by Lori Shenher
The families of Sarah de Vries, Marnie Frey, Janet Henry, and Catherine Knight maintained the most regular contact with me throughout the investigation, sometimes calling to offer some forgotten bit of potentially pertinent information, other times just to speak to someone associated to their loved one, to gain some reassurance that someone out there was still looking. I grew to depend on these calls in many ways, for they renewed my focus and sense of who I was working for when my frustration level would grow too high.
I also struggled to maintain some professional distance. There were so many things I wanted to share with the families, so many times I wanted to tell them to lobby harder, push further, because so little was happening in the investigation on the police end. They placed their faith in me, and as time went by, it became more and more apparent to me that my position on the case made it impossible for me to advocate for the women and their families, and my views and feelings placed me in a position of potential disloyalty or at least in conflict with the organization I worked for. This contradiction wore on me.
My fear wasn’t that I would be ostracized or scorned for speaking out in support of these disenfranchised women; it was much less easily defined. I was afraid that if I were perceived as sharing some of the views of the families and the community, a worse thing would happen: I would be dismissed within the VPD as a bleeding heart, as too emotionally involved in my own case. If that happened, it would be impossible for me to advocate for anyone and I wouldn’t be taken seriously within my own organization—and that would be very damaging to the future of the investigation. At that point, I still felt I would be of more assistance to these women and their families by continuing with the investigation, with limited capacity as an advocate, than if I weren’t there at all. So I continued this strange balancing act, maintaining some distance from the families and the community and not saying many things I wanted to say.
Because of the history these families had with the VPD, I couldn’t trust them not to run to the press with anything I might want to share with them. It was simply too risky—for me personally and professionally, as well as for the integrity of the investigation itself. The information about Pickton was never far from my mind, yet I couldn’t share it with the families short of asking very vague questions—such as Did your sister/daughter/mother ever mention a farm?—for fear of tipping him off. In hindsight, perhaps tipping him off would have made him stop killing, and this thought would torture me for years. What would tipping him off have looked like? How might that have changed things?
When the matter of the reward came up in spring 1999, I made a decision. By this point, my level of frustration had reached new heights, and I felt the only way to generate the kind of attention this tragedy warranted was to bring the public into it. Maggie de Vries, Sarah’s sister, seemed the only person I could confide in, not because I didn’t trust some of the other family members, but because Maggie was one person I felt would not use the information to right all the wrongs that might have been propagated against her family by the VPD. I thought she would take a balanced and considered view of what I would tell her and make a sound plan as to how best to use it.
The VPD did not support the idea of offering a reward to help find the person or persons responsible for these disappearances, and for good reason. Rewards seldom prove useful and often divert valuable police time and resources away from the investigation to deal with false claims, red herrings, and crazies trying to cash in on someone else’s misery. However, underlying this sound reasoning was another line of thought: to offer a reward was to admit we thought these women had not disappeared willingly, and that was a theory I do not believe the VPD was ready to adopt. However, in July 1999, the Vancouver Police Board approved a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of “the person or persons responsible for the unlawful confinement, kidnapping or murder of any one or all of the listed women missing from the streets of Vancouver.”
Despite the fact I had been quoted in the media as far back as 1998 saying that I thought these women had met with foul play and that the possibility of a serial killer or killers was a real one, Anne Drennan maintained a much more neutral stance as the department media spokesperson. This was no doubt through the direction of the Major Crime Section and VPD senior management; in all matters, Anne was only as informed as they allowed her to be. Her voice was the voice people listened to most, and so the community continued to cry that the VPD was not acknowledging the possibility these women had been murdered, even though both Geramy and I said publicly we believed the women were murder victims.
For all of the families, the length of the investigation was extremely traumatic. Hope, denial, dread, and fear would cycle around in their minds as they tried to reassure themselves their family member had just taken off or left the area to try to get off drugs. Then news of a violent predator would come to their attention, convincing them she had been murdered. Either way, not knowing where her body was or how much she may have suffered played havoc with their imaginations. Theirs was a hell that went on for years and for many has not ended.
Many of the families took an occasional hiatus from the investigation—insofar as they could when the fate of their mother or daughter or sister weighed on their minds constantly. Some would call me or wait for me to make one of my occasional update calls and tell me they wished to be out of the loop for a while, asking me to call only if I had something concrete to tell them. They needed a break, some time away from the immediacy of what was—and wasn’t—happening, and I respected this completely.
Several of my relationships with the family members grew. Maggie de Vries, Lynn Frey, Susanna Knight, and Sandra Gagnon would call often, and I found these late-afternoon chats helpful. They would often bring me tidbits of information I wouldn’t otherwise be privy to, things these women had picked up in their own intrepid searches for their daughter and sisters. We would toss theories around, lament the lack of support for the women on the street, and acknowledge the inevitability of their meeting a tragic end considering how society treats them and ignores the men who buy sex from them.
