The Pig Farmer and The Salish Sea

The Pig Farmer and The Salish Sea


It’s weird how life takes you places. For instance, I’ve been researching two different cold cases for a bit over a year and I’m finding that they might not be separate cases at all. Two individual stories that seemingly have no connection whatsoever. One is about missing feet, the other about missing women.

But while researching each one individually, I saw connections. I found some unanswered questions and some real possibilities that merge these two separate chapters into one complete book.

Now, I’m not telling you that they are definitively connected. That is for you to decide. All I’m doing is showing you the possibility that maybe, when they charged and convicted one man for murder, they missed some of his accomplices.

Maybe it is all coincidence. Maybe it is just my mind connecting dots when there is nothing there. But it’s worth consideration. So, I chose to document what I’ve found here, on ATS. The best place on the net to imagine, create, and question the strange and unusual.

Today I’m going to give an overview of two very different cases. Two cold cases that shouldn’t be connected at all. My purpose is not to convince you one way or another, but instead to make you consider the “what if”…. What if they are connected? Would both mysteries make more sense? Would some of the open questions be answered? For me… they would.

One is a mystery that has not been solved yet (I don’t care what the “science says”. I’ve researched it and it’s still an open case.). The Salish Sea Severed Feet. The other is the well-known serial killer case, The Pig Farmer Killer. Both take place in Canada.

And I’m adding in some other evidence at the end which may not connect the two directly but certainly make you pause and wonder…what is going on in the Vancouver/Seattle locale?

Hopefully by the end of this story, you’ll see that there’s “something strange in the neighborhood”. If not, no harm no foul. It is just information afterall….what you choose to do with it is always up to you.

The Pickton Pig Farm Murders




A cold case filled with unanswered questions. This story is about a poorly investigated crime where the police fumbled many times, leaving huge stones unturned.

If you search it online, you’ll find a lot of information. It’s not as cut and dry as it seems though.

Now, I know most stories start by going back through the offender’s childhood years and showing they had “mommy issues”. I could go into a long history about the farm, the Pickton’s parents, their horrific childhood, etc... but that’s not going to happen. It really has no relevance to the case except to show that the Pickton’s were capable of doing bad things. We already know they were capable of doing bad things. Robert confessed to doing bad things. So, I’ll be leaving that stuff out.

Instead, we’ll be covering the farm itself (crime scene), the crime, and finishing up with some huge leaps and assumptions which will surely have some of you chomping at the bit…don’t worry, it’s all speculation and just meant to get your imagination/mind going.



Continued…

The Farm


The farm is the crime scene. All the murders took place there and a ton of evidence was found on that land. It’s the primary focus of the investigation and deserves a bit of attention.

It’s a 17-acre pig farm located at 953 Dominion Ave, Port Coquitlam, Canada. The farm itself is exactly as you would expect a pig farm to be: unkept, dirty, cluttered, and messy. It has a junk yard feel to it with vehicles scattered everywhere as well as a few landfills.

The thumbnail below is a full aerial view of the farm. Originally, the farm was around 70 acres. Not all of it is shown here. Just the remaining 17 acres where the investigation took place.



On the farm there are several buildings from which evidence was collected:

Roberts Trailer



Robert’s trailer was where most of the evidence was found. It was the first place that police searched and although they didn’t find any dead bodies, there was ample evidence collected to link Robert to the missing women of the East Side. The items collected from Robert’s trailer:

• women's clothing and makeup.
• sex toys, syringes, duct tape and plastic straps.
• An asthma inhaler belonging to Sereena Abotsway.
• A gun with a dildo on the barrel was found in the laundry room on which the DNA of Mona Wilson was found on.
• A black jacket with "Andrea, 201 Roosevelt Hotel," written on a paper found in the pocket. That hotel was the last known address for Andrea Jonesbury.

