Thank you for joining me, Mark the Dark Mind Detective. This is Part 2 of my conversation with two extraordinary women. I call this episode Voices from the Shadows, Revisiting the Robert Picton case with Doctor Sasha Reed and Sue Brown. Today I'm honored to share this conversation that has stayed with me, a conversation that cuts to the heart of Canada's darkest chapter, the Robert Picton case. Joining me in this Part 2 are two extraordinary voices in the fight for justice.
Dr. Sasha Reed, a psychologist, advocate, and scholar whose work centers on preserving evidence for cold cases like the Robert Picton case. Sue Brown, a relentless lawyer with Justice for Girls, whose expertise lies in exposing the systemic failures that disproportionately harms marginalized and Indigenous women and girls victims too often reduced to statistics in the crisis of the Missing and
murdered Indigenous women. This interview was recorded exactly approximately 1 year ago, and the decision to release it now comes after a year of my own personal research, thousands of hours of grappling with the unspeakable weight of this case. Initially I was set out to craft a hard hitting and investigative documentary, but the deeper I dove so I chose to write a book. I didn't want to release this conversation until I was very clear in the direction that my work was going to produce.
I plan to make an A bunch of upcoming podcasts that will focus on my research, my work, my questions that I have about this case, and parallels of the Picton case to cases of this magnitude throughout North America. The book Picked and Learn will be rooted in fact but fictionalized. I did this because I wanted to give the victims families a rest. I'm changing the names of the people involved to give the people a rest who've been dragged through so much, put
through so much of this case. Because I feel that there's a very important overall arching story that needs to be told about this case. And I think the best way to do it is to do it in a story telling format.
Researching this case throughout the year and longer, but intensely throughout this last year has left me physically and emotionally drained many times, haunted by the sheer scale of suffering it. If it shook me this deeply, I can't begin to phantom the toll of survivors, families in the front line, workers who fought tirelessly, foreclosure. Yet throughout the soul, this interview with Doctor Reed and Sue Brown became a guiding light.
Revisiting their insights today after a year of research, I'm I'm struck how powerfully their words. Align with my own conclusion. The systemic neglect, the institutional apathy and the urgent call to protect those society this seems to so easily forget. So before we begin, I want to share a dedication from Pictonland, my book, A tribute to Jane Doe's whose unidentified skull was found in 1995, and to all of the unnamed souls soul waiting for justice. Imagine, if you will, her voice
rising from the earth. This podcast is for her, for every indigenous girl, for every marginalized woman, every victim silenced by indifference together. Let's unravel the systemic rot that has allowed such horrors to fester. Let's demand better. Please join me in this conversation as Doctor Sasha Reed illuminates the critical importance of preserving evidence in cold cases, like in Robert Picton's case of horrors, and Sue Brown dismantles the machinery of systemic justice.
Their expertise doesn't just shed light on Picton's crime, it challenges us all to see the humanity we've overlooked. This is from my book that I'm writing. It's called. This is a piece that I wrote for my book Picton Land, and this part is called Jane Doe Speaks, narrated in the voice of Jane Doe, a spirit. Of all the women who were lost and picked in land, speaking from the shadows of her past, her words are not a plea nor an
accusation. They are a call to remembrance, a demand that she and the others are not erased. You don't know my name. No one does. Not any more. Once I had a name. A little girl's name, whispered and lullabies. A name written on birthday cards and careful, loving cursive. A name that teachers called out in classrooms where I once sat full of potential. But now I am just Jane Doe, the nameless, the forgotten. You don't know my face either.
But I was once beautiful. Maybe not in the way that mattered to the world, but in a way all little girls are. Before the world gets their hands on them, before it strips them down piece by piece, until there's nothing left but hunger and exhaustion and the quiet understanding that no one is coming to save you. I was born in Vancouver, a place that is supposed to be bright, safe, and full of possibilities.
But my world was small, a space between the screaming parents crack sidewalks and the deep, arching loneliness that settled in my bones when my mother left for the last time, when my father turned cold, when the system swallowed me whole. They call it foster care, but care is not what I found there.
I learned young that the only thing worse than being hurt is not being believed, that the world shrugs at the suffering of girls like me. I ran to the streets because at least there I understood the rules. Be useful or be used. At 15, the first time a man took something from me I didn't want to give, and when I cried, he laughed. That was a moment I realized that I wasn't a person anymore. I was a transaction, a girl to be passed around, bought, sold, discarded.
Addiction found me soon after, but let's be honest, I never stood a chance. You've seen girls like me before. You pass me on the street and looked away. Pretend not to notice the track marks, the hollow eyes, the way we flinch when a car pulls up too fast. You might have even felt sorry for me, just for a moment. But you never stopped. None of you stopped. And that's how I ended up here.
And that's how I ended up here, in a place that should never have existed, a place that should have been shut down long before ever set foot on its soil. The farm. The last place I ever saw, I was taken there by a man who smiled like he was doing me a favor. A man who talks slow and laughed easy, the kind of laugh that makes you feel stupid, forever being afraid. I was cold, he promised warmth, I was hungry, he promised food. I was tired. He promised a place to sleep.
