Welcome to the Dark Bind, detective Picton Land.
I'm Mark, an investigative journalist who ventures into the
abyss of human darkness, from serial killers to systemic
corruptions. Now we confront one of Canada's
most harrowing chapters, Picton Land.
Robert Picton's pig farm wasn't just a slaughterhouse of bodies,
it was a grotesque monument to institutionalized failure.
For years, vulnerable women slipped through the cracks of a
system that dismissed their lives as expendable.
This series isn't about sensationalizing evil.
It's about dismantling the apathy that led it fester.
What to expect in this series? Anatomy of a Monster.
Picton's psyche, his hunting ground and parallels to global
predators. Broken Systems.
How law enforcement, social services, and societal biases
ignored cries for help. Honoring victims erased by
indifference and families stole demanding answers.
FBI analysis. Would modern protocols have
stopped him sooner? Legacy of trauma How Picton
crimes scarred communities and reshape Canadian justice.
A warning these details will disturb you.
They should Comfort Shields us from truth, but truth is the
only currency of change. Picton Land isn't just a true
Crime Story, it's a mirror join me as we stare into its
reflection, dissect its lessons. Chapter 3 The Forgotten Women
Victims of Picton In the narrative, serial killers,
victims are often reduced to numbers, names on a list, or
worse, merely the canvas upon which the killer painted his
depravity. But each woman who fell victim
to Robert Picton was more than just a statistic.
They were daughters, sisters, mothers, and friends.
They had dreams, struggles, and stories that deserved to be
told. In this chapter, we'll examine
not just who these women were, but how the system failed them
long before Picton entered their lives.
The missing Women of the Downtown Eastside Vancouver's
Downtown Eastside has long been known as Canada's poorest postal
code, a neighborhood plagued by poverty, addiction,
marginalization. In the 1990s and the early 2000,
it became a hunting ground for Robert Picton, who preyed
specifically on the area's most vulnerable residents.
Between 1995 and 2001, dozen of women disappeared from these
streets. Many of them were sex workers
struggling with addictions, and a disproportionate number were
Indigenous women, a demographic that has faced systemic
discrimination and violence through Canadian history.
The pattern was clear to those living in the community.
The women who maintain regular contact with family and friends
or support services suddenly vanished.
Yet when reported missing, their disappearances were often met
with indifference or dismissal by authorities.
The six women Pickton was convicted of murdering?
Well, Pickton is suspected of killing many more.
He was convicted of second degree murder in the deaths of
six women. Let's take a moment and remember
who they were. Serena Abbotsway, 29, reported
missing on August 22nd, 2001. Serena was an indigenous woman
who had become involved in sex work in the Downtown East Side.
Those who knew her described her as having a kind heart, despite
struggles with mental health challenges.
She had been in foster care for much of her childhood and faced
numerous obstacles throughout her life.
Despite these challenges, she maintained connections with her
foster family, who reported her missing when she failed to
contact them. Mona Lee Wilson, 26, reported
missing November 30th, 2001. Mona was a sex worker from the
Downtown Eastside who struggled with addiction.
Friends described her as a sweet person who had fallen on hard
times. She was one of the last women
picked and murdered before his arrest, highlighting how long he
was allowed to operate before being stopped.
Andrea Josbury, 22, reported missing on June 8th, 2001.
Andrea was one of the youngest of Picton's known victims.
She had fallen into drug addiction and sex work after a
difficult childhood. Those who knew her described her
as a young woman who still had a dream of escaping the streets
and building a better life. Her youth and vulnerability made
her murder, particularly heart breaking, a life cut short
before it truly has begun. Brenda Wolfe, 32, reported
missing on April 25th, 2000. Brenda was an Indigenous woman
who had been involved in sex work.
She was known as a fighter, someone who stood up for herself
and others, and in the harsh environment of the Downtown
Eastside, friends describe her as strong willed and protective
of other vulnerable women in the area.
Marnie Lee Ann fry, 24, reported missing December 29th, 1997
Marnie was one of Picton's earlier known victims.
She struggled with drug addiction and was involved in
sex work. She was the mother of a young
daughter in Maine. Contact with her father who
reported her missing when she failed to call home for
Christmas, something completely out of character for her.
The other victims Beyond the six women, Pickton was charged with
the murders of 20 other women, charges that were stayed after
his conviction. The remains or DNA, of 33 women
were found on his property. He himself claimed to kill 49.