Slaughterhouse



The slaughterhouse was used to process pigs. Situated just behind Robert’s trailer, he (Robert) would be out there into the wee hours of the night slaughtering them. It is also the place where police found some of the missing girls’ human remains. Some of the most notable findings were:

• The human remains of Ms. Wilson in a bucket near the pig pen.
• A hand bone of Georgina Papin was found under the pig pen floor.
• A bone fragment from the jaw of Brenda Wolfe in the mud near the slaughterhouse.

Yes…the slaughterhouse was used exactly as intended…mostly. Although Robert slaughtered pigs here, he also allegedly slaughtered other things. One witness (Lynn Ellingsen) testified that she observed Robert “processing” a missing girl in this building.

She said she heard a noise, saw a light in the slaughterhouse and went to investigate.

She smelled a foul odor and pushed open the doors of the slaughterhouse. “He was cutting something,” she testified. “There was blood everywhere. I just remember staring at her feet.”

She said she couldn’t recall looking directly at the woman, who was hanging from a chain but recalled the “long black hair that was on the table.”
“How was she hanging?” asked Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie.

“The same way he hung his pigs. There was a chain right there. That’s where she was, where he does his pigs.”

She said she saw knives with blood on them and “he was full of blood himself. He was cutting something that was on the table. I don’t know what it was.”

He said he would take her (Lynn) to the trailer where she could phone for a taxi to take her to buy drugs. She recalled getting into the taxi and then jumping out of the door soon after.

The partial remains of women Pickton is accused of killing – heads, hands and feet – were found in or near the slaughterhouse, adjacent to his trailer on his farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C. …

Motorhome



The motorhome sat directly behind the garage/workshop. It seemed to be used for drug related activities. Most of the evidence found there was blood and DNA.



• Blood stains on the walls, the floor, the carpet, kitchen cabinets, and a bathroom doorknob.
• A blood-stained mattress.
• Blood evidence was found on crackpipes, syringes, cigarettes, and bottles within the living area.

Garage/Workshop

Although the workshop has the least amount of evidence listed, it is also one of the more gruesome areas (on par with the slaughterhouse). Remains were placed in buckets containing heads, hands, and feet and then placed inside the freezer.

• Partial remains of Ms. Abotsway and Ms. Joesbury in a freezer at the back of the workshop.

The initial six women were said to be located as follows:

Ms. Wilson's were found in a room of the slaughterhouse; Ms. Papin's under flooring of an area of the slaughterhouse; Ms. Wolfe's remains were discovered in dirt and debris in a cistern beside the slaughterhouse, and Ms. Frey's remains were found on the property. Police found the remains of Ms. Joesbury and Ms. Abotsway in a workshop-garage not far from Mr. Pickton's house trailer …

Continued…

The Crime

The crime is heinous. Robert Pickton was accused of luring women back to his farm, and sexually abusing, murdering, and disposing of their remains since at least the late 90’s. He admitted to murdering 49 women, was charged with 26 killings, but was prosecuted for only 6.

Sex toys were found within the search area such as a shotgun with a dildo on it (DNA evidence showed that it had been used/ fired into at least one of the missing women), handcuffs, massage oils/cream, and condoms (used and unused).

These women were then strangled, stabbed, or shot. It was also said that they were injected with washer fluid. Then they were disposed of through many different methods. One way he allegedly disposed of the bodies was through the meat rendering process. The parts that he could easily grind up and mix with pork he did so. He would give this meat to friends to “help stock their freezers.” Vancouver issued a cross contamination warning because of it and asked that anyone who had meat processed by the Pickton farms turn it over to the police.

VICTORIA – Following new information from the RCMP, B.C. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall is calling on anyone who may still possess frozen pork meat products from the Port Coquitlam farm of Robert Pickton, to return those products to police. ...

Robert had been a very busy boy since 1978 (because I believe that’s when he started) and very few people had the nerve or the ability to stop him. But there were some….

