B.C. Murder Suspect to Show in Court
By MARK KARJALUOTO, Associated Press Writer
February 24, 2002
LA TIMES
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Ernie Crey hopes that answers to his
younger sister's disappearance may finally be coming, as the man charged with
murdering two of 50 missing women in Vancouver is to appear in court Monday.
Crey's sister Dawn disappeared in November 2000, and the ensuing 15 months
provided no answers to what happened. He said Sunday that now there is at least
some progress toward finding out with the first suspect in custody.
Robert Pickton, 52, is scheduled to appear in court Monday on two charges of
first-degree murder involving two of the women who started vanishing from this
western Canadian city's seedy east side as far back as 1983.
Police have yet to say who Pickton is accused of killing, or what evidence found
at the pig farm owned by Pickton and his siblings 20 miles east of Vancouver
caused them to file the charges.
Crey said police told him neither of the women Pickton has been charged with
killing is Dawn, who would be 43 if still alive. He knows the case so far has
uncovered nothing new about his sister, a longtime heroin addict who turned to
prostitution.
Still, the 52-year-old Crey said in a soft voice, just seeing Pickton in court
would offer some comfort -- a sign police were making progress in their
investigation of the vanished women.
"I've thought about that a lot," he said in a telephone interview.
"I can't but help but wonder, late at night, if this is the son of a bitch
that might have taken my sister's life."
Crey insisted that nothing has been proven against Pickton, but he said that if
the suspect is guilty, he wants to look at him and send a non-verbal message.
"I would want him to know that if he is responsible, and I'm not saying he
is, that my sister has a family that cared about her -- that she just wasn't a
worthless person whose life could be taken with impunity," he said.
Pickton and his brother operated a drinking club frequented by bikers and
prostitutes near their farm, which now has a makeshift shrine to the missing
women of candles, flowers and cards outside the gates.
He was arrested Friday on the murder charges. The arrests came more than two
weeks after a police task force launched an investigation at the 10-acre farm
that turned it into a virtual crime lab.
Police had no further comment Sunday.
Known as Willy, Pickton and his younger brother Dave ran "Piggy's
Palace" -- a place to party for those familiar with Vancouver's mean
streets -- in an old building they owned near the farm.
Pickton was charged in 1997 with attempted murder, accused of stabbing a
drug-addicted prostitute in his home, but the charges were dropped.
Through their lawyer, Robert and Dave Pickton have denied any involvement in the
disappearances. Dave Pickton told a Vancouver newspaper his brother often
befriended prostitutes out of kindness.
Rebecca Guno disappeared in June 1983, the first of 50 women -- most of them
drug addicts and prostitutes -- to vanish from the Vancouver area. The
disappearances increased in frequency in 1997 and 1998, with nine women
vanishing in each of those years.
Dawn Crey's life was never easy. She went to a foster home at age 3 with one
sister after their father died, Ernie said. That family, who ran a chicken farm,
abused the children physically and psychologically, he said.
A second foster home proved better, so much so that Dawn permitted her foster
parents to adopt the child she bore as a teen-ager, Ernie said.
Most of Dawn's adult life was on the east Vancouver streets, he said.
Police started investigating Pickton's farm on Feb. 6 after a search of the
property brought weapons charges and evidence linked to some of the missing
women.
Crey called it a "grim, dreadful place" of large mounds of earth and
dilapidated buildings.
"I don't like to think she might have come to an end in such an awful
setting," he said.
Copyright 2002 Associated Press