True Crime Campfire - Less Dead: Serial Killer Robert Willie Pickton, Pt 1

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

In his book, Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime, Eric Hickey wrote about a type of victim that he called, “the Less Dead”. These are people that are seen by the media or law enforcement as having less value than others. Usually sex workers, drug addicts, houseless people, and sexual or racial minorities. The case we’re discussing today is about dozens of these types of victims. Women whose disappearances were ignored or were straight up covered up because they happened to be addicts or sex workers. One police officer told a woman’s terrified family that the series of missing women were “just junkies and hookers. Don’t waste our time.” These were human beings. With friends and families, hopes, dreams, stories, lives. The fact that the authorities ignored their disappearances for so long is one of the worst miscarriages of justice that we’ve seen in our decades of true crime study. This killer roamed the streets of Vancouver, like a shark swimming among a school of fish, unchecked and under the radar, taking almost 50 lives before anyone stopped him. Try Magic Mind: You have a limited offer you can use now, that gets you up to 48% off your first subscription or 20% off one time purchases with code TCC20 at checkout! Claim it at: https://magicmind.com/tccpodSources:Cameron, Stevie. On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver's Missing Women. Knopf Canada. Kindle Edition. https://www.nativehope.org/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-mmiw?utm_term=mmiw%20statistics&utm_campaign=MMIW+-+Search&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_tgt=kwd-1652454857508&hsa_grp=144380966783&hsa_src=g&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_mt=b&hsa_ver=3&hsa_ad=646853914079&hsa_acc=3651624507&hsa_kw=mmiw%20statistics&hsa_cam=19633980915&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwlbu2BhA3EiwA3yXyu8y0N86jvR6NFomqQUWY1AD3h0y48ITuUopInfNw6Tb_MBFkRKbaRhoC0ikQAvD_BwEThe Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/aug/05/features11.g2Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In his book, Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime, Eric Hickey wrote about a type of victim that he called The Less Dead. These are people that are seen by the media or law enforcement as having less value than others, usually sex workers, drug addicts, houseless people, and sexual or racial minorities. The case we're discussing today is about dozens of these types of victims.

Women whose disappearances were ignored or straight up covered up because they happened to be addicts or sex workers. One police officer told a woman's terrified family that the series of missing women were, quote, just junkies and hookers, don't waste our time. These were human beings, with friends and families, hopes, dreams, stories, lives. The fact that the authorities ignored their disappearances for so long is one of the worst miscarriages of justice that we've seen in our decades of true crime study. This killer roamed the streets of Vancouver, like a shark swimming among a school of fish, unchecked and under the radar, taking almost 50 lives before anyone stopped him.

This is less dead, the crimes of Robert. Willie Pecton, part one. Be aware, this case has some gnarly stuff in it. Sexual assault, animal abuse, typical awful treatment of farm animals. We'll try and keep you posted as we go along, but just be warned that this is a rough one. So, campers, we're in Vancouver, Canada for this one, on March 22nd, 1997. 30-year-old Wendy Lent ice-setter felt like shit. She'd been addicted to cocaine and heroin since she was a teenager.

She'd tried to get sober more times than she could count, and she just couldn't get it to stick. Her habit cost her $200 a day, which basically meant that she was hustling from the moment she opened her eyes. She had a few tried-and-true methods to get cash. She worked as a sex worker, drug dealer. She shoplifted and stole cigarettes from delivery vehicles to sell herself.

When she woke up in the afternoon that March, she knew she'd have to get to work. She managed to sell some drugs, but she immediately lost $60 at the casino. This was bad. Her pimp slash boyfriend, Stu Jones, would beat her if he ever found out, so she decided she needed to turn some tricks.

Before she hit the streets, she did a speedball, which is cocaine and heroin mixed together, which made her hyperactive and paranoid. Eventually, she calmed down enough to look for a John. At around 11 p.m., a red Chevy pickup pulled up beside her. The men inside had long, dirty, blonde hair with a receding hairline. He was filthy.

He asked her, how much for a blowjob? She told him 40 bucks. And he said, well, how about a little more? When she asked him to elaborate, he asked if she'd come to his place in Coquitlam, about 30 minutes out of town. She told him, that was a little too far, but she knew a good place nearby. guy. He pushed again. I'll make it a hundred, and I'll bring you back by one. This was a crazy deal for Wendy Lynn, almost too good to be true. That would make up her

deficit from the casino and then some. She hopped in the truck and made small talk with the guy. He introduced himself as Willie, and offered her some candy and soda that was on the front bench. She also noticed a bra on the floor of the truck, but when she asked about it, Willie dismissed it as another working girls who'd left it behind. She kind of just shrugged. About 20 minutes into the drive, Wendy Lynn asked if he could stop at a gas station so she could use the bathroom.

He refused, though, saying they were close to his house. They were stopped at a traffic light, and when the light turned green, Willie gunned the gas and whipped around a corner, stopping at a gate outside a farm. As they drove deeper into the property, Wendy Lynn noticed many, many cars, seemingly abandoned at random along the,

the sides of the dirt road. The smell of the farm filled a cab, a heavy, acrid animal smell that had her fighting down a gag. They passed a house, and when she asked who lived there, Willie told her it was his brother's place. Eventually, toward the back of the property,

they arrived at a trailer. Inside, Wendy Lynn's immediate first impression was that it was a pig's die. As she picked her way toward the bedroom, she noticed a large, sharp butcher knife on the kitchen table. The bedroom was simultaneously filthy and ascetic. There was no furniture, just a dingy sleeping bag and a clear plastic tarp on the floor.

