimes cuddled together in bed,

but it never went any farther than that. Nevertheless, his friendship with Lisa Yelds was probably the closest thing Willie ever had to love. There were other women he had ongoing relationships with, including a woman named Tanya, who was, for a time, his roommate. But none of the others entered the barn to help him slaughter his livestock. Although an unfortunate few would discover what he was really doing with his meat grinder. When we return, the farmer's secret life,

and the sloppy habits that brought down the Picton Pig Farm. Now back to the story. In 1991, a special team of criminal profilers provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigated the disappearances of women on the downtown east side, but their findings suggesting a serial killer was active in the area were ignored. After the failure of Project Eclipse to provoke any action from Vancouver police,

the Mounties backed off. But in 1992, the missing women crisis resurfaced. Thanks to the efforts of dedicated journalists in the area, this time the police weren't going to be allowed to overlook it. On June 6, 1992, Kathleen Watley vanished. She was 39, and known to the police after her recent arrest for soliciting an undercover officer. Kathleen was black, five feet two inches tall,

and known for her plucky disposition. Like most of the other missing women, she was a drug user. On October 16, 1992, 40-year-old Elsie Sebastian was next to disappear. She was a member of the Pachidot First Nation and had four adult children who loved her dearly, despite her ongoing struggle with addiction. They asked over and over for Vancouver Police to list Elsie as a missing person, but we're told, quote, 40-year-old native women don't go missing. On April 15, 1993, Teresa, Teresa Louise Triff disappeared.

She was 31. She was small, weighing just 111 pounds. Very little is known about her life or the circumstances of her disappearance. She was the 15th woman to disappear from the downtown East Side since 1979. 16th was Lee Minor. who failed to come home for Christmas in 1993, and it was reported missing in February of 1994. 17th, on August 19th of 1994,

was 17-year-old Angela Arsino, who boarded a bus after a date with her boyfriend in downtown Vancouver and was never seen again. Vancouver police were under pressure once again from the community. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the disappearances of these women, despite their stigmatized social positions. Then, in 1995, five more women disappeared in one year. Catherine Gonzalez, Catherine Knight, Dorothy Spence, Diana Melnick,

and a fifth woman whose skull was found in Mission Slough and never identified. Both Catharines came from large families. Both survived abuse and witnessed alcoholism in their childhood homes. Both became homeless, turning to sex work for survival. but both kept in close contact with their families phoning regularly until they disappeared in 1995. Dorothy was a native woman, one of nine children, remembered for her cooking skills and warm personality. She, too, struggled with addiction. So did Diana, a private school girl who grew up riding horses and listening to heavy metal music. Dorothy and Diana grew up in strikingly different circumstances,

but heroin brought them to the same place in the end, the seedy downtown east side. When Diana vanished, she had no idea she'd just inherited a fortune. She would have found out about her share of her mother's $6 million estate had she attended her scheduled court hearing on December 27, 1995. She was a no-show, and two days later, her family reported her missing. These 22 women are still suspected of being among Willie Pickton's first victims. Until this point, he had kept off police radar, although, interestingly, it was a series of four unrelated murders that finally put police attention on Willie Picton. In 1995, four sex workers were murdered on the downtown east side.

Their names were Mary Lydgar, Tracy Alagidae, Victoria Yonker, and Tamifton. pipe. Their deaths became known collectively as the Valley murders. These vulnerable women had few friends in life, but in death they found a powerful ally, Kim Pemberton, a reporter with the Vancouver son who refused to let the issue of the downtown East Side's missing and murdered women fall out of the papers. Time and again, she confronted the Vancouver police about their lackadaisical attitude towards a rash of disappearances and homicides. Kim didn't make herself popular with the police. She called them out publicly for their lack of care for murder victims who had worked in

the sex trade or used drugs. And finally, the Vancouver police were forced to begin investigating the possibility of a serial killer in the area. But they looked in all the wrong places, starting with Seattle. From 1982 until 1984, the Green River killer murdered sex workers in the Seattle area. Vancouver police initially thought the same serial killer must have relocated to Vancouver to carry on his killing spree. The theory made some sense.

