That Lonely Section of Hell

by Lori Shenher

  Henley then joined Yurkiw—who, by her own admission in the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry testimony and to Doug LePard during his interview with her for the VPD Missing Women Investigation Report, was inexperienced with murder files—and the interview proceeded. Again, Ron and Mark were incredulous that detectives with little preparation, no file review, and even less belief in the case would be entrusted with dealing with such a key witness.

  Yurkiw tried to keep Ellingsen on track and in the room, and Henley attempted to salvage the interview and maintain some sort of rapport with Ellingsen, but little information was gained.

  On the recording, the interview proceeded with back and forth about whether Ellingsen accompanied Pickton into Vancouver and whether she was with him when he picked up a sex worker. She went off on a tangent, ruminating on all the ways she could potentially prove her story was true. Finally, Henley refocused Ellingsen on the matter of the hanging body in the barn. He told her there was some trouble with her version of the story.

  Henley went on to tell Ellingsen that there were Vancouver police officers who believed she had told others about seeing something in Pickton’s barn. She indicated she understood that. Henley was clearly getting to her and suggested Ellingsen take a polygraph examination to prove she was telling the truth, and she agreed. Henley explained that the Vancouver police officers believed she helped Pickton pick up this sex worker and she saw him skinning her body in the barn. He warned her this story was not going away until it was either proven true or disproven as untrue. She said she understood. Henley emphasized that this was an important matter and Ellingsen agreed.

  When Ellingsen left, however, there was no investigative plan in place to determine the extent of her involvement with Pickton other than to agree to let Henley set up a polygraph test.

  As a result of these interviews, Ron and Mark had some discussion with Sergeant Bill Lean of the VPD Polygraph Unit about scheduling a time for Ellingsen to undergo a lie-detector examination in our polygraph suite in Vancouver. The RCMP also tried to have her come in, as their polygraph examiner, Sergeant Jim Hunter, felt she had to be tested. A time was arranged for August 31, but Ellingsen called at the last minute to cancel, saying that on the advice of her lawyer she would not be speaking to the police any further. We were dead in the water as far as Lynn Ellingsen was concerned.

  During his May 15, 2012, Missing Women Commission of Inquiry testimony, retired corporal Frank Henley had the following exchange with Jason Gratl, the lawyer for Downtown Eastside interests. I listened intently as he confirmed what I had always suspected: despite Henley’s considerable effort on the Ellingsen file, based on Caldwell’s unreliable past performance as an informant, Henley—and by extension the PUHU—did not believe Ellingsen’s story. Henley’s opinions held considerable sway in the office.

  Gratl: “Yes. So you weren’t properly briefed?”

  Henley: “I guess I wasn’t. You’re right.”

  Gratl: “You hadn’t even taken steps to inquire whether there was other information important for an interview?”

  Henley: “That’s correct.”

  Gratl: “All right. So you understood going into your interview with Ellingsen that you weren’t properly briefed then?”

  Henley: “I can’t agree with that.”

  Gratl: “All right. You don’t have to agree. Now, did you know that Robert William Pickton was a suspect at the time of a sexual assault in New Westminster?”

  Henley: “I don’t believe I was aware of that, no.”

  Gratl: “Did you—were-were you aware that there was a profile of Robert William Pickton prepared by a profiler?”

  Henley: “No.”

  This testimony left me shaking my head. I forced myself to listen to Henley explain why he didn’t feel the need to consult RCMP corporal Russ Nash, who had been the source handler of Ross Caldwell on a previous file, about Caldwell’s credibility.

  Gratl: “He doesn’t need to be your source in order for you to review the human source file, does he?”

  Henley: “It would never be my practice to interview any human source file that wasn’t my file without first notifying the source handler.”

  Gratl: “Sure. You can find the source handler, though, can’t you?”

  Henley: “And then getting permission from the source handler.”

  Gratl: “Fine. You can do that, can’t you?”

  Henley: “And then going to headquarters and reviewing the file.”

