Police seized women’s shoes, clothing, necklaces, rings and trinkets during a raid of Robert Pickton’s pig farm in 2002. Nearly a decade later, they still do not know who owns many of the items.
“One of the things we are trying to figure out is who has possession of what,” RCMP Inspector Gary Shinkaruk said in a recent interview.
Consider the problem posed by a shoe. Should police give the shoe back to Dave Pickton, he said, referring to Mr. Pickton’s brother who owns the farm property? Should they destroy the shoe? Or assign officers to find the owner?
The police filled a warehouse with articles seized from the farm – large items such as doors, furniture and freezers, as well as personal belongings. The ownership of many items was clear, but a lot has not been connected to anyone.
Four full-time members of the Missing Women Task Force are assigned to sorting through the items in the warehouse, assessing what could yield further evidence, what could be trashed and what should be set aside for the families. The final decision on disposition of the items will be made in consultation with lawyers and the families, he said.
Task force investigators last year started sharing information they had collected with families of the missing women. In some cases, the investigators knew the victims better than family members who had not seen the women for years.
To conclude that the women were no longer alive, investigators had to find out much of what they did and who they hung out with. “A lot of investigators spent so much time investigating their missing person file that, when they actually sat down with the family and could say everything they knew, it was pretty powerful stuff,” Insp. Shinkaruk said.
“It was a sad thing that brought us there, a tragic thing,” he said. But police could tell family that the women were not involved all the time in a high-risk lifestyle They still had friends, they still had a sense of humour; some wrote poetry, he said.
Investigators met with children who did not know their mothers. They wanted to know how their mother lived as well as how she died. “When investigators met with the families, aside from the horrific things, investigators could offer a snapshot of who their mother was, often to a degree they did not know,” he said. “Almost every person [from the task force] that went out to talk to these families found it extremely powerful, almost therapeutic.”