Willie paid her, and they had sex, lasting about five minutes. She said it was a normal encounter, nothing violent or strange. Wendy Lynn asked to use the restroom. Inside, she tried shooting up a speedball but missed her vain. Frustrated, she rejoined Willie. out at the desk. She asked to use the phone, but he refused, told her he'd drop her off at a payphone. She asked to use his phone book so she could call her pimp. As she was searching for the hotel they were staying in, she sensed Willie's presence right behind her. She turned to snap at him and he grabbed

her left hand and began caressing it, stroking the top of her hand in her fingers. That's a quote. With an alacrity that shocked her, Willie snapped handcuffs around her wrist. Wendy Lynn immediately fought back, realizing instinctively that she could not let him get the handcuff on her other wrist. She started punching and kicking him, and he started hitting her back. Remembering the knife, she started moving backwards slowly, bringing Willie with her. Eventually, she grabbed the knife, blade first, cutting herself, and swung out toward her attacker. She slashed at his throat and cut his cheek. This enraged Willie, he screamed, you fucking.

bitch, you got me good. He started swinging at her with a stick from the ground. She tried the back door, but found that it was sealed shut, and when she tried to break the window, she saw it was plexiglass. Willie descended on her, punching and kicking, and Wendy Lynn lost consciousness. When she came to, she saw that Willie had dragged her outside, and she and her body, somehow on autopilot,

was still jabbing at him with the knife. She had a brutal pain in her gut, but there was no time to focus on that. As they fought, Wendy Lynn remembered her children, eight and six years old, who lived with their father. She knew they were well taken care of, but she desperately wanted to see them again, to hold them. She started bargaining. Let me go. I've got a family, and they'll pay a thousand bucks if you let me go. Willie was unmoved and managed to rest the knife away from her, but he'd lost too much blood and he was quickly losing consciousness. Wendy Lynn escaped his grasp, grabbed the knife, and ran toward the road.

She waved down a passing car, which was driven by a couple. From their view, they saw a tiny, skinny woman, partially closed, covered in blood with her innards, spilling out of a slice in her stomach, gripping a knife in her bloody hands. Holy shit. They stopped after she agreed to drop the knife, and she got in the car. The couple called 911, and Wendy Lynn pointed out the farm as they drove by. She said, if anything happens to me, if I die, that's where the guy lives that did this to me. Oh, bless her heart, good God. Wendy Lynn was transported to the hospital where doctors told authorities that they weren't sure if she'd survive.

They managed to save her, though, and her attacker managed to make it to the hospital as well. Who was this strange, dirty man that called himself Willie? What were his plans for Wendy Lynn? What in the world was happening on that farm? Robert William Picton was born on October 24, 1949, to Louise and Leonard Picton. He was born with the umbellical cord grabbed around his neck, which some experts suggest cause brain damage. Willie was their middle child, born after Linda and before David. The Pictons were an eccentric bunch, to put it nicely.

The entire family didn't care for their teeth, causing them to rot out of their heads. Louise had facial hair that amused the neighborhood kids. They still talk about it today. Oh, wow. Every day, she wore a moo-moo over a pair of men's jeans and a pair of galoshes that were too big for her. The children never heard her talking in a normal voice. Instead, she was always screeching. Like, you kids, get over here right now.

God. She sometimes wore one of her husband's jackets if it was raining, though. Like, I can't even imagine that outfit right now. Yeah. Like for the moo-moo and the jeans and the jacket and the screeching. And don't worry, campers. We're not just being mean randomly to this woman. She's awful.

She's the worst. Linda and David both looked like her with roundish faces and short statured. Willie took after his dad, tall and, quote, rat-faced. Yeah, that's very unkind to rats, Katie. I can't support that. You're right. I'm sorry. I apologize formally.

The most lingering memory anyone that knew the Pictons had was the stench. The family let chickens, ducks, dogs, pigs, or cows come in and out of the house, their house, and let them shit everywhere. What the hell? Yeah, Louise or Leonard never cleaned any of the poop up. That's mental illness. That's got, like, that's crazy. Not normal.

The Pictons ran a pig farm. farm, which if you've ever driven by one, you know that in the best quality, they smell like hell itself opened up and burped out demon farts. Pigs are cute and smart, oh, do they smell? They are smelly, smelly creatures. My great uncle ran, I had some pigs. And the farm itself didn't smell because it was pretty contained and they kept a clean, but you walk into where they kept the pigs. And oh, my God, the worst, the worst smell you've ever had in your entire. life. It was disgusting. It was made worse by the fact that the pigs had dominion over the whole property, not in an ethical free range kind of way, in a Saruman caverns of Eisengard,

ruining the environment kind of way. Pooping in the house kind of way. Yeah, pooping in the house kind of way. The boys were made to bathe like once a week. Willie, specifically, was scared of showers and didn't like being splashed in the face, something that he retained until adulthood. That ain't going to help. No. They did chores every day before school. They did it before school, at lunchtime, and after school, without showering. So they sank to high heaven.

