Victims' families, women's advocates demand RCMP halt plan to dispose of Robert Pickton evidence
CBC
The families of people murdered by Robert Pickton are among those demanding the RCMP halt its plan to return or dump thousands of pieces of evidence seized by police during the investigation into the serial killer.
The group opposing the move, which includes families, lawyers and advocates for missing and murdered women, sent a letter dated Dec. 11 to the federal public safety minister, the commissioner of the RCMP, and British Columbia's attorney general and solicitor general, calling on each "to take immediate steps to preserve Pickton evidence."
"Why in this case are they trying to erase the evidence?" said Sarah Jean de Vries at the news conference Monday morning
Her mother, who shared her name, disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in the spring of 1998. Her DNA, and that of 33 other women, was later found on Pickton's pig farm in Port Coquitlam, about 25 kilometres east of downtown Vancouver.
"They never informed my family. This has been so traumatizing for me," said Lorelei Williams about the RCMP's move to dispose of evidence.
Williams' cousin Tanya Holyk went missing in 1996 and was later named as one of Pickton's victims. Her aunt, Belinda Williams, also went missing from the Downtown Eastside nearly 50 years ago.
Pickton was found guilty in 2007 of six counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of women who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
They were Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin and Brenda Wolfe.
Pickton was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
In 2010, after the Supreme Court of Canada upheld his sentence, 20 further first-degree murder charges against Pickton were stayed because he was already serving the maximum sentence.
In 2020, the RCMP began filing applications to the court to obtain judicial authorizations to dispose of exhibits that were brought forward in the 2007 trial. The long list includes a woman's platform shoe and high heel, a pink pillowcase and a syringe.
The seven-page letter released Monday, titled "A Call To Preserve Evidence In The Pickton Case," is endorsed by nearly three dozen different organizations from across Canada, including several Indigenous women's groups, as well as several academics and other people including Vancouver East MP Jenny Kwan.
The letter is co-signed by Sue Brown, a director and staff lawyer with the group Justice for Girls, and Sasha Reid, who is behind a database of missing people and unsolved murders in Canada.
"For the families of those victims, justice has been elusive and they still hold hope that one day they will know what happened to their loved ones," the letter says.