People supplied tips to the police throughout the years. A farmhand tried to tip off the police a few times, telling them there were personal belongings of the missing women inside Robert’s trailer. A few people pointed fingers at Robert once women started to disappear. Some of the families of the missing women realized that the last place their daughter was seen was at Piggy Palace (a nonprofit building Robert and David had opened 2 miles from their home) and told the police as much. If the police would’ve took any of these tips seriously, Robert would’ve been caught much sooner. But years passed and all the warnings and tips went unheard. No one could get through to the RCMP.

It was only when the farmhand tried one final time that the police acted. But that tip he gave had nothing to do with the body parts piling up in the freezer. The tip was about illegal guns he saw on the property (this was a false claim BTW). And that is the only reason that the police chose to investigate the farm.

The Discovery

Initially, the RCMP were just going to search Robert’s house for guns and be on their way. But while searching, they recovered an asthma inhaler from a missing Vancouver woman, found personal property from other missing women, and noticed the disturbing sexual products/dried blood around Robert’s home. Upon discovering that, the police decided to investigate further and obtained another 3-day search warrant for the remainder of the property that allowed them to access the other buildings. Continuing this pattern, they spent many moons investigating the property….and they kept finding more bones.

It took almost two full years to process the farm and they spent 70 million on that crime scene. The result was that over 33 missing cases were solved.

A couple of the more serious tips that the police left uninvestigated were:

• Between 1998 and 1999, four people told police about Pickton’s alleged activities. Informant Lynn Ellingsen even said she saw Pickton butchering a woman in his slaughterhouse. Apparently, the police didn’t act because these witnesses were potential drug addicts and often changed their stories..

Lynn claimed that she had once walked into Pickton’s slaughterhouse to see what she believed was a woman's body hanging from a meat hook. He was unfazed by her presence on the body and continued cutting strips of flesh from the body's legs. Lynn had been unaware that human fat was yellow. This was deemed to be a detail which lent credibility to her story. Back before Pickton was arrested, lynn had told this story to an anonymous tipster, who passed her information to the police, but she had refused to engage with authorities when they approached her. She later admitted that she had blackmailed Pickton several times about the incident. ...

• Pickton was charged with the attempted murder of a sex worker in 1997, an episode which somehow was not considered a warning sign for cops when he was then implicated as a serial killer by four people in 1998. Could this have been his “perfect the crime” period?

The police did do a thorough search of the 17 acres. But did they miss something? Probably and here’s why:

• The Pickton brothers had sold a large portion of their property prior to the investigation.
• The Pickton brothers owned a salvage company which could’ve been used to dispose of the bodies.
• The rendering facility was never searched.

The largest crime scene in Canadian history. Yet, it should’ve been a lot larger.

the pig farm became the largest crime scene in Canadian history. Investigators took 200,000 DNA samples and seized 600,000 exhibits. Archaeologists and forensic experts needed heavy equipment to sift through 383,000 cubic yards of soil in search of human remains. …

If they failed to search the previously owned property (sold to an urban developer and not listed in the crime scene report), then there is potential that they missed some forensic evidence. The school, townhouse development, and park should’ve been searched as well.

In 1994, the Picktons struck it rich. Their farmland, purchased for $18,000 in 1963, was worth $300,000 in 1993. By 1994 it was valued at $7.2 million. In the fall of 1994, they sold a part of their farm for $1.7 million to Eternal Holdings, a townhouse development company. That same year the city of Port Coquitlam also bought a chunk of their land, for $1.2 million, and turned it into a park. In 1995, Port Coquitlam's school district bought a piece of the pig farm for $2.3 million, and built Blakeburn Elementary School on the site ...

Indigenous women had been reported missing since the late 1979 in this area (Robert would’ve been 30 at this time). Eventually enough women went missing that the police decided to create a task force in 1987. One of the investigators on the team had told his superiors that it looked like a serial killer, but his concerns went unheeded, and the task force continued to be ignored, eventually being disbanded 2 years later.