He wasn't the 1st man to lie to me, but he was the last. I won't tell you how it happened. You already know, and if you don't, it's because you don't want to. I will tell you this, It was not quick, and when it was over, there was nothing left of me but bones, blood and silence. The world went on.
The city still sparkles, the rich drank their wine, the politicians so made their speeches, the news cameras flickered for a day or two, and then they turned away, just like you did when you passed me on the street. My body was erased. But I refuse to be. I am here, I am speaking, and I will not be forgotten, Not by you, not by anyone. Because I was a baby once, a little girl with soft skin and bright eyes and a laugh and that
made my mother smile. And if you had held me then, if you rocked me to sleep in your arms, if you had kissed my forehead and whispered that the world would be kind to me, could you have ever imagined this ending? Would you have believed me if I told you the worst part wasn't what happened on the farm? The worst part that no one came looking? Well, I mean, organized crime is alive and well in the province and in Canada generally.
And I know that the, of course, I'm sure you read Kim Bolin's work in her most recent investigative piece, looking at the connections between organized crime groups who operate in British Columbia and their connections internationally and how much stronger they're becoming. And, you know, our understanding, the work that we do at JFG is, of course, with teenage girls.
And so when we're talking about girls who are being exploited and trafficked, those are children, and there's a very huge demand by men to exploit girls. Children. And particularly Indigenous girls in this province. And that's facilitated by organized crime for sure. And, you know, the drug traffickers are the human traffickers in those particular situations. And I think we have to assume that it's all very deeply connected to organized crime.
And then that becomes a huge impediment and barrier to the police to investigate it. But unfortunately, what we're seeing from the response of the RCMP in these kinds of cases and in the deaths of these girls is throwing up their hands saying, wow, you know, if we don't have a complainant, we don't have somebody coming in and giving us a full confession, what are we supposed to do about it? I don't know, investigate. Yes, put some more resources for myself.
I have reported on people's behalf many a times over the four years. Recently I reported on a creep. He was the top 25 most wanted creep in Canada. That one, when I called, I called the Surrey RCMP and reported on this woman's behalf. They were on that one because he was kind of high profile. However, over the years I've reported on child pornography to the RCMPI reported on creeps, predators, every kind of case that you can think of.
Not murder, but a lot of lot of women who are in a sexual exploitive situation. Some creep on social media is harassing them, reporting to the RCMP in in some of these cases that I think that are very serious, especially when it comes to child pornography, where some of the stupidest people I've ever spoken to in my life. And then part of my mind was, do they put someone stupid on the phone just to infuriate you? So you're just like, right. And and this one guy, I am not kidding.
He was an RCMP officer and I'm talking about very serious stuff, very serious crimes that I thought that Oh my God, that someone's, you know, that they would take this serious. He pretended, and I'm going to say to him like, oh, you're, you're bucking bullshitting me here. He pretended that he didn't know what social media was.
And I'm like, you know what? It's actually been around for about say, you know, 15 years and essentially it works like an e-mail, but it has a front face where you can put pictures and stuff, but people can send you message. You know how an e-mail works, right? He pretended that he didn't know what it was all social media. As soon as they oh, this is ridiculous, right? I am telling you, this guy should not have been a security guard at a Walmart. I was horrified.
I've talked to other cops that were somewhat better and I do know some that I do like as people, you know, I do. I do podcast things with Amanda, who's a she runs like she's a media person for the Sky Train Cops. She's super cool. I talked to a guy quite a bit, even on my podcast, Seb, who was involved in the emergency response team. He's super cool and he's all
about holding them accountable. Generally as an organization, I feel that they have to kind of step up their game, you know, and like you're saying how many like even keeping track of of women and men too. There's a lot of men, especially young, good looking men that go missing in BC too, which is highly suspicious. And reporting is not an easy thing. And I'm thinking I'm pretty articulate. I could be feisty.
I could, you know, I could you make my point across what about someone with English as a second language or someone with some intellectual disabilities, right.
Oh, they're going to just, you know, sweep the floor with them, you know, So yeah, they're the reporting is a huge issue in BC I. Think Sasha, your database tells a lot about the the cases of missing and murdered people in British Columbia. So the missing murder database, the MMD, we started many, many years ago, I think it was in my second year of my PHDI was at that time creating a serial homicide database for the purpose of my dissertation, and
it was a lot of work. I needed a break and I decided one night to just look into some stories of missing murdered people. And I wanted to look stories from home in Ontario. And as I was looking into stories, I came across the story of somebody I'd known from high school. And it was a shocking moment. I mean, I spend my entire life studying crimes and homicide, and you think I'd be numb to it by then, But no, To deal with what I had just come across. And So what I did is I just put
her name in a database. It wasn't even a database at the moment. It was an Excel file, and I populated it with information. I guess that's how I process and whatever, but that's what I did. And it started with that name and every single day thereafter, I just continued to go into the Excel file and add additional names of missing murdered people whose cases were still unsolved. And as of this morning, I believe we have 11,806 people in that database.
It's a nationally representative database, which is the only database of its kind in the country. You would imagine that Canada would have a national database of missing murdered people. We don't. Yeah, that's bizarre. We don't. Yeah, I actually have a meeting with the Ontario Provincial Police Historical Homicide unit tomorrow.
