Welcome to the Vancouver True Crime Podcast.
I'm Mark. I'm the host.
Of the show this episode, I'd like to offer a very strong
trigger warning. I'll be talking about some very
dark subject matter. This podcast is called The
Stolen Sisters of East Vancouver, A history of Crime,
Poverty, and the Missing and murdered.
Ranging from 19602022, The downtown East Side is a
neighborhood in Vancouver, Canada.
It's a extreme contrast to the rest of the city, and especially
the rest of the downtown neighborhoods most of downtown
Vancouver has been redeveloped over.
The last few decades there's lots of beautiful restaurants,
trendy bars, shopping office towers, parks and sea walls.
And for the most part, Vancouver is a pretty safe and low crime
city. But when you enter the downtown
east side, it's like you cross an invisible line from the rest
of the city. You enter a nightmare world just
half a block away from most of the other neighborhoods.
The first thing you notice is the sunken looks of their faces,
The maceated bodies, eyes that look at you, dead blank stairs.
The sidewalk is full of a makeshift street market and open
drug use. Crack cocaine and doorways,
drinking people doing drugs, openly using needles like for
example, like in Pigeon Park, which is a small triangular park
in the north corner of Hastings and Carroll St.
It's full of pigeons, tents, and heavy drug users.
The the smell of Hasting St. really hits you.
It's a combination of heavy exhaust.
It's a major this Hasting St. especially is a major artery of.
Of trucks and diesel buses and and cars and and commercial
trucks that are crossing from one part of the city to the
next. There's heavy exhaust diesel
buses. The streets are very busy.
Everything kind of has a grimy, gritty look and feel to it, The
smell of stale urine and garbage.
The buildings are old and very poor shape.
It's very loud of all the traffic and lots of sirens,
almost nonstop police, ambulance and fire trucks.
So it's it's a very overwhelming to the senses as you as you
walk. As I said, you cross this
invisible line and it's like, holy fuck, you know and you know
many of the hotels are half, you know, health hazards themselves.
There's black mold problems, lots of pests, poor plumbing and
shared bathrooms and showers. Especially dangerous for the the
female residents that have to share a bathroom with the entire
hotel. There's a massive pest problems
and many of the buildings are controlled by different gangs
and St. gangs for the drug trade.
Each building then, according to my research and talking to
former drug dealers and people who lived in the area, according
to their testimony, each building can range about 40 to
$50,000 each day in drug sales. The residents of the downtown
East Side consume about $300 million worth of drugs each
year. And you know it's a, it's a
major drug pipeline, $1,000,000 a day is spent on hard drug
sales on the streets of the downtown East side.
It's worth noting though that many of the Ng O's have been
buying up some of these hotels and managing them, bringing them
up to health code and building standards and and there's you
know there are more and more of these buildings are being bought
up and so that that is good. But there are a lot of hotels
that are left that are in horrific shape.
Just to give you an idea, I have a friend who's a social worker.
He's he's been working on the downtown East side for probably
about 18 years. And just to give you an idea,
what he has to do each day is that he arrives to work.
To his office. He arrives to his office with
the clothes that he's wearing, and then he has to open up a
Rubbermaid container, take off his clothes.
Put all his clothes in the Rubbermaid container.
Take another Rubbermaid container with a different
change of clothes. Put those ones on.
And then he goes out and sees his clients while he goes into
these hotels. He's been doing this even before
the pandemic because. A lot of these hotels are filled
with bedbugs and pests and a lot of them are serious health
hazards. Many of these hotels, as I said,
are controlled by different gangs and drugs and they net a
lot of drug sales. The residents of the downtown
East Side do consume a lot of drugs and like I said it, it's
it's very overwhelming to the senses, seeing raw suffering,
addiction, seeing women, noodling the in my observations.
I've worked a lot in very close proximity of the downtown east
side like a lot of my offices that I worked for had an had an
office in water St. which is in a neighborhood in Gastown very
trendy full of restaurants and bars and fancy firms and I T
companies and you know we're you're we're less than half a
block away from the downtown east side.
So when I leave the office, go for lunch, you know, do do, you
know, do stuff, you have a lot of interaction with Hastings St.
and being a Vancouver resident all my life, I live downtown for
over 10 years plus and most of my jobs had offices in the
downtown core. So I have a lot of experience
with Hastings St. and so there's one thing I.
