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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did and how. Episode 188.
I am your Norwegian host, Tomas Roseland Weyborg Thun. Last episode ended with a prostitute named Tracy, who had a close encounter with a monster lurking within Robert "Willie" Picton. His mask had, for a few seconds, slipped, and brandishing a knife, his true nature was revealed.
Tracy had, however, remained calm, and since Picton did not think she was using drugs, he had calmed down as well and driven her back downtown. As most prostitutes back then, she did not report his threatening behavior to the police, but did tell her fellow sex workers of his behavior, and Picton was tagged as a quote-unquote bad date.
Tonight we'll see how this did not stop Picton from fulfilling his dark urges, and we'll close in on his ultimate demise. Enjoy.
As always, I want to publicly thank my elite TSK Producers Club. Their names are...
Yeah.
You are the backbone of the Serial Killer podcast, and without you, there would be no show. You have my deepest gratitude. Thank you.
I am forever grateful for my elite TSK Producers Club, and I want to show you that your patronage is not given in vain. All TSK episodes will be available 100% ad-free to my TSK Producers Club on patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast. No generic ads, no ad reads, no jingles. I promise.
And of course, if you wish to donate $15 a month, that's only $7.50 per episode, you are more than welcome to join the ranks of the TSK Producers Club too. So don't miss out and join now. Imagine if you will, dear listener, the year 1997. Princess Diana has just died, as Elton John sings like a candle in the wind.
The song also tops the US Top 100 Singles chart, and it would be difficult to turn on the radio without hearing Elton's voice. Seinfeld, the magnificent iconic 90s sitcom, has its final episode. And the TV show Friends is the most viewed show on earth. Here in Norway, the Nordic Ski World Championship is held in the city of Trondheim.
And you'd be hard-pressed to find many people in North America who would have known what the hell a Nordic Ski Championship was. The 90s was in full blossom, in other words, but not everything was a booming economy, great pop music, and decent fashion style. Women were still disappearing from Port Coquitlam, Vancouver, Canada.
The first of the downtown Eastside's women to go missing in 1997 was Maria Laura La Liberté, a 52-year-old native woman who was born on the 7th of November 1949.
Although the last time anyone saw her was on New Year's Day, she was not reported missing to the Vancouver police until the 8th of March, 2002, five years after she vanished. Like most of the prostitutes who worked on the downtown East Side, La Liberté used an alias. In her case, it was Kim Keller.
Her hometown was Beauval, Saskatchewan, except for the fact that she was slim, five feet six inches tall, with short curly brown hair and brown eyes. Almost no other information about her is available. There is a photo of her online, posted by the RCMP, and it's clear from that alone that she was a handsome, middle-aged woman.
Where she came from, who her family were, and what happened to her are all still mysteries. Ten days later, Stephanie Lane vanished from the area around the Patricia Hotel on East Hastings Street, and more was known about her. She was twenty years old. She was part native, part black, and very attractive.
She was five feet four inches tall and weighed 115 pounds. That's just over 50 kilos. As a teenager, she had been an excellent student. But like so many of the women on the downtown east side, she fell in with a bad crowd. And worse, a bad boyfriend.
The last time anyone heard from her was when she made a phone call from a public payphone on the 11th of January, 1997. Stephanie had a young son and a family who cared deeply for her. Stephanie had, as so many prostitutes do, fallen victim to the ravages of heroin abuse. Her family had tried to help her kick the habit several times,
but it had proven extremely difficult up until her disappearance. A month later, on Valentine's Day, the 14th of February, a 29-year-old woman named Sharon Evelyn Ward disappeared from New Westminster. She was described as a tiny white woman with a lovely elfin face, brown eyes and brown hair.
Her mother was the last person to be in contact with her as Sharon had left a phone message for her asking to be called back urgently. When her mother had tried calling back, she got no reply. Sharon had struggled deeply with drug and alcohol abuse, a fact her family was painfully aware of, but felt helpless in trying to help her get well from.
A native 30-year-old woman named Maggie Gisle saw her best friend Cara Ellis for the last time in March 1997. Cara had been 25 when she disappeared. The two had lived in the Vernon ruins, nicknamed the quote-unquote Ho-Den, for years and had become very close.
Maggie and her twin sister, Lisa, native babies whose parents had left them for dead in a snowdrift, had been rescued and adopted by a white family in Powell River. Maggie developed into a bright student and a talented swimmer with high hopes for the Olympics someday.