  Gratl: “Sure. That’s how it’s done. You ask the handler if it’s okay to review the source file, correct?”

  Henley: “That’s right.”

  Henley: “You didn’t do that in this case, did you?”

  Henley: “No.”

  Gratl: “There’s a way within the RCMP you can track down who the handler is, correct?”

  Henley: “Yes.”

  Gratl: “For any given individual, correct?”

  Henley: “Yes.”

  Gratl: “You didn’t do that in this case?”

  Henley: “No, I did not.”

  Gratl: “You took the position that Caldwell’s information was unreliable, and you made that known within the group meetings that you attended, correct?”

  Henley: “Mr. Caldwell’s information was thirdhand, would not stand a test in court, was meaningless without some corroboration. That’s the stand I took.”

  Gratl: “You also distributed information that Caldwell had on previous occasions distributed unreliable information, correct?”

  Henley: “I was informed by then-corporal Nash.”

  Gratl: “Did you or did you not distribute that information?”

  Henley: “To who?”

  Gratl: “To the other people involved in the Port Coquitlam investigation of Pickton?”

  Henley: “I’m sure it was discussed.”

  Gratl: “By you?”

  Henley: “Amongst us.”

  Gratl: “By you?”

  Henley: “Well, I’m sure I told somebody that I had information that he was unreliable, if that’s the question you’re asking.”

  Gratl: “All right then. You heard that information from Corporal Nash, correct?”

  Henley: “That’s correct.”

  Gratl: “And at that point you had an opportunity to go back to the source file and review the source file to check it out to see if it was accurate, correct?”

  Henley: “Why would I doubt Corporal Nash’s—pardon me—information to me?”

  Gratl: “It’s not a question of whether you doubt it. It’s a question of confirming it.”

  Henley: “I did not confirm it.”

  Gratl: “And why was that?”

  Henley: “I didn’t-I didn’t see the need to confirm it.”

  Those opportunities we had sitting face-to-face with Ellingsen had been squandered. Police would not speak to her about Pickton again until February 2002, after his arrest, when she would finally become a key witness, but even then, they had to be pressured to take her seriously to the point that I often wondered whether there wasn’t some sort of concerted effort to keep her and her information buried. I’ve learned nothing since to lead me to understand this bizarre set of circumstances, and I stated in the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry that I hoped if the inquiry learned nothing more, we would hear testimony explaining the RCMP’s rationale around their mishandling of the Ellingsen information.

  14

  Dead in the Water

  • • •

  “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

  BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, POOR RICHARD’S ALMANACK

  THE UNSOLVED HOMICIDE members told Mark and Ron they would continue with their attempts to interview Pickton, and indeed, Ruth Yurkiw tried to do so in early autumn of 1999.

  From September 1999 on, very little was done about Pickton, but we weren’t aware of just how little. At first, I called Mike Connor’s old desk number almost daily after the second Ellingsen interview. I continued
to call, thinking I would reach an officer who could direct me to the investigator handling the Pickton file. I finally learned that Ruth Yurkiw had custody of the file, and I was able to speak to her, but she said little was happening with the file and didn’t mention that she had tried to interview Pickton. She expressed her frustration and her doubt that her superiors were giving the investigation the priority she felt they should. The Picktons had been selling parcels of their property to the City of Coquitlam, and I called her periodically throughout that fall to suggest the RCMP search that newly released land for evidence. The suggestion was always met with lukewarm enthusiasm at best. The file was dying before my eyes, and I didn’t know what more to do.

  No one from Coquitlam ever advised us about what changed for them. As VPD Deputy Chief Constable Doug LePard noted in his August 2010 report Missing Women Investigation Review, “Pickton was eventually excluded by DNA from being a suspect in the Agassiz Murders. (It appears no further investigation on the Coquitlam RCMP Pickton file occurred until November 2001, when Constable Yurkiw’s replacement, Constable Sherstone, made several attempts to re-interview Ellingsen, but was unsuccessful.)”