Do notice is that I never seen men doing this, but for some
reason it seems to affect women more, especially the women that
do heavy amounts of crack cocaine.
They do this thing called noodling, where their legs are
still but their upper bodies are just flopping around.
It's almost like one of those things that that car lots have
of those man's that flap around in the wind.
It's pretty distressing. It's pretty pretty crazy to see
that. And you know, I see a lot of
homeless men. There's literally skin and bones
passed out on sidewalks and looking very close to death.
I once saw a blonde woman, She was wearing only her underwear.
She looked like a human skeleton.
Her skin was filthy, covered in sores and St. grime.
And I remember being horrified thinking because in the media in
Vancouver, they love to promote Vancouver the best place on
earth, the world's most livable city and blah blah, blah.
Yeah, it's a beautiful place, you know it.
But it has some issues, you know, especially Hastings St.
right? So you when you see Hastings St.
for what it is you, you then understand the level of
vulnerability of these people and how they can be very easy
prey to creeps, predators and serial killers.
Most people who are residents of the downtown east side are
suffering from serious mental health conditions and they also
have some type of substance abuse as well.
But like I said, I've have a lot of experience interacting with
Hastings St. and working in close proximity.
In my experience, most of the people that I've encountered are
harmless for the most part. They're not bad people.
They are outcasts from society, and they come from every single
part of Canada. They drift here.
Only about 13% are born in Vancouver, and many of.
My other podcasts I especially the podcast Siri.
I'd call Vancouver the beautiful and ugly.
I kind of go into this. Vancouver is possibly, you know,
probably one of the more milder cities in Canada.
So. You get a lot of people who do
drift here because they think it's going to be an easier city.
It's. Warmer Lot of Canadian cities
are very cold, especially in the winter time, and many people
believe that it'll be easier to live in Vancouver than the rest
of Canada. The more violent people who end
up in the downtown east side are from other parts of Canada.
Many provinces do not pay for them to have to have them sent
back to face their punishment. And what that means is is like
crimes like breaking entry, assault, maybe theft, those
types of ones. They're not going to pay like
someone and not like the government.
Ontario will not pay to have them transported to face their
punishment. Or, of course, if it's murder,
rape or something very serious, there'd be a Canada wide warrant
they'll do that. So there's a lot of people that
flee other jurisdictions because they know the province is not
going to fly them back to face punishment.
There was a program, I'm not sure I have to look this up.
There was a program that was based on donations and
fundraising that was paying to have some of these people to fly
back and to their provinces and face their their punishment
again knowing social workers who do work down there.
And one of the other issues is other provinces have been guilty
of sending their undesirables to BC, giving them a one way bus
ticket and of course you know, they end up on Hastings St.
Recently the area has been more violent.
There's there's been more stabbing, more random attacks
and there's been more rival gang fighting over the lucrative drug
turf. My understanding too, because of
the drug sales are so enormous down there, many other gangs
from other parts of Canada have been sending.
Crews to try to get a a stake or a piece of the action because
again, you control one building you could be making.
Over 40 to 50K each and every day.
So there's a lot of incentive for people in the drug trade to
try to get. A piece of that action again, as
I mentioned in. Previous podcasts I've been to a
lot of different cities across North America.
Through my work I've been to both 40 cities throughout North
America, mostly work related and many cities of course have inner
cities. They have poverty and they have,
you know, drug problems. One thing what I find is unique
about Vancouver, which I haven't seen in other cities to this as
this in your face is, is this massive St. drug use right out
in the open. Most cities do have those
problems, but it's kind of hidden and behind closed doors
where Vancouver literally you walk down Hastings St. specially
on the welfare Wednesday people, hundreds of people are cracking
up, shooting up without a care in the world.
Again, a lot of these people who live in this area are very
vulnerable mental health issues and you know, facing a lot of
trauma, abuse and you know their their lives are hell and so
having access to St. drugs, especially opiates, is too
tempting for a lot of people. Especially at nighttime was
around Hasting St. At nighttime, let's say I'm
going to a nightclub and I'm going somewhere kind of on the
offskirts of Hasting St. like Lake Gastown.
