Butcher (17 page)

Adam told Pickton that his brother, Dave, did not want to see him destroyed, in the media or otherwise. He was simply trying to understand. But, Adam said, there were others on the task force that believed Dave was somehow involved in the case.

“Half of my investigators think Dave is fully involved,” Adam said. “They think that the two of you were involved. There’s other people that think the Hells Angels are involved with you.”

He paused for a moment and stared at Pickton as Pickton shifted nervously in his chair. Sensing that he might be getting somewhere with his prime suspect, Adam moved closer to Pickton.

“Willie, you know how big or how small this is, you know whether it’s just you, you know whether it’s you and the girls, and you know whether it was you and Dinah, you know whether it’s you and Lynn, you know…Willie. You know whether it’s you and Dave. But if you’re looking for why you should deal with this thing, deal with it upfront, I can tell you a number of really good reasons. By explaining, giving people a chance to understand, is going to make a huge difference in how you are treated for the rest of your life.”

Adam said it might make a huge difference in how he was viewed in a prison environment and, particularly, how he would be treated by the other inmates.

“You’re probably going to be the biggest serial killer in Canadian history,” Adam said, attempting to appeal to Pickton’s ego. “You’re going to be a very, very famous guy. You will have achieved something. You know you eluded police for years and years, let’s face it. It’s pretty amazing. But it’s over. And you know what, Willie, you’re a smart, logical person. Bill said it, [and] it’s true. The reality is that I believe you want to…make it a smart, logical choice as we deal with this.”

Adam again urged him to explain whether Lynn Ellingsen and Dinah Taylor had been involved, and whether they were pressuring him in any way. Adam said that if they were fully involved, it would provide some explanation to how things had happened, and would provide some answers to his brother, sister, and many of the people he knew.

As the interrogation continued, Inspector Don Adam continued in his efforts to play on Robert “Willie” Pickton’s emotions. His reasoning seemed to be that he could shake Pickton loose and get him to talk if he kept hitting at him, long and hard enough, often using things he knew about the people that Pickton seemed to care about. In one instance he told Pickton that he knew there were people who believed that Pickton hated his sister; and other people, Adam said, had told the police that Pickton’s brother, Dave, treated him poorly and frequently yelled at him. Adam claimed to know that Pickton was hostile toward his brother, which caused Pickton to begin shaking his head no. He even reminded Pickton how his brother and sister had both accomplished more with their lives than he had, suggesting subtly that he resented them for having done so. It appeared that Adam attempted to rub Pickton’s nose in the fact that he had difficulty leaving the farm life.

“You broke out of the farm once,” Adam said. “When was that? What year was it that you went down south?”

“Seventy-four,” Pickton replied.

“In 1974, did you take a bus?”

“I flew all the way down there.”

“How did you choose that place?”

Pickton told him that he had become pen pals with Connie Anderson, the young woman that he had gone to see, and that they had gotten to know each other through writing. Pickton had been twenty-four when Connie, originally from Michigan, invited him to visit her in Chicago, where she was living at the time. Adam reminded Pickton that he had nearly his entire life ahead of him at age twenty-four, and that he should have taken the opportunity to break away from the farm when it had presented itself to him.

“Willie, that was your chance to get away, to step away from the farm, to step away from what it was doing to you,” Adam said. “You know, Bill and I talked to a young guy who’s a killer out of Chilliwack. And he was a young guy, his parents are dairy farmers, and what he talked about is the fact that the farm was a trap. His parents’ health wasn’t good, and every day from four in the morning until seven at night, he worked—until he dragged himself home to drop into bed, asleep. He couldn’t take a holiday, because the cows needed to be milked, and he couldn’t have a relationship because the cows and the work needed to be done. He was completely tied to that life, and it was like a noose around his neck, Willie, tightening, choking, choking the life out of him, choking the youth out of him.”

Adam told Pickton that all of the work on the farm, with no time to play, had filled the killer from Chilliwack with anger because of how unfair it had been for his sister to go away to college while he stayed behind on the farm. Adam explained that as the killer’s parents became older and more frail, his chances of escaping the farm life diminished until they faded away. “Do you understand why, Willie?” Adam asked. “In our lives we want options, we want to be able to meet somebody we care about. Not prostitutes, Willie….We’ve got lots of statements from prostitutes about the fact that you turn them over and you have sex with them, but you never even look at them.”

“Yeah…really never had no sex with them,” Pickton replied.

“Pardon?”

“Never had much sex with them.”

“But sometimes you did,” Adam said. “I’ve got statements from them.”