  In his research, LePard learned that Yurkiw visited the farm in an attempt to interview Pickton but was met by his brother, Dave, who asked her to “come back during the rainy season,” because they were too busy working now. No interview took place until January 2000, when Yurkiw and RCMP Constable John Cater sat down with Robert.

  The investigators were criticized for allowing Pickton’s friend Gina Houston to sit in on the interview. In fairness to them, their hands had been tied because Pickton told them he wouldn’t proceed without her present, and they tried to make the best of the situation. Again, it seemed that inexperienced or under-prepared people were placed in impossible positions because the file wasn’t seen as important enough to assign top investigators or attract adequate resourcing. How familiar that theme would become to me over the years. It’s difficult to blame these investigators who were only doing their jobs but with little or no guidance.

  I pressed various RCMP members periodically that autumn and winter, asking what, if anything, was being done with respect to Pickton, including E Division Superintendent Gary Bass, whom I saw at the October 1999 meeting to discuss POI 390. Every time, I was met with comments about how “interesting” Pickton was, along with vague mention of how “something” should be done, but it was “difficult” or so-and-so was “looking into it.” I would check with the various so-and-sos, and they would have the same response: someone was “on it,” but no one could tell me what was being done, and no one needed our help. No one seemed to be doing anything, yet no one could tell me that they had substantiated that Ellingsen’s information was false. All I could hope was that if the superintendent of E Division was aware of Pickton, someone in the RCMP must be assigned to follow this up.

  But I didn’t understand the politics within the RCMP. The Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit investigators apparently had jurisdiction over members at the detachment—Coquitlam—level. In murder investigations, the investigative opinions of members such as Frank Henley of the PUHU took precedence, even over those of an experienced murder investigator such as Mike Connor, who knew the players and the file far better than any member of the PUHU.

  There seems to have been no police contact with Pickton after the January 19, 2000, interview, aside from RCMP corporal Frank Henley’s March 2001 one-man self-described “really, very much a social visit” to Pickton’s farm to tell him the names of the two people talking to police about him: Ellingsen and Caldwell. Commissioner Oppal describes this visit in his report: “On March 30, 2001, Cpl. Henley of PUHU goes to the Pickton property to speak with Pickton. He tells Pickton that Ms. Ellingsen and Mr. Caldwell have been saying he killed a girl. Pickton admits to stabbing Ms. Anderson, but says that she stabbed him first. Cpl. Henley’s meeting with Pickton is unexplained and done in total isolation from other police members.”

  That seemed to be the last police contact with Pickton until February 5, 2002.

  SINCE MID-1999, PROJECT Amelia had worked closely with RCMP Behavioural Sciences Staff Sergeant Keith Davidson and his partner, Sergeant Scot Filer; Corporal Marg Kingsbury; and the criminal profiling staff. I maintained close contact with these officers over several months, and they shared my team’s frustration that the Pickton investigation seemed to be going nowhere. This group of Mounties shared our conviction that Lynn Ellingsen’s information needed to be more closely examined and that Pickton appeared to be a viable suspect in the missing women investigation. Certainly, no one had yet ruled out his involvement.

  On February 10, 2000, Davidson called a meeting with VPD investigators Mark Chernoff and Ron Lepine; RCMP corporals Marg Kingsbury, Nicole St. Mars, and Grant Johnston; and Constable Paul McCarl and me. I was grateful that people in the RCMP still believed in Pickton as a suspect. This meeting was the follow-up to a January 13, 2000, meeting in which Geramy had asked Davidson and Filer to ask their unit to prepare a suspect profile on Robert Pickton.

  At the February 10 meeting, I asked Davidson to use his influence to appeal to his RCMP superiors to create a joint forces operation with the VPD to investigate the missing women. We discussed pursuing Pickton, dealing with the Ellingsen information, and revisiting with Crown counsel the 1997 stay of proceedings in the Anderson attempted murder and forcible confinement case. Davidson and Filer supported the creation of a joint forces operation. We discussed an action plan, and Davidson stated his understanding that those of us from the VPD were there because we wanted a joint forces operation, and if the RCMP could not set one in motion, we were prepared to go to the provincial attorney general.