Their dad, Leonard, was called Piggy by the local kids because of his smell. And once the children started school, so were they. Ooh. Linda, who was always much different from her family, was fastidious about cleaning and grooming. Her friends at the time remembered that her mom went out of her way to dress her nicely for parties in church, the one girl in the family, I guess. The boys, though, were not given the same consideration. In the book On the Farm by Stevie Cameron, the author speculates that on some level Louise understood, quote, that it was important for Linda to be like other kids, to have nice clothes, to be included. That book is our main source for this case, and I cannot overstate how much we recommend it.

It is so good. It is one of the longest books we've read for a case, and it is unbelievable. It's so fascinating. Yeah, it's a page turner. Linda was eventually sent to go live with her grandparents while the boys stayed at the farm. Lucky Linda. Louise was a strict mom. When he was four years old, she caught Willie smoking a cigarette and forced him to smoke a cigar, making him sick and turning him off cigarettes forever.

I guess mission accomplished, but yikes. Despite this, Willie. was a total mama's boy. Once as a child, he saved up his pocket money to buy a three-week-old calf. He adored this little calf. In a letter to a prison pen pal, he wrote, I was going to keep the calf for the rest of my life. After school one day, the calf was missing. He searched high and low, but it was nowhere to be found. His parents told him it probably escaped, but that didn't make any sense to young Willie who kept it in a latched pen. Finally, annoyed with all the pestering, his father told him to go look in the barn. When he ran to go find his pet, he found that

they'd butcher it. He wrote, I couldn't talk to anybody for three or four days. I locked everybody out of my own mind. His mom paid him for it, but he wanted no part of it. No, I was going to keep that calf for the rest of my life, and now it's gone. That really upset me, but that happens, that's life. I mean, we're only here for so long. When your time is over, your time is over. She was somewhat gentler with him than with David because she understood that he had a harder time in school. By the time he was in the first grade, Willie was shy and struggled with class. He repeatedly got very low scores on his standardized tests and he was placed in special ed. The problem with these types of tests is that they really only applied to kids who had an average suburban upbringing.

This is why IQ tests have to be regionalized because a student's daily experience does factor into how they answer questions. Willie, as you find out, is pretty far from stupid. In fact, I think he used the perception of his stupidity to get away with a lot of his later crimes. Most people thought of Willie as stupid, but I don't think that's true. He definitely struggled socially, but I think most of his quote-unquote dumb persona was an act. One family friends said that, quote, he's smarter than people think. He's very intelligent, a workaholic. Another called him, cunning, sly, and street smart. So, is he dumb?

I don't know, but he would eventually rack up a body count that rivals the most notorious killers. Willie dropped out of school when he was 15. In a story he told to a friend, he'd gotten one of those joke pins from the corner store. I used to have one of these. It was one of those that had a lady inside, and when you flip the pin upside down, she got naked. I used to have one of those booby pins. I got it at a truck stop. Why did you?

How old were you when he had this pen? I'm like 20. Okay. I thought it'd be funny if you were like 12. Oh my gosh. It amused me and I bought it. Listen, I probably would too. Actually, I would probably buy it now.

Yeah, same. I kind of miss it. The principal, you know, obviously did not appreciate the booby pen, called him to the office and, quote, said he was going to beat him. It's nice. And Willie said, you do that and I quit. The principal wasn't backing down, so Willie quit right there. so he dropped out of school because he wanted to keep his titty pin his titty bin it's like you'll find this

you'll find this out about willie as the story continues he's pretty funny like the way he tells stories is pretty engaging but we don't know yeah they have to be i mean guys like that you know yeah and i'm not complimenting him because i think that superficial charm that psychopaths have yeah i think half of his stories are bullshit. But, you know. But he's a pretty prolific writer. Like, he writes all kinds of letters. Anyway, sorry.

As a teenager, Louise would have Willie go dumpster diving at the local psychiatric hospital for leftover food, where some of the women and girls being treated there would flash him as he dug through the garbage. He felt supremely uncomfortable seeing the titties. He doesn't like real titties, only pen-related tithes. related titties. At least according to him, it made him uncomfortable. Louise would basically brush off the still warm food from the dumpster and serve it to her family as they sat at the kitchen table surrounded by pig shit. Oh my God. The pictons also used

the psychiatric patients for cheap labor around the farm. Oh my God. Geez, Louise. Okay, if I hadn't read this myself, I would have thought like this was a spec script from Hollywood about a serial killer's childhood, dumpster diving for food, hiring psychiatric patients for labor, psychiatric patients flashing you, pig shit everywhere, like what the fuck is happening? Yeah, you couldn't really ask for a more perfect storm to create somebody like Willie Picton. When Willie dropped out of school, his mom was actually kind of stoked, great parenting. It meant there was more time for him to work on the farm. She set him up as an apprentice butcher, but the man who was in charge of him said Willie didn't really seem

interested in it. He'd go fishing instead of butchering. If he stuck with it, he could write his ticket anywhere he wanted. Whereas Willie was a social outcast, Dave, despite having visible stink lines like a cartoon skunk, did well socially. Surprisingly, he had friends, dated, stayed in school longer, but never graduated. He did, however, start his criminal career earlier than Willie. On October 17th, 1967, at about 11 p.m., 14-year-old Tim Barrett was due home. He'd been at a friend's house all evening and his dad called the house to see where he was. The friend's dad was confused. Tim left about three hours earlier. The father's immediately started a search up and down the road where Tim would have been walking that night. As they walked, Tim's dad saw his son's shoe

