Butcher. Gary C. King

distance from downtown and Low Track, where Willie always took animal parts for disposal, offered an opinion that Willie may have balanced his unkempt and dirty appearance by drawing street women close to him with the promise of money.

      “He was such a dirty guy,” employee Robert Bayers said. “He was just gross-looking actually. I kind of felt sorry for him…. Here he is, rolling these old barrels off the back of the truck, and he has got his bare hands. I mean, we work in the rendering industry, and it’s, uh, you know, it’s dead animals. It’s not a very pretty thing to be working with, with your bare hands.”

      Regardless of why Willie was generous with his money, many of the women had come to know that they could get cash and drugs from Willie if they got into his car.

      One such woman was twenty-four-year-old Sherry Leigh Irving, an attractive young woman whose life on the streets hadn’t caught up with her yet. She and her parents had lived in Comox on Vancouver Island, and her father recalled how he and his family had lost her in 1991. He had been in the military then, and had been transferred to Ontario in eastern Canada. Sherry, nineteen years old at that time, had agreed that she would move there with them. They waited for her on moving day, but Sherry never showed up.

      “I couldn’t force her to come with me,” her father said. “That’s when I lost contact with my daughter. She was at the age when I couldn’t force her to come with me. Right up until the day we moved and left here, she was coming to Ontario with us.”

      Sherry’s father said that she took off after apparently changing her mind about making the move. She simply had decided that she didn’t want to accompany her parents, and her father, being in the military, was unable to stay behind and begin looking for her. It was at that time, her family believed, that she began the downward spiral into a life of drugs and prostitution.

      Sherry’s family described her as an innocent adolescent who loved to attend family functions, camping, and outings sponsored by their church. By the time she had reached her late teens, however, Sherry had begun to associate with a rough, streetwise crowd. That was when the drug use began as well, and in time she began running away from home. Her father believed that she gave in to the influence of her so-called friends.

      “It’s the peer pressure,” he said. “And you’ve got some kids who are very streetwise, and when you have young innocent adolescents who are new to that scene, they are very easily led. With the drug scene and everything else, there are adults who thrive off that.”

      At one point Sherry’s family, with about eight other families in the Comox area, formed a support group that functioned as a vehicle, in part, to help keep track of their daughters, particularly those who had run away from home. Her father said that the group had been able to keep track of their daughters as long as they remained in the local area, but that it had become impossible by the time they left and moved away.

      Another of Sherry’s relatives described her as a decent person who seemed to struggle with her emotions during her teenage years, despite the fact that the family seemed close and enjoyed doing things together. It was her struggle with her emotions, the relative believed, that had led to her association with the wrong crowd.

      “Generally, she was more of a happy person,” the relative said. “A sort of a go-getter kind of person. She was into track and field. She had tons of friends. She was very popular. There were ups and downs all the time, but I think it was pretty normal…. She was the type of person who would phone her family all the time.”

      Then, all of a sudden, she just stopped calling.

      Her family had always remained hopeful that Sherry would return to them. Her father hoped that she would enter a drug treatment program, straighten herself out, and perhaps return to school. At one point her father returned to British Columbia in an attempt to persuade her to begin a rehabilitation program, and had made arrangements for her to do so, but she just couldn’t make that crucial first step.

      “At the very end she was into hard drugs,” her father said. “I was trying to help her out…. She’d just disappear on us.”

      In 1996, Sherry was convicted in the Vancouver suburbs of New Westminster and Burnaby of offenses related to prostitution, one of which was never resolved because she had disappeared. As a result, the charges were eventually thrown out.

      One of Sherry’s friends described her as a fun-loving, outgoing teenager with a beautiful smile. The friend expressed shock when she saw her mug shot years later.

      “That mug shot of a tired-looking young woman, who had obviously had a hard time, completely shocked me because that was Sherry…my friend from long ago…who had a smile that would melt many…. Once vibrant and beautiful. Still beautiful.”

      “She was a very pleasant girl,” her father said. “She was a very easygoing kind of child. Very pleasant to be with, to be around, always trying to help. It was just as she got a little bit older, she got in with the wrong crowd, and things that used to matter to her didn’t matter so much. She just wanted to go her own way.”

      According to the police, Sherry was last seen in April 1997.

      She was followed by the disappearance of Janet Henry, last seen in June 1997; Ruby Hardy, last seen in July 1997; Cindy Beck, last seen in September 1997.

      It is interesting to note that one of the major differences between the case of Vancouver’s missing women and that of the Seattle area’s case of the Green River Killer was the fact that the bodies of the Green River Killer’s victims had eventually begun to turn up. The people, particularly the women, in the communities where the Green River Killer’s victims were being discovered were naturally frightened and demanded explanations and actions from the police. Gary Ridgway seemed to revel in the fear he was creating due to the bodies that he was leaving in the often remote outdoor areas, just waiting to be found. In essence, Ridgway had forced the hand of Washington’s law enforcement community—which many people had perceived as indifferent, at first due to the fact that the victims were prostitutes and drug addicts—by leaving his victims’ bodies outdoors, in the open, where he knew they would eventually be found. As time went on, many in the law enforcement community felt that he was mocking them, showing them that he could kill and remain undetected.

      Conversely, it seemed certain that the police in Vancouver would have taken an interest in the missing women sooner if bodies had begun showing up there. Although the communities in Vancouver would become frightened, even horrified, later on, at the outset the fear had been contained mostly within the prostitution community and that of the families of the missing women. When all was said and done, everyone would realize that the situation in Vancouver was horrifying beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. To put it bluntly, Robert Pickton’s vile acts of inhumanity made Gary Ridgway look like a demented Boy Scout.

      Pickton, however, wasn’t necessarily perceived as the monster that he was—at least not until he had worked himself into a killing frenzy on a particular day or night. Instead, people sometimes characterized Willie Pickton as a farmer who had become frustrated with his life; others viewed him as a backward simpleton who had not completed school; few people viewed him as the vicious killer that the government portrayed him as later, when the elements of the case began to come together. Those who got to see Willie’s violent, dark side rarely lived to talk about their experience.

      Gina Houston, a woman in her mid-thirties when the case eventually broke and a close friend of Willie’s, would later tell the authorities that Willie had once told her that he loved her. Houston, a former neighbor of Willie’s, characterized him as gentle, kind, considerate, polite, and soft-spoken. Two of her children frequently referred to Willie as “Dad,” and Houston was known as one of Willie’s most unwavering allies.

      6

      According to the Vancouver Police Department (VPD), Marnie Lee Ann Frey was last seen in August 1997, although her photograph on the Joint Missing Women Task Force poster indicated that she disappeared in September 1997. Born on August 30, 1973, in Campbell River, British Columbia, a fishing village along the coast, Marnie was twenty-four at the time she went missing. Police