That Lonely Section of Hell

by Lori Shenher

  About ten days later, Hiscox called to apologize, saying he had been in the hospital and unable to meet me. I told him I would come to see him in the hospital that same morning.

  I blasted out to a hospital outside of Vancouver around nine thirty and searched for his ward. A nurse directed me to his room, and when I asked, she told me why he was there but implored me not to say she had told me, because I wasn’t family. I assured her I would not say a thing. I found him in his bed and sat down to talk. A second bed filled the room, but it was empty.

  “You’re a tough man to track down,” I said, smiling. “You doing okay?”

  “Yeah, sorry.” He shifted in his bed, wincing. “I’m just going through a rough time. Stuff with my old lady isn’t good, I lost my job again, got arrested. Kind of messing up here big time.”

  “Are they helping you here?” I took off my coat.

  “Yeah, it helps to rest a bit. The counselor is good.”

  “Good.”

  “You know, I really don’t need this shit with Willie in my life. I got a lot on my plate, but if he’s a killer, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t tell what I know and try to stop him.” He shrugged sheepishly.

  “I know. I appreciate you talking to me. I know things are really hard for you right now.”

  “It’s no problem.”

  I marveled at his dedication to trying to do the right thing, even when it was less than convenient for him. I never got the sense it was about money; he received no money from me or from the VPD during the investigation, and he never asked me for anything that might have been available to him as a source. The most he ever got before Pickton’s arrest was a cup of coffee from Mike and me.

  My goal that day was to get to know as much about Hiscox, Yelds, and Pickton as possible. Hiscox responded fully and thoughtfully to my questions and gave me personal details about his life, his history, and his hopes for the future. He told me he was the tipster to Crime Stoppers and also said that Wayne Leng had given some members of the media his name. He had been contacted in July for information, but he did not provide any, and eventually they stopped hounding him. He clearly wasn’t after public notoriety.

  Hiscox had met Pickton and his brother, Dave “Piggy” Pickton, through Lisa Yelds, who also arranged for Hiscox to work for the brothers for a couple of months at P&B Salvage. He found Robert Pickton very quiet, with no sense of humor, and didn’t like being around him, but he assured me he had no problems with Pickton; there was no money owed between them, and they were not involved in drugs or other criminal activities together. Since sources often minimize their business dealings with other shady characters, I took this information with a grain of salt and remained open to the idea that they could be more closely connected.

  Yelds and Pickton used to date and still got together here and there. Pickton had no other girlfriend that Hiscox knew of and used the services of sex workers regularly, a piece of information Hiscox also learned from Yelds. He characterized Yelds and Pickton as “best friends.”

  “Lee said Willie asked her to get him syringes; she always gets him things in exchange for meat. She’s like his contact for stuff.”

  “What are the syringes for? She doesn’t use, right?”

  “No. She said he wants them for a girl named Anderson, half clean and half dirty needles.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “No idea. I never heard of that before, the clean and used thing. Lee says Willie wants to get this girl. Lee thinks to hurt her in some way. I think this Anderson might be the girl who gave him hep, maybe. I don’t know.”

  Hiscox felt certain Lisa Yelds wouldn’t talk to me because she was loyal to Pickton as a friend and business associate. Yelds was a longtime biker associate and someone who would never “rat out” a friend—especially to the cops. Hiscox characterized Yelds as someone who “just doesn’t give a crap” and was a borderline “psycho” at times herself. He said someone could be lying on the ground bleeding and she’d just step over him or her and carry on. He said she was generally quite cold but was loyal to Hiscox because they grew up in foster care together and she had stuck up for and protected him when he was a kid. Hiscox reiterated several times how much she hated cops.

  Despite the volume of information he gave me about Yelds, I got the feeling he didn’t want me to know too much about her. He gave me her phone number but said he doubted she would talk to me. He didn’t feel he could even approach her to let her decide, but he said if I went with him and met her casually and we didn’t tell her I was a cop, she would probably relay a lot of this info about Pickton in front of me.

  I hesitated to call Yelds, since I was afraid that might put Hiscox at risk if he returned to the farm. He agreed to introduce an undercover operator to Yelds if we asked him to—perhaps portraying her as a new girlfriend if we decided to use him as an agent. He assured me that Yelds would not be suspicious; apparently, she did not like Hiscox’s estranged wife and would not think it odd for him to bring a new girl around to meet her. We didn’t discuss the details or implications of the operation, but I got the sense that Hiscox hoped I could be the undercover operator.

  Although I had had numerous undercover assignments in my career, I hadn’t undertaken one that might turn into a days- or weeks-long operation. I was an investigator now, and although the prospect was enticing, I knew there were better people for the job. Six months earlier, I’d have jumped at an offer, but I felt a strong commitment to the work I’d begun with the missing women. I decided I would turn down the offer if asked and maintain my role as file coordinator and lead investigator.

  Hiscox said Yelds told him within that past week that Pickton had some “weird things around the house,” and this led to her divulging he had several women’s purses, items of jewelry, and bloody clothing in bags and that her impression was he kept them as trophies.

  “She says she thinks he could be responsible for those missing Vancouver girls,” Hiscox told me.

