First chance to catch Pickton was unrelated gun searches
TAMSYN BURGMANN
Vancouver - The Canadian Press
Published Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Serial killer Robert Pickton was caught at the earliest chance a police task
force had to nab him, said a lead investigator on the missing women case, who
suggested hindsight is prompting critics to overlook the facts at the time.
Retired Staff Sergeant Don Adam, who helmed the Project Evenhanded task force
starting in January 2001, told the missing women's inquiry on Wednesday that his
joint RCMP-Vancouver Police unit did “capitalize” on the first opportunity that
came up.
In February, 2002, his officers accompanied a Mountie who was executing an
unrelated search warrant on Mr. Pickton's Port Coquitlam, B.C. farm.
“Now, somehow, that's become a bad thing in everyone's minds,” he testified.
“There was no earlier breaks, I don't believe, that we missed.”
The inquiry is examining why the serial killer was not caught sooner.
Mr. Pickton was among a lengthy list of suspects drawn up by the task force,
which was formed to find patterns between hundreds of potential cases of missing
sex workers from the city's Downtown Eastside and examine who might be
responsible.
At the time, two other investigations had already narrowed in on the likelihood
Mr. Pickton was killing women. The Vancouver Police Department led one, while
another was run by the Coquitlam RCMP detachment that policed the suburban area
where the man lived.
But none of those probes coalesced.
Staff Sgt. Adam said he knew Mr. Pickton was a prime suspect for Vancouver
Police, but his superiors had specifically directed him to conduct a “holistic
review” that couldn't pick favourites for fear of overlooking other vital
evidence.
Eventually, his officers realized they had an active killer on their hands.
But he cautioned the inquiry against taking a “Mr. Pickton-centric” view in
looking at how the events leading to the man's arrest had unfolded.
“I followed [my] mandate, along with Mr. Pickton – putting him in jail for life.
I followed that mandate right through to the end on everyone. Which is exactly
the mandate that the police forces and the government financed, and wanted me to
do.
“We don't get to change history here, I hope.”
The task force did know that police had checked out Mr. Pickton in both 1997 and
1999 after a sex worker was nearly stabbed to death and then when a tipster said
Mr. Pickton had been seen butchering a woman's body. It also knew that DNA
evidence had eliminated him in a series of serial murders in the Fraser Valley.
Mr. Pickton had not, however, been recently spotted in the city's Downtown
Eastside, he said.
Asked by an inquiry lawyer whether he had been informed of the full extent of
the missing women file, Adam's testimony opposed the tone of previous witnesses
who felt information was not shared adequately.
“It wasn't lack of communication,” he said, noting that different police forces
was not the problem and that members of his team were in touch with the others.
“I didn't have a proper appreciation ... as to how many ways that missing person
unit was being pushed and pulled.”
And he said he underestimated the manpower it would take for such a massive
investigation. The task force was both streamlining thousands of missing women
cases, to determine which applied, and examining the possibility of hundreds of
suspects.
“Unfortunately that's all part of experience and living through it.”
In hindsight, the 40-year veteran said he would have managed his task force
better, watching over all the different people involved more closely.
“Evenhanded's lessons have not been lost. They're being used,” he said.
Mr. Pickton was arrested after members of Project Evenhanded found the remains
and belongings of missing sex workers during a search for illegal firearms on
his farm.
A giant forensic excavation was initiated that turned up the DNA of 33 women.
Mr. Pickton was eventually charged with killing 26, and convicted of
second-degree murder in the deaths of six.
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