near a ditch. When they looked into the ditch, they saw him lying there in a shallow pool of water. Tim's dad collapsed. The medical examiner later found that he had a, quote, fractured and dislocated pelvis, deep bruises, hemorrhaging in the back of his head and body, and a fractured skull with a subcranial hemorrhage. Dave Pickton, 16 years old at the time, had been driving his father's 1960 GMC one-ton truck when he hit Tim, stopped to see where the kid was lying on the side of the road, got back into the car, and sped home. There, his parents left into action. They saw that the truck, which was already dented and had chipped paint,

had a fresh body-sized dent and blood all over the hood and fender. The turn signal was also popped out of the fender. They ordered their son to immediately go to their family mechanic. This is it like 7.30, by the way. The mechanic later said that Dave was clearly agitated. He told the guy that a big wooden post had fallen during a construction project hitting the truck. He was able to fix the light and hammer the dent out, but Dave kept insisting that he paint the new chips and scrapes.

That was bizarre, considering the car was covered in scrapes and dents anyway. He refused. The family had to paint over the truck with house paint later that night. Oh, wow. Meanwhile, Louise Picton drove out to where her son had said he'd hit someone and found Tim. She hoisted him up by the armpits and dragged him over to the ditch and rolled him in. The next morning, when the mechanic heard the news about the hit and run, he immediately thought of Dave. He called the RCMP, who seized the truck and found blood still on the fender and hood.

They also matched chips of paint from the car to Tim's clothing. When the coroner examined Tim's body, he was surprised to find that the impact of the car hadn't killed Tim. He'd drowned, in two feet of water, after Louise Picton had thrown him in. Oh, no. Investigators arrested Dave and he was charged with failing to remain at the scene of an accident. His license was suspended for four and a half years and he was placed on probation. Louise was never charged for her role in Tim Barrett's death, but it remained the subject of Coquitlam gossip for decades. That is insane that she was never charged.

That is atrocious. Oh my God. I can't even fucking, like just and to be specific, The coroner did not think that Tim would have died if he had gotten medical attention. Oh, my God. That's horrible. So, fuck Louise Picton. Yeah.

Gross. And her pig shit covered galoshes. Yeah, life. As Dave and Willie got older, not much changed. Dave started working in construction to supplement the meager income the family got from selling hogs. And Willie stayed at the farm working as the butcher. He could dress up to 24 pigs a day. When he wasn't working, he was tinkering with cars around the farm, something he had great talent with.

Willie also had his fair share of female pen pals, which is a hobby he'd maintain his entire life. One such pen pal was named Connie Anderson, who lived in Michigan. Once, in 1974, he went on vacation for the first time in his entire life to go visit Connie in the lower 48. He was 24. In a later letter to a different lady pen pal, he said that he was scouted on this trip to be a male model. He turned it down, though, so I'm sorry we can't bless you with these photos. Now, look, we take pride in the fact that we don't tend to look shame on this show, but I need everybody that is not currently driving to just real quick look up a picture or Willie.

Does this look like a dude that would be cold scouted to be a model? Yeah, I can actually hear you. all screaming, oh, God, please know what your phone's right now. That's, yeah, that's how we feel, too. It's just, that's what he's, he is such a liar. He's just a liar. He writes fan fiction about his life. When he met Connie, it was love at first sight. By the time he left, he told everyone he was engaged. The problem was that she couldn't leave her job and he didn't want to leave the farm. I totally have a girlfriend, you know, she just don't know her. She goes to another school. In Canada. In America, actually, it's in America.

It's the other way. It seems like Willie's sole connection to the farm was his mother. She kept a tight leash on him and he rarely did anything without her say so. That went for everyone in the family, but especially Willie. David wasn't afraid to tell her to fuck off, but he still lived at home for after all these years. Not super strange for a farm family, but if David hated his lot in life so much, he could have left. By that point, he owned a business. He was in construction and topso.

soil, like he owned that, so he could have just gone. Leonard Picton was in love with his wife, but by the time his sons were adults, he was just constantly harangued by Louise. He eventually died of cancer at 91 on January 1st, 1978. The family seemed to barely notice. It was around this time that Willie started standing up to Mother. When she had a go at him, screeching, move that truck now, he'd just say, I shut up, ma. Even so, he was devastated when she developed cancer.

She passed away on April 1st, 1979. Reminiscing to one of his pen pals, he wrote, She was up and going and going and going and you never keep her down, even almost right to the end. We had to put her on a stretcher when she left here. She said, I want to have a look at this place one last time, so we sat her up and had a look at the place. She looked all over the place.

