ROBERT PICKTON-C.L. Swinney

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and author Dan Zupanski. Good evening. Robert Picton inherited a pig farm outside of Vancouver worth a million dollars and used his wealth to lure skid row hookers to his farm. This surreal murder investigation the biggest, longest, and costliest in Canadian history. He confessed to murdering forty nine female victims, dismembering and feeding their body parts to his pigs, some of the pork which he supplied to Vancouver area restaurants.

The book that we're featuring this evening is Robert Picton, The Pig Farmer Killer, with my special guests ce L Swiney, Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.

convicted in this case. And I had a strong sense when I started reading it, especially when I learned about his brother at this farm and the whole environment, that I felt other people should have been charged or could have been charged. So just the fact that so many women went missing, the fact that the Vancouver Police Department seemed to drop the ball several times in this case, and just the nature of how Robert Picton was raised and what went on at the Piggy Palace, as they

called it, just kind of caught me. So I started digging into it years ago. I wrote this one about five years ago, I think, and it was my first true crime book, so it's interesting to look at it now and where I've come on my ninth book. So it was a great story, and it kind of keeps coming up. Robert Picton keeps popping up on everybody's radar in the true crime world. So I'm happy I did.

actually involved with the case. And I'm actually considering writing a second version of this, or maybe an update to it. But his family life was tough, but it turned into more of a situation in which three children were abused physically, emotionally, verbally on a pig farm. And basically his mom, Louise kind of ran the show the dad. His father, Leonard would do kind of the grunt work if he will,

on this farm, but Louise made the decisions. She was the one who negotiated with local families and restaurants on their pork products, and she kind of had the iron fist, but she'd get mad and basically do the old Leonard take care of the kid type thing. So Robert was exposed to a lot of violence, but he was also exposed to a lot of death. He saw these animals,

these pigs, being slaughtered daily. There's a story that he shared when he was being interviewed after he'd been apprehended about how he used to flee his mom's wrath and his father's wrath by locating large carcasses of hogs on the farm that had been butchered, and he tried to hide in them to try to get away from the abuse, the punishment, the physical punishment that was going to come his way if his dad got a hold of him. So, you know, he had the upbringing of a rough childhood.

He saw a lot of death, and then there was one kind of incident that he specifically brought up and he's talked about numerous times, and essentially what happens is he kind of falls for a calf that they had because they had other animals on this farm, but he kind of came attached to a certain calf and made it known to the family that that was kind of like his personal pet, and literally out of kind of spite and out of kind of like trying to show Robert who was in charge of what life was really

all about. His mom had the calf butchered one day when he was at school before he dropped out, and he came home looking for this calf and his mom said it wanted to go down to the farm, and he responded down there and found his you know, his pet. Kind of like you and I with our first dog. If you will hanging butchered and gut it out in the farm, so you know he's exposed to quite a bit.

injured severely. He wasn't dead, but he was he had obvious injuries. So he ran back to his mom and said, hey, Mom, you need to come over here. I need your help. And she literally walked up on the scene, looked at this poor kid who was still breathing, looked at her son, kind of shrugged her shoulders, if you will, rolled the kid over to the embankment and down into to some standing water that was at the opposite end or at the bottom of that embankment, and left the kid to die.

And you know, obviously David went in town, tried to cover up what he had done and tried to get some work done on the truck to replace the bumper in the headlight. And then you know, Robert saw that and the fact that Louise just calmly walked up, saw this child that her son had run over with a truck but was still alive, and calmly dumped him in

the water and left him for dead. You know, it got to David, it got to Robert and their sister, and you know, it was just another example of how if it didn't involve Louise and her children and her husband, it didn't really connect in her mind, just didn't compute. She didn't care, So they left that kid for death.

was regarded as. Maybe not so much in his own family, because you say he had that little thing going on his family, but outside in high school and out in society, how did people look at and regard Robert Picton.

little bit slow. And we know that, you know, children can be mean to other children, and even back when Robert was going to school, it was the same thing. And so because of his received kind of slowness, because he's stunk, so bad that he used to tease him and call him stinky and names like that, and the constant pressure from Louise to basically, you know, you know, hector school, We don't we don't really care about that. We have the farm, you know, That's what we deal

with that. We're pig farmers. That's what we do. He didn't have any you know, love life, if you will. There was one girl who felt terrible for him and at times would convince him to go take a shower because she just couldn't stand being around him. And sometimes he would kind of hesitate, and he would basically say hey, or she would say, hey, you know, I'm really your only friend, and so if you're not gonna go shower and at least try to clean up some, you know,

