Police broaden farm probe
Investigators seek links to murders of four other women
Salim Jiwa
The Province
Monday, February 11, 2002
The police search at a Port Coquitlam pig farm has raised hopes that any evidence found there about 50 missing Vancouver women will also shed light on the murders of at least four others, The Province has learned.
Tammy Lee Pipe
The Missing Women Task Force has been looking at the files of the provincial task force on unsolved homicides in relation to the murders of sex-trade workers Tammy Lee Pipe, Tracy Olajide, and Victoria Younker, whose bodies were found near Agassiz and Mission in 1995, police sources said.
Another woman, Mary Lidguerre, whose remains were found in North Vancouver in 1997, also disappeared from the same Main and Hastings location as the three women whose bodies were found near Agassiz and Mission.
Police have said in the past they believe the person who killed Pipe, Olajide, Younker and Lidguerre had a hand in the disappearances of Vancouver women Dorothy Spence, Catherine Knight, and Cathy Gonzalez, whose names were on the original list of 31 women made public three years ago.
Police thought they had a suspect in the murders of Pipe, Olajide and Younker and the disappearances of Spence, Knight and Gonzalez, but DNA tests cleared him.
Tracy Olajide
Now investigators tell The Province they are pinning their hopes on the pig farm.
"We are looking at" the possible connections, said a source close to the investigation. "It would be stupid not to."
Police have DNA evidence from the bodies of Olajide, Pipe and Younker and there is also concrete evidence that one man killed at least two of them.
- The SPCA yesterday took 40 sheep, 10 goats, eight pigs, two llamas and two cows from the farm to an disclosed location in Langley.
"Our concern ultimately was for the health of the animals and it felt the best thing for the animals was to remove them from the site," said Shawn Eccles, manager of field operations for the B.C. SPCA Vancouver region.
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| Mary Lidgeurre | Victoria Younkers |
Two pigs and two sheep were earlier diagnosed as being critically distressed, said Eccles. The pigs were euthanized last week and taken to the provincial animal health centre in Abbotsford for a post mortem.
Two wading pools were brought on to the property yesterday "to assist the investigators," said RCMP Const. Catherine Galliford, a task force spokeswoman. "But we don't want to get anymore specific in regard to that."
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