Both murderers had a taste for sex workers, and an early Green River killer suspect, Gary Leon Ridgeway, had been frequently seen in Vancouver. It's likely that Ridgeway, who later confessed to being the Green River killer, was responsible for some of the disappearances and murders in Vancouver. But when early DNA testing appeared to rule Ridgeway out as the Green River killer, police, for the first time, turned to Willie Picton as a possible suspect. The Picton brothers were already well known as local troublemakers before Willie's name came up in connection with the Valley murders. They'd never been suspected of murder before, but their loud parties and association with criminal biker gangs made them stand out to investigators.

Although he hated police, Willie voluntarily gave a DNA sample to major crimes investigators working on the Valley murders. It wasn't a match. After Willie passed the 1995 DNA test, he ceased to be a priority for law enforcement. He wasn't formally eliminated as a subject, but the cops moved on to other leads.

And Willie, feeling immune to prosecution after escaping arrest, moved on to newer crimes. The Picton brothers even seemed to taunt the public by founding a charitable organization in 1996 called the Piggy Palace Good Time Society. Its headquarters was a bar the men bought with proceeds from the sale of some land. Its stated mission was to host fundraisers on behalf of, Worthy groups, for the palace's grand opening, Willie shaved, which was a rarity. In reality, the Piggy Palace Good Time Society was more like a tax-exempt venue for the usual Picton pig farm debauchery. Strippers, Hell's Angels, and even off-duty police officers

frequented the huge parties thrown at the palace. Not only had the cops let Willie off the hook for murder, they were now partying and drinking with him. Also in 1996, three women disappeared from the downtown east side, Francis Young, Tanya Marlo Halleck, and Olivia Williams. When Tanya's family tried to report her missing, the Vancouver police replied, Your daughter is just out having fun. Don't waste our time. Tanya's sister called the missing persons department nonstop for the next two days until they finally agreed to take a report. But like the rest of the disappearances around that time, it was not investigated. Many of the women who disappeared in 1995 and 1996 lived or had lived at the Vernon rooms,

a boarding house in the downtown east side that catered to sex workers. Willie Picton was a regular there. He was also known at the Astoria Hotel, where slightly higher-dollar sex workers plied their trade. That's where Tracy Bwion first met Willie Picton. According to the book On the Farm, Robert William Picked in and the tragic story of Vancouver's missing women. She'd seen him in the area before. The local sex workers talked about their clients, and she'd heard of Willie. Nothing good, but nothing so terrible it would make her think twice about accepting his money for sex.

One day in 1996, Willie approached Tracy and asked her for oral sex. They agreed on a price of $40, and Tracy. got into Willie's truck. The smell hit Tracy like a runaway freight train. The truck stank like dead animals, like manure, and like something else she couldn't put a name to. As if that wasn't disgusting enough, when Tracy and Willie got back to his trailer on the pig farm,

it was so messy they couldn't even get into the bedroom. Tracy performed oral sex in Willie's cluttered kitchen, then began getting ready to leave. Willie pulled on his pants and promised to drive her home. Suddenly, Willie became angry. He accused Tracy of stealing his wallet while his pants were down. Before she could defend herself or even flee, he was on her. Grabbing her by the shirt collar, in his hand was a butcher's knife.

It's unclear whether Willie actually believed Tracy had taken his wallet. Police speculate that he would fabricate lies that allowed him to work himself into a rage and attack the women in his trailer. Tracy struggled with everything she had. Finally, she broke free of Willie's grip, but not before his sharp knife had cut two buttons off her shirt. Tracy ran out of the trailer in fear for her life. When Willie came outside after her, he was no longer angry.

He quietly asked Tracy to get into his truck so he could bring her back to the downtown east side. She had no other way to get home, besides walking for many miles. So she agreed. As he drove Tracy home, Willie told her that he liked to help young sex workers in withdrawal. He would find them on the street and take them home. Willie was angry that so many of them went back to heroin after he tried to help them. Willie told Tracy that addicts who relapsed, quote, don't deserve to live.

Tracy herself was an addict, although Willie didn't know it, She'd had many relapses of her own. It made for a chilling ride back to the downtown east side. Tracy didn't bother to call the cops about the assault. She knew the Vancouver police would do nothing about the physical assault of a sex worker. She was just glad to have escaped with her life. She was one of very few women to see Willie's dark side and survive it.