Unfortunately, she was also a child who was abused by her adoptive father and wound up at 14 with a boyfriend who turned her on to drugs. She quit school and went to live with him in a run-down dive in Victoria. It was not long before he began pimping her out to earn enough money for their drugs.
When she was about fifteen years old, Maggie broke up with the boyfriend and moved to the downtown Eastside. There she lived for fifteen years, working as a drug-addicted prostitute, thief, and pimp. Her street name was Crazy Jackie, and everyone knew her. She had hit the bottom of Skid Row, but she was intelligent and determined.
After more than 30 attempts to clean up and get out, she finally succeeded in March 1997, and her ambition was to help Kara do the same. Kara, who used the street name "Nikki Trimble," had moved to Vancouver from Calgary, where she'd worked as a prostitute since she was only 13 years old. Her story
was a typical one of troubled teen years, but she never lost touch with her family. Her brothers and their children all adored her because she never lost her love of fun. She kept them all laughing and loved to play with the children. But Kara was smart and thoughtful as well. Her family remembers how she used to spend hours writing in her journal about her feelings and experiences.
Like everyone who falls on hard times, she too had dreams and aspirations of living a better life. Kara disappeared on the 10th of March, 1997. Maggie went back to look for her in the third week of April, but she never saw her again. What follows is a first-hand account of a prostitute who very nearly was added to Picton's growing collection of victims.
It was the 23rd of March, 1997, and her name was Sandra Gail Ringwald. She had been up all night and was, as usual, feeling terrible. She crawled out of her bed in the Cordova rooms, and a craving for a hit of cocaine woke her up. She felt terrible, but she always felt terrible unless she was high.
She was 30 years old, 5 feet 6 inches tall, skinny, and addicted to cocaine and heroin. Paying for her drugs cost her about $200 a day, which meant she worked hard, selling sex from street corners and stealing stuff from any store that would let her through the door. A favorite target was the Army and Navy store on East Hastings. Another was London Drugs on Robson Street.
But her signature method of raising cash was breaking into cars that delivered cigarettes to stores, stealing the cartons and selling them herself. She had collected an impressive criminal record of arrests and convictions and done plenty of jail time, and she had tried and failed many times to kick her addiction.
Sandra had started using drugs when she was in her late teens, and now, even though she was on a methadone program to wean her off them, she could not give them up. Methadone does work for many addicts. While they cannot get high on it, it is a strong opiate that calms down users and causes less withdrawal problems. That's why so many doctors prescribe it, to help addicts stop using drugs.
But methadone was not working for her any more than the hospital detox program had. Sandra Gale had two young children, one eight and the other six. They had a decent life with their father, Paul Campbell. He was a fisherman who lived in North Vancouver.
She had worked as a cook deckhand on his boat, the Ocean Achiever, for five years when she was younger, but had not been on his crew since 1994. 1-800-Flowers.com is more than your birthday, anniversary, or just-because gift-giving destination. We put our hearts into everything we do to help you celebrate all life's special occasions with friends and family. From our farmers and bakers, florists and makers...
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i know first-hand how extremely difficult it is to make time for self-care but it's good to have some things that are non negotiable for some that could be a night out with the boys chugging beers and having a laugh for others it might be an eating night
For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever.
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Visit BetterHelp.com slash SerialKiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash SerialKiller. She desperately wanted to be part of her children's lives.
She was also smart enough not to take welfare. She was afraid that if she did, the welfare people might start nosing around her kids, and she might lose the limited access she now had. By this time, her favorite drug was a speedball, a mix of heroin and cocaine that she injected up to five times a day, or as often as she could get it.
The cocaine wired her up to feel happy and excited, and the heroin calmed her down. She hit the streets as soon as she was dressed, and after selling enough drugs to get a little playing money together, she snuck away from her boyfriend and pimp, Stu Jones, and headed for the casino on Main Street at Kiefer in Chinatown.
She loved gambling, but tried to limit her bets to twenty dollars a day. Occasionally she was lucky, but this day was not one such day. Sandra lost sixty dollars at the tables and was scared. If she did not earn back the lost money soon, her boyfriend would find out and beat her up.
She knew that her only option for fast cash was to sell sex on the streets. But first, she needed a speedball. So she ducked in behind the Regent Hotel and rummaged through her stash. She still had several flaps of heroin and cocaine that she had shoved into the change pocket of her jeans, and a needle in the bag she wore on a belt at her waist, where she also kept condoms.