Each of these women had a name, a story and people who cared
about them. They included Jacqueline
McDonnell, Diana Rock, Heather Bottomley, Jennifer Freuminger,
Helen Hallmark, Patricia Johnson, Heather Chinook, Tanya
Holick, Sherry Irving, Inga Hall, Tiffany Drew, Sarah
Devries, Cynthia Felix, Angela Jardine, Diana Melnick, Deborah
Jones, and many other names who remains were never identified.
Many of victims of victims existed on the margin of
society. People who disappeared wouldn't
immediately trigger alarm bells. Sex workers, particularly those
who struggle with addictions, were often viewed through the
lens of judgement rather than compassion.
Their lives were deemed less valuable, their safety less of a
priority. Poverty drove many of these
women into dangerous The economic desperation of the
Downtown Eastside created conditions where survival meant
taking risk, getting into the cars with strangers, working in
isolated areas, prioritizing immediate needs over safety.
Many of Picton victims struggled with substance use disorders,
which made them easier to manipulate and control.
Their needs for the next fix could override self preservation
instincts, making them more willing accompany somebody like
Picton to his farm. Despite the potential dangers,
Picton exploited a critical vulnerability in the systems.
He picked up women in Vancouver, but brought them to his farm in
Por Coquitlam jurisdictional boundaries.
This meant that when women went missing from Vancouver, the
connection to Por Coquitlam wasn't immediately made.
The disproportionate number of Indigenous victims highlights
Canada's ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous
women and girls. Centuries of colonization,
residential schools, systemic racism created conditions where
Indigenous women face heightened vulnerability and decreased
protection. Long before these women
encountered Robert Picton, they have been failed by multiple
systems meant to protect them. When families reported these
women missing, they were often met with dismissive attitude.
Police frequently suggested that the women simply moved away or
were on drug binges or it would return eventually.
Reports were taken haphazardly, if at all.
Following up was memo, and one family reported being told she's
a drug addict and a prostitute. What do you expect us to do?
This attitude premeditated the investigation, delaying
recognize recognization of patterns of disappearances.
Let's read that one more time. This attitude permeated the
investigation, delaying recognition of the patterns of
disappearances, social services gaps.
Many of these women had interacted with social service
throughout their lives foster care, addiction services, mental
health supports, housing assistance.
Yet these systems operated in silos, failing to provide the
comprehensive support needed to address complex, interconnected
challenges. Healthcare shortcomings.
Addiction treatments was difficult to access.
Long waiting list, limited options.
Mental health support was similarly scarce for women
struggling with both addiction and mental health issues, a
common combinations among Pickton's victims.
Appropriate care was nearly impossible to find.
The state charges against Robert Pickton in 1997 attack on Miss
Anderson represents perhaps the most egregious system failure.
If this case had been prosecuted, many lives might
have been saved. The decision not to proceed
because the victim was deemed unreliable due to her addictions
issues sent a clear message about whose testimony was valued
and whose was not. It is critical that we remember
these women not just as victims of Robert Picton's, but as human
being whose lives had value and meaning.
They are more than just their struggle, more than just their
addictions, more than just their involvement in sex work.
They were women who laughed, loved and dreamed.
They had favorite songs and foods.
They had inside jokes with friends, they wrote letters,
they celebrated birthdays, and they made plans for their
futures that they would never see.
In the words of Wayne Lang, a friend of Sarah de Vry's, when a
picked and suspected victims, these women weren't just drug
addicts or prostitutes, they were somebody's daughter,
somebody's sister, somebody's mother.
By reinforcing them to stereotypes, high risk lifestyle
known to police sex trade workers, we perpetuate the very
dehumanization that made them vulnerable in the 1st place.
We become complicit in a system that sees some lives as more
disposable than others. The tragedy of Robert Picton's
case isn't just that a monster was allowed to kill for years
without being caught. It's that the women he targeted
were deemed unworthy of protection long before they
encountered him. Their disappearances were
noticed primarily by those who loved them, not by the system
tasked with keeping all citizens safe.
And the next chapter, we'll examine the investigation that
allowed Picton to continue killing for years despite
mounting evidence and community concerns.
The failures of this investigations reveal a
disturbing truth about who we as a society choose to protect and
who we allow to remain vulnerable.
Chapter 4 The investigation that failed Systemic breakdown in the
annals of criminal investigations, the Robert
Picton case stands as a profound example of systemic failure.