She never did come back. Willie felt free for the first time in his life. His angry, controlling mother couldn't screech at him anymore and force him to stay home. There was one catch, though. In her will, she divided her estate, amounting to about $148,000, which was, you know, much bigger money back then, equally between her three children. For David and Linda, they had access to the funds right away. Willie, who was 30 when his mom died, immediately got 20K, but couldn't get his remaining inheritance unless he stayed on the farm till he was 40. So I don't know about y'all, but I really struggle with focus and motivation, and it seems to be getting

harder as I get older. I'm sure a big part of it is my ADHD, plus the fact that I never seem to get enough sleep, and there are so many tempting distractions to dive into every day. So the end result is I end up procrastinating on the important stuff, and then I just get mad at myself. So I'm always on the lookout for anything that will help me with this. So when Magic Mind reached out to us to see if we wanted to try their daily mental performance shots, I was excited to give it a go. Magic Mind is a daily shot. So ideally, you take it with like your morning coffee or tea, packed full of mushroom neutropics and adaptogens, plus over 100% of your daily vitamin C and D. I've been taking it for the past five days, and especially in the past couple days, I'm really

starting to see results. I'm finding myself brighter, more focused, more energetic, and because I'm getting more done, I'm less stressed out and anxious, since a lot of my stress comes from my own procrastination and lack of motivation. I hate this idea that you have to be a stress case to be successful and the folks at Magic Mind seem to agree. They spent a decade perfecting this research-backed formula with the goal of getting you to your full mental capacity, but without any of the downsides that you see a lot of the time with products like this, like overcaffeination or jitters. Believe me, I do not need any more anxiety. I have enough of that already. The caffeine that's in Magic Mind is time release, which has been a game changer for me. I've always been a big fan of caffeine,

but I hate the inevitable crash you get a couple hours into it. With Magic Mind, there's none of that. Plus, they've added L-thionine to make the caffeine last even longer. So I like that this is not a quick fix. You're not putting a temporary band-aid on the situation here. You're actually adding something to your daily routine that will help you in the long term, mind and body. In fact, some of the ingredients take a few days to reach full effect, which is probably why I've felt so good the past two days, because I'm five days in as of now, and I'm definitely a believer. I think you will be too. Try a kind of seven-day challenge with me. Try one week of Magic Mind and see how you feel. I think you're going to feel more energized, less stressed, and more motivated to tackle your

to-do list. Magic Mind seems like a cool company, too. They're 100% carbon neutral, they source the best ingredients, they'll refund your money for 100 days after purchase. If you're in any way unsatisfied, no questions asked. And they ship internationally to over 65 countries. And as TCC listeners, you have a limited offer you can use now that gets you up to 48% off your first subscription or 20% off a one-time purchase with code TCC20 at checkout. That's TCC20 at checkout. You can claim it at magicmind.com slash TCC pod. That's magicmind.com slash TCC. C-Pod. His mother designated Linda and Dave as the trustees.

He technically got 20K more than his siblings, but that didn't mean much to him now. He had to wait a decade to get it. He was furious with his mother. It was bullshit that he was the only one that got this fucked up deal. I wonder what her thought process was here. Do you think she knew something about her son? Or was this just a strange way of her continuing to baby him?

Make sure he was taken care of for a while. I think it could be a little of both, actually. Yeah, I think she didn't trust him to make his own decisions. Yeah. And, you know, it's not uncommon in farm families to have like these kinds of like, no, it's not catches in a will where it's not catches, but it's like, hey, like, we're going to divide this land equally, but you can't sell it for 10 years. Right.

You know, like, it's not, I spoke with a friend of the show, Taylor, whose families raises a cattle. And she said, yeah, that's pretty common, but it's super weird that he was the only one with the stipulation. It wasn't for all of them. Right. Louise's death marked a sharp turn in the farm. While it wasn't exactly picturesque before, it somehow got worse when Willie and his brother took over. Dave Picton had a time. topsoil business, and he removed all the usable topsoil on his farm for customers, and the fields

started being filled with vehicles. Willie, who'd given up his apprenticeship, still slaughtered animals on the farm. He started offering to source exotic meat for his clients, oh, that just worries me right off the bat, like emu or llamas, which he would butcher and process at his farm. He was good at killing the animals, either slitting their throats or shooting them with a nail gun. God, that's awful, but the more Intricate art of butchering was something he wasn't good at at all. He often outsourced this part of the job to a local butcher shop. He'd take the bones and remaining meat and skin and dig big pits all around the farm, covering them with dirt once they were full.

Willie didn't really have the instincts of a livestock farmer. He had a reputation of buying sick or dying animals at a reduced price. Yummy. If you've talked to anybody who raises livestock, even livestock raised for slaughter, they genuinely care for the well-being of their animals most of the time. I mean, my grandfather was a livestock farmer, and he loved his cows. I mean, he was very kind to them. They were all, you know, free range.

And not only does it make sense to want to eat healthy meat, but it's also just respectful to treat an animal that's going to give its life to feed us with some dignity. And obviously, there are many people who would say we shouldn't be eating animals at all. I very much respect that opinion. But if you're going to do it, do it with respect. back and do it with humanity. Yeah, it's kind of like the Temple Grandin theory of livestock raising. She's very much about like, you know, it's they should leave good lives.

It's not, it's not hard. And it's like definitely the least of his crimes. But it's like the cherry on top of a shit Sunday that he's such a terrible person, that he treats his livestock like shit. Like he, like the auction house would save sick pigs for him or like pigs with sores. and stuff that, like, they'd know he'd buy it. It's gross. God.

When Willie Boy couldn't bury the remains on the property anymore, he'd have a rendering company come pick them up in big 45-gallon barrels to be turned into stuff like cosmetics, soaps, and pet food. Because Willie was a regular, they really didn't bother to inspect what he was dropping off to turn. When one driver did, he noticed that the meat inside was black and in big chunks, which was strange. Farmers typically use the whole animal because, you know, that's money.