Yeah. So I'm gonna be showing them the database and just, you know, utilizing it as a means to help them to visualize what they can do with their capacity to get information that I, you know, could not possibly access. I'm sure they could do a lot, but the fact that a database like that doesn't exist, I think is problematic. But what we do essentially is we find information on missing murdered individuals. We look at their cold cases. They are for the most part cold cases.
We input their information, we track that information on a map, and then we try to identify suspicious clusters of missing murdered people throughout the country. Sometimes it's serial killers, most times it's not. Most times there's a stomach or structural issue. You know, you know how I was talking about highway of tiers. You have a lack of Wi-Fi, lack of pretty much everything.
That's what I mean in terms of of a lot of critical infrastructure can lead to increases in missing murdered people just because it increases their level, level of vulnerability. So that's definitely something that we're using. And yeah, it's been a, it's been a journey. For sure, I can imagine. May I ask a question, and this is something I talk a lot about on my podcast, is why do you believe that BC has such a high missing, missing persons compared to the rest of Canada?
I'll talk specifically, you know, Sue can definitely add in here as well, but I'll talk specifically about the Indigenous issue. So I was looking into the database just to track status, and I realized that British Columbia, as I have my data represented in the database, British Columbia accounts for 20% of Canada's missing murdered indigenous women and girls. And that's a high percentage. It's higher than any other province throughout Canada.
And I think the issue is multifaceted and it can't be explained with just a couple of bullet points here and. There, of course, yeah. It extends all the way back to a history of Canada's colonialism. It goes back to the RCMP, it goes to the strange combination of over policing and under policing, lack of funding, withdrawing of funding it. It touches on every single aspect and element.
And then you have the massive, massively complicated and devastating in ways geography of British Columbia. Every single time I can see, I go there with the eyes of, you know, a person who studies serial homicide my entire life and I can see so many wonderful in quotes, obviously opportunities to dispose of a body. You've got the perfect climate, enormous predators like predatory animals. It's a haven.
And I think that's why also why area like that travel or that area, when you travel it, you can see this is a very hot spot for serial homicide predation. And I think the geography of these spaces does just lend itself very well to hiding, concealing bodies. To add on to that, I would just say too, there's also a very, very, very high proportion of people who live in poverty. We've always had a historically
high drug user population. The Downtown Eastside is its own, you know, economic microcosm of poverty and marginalization. We have a lot of provincial mobility. One of the issues that we look at is, you know, a lot of women and girls like girls in particular, but Indigenous children actually have to leave reserves to go to school in other cities.
We also know there's a lack of economic opportunities in so many parts of northern British Columbia, which forces migration into areas like Prince George, Kamloops, Kelowna and Vancouver, where we have really high rates of insecurity, poverty, drug use and addictions, you know, and all of this, the requisite stuff that comes with it that creates a very vulnerable population
from a victimology perspective. And then you can also lump on top of that, I think we have very, very, very active organized crime happening through the province and very highly organized, you know, internally, but also the networks are connected with one another. And so you have, we're, we're coastal, so that brings with it.
And we also, there's trade routes up up the coast from South America. And then you can add on to that the, and you can't talk about this issue without talking about resource extraction in the province of British Columbia and Alberta, where you see really high demand boom towns where that have, if you look at the history of boom towns and the economies around boom times towns all the way back to the Gold Rush, they've always historically been some of the
same issues. And so all of that, everything Sasha said and all of that, I think creates a perfect storm for a lot of unfortunately, disappearances and homicides. And even just when you're looking at that one small period of time, just like the 80s, eighties to 90s you had in BC in this, like in Victoria, Vancouver, in and around this area, you had not just one, but you had multiple serial killers, multiple serial killers. You have some that are still to
this day unsolved. So I think in terms of uniqueness, like Vancouver really is unique in the sense that it's always somehow drawn these people who exploit women and girls, who murder women and girls, and who do it unfortunately quite successfully, as in never being caught. Yeah, it's, it's disturbing or truly is like being from Vancouver. I, I remember, you know, like all the way back to the 70s, even back in the 70s, it was more of a hippie, you know, the
big kits beach. And there was always, my point is there was always like this drifter and maybe it's not a politically correct term they use anymore, but there was always a drifter element that came to Vancouver. Maybe it was because they were leaving something back home or burnt bridges and it represented something, you know, being on the coast, the weather's better. And there was always people that they always felt like. I met them all my life, even going all the way back to the 70s.
He always felt they were running from something. And and then because of your running from something, you're probably likely to go and get yourself in bad situations. You come here without money, you get involved in drugs, which is really easy to do because drugs are just so plentiful. And then you're like you said, you're in poverty. You're, you're, you're put into a vulnerable situation, right? Maybe you weren't prepared for how expensive Vancouver was
going to be, right. And and then there's I believe that there's people that come here because they know that there's lots of vulnerable people kind of like dark tourism and stuff because our Lawrence law enforcement, like again, you've done so many cases, right, How they put a list of all the unsolved cases in the cases that aren't there are there are solved. They're probably not even 1%.
You know it. It amazes me at their inability to solve crimes like going, even though in Vancouver for the gang crimes 400. I, I remember when I first started this, I made a list of all the unsolved homicides. Like I, I, I gave up and I just lost interest at about 550 of unsolved homicides that were gang related. Made an Excel spreadsheet, right? And I got to 550. There's probably another hundred you can put on that. That was in 2020, right?