What makes this case particularly disturbing isn't
just the horrific natures, it's how long they were allowed to
continue despite mounting evidence, Community concerns,
clear warning signs. In this chapter, we dissect the
investigation, or more accurately, the series of failed
investigations that allowed a predator to operate with
impunity for years. The timeline of Robert Picton's
investigation reads like a manual and how not to handle a
potential serial killer case. Let's examine the critical
moments when intervention could have stopped the killing. 1990s
women begin to disappear Starting in the mid 1990s, women
began to vanish from Vancouver's Downtown East Side at an
alarming rate. Family members, friends, and
community advocates reported these disappearances to police,
often to be met with indifference or dismissal.
By 1997, community members were raising concerns about a
possible serial killer targeting sex workers.
These concerns were publicly dismissed by law enforcement,
who suggested the women had likely moved away or change
their lifestyle. 1997 The attack on Miss Anderson In March 1997,
Pickton attacked a sex worker, Miss Anderson, at his farm,
stabbing her multiple times. She managed to escape, disarm
him, stab him in self-defense. Both were treated at the
hospital for the same injuries. Pickton was charged with
attempted murder and this should have been the end of his killing
spree. Instead, in January 1998,
prosecutor stayed the charges because they deemed Miss
Anderson, due to her drug addiction, too unreliable a
witness to secure a conviction. This decision represents perhaps
the most a grievous failure in the entire case, a violent
attack with physical evidence, a victim who survived to testify,
and a suspect with a suspicious lifestyle.
Yet the case was abandoned because the victim was deemed
expendable. 1998 to 1999 mounting evidence ignored and
1998 an informant told police that Picton had a freezer full
of human flesh on his property. This tip was not properly
investigated. In 1999, another informant
reported seeing women's purses, identifications and clothing on
Picton's property. The police conducted a cursory
search but found nothing suspicious of failing failure of
basic investigative techniques. During this period, women
continue to disappear at an alarming rate, yet no conviction
was made to Picton despite his previous violent attack on sex
workers. 2001 Project Even Handed formed By 2001, the
disappearances have become impossible to ignore.
The Vancouver Police Department, the RCMP formed a joint task
force called Project Even Handed to investigate the missing women
cases. Critically, this task force
operated under the assumption that the disappearances had
stopped. They were investigating
historical cases rather than an active serial killer.
This fundamental misunderstanding Hanford the
urgency of their work. When a Vancouver police officer
informed the RCMP lead investigator in the fall of 2001
that women were still disappearing, investigator
refused to shift focus, claiming it would have a crippling effect
on his investigation of historical cases.
February 2002 The breakthrough The break in the case came not
from the missing women investigation, but an unrelated
firearm investigation. On February 6th, 2002, police
executed a search warrant for illegal firearms on Picton's
property. During the search, they noted
items belonging to missing women.
This led to a secondary warrant specifically relating to the
missing women's investigation on February 22nd 2. 2002 Picton was
charged with two counts of first degree murder as the
investigation continued, charges would eventually rise to 26
counts. Critical failures in the
Investigation The Missing Women's Commission of Quarry,
led by Commissioner Wally Opel, identified 7 critical failures
in the police investigation. Let's examine each detail.
Failure to take and act on missing persons Report Families
attempting to report their loved ones missing face numerous
obstacles. Some were told they couldn't
file report because they didn't live in the same city as a
missing person. Others were told to wait 72
hours. Despite policies allowing
immediate reports for high risk individuals, when reports were
taken they were often incomplete with minimal follow up.
Information wasn't properly entered in the database,
hampering the ability to recognize patterns.
As Commissioner Wally Opal noted, in a few cases the
barriers were so pronounced as the amount to denial to make a
report. Failures to recognize a serial
killer despite clear patterns of evidence.
Women from the same area of similar backgrounds vanished.
Voter trace police failed to connect the dots and recognize a
work of a serial predator. This failure stand partly from
bias assumption that sex workers often disappeared voluntarily,
partly from a lack of proper analytical tools and training.
The working group tasked with reviewing the missing women's
case were focused on review rather than active
investigation, lacking the urgency the situation demanded
Failures to warn and protect potential victims.
Perhaps the most disturbing was the failure to warn women the
Downtown Eastside that they might be targeted by a serial
killer. As Commissioner Wally Opal
stated, I conclude that the VPD was under an obligation to warn
women the Downtown Eastside, and they utterly failed to do so.
There was no sound evidence of investigative reasoning not to
issue a warning. The first sign of a strategy to
protect vulnerable women came in 2002, just weeks before Picton
was caught. Far too late for dozens of
victims. The investigation was plagued by
delays and adequate surveillance, mismanagement of
informants and sources. When tips came about Picton
follow up was a minimum or non or non existent.
