Butcher (14 page)

“She [Roxanne] gave me head.”

“After she gave you head, what happened?”

“Nothing. She was nice. She tried phoning me, back three months ago. She went to Abbotsford. I heard she moved back to Vancouver.”

“Who’s your girlfriend now?”

“Nancy. We never had sex.”

“Who was the last girl you were with?”

“Roxanne.”

“She gave you head eight to ten months ago and you haven’t had sex since?”

“No, she had to go have an operation for a dislocated back. She wanted me to dance. I don’t dance.”

“What’s your favorite way of having sex?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not fussy.”

“You haven’t had sex in how long?”

“About a year.”

“Funny, on studies of people who’ve been identified as killing lots of people, something happened to them as a child. When you look back…tell me about the first sexual relationship you had with a girl.”

“Not much to say. I wasn’t interested. Can’t remember.”

“The first time with a prostitute—tell me about that?”

“I never had sex with Connie, either,” he said, referring to the girl he had met in Michigan. “She was the first girl I went out with.”

“Who was the first prostitute?”

“I think it was Lynn. The one that knifed me. Probably the first time. I just wanted to go home and go to bed, but I had thirty-four hundred dollars on me.”

Pickton was either confused about who had knifed him, or he was deliberately stressing his purported difficulty remembering people.

“The first time with a prostitute was Lynn, and then Roxanne,” Fordy confirmed.

“Roxanne. She’s a nice person.”

“Do you think she’s dead?”

“I don’t know! I hope not. She’s a nice person. I hope not. She phoned me about three months ago.”

“So you’re telling me, none of those girls has been to your place, and you never had sex with them?”

“No, but it doesn’t mean much.”

“It means a lot. We’ve got the best cops here….”

Fordy trailed off as a woman entered the interrogation room with lunch.

As the interrogation continued in the small RCMP interview room in Surrey, Sergeant Bill Fordy continued with his probe of Pickton’s life and tried to draw out what Pickton may have known about the missing women. Among the additional details he elicited from the suspected serial killer’s background through his questioning was the fact that Pickton had held a contract with the Vancouver Police Department for purchasing unclaimed cars that had been impounded by the police.

“I buy cars from the Vancouver police,” Pickton stated. “I have a contract there. Buy more than seventy a year. Had the contract almost four years. Just buy the old ones for salvage—there and other auctions. Strip the motor out and sell the motor. I found six hundred bucks in one. It wasn’t mine. I couldn’t take it. I took the money back to the owner. I don’t steal from nobody. People steal from me—left, right, and center. People knife me in the back. I’m just trying to help people. I try to help people.

“In one car,” he continued, “there was a single-bladed ax that had blood all over it. It came out of a 1989 Chevy Astro. The backseat was folded together. There was blood all over the backseats, everywhere else. But life goes on. When I pick up anything, I take it back to VPD, they say we don’t want anything back. Nothing. I go through about a hundred-fifty vehicles a year. I don’t have time to worry about one needle or anything else.”

“You said ‘need all’?” Fordy asked, trying to clarify what Pickton had said.

“Needles,” Pickton repeated.

“
Oh,
needles.”

“I look through glove boxes, trunks—you won’t believe what you find. It’s outrageous. Outrageous. Bras, tops, blouses, clothes,” Pickton said.

Pickton’s comments about the women’s items that he claimed he found in the vehicles he purchased could have been his way of deceptively attempting to show how so many women’s garments and other items had come into his possession—or it could have been the truth. Fordy had no way of knowing yet just how much was truth and how much was bullshit—but he did know that Mona Wilson’s DNA had turned up in bloodstains found on a garment in Pickton’s closet.

“When you find that stuff, do you try to sell it?” Fordy asked.

“No, no time. I bring two, three, four a day in. I don’t take anything out. If I see something valuable, I do. Tools, things like that, I put it aside.”

“I can understand, with that quantity coming in. So you said you find bras, clothes?”

“Everything’s there. People live in their cars…. A woman was supposed to come back and do laundry, take her clothes. They were all on the bed. She never came back. I don’t know what happened to her. She was staying in a van behind the Cobalt (hotel). Another person was staying behind the Georgia Viaduct.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know. They all look alike, and so many come and go.”

“You’d remember if you killed them—”

“I don’t remember them!” Pickton exclaimed. “I don’t. I don’t! I’m telling you the honest truth. I’m telling you that. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t, I don’t!”

At one point the interview turned toward the inhaler found inside Pickton’s trailer, which he denied knowing anything about. He also confirmed that a girl named Sarah had stayed over at his place one night.

“I gave her a hundred-dollar bill,” Pickton said. “And I never had sex with her. I have a black bag that came from her, a big, long bag. I got people coming in and out of my place, you wouldn’t believe. Even after hours. If you don’t believe me, you can talk to Nancy. She was staying there.”

Pickton again referred to a woman named Lynn, and told Fordy that he had called paramedics for her on one occasion when she overdosed on drugs while staying at his place.

“Do I look like a murderer?” Pickton asked. “Innocent people get set up. People will set anybody up. I’m not trying to get away with anything. I’m telling you the honest truth. Take me the way I am. I’m myself. I’m sorry about living. I’m sorry for the way I am. There’s quite a few people knew about my gun. I never kept any secrets. I kept open-minded.”

“Tell me about your .22,” Fordy prodded, now that Pickton had opened the door about the gun.

“I shouldn’t be talking,” Pickton said. “My lawyer’s not here. I really shouldn’t be. But I don’t keep secrets. I’ve told everybody about everything. I sometimes use my .22—oh, I shouldn’t be talking—on big boars. They have big heads, very solid, very heavy, very big bones. Sometimes it takes four, five shots to bring it down. I put plastic over the top of the gun to quiet it down. I shouldn’t be talking about that.

“Take me any way you want,” he continued. “I remember dates, faces—I don’t remember any of these people. I’m charged, you can do whatever you want to do with me, but that doesn’t make me a murderer. I was a plain little farm boy. I’m just myself. If I had to do the whole thing over again, I don’t know if I’d change very much.”

Pickton was near tears by this point, and his voice had dropped to almost a whisper.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for living. I’m tired. I’m sorry.”

“I understand your need to lie to me, because you’re scared,” Fordy said. “In your gut you don’t know what is going to happen. All you know right now is, you’re just a big media celebrity. You’re bigger than the pope—you’re bigger than Princess Diana, than f***ing bin Laden. You’re on the front page of every paper.”

News of being in the newspaper seemed to bring Pickton back to life, but Fordy could not tell at that point whether Pickton was pleased or bothered over his sudden celebrity status and infamy.

“The paper?” he asked. “I’m in the paper today?”

“This is it,” Fordy replied. “You are done. There is irrefutable DNA evidence you’re responsible.”

“You mean I’m in the paper today!”

“There’s a map for each of us, a reason,” Fordy said. “Your father was a hard worker, your mum was a hard worker. Your sister did what she did to you.”

“She didn’t do anything to me. She went to school.”

“We’ll look back and wonder why things happened. Why did my mom die? Why didn’t Connie come up and marry me, when all I wanted was her to be [by] my side?”

“Not necessarily,” Pickton said defiantly.

“That’s what you wanted.”

“Not necessarily. I miss her. I miss my mom.”

“If your mum were still alive, you probably wouldn’t be in this chair right now,” Fordy suggested. “If you could go back, you’d change things.”

“I wouldn’t change much.”

“That tells me you have a good side. You are who you are.”

“I’m in the paper today?” Pickton asked again.

“Yes, you are. Do you know why? Because you’re done. It’s done. It’s all over. All the things you need to build a house are in place.”

“I don’t think any of those girls have been to my place.”

“I’d rather you don’t tell me that,” Fordy said. “No lies. I’d rather you not talk to me. I told you about the blood splatter people. They’ve been at your place. They’re getting evidence from everywhere. They’re spending a million a month digging. This is the biggest crime-scene investigation in Canadian history. They’ve done DNA, had people come look at blood spatter. If it was one isolated thing, it wouldn’t matter—but this is a freight train, and it’s only been going for two weeks.

“The only thing that matters now is what kind of person is Robert Pickton,” Fordy continued. “I think you’re a good person. If you were like Clifford Olson [a Canadian serial killer] that would be a different matter, my friend.”

