|
Pig farmer up for 27 murders
31/01/2006 11:45 - (SA)
Vancouver - Pig farmer and accused serial killer Robert William Pickton pleaded not guilty on Monday to murdering 27 sex trade workers who disappeared from Vancouver's notorious skid row over a 25 year-period.
As Canada's largest mass murder trial began, outside the court building aboriginal drummers chanted and dozens of supporters held up a fabric banner bearing the names of dozens of missing women.
Inside, Pickton, 56, stood quietly in a bullet-resistant prisoner's box as lawyers began technical arguments over evidence.
The case was being heard in a courthouse in New Westminster, a suburb of this western Canadian metropolis. Security was so tight that spectators and journalists were still lined up after the trial began waiting to pass through metal detectors.
Pickton raises, butchers pigs
The defendant arrived from jail in a convoy of sheriff's vehicles and was escorted into the court from a secure underground parking lot.
Pickton was arrested four years ago at his family's pig farm in Port Coquitlam, east of Vancouver, where he raised and butchered pigs.
Pickton was an early suspect in the disappearances over 25 years of more than 60 women, all of whom vanished from Vancouver's squalid Downtown Eastside.
The area was Canada's most impoverished neighbourhood, a place where drug dealers and sex trade workers sold their wares on the sidewalks.
Special police task force
Many were homeless or transient, and could disappear for months before anyone noticed them missing.
In 2001, a special police task force was formed to solve the crimes amid a growing public clamour over police and government neglect in the disappearances.
In early 2002 the task force raided the Pickton farm, and in an investigation uncovered the remains or personal effects of 31 women.
Two years later, health authorities issued a public warning that pig meat sold by Pickton might have included human remains.
Assessment standard
Stan Lowe, spokesperson for government prosecutors, said there was no word on whether further charges would be presented. He said: "We laid 27 counts ...based on our charge assessment standard, those are the ones that have met it so far."
Peter Ritchie, head of Picktons legal defence, was quiet about the case.
The judge imposed a media blackout on the first part of the trial during which prosecutors and the defence team would argue over what evidence could be admitted in court.
Canadian judges routinely ordered such bans so that potential jury members would not hear details before the trial.
Pickton had not indicated whether he'll choose a trial by judge and jury, or judge alone.
Lowe said: "We do not want to have evidence known to a jury poll that hasn't met the scrutiny of the courts."
|
News