I'm not going to spend time around you. And so he would reluctantly go take a shower and try to clean up a little bit. But it was pretty rare. Kid is exposed to violence. He's around killing animals. His mom has no regard for human life other than her own and her children and her husband. He has no friends at school, he's constantly picked on school, and all that stuff combined, he just basically steps out as he drops out of school, and his mom is like, you know,

thank god, finally you did it. You know, I need your help out the farm.

they just didn't have the experience. Even though they worked there and lived there, they didn't they didn't know the day in and day out operations that were needed to keep it successful. They didn't have a lot of communication skills to meet with other families nearby that they would sell pork with, or the restaurants and stuff. So they

had a tough time selling product. But they basically had to shut the pig farm part of it down, and it was it was actually beneficial to the three siblings because their property was quite large, and so they were actually able even though they kind of the pig farm went under, if you will, they were able to sell portion of their property and it wasn't even a large portion.

I think it was like I think it was like four or five acres or something like that, but they made a couple million dollars on that transaction, and now things that simple transaction, if you will, or that change in that that family dynamic of mom and dad running the farm, they passed away. Siblings try to run it and it doesn't work. They're thinking they're down out and they're in real trouble. But investors show up and give them a couple million dollars for a chunk of their property,

and that's when things changed. That's when they went to I think I wrote in the book how they started living high in the hog and I was just kind of playing on words there. But they they went from dirty clothes, hand me down clothes, nothing nice at all because it was work, work, work, and get the farm to keep going, to actually having some stuff. And it

kind of changed the mentality of the siblings. And that's when the two brothers, when Robert and David started to convince their sister that they should, you know, live a little kind of live. You know, we have a little bit of money, now, let's live a little bit. And so they started having these parties, these lavish parties on the farm, and that's when things dramatically changed for how Robert Pickton becomes or is involved in being a serial killer.

for themselves and for their neighbors. So tell us a little bit about this piggy palace, good time society and these parties and what eventually happens with this party scene.

gets these girls to come with him. And mind you, he didn't have a lot of In fact, what I can tell, he didn't have any girlfriends up until the point that he came into money, and he really didn't have girlfriends, but he had women that were interested in him because of his money. So he would go down and pick up girls for him. His brother would go down and pick up girls in the Low Track area and bring them back to the farm. And at this kind of point, the sister sort of kind of starts

divorcing herself from the situation. She's not hugely involved, she's not really into the party scene, and kind of distance herself a little bit from that scene. But you know, I work in law enforcement, and I can tell you that if you have a location that is away from the general public, away from police, the you know, watchful eye, and there's money and prostitution and drugs going on, these kinds of locations attract people who live those lifestyles, and

so eventually this Piggy Palace Robert thought. He tried his society angle, which was kind of like a club, and he kind of fashioned it marginally on what he thought the Hell's Angels would have a club on. But he learned quickly that he was not going to be a Hell's Angel. He was not, you know, a biker. He had really nothing to do with that world. But they did associate at some point because he would buy narcotics

from them from local hs. But at that point, as this thing starts to grow infester, the neighbors are saying, hey, there's this is too much. You know, there's parties every night, there's screaming. It sounds like women are being assaulted. They're not having fun. There's drunk people walking down the dirt road, there's car crashes. I mean, they start basically complaining to Robert and his brother and they say, hey, this is guy,

to stop. Well they don't and they keep going. Well it brings the attention of the local law enforcement and so they Vancouver PD responds out there and says, hey, you know, don't make us come out here again. Stop what you're doing. We know you're you know, he's coming to some money and there's some stuff out here going on. Just keep it down, stop doing it. Eventually the PD leaves.

Robert says okay, but they don't stop, and at some point the city's able to get kind of an ordinance pass if you will, that shuts down the Ticky Palace. They actually go to court and get an injunction slapped on the society. And it kind of crushes Robert because it shuts down this society that he was so high on. He was so fancy. He felt like he was sophisticated, and you know, he's got all these women that want him.

He feels loved. Even though it was, you know, fake, he was it was about drugs and sex, but you know it crushed them. They crushed them pretty good. But there was no sentiment at that time with the parties, with the prostitution, drug the monies, all that stuff, that there was any killing going on at the farm. It was just kind of kind of considered like a brothel of just kind of craziness, you know, and that's why they had that Piggy Palace name for it.