Continued….

Deep Dive



That was/is what all the newspaper articles said. He killed 26, confessed to 49, and got charged for six. I believe he murdered people long before 1995. There are several reasons I’ve come to this conclusion.

• Most serial killers start in their late 20’s. When the first women went missing, it was 1978. That would make Robert 29 years old (born in 49). He would be well into his “killing years” by then.

• Most serial killers will practice their killing skills before/while finding their prowling spot. Once they perfect their process, they will find a location to hunt and that becomes their killing ground. Robert had to have been killing long before he settled on the East Side as his regular hunting ground.

• Robert said he wasn’t the “Head Honcho” or boss. He literally states that he’s gonna take the fall for everyone. In the taped interview (embedded above) he mentions “all 15” of ‘em. I don’t think he was lying when he said that. In the jailhouse recording, he states that they only have 49 people. That’s only half of them. The other half might be over 100 (I think, it is muffled).One of the things that I noticed looking about the evidence is that there was a lot of unidentified male DNA found in/on the collected evidence (knives, sex toys, etc.). It makes me wonder how many of those unidentified men were involved with the murders.

Now, there are several other people involved in this case and some of them weren’t charged in exchange for their testimony. The most noticeable and curious one not charged was Pickton’s brother. At the time he lived on the south side of the property and even though there was some DNA evidence to support at least questioning him, he was never interviewed.

David Pickton



When police searched David’s home, they found sex toys in David’s bedroom which were similar to Robert’s (handcuffs, bungee cords, dildos, etc...) and DNA evidence from at least one of the missing women.

A few points of interest on David:

• David handed the police a bag with personal effects of one of the girls in it. This bag was used as evidence against Robert even though it was David who had it in his possession.
• David had sexually assaulted a woman and was charged with it after Robert Pickton got arrested.
• David Pickton ran over a child when he was young, and the family just put the child in the ditch and walked away. The child died from drowning, not from the injuries related to being run over.
• David was never interviewed by the police, never testified in court, and never connected to the murders.


The points above show that David had the same behavioral characteristics as Robert. Do those behaviors make him a murderer? No. But they do make it very hard to rule him out as an accomplice.



David is still free and was spotted in Vancouver as late as 2012. I have searched for more recent sightings and have not found any.

Let’s take a look at the people who were involved but never prosecuted in the Pickton case.

1. David Pickton – lived on the property but was never investigated/charged
2. Lynn Ellingsen – blackmailed Robert with what she saw, helped lure victims into Robert’s truck and back to his trailer
3. Pat Casanova – arrested in 2003 on 15 accounts of murder but never charged. A close friend of Roberts for 15-20 years.
4. Dinah Taylor – lived 18 months on the farm with Pickton and was a good friend of his.
5. Brian J Omichinski - partner in construction company which I can’t find any info on. Nothing…not even a small blurb.

Continued…

The Investigation



We know a few things about the RCMP. Firstly, they will never admit there is a foul play in any investigation they do. They may say someone died under mysterious or unusual circumstances, but they never sound the alarm bells.



A commission of inquiry was done on the Pig Farm investigation and, the conclusion was that they had failed on many, many levels. One of those failures was to deny a serial killer was working in the Vancouver area. Both reports are linked below:

Part 1

Part 2

They did not properly follow up on any potential leads that came from people of low status. That was a major reason why they left many of them uninvestigated.

They also work very, very slow. They took 6 months to interview Robert regarding the missing women. They notified him in August 1999 and allowed the interview to be pushed off until January of 2000. Not only did that give him plenty of time to prepare for the interview, it also allowed him time to “hide the bodies”. It was David who convinced the RCMP to delay the interview until after harvest, as Robert would be very busy during the summer months.

Overall, the police were very bad at sleuthing this one out.



This same formula has turned up in the severed feet mystery. They have done little to identify the owners of the missing feet, as well as dragging their own feet throughout the investigation.

