Joint Missing Women’s Task Force
Project Even Handed began in November 2000 with a mandate to investigate the disappearances of 27 drug-addicted sex trade workers who had gone missing in the time frame of 1984 to 1999 from the city of Vancouver in Canada’s province of British Columbia. This project was later renamed the Joint Missing Women’s Task Force. In February 2002, while performing a search warrant in relationship to an illegal weapons possession, items related to some of the missing women were discovered in the residence of Robert William Pickton, who lived in a trailer on a 17-acre pig farm near Vancouver. A new search warrant was obtained and within a short while the largest crime scene in Canada was established. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) set up an onsite evidence recovery unit and more than 100 crime scene investigators worked from February 2002 to November 2003 to carefully examine the entire farm. Remains of victims were found in buckets in Pickton’s barns. Freezers in his garage were covered with blood spatter. The entire 17-acre farm was subdivided into 20-meter by 20-meter grids. The topsoil across the entire farm was removed down to a depth of 2 or 3 feet ( 1 m), and sometimes as deep as 18 feet ( 3 m), and carefully sifted through in search of human bone fragments or tissue. In total, more than half a million samples were collected of which 240,000 were processed for DNA. Robotic workstations to aid DNA extraction using Promega’s DNA IQ chemistry were validated and put into use in April 2004. Human-specifi c DNA quantitation with Applied Biosystems ’ Quantifier kit was then performed to see if samples should be processed further to try to obtain a DNA profile. The human DNA quantitation served as an important screening step in the DNA analysis process. From the nearly quarter million soil samples and swabs collected, 944 biology reports were issued with 299 submissions yielding DNA profiles for comparison purposes to victim reference samples. More than a million pages of notes from approximately 110,000 documents were released to the defense as part of disclosure. While sufficient evidence had been identified to charge Mr. Pickton with 27 counts of fi rst-degree murder, his defense team successfully lobbied to have the charges divided. The trial of Robert William Pickton began January 22, 2007, with an indictment on six accounts of fi rst-degree murder. The prosecution called 98 witnesses. The initial verdict reached by the court for Canada’s most prolific serial killer was ‘ guilty of second degree murder ’ on all six counts. Both the prosecution and defense have appealed the verdict, which will be heard in April 2009.
Source:
Horley, K. (October 2008). Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Presentation at the 19th International symposium on human identification , Hollywood, CA.