Serving Whom?

"I was told that if we found anything we'd need a warrant, everyone was so leery about getting on board with the investigation, worried about his rights."

Well, they were prostitutes. That says it all. Society's throw-away, expendable, disposables. Scorned and pitied. They were denizens of the night, of dark, dirty streets; they were, after all, not society's finest. They were, in fact, a societal embarrassment. Why weren't they more discreet? Why were they so brazen? Why were they out there, on the streets, tempting men?

Those men have rights, after all. Those men are the stalwarts of society. Many of them are businessmen, medical doctors, judges, police officers, the local barber, the schoolteacher. They're respectable. They're just looking for a little sex and are willing to pay for uncomplicated sex. It's available and they're the clients.

Of course if there were no clients there'd be no trade. Sometimes it's all a woman has, when she has been so utterly degraded already by her sickly insane dependence on recreational drugs, on alcohol. When you're so despair-ridden, so aware that you're less than nothing as far as society is concerned, how much lower can you sink?

Well, you can agree to go along with someone who lives in the neighbourhood, a farmer by the name of Robert William Pickton whose pig farm isn't that long a drive from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. You can go along with him, in 1997, to be viciously attacked by him, fight back, and manage to escape. Then you can report the attack to the local authorities.

You can do all that, but they'll look at you, evaluate the situation; the word of a drug-addicted prostitute against that of a respectable local farmer. Oh, not-so-respectable, after all. But still...
It was decided to just let the matter drop; no one would go out to the Port Coquitlam pig farm and charges would be dropped. Can the law depend on the word of a drug-addled prostitute? Not likely.

Does society care about all those strange absences? Eight women between 1997 and 1998 just gone, no one knows where or how or even when. People. Especially footloose, drug-addicted ladies of the night; they just decide to go somewhere else. 'Bye-'bye. Then a tip comes in to the Vancouver Police Department about the same guy, a caller who describes him as "sicko" claiming to have ground women up just like pigmeat.

Two RCMP constables go along to interview him in 2000. He's agreeable to a search of his property. They decide not to proceed. And eleven more women are reported missing. Odd that; in 1998 the VPD and RCMP had some interest in Robert William Pickton, and were curious about his pig farm. A number of additional tips came in. A visitor to the pig farm had reported comments about ground-up bodies being fed to pigs.

The Canadian Police Information Centre databank had gained another entry under "observation" status for "being dangerous to prostitutes". Sources kept showing up, people who had been at the Pickton pig farm. The RCMP and the VPD appeared to have a jurisdictional disagreement. Eventually an RCMP officer happened on the property, looking for an illegal firearm. When items turned up linked to the missing women.

And with that evidence staring the police directly in the face, what else could they do but launch a serious investigation and examination of the pig farm? Finally, the first two of 26 murder charges were laid against Robert William Pickton. Finally the B.C. Supreme Court jury, five years later, found Robert William Pickton guilty on six counts of second-degree murder.

The other twenty missing women? Well, remember what they represent; drug addicts, prostitutes, human waste drifting about the sleazy streets of the Downtown Eastside. Charges stayed.