Suzanne Fournier, Vancouver, B.C. (Vancouver Province) – An Ontario deputy police chief on the stand at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry refused Tuesday to agree with an RCMP lawyer that there was no point in the Mounties accepting Robert Pickton’s invitation to search his farm in 1999.
Jennifer Evans, Peel Regional Police deputy chief who analyzed the police probe into Pickton, produced a 2010 report that documents that cops knew for years that Pickton’s farm was rife with vidence.
Evans refused to agree with federal lawyer Cheryl Tobias that Pickton might have hidden evidence, or suddenly withdrawn permission had RCMP Const. Ruth Yurkiw searched his farm, with his consent, in September 1999.
“We’ll never know because she never tried to search, we’ll never know what might have occurred,” replied Evans.
But in her report, Evans takes at least 50 pages to cite informant evidence that by 1999 Pickton’s farm was strewn with “trophies” such as women’s purses and identification and firearms. One woman told police she couldn’t walk across Pickton’s yard without tripping on women’s belongings.
Other informants told police that Pickton slaughtered women on the farm, ground up human remains, took body parts to a rendering plant and even stored “strange” meat in freezers. All of that turned out to be true, as Evans documented.
Evans noted that informant Bill Hiscox told Vancouver Police Department Det. Const. Lori Shenher in 1998 that Pickton collected women’s things and “bloody clothing in bags.”
Evans took dozens of pages in her report to cite the chilling descriptions of Pickton’s grisly farm from information provided in 1999 by Pickton associate Ross Caldwell to VPD detectives Mark Lepine and Ron Chernoff.
Lynn Ellingsen, another Pickton hanger-on, told Caldwell and friend Leah Best that she had seen Pickton gutting a woman in his barn, hours after they picked up the woman together on the Downtown Eastside.
Evans’ report notes that all of that information was in police hands long before Pickton issued his invitation to Yurkiw to search his farm.
Poor information sharing by police, both internally and between the VPD and Coquitlam RCMP, did not assist Yurkiw to judge what a casual search might have found, Evans noted.
In fact, Yurkiw phoned the Pickton farm in September 1999 but was told by Robert Pickton’s brother, Dave Pickton, to “come back in the rainy season” when the farm was less busy.
Pickton was not arrested until February 2002, when a rookie RCMP officer wrote up a search warrant to look for firearms on the Pickton farm.
Police immediately found missing women’s ID, medication and clothing, human remains in plastic pails in freezers, as well as packages of human flesh.
[Source]
While your dumping on people from your armchair, unjust, maybe you could answer why the Crown never went with the charges on Pickton that were put forward and would have kept him off the street for the majority of the killings. Or does that not fit with your force bashing?
Hey Monte, the way I read that DT post, about a BC case, in a BC inquiry, why would the idea be about the ROC? Seems to me that poster knows about the legal system here in BC and is talking about BC. And by the way you never answered the questions did you? Cuz they are right.
As for the inquiry, I will wait to hear from Don Adams, it should be quite newsy.
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There is an inherent danger to having outside reviews on any issue. If Ms Evans was remotely familiar with the Crown Counsels office in British Columbia she would know that they do not advocate nor stand behind consent searches of anything. In fact they do not proceed with a case based solely on consent searches, subsequent to numerous case law findings over the past years. The same hold true for the PPSC and federal matters.
Information sharing aside her assertion that “…did not assist Yurkiw to judge what a casual search might have found…” is not valid because the Crown would not have accepted it. Moreover, with respect to a obtaining a real search warrant using items found by this “casual search”, it would be more than ample grounds for the defense to have any exhibits ruled inadmissible even if a gullible JJP would sign it.
On what basis do you conclude that the RCMP who only have observer status at the Provincial negotiating table with the Feds, bullied the Province?
The Ministry of Pubic Safety does the negotiating between the Provincial authorities and the Federal Government.
In regard to bullying the municipalities, how exactly is that accomplished when the UBCM unanimously endorsed the RCMP at a recent convention and most of them have conducted thorough studies for themselves on the benefits of opting out of RCMP service? Do you have some salient facts to buttress your allegations?
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