Canada's worst serial killer...

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Have you heard the song recorded as a tribute to women missing from Vancouver's downtown east side?? More than 60 artists contributed to the song, titled:
The Streets Where You Live

They include top Canadian musicians such as Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie, Barenaked Ladies singer Steven Page, Sarah Harmer, Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy, Bif Naked, Colin James and David Usher. All of the song's royalties will go to the non-profit Buried Heart Society. It runs a treatment centre for female drug addicts.

Robert Willy Pickton, a Port Coquitlam pig farmer, is charged with killing 15 women who are among 67 identified as missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
The man accused of being Canada's worst serial killer preliminary hearing began today. The preliminary hearing is held to allow Judge David Stone to determine if there is enough evidence against Robert Pickton to proceed to a trial that would not likely begin for at least a year.
The 53-year-old Pickton has been in custody since late February, when he was charged with the murders of Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson.
A huge police investigative team has been painstakingly searching Pickton's Port Coquitlam, (B.C. Canada) farm for almost a year. In the ensuing months, he was also charged with the murders of Diane Rock, Jacqueline McDonell, Heather Bottomley, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Jennifer Furminger, Helen Hallmark, Patricia Johnson, Georgina Papin, Heather Chinnock, Tanya Holyk, Sherry Irving and Inga Hall. The 15 were among 61 women from the Downtown Eastside -- mostly drug-addicted prostitutes -- who disappeared from the poverty-stricken neighbourhood. The murder counts against Pickton so far are four more than the number admitted to by Canada's most notorious serial killer, Clifford Olson. Police added four more names Wednesday to the list of 63 women who have disappeared since 1978, bringing the total to 67.
Forensic science: Its role in the missing women investigation:
Ten acres is a lot of ground to cover with a fine-toothed comb. But that's essentially what teams of investigators are doing on the Pickton pig farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C. They are trying to find any tiny piece of evidence – bone fragments (bone slivers, even), hair, joints, teeth – anything that might contain a few cells, enough for a usable sample of DNA. But the size of sample that’s needed to be usable has shrunk, even in the last few years.
"A blood sample – a dot of an 'i' from 10-point type – would easily be recoverable as DNA," says Kevin McElfresh, senior vice-president of the BODE technology group in Virginia, a DNA lab the RCMP has used in several cases. McElfresh says cigarette butts, hairs and small bone fragments could sometimes yield DNA samples a few years ago, but it was hit and miss. "Now, cigarette butts are a ton of DNA. Not a problem," he says. "We can get DNA from the tags of shirts that people have been wearing, not even bloody," McElfresh says. The ability to find DNA in such tiny fragments also has its drawbacks, though. When police told Maggie deVries that her sister Sarah's DNA had been found on Robert Pickton's pig farm, they pointed out that it wasn't enough evidence to lay charges against him. "(The DNA) doesn't even really prove that Sarah was ever there," said deVries. "It just proves something she touched was there." Investigators found 3,000 pieces of evidence in the top levels of the dirt on the Pickton farm.
To continue their searches, though, police brought in heavy excavation equipment to sift through the soil, including two 50-foot flat conveyer belts and two dump trucks. The investigation team is made up of 91 people: 30 to 40 police and 52 forensic and archeological experts. Several archaological students were hired to help go through the dirt as it passes by on the conveyer belts and identify remains. In June, police estimated that the excavation could take a year. In September, they said the investigation will go on indefinitely. "Now, one factor to the benefit of the police is criminals are lazy, so they're not going to be 40 feet below the surface," says Rossmo. Other forensic experts will focus on reconstructing the crime scene by looking at how the bones were scattered around the farm.

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