Most women who saw Willie's butcher knife found their lives ended, like one of his pigs, strung up on a meat hook in the barn. Around this time, Willie's closest friend, Lisa Yelds, moved away. She'd been the only person besides Willie who regularly set foot into the slaughterhouse. Without Lisa looking over his shelter, Willie was free to spend even more time attacking women. And he was lonely, especially with the Piggy Palace taking up more and more of Dave's time, leaving Willie to mine the farm. Dave had a bigger vision for the Picton family brand

than a successful pig farm in a single bar. He didn't think much about his little brother left alone with the animals or what Willie might be doing with all his newfound privacy. On the night of March 22nd, 1997, Willie drove to the downtown east side with sex on his mind, and something else too,

something that satisfied him in a way a sex alone couldn't. Willie found his target almost immediately. Wendy Lynn Eistetter, a 30-year-old woman addicted to heroin and cocaine. Wendy didn't want to go back to Willie's farm with him, but he offered her $100 for oral sex. It was more than she was likely to make on the street

in the downtown east side. Living with a $200 per day drug habit, Wendy didn't have the luxury of turning down that kind of cash. She hopped into the filthy truck. She wanted to get high before having sex with the disgusting pig farmer, so Wendy asked Willie to stop at a gas station about two minutes from the farm. She said she had to use the restroom, but Willie refused to stop. When they reached Willie's trailer, it was filthy inside,

just like it had been when Tracy was there. Though this time there was a pathway through the junk just wide enough to reach the bedroom. Wendy followed Willie in. He had no bed or blankets, just a sleeping bag on the floor, but he paid in cash and agreed to use a condom. Small blessings. Wendy and Willie had intercourse for about five minutes. After the sex was over, Wendy led herself into Willie's bathroom

and tried to shoot up on the toilet, but she was distracted at Mr. Vane, wasting the drugs. According to On the Farm, Wendy wanted to call her boyfriend Stu, but Willie refused to let her use his phone. He did allow Wendy to look at a phone book and get the number of the Cordova rooms, the seedy motel where she stayed with Stu.

Willie promised to take Wendy to a gas station with a pay phone on the way home. While Wendy was distracted by the phone book, Willie slipped up behind her. He was holding one of his favorite tools, a pair of handcuffs. Surreptitiously, he was. He cuffed her left wrist. When Wendy turned and saw the eager, hungry look in Willie's eyes,

she knew she was face to face with a killer. It was a moment for fight or flight. Wendy chose to fight. She bit, kicked, scratched, punched, and slapped, giving as good as she got. With the handcuffs dangling from one wrist, she edged backward into Willie's kitchen. There was a butcher knife on the kitchen table. Wendy She got her hands on it, but in her state of panic, she accidentally grabbed it by the blade. With blood dripping from her palm, Wendy slashed at Willie's cheek, slicing it open. He howled in pain. They continued to struggle, making their way out of the trailer as they tussled over the knife. Both Wendy and Willie were losing blood fast. Willie pinned Wendy against his truck. She saw the knife in his hand. Then she saw his eyes close. Willie fainted from blood loss before he could deliver the final blow.

But Wendy was badly weakened herself. He had slashed her belly, leaving her partially disemboweled. But her will to live was strong. Wendy dragged herself to her feet and ran from the farm, leaving Willie to bleed into the dirt. When we return, Wendy's desperate cries for help echo on a deserted road. And now the conclusion to the story. Just after midnight, on March 23, 1997, Wendy Lynn Iceetter sustained horrific injuries

in a struggle with serial killer Willie Picton. With her intestines spilling out of a deep slash across her stomach, she raced away from the Picton pig farm and towards two houses in the distance. She was still holding the butcher knife she'd used to fight off Picton. She threw herself against the bay windows of the nearest, house, leaving bloody handprints. Wendy knew she had only minutes left before she, too, would collapse from blood loss. Desperate, Wendy broke two windows, but the homeowners didn't appear. Just then, a car drove by. Wendy saw a woman in the vehicle and waved desperately for help.