Surveillance operations were brief and insufficient.
Informants weren't properly handled or their information
adequately verified. These basic investigative
failures allowed Picton to continue to operate despite
being on the police radar. Poor coordination between
various investigation team, the VPDS Missing Women's Review
Team, and the Coquitlam RCMP investigation of Picton and
other related investigations. Information wasn't properly
shared. Resources wasn't efficiently
allocated and there was no clear leadership structure guiding the
overall investigation. Jurisdictional issues The fact
that picked and picked up women in Vancouver VPD jurisdiction
and killed them in Pork Coquitlam RCMP jurisdiction
created significant barriers to an effective investigation.
Neither agency took full ownership of the case, each
assuming aspects of it fell under others responsibility.
Jurisdictional confusion contributes significantly to the
blatant overall failures of the missing and murdered women and
the Picton investigation. According to Commissioner Opel,
there was minimal internal review of the investigation
progress and effectiveness. Senior management failed to
provide proper oversight or take ownership of the case.
While community members raise concerns about the
investigation's inadequacy, these concerns were dismissed.
Rather than address bias that allowed faulty stereotyping of
St. involved women to influence the investigation.
This bias manifested in several ways.
The assumption that missing sex workers had simply moved away or
changed lifestyle to missile a family.
Concerns about out of character disappearances.
Devaluation of information coming from other sex workers or
drug users. Reluctance to allocate
significant resources and investigation crimes against
marginalized victims. Failures to recognize the
heightened vulnerability of Indigenous women.
As Commissioner Wally Opal noted.
These women were poor, they were addicted, they were vulnerable,
they were Aboriginal. They did not receive equal
treatment by the police. The systemic failures in the
Picton case bear striking similarities to other notorious
cases where vulnerable victims were failed by the system.
Paul Bernardo investigation. The same issues that Hanford.
The Picton investigation, jurisdictional confusion, poor
information sharing and the lack of major case management had
previously been identified in the Paul Bernardo case in
Ontario. Despite a report by Justice
Archie Campbell in 1996 highlighted these exact issues,
the lessons weren't applied to the Picton investigation,
allowing history to repeat itself with tragic consequences.
The Green River Killer investigation Gary Ridgeway The
Green River killer operated in the Seattle area for
approximately 20 years, killing at least 49 women, many of them
sex workers. As with Picton, the
investigation was Hanford by a failure to prioritize crimes
against marginalized victims and properly allocate resources.
Irony of the Picton case is that his capture came not through
dedicated missing women's investigation, but through an
unrelated firearm investigation and fed.
February 2002, a junior RCMP officer received information
about illegal firearm on the Picton property.
Acting on this tip, he obtained a search warrant recognizing the
potential connection to the missing women's cases.
He brought along members of project even handed during the
search what they found shocked even seasoned investigators.
Items belonging to the missing women.
DNA evidence, eventually the remains of numerous victims.
The farm became the site of the largest forensic investigation
in Canadian history, with investigators shifting through
soil. They eventually found the
remains of 40 women, profiles of DNA evidence and 40 men profiles
of DNA evidence. The catastrophic failures of the
Picton investigation lead to several recommendations from the
Missing Women's Commission of Inquiry.
A regional policing Establishing a Greater Vancouver Regional
Police force to address jurisdictional issues.
Improve training. Mandatory training for officers
regarding vulnerable community members.
Enhance protocols. Better missing policies and
practices. Community accountability.
Establishing more police accountability to communities.
Funding existing centers. Providing emergency services to
women in the sex trade. Victim compensation.
Establishing compensation and healing funds for victims.
Victims families. While these recommendations
represent important step forward, they came too late for
the dozen of women who lost their lives to the true cost of
these investigative failures can't be measured in dollars or
resources. It must be measured in human
lives. The women who might be alive
today had the system function as it should have, had the 1997
attempted murder charge been properly prosecuted, had the
tips about freezers full of human flesh had been properly
investigated. So this a side note.
How the fuck do you not be able to open a freezer and see all
the human meat and body parts? In my more detailed
investigation as we will get to further, some of these victims
went missing in the late 90s and yet was still in the freezer.
And the next chapter will examine how the Picton case
compares to other serial killers.
So it's also worth mentioning in this series I am trying to give
you the overview of the complexity of the cases.
I'm not going to really dial in on the details of the cases yet.
I want you to see the full scope and complexity of the case.
Until next time, mark the Dark Mind Detective.
None.