You're saying that they can't, they can't solve any of these. And I'd like to hate to say it. If I was involved in organized crime and even talk to my friend David, you know what, what with some of the new factors in BC, it'd be a gold rush for criminals. Absolutely would be. If I was a criminal, there'd be so many things that I, I could
easily exploit. Like absolutely, even if I get arrested, even if they do have evidence, even someone has me on camera, probably maybe get thrown out or stayed right. Like I like again, if I honestly like if I was a criminal in BC, I'd be laughing. And but it's it's scary because there's a lot of good people that aren't that want to live here, raise their kids an environment that's compassionate. And if something does happen to
your family member or friends. I've spoken to so many women, especially indigenous women who their loved ones are, are dead and and they'll say, oh, she died of a fentanyl overdose. But then they'll tell the cops, well, she never done fentanyl. She drank a little bit, but she wasn't a drug user.
Oh, yeah. Well, maybe she started, we found we. So basically, you could murder someone to throw a throw a little baggie of fentanyl and, you know, give them, you know, if they died of a hotshot or whatever. Case closed, right? Case closed, right. And then you have a system that really doesn't give a shit. And then this Picton thing proves it. And we went to the candlelight vigil the next day, they removed everything someone was probably
watching in the parking lot. And when everyone left, all, you know, throw it all in the trash. Disgusting, you know, absolutely disgusting, but not surprised in the least. Absolutely not no zero surprise, but still disgusting, right. But that's the attitude, right? It's always like it's it's sort of like long as Vancouver looks nice and have shiny bit buildings, but don't go to the downtown East side. But we're going to get World Cup soccer here. So we're a world class city now, right?
Everyone's happy, right? So I'm, I'm I'm grateful for what you guys are doing. Maybe talk about the the evidence and, and and again there's was it 15,000 exhibits that they want to destroy, give back. What does that mean? Like what did like?
Well, what's their proposal? I guess but with this evidence from Robert Picton that they so they have over 200, they collected 200,000 and exhibits but they want to destroy 14,000 or like I don't get it. The RCMP quietly disposed of what we are assuming was 185,000 exhibits, already 5 applications that preceded. Before, so they've already been doing this. For a couple years, since 2021. And so at this point, I think we are fighting for what's left. The very last remaining pieces. Wow.
Again, sometimes it's, it's like it's hard for me to be lost for words. But like when you study and I know you guys know this case probably not better than me. And every aspect of it was disrespect to the family when they tried to report. Oh, we don't. They've been calling them hookers or something. I can't remember her name, but I, I have it in my notes. She was a woman. Yeah, she worked for. She was one of the one that had answered the phone and she was
such a bitch. Been referring to them as hookers and you know, just awful, like every aspect of it. And there was there was some good, there were definitely good people that cared. There were people that cared, but there was a majority that didn't right. They didn't feel it was worth investigating. They denied there was a serial killer, but they while they hid the Hemlock Valley serial killer from the public. I didn't know about that serial killer.
So recently when I started researching the Picton case, a couple I, I did some podcasts about two years ago. That's when I figured I discovered there was a Hemlock Valley serial killer that was not well known in the public during the, during the 90 fives of I know because I watch the news every day back then. And, and, and so not only do they keep they're denying there was a serial killer, but they
denied the existence of that. That would for sure there was a serial killer, the one in the the Hemlock Valley Mission 1 and there's probably my other ones too. So there's there's a there's maybe seek talk on this. This is something I've noticed, especially in the last decade. You know, I've always, you know, was followed news stories as it broke, as they progressed through the media and into the court. I find, and maybe it's my perception there's more of a secrecy now around cases that
they were before. For example, there was a guy and and Kelowna part of the equestrian community. Apparently. Is this rapist something? Well, a man, a man, a man is accused of sexual. So why name him what you name him So people can be but that that that wasn't the case 20 years ago or 10 years ago. If they're if someone's going to put a report, a journalist who,
what, where, when, how, right. But now it seems like it's like these cases are very cryptic, like, Oh, there's a man talk to another person and that man died. You know they were. You got to read through the lines almost more. I think we can say more broadly in Canada we have a really big access to information problem.
I think, you know, I think we can most recently trace it back to Stephen Harper and some of the reforms that he brought in to our access to information legislation, federally at least, and provincially. I would say the provinces have followed suit largely. And I, I mean, Canada's access to information laws are not aligned with what I would consider adequate for a western democracy.
Transparency and accountability is a pillar of democracy, fundamentally important, which means that our institutions, including the police, need to be open. Yeah. To be to to be scrutinized and to have the, you know the quality of their work assessed.
In. Public they have major obligations and duties to fulfill to the public they have a due diligence obligation to thoroughly investigate all cases that come to them and we can't possibly assess whether they're doing their job if we don't have access to the information you know, that doesn't mean that all information every salacious. Piece No. No. Detail needs to be provided to the public. There absolutely needs to be a balance.