Fordy paused for a few moments and retrieved some photos from file folders that he had brought with him to the interrogation room. He explained DNA to Pickton again, and how it can be used as evidence.

“When you and I shake hands, your DNA is on my hands, mine is on yours,” Fordy said. “Jack Nelles—he’s the blood spatter expert—he’s in your motor home. He’s done a forensic examination. What we’ve done is look at the mattress.”

He showed Pickton a photo of the bloody mattress.

“See anything there?”

“No,” Pickton said. “Drawings?”

“Looks like a dog,” Fordy said. “What it is, is bloodstains. Lots of blood. It’s bloodletting. We talked earlier about special lighting. This is the same mattress under a different light.”

Fordy pointed out the blood spots and smears that had been identified as Mona Wilson’s.

“What’s that got to do with me?” Pickton asked as he leaned toward the photo for a closer look.

“Her blood is all over your place,” Fordy said as he flipped through the photos. “Cupboards. This is where she was killed, rendered unconscious. See where it drags along out of the place—same thing there. This is a crime scene investigator’s dream come true. The table, the counter, this is the part I want to show you.”

“That doesn’t mean I did it,” Pickton protested.

“I’m going to show you how you’re going to be convicted,” Fordy stated. “It’s normal to hold on to the lie, hoping it’s going to pull you out. It’s not. There’s DNA all over the place—floor, walls. It’s analyzed to come back to Mona.”

“I don’t know her.”

“That’s her shoes. She had her shoes on when you killed her. You put her shoes in the closet because they had blood on them.”

“What! No—no.”

“Your DNA. Her DNA’s there. Now you’re wondering how does her DNA tie to me. She died at my place,” Fordy suggested.

“Possible, okay.”

“But you’re thinking, ‘Bill, how are you going to prove it to [convict] me?’ Experts say you’re a logical thinker, Rob. And they say once I show you, you’re going to accept responsibility. That’s what the experts say.”

“So my picture’s all over the front page! Shit! I never did anything.”

“Stop it! I don’t want to hear lies. If your mother, whom you love and respect, were here now, she’d want you to stand up and be a solid, good person. You’re probably scared inside.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“You’re wondering how to get out of this.”

“I didn’t do anything! I don’t know her!”

“It’s okay to be scared,” Fordy continued. “This is a scary, scary time. Because there’s some cops who think you’re a crazy, sick, demented wacko. Some cops think these girls are out there selling their bodies, have no self-respect, jamming needles into their arms—heroin, coke, whatever—they’re the master of their own destinies. I’ve been in cases where girls steal from each other, breaking into houses, stealing from hardworking people—there are different camps in this building. There are camps that see you as some sick, demented man—some weirdo. I hope that’s not the case. You’re probably wondering, ‘What are my friends going to think of me? Are they still going to be my friends? Are they going to abandon me? I’ll go away to jail forever, and be alone. I can’t work anymore. I can’t go back to my farm. Why is this happening to me?’”

“Why?” Pickton uttered.

“‘Why have I done the things I’ve done?’”

“I didn’t!”

“If you aren’t asking why, then I am scared for you,” Fordy said. “Then you are beyond help. You are beyond ever understanding yourself. And you are beyond anyone ever understanding you. You are that weirdo, if that’s the case.”

“This is way out of hand,” Pickton said quietly.

“You’re right. It’s way out of hand. The train is picking up speed. You’re going to be convicted and go to jail. The only question is, what kind of person are you? Because you’re done on this…. They’re going to keep going through your property and find more. This is over for you. This is over, Rob. This isn’t going away. I know you just want balance. You were born into the pig farm. Deep down you probably loved it at one time.

“You know, when the cancer was in your mom, and it just ate and ate away and she got sicker and sicker and then died,” Fordy continued. “That’s what this lie is. It’s a cancer. And you’re the only one that can take care of that. You’re the surgeon and you’ve got the knife in your hand—you’ve got to cut that cancer out. And you’ll be asking, ‘Why, why, why?’”

“You mean it’s in the paper and everything else? I can’t even go to the courthouse, or anything else.”

“It’s going to be hard on you. It’s not going to be easy.”

“I’m not going to get bail, or anything else.”

“You’ll be held in custody. You’re in custody.”

“Until I deal with this here.”

“It’s done. It’s the only thing you can do.”