early part of ninety nine. Nineteen ninety nine, Vancouver PD with RCMP, working on a tip from a guy named his Cocks, which is a friend of Roberts, and I'll go into more detail about him in a minute, they formed this task force about these Vancouver missing women and the number goes from forty to fifty to over two to three hundred missing women and it causes a huge concern in the community. Finally, the family members feel like

the police department is going to get involved. But you're the time that this started, the time that the women started missing was around nineteen seventy one, and this task force is not put together until nineteen ninety nine. That's a twenty eight year gap. Almost the generation goes by before law enforcement starts to pay attention to this growing

number of missing women from this Low Track area. And you know, eventually, if you look into this case, you'll see that Vancouver PED actually apologizes profusely for how they handled this case. Holly handled the missing women's portion of it, and so it it's clear that the police department made a huge mistake and they were actually investigated themselves so

it was a big deal. So they they really bundled the investigation, but with and one of the inspectors and all these groups coming together and this guy Bill his cocks his information basically going to the police saying, hey, there's something more going on besides parties out there at the palace. The police department was able to get search horns, so in fact, they were able to get three separate search horns and searched the piggy Palace and the farm

and the remaining property belonging to Robert. They searched it three times and found nothing in those three searches. And the thing that really upset the families is, and what we learned later is that they just basically walked around for a few minutes and walked off the property. They didn't, you know, open refrigerators. That had they open refrigerators, they would have found human remains sitting right next to slabs

of pork. Okay, they didn't do their jobs, and that's why they Vancouver PD specifically was investigated, and that's why they issued a huge apology. And then as this is still ongoing, Robert's still going to the low truck grabbing prostitutes and he's still doing what he's doing out at

this farm. And eventually, after even failed attempts finding anything that was going on up there that was criminal besides the alleged prostitution and drug use, police get police get a wind of some information that hey, you need to go to the Piggy Farm one more time or the Piggy Palace they called it to and look in the

refrigerators near where the slaughterhouse is. And he also need to check the pens where the So Robert had this six hundred pound bore that was kind of his pet that kind of patrolled the property and it kind of intimidated. I mean, six hundred pound animals is huge, So this thing intimidated a lot of people. But this source, this confidential hormant, told the police, hey, go check the boor's pen,

and so again they do it. They go out there and lo and behold, they found a human jaw, the remnants of a human jaw, and the boor's pen, and then they found some body parts in a refrigerator and just kind of this whole case finally got some teeth and finally the whole mention of a serial killer to connecting the low track women missing to the Piggy Palace kind of came.

six hundred pounds bore patrolling the property. So a lot of the things that he said were later backed up after they had this search for the illegal weapon. But also that this Wendy Lynn Eyesletter was wasn't taken very seriously by police at all?

they were prostitutes. And that was one of the key things in this book about picked and that really frustrated me. We all, we're humans. We make mistakes. Law enforcement makes mistakes. In this particular case, too many mistakes were made by the police department. But had they listened to that victim, the one that was stabbed, they would have they would have had, I think a better sense of what was going on, and they would have had some teeth to

turn up the heat on Robert. But don't forget that it wasn't just a police department dropped the ball there. In that particular case with Wendy, the prosecutor who was aware of the case said, hey, for lack of better words, that, hey, she's a prostitute. She's going to get destroyed by the defense attorney. And so he didn't want to have her go to court because she was a heavy drug user and prostitute. And so the prosecutor refused to file that case. So, yes,

the police dropped the ball numerous times. Eventually they tried to convince the prosecutor to file a case, and then at that point the prosecutor said no. So several groups, several people were involved in dismissing what was happening out there, and that led to more women being killed at the Piggy Palace.

this and the number of exhibits. So tell us what they first find and then from there how it proceeds.

And remember too that we didn't talk about, but Robert had been picked up on some charges unrelated to anything really going on at the Piggy Palace or unrelated to any type of serial killer investigation, and he was allowed to bail out, but when he bailed out, he was placed on twenty four hours surveillance, and so information and probable cause developed from observations on that twenty four hour surveillance and the information from the quote unquote informant which

was that guy, which was Bill. They went out there to that farm again and specifically looked in certain areas, and that's when they found a human torso, half of a human torso. They found human skulls. They found ahead of a female. They found skulls that were cut in half, and inside the skulls were like hands and feet, human hands and feet. And that's when that's when kind of

the wheels fell off. Was like, oh my gosh. You know, the police department realized quickly that they had themselves a large problem, and they decided that, okay, we're going to have to search this full property, you know, thoroughly. And that's when you get into the expense part. There was over one hundred anthropologists called out to that property and they dug for over a year and continually found human remains, bones, teeth, jaws,

everything all throughout the farm. And so it suggests at some point when they started trying to put these remains together and kind of form bodies, if you will. The number was in the high seventies of full remains that they had recovered out there, So you had twenty four hour a day digging seven days a week. In total.

