Butcher (6 page)

After Dave Pickton moved to the other side of the farm, near Piggy’s Palace off Burns Road, which was nearly a mile away from the main farmhouse, his brother, Willie, finally had the freedom to come and go as he pleased. Dave had escaped much of the stench of the pig-farming operation, and Willie could now do what he wanted without having to explain anything to Dave, or to anyone else. Dave had moved out of the main farmhouse soon after the sales of the parcels of land had gone through. A short time thereafter, he had constructed his after-hours social club. He, too, enjoyed the freedom that living away from his brother had given him, even if he was only a short distance down the road. When the wind was just right, however, he could sometimes still smell the pig shit, blood, and rotting carcasses that Willie had left unattended. Nevertheless, the separateness afforded each of the brothers the freedom that each had wanted, and needed, to do as they pleased. Willie, of course, liked to cavort with prostitutes, and Dave could continue his efforts at becoming closely aligned with bikers—particularly, some said, the Hells Angels. All the while Dave lived with a woman who seemed willing to put up with his love of partying.

A number of people who had known and worked with the Pickton family painted a picture of happier times that dated back to the 1970s, when there was not so much junk lying around on the farm and there were greener pastures in wide-open spaces. There were also horses on the farm at that time. One woman, Alison Gailling, was six years old when she first visited the farm in 1979, when her older sister, Vicky, began dating Dave Pickton. Now a high-school teacher in her mid-thirties, Gailling recalled a memory that was not so pleasant. She said that there was a large sludge pit on the farm, where dead pigs and other pig waste materials were discarded. On one occasion, she said, Willie took her into the farmhouse’s basement, which she described as dark and “scary,” where he showed her how to make sausages using a meat grinder. Gailling’s memories, of course, dated back to a time, presumably, before the horror that the Pickton farm would become famous for had begun.

As a young boy Willie Pickton did not want to watch the pigs while they were in the process of being slaughtered by other family members or hired hands. On butchering days, when the hired help would slaughter the pigs in the barn, Willie would go fishing or take part in other activities away from the area. Perhaps it had been the sound of the pigs “screaming” that had bothered him, or the sight of their blood had made him squeamish. Whatever it was, his interest in the pig slaughters just had not been there as a child. Those who knew him as a kid said that he did not become interested in slaughtering pigs until he was older, by which time Willie had begun doing most of the dirty work. By the time he was into his early twenties, he was not only slaughtering pigs, but he was killing and butchering other farm animals, such as goats, cows, and at least one horse, and apparently was enjoying it.

In 1974, when Robert was approaching his mid-twenties, a woman, Sandy Humeny, began dating his brother, Dave, and eventually moved into the farmhouse. She described how she helped the elder Picktons, Leonard and Louise, and how Louise had seemed in charge of running things because Leonard’s mind had begun failing at that time. Sandy explained that socially the Picktons kept very much to themselves and did not participate in many local social events despite the opportunities available to them. One of the few social events that she remembered them taking part in was entering several of their horses in a May Day parade. By this time Dave had obtained his first large truck and had begun hauling topsoil for extra money, while Willie continued to work on the farm. By the end of the decade, after both parents had died, Dave took over the various aspects of the business and delegated most of the work to his brother and hired hands.

Sandy’s sister, Ingrid Fehlauer, recalled watching Robert slaughter a variety of animals when she would visit the farm, and she said that she had returned there as an adult and had visited Robert Pickton several times a week for a six-year period in the 1990s. She said that she had never seen anything unusual on the farm, such as prostitutes or anyone using drugs, during some of those visits. She described Robert Pickton as a “good friend.” She did say that the trailer he lived in was unkempt and dirty, and on one occasion she had seen “lots of blood” in the trailer, but she had not known its source.

The Pickton farm during those days, and especially later in the 1990s, was very busy with visitors coming and going at a rapid pace. At one point it was common for two hundred cars per day to visit the farm, with activity occurring from 6:00
A.M
. to 2:00
A.M
. seven days a week, according to Bill Malone, a friend and employee of Dave Pickton’s. Security eventually became an issue when things began disappearing. Many times people dropped by just to use the phone because they knew that one was available; some people came onto the property looking for Willie; others, according to rumors, used the Pickton address to receive their welfare checks and other items. In fact, there was so much mail arriving at that address that there often was not sufficient room inside the mailbox, forcing the mail carriers to leave large amounts of mail alongside it on the ground.

“There were so many people coming onto the property, we did not have control over what was happening,” Malone said, who was often there because of his employment with Dave. “There was a continual stream of people going in, once they knew they could use the phone even when there was no one there…. There were people I did not recognize. Even if I said Willie wasn’t around, they would still proceed and say they would wait for him.”

Even the warning sign
PIT BULL WITH AIDS
did little to keep people out.

The parties at Piggy’s Palace were another matter altogether. They were frequent and raucous, with drug-addicted female prostitutes showing up in large numbers because they knew that they could find drugs there. Occasionally a male hooker would arrive in drag. There were also people there, like Willie, who would pay the guests for sex or trade drugs for sexual favors. It was a forbidding place, but those in attendance at the parties would not realize just how grim it was until much later—or unless they became a victim who had not been allowed to leave.

“The farm was the dregs of the earth,” said one sex trade worker from Low Track who knew it well. “It was a hellhole. You can say to someone, ‘Don’t go,’ but if they’re an addict, the addiction overcomes the senses. The police had known about the Pickton farm for some time, but nothing changed.”

Despite the police awareness of the goings-on at the Pickton farm, the only thing that occurred were more parties, many of which were bigger and louder than the ones that had occurred in the early days of Piggy’s Palace. Little did anyone know of the sinister backdrop that the parties helped to safeguard, and they kept coming for the drinking, drugs, food, dancing, and loud music that emanated from the Palace’s exceptional sound system.