  Unknown to me for years after that meeting, a second meeting took place on February 14, at Davidson’s initiation. Davidson, RCMP corporals Filer, Kingsbury, St. Mars, and David McCartney, and Constable John Cater attended. As per Davidson’s affidavit, “The purpose of the meeting was to discuss investigative strategies regarding Pickton as a suspect.” At that meeting, McCartney was charged with obtaining “authorization to intercept communications and a search warrant for the property,” and Cater was assigned to conduct a background investigation of Pickton, but for unknown reasons neither of these assignments was completed.

  I struggled after the Ellingsen information seemingly died in late 1999, asking myself how I could have pushed this issue further. I don’t believe I could have done any more than I did at that time and in early 2000. I passed on everything we knew to the RCMP Serious Crime members. Late 1999 and most of 2000 was a strange and bewildering time for me; I began to relate select portions of this situation to non-police friends when we’d meet socially, and their stares and exclamations of shock and disbelief that something couldn’t be done to get on the Pickton farm both validated and deeply dismayed me. Regular citizens, normal civilian people, thought this was completely messed up.

  More and more, I found myself telling this story to outsiders, relative strangers even; taking these minor risks of indiscretion was the first real indication I had aside from my nightmares that this case was really getting to me. I needed to do something to prevent the stalling of the Pickton file from dragging me deeper and deeper into despondency. How could my own colleagues and managers not question it, too? Or worse, why couldn’t those of us who could see it overcome this toxic police bureaucracy to insist that the right thing be done?

  I felt I had exhausted all acceptable avenues within the policing infrastructure, short of stepping way outside those informal but well-established codes of conduct known as “what’s done” and jeopardizing my role—though ineffectual—on the case. As Deputy Chief Constable LePard would testify in the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry years later, circumventing the police department that held jurisdiction in an area just wasn’t done, and to do so would be the police equivalent of anarchy. This prohibition wasn’t written anywhere I was aware of; yet it existed, and I felt its restrictions powerfully. I
t was like the policing equivalent to a natural law.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t feel prepared to fight for justice and break this ridiculous tradition, even if it meant risking my career; more than anything, I feared my actions would have little or no effect, would be witnessed by few, and I would be quietly shuffled off to the sidelines, a place very much like where I already was, and my advocacy, again ineffectual at best, would be lost to the victims and their families. I didn’t even know what it would look like to try to circumvent the RCMP.

  I knew how people were viewed who pushed too hard to make their views known. I would be written off as an overly passionate feminist crackpot, and whatever message I might be trying to communicate would be dismissed, much in the same way Lynn Ellingsen’s information was dismissed. I felt trapped and frustrated and more bound by my duty and moral obligation to these families than by any sense of duty to the VPD.

  I struggled professionally and personally through the early months of 2000, without any idea of what more I could do to further the Pickton investigation. No one offered any ideas. Nightmares tormented me, my stomach seemed unable to tolerate most food and drink, my head and body ached for no apparent reason, and I suffered from allergies I’d never had before. I found myself taking a sick day every few weeks when I couldn’t deal with Fisk and Myers or sitting in that project room staring at the women’s photos on the wall.

  In March 2000, I attended a small memorial gathering at Crab Park, on the north edge of the Downtown Eastside, to commemorate the missing women. Perhaps twenty-five of us stood in a small circle, huddled under our umbrellas, weathering a typical Vancouver downpour. Dave Dickson and I were the only police officers there; standing beside us were Indigenous elders, family members, and women from the Downtown Eastside. People took turns holding the talking stick and speaking quietly to the group, and after about half of them had spoken, Dave passed me the stick. Barely peering out from under my umbrella, I opened my mouth, expecting my usual clear, well-projected voice to come out.