I believe this case costs close to one hundred million dollars for law enforcement to pay all the cranes and the operators, and the evidence texts, and the forensic specialists, the anthropologists, law enforcement, the overtime, everything that went into this case kind of absorbed the Crown kind of it. Just the PD was exhausted. I mean, it was one of those things where they found those first few items and and cordoned off the entire property and started uh

systematically searching. They spent over a year finding evidence of crimes. That was the body portions in a little trailer that was kind of the spot that Robert Let lived in or stayed in. They found evidence of his kind of SEXUALBVNCY. They found for example, and it's you know, not a fun thing to talk about, but one of the things that he did was he used a a dildo if you will, on one of the one of the prostitutes.

But he had fixed a twenty two caliber rifle to that device, and while inserted into one of his victims, he pulled the trigger and killed her. They also found syringes filled with window washer fluid. I don't know if you know how that works, but if you want to research that, it's a very brutal way to kill somebody if by injecting them with that. They found handcuffs, they found just you know, a treasure trove if you will, for an investigator's point of view of items that they

were using to build a case against Robert. So it just took so long to unearth all this evidence, categorize it, and then put it in warehouses and try to make sense of it before they brought this case to court.

with anything. And you know, I don't know, I don't know if she had any inclination because she she distanced herself quite a bit before most of this really started. But David, he had a history of violence as well. He was no you know, I mean, remember he ran over a child and watched his mom dump him, dump the child into the to the water, and the kid, you know, for just so you know that the child that tim he could have survived. The autopsy revealed that

he drowned. So had they just called for an ambulance or or helped him for that child would have survived.

So David was no you know, no saint. And and it was my opinion right in the very beginning of investigating this case that those guys were of the same ilk and I just don't I don't have any concrete evidence to prove that David was involved with all this stuff, but there's no way in my mind, given the fact that they were inseparable, given the fact that they both started using drugs, they both had prostitutes, they both went to the low track. There was over seventy plus victims

found on their farms. There's just I just can't believe he didn't have any involvement in any of those murders. I just can't. I can't believe it. So they also as they searched the area, they kind of branched out a little bit from the farm, and there was a neighbor that was friends one of the neighbors I was friends with Robert, and they also found two bodies over there on the outside edge of Robert's property. So every time they kind of moved quadrants, if you will, they

just kept finding more bodies. So it was it was a pretty throughsome and long term. It was going for so long though, that it was almost like you couldn't get more shocked. It came out that Robert was feeding his victims to the pigs, and these same pigs were

being butchered and sold to local families into restaurants. So at some point members of the community and members, you know, neighbors of Robert and the Pictins were actually eating pigs that were fed by these victims, you know, fed these victims, and they just kind of that was kind of one

of the things that rocked the community pretty hard. It was one thing that all these women, missing women, you know, a lot of them were tied to the farm and now they're finding a lot of evidence of dead bodies. But then it was another to actually, you know, dispose of the bodies to these pigs, and how the pigs eat them and then butcher the pigs and sell them to people to eat. It just kind of really it rocked the world of a lot of people, even law enforcement.

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in two thousand and two. There is a problem with the amount of victims that are positively identified and then being able to do this trial. This is something that Canadian law had never seen the complexity of this trial. And then you also introduced a couple very very colorful characters for the prosecution, one named Casanova ironically and another name Chubb. So tell us a little bit about what these two characters have to say about Robert Picton and how it's utilized in this trial.

kept kind of live, if you will. He kind of put those twenty on the shelf, and it was his prerogative that he could do that. But it was very unique. But the trial court judge or was very cognizant of the fact that this trial was going to go on forever, even with six victims, and it was going to cost too much, and he basically was like, if he gets six, you know, it's pretty much in his mind as good as twenty six and because of the sentencing guidelines at

that time. You know they've changed since, but at that time, he weren't really going to get much more time on top of the case, so he split those up and it upset the other twenty known victims. Their families were outraged. They wanted justice for their their family members too, But the judge ultimately decided that he was going to keep that ruling, and so he did. But as you can imagine the court case, the trial was, it was a zoo.

I mean it just with so many pieces of evidence, so much time invested in the case, so many agencies involved, there just was gonna it was still gonna be a lengthy trial. And so it started. It started with a bang. There was a lot of point and hollering and objections and stuff. And interestingly enough, a little sidebar on this was there would be several times in which Robert would

appeal his charges or his sentences and convictions. But there was a ploy used by law enforcement in this case that's kind of used sparingly throughout the United States as well. And while he was in custody fighting his case in the very beginning, when he was arrested for the first two murder charges. Vancouver PD inserted a law enforcement officer into the jail, so it was a full fledged officer, a badged officer into the jail pretending to be an inmate.