Each flap held about half a point of cocaine or heroin. Sometimes she would buy it by the cap, which was one point, one tenth of a gram. And it was always mixed with double the amount of filler or quote-unquote buff. She quickly mixed two papers of heroin with one paper of cocaine, poured them into her syringe and flicked on a cigarette lighter.
Carefully, she passed the flame back and forth under the syringe to warm up the drugs, then jammed the needle into a vein in her leg. The drugs chugged into her system fast, and as usual, she began to feel frantic and paranoid right away, and ran around the streets for forty-five minutes to calm down.
Once she had her breathing under control and her mind cleared of craziness, Sandra, bundled up in a warm jacket against the March winds and wearing hiking boots, went to work at the corner of Princes and Cordova, a block north of East Hastings and three blocks east of Maine. Sometime between ten and eleven o'clock at night, about four hours after her speedball in the alley,
A red Chevy pickup truck stopped, and the driver's window rolled down. The man driving the truck had shoulder-length dirty blonde hair receding on top. His face was covered with stubble. She figured him to be a couple of inches taller than she was, maybe five feet eight inches, and he was wearing a checked shirt. He asked how much it would cost him for a blowjob.
When she answered forty dollars, he asked how much it was for a little extra service. She looked at him questioningly, and he further said that he wanted her to join him back at his place at Coquitlam. That was a semi-long trip away, and at first she refused. Then he offered her one hundred dollars.
That kind of money would not only make sure that Stu would not beat her up, but he would be very pleased with her for bringing in a profit. She smiled at the stranger who called himself Willie and jumped in his truck. On the drive towards his place they chatted and she also noticed a used bra lying on the floor of the truck. The man said it had belonged to a working girl who had forgotten to bring it with her.
Sandra only nodded at this and continued chatting about family and the weather. After a while, they reached the gate to the large Picton farm and Sandra noted the massive amounts of garbage, all derelict cars and piles of earth piled all over the grounds. The pair drove to the back of the farm and parked outside of Picton's trailer. Inside, it was even worse than in the truck, Sandra thought.
The smell was ripe with decomposing food, dirt and mold. They got to the back of the trailer where there wasn't even a proper bed, only some sleeping bags and a plastic tarp on the floor. Robert Pickton gave Sandra four twenty-dollar bills and the pair got naked. Sandra got on all fours and Pickton had sex with her for five minutes before ejaculating inside the condom she had made him put on.
Afterwards, she asked to use the toilet, which he allowed. Once locked inside the toilet, she immediately tried to shoot up more drugs. To get rid of the feeling of disgust she felt after having had sex with a foul-smelling, dirty and severely ugly man who called himself Willy. This time, however, she was unable to find a suitable vein and could not get high.
Annoyed, she emerged after about ten minutes and asked to use the telephone. As she was bending over the phone, dialing Stu in order to inform him that she was on the way back with money, she sensed Picton looming right behind her. She was irked by this, and as she swiftly turned around, he smacked a handcuff on one of her wrists. Now Sandra, she was a fierce woman.
She did not collapse in fear or tremble or weakly try to slap him. She kicked him as hard as she could, punched him in the eye, and screamed like a banshee. Robert Pickton was taken aback by this, but did not stop trying to hold her down and beat her back. As she was beating and kicking, Sandra had noticed a knife laying behind her as she had been trying to make a phone call.
With her left hand, she fumbled behind her, trying to reach it, as she was punching Picton with the other hand. She found the knife, and when she clutched it, she could feel it slipping through her hand, carving deeply into the fleshy part of her palm. But she cupped it in her hand and leapt at him, swinging the knife. She slashed at his throat. Then she pulled the knife across his cheek.
"'Picton was not used to victims fighting back so hard and roared in pain "'and shouted the following to her, and I quote, "'You fucking bitch! You got me good!' end quote. "'With one hand he grabbed a rag and pressed it to his neck. "'With the other he found a wooden stick and swung it at her. "'Sandra Gale picked up a plant and threw it at him, "'and then another, followed by anything else she could grab.'
While he ducked and swore, she spied a door and tried to push it open. It was glued shut. The only way out was past him and out the door they had come in. She tried to break the door's window and jump through, but it wouldn't even crack. She realized it must be plexiglass.
he was on her again and they swung at each other and fell on each other stabbing punching kicking sandra gale blacked out but did not pass out she regained consciousness she realized they were both outside standing by picton's red truck
He was over her, bending her back, but she was still holding the knife in her right hand and jabbing at him frantically. She howled at him to let her go, and even promised that her family would pay him a thousand dollars if he would only stop and let her go.