The Salish Sea



The Salish Sea is an inland sea located between Vancouver B.C. and Seattle Washington. In August 2007, a foot washed up on the shore of a beach and the mystery began to build from there. Now, there has always been feet that wash up on shorelines. So, one foot wasn’t that huge of deal. But it was only a month or so later that another foot was discovered. And feet have been discovered floating in the water and/or washed ashore every year since 2007. More than 20 feet have been found so far. Some of them have been matched up and some of them still need to be linked to their owners.

The RCMP have stated that the reason these feet are turning up is because they all were wearing tennis shoes/hiking boots that caused the feet to float after they disarticulated from the body during decomposition. A police officer stated that finding two feet from the same body was a million to one odds and was deemed as an anomaly.

The RCMP forensic investigation team worked tirelessly to try and find the owners of these feet. Almost all of them have been linked conveniently to “a severely depressed person who committed suicide “. The theory is they jumped off one of the numerous bridges found throughout the Vancouver area. There are several major bridges that are deemed suicide bridges. Three span across the Fraser River on the south side and two are located around Vancouver itself.

I think that’s all a little too convenient and sounds exactly like what they stated in the years before the Pickton case was cracked (the women all just moved away because they were transients/prostitutes).

A couple of the foot cases have been listed as “solved”. The forensics team stated that they identified the person, and the family didn’t want the names released.

Well, I found the names of the “identified” remains and, let me tell you, they were troubled and depressed. But the circumstances leading up to their deaths do not point to a suicide necessarily…except in one scenario. It sounds like because that was the solution for one, it became the solution for the rest.

They are still finding feet to this very day. As far as I can tell after mapping out all the feet found so far, at least one foot every year has been found when you put all the Seattle and Vancouver ones together.

Anyhow, because of the amount and frequency of these feet, they became a newsworthy story. I will be doing a write up on this one that focuses on why this case is still open and some huge discrepancies in the reporting/investigation processes. It’ll be fun!

But we’re here to see how this case is linked to the Pickton Farms and I’m about to lay that out for you….



The Link

• Robert Pickton was prosecuted in December 2007. It was in August of 2007 that the first severed foot was found in the Salish Sea.
• The people who were friends/accomplices of Picktons never got charged, which means there is potentially a serial killer still free to do his/her deeds.
• The farm is located next to the Fraser River
• The slaughtering process usually involves cutting off the extremities (feet and head) of a pig and placing them aside for other uses. (A note that the forensics lab states these feet all detached naturally, so, this bullet point could be invalid.)
• There were many other male DNA samples found on the evidence at the farm but none of those were pursued or investigated.
• A person could potentially travel from Vancouver to Seattle very easily. Matter of fact, the green river killer (Seattle) was a suspect in the Pickton Farm murders. They thought it would be easy for him to travel across the border. Why then, wouldn’t it be just as easy the other way around?

So, how hard would it be to imagine that one of the main perps is still out there killing? And how big a stretch would it be to think that they are dumping the bodies in the rivers? The SK (Serial Killer) could no longer use his/her original dumping and hunting grounds. S/he would have to find new ones if they wanted to continue their killing spree. And, they might have to change their M.O. Which means that they could be no longer killing just women prostitutes. Which brings me to another issue which includes a map of missing men in Vancouver. Here is a link to that map ...



Look at the cluster of deceased/missing people in Vancouver. Can you honestly tell me it isn’t a bit unusual?

So, random killing throughout the two cities (Seattle and Vancouver) for years, dumping the bodies into the rivers/sea, and expanding your hunting ground across borders. Not that difficult to imagine.