And it was at that point that Robert confessed to at least forty nine murders to that undercover cop, and so I thought that was unique. It was a very unique way of trying to get data for this case. And the reason why it was agreed upon because it's not It is definitely not the norm to do that. I've seen it in my own career, but it's not the norm. But the reason why was because of the

two guys you talked about, Chubb and Casanova. There was some great concern by the prosecution team that Casanova and Chubb might not hold up in court, and so they were trying to get something concrete, and a confession would be fairly concrete, and so the prosecutor was trying to

hedge his bets, if you will. It later came out that he made those statements to this guy, but the judge throughout the quote unquote confession because he didn't like that police had snuck in undercover comp into the jail. So it was very interesting. This judge was unique and it was very specific on how he did things, and so that kind of backfired against prosecution team. But you

talked about Chubb, and he talked about Casanova. So Casanova was brought in by the prosecution team to testifying court against Robert, and Casanova and Robert were good friends, and I can't confirm it right now, but I believe they're still good friends. And it kind of has to do with how Casanova testifying court against him. The prosecution brought him in to try to talk about Casanova seeing crimes being occurred, our crimes by Robert to these women victims.

But at some point Casanova kind of changes his story and it was later believed that Casanova was ultimately actually working for Robert to try to help Robert by confusing the jury with his testimony. But Casanova made some damaging comments in court about watching crimes occurred, if you will, by Robert to these prostitutes. There was some question about why didn't he intervene, why didn't he help out with these victims, and he said he was afraid, if you will,

of what Robert might do. To him since he saw what he was doing to these women, And ultimately it turned out that his name was Pat and pat pat statements in court really didn't do anything for the prosecution and actually helped out Robert in his case the defense. So, mind you, these guys are all criminals. So Casanova and

Chubb had criminal histories. They were not you know, quote unquote outstanding or positive members of the community, if you will, you know, based on how you and I would perceive them today. But they still had something to say in court,

and so the prosecution used them. Chubb Scott Schubb, he was also another friend of Picton's or Roberts, and he he said that he saw a lot of a lot of like physical abuse and strangling of prostitutes by Robert, and so the prosecution brought that in to say, look, you know, Robert's not this nice, kind of homely guy who got lost on a farm with a bunch of

money and drugs. You know, he's a he's a maniac, he's violent, and so Chubb was brought in to make it appear as though Robert was this extremely violent man.

But what happened it also backfired against the prosecution because the defense attorney was able to bring out some information that they had figured out, and I'm not sure how they did it, but they basically were able to convince the jury and based on some questioning that they had of Chubb that Chubb was actually being paid to testify against Robert, which the defense said would obviously make it so that Chubb would say whatever you had to say

because he was being paid by the prosecution, which again severely crushed his credibility and crush the prosecutions to what they had called a bit originally their star witnesses Chubb and Casanova.

you will, by when he was questioned by the prosecution as well as the defense attorneys, and his credibility was super strong. But he said that he had dinner one day with Robert, and he had dinner with him, not very often, but he said during that dinner that Robert told him specifically, kind of like in a spontaneous statement, if you will, that he had killed some prostitutes and fed him to his pigs. He said that, you know,

he was shocked. Del would said he was shocked, but he was just kind of like, you know, he didn't know if Robert was joking or what really the angle was. And they continued to have dinner, and he Robert continued and said, hey, well, you know these proceeds I pick up from the low track, I have sex with them, I kill him out here, and Robert would continue. He talked about how he would hack up the body parts of the female victims, feed him to his pigs, or

he would store them in large barrels. And get rid of them at a local disposal plant. And he said what convincing to the jury was that Robert explained all this so easily and so clearly to Bellwood that he thought it was true. Like it was like, how could this not be true? He's saying it so definitively of what he's done to these prostitutes, and it just was overwhelming.

In court, everybody was kind of like stunned. Now we talked about like he was the ninety seventh witness, so you can imagine, you know, sitting in court and listening to this, to all these different characters coming in, but this one had a lot of kind of had a lot of weight to it. And because he had so much information that supposedly directly came from Robert, specifically about what Robert was doing to the victims, it was very damaging against Robert for his case.

found guilty of six second degree murders. And so there was some some rumblings in Canada's as far as was it worth a four year investigation and a year and a half trial at the tune of one hundred million dollars for this case, But that was sort of the people who didn't have any family members tied up in this case. The family members of the victims don't see

a number, they don't see how long something takes. They were just happy, just ecstatic, if you will, that he was convicted, and so they were anxious to see what he would be, what his sentencing would be. And back then, you know, you and I talked about it earlier. But they've changed the law a little bit Canada. I'm not sure this case specifically is why they did it, but there's been unfortunately quite a few serial killers in Canada and with a large amount of victims, and so I

think they changed it. But he was able to be sentenced between ten and twenty five years, and that was going to be before parole, the possibility of parole, which was to be set by the trial judge. So after all, it was said he was found guilty of six second degree murders sent to the maximum amount of time he could be sentenced to, which was twenty five years for a second degree murder, and it was kind of the norm.