At first, the car kept on driving, but it stopped just down the road and reversed towards Wendy. in the car was a kindly elderly couple who believed Wendy's story even after finding her covered in blood and holding a knife. They called 911 for Wendy and for Willie, who she explained was back on the farm with multiple stab wounds. Even in her grave condition, Wendy insisted on telling the couple exactly what happened to her. She didn't want Willie to get away with it. Wendy was admitted to the Royal Columbian Hospital at 2 a.m. on March, 23rd, 1997. Her injuries were so severe, doctors weren't sure whether or not she'd make it through the night, but thankfully, she pulled through. By Monday, the 24th of March, Wendy felt well enough

to tell police every detail of her encounter with Willie. This should have been the end of Willie Pickton's killing career. But once again, Vancouver police focused on their prejudices against sex workers and addicts, instead of catching a serial killer. Police were slow to take action and operated from the belief that the fight might have been a mutual dispute, not an attempted murder. Willie, for his part, was badly hurt.

He had more than 100 stitches mostly on his arm, back, throat, and jaw. Wendy had even stabbed him so hard in the mouth that she sliced off the tops of multiple teeth. He couldn't eat a morsel. But his brother Dave wasn't about, to play nurse. He called Lisa Yelds and begged her to come home to take care of Willie. Dave offered Lisa $200 to care for Willie for a few days and to wash away the pools of blood

still curing in his trailer. Reluctantly, Lisa agreed. When she arrived on the farm, Willie had a story ready. A sex worker had tried to rob him, he said, and when he resisted, she stabbed him. Lisa Yelds was the paranoid type. As fond as she, She was of Willie, his story was hard to believe, even if it was the account the police were investigating. She started looking around his trailer while she cleaned up, and what she found gave her reason to doubt her old friend. Willie had a stash of ID cards and other personal effects belonging to women she'd never met.

Lisa debated what to do with this collection, turn it over to the cops who she hated, or ignore it, possibly at a serious cost. The decision was almost taken away from Lisa. On April 8, 1997, about two weeks after Lisa arrived at the trailer, Willie was arrested for attempted murder. Although police at first investigated the possibility that both parties were at fault in the altercation, both Willys and Wendy's injuries matched up with Wendy's story and not with Willys.

But luck was with Willie. Wendy was too terrified to face him again, especially after she heard that Dave Picton hired a private investigator to look into her own background, with an eye towards discrediting her. At the trial, Wendy was a no-show. The charges were dropped. Willie was free to return to his farm and keep on killing. The cases of missing women continued to skyrocket.

Kelly Little, an indigenous Canadian trans woman, disappeared on April 23, 1997. Next was Janet Henry, also a First Nations woman, age 37. In August, former cheerleader Helen Hallmark vanished. Later the same month, Jacqueline Murdoch, a member of the indigenous carrier nation, also disappeared. Throughout all of this, it's unclear whether or not Dave knew exactly what Willie was doing on the farm. He has always denied it. But many victims' families believe Dave was complicit. At the very least, Dave was aware that Willie needed a steady supply of sex workers at the farm.

Then, in September of 1997, Dave started recruiting sex workers for Willie. He met Renata Bond on the downtown East Side and offered her $100 to find a woman to give Willie oral sex. Renata did as Dave requested. So he began coming to her every time Willie wanted sex. Each time Renata procured a sex worker, she would get cash and drugs as a finder's fee. Dave asked for losers, women who wouldn't argue about going so far out of town for a job. Renata was so used to the revolving door of the downtown east side, she never noticed that the girls she talked into going to Willie's farm never seemed to return.

One such woman, Sherry Irving, was a 24-year-old indigenous woman who had been crashing with Renata, She owed Renata money. When she didn't return from Willie's place, Renata assumed Sherry had kept Willie's money for herself and skipped town. Marnie Frey, a young addict and sex worker with a criminal record, disappeared on September 24, 1997. Marnie likely felt sorry for Willie. She carried a fondness for vulnerable human beings.

She would give her belongings away to others who seemed to be in need, even if that left her with nothing. Until her disappearance, Marnie was in close contact with her family. She was the mother of a five-year-old girl, Brittany, who was being raised by Marnie's parents. When she stopped checking in to see how Brittany was doing, her family knew something terrible had happened. We don't know exactly how he did it, but Willie killed Marnie. He lured her to the farm. Maybe she was one of the addicts he promised to help, then became enraged when she relapsed.

