Word: pickton
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...fates of Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Ann Wolfe, Marnie Frey and Georgina Faith Papin are emerging in British Columbia Supreme Court, in the gritty Vancouver suburb of New Westminster. There, Pickton sits calmly behind bullet-resistant glass, an unimposing slim man with a fringe of lank grey hair around a bald pate. Now 57, he has become well-known in legal circles since his arrest in February 2002. But only now has the end of a Canadian publication ban, intended to ensure an impartial jury hearing, revealed the gruesome details of his case. Pickton has become instantly famous...
...Canada's national police force, then investigating a separate case of prostitute serial killings in the province, team up with Vancouver police. The joint task force now lists more than 60 missing women; police said the DNA, remains or belongings of about half of those have been linked to Pickton's pig farm...
...level in the Downtown Eastside. Some 15,000 injection-drug addicts, many of them mentally ill, are concentrated in Canada's most impoverished neighborhood. An estimated 1500 female addicts continue to sell so called "survival sex," at all times and in all weather. Reporters interviewing the women about the Pickton trial were shocked to find that many didn't know about it, or care...
...Pickton's lawyer Peter Ritchie says his client is innocent, and that he will refute the prosecution's evidence. Pickton's own voice is directly heard only in a videotaped police interrogation after his arrest and the first two charges were brought in February 2002. Played to the jury, the tape shows him mumbling and at times appearing barely cognizant of events. "I'm just a pig farmer," Pickton tells police. "I'm a working guy, that's all I am." When told he was charged with two murders and was being investigated in the disappearances of 50 more women...
...Pickton's tale unfolds in court in a local suburb, the streets outside throng with police and sheriffs, panhandlers and patients released from a local mental hospital, college students and office workers who line up at local coffee shops. A stone's throw from the court is a strip joint advertising, in neon, "Mugs and Jugs." Nearby, a shop displays garish Valentine's Day wares: a larger-than-life knight in shining armor standing tall beside a Queen of Hearts. It's a costume shop, of course. Vancouver, in these dark days, has a dearth of real-life romantic heroes...