BC pig farm task force grows, 30
new officers will join investigation
The Edmonton Journal
Wed 27 Mar 2002
Canada
Source: CP
More investigators are being added to the task force investigating the disappearance of 50 women and the search of a suburban pig farm is expected to last three years, BC-CTV news reported Tuesday.
The task force is adding at least 30 more investigators in addition to the 80 investigators and 12 forensic specialists already working on the search of the farm in suburban Port Coquitlam.
Investigators originally anticipated the search of the Port Coquitlam farm belonging to Robert William Pickton would take a few months but that estimate has since increased.
"It'll easily be a year more or less that we're going to be, probably, physically on the site," Vancouver police Det. Scott Driemel said during a news conference last week.
But CTV quoted task force sources as saying the search will likely continue for three years, possibly more.
One lead investigator has also told relatives of some of the missing women that the women are dead, CTV said.
Relatives of the missing women also said a lead investigator has told them this investigation is even bigger than just the missing women, but did not elaborate, CTV said.
Fifty women, many of them prostitutes, have disappeared from Vancouver's poverty-stricken downtown eastside since 1983 -- 39 of them in the last six years.
Pickton, 52, has been charged with the first-degree murders of two of the missing women.
A massive search of the farm where Pickton lived has been under way since Feb. 5.