Pickton: The Wheels of Justice Begin to Turn

Sadly, there are countless British Columbians who feel much like I do tonight. There’s a quiet satisfaction in knowing we’re entering phase two of the largest murder investigation in Canadian history. It is the eve of the Robert Pickton trial. At long last, one of the most sadistic murderers in Canadian history is on the verge of meeting with his accusers.
Pickton was arrested five years ago for 26 (formerly 27; one charge dismissed due to lack of evidence) murders dating back to the mid-90s.
Pickton and his brother ran a so-called “non-profit” charity called Piggy Palace Good Times Society. According to Wikipedia, their society’s mandate was to “organize, co-ordinate, manage and operate special events, functions, dances, shows and exhibitions on behalf of service organizations, sports organizations and other worthy groups.”
Which is to say sponsor drug-fuelled parties at their pig farm, featuring the most disenfranchised sex trade workers in this province, the Downtown Eastside prostitutes. The girls at the Pickton farm would be murdered, then fed to the pigs. The crime scene investigation of his farm became the largest criminal forensic investigation in Canadian history.
In the last two or three decades, there have been more than 60 DES prostitutes go missing or cornfirmed as murdered. Some speculate Pickton had his hands in more than a few, and possibly even others in other PNW cities.
The sex trade may not be everyone’s favourite dinner-table topic, but, really, as long as there are people living in denial about the world’s oldest profession, a good majority of those workers will continue to be marginalized. With that comes vulnerability.
Yeah, everyone’s up in arms about the whole NIMBY scenario. “Sure, legalize it, legislate it, but not in my back yard.” Tough. It’s already in your fucking back yard. You’re just choosing to avert thy eyes.
Do I have a constructive solution? No, not beyond the “bring back the brother, institutionalize the madam, legislate the health and hygiene” mantra you’ve heard so many times before. What’s the big deal? It’s going to be a lurid industry no matter how you slice it, but the reality is, women will continue to be victimized, tortured, beaten, raped, and killed unless somebody steps in and accepts that this is part of the dark side of society, but maybe with some proper controls in place, we can make it a whole lot less ugly.
But what do I know. I’m a stark raving liberal with a heart sewn on her sleeve. I get all boo-hooey at the thought of women killed for no better reason than that of society forgetting they existed at all. Call me crazy.

4 thoughts on “Pickton: The Wheels of Justice Begin to Turn

  1. CitizenX

    But Steff… if you legalize prostitution (making it safer/healthier/an industry that can then be monitored for the sake of those involved in it), then it becomes impossible to pretend it doesn’t really exist… just something you saw in a rerun of “Starsky & Hutch” last night! Heh… that reminds me of this one episode, where Huggy Bear found this… um… this suitcase belonging to a, uh…

    …what was I saying?

  2. Anonymous

    The wheels of justice? Only if you believe Willie went downtown, and with his charming personality lured girls out to his pig farm and then murdered them without anyone else helping him or knowing what he was doing … 26 times!
    The wheels might be square.

  3. scribe called steff

    I dunno if Willie did it alone or not. I need to hear the evidence before I decide that, but that’s not too hard to imagine happening. Once every three or four months? That’s hardly as if he had to pull it off weekly. Hell, according to people in my life, I could go unaccounted for for days sometimes if I feel like avoiding ’em.

    It’s not that a spectacular feat. It’s the lack of humanity that freaks me out.

    Besides, I work in the tv industry and cannot tell you the number of documentaries and raw footage that never goes to air that I’ve seen of these downtown eastside prostitutes, and you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think money alone would make a good many of ’em go against their better senses. $100 goes a long ways when you’re talking about your crack fix versus detoxing against your will.

    And furthermore, there’s been talk among prostitutes that this guy had some kind of farm, and he tried to pay big money for women to go out for the night, and sometimes some said no.

    SO, yeah, I dunno, but I’ll hear the evidence and decide based on what I hear. I mean, who the fuck am I to guestimate about such a thing.

  4. scribe called steff

    (I mean there’d been talk for a few years about this guy and his farm. Willie was arrested in the late ’90s for a violent assault but they couldn’t get the evidence at the farm. This guy wasn’t under anyone’s radar, and he wasn’t that stupid if he got away with it while the cops had a file on him.)

Comments are closed.