Let’s add another layer to this mystery. What about a map that shows all the missing women in that area …


Add those two together with the severed foot map and, at the very least, people living around the Salish Sea are accident prone…

Continued…

The Locations


Let’s first look at the farm location and its association with the Fraser River. The 17 acres that the police searched are not located right next to a river, but the original parcel of land the Picktons owned was. It butted up against Pitt River, which merges/becomes Fraser River. Also, several other properties they own are located next to or directly on the Fraser River. The area that was Pickton’s hunting ground (downtown East Side) and where he rendered his meat at is located next to Vancouver harbor.

Both these water sources (Fraser River and Vancouver Harbor) are where the RMCP believe the severed feet came from. They came to this conclusion by tracing the feet back to their possible point of entry via seasonal currents and water flow (see link to map here …

The Salish Sea severed feet are clustered around these same water sources: the Fraser River and Vancouver Harbor (There is also a cluster around Tacoma, WA). The people have not been identified fully. The forensics team was able to establish approximate sex and age: a mix between male/female deceased in their twenties to fifties.

So, I ask you ATS’ers, what is going on in this area? Why so many missing people in such a small area? Why are feet showing up? Why is no one noticing/talking about/looking into this strange phenomenon?

blend

a reply to: blend

What a thread, Blend... truly excellent!

a reply to: blend

I only read the first paragraph! I love your writing and will come back tonight to read it all!

Excellent read. Thank you.

originally posted by: Encia22
a reply to: blend

What a thread, Blend... truly excellent!

Thank you Encia. Glad you stopped by to check it out! Hopefully you find something of value in it.

originally posted by: JJproductions
a reply to: blend

I only read the first paragraph! I love your writing and will come back tonight to read it all!

I can provide a synopsis for you if that helps...I know you're a busy guy! Send it to ya via PM...might be a bit though...have to catch up on some things first...



Thanks for stopping by!

blend

originally posted by: DAVID64
Excellent read. Thank you.

Should've been longer/better. I just ran out of time. But, I'm glad you liked it!

Thank you!
blend

a reply to: blend

Thanks for the thread, Blend. You did a beautiful job presenting the evidence in a very captivating way!

These strange cases has always held my attention, along with the Highway of Tears. I've often wondered if they aren't all connected to the same killer/group of killers. It's hard to imagine it being the work of only one man.

You can always add some more todbits later if you want.

originally posted by: blend

originally posted by: DAVID64
Excellent read. Thank you.

Should've been longer/better. I just ran out of time. But, I'm glad you liked it!

Thank you!
blend

BullSNIP! This was exciting! A wonderful read!

Ironic how we have back to back old school epic threads less that 24 hours of confirmation that the site will continue to exist…..

originally posted by: blend

originally posted by: DAVID64
Excellent read. Thank you.

Should've been longer/better. I just ran out of time. But, I'm glad you liked it!

Thank you!
blend

Great stuff!

Bravo!

I believe the TV show "Criminal Minds" did a multi-part episode that parallels the Pig Farm case. I'm sure they used it as a primary source for their writing. It was an excellent show(s)!

Also, I saw a show on Netflix recently called "The Unexplained Files" which goes into the whole "Feet on the beaches" stories. Also, very well done, but you did a better job than both with your post!

Keep 'em coming!

a reply to: blend

Thank you, I am going to read this one for sure since I have a connection to pig farms. Oink! Lol

a reply to: blend

Great thread, informative and superbly laid out

When googling his name it looks like he was attacked in prison on the 20/5/24


Robert Pickton attacked in prison, clinging to life

I’m so glad to read he got speared in the head by a broom handle.

a reply to: UpIsNowDown2

Oh my, a pig farm? It's a fact (some say well known) that pigs will and do eat anything and they will consume human flesh.
A very good explanation, though in a film, (I do wish I understood how to transfer excerpts of film onto ATS, may be someone could do it for me) In a film called "Snatch" the criminal called Bricktop explains the procedure of how to get rid of a body by feeding the body to the pigs. So why these murderers never used this method being as they were on a pig farm eludes me.

a reply to: crayzeed

I remember that scene. Here you go: