Scene Of The Crime

Is it that police are too hamstrung by legal niceties, too overwhelmed by the work involved in securing the safety of their jurisdictions in the face of overwhelming criminal activities? Or is it perhaps driven by the phenomena of professional inattention to details? But when the details taken together represent as so glaringly indicative of horrific crimes?

And then compounded by the irritating fact that a key witness is considered to be untrustworthy.

That key witness was subjected to the most horrific of experiences and just barely managed to escape a bloodily vicious attack that could have cost her life, and in her desperate attempts to save herself, she was able to inflict grievously serious wounds on her attacker, yet her story didn't seem to add up to the authorities.

And because they suspected her veracity, a raving lunatic was let loose to murder again and again and again.

So much for placing our trust in the professionalism of police forces. Why is the word of a woman held to be suspicious when she is testifying against a man, when the evidence clearly demonstrates that she had undergone the trauma she describes at the hands of a man whom she herself managed to temporarily emasculate? Because she was a professional whore.

And why was society in general and the authorities in particular not overcome with concern at the disappearance from Vancouver's downtown eastside of countless woman? They were street persons all, contemptible drug users who used the proceeds from selling their bodies to feed their drug and alcohol addictions. Someone loved them, though.

Now it transpires, after a jury found Robert Pickton, the serial killer extraordinaire, guilty of only second-degree murder of six women, for which crimes he was sentenced to serve the maximum sentence of life behind bars - with no parole for 25 years. This man tortured and horribly murdered dozens of women - and his punishment is 'life behind bars' with no chance of parole for 25 years.

That is one prime absurdity. The other is that clues and evidence in the hands of the Vancouver Police were left to sit there, there were no bright minds to connect the dots and come to an obvious conclusion. The woman in question was close to death, having lost three litres of blood; yet she made her escape even while handcuffed and in a state of shock.

Taken to Royal Columbian Hospital with multiple stab wounds all over her body, she was unconscious in hospital for four days. The man who so horribly assaulted her had lost the same amount of blood when she fought back, managing to halt his frenzied attack upon her by herself slitting his throat. And he was brought to the same hospital where police took his clothing.

And where the key to the handcuffs that secured her wrists were found in his pants pocket, taken to the room where she lay, and her hands uncuffed. And although Robert Pickton was charged with attempted murder, assault and forcible confinement, the Crown felt the woman too unstable to testify in court, and he was released. That was 13 years ago.

"I was fighting him, I was, like, going backwards so I could get to this knife. I was begging him to let me go, telling him I had a family. And then I leaped at him, I slit his throat ... I remember him grabbing a rag and going 'You f--cking bitch, you got me good', and he put the rag on his neck. And then he had a big long stick and I remember just picking up plants, everything I could get a hold of, and throwing it at him."

This testimony was held to be not credible. And it was withheld, along with other incriminating and vital data from the knowledge of the jury that sat during Robert Pickton's trial, and which reached their decision to find him not guilty of first-degree murder. This was a travesty of a trial and an associated travesty of justice.

A monster was released to continue his deadly predation. Stabbing, assaulting, killing dismembering, and burying the body parts, some of which were ground up and kept in his freezer. He felt free to continue with his killing spree, because desperate women were so readily accessible, and no one seemed to care what happened to them.

And his lawyers, eager to polish their reputations for working the law to the advantage of their odious client, held that his charter rights had been jeopardized because of some of the actions during the investigation by the police - once people got serious about searching for the missing women.