So why was Willie giving up perfectly good meat? He used this company from the late 80s up until the late 90s. Was there something else in those barrels? Don't think too hard about the fact that people were smearing whatever was in Willie's drums all over their faces or feeding it to Fido. Trust us, it only gets worse. Oh, God, that's dark. The Picton brothers' relationship was, like most things at the Picton farm, weird as hell. It seems clear to me that Willie needed some kind of authority figure in his life.

According to their sister, Willie would refer to Dave as his father. He'd say stuff like, I'll tell you, but don't go tell my dad, or keep the secret from daddy. God, that's weird. Dave, for his part, took on the nagging role that his mother had vacated. Despite wearing the same ode to pig shit, that Willie wore, Dave would shit on his brother for his hygiene. I acknowledge

what you did there. It was bad, but I acknowledge it. Oh, thank you. Anyway, Dave would yell at Willie for having unwashed towels and sheets. That's such a dad thing to yell at him about, so I kind of get why I really call him

dad. Okay, but then also maybe shovel the shit out of your living room if you're going to get persnickety, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, Willie's basement room, like, constantly flooded during, like, rainstorms and fill with mud and muck, which smelled up the house, which sent Dave over the edge, which is, like, get a sump pump, you know? God, these people must have had an incredible tolerance for stench. Because you get blind, nose blind, as they call it, after a while where you really don't notice it. But, I mean, I bet it would knock you over if, like, any one of us walked into that house.

I think Willie, Willie did. claim that he didn't have a sense of smell. But again, I think he's a liar. So I think he was just using it as an excuse. Well, maybe it just got seared out of him by the sheer power of the stench. And eventually, Dave kicked him out of the house. That's why eventually Willie was living in a trailer. I feel like we could dedicate half of this episode to how weird Dave Picton is. Yeah. He is definitely a criminal, but he's not nearly as bad as his brother, right? He was more charming and social than Willie, but he was still a fucking asshole. One woman recalled, Dave was rude and obnoxious.

If he thought a woman was overweight, he would say, you fat cow. He'd tell women quite openly, you're getting fat. You have a big ass. And he thought he was funny, but people used to laugh at him, making fun of him behind his back. He had a lisp, and he said things like the twain went over the twacks. Oh, God. In the same breath, she said, you know, I considered him a good friend. This is, every single person in the Picton's life was like, yeah, they were a fucking creep, but like, we were buddies.

That's wild. He was a very good businessman, a workaholic. I stayed at the home overnight many times. Dave would get up at dawn and go out till dark. He worked with diesel machines and backhose, but he'd always showered when he got home, not like Willie. And Dave paid for everything. He would supply us with booze, but I never saw him drunk. I never saw him do drugs.

He didn't like being out of control. His girlfriend would smoke pot, but I never saw him do it. Yeah, this is a pretty common thing for manipulators, I think. They don't want to get drunk or high because they don't like being out of control, which I find creepy. If everybody around you is hammered and you're the only sober one, I mean, who has the upper hand in that situation? And I've known people like this personally. Like, I'm thinking of one person in particular that I knew years ago who actually told me straight out. I don't like to get drunk because I don't like being out of control. I like to

be able to control the situation as how he put it. And it just hit my ear wrong. It was creepy. Well, and there's a difference between being like sober and being like a manipulator. Like we're not equating the two. There's a definite kind of person. He specifically meant he wanted to be able to pull the strings of the evening. He wanted to be in charge. That's that was the context of the conversation. Yeah. And it's and they. And they. And they. And they. They are the people that are generally pressuring people to continue to drink. Exactly. Oh, yeah.

They like it when you get drunk. They just don't want to do it. Yeah, because sober people do not give a fuck. They're like, whatever, do what you want. They're not like, oh, have another shot. Have another shot. Because this is something that Dave and Willie both did, right? They would supply the drugs and the liquor and they would pay for everyone's drugs and liquor, but never partake.

And like, but they wanted to be in the, they wanted to be in the situation. It was super creepy. They're working a system. That's creepy as hell. Dave was very interested in biker gang culture, but he was a coward. So we kind of just hung around them and hoped they'd invite him to their birthday parties and stuff, like somebody's like weird younger brother. He and Willie became the little personal assistance for these violent gang members.

They'd help boost cars, deal drugs, pimping, and gave him a place to party. Starting in 1980, Willie ran the chop shop and hired a few teenagers to run the pig farm while he did his mechanic thing. Did you hear the scarecrowths around the word hired? Yeah, that's because he didn't pay them. He occasionally let them stay on the property for free and offered them free meat, but like, I know teenage boys are smelly, but I feel like an unkempt pig farm with half a dozen poorly buried awful pits might be worse than their rooms.

A little bit, you know. As far as the free meat went, the veteran boys would warn the newbies that they shouldn't take anything offered by Willie. One recalled that Willie offered him a ham and at the end of his shift he brought him, quote, a mass of material. It wasn't brains, but I don't know what it was. It was all stringy and not ham and it wasn't frozen. God help us.

And every woman that was involved in the Picton's lives would repeatedly say, I didn't eat anything from the farm. And Willie specifically, like when they had pig roasts, would not use their own pigs. He would say, oh, our pigs are sick. We can't use them. Where are the health inspectors? My God. I thought Canada was good at this kind of stuff. When anyone would have the audacity to ask for the money they were owed, Willie would tell them he could get rid of anyone that he wanted. And then in the same breath, he'd try to pal around with them. The points were pretty scared of him. And I think Willie liked it. There,

I said it. I think he did it on purpose. Oh, yeah. It didn't help that the Hells Angels enjoyed harassing the boys and finally convinced them to go steal cars for them. The boys adapted quickly, though. It helped that they'd get paid for this work. And it stank less than mucking the pigs. The operation was very pirate-esque. Is that a word I can use?