Gastown has a lot of nightclubs. You're one block off of Hasting
St. So you're out at night,
clubbing. You leave the club, you walk
out, You're on Hastings St. I find that night time, for me
personally, it has a very dark, sinister fill to the street,
especially at night time. You know, places like Blood
Alley are claimed to be some of the most haunted parts of the
Vancouver. There's some interesting history
of Blood Alley. Another kind of.
Area where there's a lot of heavy drug use and people
congregate and do heavy amounts of drugs, but it's very old and
cobblestone looking and it's. It's rumored to be one of the
most haunted parts of the city. There's claims of a woman all in
block walking in the back alleys of Blood Alley over the 100 year
history of the downtown East side.
It's an easy argument of of almost every square inch of
those streets have someone has died on those streets.
When you combine the massive amounts of overdose, the drug
use, the poverty, violence, the the streets are literally paved
in blood. You know, if the fentanyl
overdose in itself has claimed so many people, like so many
people, we are still in a fentanyl crisis.
So we had the most deaths from fentanyls, mostly in the
downtown east side in record level.
There's more people who died from fentanyl overdose than from
the COVID pandemic situation. So tell a story and I think
this. Story illustrates the potential
horror of the downtown east side.
So I worked in an office on Water St.
It was for a software company. I met my friend for lunch who
works in a different office and he he.
Suggested, he suggested. That we go to save on.
Meats save on meats is a kind of an iconic.
A meat shop that also has a bit of a a restaurant that has a
restaurant breakfast, a bit of a pub.
It's. Kind of a cool place, actually.
When Anthony Bourdain came to Vancouver, he had a burger
there, if you watch the. Episode of Anthony Bourdain in
Vancouver. He goes to save on meat.
It's actually a pretty cool episode.
I'm a huge. Fan of Anthony Bourdain, So rest
in peace. It's very sad.
When he committed suicide anyways.
It was summertime, very hot, extremely hot.
It was probably. In the high 30s.
Which is about. 90 The 90s I was wearing because I had a client
meeting, so I was wearing dress pants a.
Short sleeve dress shirt. A tie.
So I kind of look like a Mormon. With that outfit.
Which is kind of funny, but anyways, so we go to save on
meet, walk up Hastings St. It's like.
People are just like passed out. Everyone's looking pretty rough,
you know? Again, people smoking crack in
front of you and it's very crowded and hot, stuffy, and we
get to save on me. We walk in.
I go walk. Towards the.
Back and there's like booths and I sit down wait for my friend
and the booth in front of me is a woman and.
She looks pretty. Rough like she looks like
someone from Hastings St. And she has a bunch of little
dime bags. Of, you know, obviously her
drugs all divvied up for her. You know, do her sales for the
day and I of course I pretended not to see them, but she has one
of those cheap ten of those Kicks strollers and there's a
newborn baby in there without a blanket, no receiving blanket,
nothing to cover the baby up. The baby is really newborn.
I have two children, so I know a lot about babies.
The baby. Looks like it's.
Couple weeks old. Just laying there, flopped in
the Kickstart stroller. My friend arrived, I ordered a
burger and I'm eating and I swear I didn't see that baby.
Move once, so I'm. Starting to get scared.
I'm like, does this woman have a dead baby?
Like, I'm kind of freaking out, right?
So I'm sitting there, I'm staring at the baby and then it,
I it hasn't moved nothing. Hasn't opened its mouth, haven't
opened its eyes. Its mouth is kind of open, its
flopped. Kind of just.
Flopped his arms and legs open. So I don't know really what to
do, right? So anyways.
And then her husband or boyfriend or whoever.
The baby daddy shows up and. He looks pretty like a tough
character. He has long, long hair.
He's skinny wiring, not wearing a shirt.
He looks like a guy that can, you know, put up a pretty decent
fight. He looks like, you know, he
looked like a guy that would, you know, be violent.
I could see them. They're, you know, they're
talking about their drug sales and they're, you know, making
these little dime bags. With whatever dope.
They have in there and the baby, I'm staring at it and it's not
moving. So when my with my friend we
finished eating, I'm getting up and I opened my phone and I put
a picture of my kid up and I say the woman.
I said oh you have a new baby, congratulations, show her a
picture of my kid. And right away the guy comes and
he says to her, This guy bugging you?
And before and then she looked and so no, no.
And I put my hand out. Hey, congratulations on your
kid. You know, shake his hand kind of
you know, diffuse the situation because all I want to know is
this is this kid alive or not this baby alive.