One of the main reasons behind the spring 1999 family meeting was to explain the need to collect DNA samples from as many of the blood relatives as we could. At that time, it was the only way we knew to obtain samples of DNA similar to that of the victims to use for testing should we find a body or body part. In the end, it would prove to be less crucial as newer technology assisted us, but it was a start and gave the families a sense that we knew what the hell we were doing.
One of the few things I am proud of in this investigation was coming up with the idea of using PAP smear tests to obtain DNA profiles on the missing women. I continued to believe it was only a matter of time before we started finding bodies or body parts, and as time passed, identification would become more difficult, especially for those women who were without family or who had been adopted at birth. In this way, we were guaranteed of having victim DNA on all but two of the twenty-seven women on our list—and we were able to obtain familial DNA for those two.
I made an excellent contact at the B.C. Cancer Agency—which collects and stores slides for comparison against newer tests—and she agreed to put aside the most recent PAP smear slides of all the missing women who had had the test and save them indefinitely, rather than just for the required seven years. She also informed me there was a policy change afoot to reduce this hold period from seven to five years. Several of the missing women were fast approaching the five-year mark, so I was pleased to discover this resource when I did.
My contact there was wonderful to deal with, one of the few medical administrators I worked with who balanced privacy concerns with the practical need to identify these women should DNA evidence arise down the road. We agreed that the agency would not release any personal medical information about the women, but the slides would be available if we were able to show we had a reasonable belief that we had found the DNA of one of them and needed
to test it against the known sample. This was extremely helpful—the familial DNA would help to show a likely match, but to be able to test against a known sample of the actual victim vastly decreased the likelihood of a misidentification.
In the meantime—before we knew about the B.C. Cancer Agency’s storehouse of DNA—we held the family meeting and I explained DNA testing in layperson’s terms in a way that I hoped wouldn’t be too upsetting to everyone. The families were very receptive, and everyone who could provided a sample. We used saliva on a buccal swab, because hair was unreliable and blood was considered invasive. Saliva would provide an effective basis of comparison against the found sample.
There were strong divisions within some of the families that I suspect arose from feelings of blame for their loved ones’ fate. Some family members who had not been there for their missing loved one when she needed them suddenly showed up, claiming concern and putting themselves forward as the family spokesperson. This proved a minefield to navigate, and I had to make assessments of several people before determining who might be the best contact person for that family. I made mistakes in the beginning, trusting that a brother, sister, or parent I had been in touch with actually cared about their missing relative. Later, I would discover that this person had not been supportive at all or had been the abuser responsible for the woman’s being on the street in the first place.
I encountered several men in these files who had abused their sisters or daughters in the family home, then later pushed to be the family representative, presumably so that they could have some element of control over what information about the missing woman’s past reached the police. These incidents were impossible to prove, as many historical sexual assault claims are, but it was easy to sniff these men out, and once I stopped dealing with them as the family contact, they faded from the scene, no longer interested in finding their sister or daughter. In a couple of cases, the victim’s mother sold her very young daughter to men for sex, pimping her out on a regular basis, often in the family home. That discovery overwhelmed me with sadness; I knew these things happened, but it made me sick to come face-to-face with fathers and mothers who so horribly abused their daughters and now were calling me professing their love and concern.
Over time, many of these families began to seek each other out for support. They met at the various events staged to bring attention to and memorialize the women, as well as online through the website Wayne Leng set up. After a honeymoon period of a few months, signs of strain became obvious. Disagreements arose over everything from who got to do media interviews to board appointments on various Downtown Eastside committees to memorial events to what to do with funds raised in the names of the missing women. Some of these people shunned the spotlight, whereas others sought it. Clearly, for some, their association with this case was the closest to the center of attention they had ever been, and some handled that better than others.
Lynn Frey, Marnie’s stepmother, called me one or two afternoons a week on her drive to pick up Marnie’s daughter from school. I became aware of Marnie’s case through my July 1998 CPIC search across Canada for related files of women who had disappeared from the Downtown Eastside under similar circumstances. Her family knew from the onset we were investigating Marnie’s disappearance as potentially linked to our other missing women, and Lynn and I discussed this frequently.
Lynn would tell me of her efforts to find Marnie, and she made frequent trips from her Campbell River home to the Downtown Eastside to seek more information. These midafternoon chats lifted my spirits, and I came to value Lynn’s information greatly. Her dogged persistence and determination to find Marnie inspired me to press on during the especially difficult days.
A Letter to Marnie Frey
• • •
DEAR MARNIE,
Finally, your parents received the news they dreaded—you were on that farm. Over the years, they clung to that ever-fading glimmer of hope that maybe—just maybe—you had avoided a violent and painful death. Maybe you had died in the midst of feeling the only peace and comfort you had known in your last few years, that euphoric rush as the dope hit your vein.