Basically, Willie would help remove anything valuable from the cars and then using Dave's heavy construction equipment, they'd bury the stolen loot all over the property. So they had, sorry. So they had little treasure troves of booty along with the pits of rotting animal carcasses all over the farm. It's awful. I know. It's horrible. But, you know, nothing good lasts forever.

And when a local politician's kid got arrested and he squealed about the car theft ring. See what I did there. Squealed. I'm sorry. The Mounties decided to. take a look and see what the Picton boys were up to. According to one of the investigators, Dave was condescending and protective towards his brother while Willie was shy and cooperative.

And he noticed that Willie never blinked and seemed mentally diminished, submissive, and very mechanical. Never blinked. It didn't take long to put the grathis on Dave, who the police figured was in charge of the operation, and with Dave in cuffs, Willie showed them around the farm. He pointed out each and every pit. containing stolen goods. I want to remind you that it was Willie

that it was in charge of the chop shop, and Dave, according to employees, had nothing to do with it. Ultimately, though, there were no consequences for either brother. The Mounties were currently investigating an active serial killer in the area. The man was Clifford Olson,

a disgusting, monstrous slob in his own right, who sexually assaulted and murdered 11 children between 1980 and 1981. At that point, Olson would have the high highest body count of any Canadian serial killer. So, naturally, the cops were a little focused on that one.

When they eventually caught him, the government offered him $10,000 per body if he led the police to his grave sites. Yeah. I think you can imagine the public's reaction to that. Lucky for them, Twitter didn't exist yet.

Because, I mean, I've never even heard of anything like that. That is... It's unbelievable. And you know he didn't lead them to any bodies. He He toyed with the police until he died. He was like, who's that? Oh, my God. I am so embarrassed.

I can't think of the name. He's like the transient serial killer. Henry Lee Otis. Henry Lee Otis. What is it? Henry Lee Lucas and his boyfriend was Otis, right? Yeah, Otis tool. Otis tool.

Oh, God, it's a stupid name. Anyway, Henry Lee Lucas would do that just to get out of prison. He'd go on welcomeouts. A lot of them will. They'll get attention and they get to feel important for the day. Yeah, you don't have to usually pay him anything. for that. So that's just bananas. Willie was

super territorial about his stuff. Once, his brother showed a woman named Karen Kaufman, his room, which contained the creepiest paraphernalia you have ever heard of in a bedroom, including a bare mattress on the floor with a mysterious black stain, a taxidermied horsehead,

and a local history book that covered picked in history. When he found out about it, Willie told his brother, if she ever comes into this room again, I'll kill her. Bro. Your brother took her in there. She didn't do anything. She was just following him.

Why are you threatening her? Kill him, if anything, God. Yeah. After that, when Karen was over at the house for dinner, Willie threw a glass of milk at her. She stopped hanging out at the house pretty quickly after that. Don't blame her. She was one of the few women in the friend group

that saw Willie's mask slip a little, but women that didn't know him were even less safe from him. By the late 80s, Willie was starting to cruise downtown Vancouver to look for sex workers. Something we loved about the book on the farm was that it discussed the way that geography contributed to how the victims in this case were so vulnerable. We don't have time to get into everything, but essentially politicians worked in concert with law enforcement to force sex workers to the downtown east side, which had a high crime

rate, away from, you know, touristy areas. You can still see this today with houseless populations. One street is charmingly called the kiddie stroll, because under age sex workers were often posted up there. You know, trafficked kids. Glad they gave it a cutesy name. One grimy politician was a gem of a man named Gordon Campbell, Vancouver's mayor, who said that it was unfortunate that sex workers were being murdered, but quote, we do not want hookers around our high schools or elementary schools. We do not want them in our parks. We do not want them in our residential neighborhoods. He seems nice. Why don't you shut up and go cut a ribbon, Gordon? Yeah, big

gosh, it really sucks, but have they considered, like, not being sex workers, energy, right? It's your problem, dude. You know, these issues might be just a smidgen more complicated than that. Have you thought about that? As a mayor of a city? It's just unreal. And I love that he brought in children with the schools, like sex workers are targeting kids. News slash, Gordon.

Kids don't have money. I know. It's gross. Yeah, that's what you have to worry about. Good God. Other groups that roamed around the down. downtown east side were patients from the psychiatric hospitals, as well as drug users. Hells Angels, Vietnamese gangs, and the Russian mafia kept a tight grip on the happenings in the

downtown east side, running flop houses and drug rings. 10 to 14% of the female population that lived here were First Nations. The community in the downtown east side was tight-knit. Everyone kind of looked out for each other. The women made sure their friends got home at the end of the night. There was also an organization called the Women's Information Safe and, House, or Wish, which opened in the evenings as a service to sex workers. There, they could get some food, a shower, some clothes, and have people to talk to. Wish also provided workers with access to a bad date list, which contained dangerous or

creepy men that other women recommended that others don't see. In the early 80s, when women from the downtown East Side started coming up missing or murdered, it was difficult to get any of the cops to care. There were 17 unsolved murders between 1981 and 1987. In fact, there was an active serial killer in Vancouver in the 80s that the cops knew the identity of. His name was Gilbert Paul Jordan, and he was a sick fuck. That's the technical term that the profilers use, probably. Yeah, I think so.