It was sort of accepted in the law enforcement community because that's what the law was in Canada, but in the United States and around the globe, it was a shocker. It really upset people. They could not understand how a guy could kill six people. And at that time it was equated. And I'm from the United States, so I can tell you what we thought it was and perceived

it was. But you could kill one person for a thousand people and get the same amount of time and that's just, you know, I don't understand it, but that was the law. It's changed now so you can get twenty five years I think for each person you kill, which makes it you know, he kills six, you're at one hundred and fifty years, I believe, so you're gonna die in cussy. So that people feel at least the

Canadians who wanted more time are happy about that. The outsiders, people outside of Canada kind of understand that new change in the law, but it was kind of hard to understand how you could kill one or a thousand people and get the same amount of time in Canada at the time that Robert was sentenced, So there was some frustration again the judge that his name was Williams. He was not a fan, James Williams was his name. He

wasn't a fan of Robert picked In. He was repulsed by Robert picked In, and he had great, kind of a great sense of resolve when he got to finally sentence him. So it was a bit of relief for the families that were involved. But you only had twenty six victims on the table, and they found remnants of seventy plus bodies, and over that period of seventy one to ninety nine, there's been three hundred plus women missing

from the Low Track area. So we don't know how many women actually were murdered by Robert Ticken, but it was definitely a significant case for sure.

consecutive sentence, which would seem reasonable the three murders. You would be charged for each one of those murders, and and then your parole eligibility could be up to twenty five years for each one, getting up to seventy five years, say for three, and it would be that was part of the outrage that this person would have a parole hearing and many parole hearings as a result of this, but also that they could not convict despite the syringe

with the window washer fluid window wiper washer fluid. It looked like, why couldn't you get a first degree murder conviction? What was the rest of the criticism though, you talk about the twenty six and then the frustration at only six could be tried in the court, But what was it? What was the talk in Canada and probably nationally too in terms of frustration, and also what what was the what were they criticizing? What areas were they critical of in this case? Afterwards?

under severe duress. The families still, even after Robert was convicted, wanted answers, and the PD did not have them. If they did have them, they didn't give them to the families. It was kind of like Vancouver PD was hoping that, okay, listen, everybody, we screwed this thing up for years, and yes, we acknowledged that because we did so, more women probably were murdered. But we caught him, he's convicted, he's going away to prison,

so let's move on. And that was kind of a slap in the face to everybody, especially the family members of the victims, that the PD just still didn't seem to want to take a lot of ownership of what they did wrong in this case. So there was still press conferences being held in which family members were actively

criticizing the police department. There was a request and kind of a protest, if you will, that the police department would be investigated because there was some concern or some allegations that somebody inside maybe was involved with Robert and that's why things were bungled the way they were. And so the investigation was done, and the police department basically at some point was basically knocked their knees and finally acquiesced and said, yeah, we we get it. You're right,

we did this wrong. And then as soon as they started to try to appeal to the citizens that they serve, the citizens weren't happy still and said, well, that's great, you got Robert picked in and there's seventy plus victims that we think we're out at that farm, But where's the other two hundred and twenty five plus victims at you know, what's going on in low Track, what's going on with the Indigenous women in Canada? What's going on with this? And so they didn't let them go, they

didn't let it stand. They demanded answers, and it it

actually helped with these missing women in Canada. And so there was a foul case in the public's the public, the media, the victims of the families with the police department, and it there's still people to this day who are very upset with how that thing, how that entire picting case was handled, and so it's it's a very very ugly eye for the police department, and it definitely trickled through the United States to a point where I'm in law enforcement and I know these cases, and many of

the detectives that I work with know these cases, and you know, it's it's not a joking matter, but there has been talk about we can't have another Robert Pickton case,

or we can't have another investigation bundled like that. So when you when you go outside your country and other agencies are trying to prevent having the same errors that you had over such a long period of time and so many errors, you definitely definitely need to step back as an agency and look inside and say how do we fix this and how do we prevent this from ever happening again. So it was a it was a pretty bad situation.

huge issue. And the Missing Women's inquiry that is now going to go ahead next year is still from this same same from the same impetus, from the same horrors that Robert Picton inflicted on women, and and the fear that was instilled on the West Coast for all those years while the serial killer was loose. You also include in this some interesting letters in two thousand and seven because you talk about that Picton, unlike many other serial killers,

really didn't have anything to say to anybody. But in two thousand and seven you talk about a pen pal, Thomas Ludami, that he had a hobby of corresponding with these serial killers. What does he release to the Sun and tell us, as you do in the book, some of the things that he had to say to this Thomas Ludami.

