Butcher (20 page)

When Pickton returned to his cell after meeting with his lawyer, following the eleven-hour-plus interview with Fordy, Lillies, and Adam, he did not seem particularly happy, but he seemed pumped, full of life. His present state could have been the result of having relived—at least in his mind—during his interviews with the RCMP officers much of what he had done to many of Vancouver’s missing women. Whatever the cause had been, he was not ready to go to bed yet and call it a day. He clearly was in a talkative mood, and he hadn’t a clue that the person he shared a cell with was an RCMP undercover officer.

“What time is it?” his cellmate asked when Pickton walked into the cell.

“Ten,” Pickton replied.

“At night? You’ve been gone all day. F***, they beat-in’ you up in there, or what?” the cellmate asked.

“Yeah, they nailed me to the cross,” Pickton said, repeating what had become one of his favorite phrases. “They got…three or four murders on me already.”

“Really?”

“It’s too big,” Pickton said.

“Huh?”

“It’s too big,” Pickton repeated as he sat down on his bunk. “I guess I’ll never get out.”

“Huh?”

“The rest of my life without parole. Without parole…,” Pickton said with a gloomy tone in his voice. “I can’t believe this…. F***, they’re sure putting me through the wringer…like a f***ing nightmare in hell.”

“Yeah.”

Pickton expressed his opinion about how unpleasant the “f***ing long day” was with the cops, and how the investigators had told him they were gathering a lot of evidence against him, enough to charge him with thirty or more counts of murder.

“They want me real bad,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Now I’m all over the paper,” Pickton said, speaking in a hushed voice. “Made the headlines.
Whoo!
‘Pig farmer charged with murder, first degree’…right across the f***ing headlines.”

“You’re an all-star.”

“I told them, I says, ‘If I’m going to be charged, I [need to] see some of the films.’ I says, ‘I’ll key the queue, I’ll make you a bargain,’” Pickton said. “…But I told them that ‘you’re going to have to open your mind to me. I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do, you see.’ And he says, ‘You can’t tell me that, you’re not a cop.’ I says, ‘You’re just as much cop as I am….’ I told them already, I says, ‘I’m not the only one. If I go down, a lot of other people are going to go down.’”

“That’s what you gotta do, right?”

“F***.”

“You really f***ing have to be careful,” the cellmate said.

“I think I might have buried myself, ’cause I’m a key holder,” Pickton said.

“Ha, well. What are you gonna do?” his cellmate asked.

“‘If you want me,’ I says, ‘you want me…it’s not up to them to tell you, it’s up to the judge,’” Pickton said.

Pickton told his cellmate that even though he believed he had the police confused, he did not believe he would ever be a free man again. He figured that he would be serving a life sentence without parole by the time he was convicted in court. He was not even sure how many murders he would be tried for—so far, it was two or three. He mentioned how he had beat the rap in the earlier case involving the stabbing of Wendy Eistetter, but this time he believed he was finished.

“This time I’m not gonna walk,” Pickton said. “I won’t even come up for bail…. They said no…. I haven’t got a record. I’m clean.”

“Nothing?” his cellmate asked.

“No.”

“That’s a bonus.”

“I’ve got, ah, two murder charges, now,” Pickton said.

Pickton heard the sound of the metal tray as his evening meal was slid under the door. He went over and picked it up. His cellmate had eaten earlier. It appeared to be beans again, and it did not look appetizing. As he had done before, he gave the coffee, which came with the meal, to his cellmate.

“That’s [some] f***ing harsh shit,” his cellmate said about the beans.

Pickton was hungry, however, and ate it all. He even sopped the liquid up with his bread, all the while talking between bites with his cellmate about his cellmate’s charges.

“They got you for murder charges? Or attempted murder?” Pickton asked.

“Well, they got…the attempt. They got—I talked to my lawyer…. There’s some more pending…a couple more f***ing things they’ve got on me,” his cellmate said.

“But you’re nothing like mine,” Pickton said.

“I’m f***ing looking at some serious time if…they put things together,” his cellmate said. “Do you know what I mean?”

At that point in their conversation, Pickton held up his right hand in the open position, clearly showing all his fingers and thumb, apparently to indicate five. He then quickly made the appearance of a zero with his thumb and index finger. He then pointed at himself and placed a finger on his lips, telling his cellmate to be quiet and not say anything. The effort to keep his cellmate quiet did not work, however.

