Police Didn’t Believe Own Officers As Serial Killer Kept Killing: Report

Police didn’t believe their own sources, their own officers or that there was a serial killer roaming Vancouver’s streets, all of which allowed Robert Pickton to get away with murder, concludes an internal police review.

The B.C. government hasn’t said whether it will call a public inquiry into the notorious case, but promised Friday to hold some type of public examination of the failed police investigation that allowed Pickton to continue killing women before he was finally arrested in 2002.

The 400-page report released by the Vancouver Police Department blames both the city’s force and the RCMP for a series of errors in the years that preceded Pickton’s arrest.

Deputy Chief Doug LePard’s report says 13 women vanished from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside after the department first forwarded information about Pickton to the RCMP, and 11 of the women’s DNA was later linked to Pickton’s sprawling farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C.

LePard made it clear Pickton should have been caught earlier.

“Certainly there was justification to aggressively pursue the information in the summer of 1999,” LePard told a news conference Friday afternoon as he released the report.

“This report sheds a harsh cold light into every corner of the process, outlining every failure, regardless of where it occurred.”

LePard said the RCMP and Vancouver police failed to effectively share information, both forces lacked leadership, neither had enough resources and that some Vancouver police officers had a bias against the women, most of whom were sex workers.

He said several officers who did come forward with information were ignored, and he specifically referred to Kim Rossmo, a geographic profiler who has complained he was ignored when he warned a serial killer could be at work.

LePard called Rossmo’s work “uncannily accurate.”

“No one wanted to let a killer escape,” he said. “Everybody was doing their best, but when you don’t have the right information, the right people aren’t talking to each other, then mistakes happen, opportunities are lost.”

In fact, the report outlines several police sources who told investigators about women’s identification and bloody clothing on the farm and that Pickton had a “special” freezer where “strange” meat was served, which one source believed was human.

Investigators discounted that information as hearsay, but much of it turned out to be correct.

“You will see that the information from the various informants — and there were multiple informants — all turned out … to be 100 per cent accurate,” LePard told reporters Friday.

His report makes a series of recommendations including improving information sharing between the RCMP and Vancouver police, and he said those recommendations have already been implemented.

While Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu said the department still strongly supports a public inquiry, he added that much has changed within the force.

“I can say with all certainly this would not happen today,” he said.

Chu and LePard reiterated their calls for a public inquiry, joining a long list of supporters that includes the RCMP and many of the victims’ family members.

The province has until now avoided questions about a public inquiry, but B.C.’s acting solicitor general now says the government will do something — whether it’s an inquiry or other type of judicial process — to examine the police investigation.

Rich Coleman said that decision will be made early next month, adding the government held back on taking any action during the lengthy criminal case, which ended with a decision from the Supreme Court of Canada last month.

“You can never do an inquiry or really a review and go public with it in the middle of a case that’s before the courts,” he said. “To do that, you may actually jeopardize the conviction or the investigation.”

Officials with the RCMP, which is currently sitting on its own review about the Pickton investigation, said the force was still reading the report and will comment later.

But the Mounties also suggested their review came to different conclusions.

“I can say that there are certain views expressed which I do not share,” Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass said in a written statement that was read at a news conference by Chief Supt. Janice Armstrong.

“However, in fairness, I know that the same can be said with respect to the RCMP report created in 2002.”

LePard’s report said “the investigation was effectively derailed” when the lead RCMP investigator was transferred in 1999 and the key witness was deemed not credible.

He also notes the RCMP interviewed Pickton in January 2000, but officers without extensive interrogation experience were involved, there was no detailed plan, and they didn’t include Vancouver police.

At the time, Pickton consented to a search of his farm, but the RCMP didn’t take him up on the offer.

Ernie Crey’s sister Dawn Crey was last seen in November 2000 and her DNA was later found on Pickton’s farm, although Pickton was never charged in her death.

“I’m sure my sister, as difficult as the life she was living in the Downtown Eastside, she would have still been alive today, and tragically that goes for many other families,” Crey said.

He said the findings of the report — and the finger pointing between Vancouver police and the RCMP — leave the provincial government with little choice but to call a public inquiry.