Maybe she was just another sex worker hired for the night, and then, like Wendy, handcuffed when she turned her back. After he butchered Marnie, maybe even with the same knife he tried to use on Wendy, Willie buried part of her jawbone and some of her teeth on the farm. The rest of her remains were likely put through a meat grinder, then possibly sold or given away as ground pork. Next to vanish was Cindy Felix, who was born into a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of wealthy family but brought down by addiction. Her family had kept in touch with her. When she abruptly

stopped calling, they knew immediately she must be dead. We know even less about what happened to her, but she was at Willie's farm long enough to leave traces of her DNA behind. Perhaps her body, too, went through the grinder, but this time he didn't bother to keep a jawbone as a memento. On December 24, 1997, Willie took a break from murder to play a prank. He drove to the downtown east side with two piglets in his truck and turned them loose on Hastings Street. Then Willie spent the rest of the day watching the piglets race, frightened around the neighborhood. He particularly enjoyed watching the cops chase after them. But he was back at killing before long.

Just after Christmas, Carrie Koski disappeared. After killing Carrie at the dawn of 1998, Willie felt invincible. He kept killing, and the Vancouver police kept bearing their heads in the sand. After a thorough review of case files on Vancouver's missing women, the cops publicly announced that they didn't believe a serial killer was on the loose in Vancouver. That was good news for the local serial killer, of course. Willie again ramped up his activities after the report made the news. In early April of 1998, Sarah Jane DeVries, an addict and sex worker well aware of the missing women crisis, wrote a poem about the murder.

As reported in On the Farm, it read in part, woman's body found beaten beyond recognition. You sip your coffee, taking a drag of your smoke, turning the page, taking a bite of your toast, just another day, just another death. A few days later, she disappeared. Like Cindy's body, Sarah's remains were never recovered. Only traces of DNA were left behind to, in a limited way, explain her last moments. Sarah was the 48th woman to go missing from the downtown east side since 1979. Next was Inga Hall, making it 49. Local reporters had been pressuring Vancouver police for years about the missing.

women crisis without results. Now they again ramped up their reporting, and again, Vancouver police insisted through a spokesperson that there was no serial killer in the downtown east side. The newspaper articles did produce one lead, Bill Hisccox, who on July 28, 1988, called victim Sarah Jane DeVries, grieving best friend, Wayne Lang, to chat. Bill had seen a newspaper interview with Wayne Lang and couldn't help feeling for him. Calmly, Bill related stories he'd heard from a friend, Lisa Yelds, who had helped Bill get a job on the Picton farm. Bill told Wayne he and Lisa Yelds had both seen women's IDs, purses, and clothing in

Willie's trailer. They were suspicious, Bill said. Bill had gone to the Vancouver police with this information several times, but they did nothing about it. Not even while women continued to disappear. Finally, in April of 1999, the Vancouver Police finally responded, offering a $100,000 reward for information on the missing women. Meanwhile, a young woman named Lynn Ellingson was working for the Picton farm,

keeping the books and doing odd jobs. She was a drug addict, but the Pictons didn't mind. In fact, they sold her drugs themselves. She lived on site with them and was treated like family. One spring evening, Willie took Lynn with him to the downtown east side, where he intended to find himself a date. They picked up a young woman with short dark hair. She was willing to come back to the farm for the night. Lynn and the young sex worker got along well.

They smoked crack together until Willie got impatient and asked the sex worker to join him in his bedroom. Lynn went back to her own room and smoked more crack. Some time later, she was too high to remember exactly when. Lynn saw a light on in the barn. It was the same barn where Willie did as butchering. It seemed strange. In a drug-addled haze, she got out of bed and drifted towards the barn to see what might have happened.

The first things she saw were two human legs, with toenails painted red, dangling above the ground. By the time Lynn realized what the strange tableau must be, Willie had her by the arm. He dragged her inside the barn and forced her to look at the sex worker they'd picked up earlier, now dead, and hanging from the same meat hook he used for pigs and cattle. Lynn wanted to run, but Willie had a tight grip on her bicep. He was telling her over and over again that the woman was like a pig, so he was just butchering her like a pig.