“What’s that? Five? Zero?” the cellmate said.

Pickton laughed quietly and put his finger on his lips again to shush his cellmate, then gestured toward the camera. He went through the motion again, this time using two hands—five fingers of his right hand and forming the zero with his left hand.

“Fifty?” his cellmate asked quietly.

Pickton nodded to indicate yes, with a broad, wicked-looking smile on his face.

“Ha, ha, f*** you,” his cellmate said. “You’re…shitting me.”

“Camera,” Pickton said, gesturing at the camera again.

Pickton’s shushing of his cellmate and the fact that the camera was ever-present did not seem to stop them from talking. Pickton was doing an outstanding job of incriminating himself, even though he seemed to know better than to talk in the presence of the video camera.

“You, yourself? I’ve done a few of these,” his cellmate said.

“Um-hum.”

“I’ve done a few. Yeah, I’ve a f***ing few under my belt. You’re full of shit, man, you’re [messing] with me…. I remember the first one I did, the very first one, took a pickax. Do you know what a pickax is?”

“Um-hum.”

“For cracking ice—”

“Yeah, I know what it is.”

“Put it right in here,” Pickton’s cellmate said, pointing toward the back of his head. “There’s…like hardly any mess, no f***ing blood, and f***ing hard to detect, eh. It takes the cops a while to figure out what the f*** happened to the guy.”

It was clear that Pickton really did not want to hear or talk about what his cellmate had done, but instead wanted to talk about his own situation.

“I buried myself now,” Pickton said.

“How?”

“Got me. They got me on this,” Pickton said as he finished up his evening meal.

“No shit. Give me a break. What have they got?”

“I don’t know, there’s old carcasses,” Pickton said.

“So, what have you got? You know what I’m saying?” his cellmate asked.

“DNA.”

“F***!”

“Yeah.”

“Come on, buddy…that’s nothing. They can’t finalize, though, if you’ve got a f***ing missing person. It’s f***ing pretty hard to collect DNA on that.”

“They’ve got DNA,” Pickton said.

His cellmate, in an effort to extract additional information from Pickton, told him that the best way to dispose of something was to dump it into the ocean.

“Oh, really?” Pickton asked with a somewhat wily tone in his voice.

“Do you know what the f***ing ocean does to things? There ain’t much left,” his cellmate said.

“I did better than that,” Pickton said, grinning again.

“No.”

Pickton slid his meal tray under the cell door and sat down next to his cellmate so that, he believed, he could speak undetected.

“A rendering plant,” he whispered, sniggering creepily under his breath.

“Hey?”

“A rendering plant,” Pickton repeated.

“Ha! No shit…. That’s gotta be pretty good, eh?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Can’t be much f***ing left.”

Pickton told the cellmate that he was caught because he was becoming sloppy toward the end.

“Really,” the cellmate said.

“They got me—oh f***—gettin’ too sloppy,” Pickton said. “…I was gonna do one more, make it an even fifty,” Pickton said.

Pickton’s cellmate laughed.

“That’s why…I was sloppy about…I wanted one more, make—make the big five-oh,” Pickton said.

“Make the big five zero,” his cellmate said, laughing. “That’s f***ed. F***ing five-zero. F***ing half a hundred.”

Pickton chuckled evilly at his cellmate’s remarks, thinking, of course, that they had been made in adoration of his ability to kill forty-nine women.

“Yeah. Like you say, that’s the best part…” his cellmate said.

“Everybody says,” Pickton said, pounding his fist. “How many of those? Wouldn’t tell ’em…. I wouldn’t tell ’em.”

Pickton told his cellmate how the investigators had asked him to talk about all his victims and how he had refused. He seemed proud that he had not given in to what the cops had asked him.

“You know, they got forty-eight on the list,” Pickton said matter-of-factly as he talked about the official list of missing women as it appeared at that time in 2002. “You know the list has only got, like, only got half the people in there.”

If what Pickton had just said to his cellmate was true, investigators would be hard-pressed to find out what had happened to the other half of the missing women on the list. And if Pickton had really killed forty-nine women, like he had said, but only half of those women were on the official list, who were the other women that he had killed?

“How does that all fit?” his cellmate asked. “That helps you.”

“Yeah…but I think most of them, based on that f***ing…evidence, I think I’m nailed to the cross.”

“Hmmm.”

“But if that happens, there will be about fifteen other people [that] are gonna go down. Some will go down the tank,” Pickton said.