Thomas got some letters. Uh, he got lots of letters actually from Robert, but he released some of them to the Sun and the Son's a huge newspaper and it's a huge print and there's a lot of volumes of that coming out. So it kind of well, it's kind of interesting that that the Son would pick these up.

But they this Robert Pickton case and Robert himself and the whole totality of this case and how it's still ongoing and we still hear about it caught the eye of the Sun. And so they bit and they published some of these letters. And I included some of the excerpts from the letters that I was able to get in the book, just some small spots, and and in that area you can kind of see where Robert kind of perceives himself as as being godlike, having powers like God.

He talks about uh, kind of mentions how prostitutes are kind of in his mind a little bit impure or immoral, and but he doesn't he doesn't confess to anything in these letters he's and a lot of people assumed, and I did too, that Robert Pickton was kind of a a very unintelligent man and kind of operating at the low end of the spectrum as far as intelligence. But

I don't know. I kind of have a As years go on, even though I published this book and wrote this book and stuff, I still don't haven't let this case go. I still get calls, emails, I still try to get information. I actually talked to our emailed to guys that were actually the guys who interviewed Robert, So I have you know, I still have a strong interest in this case. And as I go on, I feel like he's smarter than he kind of led on. I feel like he kind of enjoyed what he was doing

at the farm. I think he reveled in it. One thing we didn't talk about was that he didn't do a lot of drugs and alcohol until he got introduced to crack cocaine. And when he started using crack cocaine is when he started doing all these things. I have written plenty of books, and there are plenty of stories of serial killers who have either traumatic experiences or ingest narcotics like crack or LSD that kind of completely changed

their mind and how it works and they become serial killers. So, you know, there wasn't a lot in my book about that, and there's not really a lot talked about about that, but these letters really kind of he would actually refer to excerpts from the Bible. He would quote, you know,

acts and and just kind of ramble. But everything he kind of talked about was God and Christians and so the even so, you know, I mentioned earlier how James Williams, which was the judge, the trial court judge, didn't really like Robert. Well, Robert didn't really like him either, and so in some of these letters he kind of made some comments about the judge, about the police, about our CMP and kind of saying, you know that they all plotted against them. He kind of claimed his innocence again.

He mentioned that he was going to clog up the courts for a longer period of time through appeals. He kind of kind of giggled or not giggled, but made it clear that he was happy that he cost the crown one hundred million dollars, and you know, he took some shots at law enforcement, at the community and that

kind of stuff. So they were interesting letters. It would have been nice to see all the letters, but Ludomine didn't put him out, and then there was a question on whether or not they were all legit or not, and there was an investigation done because everybody questions everything nowadays, and so there was some questions as to whether or not picked and actually even sent those letters and they were an investigation was done and it was determined that

he did in fact send those letters out. So it's interesting that he reached out to somebody and that you know, there's a lot of people who communicate with him by letters, but Ludamin was the only one to let those letters out and got them into the sun, so it was kind of unique.

your experience. I'm a low.

And then to the to the severity. You have gang wars, turf wars, you have the violence, you have girls as young as eleven getting into prostitution, you have dead bodies being found on a regular out there in that Low Track area. There's not a lot of housing. I mean, it's like you said, I have been to a lot of CD places in California. I can talk about Oakland or East pal Walta, I can talk about Chicago, can talk about Baltimore. I've been to places in Florida that

you don't want to be caught you know alone. I've been places in the Bahamas. I mean, I've been places across the world that you don't want to be caught in. But when I researched the Low Track area, it just kind of, you know, blew my mind. But what blows my mind now is that it's still that way from everything that I can figure out and from everybody that I talk to, it's still not the place you want

to take your family for a walkthrough. And that happens, and people will often ask me, because I'm in law enforcement, Hey, you know this place is terrible. Do something about it. Well, you know, you can't just go in there and do something about it. It doesn't work that way. Everybody has rights. You have to have staffing, you have to have a game plan, you have to have funding, you have to

have the resources to make that happen. But with having said that, there are certain places in certain communities, I would argue that almost every community has areas on the wrong side of the tracks, if you will, or areas where you don't really want to go. It just attracts those type of people and you're not gonna clean it out.

