A B.C. Supreme Court justice has ruled against an application that would prevent the RCMP from disposing of thousands of pieces of evidence that were seized during the investigation into serial killer Robert Pickton.
Thousands of pieces of evidence were seized from serial killer Robert Pickton’s pig farm decades ago, whether it was used in his murder trial or not.
Some of the items also belonged to Pickton’s victims.
RCMP had applied to the court for permission to dispose of about 15,000 items.
A group of plaintiffs in civil actions against Robert William Pickton and his brother, David Francis Pickton, fought to have the evidence preserved, but Justice Fritz Verhoeven has ruled that civil claims will not be prejudiced by the disposal of evidence.
The plaintiffs are children of some of Robert Pickton’s victims.
Advocates for victims whose cases remain unsolved say the ruling is a blow at their attempts to get justice.
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“It is part of a larger picture of failing, and it’s failures by the police, it’s failures by the justice system to properly and thoroughly investigate cases of disappeared and murdered, marginalized and mostly Indigenous girls and women, and those failures persist to this day,” Sue Brown with Justice for Girls told Global News.
The items were seized from the Pickton’s Dominion Avenue property during Project Evenhanded, which was a police investigation into missing and murdered women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Verhoeven said in his ruling that only a small portion of those items were entered as exhibits at Pickton’s trial and were then returned to the RCMP. The judge ruled that over the years, RCMP continued to make efforts to repatriate items to determine ownership and what should be done with them.
“Having reviewed the affidavits before me today on the RCMP’s applications, I fully accept that the process has been, as counsel have said, painstaking, careful, and thorough. It has taken a long time and a great deal of effort to get to this point. In saying that it has taken a long time, I mean no criticism,” Verhoeven wrote.
Pickton was charged with 27 counts of first-degree murder and convicted of six counts of second-degree murder.
He was given a life sentence and was killed in prison in 2024.
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