“Yeah.”

“I said they were my friends,” Pickton said.

“Huh. Hey, between me and you, man…you look after it for yourself,” his cellmate said.

“I thought they were my friends…. I seen in the interview…people…even says I filled the syringes up with antifreeze and you inject the stuff and you’re dead in about five to ten minutes,” Pickton said.

“Hmmm.”

“…They got a lot of stuff on me,” Pickton said. “That’s only part of it…. They’re gonna nail me to the cross.”

Pickton told his cellmate that the cops had told him that if he had kept his act clean—that if he had not gotten sloppy—he would have likely gotten away with murdering Vancouver’s prostitutes for a lot longer. He said he knew that was how they had gotten him—his sloppiness, and the guns that they had come to find.

“I made my own grave by being sloppy,” Pickton said.

“Doesn’t that just kick you in the ass now?”

“It pisses me off, no way,” Pickton said. “You know it pisses me right off…. They just—they don’t have nothing, but nothing…. Really pisses me off. I was just gonna f***ing do one more, make it even.”

As his cellmate laughed about what he had said, Pickton began getting undressed in preparation for turning in for the night. He took off his jogging suit and began scratching as he gloated over his new celebrated status.

“Bigger than…the ones in the States,” Pickton said. He was talking about the Green River case, which, he told his cellmate, the police had talked about during his lengthy interview. His cellmate agreed that Pickton’s case was bigger than Green River.

“F***, it looks like you got the record,” his cellmate said.

“It’s big. It’s growing,” Pickton said. “They say they want to dig…. They want to dig…they’re gonna dig for a year.”

“That’s unbelievable.”

“Let ’em dig,” Pickton said. “I told them already…‘No shit. Have fun. Play in the dirt.’” Pickton sniggered as he spoke. “‘Teeth, we’re gonna find fingernails, bones,’” Pickton said, indicating what the investigators had told him. “Mr. Sloppy. Sloppy at the end.”

“F***, they’re gonna burn your ass.”

Pickton lay quietly on his bunk for several moments, staring up at the ceiling. When he spoke again, he told of how he had stumped the cops and had confused them during the interrogation. “But I sure racked their brains, I’ll tell ya,” Pickton said. “Now they didn’t know what to say.”

“You stumped them, eh?” the cellmate said, laughing.

“Oh, f*** yeah, I had ’em going,” Pickton bragged. “I had them going. I was sitting in the chair and everything else…. I really had them going today.”

Pickton had become even more boastful by this time. He told his cellmate that he had been in control of the interrogation. He said that he sat back in the chair and propped his feet up on the desk as he “screwed” with the investigators’ minds. He told his cellmate that he had even told the cops that he was looking forward to additional interrogation sessions, hopefully sooner rather than later. His cellmate changed the subject at one point and steered Pickton back toward the number of kills he had made, playing on his ego by saying that Pickton must have the highest number of victims.

“Hmm. God…you’re f***ing up there (in numbers). That’s gotta…like you say, put you over the top,” his cellmate said.

They talked about how many victims’ lives the Green River killer had claimed, but could not seem to agree on an accurate number. When Pickton apparently grew tired of comparing himself to Gary Ridgway, he returned to the investigation that was occurring at his farm.

“…They even took my—my linoleum off the floor,” Pickton said. “Peeled it right off. Peeled all the wallpaper off the walls…. They’re digging deep. They’re digging real deep.”

“Yeah, they’re working hard.”

“Real hard,” Pickton agreed. “…Four I was sloppy with. I just couldn’t finish it off, so I cleaned it up and that’s it.”

Pickton indicated that his plan had been to let things cool off for a while, then start back up again at a later date. “Then, then do…another twenty-five new ones,” he said, laughing out loud.

It appeared to the cops watching the video monitors that Pickton was enjoying himself. Smiling broadly, he waved toward the camera on at least two occasions and said “hello” on another. Whether he knew that he was being recorded or not was not entirely clear. Because he had indicated to his cellmate to be quiet a few times, it seemed like he had been concerned about being recorded. On the other hand, he had been talking very freely, although in hushed tones, for quite some time, indicating that perhaps he thought that he was only being viewed in the cell, so that guards could see that they were still there and were behaving themselves, and not recorded. It was also possible that he knew that everything was being taped and he was providing inaccurate, misleading information, thinking that he could confuse the cops even more than he had already—at least in his mind, that is.