Her body was split open. Willie was scooping out her entrails into a bucket. Lynn was surprised by the yellow color of the woman's fat, so different from the white animal fat she'd seen before. We don't know if Willie ever ate any of his victims himself, but his butchering ritual was reminiscent of cannibalism. Therapist Karen Hyland says that, for a tiny fraction of the population,

cannibalism can become addictive. For people with cannibalistic fantasies who act on those desires, the rush of fantasy fulfillment releases a burst of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with intense pleasure. This could drive someone to seek fulfillment of that fantasy over and over again. Whether or not Willie himself was a cannibal, he did mix human remains in with his farm's meat. Perhaps for him, the fantasy of cannibalism was less likely,

about consuming women himself than about the power of tricking someone else into it. Willie told Lynn that if she ever told anyone which she had seen, she would go on the meat hook too. Lynn, crying, insisted that she wouldn't tell. She just wanted drugs and booze. She didn't want any trouble. Perhaps Willie was already sated for the night, or maybe he felt bonded to Lynn in a way. He let her go without a fuss. even called her a cab. She went back to town, got drunk and high, and tried to forget. But try though she might, Lynn could never get the sight of those dangling, painted toes out of her mind. In May of 1999, the Vancouver Police established a new missing persons review unit,

headed by Detective Constable Lormer Schener. Unlike most of the other police officers in Vancouver, Detective Schener had a strong reason to sympathize with the sex workers who had gone missing and turned up murdered. Lorimer Schaeiner is a trans man. During his early years as a police officer, when he was still living as a woman, Detective Schener worked undercover. He often dressed as a sex worker for prostitution stings. Having lived the occasional night in the life of a Vancouver sex worker, Detective Schener hated seeing their cases swept under the rug. For years, he'd been quietly advocating on behalf of the missing women, but was told by his bosses that the victims had probably just wandered off on their own.

Now, finally, he was being given his own unit and his own resources to investigate the case. Almost immediately, Detective Schener started receiving tips about Willie Picton. There were enough sources coming forward and enough women missing that Schener was certain the Picton farm would be the key to unraveling his. entire case. Unfortunately, without the cooperation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he couldn't serve a search warrant. Under the Canadian system, the RCMP would have to assist in order for the search to be legal.

And the Mounties weren't interested. Sure, they made some half-hearted attempts to help. On one occasion, when they went to visit the Picton farm, Dave told them it was a bad season for a search because he was too busy farming. He asked them to come back later in the year, and they left without argument. Detective Schener's bosses were equally uninterested in helping. In fact, they seemed to think Schener's special investigation unit was useful for exactly one thing, keeping the media pacified, while Vancouver Police pursued business as usual.

Schener developed post-traumatic stress disorder from the guilt he felt about being unable to bring the missing women home. He couldn't sleep. he could hardly eat. At the end of 2000, Detective Schener asked to be transferred off the missing women case. He was totally disillusioned, depressed, and demoralized. In January of 2001,

according to Detective Schener, the Vancouver police pulled another public relations stunt. They established a joint operation with the RCMP to review all of the missing women's cases. But instead of focusing on the suspect right in their backyard, they prepared a list of 100 known sex offenders in the province. Picton was on the list, but was no more a priority

than the other 99. It seemed as if Willie Picton would never be caught. Detective Schener felt like he was losing his mind. He couldn't understand how his colleagues were unable to see the next step that seemed so obvious to him. The Picton Pig Farm had to be searched. Months and years dragged on with no progress. Women kept disappearing.

Then, finally, on February 5th of 2002, an RCMP officer showed up at the gates of the Picton Pig Farm. But he wasn't there to find missing women. He was there to find a missing, unlicensed gun, believed to be in Willie Picton's possession. More effort was made to find an inanimate firearm than to find over 50 missing women. It was sheer coincidence that when the young Mountie searched the farm for the firearm,

he found an inhaler with one of the missing women's names on it. Finally, police took investigating Willie Picton seriously. The very next day, they served a search warrant and began taking the farm apart. Officers swarmed the Picton Pig Farm, looking in every nook and cranny for evidence. And they found it. bones and teeth buried all over the property. Some of the women's skulls had been cut in half for burial. Their hands and feet stuffed inside.