Your stepmom, Lynn, searched high and low for you, proving that blood ties aren’t always the strongest. She and your dad did all they could to find you, spending most of the time turning over stones, walking skid row, and searching the Internet for you—and the rest of the time out fishing to make their living, wondering out on the water if you’d turn up while they were away and they’d miss seeing you. Or worrying I’d try to reach them to tell them I’d found something and forget where they were. But I always knew how to find them if I had something—anything—to tell. But there was rarely anything to tell. From that August you went missing, there’d been nothing.
Lynn and I talked for hours on the phone. She always amazed me with her ability to ask how I was doing with “all this” when she was suffering so much over not seeing you. Through our talks, I felt as though I got to know you and the struggles you faced. You were a firecracker, that much I could figure out. No one could tell you what to do or how to do it—but one thing controlled you. If not for the drugs, perhaps you would have harnessed that energy and strength and been the kind of mother and person you always wanted to be, the kind you had wanted your birth mom to be, the kind Lynn had been to you. Perhaps—unlike many of the other women—your own sense of invincibility was your savior for so long, convincing you that you could rise above your problems and take care of yourself, even among the parasites and lowlifes you dealt with every day on the Downtown Eastside.
I looked at photographs of you—taken by a customer in a bank machine vestibule. You smiled like a model, feeling beautiful in a thrift store coat, red lipstick, and vinyl, mid-calf boots—you were still pretty despite your hard living, and your sparkling eyes and smile radiated hope. What were you hoping for, Marnie? Your big break? Some kind of break? That this sleazy man would be the first to come through with promises of the kind of life you always felt you were destined to live? Was it these dreams that got you through your day, your week, your life?
You didn’t have a chance: from a very young age, you were addicted to heroin, and by the time many kids were just beginning to experiment, you were already gone—the legacy passed on to you by your birth mother and her twisted belief that drugs would make you feel better and ease your pain as they did hers.
No chance. You had no chance.
Lynn would tell me of how she walked into the lobbies of scummy skid row hotels and rooming houses, showing desk clerks your photo and asking if they knew you. She told me of the one man who said he could tell her something for ten bucks. She passed over the money only to be told he knew nothing, and it was right then she felt the kind of cruelty and humiliation you must have felt in your years of working the street—of men offering, then taking away—people dangling those carrots they would never let you hold in your hand.
The day Pickton was arrested, I asked to be the one to call and let Lynn and your dad know. Even in the midst of this news, she expressed concern for me, that I had been unfairly portrayed in the media. She apologized to me and wanted me to know she shared no part of your aunt Joyce’s criticisms of me. She told me she was proud of me, the way a mother might say it, and I thought of you and how lucky you were to have an advocate like her on your side. She and I share that, I suppose. We share that sense of trying so hard to advocate on behalf of all of you and of failing so miserably to have made any kind of difference or save any of you from this horrific end.
Lynn knows how hard she tried. She never stopped believing she would find you.
12
The Second Pickton Tip
• • •
“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”
FRANZ KAFKA, THE TRIAL
IN APRIL 1999, Pickton resurfaced as a suspect in a sexual assault and strangulation attempt on a New Westminster sex worker. Although Mike C
onnor and I had attempted to track his activities through the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) flag, we had received next to no information about his activities. Finally, we had something.
Because Pickton fit the description of the attacker, a meeting was held at the New Westminster Police Department with members of the NWPD, the Burnaby RCMP, the Coquitlam RCMP, the Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit, and the VPD. We discussed Pickton’s viability as a suspect in the missing women files and we agreed that his photo should be shown to as many sex workers as possible in all the jurisdictions with an active sex trade. Again, Special O was assigned to conduct surveillance and obtain a discard DNA sample—an item such as a cigarette butt, condom, drinking straw, or dirty Kleenex used by the suspect from which a DNA profile can be taken—from Pickton to use in comparison with DNA found in three murders around Agassiz, B.C., of women who fit our victim profile—Tammy Pipe, Tracy Olajide, and Victoria Younker.
The RCMP’s Special O surveillance unit observed Pickton from May 5 to 11 and saw nothing unusual or apparently significant. He was followed to West Coast Reduction Ltd., an animal-product rendering plant on the Downtown Eastside waterfront, where it was later determined he regularly brought pig entrails. Aside from that, there was little activity. Pickton seemed to attract minimal police attention, and despite the CPIC flag, we were receiving no reports of his being stopped in areas frequented by sex workers. There was not enough evidence in the New Westminster assault to charge him, and he continued with his day-to-day activities.
May came and went quickly. The formation of Project Amelia occupied every moment. Hiscox and I played phone tag briefly but did not speak, and it was becoming clear to me that in the interests of his own recovery he was no longer in direct contact with anyone on the Pickton farm. I was reluctant to press him further or encourage him to return to a lifestyle that might promote or restart his drug use, so I accepted the limitations of his new life, hoping he would call if there was anything new.