I think there's a file called Sick fuck at the FBI. There should be, if not. His M.O. was to pick up an indigenous sex worker and force them to drink massive fatal amounts of liquor and then watch them die. Oh, Jesus. Some of the victim's deaths weren't even listed as homicides. Because it just looked like an overdose, right? Yeah, of course. He had such a reputation with the police that when an indigenous woman was found dead with alcohol poisoning, they'd call it a Jordanesque murder.

Wow. It wasn't until a team of reporters from the Vancouver Sun managed to connect 10 deaths to Jordan that the police finally did something by charging him with manslaughter, for which he was sentenced to six years in prison. Yeah, I know. Justice served, right? He sounds a lot like the grinder killer in the U.K. That was a similar, M.O. Yeah. When Sun reporter Kim Pemberton asked about some of the murdered women, a senior homicide investigator said,

I'd rather solve one Aaron Kaplan over a dozen prostitutes. Aaron Kaplan was a two-year-old who'd been murdered in 1985. How do people say stuff like that out loud? I hope he steps on a Lego every morning for the rest of his life. Why can't you solve both? You massive twatwaffle, the two types of cases are not mutually exclusive. You don't have to pick one or the other.

You can solve both. Those are both human lives. Dick Tree. Sorry, Dick Tree just got me. Something that I think personally, a reason that the police, aside from being, you know, judgmental dickheads,

I think part of it is that stranger murders are harder to solve. And they just didn't want to do it. And Aaron Kaplan's death is still unsolved. So great job. So you didn't do either one. You didn't do either one. And I get how this, okay, I get how that thinking starts. If you want to be charitable, you can say, okay, people who are sex workers who often

have substance abuse issues, people with, you know, severe mental health issues, that population does tend to be very transient people do tend to drop off the map and then pop back up later there's it's not like there's nothing behind it whatsoever that's valid it's just that there's so much gross like bigotry behind it too that it's almost it almost feels like they're using that as an excuse rather than as a valid reason it's like oh gross you know like that that person who said oh i'd rather saw one where it doesn't prostitutes like that's just just, man, we got to weed these people out. We got to weed people like that out.

Well, and again, like, you know, of course there are people, like, there's a woman that was attributed to Willie Picton's reign that was found alive in the U.S. She just moved, right? Yeah. Those, of course happen. Yeah. It's not like it's based on absolutely nothing valid. Like, that is a transient population that people do go missing and pop back up.

Yes. Yeah. But also, if you're saying. it like that, fix your heart. Like really examine whether you don't want to solve it because you don't think it's a valid case or you don't want to solve it because you think this person doesn't deserve it or you think this person because they have a substance abuse issue or whatever is just not a valuable human being. Like that's just gross. And if you're that burned out, quit seriously. You can always just ask, right? Like a lot of there, cops are assigned to that

part of downtown. They could have just walked around and asked because you'll see in I don't know four out of five of these missing women there are people actively looking for them people in their lives that are like she she left her birth certificate she left her kids like she would never do that like two seconds of digging in a lot of these cases

would reveal something is up especially when it's a pattern emerging and there are so many of them and we've seen this a million times and the same thing by the way also in Canada I'm going to have to say happened in Toronto with the Bruce MacArthur case yeah so and that was the

LGBT community where it was gay men going missing and everybody in that community knew gay men are going missing, something's wrong and it just got just swept aside for years and that monster just was allowed to run rampant. It's horrible. I can't think of it. We will get into this and I'm going to have a rage stroke. The police were actively avoiding investigating crimes against sex workers at this time. Kim Pemberton and Neil Hall tried every avenue to get these cases solved. Pemberton told Stevie Cameron, we were trying to show they were human. We found their families and we tried to paint pictures of these women. They were somebody's mom, somebody's daughter. But the cops we were dealing with were racist and sexist. So that was the culture of Vancouver police at the time.

If it didn't strike them as respectable, they didn't want to do anything about it. That was convenient for anyone that might want to hurt women. On August 21st, 1991, Willie Picton drove to Vancouver Island with some of his brother's employees. No one really knew what he was up to, but he took his van. That same day, late at night, 25-year-old Nancy Clark was seen on a corner, looking for a trick. She was a young mom with two daughters, an eight-year-old Amber and an eight-month-old. She adored her children.

She would have done anything for her kids, which is why it set off alarm bells when she missed Amber's birthday on the 22nd. She would never, ever have missed her daughter's birthday. Never in a million years. Sadly, no one would know what happened to Nancy for another decade. Her mom, who got custody of the children,

said that Amber was so scared of her going missing that she'd follow her grandma like a little shadow, saying, I don't want you to go missing like mommy. Something you'll notice as we continue this story is that every single woman in this case was deeply loved, deeply cared for, and deeply missed. It's unconscionable to us to think that anyone could look at the lives these

women lived and feel anything but a deep sense of empathy. There's no doubt that their lives were filled with mess, but whose isn't? No one is less human than anyone else just because they struggle with addictions or in sex work or whatever. It feels like an obvious thing to say, but many people were discussing, including the murderer, had no problem dismissing these victims as less than human. Less dead. So that was part one of a wild one, right folks? You know we'll have part two for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few

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