That Lonely Section of Hell

by Lori Shenher

  I laughed hearing this story. Knowing you a little, feeling a sense of wonder at the very strength of your survival instinct, thinking you’d probably get a kick out of making those poor young policemen look like Keystone Cops. Looking forward to our meeting.

  You were staying at the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women. They told me you’d be there for a few weeks at least, so I gave you some time to clean up, knowing we’d have a much better talk if you weren’t in the throes of detox.

  I fought to contain my excitement, for you were a key piece to this puzzle I was trying to solve. The more I tried to learn about Robert Pickton and his pig farm, the less ground I seemed to be able to cover. But you had been there. You had been with him. And you had survived him. Did you have any clue back then what that really meant?

  You were smaller than I remembered, almost mouselike. Half-Indigenous, half-white, with wild curly dark hair and a small shy smile, despite your apparent dislike of police, whom you saw as just one more obstacle in the way of your getting high and escaping the demons in your own head. Nothing personal, you said.

  I told you the truth—that you didn’t have to talk to me if you weren’t up for it, that I had arrested you a couple of times in the past, that I was very interested in your story and wanted to go over it again with you if you felt you could handle that. You agreed. You said you were pissed; you couldn’t understand why that prick wasn’t in jail. I asked you what you thought the reason for that was. You said the Crown said you weren’t credible. On account of your drug addiction, you explained. As though that was typical.

  You looked up at me timidly and said, “That’s not right, is it?” I replied that in my experience, it’s usually up to a judge and jury to make a decision about the credibility of a witness. You nodded and I was reminded again of all the ways that poor, drug-addicted women are dismissed.

  We talked about the missing women, about how many of them you had known—Sarah, Helen—and about your fear. You avoided the corner of Princess and Cordova, where he had picked you up that night, afraid he would return to find you. Did you know he tried to pay friends to finish you off? To kill you so that you would be forever silenced, unable to tell, unable to point a finger at him and say, “Yes, Your Honor, that’s the man”? He knew this wasn’t over with you. He was so right.

  That’s the man who offered you $100 for a “lay”—a pretty decent date back in 1997 for the low track, where the most desperate and unprotected women worked. You said the word with the nonchalance and slight disdain of someone for whom sex had long ago ceased to be anything other than a quid pro quo arrangement. “Lay,” “blow job,” “half and half”—all mechanical, locker room, porn site terms devoid of any feeling or illusion of closeness. I wondered if you had ever been fortunate enough to have sex out of love, if you had ever wanted to be with someone as much as they wanted to be with you. I worried I was stereotyping you by even wondering that.

  So you jumped into the truck, despite a small but persistent voice in your head telling you something about this guy was off. You said this feeling grew stronger as he drove you east along the Lougheed Highway, but still you carried on.

  A hundred bucks. A hundred bucks.

  You asked where he was taking you and he said he had a place in Port Coquitlam. You suggested a hotel or even an alley might be better. He said nothing and just drove on in the night, never fully stopping for red lights, merely coasting as he approached and timing them so the truck never slowed enough for you to chance a leap out the door. By then, you were thinking about it.

  This is why I don’t leave the skids.

  You noticed a bra on the floor beneath your feet. What’s this? Silence. You looked out the window for some magical way to escape. He drove on through the night.

  He pulled onto a large junk-filled property—but he didn’t drive to the house. You were afraid and again asked him where you were going. He told you he had a trailer near the back of the property. He drove on in the darkness.

  He parked alongside a dirty construction-type trailer and helped you out. Then, he suddenly stopped you, telling you to wait right there as he pulled a large sheet of plywood from somewhere near the trailer and laid it down on the ground outside the trailer door. You thought that was odd because it wasn’t raining out, the ground was dry, and there was nothing but a little gravel to track inside. It wasn’t like the place was clean or anything. Weird.

  Okay, come on in. You did. A hundred bucks.

  Every girl has her limit, you said. But sometimes you get yourself into spots, situations, and it’s hard to say no, to tell them you’ve changed your mind, that it doesn’t feel right. They already think they own you. The deal’s already been made, and you know how these guys can get if you piss them off.

  You had sex on a filthy mattress on the floor. Mona Wilson would be killed on this mattress. How many others were there? When he was done, you asked for your money and he said no.

  Here we go.

  You asked if he would at least drive you back into Vancouver.

  No.

  You asked if you could use the phone.

  No.

  So you reached for the phone book and before you could begin thumbing through it, he grabbed one of your arms and clamped a handcuff around your wrist—so quickly you hadn’t even seen the handcuffs. Immediately, you knew you were fighting for your life.

  He tried to grab your free arm, but you fought harder than he could have imagined you would and he couldn’t get the second cuff on you. You saw a knife on the counter and struggled to reach it like a drowning person lunging for a life raft. Got it. You lashed out at his neck, slicing him from one ear to Adam’s apple. You dropped the knife and ran for the door.

  He bled heavily but still managed to grab you again. You grappled for a few moments; he now had the knife. He shoved it hard into your abdomen and then pushed it up. You both flailed about as you each lost blood and consciousness. Finally, he indicated you could go, pointing to the door. You felt gratitude that he let you go.

