Stevie Cameron saw it as the “assignment of a lifetime.”
Better known for her investigative reporting uncovering Parliament Hill scandals, Cameron turned away from white-collar crime to write a book on serial killer Robert Pickton and the missing women of Vancouver.
“I’m a reporter. This was the best story of my life,” says Cameron, who will be sharing her experience today (Nov. 25) at The University of Western Ontario as the guest speaker of the Clissold Lecture in Journalism.
The free event begins at 5 p.m. in University College, Room 224 (Conron Hall). Her talk, “Covering the Pickton Case: Horror, Heartbreak and the Assignment of a Lifetime,” will discuss the challenges and highlights of her multi-year investigation.
She is the author of On the Take, The Last Amigo, The Pickton File and, most recently, On the Farm: William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing Women. She had an extensive and distinguished career working at the Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Globe and Mail and CBC-TV.
As a University of British Columbia alumna with family ties to Vancouver, Cameron followed media reports about a striking number of women going missing from the city’s Downtown Eastside. But it wasn’t until shortly after Pickton was arrested in connection with the murders that she was asked to write a book about the case.
“For years and years I’ve been interested. I’ve worked in a community of addicted people and homeless people (in Toronto) and I understood the issues. And, I wasn’t afraid of the story,” she says. “I just couldn’t believe my luck that I was offered this book.”
In December 2007, Pickton was found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 25 years. The murder charges for 20 other women were stayed.
In August 2010, B.C. Crown officials confirmed Pickton would not be prosecuted on the remaining 20 murder charges he faced. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously rejected Pickton’s appeal for a new trial.
Cameron, known for her instincts about a good story, knew there was more to the missing women cases than police or the media would report.
“It was just too many women missing. The average number of women that go missing in the Downtown Eastside every year is one to two, maybe three. But when you have 13 go missing in 1997, police still didn’t do anything. I thought, ‘There’s a serial killer working there.'”
Cameron spent nearly eight years immersed in Pickton’s world. She sat through the preliminary hearings held in a provincial courthouse in Port Coquitlam, interviewed experts and those close to him, and poured over court transcripts.
To find out more about Pickton’s domestic habits – where he bought groceries, what his relationships were like with his brother and sister, what foods he ate and how he spent his spare time – Cameron conducted extensive interviews with his long-time best friend and neighbour Lisa Yelds.
“She’s a very interesting person herself,” Cameron says. “She knew him in a way that no one else I ever interviewed knew him.”
New techniques in forensic science were established as a result of the case. The B.C. Cancer Control Agency became a resource for police to identify the missing women because a central DNA bank did not exist in the province. The DNA of 33 women was found on his farm. The agency keeps pap smears of every woman in the province and police used the DNA to identify almost all of the women.
While the investigation was marred by incompetence in the beginning, the Vancouver police established a task force and conducted an extensive search of Pickton’s farm. The case attracted interest from officers from across the country that wanted to learn from the case.
A public inquiry into the police investigation of Pickton will be conducted.
“People actually do care and they care a lot. They loved and cherished these women,” says Cameron. “I don’t think this will ever happen again in Canada, this kind of neglect. I think a lot of police forces learned their lesson with this one.”
Having spent several years inside the head of a serial killer, Cameron no longer has intentions of interviewing Pickton. “I don’t want to know any more about that man,” she says. “I would like to interview him if he would admit to the killings of the other women.”
It was a heartbreaking and horrific case to follow, but Cameron saw it as a new challenge.
“It was extremely emotional and also extremely interesting. We were all fascinated by it,” she says. “You don’t get a chance like this very often.”