“The ones brought over and…those…,” Pickton trailed off, but Adam quickly picked up on his statement about “the ones brought over.”

“And you had the girls bring them out right?” Adam asked. “Did Lisa ever bring out girls for you?”

Adam described her as a blond-haired girl that had been married to a biker named “Blackie.” Pickton described her as nice, and said that he knew her as “Lee,” but he denied that she ever brought girls out to the farm for him.

“We know that Dinah brought girls out, right?” Adam asked. “You…don’t need to think about it, Robert. You know that’s a fact—we know that, you know that. All right.”

Adam reminded Pickton that the police believed that Lynn Ellingsen had brought women to his place, but conceded that they did not know whether Ellingsen and others had participated in any of the killings. He also reminded Pickton that the police knew that Ellingsen was blackmailing him and that detectives had statements from witnesses to that effect.

“You’ve told people that, and we’ve got those statements, and you know what, she is going to screw you again, like everything she’s done to you, she is gonna screw you again, Willie,” Adam said. “And that’s one of the things you could stop. You choose to tell the truth here tonight, and that choice is yours. But you could screw her right back, because if you talk before she does, there’s no need for us to make a deal with her. We could be down there arresting her later tonight if you tell the truth about what was going on, do you understand?

“Don’t you get tired of being beat up by people, and abused and used, Willie?” Adam continued. “Aren’t you tired of it? Isn’t it time you did something…just for yourself? Don’t let these people beat you up, make you into a monster, use you, walk away from everything they’ve done, laughing and—what?—selling their story to CNN, so they make money on it. You know how it goes. That’s all in the palm of your hand.”

Adam told Pickton that he should not allow all of the people who had been coming forward with information to make a fool of him, and advised him, again, to come clean, deal with his situation and tell the truth. He told him that the present time would be his opportunity to tell them
why
they would find bodies on the farm, and assured him that they would.

“If Dinah, like your brother says, has killed some of these girls, and maybe that’s not true…but if she has, or if Lynn knew and was still bringing the girls out, which is what I think, and Dinah was, then don’t let them make money and make themselves famous and make you look worse and drive you into the dirt, Willie. ’Cause you have the power right here and right now to put a stop to this, and you know all you gotta do is tell the truth. We sort it out, ’cause suddenly when you tell the truth, they have no more power to hurt you. They have no more power to make money off you, and they have no more power to make deals. ’Cause I’m telling you that’s how it works.”

Adam explained that Lynn Ellingsen’s lawyer was negotiating a deal for her as they spoke, and emphasized how that could hurt Pickton’s case. He reminded him again and again how Ellingsen had hurt him, and how she had blackmailed and betrayed him—and that she was preparing to do it again. By this point, Adam was displaying a demeanor to Pickton that made it seem as if he was pleading with him, almost begging him to tell him what had happened on the farm. At times it seemed as if he had Pickton’s best interest at heart, which must have been an effort to work on Pickton’s psyche to persuade him to incriminate not only himself, but others.

“You could have killed those two girls (Ellingsen and Taylor),” Adam said. “[But] you didn’t, did you? Do you see what I mean? You could have, but you didn’t, because you care about those girls. And now they have done this to you. It’s not right, Willie. It’s not right…that she blackmailed you. It’s not right what they are doing. I’m holding out my hand to you. I’m offering you a chance to have some dignity, to walk…through this thing. To stop being used by people, to not let them win and you lose.”

Adam would not let up on driving home the point that Pickton had been blackmailed, been made fun of and ridiculed by the women that he thought had been his friends at one time. He assured Pickton that his was a lost cause, that the evidence was being uncovered quickly, and that it spoke for itself. He said that the evidence, in only two weeks, was overwhelming, and that it was coming in so quickly that he had to bring additional personnel in just to help keep it organized. He said that even though he had written three notebooks of information over the past two weeks, he could not even keep the evidence straight himself. He compared it to an avalanche rushing down the side of a mountain and that it would be impossible for Pickton to escape its consequences. He also continued to play on Pickton’s guilt, if he felt any, by telling him that the families of the murdered women would only be hurt more if he chose not to talk about his crimes. He said that it would take time for his people to dig up the murdered women, or what was left of them, and that alone would continue breaking the hearts of the numerous families and prevent them from obtaining some sense of closure in their individual cases.

Adam reminded Pickton that Dinah Taylor’s family had been urging her to cooperate with the police, and although she had not gotten to the stage of having a lawyer negotiate for her, it would not be long before she began trying to cut a deal with prosecutors.

