Butcher. Gary C. King

      A number of police officers were dispatched to the site, along with search dogs and a crime scene investigation (CSI) expert, who collectively made a thorough search of the area. When it became apparent that little else of significance could be found on the marshy land, divers were brought in to search the Stave River. Although nothing else was found at the site, forensic experts were able to determine that the skull belonged to the right side of a woman’s head, which, they believed, had been neatly bisected, literally sawed in half vertically, front to back. Although a number of theories as to how the skull came to be at that location were considered, including that it may have come from an indigenous burial site that had been disturbed or perhaps had been carried there by the nearby river during a high tide or flood, the investigators never came up with a satisfactory explanation for its presence, nor were they able to ever identify it. Nonetheless, it was a discovery that CSI expert Tim Sleigh would never forget. After all, it wasn’t just any skull—it was a skull that had been neatly cut in half, proving, in his mind, that such a precise cut could be far from accidental. His gut told him that not only did the grisly discovery mean that someone had died, but that the person likely had been murdered. With nothing else to go on, however, it would be years before Sleigh would understand the magnitude of what he had been called out to investigate that day in March 1995.

      March 23, 1997

      It was a cloudy, chilly evening when sex-trade worker and drug addict Wendy Lynn Eistetter hit the streets of Vancouver, British Columbia’s Downtown Eastside, sometimes referred to as “DES,” to try and earn a few bucks to support her habit. Sometime before midnight a light breeze blew in off the Pacific Ocean, at perhaps six miles per hour, and made the late-night temperature seem even colder than the present forty-three degrees. Nonetheless, Wendy flitted up and down the boulevard in the vicinity of Main Street and East Hastings, hopeful that another trick would come along soon. As it turned out, she didn’t have to wait very long.

      Robert “Willie” Pickton, forty-seven, a smelly little man who always wore gum boots, turned the corner and pulled to the curb, where he stopped and beckoned Wendy over to the car. He told her that he had crack cocaine and marijuana, and would pay her whatever her going rate was if she would accompany him back to his trailer, located just outside of town in nearby Port Coquitlam.

      Wendy, glad to get out of the cold night air, didn’t hesitate or quibble about his offer as she climbed into the passenger seat of Pickton’s vehicle. Pickton’s unkempt, dirty appearance and hygiene hadn’t deterred her, either. As she viewed the man with the scraggly beard and long hair, which had been pulled back into a short ponytail, Wendy knew that she had been with worse—she just couldn’t remember when.

      It became darker as they drove out of the city, past New Westminster and onto Lougheed Highway. During the drive Pickton told her how he operated a pig farm, and they smoked crack cocaine along the way and made small talk, which didn’t seem to matter to either of them. The cloud cover made it seem eerie as they turned off the highway and drove down Dominion Avenue, eventually approaching Pickton’s pig farm, but Wendy paid little mind, at that time, to her surroundings. After driving through the metal gate at the entrance to the farm, which resembled a desolated industrial area during the day, Pickton parked just outside his trailer, which was situated adjacent to the slaughterhouse. The two of them stumbled up the three short steps onto the porch and went inside, crack and crack pipe in hand.

      The interior of the trailer was filthy. It appeared nearly uninhabitable, with clothing, much of it women’s, scattered about, and occasional women’s accessories lying here and there amid the trash that looked like it had been there for a long time. The trailer also stank badly with an odor that Wendy could not discern, and she soon found herself wishing that she hadn’t gone there with Pickton. But it was too late now, and she realized that she would just have to make the best of it, get it over with, and then have Pickton drive her back to town.

      They turned left in the hallway near the trailer’s entrance, and passed by a room that Pickton used as an office. It was also filthy and in disarray. The desk was cluttered, and a stuffed horse’s head hung on the wall behind a watercooler off to one side. They passed a stereo located near the trailer’s entrance, and Pickton paused for a moment to turn it on, with the volume loud, as they made their way toward the bedroom. There were large, dark stains embedded into the badly soiled carpet at various locations, but Pickton didn’t seem at all concerned about showing his guest how filthily he lived. Once they reached the bedroom, they removed their clothing and began various forms of sex play; at one point Pickton bound Wendy with a pair of fur-lined handcuffs. Afterward, satisfied that he had the young woman under his control, the sex play began to turn somewhat rough. But that’s what Wendy was there for, and at first she didn’t mind too much.

      A little later, however, after releasing Wendy from her much-used bindings, Pickton became even rougher, and his demeanor turned maniacal. Out of seemingly nowhere he pulled out “a brown-handled knife,” and Wendy suddenly became horrified at the sight of the knife’s blade. She began screaming. Out in the middle of a several-acre farm, and inside a trailer where the music was blasting, no one could hear her—and she knew it. Pickton seemed to revel at her obvious fear, and he began stabbing her repeatedly with the knife. Pickton’s voice became elevated and eerily shrill, which served to terrify Wendy even more. At one point, after sustaining several serious stab wounds, some of which were to her abdomen, Wendy managed a show of strength and broke free from Pickton’s grip, mustering enough energy to turn the tables on her attacker. After a violent struggle she wrested the knife away from Pickton and stabbed him with it. Satisfied that she had bought some time for herself, Wendy, half-naked, staggered out of Pickton’s trailer and made her way toward Dominion Avenue.

      It was about 1:45 A.M. when Wendy reached the street, blood gushing out of her stomach wounds. According to a police report taken later, Wendy was picked up by a couple driving along the dark road. After loading her into the backseat, minutes later they flagged down a police officer who arranged to have the injured woman taken to the Royal Columbian Hospital in nearby New Westminster, a Vancouver suburb, where she was treated for deep stab wounds to her torso. Similarly, Pickton drove to another hospital, where he was treated for the stab wound inflicted by his victim.

      Fortunately, Wendy Eistetter survived her violent encounter with Robert Pickton. She had been one of the lucky ones—many others were not. Pickton also survived, both medically and legally. Although Pickton had been charged with attempted murder by the Crown after the attack on Wendy, he hired big-time Vancouver lawyer Peter Ritchie to represent him. The charges were later dropped when Wendy did not show up to testify against him—despite the fact that the police knew that he had been the person who had provoked the attack by stabbing Wendy first. It seemed just as well from the Crown’s viewpoint—Pickton had hired a private detective for $10,000, according to Pickton, to investigate Wendy’s background, leaving prosecutors believing that they would have had a tough time convincing a jury that a millionaire pig farmer had tried to kill a hooker who was also a junkie. The incident should have been one of the first clues that something very wrong may have been going on at the Pickton farm, but it seemed to just fly right over the heads of the local police, who chalked it up as an isolated incident.

Part 1

      1

      The city of Vancouver, British Columbia, with a metropolitan area population of 2,249,725, is the largest metro area in the western part of Canada and the third largest in that country. Located along the coast and sheltered from the Pacific Ocean by Vancouver Island, the major seaport is ethnically diverse, with 43 percent of the area’s residents speaking a first language other than English, and is ranked fourth in population density for a major city on the North American continent, behind only New York City, San Francisco, and Mexico City. Because of its rapid growth, it is expected to take over the number two spot by 2021. Idyllic in appearance because of its surroundings of natural beauty, Vancouver is repeatedly ranked as one of the world’s most livable cities. In Canada it is among the most expensive places in which to live. But Vancouver is a major city, and with that distinction comes the grim reality that, like all major cities, it has a dark side that most tourists rarely get, or even want, to see.

      One of Vancouver’s unpleasant sides, an understatement to