Of course, the ethics and the morals associated with the information that's released to the public is really important. But I would say the pendulum has swung way, way, way, way, way too far towards information and privacy to a point where we can't hold our public institutions accountable for the work that they're doing. And I think that that's actually quite dangerous. And, and yeah, we absolutely see it in the context of trying to get in information.
Even the families in the cases that we work on, missing and murdered cases, we have a lot of difficulty getting access to the police files I work on, on the Innocence Project. We've had tremendous difficulties in some of our cases getting access to the post conviction documents to review where we have, you know, credible information that suggests that there may be somebody who's innocent and being held in prison wrongfully. Getting access.
To those documents is incredibly difficult, and it should not be that difficult for professionals, lawyers who are doing their job, discharging their duty as officers of the court, as people who are tasked with, you know, professionally seeing about the administration of justice. We should be granted professional access. That is part of the role lawyers and advocates should be playing in this system. And our governments don't let
that happen. And I think that that's something that we need to push back against. Yeah, the secrecy is really concerning to me too, because it's like, I don't think it makes for a safer society. Like you said, they don't have to release every little piece of rain. And I and I understand the benefit of holding back for investigation purposes, like some key pieces so that, you know, because he get crackpots that, you know, self confess or whatever.
But yeah, something I've I've really noticed it strongly, especially in the last five years or so, more even. And, and like even even recently I I've been tracking missing men that have been going missing in, in Vancouver and there's quite a few of them. And there is, there is, there seems to be, you know, a certain look that that seem to be going missing, like young, attractive, athletic, don't have any issues with like criminal cases or anything like that.
And, and there's almost like no information being released. And I've even spoken to like the mother, the mother's even frustrated with the RCMP and stuff. And five years now after the fact, there's like no new pieces of information like 0 and, and, and for the families that that just must like, it's like a like the double edged sword, right?
You got the sword of your your child or loved 1 going missing and then you have OK, this incompetent investigation that's that's going parallel to this tragedy, which is probably unfortunately the case for more victims families than not, right? Yeah. Well, I think that's also something that informs a lot of the a lot of the work that Sue and I do.
So we recognize that so many of these people, so many family members have been just completely ignored by investigators or even when trying to get reports, people won't take them. We understand that they've had difficulties, severe difficulties with the state. And secrecy, of course, is another one of those big difficulties. So when we interact with or engage with families, we want to make sure that we're operating on this standpoint of we're going to share this information
with you. We have, you know, a thread with family members where we're constantly updating them, even if it's an update about nothing, like, hey, just checking in, reminding you that we're here. If you have any questions whatsoever, it doesn't matter if you do or not.
I think having that open line of communication and being there and being responsive to the questions that they have, even when it's like legitimately nothing or even if it is something like, hey, this is very sensitive information, please don't share it. But I think you're entitled to know. You're entitled to know. So that is something I think that informs our work in the way that we try to interact and engage with the families that we work with. Oh that's amazing.
So why you break down what what your organized both your organizations are and just for the audience and how they can support you guys and support your important work that you guys do. So I mean, the midnight order is my my big thing. I can't say too much obviously, because embargo, but the midnight order is where a lot of this investigative work started. It's not where the database started, but it's where it kind of took off.
We're a team of women essentially, who are doctors and seem to be lawyers, psychotherapist professionals who are interested in helping people to access justice and acquire, you know, resolutions to complex cold cases. And so we work on databases, we talk with families and we try to
do that. And then just the completion, not even completion, but filling out the serial homicide database and the missing murder database and just making sure that these things are constantly being engaged with because they do have an investigative, sorry, my cat. They definitely have a role for investigations and we're the only ones with these databases that we tried to do what we can with them. Well, that's amazing. That's really amazing. And so how about your your
organization, Justice for Girls? Yeah, Justice for Girls has been around since 1999. We were founded with the mandate to advocate for the rights and equality of teenage girls who live in poverty, large, foreign, out of the youth movement at the time and the anti violence movement, recognizing that that particular population of girls was falling through the cracks.
So we were always sort of looking at, you know, particularly girls who were in foster care were subject to extreme levels of violence and the most horrific violence in the Downtown Eastside and throughout the province. So over nearly two decades, our work has taken us throughout the province to rural and remote communities.
A huge number of the girls that we work with and cases that we work on are Indigenous girls because they're so disproportionately represented among the missing and murdered girls and girls who are in poverty and girls who are in foster care and girls who don't receive adequate responses from
the police. Most I would say, although we have a huge piece of work that that really emphasizes supporting and promoting the rights of girls to access education, meaningful access to education, to meaningful access for economic and employment opportunities for, you know, the right to be protected in. Cost. Care and to have those institutions function the way that they're supposed to, that's a huge emphasis on our work.
But I would say a significant amount of the work that I do and have done with the organization is around police accountability. And we've also done a bunch of work with girls who were incarcerated and advocating for their human rights in that
context. So some of that work has looked like supporting, you know, the victims of Serial, you know, abusers and exploiters working on cases where young women were murdered to advocate for the police to do their job, for the justice system to do their job, to support their families, to support the young women if they themselves are victims and testifying in court to ensure that they have meaningful access
to justice. And in cases involving missing and murdered girls, our focus is on thorough and adequate investigations and holding the state accountable at domestic, national levels as well as international levels for their failures to do so on behalf of families. So in 2013, we supported a Human Rights Watch investigation in the province or investigated police failures to thoroughly investigate and respond to violence against women and
girls. We worked with coalitions of of organizations in the past to support investigations by the Inter American Commission on Human Rights on violence against Indigenous women and girls in the province, as well as the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women at The UN also did an investigation in 2015.
We have strongly advocated for the implementation of recommendations from all of those inquiries, including the Missing Women's Inquiry, the Wally Opal Inquiry, and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry. So politically, our emphasis is on trying to convince our governments to. Thoroughly. Implement those recommendations, which they have and continue to really just fail horribly to do so. There's that and then there is this piece of investigative
work. A lot of it I work with Sasha on. And Sasha's expertise is so invaluable in this area of current death investigations in cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls where there hasn't been any investigation. And we we want to see the police do their job and we want to see justice for the families. Well, that's amazing a question then, if you guys have said it's from positivity at the end here, if you if, if, if let's let's you know, let's say this right,
like you were in charge, right? How would you structure then like to prevent like what, what can maybe the better question is, is how do we prevent this? Because again, BC seems to be a real hotbed of this stuff, right? It's, and personally from my research, seems like it's a Western Canada issue. You know what I mean? Like especially the missing indigenous women. It seems to be throughout Western Canada for the most part, parts of Ontario at Thunder Bay.
I keep track of Thunder Bay because it comes up all the time. Like it just seems like every other day there's someone going missing in Thunder Bay. So that's a hot spot, which is almost comparable to BC, right? But you know, BC seems to be a hotspot. So how do we prevent this From what could we do differently to to prevent these future tragedies? The future Pictons, the future Olsens, or the creeps that you know you come here to for predatory reasons.
That's a very good question. It's a very hard question to answer. OK, I'm going to say in no particular order, one, I think we need to make very public information going into missing, murdered people. We need to have statistics on who's going missing, where are they going missing, and that we shouldn't have to have to go through FOIA or a tip to get this information. This information should be out there.
This is going to be bold. So I'm not too sure how well this is going to play out, but I'm going to say maybe a little dismantling of the RCMP may be good. I mean, it's a racist, colonialist institution in the 1st place. Maybe why you start with dismantling that and trying to come up with something, anything else that doesn't have, you know, racism and a colonialist narrative as its foundation. Why don't we change that up?
I think that we need to pump funding into making sure that there is that critical infrastructure in those spaces that lead to so much vulnerability for people living in the rural NI think that we need to and Sue's probably for
sure going to talk about this. I think we need to do a lot more in getting police departments up to task on what human trafficking looks like, how it takes shape, who are the players and how do we go about creating, I don't know, investigative strategies and also new legislation if it's necessary to make sure that we're bringing these people to justice and that we're we're helping these people who are so vulnerable and go to education. I could go on Sue, throw some stuff in. Sure.
Those are all very good, Sasha, in, I'm going to say in a very particular order. First and foremost, we need to properly and thoroughly fund the institutions that we rely upon that actually address so many of the, the victimology factors that we know render particularly women and girls vulnerable to violence in the 1st place. So the foster care system needs to properly the you know, we need, we need to have adequate and safe housing for all people and women and girls in
particular. We need, you know, adequate and thoroughly funded education and employment options so that women and girls. We have to keep in mind that poverty disproportionately effects women and girls. It's a. Very gender dispute that. We don't talk about often enough and so but but all I for all people poverty, those basic social issues have to be addressed because they make those people vulnerable to
violence and exploitation. Exploitation can only happen where somebody is leveraging power against. Yeah, absolutely. And if you take that power away, then you necessarily shift that exploitive relationship and in the meantime, give meaning to the fundamental human rights to an adequate environment, an adequate and housing adequate standard of living, basic necessities, you know, patient, the list goes on. Safety. So that first and foremost is something we need to do better.
We need to put more money back into those institutions. And we also requisitely need to have appropriate accountability and transparency from those institutions. We need to function better as a society. Secondly, you know, and related, we need better accountability
and transparency on the police. I do think there's based on everything I know and I'm not certainly don't know everything, but I would say all of the information I have gleaned has said to me there is an internal rot in the RCMP that needs to be rooted out. And I think that that can probably only happen with a revisioning of what the national police force looks like and what policing looks like on the
ground in communities. And I don't think that our national police force can be doing both at a bare minimum. But I think that that needs to be fundamentally shifted and changed with a requisite amount of accountability and transparency on whatever policing system and policing
institutions we have. And also relatedly, what we don't have in Canada. What we really ought to have in Canada is a remedy mechanism that's available for victims and families of people who've been murdered or disappeared to go to when they feel that the police have not thoroughly. Investigated. Cases, we don't really have an adequate remedy. I mean, you can do a police complaint, but there. Aren't they'll investigate themselves and we did a great job yeah and even.
If even if they come out with recommendations, I mean, they're you know, there's disciplinary measures that might, might happen, but then they're you know, they're bad Opoling. What's it essentially a systemic issue and they're able to just say, Oh, well, that was that one bad police officer. That's not the system. The most of us are good. Let's just keep the system functioning the way it is.
And I it's not working and we need a truly independent body, an oversight body that isn't the police overseeing the police. And as part of their mandate, we need them to to provide real remedies to families where the police are failing because we don't have that. And then as Sasha said, yes, absolutely we need to look at trafficking and exploitation in this country. And we really seriously have to look at the impact that that's having the relationship.
When you talk about the Highway of Tears, I don't think you could talk about the Highway of Tears without talking about exploitation and. Trafficking no of. Course not. But we don't talk about this fictional potential serial killer. I don't think there was a serial killer. And and so that's, you know, something that we really need to take a hard look at what we're doing there. So those would be my sort of like wish list, top top.
Five yeah, no, I agree 100%. I did a lot of things of that too. And, and it's, it's extremely disappointing, like how when these bigger cases hit the media and become part of the media or sorry, the, the, the public conversation and you get a lot of talking points, but you really ever get any, anything that's really satisfactory in my opinion. I think cops are great for emergency situation. Someone's breaking into your
house. There's a bank robbery, there's a carjacking, They're great showing up with flashing lights and guns. And, you know, if someone's breaking in my house, I'm, yeah, I'm going to call the cops, right? However, when it comes to stuff where it's like investigating stuff, that's that maybe it's not as clear because there's some very, very smart people. Back to Picton. And this is the thing I always say he wasn't, I'm trying not to swear, but I'm, it's hard.
I always joke and I say he wasn't the Zodiac Killer. He wasn't like he was 5 missteps ahead of the cops with his ciphers and codes. He was out in the open and he wasn't really, really cleaning up after himself really. You know, not to be gross, but he was pretty sloppy, right? What about the criminals that are serial killers, which we know they're, they exist that are super smart that, that study forensic, the study of police procedures.
Olson was pretty crafty. He would use different cars. He would totally clean out his cars after he would have different changes of clothing and and he was considered head of his time because he spent so much time in jail. He understood how cops thought and how they, how they, how they think. So there are a lot of criminals and I've, I've, I've met some in my life. You know, they know every, every trick in the book.
They know every loophole, right. So when it comes to people that murder and stuff there, there's probably some that are pretty intelligent out there that are really smart. They, they, they don't have a chance of catching them. If, if Picton was able to do it for 20 years. That scares me. That keeps me up at night. So we, we also have to attract smarter people to
investigations. There's probably a lot of people like yourselves, like you, you Doctor Sasha Reed is is that imagine if you were given the task to actually arrest people, but you didn't have to wear a uniform. You know what I mean? Like people like you should be be able to go in law enforcement and and say no, that person's killing somebody. You know what I mean? I, I can prove it right. Have to you get what I'm saying?
We have to, we have to like recruit better and brighter people that want to catch these people because I hate to say it. I think the way that you like, you're back to the RCMP, the way it's structured, the way that you have to go through the old boys club and all the other things. It probably prevents a lot of people, especially women that want to join it in the first place. You know, all the sexual harassment subsuits and things
like that. Yeah, the billion dollar lawsuit of sexual assault and harassment against female RCMP officers is definitely enough to stop women, I think, from entering that institution. I think it's vital that women are represented in that institution for sure. I think I mean. My motivation? I was a month in, of research and getting ready for this Jeffrey Epstein series. And I was about a month in of researching, reading everything I can.
I've, I've been following the case for God for a long time. So I do know, you know, quite a bit about it. But I was doing the deep dive research and then I was contacted like, Hey, we're making a Picton documentary. And then I heard about the, the evidence being destroyed. And I thought, well, this is probably a good time to put it out there, try to put out stuff that really, cuz my, my goal, like my goal is to really breakdown the events and
document the events. So they're kind of preserved in the future. And you know, my way through storytelling and stuff like that. But really, really nailed down what happened when, where, what, you know what I mean? Because I, I find that most of the articles don't really, you know, they kind of brush over, they give you a little recap and then, you know, picked and was bad. He murdered people. We all know that, but we don't really understand the story.
So my my goal is to really break down this story the best I can in multiple podcasts and posts and. I think so. And if you want, I can give you just a quick rundown of how we came to realize that this evidence is being disposed of if you're. Absolutely not. Please. Yeah, please. 2020 came about, and again, I'm 2020 is COVID. I'm studying Robert Picton because he's an outlier.
And in that process I find an article talking about the fact that the RCMP are trying to dispose of evidence, a small amount of evidence from this case. I think it was like Jeremy Heinsworth, a Vancouver reporter who reported on that. I thought that was really interesting. I didn't think too much of it at that time because I just started. But then the more I studied, the more I realized, Oh my God, we
have to stop this. So I wanted to get a sense of what had been destroyed first and foremost. I remember emailing journalist to see what have you found. You have enough, David, do you have any information you could share with me in terms of what's being disposed of? They said no, we don't have that information.
So that's upsetting. Sure. So I filed an A temp last summer with the RCMP and I basically asked about evidence related to the Ruskin site because that was what was cited in the 2020 article as being the only evidence that was being disposed of. Evidence from the Ruskin site. It's where the mission Jane Doe. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. Mission. Yeah, right.
Yeah. And so IA tipped the RCMP and I got a phone call which I thought was very weird because I I've sent a tips to everyone imaginable and this is the only time I've ever got a phone call. In this phone call I was sat down and kind of told what these applications were. And that's the very first time I heard this word applications, plural, not singular. And I said well what do you mean
how many have gone forward? And that's when I learned there had been 5 applications so far that I've gone forward. And I asked what is the status of everything? And the explanation was that everything has been disposed of. And when I asked for clarification as to what disposed means, the answer was, and I quote disposed as in to be
like, as in to no longer exist. The conversation continued where we learned items were incinerated and then we learned, well, I learned that there was going to be more applications for the coming. And at that point, I think I told Sue what was going on. I think at this point we kind of knew that there was more to depict in case that we really
needed to dive into. And I think at that moment, we basically were all hands on deck for seeing what information could we get, how can we stop this? I did get one affidavit, so that very first one from the Ruskin site, we got in touch with the family members from that application just to confirm with them.
Did you know about this? At which point they said no. And we, again, became immediately concerned and continued to do everything that we're doing now, because it's very clear that they weren't informed, they weren't aware, they don't agree with what's happening. And even though I asked for the full repertoire of every affidavit that's been filed in terms of disposition, I still only have that one. I've sent in another application
asking for that information. And the response I got was this is now before the courts, so I can no longer access these affidavits, which is frustrating. But slowly and steadily, I think even just having that first one was really valuable for us in terms of seeing just the sheer amount of evidence that had been disposed of. The explanation for it which was these are of no value which just seeing that on a piece of paper when you know that there is over 20 unsolved cases connected. To this.
This was really frustrating, I think, and it just continues. So I think that's one of the reasons why I myself am so, so energized just to stop this, because we don't know. And I think I've talked to so many people about this. You don't know the value of this evidence until you know it. The couple things come to mind. So just to recap for the people
listening right. So my understanding before this conversation was they are applying to destroy or give back or whatever the wording they use of this evidence. And then what you're informing people listening in myself is no, they've been destroying stuff since 2020 in secret. And one of the things that does get under my skin, like I felt, you know, for quite a while and especially more so now there's like the sanitation of this case. Like, for example, we went to the candlelight visual.
There's not one sign, There's not a memorial. That land wasn't made into a park. They could have made a nice garden, a park, a memorial, something out of it, right? A chain link fence around the grassy field. Nothing to see here. It's almost too like antiseptic, if that makes sense, you know what I mean? It's like a crime scene that's been cleaned up, right? And then course, you know, the, the family members did their memorial. Oh, gotta clean it up, get it away.
It's almost like we don't, it's like out of sight, out of mind, right? And then the destroying in secret this, this evidence, it's like so. Of this being done in secret. So I mean, I know that the RCMP are going to come back and they're going to say no, this was conducted in open court. But I think the timing of it really calls into question whether or not it was open court. This was done during COVID.
What's happening during COVID. We're all stuck at home doing nothing and not actually paying attention to anything. We're too stressed, we're too scared to do anything. And so no public representation was there at the hearings when they were applying for these disposition orders, people weren't there. People weren't paying attention. And even that one newspaper article really went under the radar. I'm sure that there are people in BC who would have followed up on that.
But again, I think that the the timing of this all seriously calls into question whether or not this was open to the public in the way it should have been. This was Canada's most significant stereo homicide case in like in its. History. And this was a case that was marked by systemic discrimination and problems. At every single step, the public should have been informed. They should have been there and if not, then the family should have and they were not. This same scenario happening
anywhere else. What what would be the outcome, right? Like, for example, like you see, even like his, his practices, like, you know, his, his slaughterhouse wasn't even licensed for Christ's sake, Even that right? This that you know, the, the way they got the warrant to go to on his property, right was kind of sketchy. You know, informant saying, oh, there was a Mac 10 on the there, right, blah, blah, blah, right. You know, the a little bit on the shade.
This guy's begging the cops that he needs to pay rent. Well, that's not even how it started. That was Scott Chubb, and this is. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, but he. And he's like, yeah, there's marijuana on the farm and the cops. Care. Yeah, they didn't care about. That yeah, no. But my point is, is that when someone's been illegally slaughtering pigs in the most disgusting, cruelest way fashion, isn't that a reason to
be able to go on the farm? Hey, what are you doing on your property? You have chicken fights. You have. Oh, yeah. He was also salvaging cars from the from the Vancouver police. So it's just like what you had a contract with a with like almost nothing about it on paper makes any sense. Yeah, right. But like I said, because I've been in BC on my course, it's BC, right? That's, you know, if you're from here, you understand.
Yeah. If you're from somewhere else, you'd be like what, like cock fighting or whatever, like even that, you know, it's how many illegal little, like organized little crime things that you have going on that on that property, right? Yeah, it's, it's brutal. It's, I don't know, it's upside down world.
Well, I hate this case really. I honestly, I hate everything about it. I, I, I'll, I'll research it really hard for like a month and I'll take give myself two weeks off it just because I need to detox from it. Like I, I find that I even get like headaches. I get stomach issues. Like if I really get into like the it's, it's so brutal and vicious. My my cat just came in too. So yeah, cats are always just
interrupting. Anyways, well, you guys have a great evening and I appreciate your time and I'll be in touch with you guys. OK, Thank you. You're welcome. Have a good day. Thank you again, both. Bye bye.