Canada Looks Into Hunt for Its Worst Serial Killer

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- A public inquiry that began Tuesday in Canada asks why it took so long for authorities to catch the man convicted in what police call the country's worst serial murder case.

Robert William Pickton, 61, was convicted in 2007 of six counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of drug-addicted prostitutes he picked up from downtown Vancouver. He slaughtered the women at his pig farm in the suburbs and fed some of the remains to his pigs. Other remains were taken to a local meat rendering plant.

Pickton was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years. After his conviction was upheld by Canada's top court in 2010, British Columbia's government ordered the inquiry that his victims' families had been calling for.

Pickton picked the women up from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, several square blocks of squalid hotels, drug dealers and street-level, survival prostitution. He lured them to his muddy, garbage-strewn farm with promises of money, alcohol and drugs.

At trial, the court heard that Pickton bragged to police that he killed as many as 49 women.

Commission head Wally Oppal said Tuesday the inquiry will examine how Pickton did not get caught earlier, examining if marginalized women are treated equally by the justice system. He has the power to make findings of police misconduct in the case.

"We must ask ourselves, 'Is this acceptable, is it acceptable that we allowed our most vulnerable to disappear, to be murdered,' he said as the inquiry opened Tuesday. "The question is upsetting. It challenges our fundamental values."

Oppal, a former attorney general, said those questions are essential to understanding the nationwide crisis of missing and murdered women.

Pickton had been tagged as a prime suspect in 1999 as police investigated reports of missing sex workers. Commission lawyer Art Vertlieb said DNA from 32 identified missing women and one unknown woman were found at the farm Pickton owned with his siblings in the Port Coquitlam suburb.

Attorney Cameron Ward represents 18 of the victims' families. He said his clients are hoping the inquiry will provide answers as to why police took so long to arrest Pickton in 2002.

Pickton was convicted of killing Lynn Frey's stepdaughter, Marnie, who vanished in 1997.

"I want accountability and I want justice," Frey said of her decision to testify before the Oppal inquiry.

The commission is also investigating why government prosecutors dropped attempted murder and forcible confinement charges against Pickton in 1998.

Pickton was arrested in February 2002. Testimony at his trial revealed that he had handcuffed a woman and stabbed her but she fought back, stabbing him. The woman was found naked and bleeding after fleeing his farm. Both Pickton and the woman wound up at a nearby hospital and the key to the handcuffs she was wearing was found in Pickton's pocket.

Vertlieb told Oppal in his opening statement that police officer Kim Rossmo said a serial killer was at work but his assertions were dismissed by superiors.

Vertlieb said a warrant was issued for a search of Pickton's land but was not executed. He said Pickton even offered police the chance to search the property but they declined.

It wasn't until a police informer needing money told police of improperly stored guns that a warrant was executed. Members of the Vancouver Police Department and Royal Canadian Mounted Police joint task force waited outside the farm.

When officers began to find identification from missing women, the search was called off and murder warrants obtained for a search.

In August 2010, a Vancouver Police Department report said 11 women may have been spared from Pickton had police acted on information available four years before the pig farmer's arrest. The 450-page report blamed both police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for errors that prevented either police force from arresting Pickton.