VICTORIA - There will be a public inquiry into the flawed police investigation that allowed serial killer Robert Pickton to continue hunting sex workers from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
B.C. Attorney General Mike de Jong said Thursday that the province has ordered hearings to examine how police handled reports of women disappearing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and being lured to Pickton's farm in nearby Port Coquitlam.
"This is a situation in which upwards of 50 human beings went missing. We believe many if not all of those individuals were murdered," de Jong told reporters following a provincial cabinet meeting in Victoria.
"There are still lingering questions about the nature of these investigations, questions about whether more could have been done sooner, are we in a position to learn from the investigations and mistakes that may have been made. The government has taken the view that the best vehicle by which that can be accomplished is a public inquiry."
De Jong declined to reveal who will oversee the inquiry, which will have the power to compel testimony from witnesses, and it's not clear how soon it could begin.
Pickton was arrested in 2002, setting off a massive search of his sprawling farm where investigators found the remains or DNA of 33 women. He was charged in the deaths of 27 women and eventually convicted of six counts of second-degree murder.
But the extensive investigation that followed the discovery of dismembered bodies and personal items from missing women stood in contrast to what many, including the victims' families, have long complained was the failure of Vancouver police and the RCMP to catch Pickton sooner.
Pickton's convictions were upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in July and prosecutors have said they don't intend to pursue any further criminal charges.
With the criminal case finally over, police and politicians are ready to take an in-depth examination of how police handled the case.
Part of that began last month with the release of an internal Vancouver police review of the investigation.
That report detailed a series of failings by both the Vancouver force and the RCMP which allowed Pickton to continue killing for years after he first caught the attention of investigators.
The Vancouver police report concluded the RCMP and Vancouver police failed to effectively share information, both forces lacked leadership, neither had enough resources and that some Vancouver police officers had a bias against the women, most of whom were sex workers.
It said even after Vancouver police first forwarded information about Pickton to the RCMP in the late 1990s, 13 women disappeared from the Downtown Eastside, 11 of whom were later linked to Pickton's farm.
The report put much of the blame on the RCMP, accusing the federal force of letting the investigation lay dormant for months and botching an interrogation of Pickton in January 2000 -- more than two years before his arrest.
The RCMP has prepared a similar review, but it has not yet been released. The Mounties have suggested their report will contradict some of the Vancouver Police Department's conclusions, although the force hasn't said when it will be released.
Families and friends of women who disappeared from the Downtown Eastside started sounding the alarm in the early 1990s, but some have said when they reported those disappearances to police, they were told the women had likely moved elsewhere.
Last month, a publication ban was lifted in Pickton's criminal case, revealing he was accused of trying to kill a prostitute on his farm in 1997.
Those charges were stayed over concerns the victim would have made an unreliable witness, and Pickton continued killing.