  As you turned to stagger out—your guard down and now focused merely on survival—he grabbed you once again around your neck and pulled you back into the trailer. He tricked me. He plunged the knife into your lower chest. Then he passed out.

  Hands pressed against your body to hold your organs in, you ran the hundred or so yards back to Dominion Road, looking about wildly for anyone to help. You crossed the road and pounded on the door of a darkened farmhouse, but no one was home. Did anyone ever tell you that home belonged to his aunt? You smashed your fist through a window, trying to get in, thinking, He must be coming after me.

  Then you saw the lights of a car.

  Half-naked, bleeding, and still holding the knife, you flagged the car down, screaming that someone had tried to kill you. Amazingly, the couple stopped—and politely implored you to put the knife down, which you did. You hadn’t even known you were carrying it. How did I get it back from him? You cried, telling them someone tried to kill you and you feel bad because you think you stabbed him, you had to stab him. You were already worried they would find some way to make it your fault.

  It was always the girl’s fault. They asked for it, making these choices, working the streets—what did you think would happen when you got in the car with a stranger?

  The people in the car called 9-1-1 and arranged to meet an ambulance on the way to the hospital. They put you on board and the paramedics went to work, trying to stop the blood loss that had reached a very dangerous point. You had to tell them all you didn’t mean to stab him, because you were sure you were dying and didn’t want to have this on your slate if there was actually an afterlife. They told you, Shhhh, save your energy, but this was important and they had to know you didn’t mean it. You would die twice on the operating table, but you hung on.

  He managed to drive himself to the hospital shortly after you. Bleeding out. Quickly, the police would put two and two together.

  You lifted your T-shirt and re
vealed several long jagged scars crisscrossing your midsection and lower chest. I was amazed you survived. I told you of how I had seen the property and could not understand how you could have possibly run that distance from the trailer to the road. It was easily the length of a football field and a half.

  I told you I believed you were the only one who had got away.

  You nodded slowly.

  We went over some details again, and I asked you what your plans were once you got out. You said you had kids living with your mom and you wanted to clean up and get them back living with you. You said you didn’t know he had tried to find you and that itself was enough motivation to get through detox and make a new start. You hugged me and I wished you the best of luck.

  The guard came to take you back to the open living unit and you paused, turned back to me, and said, “Catch him, okay?” I said I’d do my best.

  During the investigation, I’d often talk to the people walking the beat, asking if you were still around, hoping you had found the strength to overcome your addictions. Last I’d heard, you were doing really well.

  It really is about luck—that you’re where you are and I’m where I am. A mere coin toss.

  How must you feel now? Do you feel vindicated in some way or just disgusted that your story wasn’t heard and it had to go on so long? Do you still feel outrage, or was that beaten out of you through years of violence and scratching out an existence in the constant soul-sucking world of the Downtown Eastside? Do you wonder about all the women who died needlessly? Do you think about how easily you could have died that March night? Do you feel survivor’s guilt? I know many of the girls do.

  I wonder if you know how brave you are.

  5

  Working with Bill Hiscox

  • • •

  “The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”

  CARL JUNG, MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS

  ROSSMO TOLD ME he felt the offender (or offenders) had the ability to dispose of bodies in privacy, was probably Caucasian, and probably used a vehicle—all things I had surmised early in the investigation and reasons that the Pickton tip resonated so strongly with me from the outset. Early in the missing women investigation, I discounted nothing—I met with anyone who wanted to talk—and remained open to anything that might help us find these women, including Rossmo’s theories. Unfortunately, none of these led us anywhere.

  In August 1998, I made several unsuccessful attempts to reach Bill Hiscox at the number he left Leng, and we finally spoke on the phone early in September after I tracked him down to a men’s shelter. I left him a message, and he returned my call later that night. A phone conversation is never optimal when dealing with a source, but it marked a beginning I hoped would lead me to a face-to-face meeting so that I could better determine his credibility and his motivation for coming forward.

  We spoke easily, and I found him to be reasonable and lucid. He made no mention of a reward—not that one had been offered yet—and he did not ask for payment. He spoke intelligently and answered thoughtfully, and I liked him.

  “I’m not working out there anymore,” Hiscox told me. “He’s a creep, odd duck, you know? Like, we just never got on that well. I think he just put up with me because Lee said I was okay.”

  “How did the grinder thing come up?” I asked.

  “I dunno. We’d be sitting around, shooting the shit, and Willie’d say, ‘Hey, if any of you guys ever need to get rid of a body, I got this here grinder works like a hot damn. You’re welcome to it.’ And that was Willie, always giving people his stuff, then getting pissed if people took advantage.”

  “Did he only offer the grinder the one time?”

  “No, I remember him saying it a few times, like to other people. He seemed kinda proud of it.”

  “So, why were you so hot to talk to the police about him?” I wanted to test him a little, see if he was motivated by money or a grudge.

