Witness testifies she saw Pickton butchering dead native woman

[FireWire]

THE PICKTON TRIAL: HORRIFIC SCENE DESCRIBED IN COURT

Witness testifies she saw Pickton butchering dead native woman

ROBERT MATAS

June 26, 2007

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. -- It was a horrific scene that shook her out of her cocaine high.

Lynn Ellingsen pushed open the barn door on Robert Pickton's farm. She said she saw a native woman hoisted up on a chain like a pig for butchering.

"Where my nails are here, that would be where her toes were," Ms. Ellingsen told a murder trial yesterday, her left hand held up before her eyes, her voice shaking. She said she could not see the woman's face.

"I was just staring straight in front of me. I was not looking all over. I just remember her toes, her feet right there at eye level," she said.

Stopping frequently to wipe her tears, Ms. Ellingsen told the court at Mr. Pickton's first-degree murder trial that she saw Mr. Pickton covered with blood, cutting something she could not identify.

The woman's long, black hair was on a table in the barn. Ms. Ellingsen said she saw knives with lots of blood on them. She was not sure what else she looked at. Ms. Ellingsen said she recalled an odour from something, but she did not know how to describe it.

She thought it may have been from the woman's intestines.

"I was very scared, shocked. All I could think about was, how am I going to get out of here," Ms. Ellingsen said.

Mr. Pickton is on trial for the murder of six women and has been charged with the murder of 20 more. The prosecution's theory is that Mr. Pickton murdered drug-dependent prostitutes from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and disposed of their bodies by butchering them as if they were pigs.

Ms. Ellingsen, the 95th witness since the trial began on Jan. 22, is the first person to offer an eyewitness account of Mr. Pickton allegedly butchering a woman.

Mr. Pickton looked at Ms. Ellingsen briefly and then looked away, showing no reaction to her graphic testimony. The jury appeared to be closely following her testimony, but appeared to be untroubled by the scene she described. None of the victims' families were in court.

Ms. Ellingsen, who turned 37 yesterday, told the court she has been a heavy user of cocaine since she was 21, although she has stopped for some periods over the years. She said she smoked cocaine as recently as two weeks ago. She also confirmed she was involved in prostitution, welfare fraud, theft, drunk driving and an abusive long-term relationship with a boyfriend that led to her being hospitalized.

She said she met Mr. Pickton through a friend she knew from a women's shelter. Mr. Pickton later offered her work on the farm, cleaning up his trailer and part of the property. He also offered her a place to stay - in a room in his trailer on the farm.

Ms. Ellingsen told the court that the evening she saw a woman hanging in the barn began with a visit to the Downtown Eastside. Mr. Pickton told her he wanted to "pick up a girl," she said.

Ms. Ellingsen described the woman they picked up as having high "chipmunk cheeks" and long, black hair with straight-cut bangs. "She was a very pretty girl," Ms. Ellingsen said, adding that the woman looked like an aboriginal person.

When they returned to the farm, Ms. Ellingsen went to her room to smoke crack cocaine, and Mr. Pickton took the prostitute to his bedroom.

Ms. Ellingsen said she heard a noise that brought her out of the room. She saw a light inside the barn, which was adjacent to Mr. Pickton's trailer. She opened the door. "I saw this body hanging," she said. She remained silent for several seconds and then continued.

"Willie pulled me inside behind the door and walked me over to the table and he made me look," she said, referring to Mr. Pickton by a diminutive for his middle name, William. Mr. Pickton told her if she was to say anything, she would be right beside the woman, Ms. Ellingsen said.

Ms. Ellingsen said the woman was the person she and Mr. Pickton had picked up earlier that evening. She told Mr. Pickton that she would not say a word, that she just wanted money for more drugs.

Ms. Ellingsen said Mr. Pickton went back to the trailer to phone someone for drugs. He then put her in a cab and told her to come straight back. She ran out of the cab shortly after it left the farm, she told the court.

When she first tried to tell someone what she saw, no one believed her, she said. Police questioned her, but she lied to police. Addicts and cops do not get along, she told the court.

Ms. Ellingsen also said she was under the influence of cocaine when she heard the noise that took her out of her room. But she was not hallucinating in the barn. "That was enough to straighten me right out," she said.

globeandmail.com: Witness testifies she saw Pickton butchering dead native woman


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