  “Is she scared of him?” Hiscox laughed at this.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “You just gotta know Lee,” he said, shaking his head, still chuckling. “It doesn’t surprise me she’d still hang with him. That’s just how she is. She doesn’t give a damn.”

  “Do you think she’s in danger? Are you worried about her?”

  “Nah. You gotta know Lee. She’ll be cautious. She said she keeps one eye open around him now.”

  This type of thirdhand information was interesting, but I couldn’t verify the truth of any of it; it was not going to help me obtain a search warrant to get on the farm. As I continued to listen to Hiscox, I felt a growing frustration that we needed more and hoped an undercover operation would be the key.

  “I’ll call you Tuesday morning, assuming you’ll be released, okay?” I said.

  “Sounds good. I don’t know if they’ll let me go back home or what. My wife came to see me last night, so maybe we can work things out.”

  “I hope so. I hope it goes well for you,” I said. “Can you call me and let me know where you’ll be staying?”

  “Sure.”

  I drove back to Vancouver feeling hopeful we could make some inroads into Pickton’s activities through Lisa Yelds. When I got back to my office, I told Al Boyd—who was now my supervisor, since Geramy had been seconded to another investigation—about my dealings with Hiscox, and we agreed that this should be an RCMP investigation, since the farm was in the Coquitlam RCMP jurisdiction. I had already phoned and left a message for Mike Connor on my way home.

  Mike and I played phone tag for several days and finally spoke in late September. He was excited by this new information and the progress I was making with Hiscox, but he was also deeply concerned about the threat to Anderson. We felt it was imperative that he find her and warn her she could be in danger. We also agreed that Mike would request the services of Special O—the RCMP surveillance unit—to follow Robert Pickton. Within two days, Mike had arranged
for surveillance coverage on Pickton from four o’clock in the afternoon until whatever time they “put him to bed”—surveillance jargon for when the team members feel the likelihood that the target will go out again before dawn is minimal. For a man suspected of picking up sex workers in the later hours, this would not be easy.

  We also had to consider whether we should allow a man suspected of killing sex workers to pick a woman up on the street. It presented a surveillance catch-22—we couldn’t guarantee that a woman would be safe or that the team wouldn’t lose Pickton’s vehicle, but if we arranged to have Pickton stopped by a marked patrol car every time he picked up a woman, he would quickly suspect surveillance. It’s similar to following a sex offender, which we did several times during my tenure in the Strike Force. You can’t allow him to break into a home and assault anyone to secure your charge, so often the team must settle for a trespassing arrest, stopping the suspect in the yard or on the front steps of a potential victim’s home.

  The downside is that the suspect ends up being charged with a much less serious offense than the one we know or strongly suspect he had every intention of committing. At any rate, we were given three days of Special O’s time, and Pickton did little to arouse suspicion. He did not try to pick anyone up; nor did he spend any significant time on the Downtown Eastside other than to conduct what appeared to be business relating to his farm.

  In the meantime, I had heard from Mike that many members of the Coquitlam RCMP knew the players in a well-established criminal group in Coquitlam, including Yelds. He asked me whether my source had mentioned her, and I had to tell him yes. On October 13, I tracked Hiscox down to a Maple Ridge drug treatment center. I left a message for him, and he returned my call within an hour. Mike also told me that his superiors had no appetite for an undercover operation. At least Mike was there to advocate for the file and protect Hiscox, and that was somewhat comforting to me.

  Hiscox was not happy when I told him that the RCMP wanted to contact Yelds directly, but he agreed to meet with Mike and me. He remained very concerned Yelds would discover he’d been talking to the police. He said he would trust whatever I decided and would do what I thought was best. I felt the weight of responsibility that he would place this degree of faith in me, and I vowed to do everything I could to look out for his interests as long as he continued to be on the level with me. I told him that I thought passing him over to the RCMP—ideally, Mike would handle him—would be better than them going straight to Yelds, and he agreed. But he wanted to be out of the picture sooner than later, and he didn’t want Yelds to know that he had led the cops to her.

  6

  Watching Our Investigation Stall

  • • •

  “I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That is a piece that cannot be moved.”

  SØREN KIERKEGAARD, EITHER/OR

  IN MID-OCTOBER, MIKE and I picked Hiscox up from his treatment facility and drove to Starbucks for a coffee, then sat in the car in a parking lot and talked. Hiscox looked far better than when I’d seen him last; his complexion had some color, and he appeared more rested. He was in his early forties, Caucasian, medium height, and wiry fit in that way men who’ve lived and fought hard can be. His face bore scars like a boxer’s over his brow, chin, and bridge of the nose, and he carried himself like an aging hockey player, strong and sure but sore. He wore a faded ball cap, mackinaw jacket, blue jeans, and work boots and looked like any other Vancouver area laborer. I played him the voice lineup I’d created.

  “Does that sound like anyone you know?” I asked.

  “No, definitely not Willie. More like Dave, but Dave talks kinda like Elmer Fudd, and I don’t think it’s him,” Hiscox responded.

  “Can you go through everything that happened that led you to contact Lori, from the beginning for me? I know it’s repetitive for you, but it’ll help me know where we’re at,” Mike asked.