Bill Malone, Dave’s friend, claimed that the sound system in Piggy’s Palace had been his idea and that its installation had been under his supervision. He said that the system was as good as or better than those in many of Vancouver’s nightclubs. As far as the parties were concerned, Malone said that the kitchen had been equipped to serve as many as five hundred guests. Buffets were a favorite at Piggy’s Palace, and in addition to the roasted pigs that Willie always provided, turkey was frequently on the menu.

Tanya Carr was another person who provided details about life on the farm. Tanya lived down the street from the farm as a young girl in the late 1970s, but she visited it frequently and eventually became close to Willie in what she described as “an uncle-niece relationship.” Pickton allowed her to stable a horse at the farm and, as he seemed with many people, was genuinely happy to have been able to help her, even in such a small way. In 1994, when Tanya was twenty-one and Willie was forty-five, she moved in with him and they lived in an old recreational vehicle parked on the farm. She, too, described the farm as a busy place, but said that much of the traffic had consisted of customers doing business with Dave’s topsoil and demolition businesses, P&B Salvage, or those who stopped by to buy pigs, which Willie would happily butcher for them. However, by 1997, Tanya was no longer spending much time on the farm and had begun to build a life on her own. While she had appreciated Willie’s kindness and generosity, something had signaled her that it was time to move on.

When intelligence had been handed out, Willie, by his own admission, was not the sharpest tool in the shed. A simple man, Robert Pickton possessed poor verbal skills and had an IQ of 86, which is at the low end of the average scale, where approximately two-thirds of the population fell. He failed the second grade, and school administrators placed him in special classes that educators at the time thought might help get him through school. However, his educational abilities seemed to top out in the fifth grade, even though records show that he was in school until the ninth grade. As an adult Willie’s vocabulary appeared minimal at best, and he frequently did not understand the punch lines of jokes that others would tell him. However, he seemed to excel during bidding at pig auctions, and his skills as a mechanic seemed very good, according to those who knew him. In addition to butchering, he was very adept at rebuilding internal combustion engines, small or large. Nonetheless, those who knew him considered him a simple, unsophisticated pig farmer who could never get to first base with a woman unless he paid her for sex. Even then, he often ended up masturbating himself to achieve orgasm.

Pickton, whom people often described as a workaholic, was in reality a dirty little man with personal hygiene that would make most people cross the street to avoid passing in close proximity to him. Always repairing and fixing up used cars and trucks, some of which he obtained from auctions held by the Vancouver Police Department, was one of his sidelines to earn extra money; the other way, of course, was butchering pigs for other people, for which he charged a fee. Although he wore his gum boots nearly everywhere he went, he never wore gloves in his work. Echoing the comments of a coworker at West Coast Reduction, an employee there said that Robert Pickton could not have cared less about engaging in sanitary conditions when he dropped off discarded pig carcasses and associated parts, sometimes called offal, at the rendering plant in Vancouver.

“It’s just that he was handling these old dirty barrels with his bare hands,” said the employee at the rendering plant. “He was such a dirty guy. I almost felt sorry for him.”

One of the biggest questions that would be on many people’s minds as the case unfolded was whether Willie possessed a psychopathic personality or not. On the surface he did not appear to be psychopathic. He seemed to enjoy helping other people, whether by giving a person a place to stay for a while, providing them with food, giving them a job, or simply giving away money to people he liked and whom he believed to be in need. (The typical psychopath, or sociopath, doesn’t care about others, is focused on himself and his own personal gratification, and has little, if any, conscience.) There were people who knew Willie that described him as a caring, generous person who would give anyone in need the shirt off his back. Nonetheless, as would be pointed out later on, not all serial killers are sociopaths; yet, Willie, as a kid, would often hide inside the carcasses of hogs that had had their entrails removed so that his mother and others could not find him. While that act in and of itself would not necessarily distinguish Willie as a psychopath, it was a behavior that most people would not ever consider engaging in.

Growing up had not been easy for Willie. He worked hard on the farm, driven by a domineering mother who forced him to take baths instead of showers; he would not even take a bath until forced to do so. He performed poorly in school before dropping out shortly after starting high school. Not only had he not liked going to school, he reportedly had been picked on regularly by the other kids, which, some said, weighed heavily in his decision to not finish his basic education. Girls had had nothing to do with him until later in life, when he learned that he could pay women for sex.

The problems that had led to Willie becoming a vicious sex killer had not begun in early adulthood, but rather had started early in his life. Even though he purportedly had been close to his mother, Willie had suffered much during childhood from having been forced to work long hours, which had kept him from being able to enjoy many of the activities that most children engage in. He also resented his mother after her death for the manner in which he perceived she had treated him in her will. It seemed like he had faced humiliation frequently while growing up and even into adulthood. Rejected by girls and made fun of by boys, Willie grew up unable to fit in anywhere. Even his brother’s biker friends did not seem to like him. Since he did not drink or take drugs, Willie attempted, it seemed, to fill the voids in his life with sex in the form of fantasy and masturbation, and later with murder. On one occasion he purchased a plastic blow-up doll, presumably from a Vancouver sex shop for his brother’s birthday, but he purportedly kept it for his own use.

For reasons that were never entirely clear, Willie decided to end the year 1997 on a somewhat high note. While trolling the streets of Low Track on Christmas Eve, perhaps thinking that it would be funny, Willie released into the streets two pigs that he had brought with him from the farm. On the surface, based on the accounts of those who witnessed the incident, he seemed to think that it was a hilarious, even mischievous thing to do. However, perhaps in a sinister sort of way, he may have reasoned that the levity of his actions would make it easier to connect with some of the working girls that evening.