And he gives me this like the creepiest like.
Joker smile because he's. Completely wasted.
He's been drinking like a fish, like while I'm sitting there
eating my burger. I've watched him, probably. #
back about four. Pints of.
Beer and a shot. And he looks.
Like he's on something else, right?
And I looked down and Oh my. God, thank God the.
Baby moved it. Opened its mouth.
Its eyes. So I'm like, oh God, thank God
the baby's alive. So, you know, that's all I
wanted to know. I just want to know if that baby
was alive. But I'm just horrified, right?
Because obviously, you know, the parents are pretty, pretty.
So then I walk. I watch them, they they stroll
out of there. They go off, they go down
Hastings St. and I'm just thinking, wow.
Like, what a life. That baby's going to have,
right? So that that's like the horror
of Hastings St. you see? Stuff that just just, you know,
just blows your mind. Like I I remember one time I was
walking was at work. I was on my lunch break and half
a block from my from where I work.
Cops come rolling up. Really.
Hard and heavy sirens. They jump out of the car.
They pull guns. A guy, but 10 feet from me, I
guess he went into one of the stores and he stole a kitchen
knife, flashing like it around. So obviously someone called the
cops. I'm like 10 feet away from the
cops, have guns out, screaming, put down the knife, I just.
Casually just keep walking. You know that that's Hastings
St. You don't know what to expect
there, right? But again, I want to emphasize,
majority of the people who live down there are not bad people.
I've had a lot of introductions with them.
I've, you know, people who live, you know, who are not like me,
especially if they live on the street or close to my office.
I would bring them warm clothes in the winter time, buy them hot
chocolate coffee. Occasional meal at McDonald's or
Tim Horton's, and most of the time they've been pretty
respectful for to me and I've been respectful to them.
Majority of the people who live down there are not bad people.
However, there are a lot of bad people that do go down there.
The population is approximately about 15,007 thousand are living
in low income housing hotel rooms.
The rest of the population is pretty much homeless, living in
temporary shelters. Tent cities and various parks
throughout the downtown east side.
However, under these very harsh circumstances and conditions, it
has a very strong community history of social activism.
Every Valentine's Day, there's the annual missing March for the
boat. 900 women have gone missing, according to their
statistics. There's also a lot of dedicated
frontline workers who save many lives from drug overdoses and
social workers Ng O's that provide programs and help to the
people that downtown east side. So there's a a large population
of very dedicated people trying to provide help and services to
these people. So, and it's also worth
mentioning, too, that the government of BC, the prevention
the federal government, and the City of Vancouver spend in a
combination. Of $1,000,000 a day in services
for the health and welfare of these people.
The fentanyl crisis has caused an overwhelming amount of
overdoses and social problems and death, and it's so ongoing.
Many of the drugs that are consumed in the downtown East
Side, the crack cocaine, heroin and meth, has now been
contaminated with fentanyl. And benzodiazepine to as a
cutting agent, but making these drugs more dangerous in this
series. I've have done a lot of research
on Robert Picton in this episode.
I'm not going to go too much into him because I have a lot of
writing I've done. I've written over 100 pages and
I'm going to be having a series just specifically just on the
events of the Robert Picton Pig farm and all the.
Atrocities that occurred on that farm.
On December 9th, 2007, Robert picked in a pig farmer from Pork
Oquitlam. It's about a 30 minute drive
from the downtown East side was charged for the death of six
women. He was also charged in the death
of additional 20 women, many of them from the downtown East
side. Twenty of these charges were
stayed by the Crown and in 2010 in December.
In 2007, he was sentenced to life in prison with no
possibility of parole for 25 years.
It's the longest sentence available under Canadian law for
murder. Following Picton's arrest in the
aftermath, attention was given to a prior attempted murder of a
sex worker In March of 1997. During an altercation on the
farm, the victim informed police that picked and had handcuffed
her. But she escaped after suffering
several lacerations, disarming him, stabbing him with a knife.
The charges were stayed in January 1998.
Charges are stayed when a judge or Crown decides that it'll be
bad for the justice system. For the case to continue.
This means the issue of guilt or innocent is never determined.
Stays can be granted when the state has acted unfairly,
including the failure to bring the case to trial in a timely
manner, the missing. Women's Commission of inquiry.
Had four mandates. Evaluate the response of the
police to reports of missing women from the downtown east
side of Vancouver. Evaluate the reason for staying
charges against Robert Picton in January 1998.
Recommend changes regarding how missing women and suspected
homicides are handled. Recommend changes on how cases
are handled when they involved more than one investigating
organization. In 2012, the Commission issued a
final report which includes a number of recommendations.
The Commission office was closed in August 1st, 2013.
Indigenous women and girls represent 16% of all female
homicides in Canada, while being only 4%.
Of the female population in Canada, Project Rescue was in
response to the many violent. Drug dealers who are?
Praying on the Addicted, Marginalized women in the
downtown East Side Women of the downtown East Side have been
complaining to police. What they feared most were
predatory drug dealers who conducted their business with
violence, torture and terror and preyed on the weak, addicted and
women. An investigation team chosen
from various areas of the Vancouver Police Department,
including Major Crimes, Gangs, Drugs, Financial Crime and Beat
Enforcement Team target these individuals who are victimizing
the most vulnerable and the most marginalized in the Downtown
Eastside community. One of the people that they
caught was a sex. Offender with a history.
Of assaulting young teen first was among the 11 arrests in Van
Town Vancouver. The The Vancouver Police
campaign was targeting the worst of the worst violent drug
dealing of predators in the downtown East Side February.
The suspects were arrested through Project Rescue and FACE.
They faced a combined of 47 counts, including charges of
sexual assault, drug trafficking and extortion.
Police said that each person had an alleged role in the
exploitation and degrading. The vulnerable women in the
downtown neighborhood. So over the years I've have
heard horror stories about these predatory drug dealers for even
for debts for as small as $10. Women get beaten, they get
violently abused, their head shaved.
I've heard women being pushed out of windows on top of roofs,
fingers being chopped off, forced into prostitution and
just viciously abused. So basically what happens?
A woman meets a predatory drug dealer who's all too willing to
give them drugs on credit. When they can't pay or they're
late with their payments, their nightmare begins.
One of the suspects that police put into custody was a sex
offender and drug trafficking. Martin Tremblay.
I will be doing a standalone podcast about this creep, and I
have one. Of his survivors, who's who's
been working with me for the last six months and we're going
to do an interview and talk about some of her experiences.
It was her effort that helped declare him as a dangerous
offender. So in this particular case in
the project rescue, he faced 4 counts of trafficking cocaine,
one count of cocaine possession for the purpose of trafficking.
The police made a public announcement and a plea for more
of his victims to come forward. He's in jail now.
He can't hurt you, Inspector Dean Robinson said.
We believe the only way we can guarantee that he won't harm
more women if he stays in jail. Martin Tremblay was found guilty
in 2003 of 5 counts of sexual assaults.
Tremblay like to use alcohol and drugs to lure and incapacitate
his victims. He was released after serving
only a single year in prison. Many of the women's advocates
have complained that not enough was being done to protect the
public. During Tremblay's sentencing, he
was not bound by any conditions that he stays away from young
girls. On the release from prison,
Martin Tremblay murdered two other teens.
One Her name was Martha Hernandez.
Her body was discovered lifeless in his Richmond home.
Her friend Carla Lalonde died the same day when her body was
just dropped on the street. Both girls died of a lethal mix
of drugs and alcohol. Martin Tremblay was convicted in
2013 for two counts of criminal negligence causing death and
failure to provide the necessities to life.
He was labeled a dangerous offender.
The designation of dangerous offenders reserved for Canada's
most violent criminals and sexual predators.
The Crown attorney can seek the designation during sentencing,
but they must show that there's a high risk that criminal will
commit violent or sexual offenses in the future.
The designation carries an automatic sentence of
imprisonment for an indeterminate period, but every
seven years they can apply for parole.
Dangerous offender laws have root in the 1947 Habitual Act
solely with offenders with lengthy criminal records, and
then the 1948 the Criminal Sexual Psychopath Act, and then
in 1977 the designation dangerous offender replaced both
habitual offender and dangerous sexual offender.
Changes to the Criminal Code of Canada in 2008 requires some
repeat offenders convicted of three or more times of violent
crimes or sex crimes to prove they are not a danger society.
Putting the onus on the offender rather than the crown, makes it
easier to designate some repeat offenders as dangerous
offenders, which effectively can put them behind bars.
Her life.