  Hiscox repeated what he’d told me and delved further into Yelds’s contacts than he had with me, because Mike was much more familiar than I was with the players in the Coquitlam outlaw motorcycle gang scene of years gone by. I could tell immediately that Mike saw that Hiscox was the real deal and knew all the players and history.

  “Lee saw IDs and bloody clothing in bags when she was cleaning in Willie’s trailer, that’s what got her to tell me about it,” Hiscox said. “She put two and two together with the offer to get rid of bodies in the grinder and the stories about the missing girls on the news and the girl who he stabbed who he says gave him hep. She thinks Willie could be a serial killer, but she’s no rat and doesn’t want to do anything about it.” He snorted lightly. “So, she tells me—and me, I can’t just sit on this, I have a duty to do something and I can’t live with my conscience and stay quiet about it.” He continued telling Mike all he had shared with me.

  “Anything else you can think of?” Mike asked. “Anything new?”

  “Yeah, Lee also said she saw a purse she thought belonged to a native girl, like it had one of those dream catchers hanging off it. Said she saw that one a couple of years ago now.”

  The only Indigenous female we had as missing from the Downtown Eastside from around that time was Janet Henry, last seen in July 1997. Janet had frequented the same area as Anderson, and they both were short and had short dark hair. There had been no trace of Janet and no sightings of her, and her welfare checks had gone uncollected since June 1997.

  “How do you think we should approach Lisa if we were going to?” Mike asked.

  “You have to know Lee. She’s tough and she’s no rat. It’d have to be undercover. You couldn’t, like, knock on her door and say, ‘We’re the cops, can we talk to you for a sec.’” Hiscox laughed. “Yeah, she wouldn’t go for that. She’d slam the door in your face. She hates cops.”

  “So, you think an undercover operation is the way to go with her.” Mike asked. “Would she trust a new person in her life?”

  “Not easily, for sure. But if they came with me, she’d let them in.”

  But when Mike and I spoke alone later, we were both concerned about going this route. An agent essentially works for the police and is directed by the investigators to get what is needed on a case. Once someone agrees to become an agent, they become a compellable witness in any court proceeding and lose their status as a confidential source.

  Acting as a police agent is incredibly emotionally demanding, and even the most stable and composed sources can struggle in that role. I had always felt my first responsibility to Bill Hiscox was to him as a person. Although finding the women was extremely important, I didn’t want to make him another victim of the investigation. I just couldn’t guarantee that making him an agent wouldn’t ruin the personal life he was working so hard to rebuild. Mike knew more of the players in Yelds’s world and agreed that involving Hiscox in an operation posed risks for him.

  We drove Hiscox back to his treatment center.

  “We need to figure some stuff out on our end about Lisa,” Mike told him. “We’ll probably have to contact her one way or another, but we want it to be in a way that doesn’t cause you any grief.”

  “Good.” Hiscox hesitated before climbing out of the car. “But you know, if my name comes out, so be it. It’s the price to pay for doing the right thing.”

  After this meeting, I received what I felt was a significant show of support for this investigation from the VPD Major Crime management. Acting Staff Sergeant Brock Giles and I met, and he told me he was committed to providing money to advance the Pickton investigation and help pay for things such as an undercover operation, witness protection, aerial forward looking infrared (FLIR) photography, and land photos. He also offered the VPD’s assistance in putting together a joint submission to the Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit (PUHU).

  I called Mike Connor and told him about this offer, but something had happened on the Coquitlam RCMP end. They no longer seemed hot to speak to Yelds, for reasons unknown to me. Mike didn’t kno
w what had changed.

  It was at this point in the investigation that I began to realize how priorities shifted from one minute to the next in policing organizations—both the RCMP and the VPD—and how something that seemed to be the most pressing matter one minute could be moved to the back burner the next. It seemed that someone could just decide a file wasn’t important anymore, with no real basis in fact for that decision and no documentation, certainly none that I would be shown. This was the first of many deaths of the Pickton investigation during my time working on it.

  Hiscox contacted me in December 1998 to let me know he was out of detox, clean and sober, and still willing to help us with Pickton. He hadn’t seen Yelds since before rehab but offered to get back in touch with her if we wanted him to. He had been staying away from his old crowd in the interests of his rehabilitation, and I told him to focus on his recovery and to let me know if he happened to hear anything. I would contact Mike, and we’d figure out where to go from there. We agreed to let each other know about any new developments. It’s unclear to me how Mike got the impression we were out of contact with Hiscox, as he later testified at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, because that wasn’t the case on my end. When I was able to track Hiscox down and speak with him, he simply didn’t have any new information to offer about Pickton. In hindsight, this was another misunderstanding between the RCMP and the VPD, because Mike and I had an excellent working relationship.

  I tried to reach Hiscox again in February 1999, but he didn’t call me back. I tried again a week later, but still no reply. I became concerned and ran his name through CPIC and PIRS—the RCMP record management system—which indicated he had been in some recent difficulty and would not be available to help us until the end of February. My heart sank. Not knowing what kind of mental shape he would be in, I began to accept that perhaps we had all the information we would get from him.