“Now that you’re…in custody, she knows that you’re dangerous to her, ’cause you know what she has done and you know what Lynn’s done,” Adam said. “So it’s gonna become a race to see who…deals with things first. If you let them win…that’s a mistake, you know. Dave knows it’s over….”

Pickton interjected at that point and told Adam that he had to speak with Dinah before he could do anything, apparently referring to telling Adam what really happened.

“To say what?” Adam asked. “Like Dinah, can I—is it all right if I go and show them the bodies?”

“No.”

“Willie, look at me for a sec, okay?”

“I gotta talk to her anyways first.”

“Well, you’re not gonna be able to talk to her,” Adam said. “All right. Our people are gonna be negotiating with her over the next little while, and they’ll come to some agreement. Dave is saying all right…that it’s all going to be over, that there are bodies, and that you didn’t kill them all….”

“There are bodies?”

“That there’s murder, been murders, and he said you told him. I think he wants to believe in some ways that Dinah killed some of these girls and that, for some of them, you’ve just helped get rid of the bodies. That is probably partially true, Robert, partially true. Well maybe, maybe it’s not. Maybe it was just you couldn’t tell your own brother you’d done this….

“I know that you still…clearly have feelings for Dinah, don’t you?” Adam continued. “Do you understand if Dinah has killed these girls, then she has to deal with that, do you understand that? Does that make sense to you? If she hasn’t…then we need to know that, so we’re not looking at her as a killer.”

“Yeah, but I gotta talk to her anyways first, before I say anything,” Pickton said.

“No. But…let’s examine that for a second, Willie. Tell me why we should let you do that.”

“Well, I’d like to talk to her.”

“No, no, no,” Adam said, becoming somewhat frustrated with Pickton’s apparent simplicity. “I know, but—but let me ask you this. I mean, if you were a cop, why would you, why would you allow that to happen? If you were in my shoes? Why should I, as a policeman, allow two suspects to talk to each other?”

“Well, I am not a suspect anymore, am I?” Pickton asked after a brief pause.

“No, well, yeah, you’re charged, you’re—”

“There you are. So I’m not a suspect anymore.”

“Well, you’re still a suspect in all the other ones. Right?”

“It’s gonna come out anyways, right? About myself, it doesn’t matter.”

“What’s the point?”

“That’s what I am saying,” Pickton said.

“Well, then let’s just deal with one step at a time,” Adam suggested. “I know you care about Dinah. What about Lynn? How do you feel about her?”

“I think she is a nice person.”

“Um-hum. Did you think she was nice when she was blackmailing you? Well, you didn’t, did you? No one likes to be blackmailed. Come on, let’s be honest with each other.”

“Yeah…she—she did blackmail me…time and time over.”

“She says it was because she walked in when you were skinning a girl.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Well, Willie…I’m telling you right now…we’ve got statements from other people saying you’ve done that. Willie, we’ve got people saying that you used to have sex with them when they were dead, that you were—”

“Oh yeah, right.”

Adam reminded Pickton that he was only trying to make him aware of just how bad things were for him in an effort to clarify his situation, which seemed hopeless.

“You know whether you are the worst monster to ever come down the pike here in Canada”—Adam paused while Pickton laughed out loud—“or not, you know whether you’ve killed…fifty women or—or more.”

Adam told him that Bill Fordy had not mentioned to him during his portion of the interview that the blood of eight unidentified women had been found all over his place, particularly inside his trailer, as well as the motor home. Additional evidence of that nature was likely to follow, he indicated. He explained that the investigators believed that the other blood, besides Mona Wilson’s, that had been found inside the trailer was likely from other kill sites. He explained that the task force was actually moving a lab on site at the farm to process the evidence as soon as it was found, and that they had devised a method in which they could rapidly separate pig blood from human blood.

“They’re gonna be moving into the slaughterhouse, Willie,” Adam said. “I absolutely believe we’re gonna find human blood in there. What about that? Where do we go then? When everybody’s won except you, where do we go? When the deals have been made with the woman who was blackmailing you, when she’s escaped her responsibility…you only get one chance, and if you want to let her win, get used again—I saw how you felt about being blackmailed. No one likes to be blackmailed, but for the moment, Willie, in your life, you have a chance to pay back. And if you choose not to, then the whore’s just used you again. Because the reality is some of these guys who are talking about things that you’ve done, and there’s lots of them…but the reality is, is that you may have things you can say about them, to even things up. But the only way you can do that is by telling the truth and by dealing with it. So you wonder what’s in it for you, Willie, it’s a chance not to get kicked in the chops again by these people. ’Cause the other side of it…you know, we all try and protect ourselves.”