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Murder accused will stand trial
24/07/2003 09:33 - (SA)
Port Coquitlam - The man accused of being Canada's most prolific serial killer was ordered to stand trial on 15 murder charges on Wednesday.
The decision by a provincial court judge came after a six-month preliminary inquiry into the charges against Robert William Pickton, a pig farmer in this suburb 30km east of Vancouver.
Pickton's alleged victims, aged 22 to 46, are all on a police list of more than 60 prostitutes and drug addicts who vanished over a 25-year period from Vancouver's downtown Eastside, a seedy area of the west coast metropolis.
As the judge made his ruling here, Pickton, who is in his mid-50s, sat expressionless within a bullet-proof prisoner's box, wearing a short-sleeved summer shirt and occasionally consulting sheaves of paper on his lap.
The hushed gallery was packed with family members of the dead women, some of whom sobbed silently, reporters international press outlets, and armed sheriffs in bulletproof vests.
No details of Stone's ruling can be revealed because of a publication ban on the preliminary hearing, a Canadian legal inquiry in which a judge hears evidence then decides whether a trial is warranted.
Pickton is scheduled to appear September 11 to fix a date for his trial in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province.
Although defence and prosecution lawyers said they want a prompt trial, it is unlikely because of complex scheduling that it will begin before next year.
Outside the court on Wednesday, prosecutor Michael Petrie said depending on how much evidence the two sides agreed to, about 85 witnesses could be called.
The case is unusual because a massive police investigation continues even as the charges proceed.
As the judge released his ruling on charges in 15 deaths, a stone's throw from the courthouse on the Pickton pig farm scores of police and forensic anthropologists continued to search for personal items, bone fragments, body parts and DNA evidence from more victims.
Since February 2002, scientists have sifted through soil and combed over debris and buildings of the farm Pickton owns with his brother and sister.
Last Sunday, the search was expanded to a second site, a swampy area 65km east of Vancouver, where half of a human skull was found in 1995.
Police and prosecution lawyers are tight-lipped about whether more charges involving the remains of more women will be laid.
"Under our legal system, anything is possible...but I'm not going to speculate on that," Petrie said.
Pickton's trial is expected to last longer than the six-month preliminary hearing, but neither side could predict how long it might take, nor whether it might be postponed until the police investigation is complete.
"Since the investigation is ongoing it's difficult for us to know exactly when the trial is going to be or when the search is going to be completed," Pickton's lawyer Peter Ritchie told reporters.
The coming trial holds out the possibility of some closure for the friends and families of the 15 women alleged to be murder victims.
Most families of the other 46 missing women, however, remain in limbo, said Ernie Crey, whose sister Dawn vanished in December 2000.
"For me and the other families, it's very much an agonizing wait-and-see," Crey said.
- AFX
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