"'Picton only grunted in response "'and eventually managed to get the knife away from her. "'But just as he had the knife, "'he started to slide towards the ground, "'drew, coming from his mouth, "'the knife hanging limply in his hand. "'All his weight was on her, but he was losing consciousness. "'She slipped out from under him as he collapsed, "'grabbed the knife from the ground where he had dropped it, "'and started to run.'
She got to the farm gate and opened it and ran straight across the road to the closest house across the street and hammered on the door. No one answered. She tried to break a small window in the door using the knife she still clutched in her hand, but it would not even crack. Maybe she could break the big window instead. She swung at it with her elbow and smashed it open. Headlights suddenly appeared down the road.
She ducked down. Maybe it was him. She peered at the car and saw two heads, and one was a woman. The car went past, but within a minute or two it had turned around and was coming back. Sandra Gale broke another window. "'Help! Help!' she screamed. "'Help me!' The car stopped. The elderly driver and his wife stared at her, appalled. They saw a skinny little woman, terrified, covered in blood.
She was almost naked and her intestines were spilling out of her stomach. She was waving a butcher knife. The man shouted at her not to stab them. Sandra threw the knife away and the man jumped out and opened the back door of the car, clearing off the seat so she could lie down. He started the engine and began racing to a hospital.
Sandra knew her life was ebbing out and told the woman in the car that if she died, the man responsible was in a trailer at the back of the farm they just drove by. As she listened to Sandra Gale, the woman was dialing 911 on her cell phone.
Within minutes, they began to hear sirens. As soon as an ambulance and the police caught up to them, the man stopped his car and told the police that the man who had stabbed this woman and who lived in the house at the back of the property had been stabbed himself. It was 2 a.m. when the ambulance delivered Sandra Gale to the emergency room at the Royal Columbian Hospital.
The emergency room team imagined Sandra Gale quickly. Her hands were badly cut, and her lung, they suspected, had been punctured. There were two deep stab wounds in her abdomen. She was losing blood so rapidly, the doctors were not sure they could save her. A few minutes later, doctors moved her to an operating room. While she was under anesthetic, the surgeons repaired the massive cuts to her abdomen.
She would live. Just over an hour after Sandra came to the hospital, Robert Pickton was rushed into the same emergency room as well. He was covered in superficial knife cuts, with one particularly nasty cut on his cheek and two deep gashes along one of his arms.
His story was that Sandra was a quote-unquote crazy bitch who had stabbed him while trying to steal over $3,000 he had laying on his kitchen table out in the open. The police charged Robert Pickton on the 8th of April 1997 with one count of attempting to murder Sandra Gale Ringwald by repeatedly stabbing her and with unlawful confinement and aggravated assault.
Picton hired Peter Ritchie, one of Vancouver's best-known and most expensive criminal lawyers, to defend him. He told people he had paid Ritchie $80,000 for his help. The Picton brothers told close friends that the law firm hired a private detective to get as much background as possible on Sandra Gale. His fee, they claimed, was $10,000.
Her court date was set for the 28th of January, 1998. Whether she knew she was being investigated or not, Sandra Gale was very, very afraid of Robert Pickton. She did not show up in court, and as a result, the judge dropped all the charges against Robert Pickton.
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Go to warbyparker.com slash covered to try five pairs of frames at home for free. warbyparker.com slash covered. As dawn broke over the seven seas, the pirates of the Crimson Galleon set sail for adventure. But there was one problem. Paperwork. Mountains of it. Filing, invoices, you name it. This work ain't fit for a pirate.
Luckily, their captain had an idea. She used the smart buying tools on Amazon Business so they could work more efficiently and get back to doing what they do best. I know, right? Amazon Business, your partner for smart business buying. And so ends part three in the Robert Pickton saga. We'll continue this series in the next episode where we will come close to the end. So as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned.
What follows is a message to my dear Norwegian listeners in Norwegian. Seriemordepodden har lansert i det du hører dette sin syvende episode. Sagaen om BTK er gått i gang. Så som de sier i Radioland, följ med. Finally, I wish to thank you, dear listener, for listening to this episode.
If you like this podcast, you can support it by donating on patreon.com slash theserialkillarpodcast, by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, facebook.com slash theskpodcast, or by posting on the subreddit theskpodcast. Thank you. Good night and good luck.