Example I can give you is East Palu Alto. I have place that was when I was in the training program sixteen years or seventeen years ago, where there was several stabbings a night, there was seven or eight bars in a row, and it was just a free for all, not until and we made arrests out of that place, out of that area, three or four, five, six even more arrests a night every night for about twelve years,

and nothing changed. Right, So you get to a point as a law enforcement member where you wonder, what's it going to take. Well, in this case, what it took was some extremely wealthy investors purchasing that entire piece of property and demolishing it. And now there's a four seasons

hotel there. So you went from stabbings, homicides, gangs, the whole nine to arrest by law enforcement time and time again for a period of twelve years, nothing changes, and all of a sudden, they leveled it, put in a four seasons hotel, which is a high end hotel in the United States, and crime significantly decreased in the hotel parking lot area, but outside of it it's the same whole place. It's just interesting how that works.

River killer. And he also said something that I thought was very interesting too, that he only got caught because he was sloppy as far as you found out when they did the first three searches. You say that they missed some obvious stuff, but was, like you say, some

people have talked about his IQ being eighty one. Do you think that he was a little bit smarter And was there any any attempt by picked him to elude police and was he successful and did that lead to maybe him being as he described sloppy in the end.

I think David was far more intelligent. I think he actively participated with the prostitutes and the things going on at that farm, and I think he assisted his brother and they worked as a team. That's my personal opinion. I don't have anything concrete to put that on. That is how I feel, and it comes with comments like

he made to that undercover officer about being sloppy. It comes with the fact that his brother skated any arrests during this investigation, and as far as I could tell, had a very small, small appearance in court, which makes it I just don't understand why the prosecution wouldn't set him on this stand for a week to talk about his brother, to try to build that picture of this guy as a serial killer, and he never that did not happen. I don't know why. There's a lot of

unknowns in this case, but that's my opinion. Is that if it wasn't his brother with somebody else, but he had assistance, he had help, he needed it. And then the stuff about Ridgeway and having fifty so he would have one more. We see that a lot with serial killers, where they idolize another serial killer and they want to be you know, they want to play that one up

game with that person. And to make a statement like that sheds a small glimpse into the mind really of what's really going on in Robert's mind to brag like that. But on the flip side, and something that has to be discussed is I've talked to thousands of criminals in my career. I currently work in.

So I've seen these guys say and do almost any thing, and so there was some question, well, well, Robert wouldn't have been smart enough to pull all this off, so you know, it probably only just did the six and there was only enough evidence for the six and stuff. So it caused a lot of confusion. But my opinion, based on now going on six years of investigating this case and the information I've got after this book came

out years ago, I think his brother was involved. I think Robert's a little bit more intelligent than eighty one as far as an IQ, And unless he really actually said something someday, or we have something else to go on, we just kind of have to go with what's in front of us.

if they were at all. I mean, there's ninety seven witnesses, so I can't remember all of them.

they actively participated in murders, I don't think so. Whether or not they wanted to help Robert out, because he probably got out of control one night or one day with one prostitute or one night with another prostitute. Would it be beyond them to help him, I don't think so. I think they would help him. I don't think they would actually be killers, but I think they would help Robert if they had to.

cool thing for them to do. It's kind of like what I do, or I donate a lot of my almost all my proceeds to victims of violent crimes and cancer research and stuff like that, and they donated some of their proceeds or what they got from those settlements. But you know, I can tell you that a police department is not going to give a settlement outunless they

made a main your mistake. The fact that they settled suggests that they did and confirms that we talked about at length in this discussion today about how the PD dropped the ball, But man, fifty thousand dollars just it blows my mind. I don't know if it's a Canadian thing.

I can tell you right now, in California or in the United States, if somebody is going to settle with an agency, or if there's a wrongful death or some type of settlement, even like a you know, a case in which the law enforcement officer takes another person's life but it's deemed a substantial or a shoot that was correct, you know, so the officer did what they were supposed

to do, but it still somebody lost their life. Most people in the United States are going to get paid out something to the to the family, but it's usually around a million dollars. So if you have if you have that number of that figure United States, and you have fifty thousand in Canada, you know, I don't know, I don't know if it's appropriate or not, but that's what they settled on.

him getting out parole after twenty five years. And my Canadian experience killers like Paul Bernardo and Robert Picton, they will go out of their way, not very much like Manson and his cohorts never ever see the light of day get parole. But as it's small comfort to people that have to experience new numerous parole hearings on his behalf.

them to death on death row is deemed inhumane. And so now we have, excuse me, a death row that is filled with people who will never be whose sentences will never be heard or they won't be taken out. It's hard to deal with, especially for the victims' families.

Thank you very much Chris for this interview.