  “Well, why do you think?” He seemed annoyed at my question. “If he’s killin’ girls, he needs to be stopped. I may be a lot of things, but I know what’s right, you know? What Willie’s doing, it isn’t right. If that was my sister, I’d sure as shit want someone speaking out to stop it.”

  He told me he was trying to clean up his life and get his own place. He told me about his friend Lisa Yelds, nicknamed Lee, a good friend of Pickton’s who arranged for Hiscox to work on the farm as a laborer. This was typical of Pickton—he seemed to have platonic relationships with women living on his property and sexual relationships with sex workers.

  Although Hiscox characterized Yelds as a close friend of Pickton’s, he said she had expressed concerns to Hiscox that Pickton might be drugging her and possibly touching her while she was unconscious, but she wasn’t certain. Neither she nor Pickton drank alcohol or used drugs. Hiscox often described Pickton as a “creepy guy” and told me how Pickton had picked up a sex worker downtown, taken her back to his place for sex, then stabbed her. I knew he was talking about Anderson.

  “Did you know the girl he stabbed?” I asked.

  “Nah, no idea. Some girl he picked up downtown, I think. He was pissed, said she gave him hepatitis. Said he’d pay us to bring her back to the farm so he could finish her off.”

  “You heard him say that?”

  “Oh yeah, a few times to different people. Lee said he asked people to find her all the time. He blamed her for his being sick.”

  I was keenly interested in having a conversation with Lisa Yelds or finding a way to place an undercover operator in a position to befriend her, but Hiscox was certain she would not want to talk. From Hiscox’s description of her, it was clear that she was at best incredibly antipolice and was not interested in helping anyone other than her closest longtime friends. It was obvious that Hiscox felt affection and loyalty toward her, in part because their friendship extended back many years.

  Both Yelds and Hiscox were afraid of the Picktons’ biker associates and of being known as police informants within their own peer group. In the 1980s and ’90s, the Picktons were well known in the community. Their parties were notorious in the Port Coquitlam area. The family owned several large properties that they would eventually sell to the city, which subdivided them for developments and big-box stores such as Home Depot. Before that, Robert and his brother, Dave, lived on one property, and on another property a mile down the road there was a large barn known as Piggie’s Palace, where, according to local lore, those parties took place and were well attended by many in the community, including elected officials and police. Although there were rumblings of illegal after-hours liquor activity, for the most part it sounded like relatively good clean fun, at least on the surface.

  Down the road from Piggie’s Palace was quite another story. Robert lived in the small dirty mobile office trailer farther back from the road, and Dave inhabited the house near the front of the large lot. Large mounds of recently moved earth, piles of junk metal and lumber, derelict cars, and numerous backhoes littered the property. The brothers owned and operated P&B Salvage company and the farmland was their storage area. There was also a barn and attached slaughterhouse where Robert butchered his pigs and lambs, selling the meat to friends and local sellers.

  None of the sex workers I spoke with agreed to go on the record with what they saw and experienced on the property shared by Robert and Dave, but several told me stories of depraved sex “games,” many involving non-consensual sex acts and torture; drugs laced with unknown hallucinogens; and pigs exhibiting an unnatural interest in humans. As one woman described to me shortly after the Pickton search began in 2002:

  “I was in the trailer, you know, we were partying and some of the guys were getting pretty into it, taking girls into the other room and around the side. Dope everywhere. I was using a lot back then, so my memory isn’t the best, but I knew what I was doin’. Someone gave me some smack and as soon as I shot it, I felt sick, really weird, not like trippin’, more like sic
k. Just not the way a high feels.

  “So, I say I’m going out for some air and no one really stops me, so much is going on and everyone’s fucked up, right? And I go around the trailer, it’s a really nice night, not raining for once. My head’s swimming, so I just walk. I’d never been out there before, so I walk for some air and I turn a corner and there’s a pigpen. I grew up in the country, I know pigs, so I walk over to the fence to have a look, I’m feeling a little better. And out of fucking nowhere these pigs are throwing themselves at the fence where I’m standing like they want to get at me. I never seen pigs act like that, pigs are gentle. But it was like they could smell me, smell my woman-ness. They scared the shit out of me and I got the fuck away from there.”

  Hiscox agreed to think of ways to obtain more information from Yelds but wasn’t confident she would cooperate. He offered to try to spend some time on the farm, but I suggested he do so only if it was convenient for him and if that appeared normal to Yelds and Pickton. I didn’t want him doing anything outside of his normal routine, and I didn’t want to give him the impression that I was directing him. At this point, I didn’t know enough about him to have him acting as an agent for the police, and I didn’t want him doing anything to put himself at risk or to tip Pickton off that he might be a police source. We agreed to speak again in a few days, and I continued to assess his true involvement in the activities on the Pickton farm.

  A few days later, I arranged to meet Hiscox, but he called on the morning of our meeting to say he couldn’t make it but would come at one or two that day. Two o’clock came and went and no Hiscox—no call, no show. I was mildly annoyed but tried to be patient and reassure myself this was typical of sources—especially those with addictions.