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Remains of 5 victims found
10/12/2002 12:30 - (SA)
Port Coquitlam - Police found remains of five of the 15 women Robert Pickton is accused of killing in their search of the pig farm he owns with his siblings, a defense lawyer said.
Reading from an affidavit that complains the prosecution has given the defence insufficient information, lawyer Marilyn Sandford on Monday provided some of the first public details of the case against Pickton (53), who faces 15 first-degree murder charges.
A painstaking search of two properties - the pig farm on Dominion Avenue and a nearby plot where Pickton and his brother ran a party house known as Piggy's Palace - has yielded remains and DNA evidence in what police call the biggest serial killer investigation in Canadian history.
"Human remains have been discovered on the property at Dominion Avenue with respect to five victims," Sandford said. She also said a trailer on the property is believed to be "the focal point of the investigation".
The affidavit complained that police have been searching the properties for months without proper search warrants. It says the prosecution has failed to turn over to the defence evidence including tapes of statements by key witnesses.
"These witnesses are going to tell the court about things they say they observed on that property and things they say Mr. Pickton said to them," Sandford said. "These people are former friends and associates of the accused."
A preliminary hearing to determine if sufficient evidence exists to hold a trial is scheduled to begin on January 13. Last week, Judge David Stone rejected a request by Pickton's lawyer, Peter Ritchie, to close the courtroom to the news media and the public to avoid tainting a jury pool for a trial.
Ritchie feared foreign media reports on the Pickton hearing would turn up in the Vancouver area on the Internet or cable and satellite television broadcasts. Preliminary hearings are under a publication ban in Canada.
Pickton attended Monday's hearing, sitting behind bulletproof glass in a special defendant's box and saying nothing. Tall, thin and balding, he sat with his large hands clasped in his lap for most of the session, grimacing at one point at mention of DNA evidence involving the 15 alleged victims.
The alleged victims are among more than 60 women missing from the Vancouver area over the past two decades. Most were prostitutes and drug addicts from the seedy downtown East End.
Relatives of the dead and missing complain police ignored warnings that women were disappearing for several years. Pickton was arrested in February, shortly after police began searching his property on a weapons charge.
Sandford, an associate of Ritchie's, said the search warrant expired in April, but the Pickton property "has continued to be searched on a mind-boggling scale forensically".
She also said the defense has received no information regarding wiretaps of thousands of intercepted phone calls, or thousands of photos from the search area.
"We don't have any of these intercepts. We don't have the tapes, we don't have the logs, we don't have the transcripts," she said. "We don't have any photos of the interior of our client's trailer, which we understand is the focal point of the investigation." - Sapa-AP
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