The Pickton Killings: Why We Need a Public Inquiry

I didn't know what to think when I heard that Robert Pickton would not be tried for the murder of twenty other women he was accused of killing.

On the one hand I was glad that we would be spared from hearing more ghastly stories about what went on at that blood soaked pig farm. On the other hand I didn't want the families and friends of the dead women to feel that they had been denied justice. Again.

But now that a publication ban has been lifted, and I've heard some of the things the jury never did.

There was a tremendous amount of damning evidence against Robert (Willie) Pickton that the jurors deciding his fate did not hear during his year-long trial in 2007, including an allegation from a sex-trade worker that he nearly stabbed her to death.

One thing I'm absolutely sure about is that if this case is ever going to have closure we need a public inquiry.

Now that the legal wrangling is over, there is a bigger question to confront: how did the Port Coquitlam pig farmer manage to lure vulnerable women – many of them prostitutes from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside – to their deaths for 14 years before police arrested him?

Not just to look at what went wrong, but WHY?

Because this isn't just a crime story. Or the story of a sick monster. It's also the story of the powerful and the powerless, and the desperately poor people of  Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.

And as I once wrote, after watching the sad story of Sarah de Vries...














The other horror was indifference.

Yup. As I said three years ago, for Sarah, for all the other women, for those who loved them, for the sake of all of us, we need a public inquiry.

So we can send out a message to anyone who still doesn't get it: ALL lives are precious. And ALL Canadians are equal. 

So some good might come of this horrible tragedy.

So it never happens again...

Pickton and the Pig Farm Murders

When I heard that Robert Pickton had been convicted of second degree murder in the case of the missing women of Vancouver, at first I was disappointed. It didn't seem fair.

It didn't seem enough for a man who not only murdered so many women. But also tried to destroy all traces that they had ever existed. Just like the Nazis did.

But then I realized the convictions would probably be enough to keep him in jail forever. I remembered that this case was bigger than that miserable monster. And it was NEVER fair.

All those women who disappeared were failed first by society. And then by the police. Because they were poor, and so many were native women, or drug addicts, or sex workers, police didn't care about them enough...until it was too late. And the pig farm was soaked in blood and full of shredded body parts.

Even though every human life counts .... no matter how poor or how miserable. Even though all the women had families and friends who loved them. Just like Sarah De Vries did.













You can read more about Sarah De Vries....and see some haunting video of her...in this post.

If there is a second trial....and there should be one....Sarah and the 19 other women Pickton is accused of killing will get a measure of justice. And so will those who loved them.

But of course it's way too late. And it will never be enough.

So what I am hoping for is a full public inquiry. Not just to determine once and for all why things went so terribly wrong. Why a killer was allowed to go on killing. And so many lives that could have been spared were lost.

But also because hopefully it will finally bring some help to the desperately poor and vulnerable people of the Downtown Eastside. So they can be treated like human beings at last. And escape the nightmare that is Canada's shame.

During my brief stay in Vancouver a few years ago I saw some sights in that neighbourhood that haunt me to this day. It wasn't scary or threatening just terribly depressing and sad. I saw so much poverty and despair it was hard to believe I was really in Canada. So I can only imagine what it must be like to live and die there.

Just like so many women who disappeared did. And so many desperate women still do.

In her diary not long before she disappeared Sarah DeVries wrote:

"Will they remember me when I'm gone...or will their lives just carry on? Will the tears fall from their eyes? When they try to say their goodbyes..."

Nobody who loved these women ever had a chance to say goodbye. Their tears will flow forever. And life does carry on.

But if the rest of us want to remember Sarah and all the others...and try to extract some good out of this monstrous tragedy and horror show.

The only decent and Canadian thing to do is try to make sure that something so cruel and so horrible... and so shameful.

Never ever happens again...