Human remains were found in a garbage bag. A woman's jawbone was buried right next to the barn where Willie did his butchering. Picton kept everything, and investigators found a purse belonging to Sarah DeVries. Inside the purse was a used condom, which tested positive for Willie Picton's DNA. But the worst find of all was in Willie's freezer, where investigators discovered packages of ground meat. They were a positive DNA match for victims Inge Hall and Cindy Felix. After the fact, it came out that Marnie Frey was also ground up with other meat and served at one of the Picton's barbecues, and horrifically, two of her cousins later realized they were at that party and likely consumed their own

family member. When Detective Schener heard about the search, he was so overwhelmed by the news. All he could do was weep. Finally, the victims would have their voices heard, but it had taken far too long. On February 22nd, Willie Picton was arrested and charged with two counts of murder, but the investigation was only just beginning. Investigators roared onto the property with heavy equipment in June. digging up the whole farm in search of more evidence.

Now that police were finally on the case, they wanted to do it right. The excavation took 21 months, ending in November of 2003. To allow ample time for evidence gathering, Willie Pickton's trial didn't begin until January 22, 2007. By that time, he stood charged with 27 counts of first-degree murder. For procedural reasons, the judge hearing picked him. In the victim's case decided to split it into two trials, one with six victims conclusively proven dead, and the other with 20 victims whose personal effects were found on Willie's farm, but whose bodies were not recovered.

The six-victim homicide trial was heard first. On December 9, 2007, a jury of his peers found Robert William Picton guilty, of six counts of second-degree murder, for the killings of Serena of. Botsway, Mona Lee Wilson, Andrea Joseberry, Brenda Ann Wolf, Marnie Lee Frey, and Georgina Faith Poppin. Willie Picton was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole for 25 years. He appealed his conviction all the way to Canada's Supreme Court, where his sentence was upheld. He will become eligible for parole on February 22, 2027.

Willie Pickton was unpredictable and irrational in the free world, and he's been the same way behind bars. On one occasion, when he was told a camera had been placed in his cell to record him, he responded by stripping completely naked and masturbating. In January of 2018, the documentary Voice of a Serial Killer was released, featuring previously unseen 2002 footage of Willie Picton, confessing to his cellmate, who was in fact. in the fact and undercover police officer.

In the chilling video, Picton brags about using a rendering plant, a machine usually used to safely dispose of animal ways stabbed or butchering, to dump his victims. Then he laments that he was caught before he could kill 50 women. He says, quote, I was going to do one more, make it an even 50. That's why I was sloppy about it. I wanted one more.

Make the big five-o-o-old. When he's not confessing to his crimes, Willie's denying them. In 2016, Willie released a self-published book accusing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of a grand conspiracy against the Picton family. The book, which is riddled with spelling errors and incongruities, was handwritten by Willie behind bars. In it, he denies killing anyone at all. We will probably never know exactly how much.

many women Willie picked in actually killed, or when his killing spree began. But Willie, for all his notoriety, is just one small part of this story. The bigger story is the ongoing crisis of Canada's missing and murdered indigenous women. The Canadian Broadcasting Company, CBC, is actively monitoring more than 250 unsolved cases in which police do not suspect foul play, but where the women's relatives insist they have fallen victim to violence. For his part, Detective Schenner was forced to take long-term medical leave from police work after the Picton case destroyed his health. In 2017, he was interviewed by the BBC.

He replied, quote, people think there's police accountability in Canada, but there aren't a lot of mechanisms that the government has to oversee their work. Without that accountability, I do think a killer like Picton could get away with it again. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. We'll be back Monday with a new episode. You can find more episodes of serial killers as well as all of podcasts, other shows on Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Several of you have asked how to help the show. And if you enjoy the show, the best way to help is to leave a five-star review. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook. and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler,

is a production of Cutler media and is part of the Parcast Network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, sound designed by David Turk, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro and Paul Mahler. Additional production assistance by Maggie Admiere and Freddie Beckley. Serial Killers is written by Yelena War

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