Family of missing woman demands new Pickton murder charges

The mother of a young woman whose skeletal remains were found on Robert Pickton’s farm—but forgotten about in storage for years—is demanding murder charges be brought against the convicted serial killer so she can find closure.

Michele Pineault’s daughter Stephanie Lane was 20 when she went missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in January 1997. Next year, Lane’s son will be the same age as his mother was when she disappeared.

During the 2003 police investigation, authorities informed Pineault that her daughter’s DNA was found in one of Pickton’s freezers, but there was not enough of it to charge him. However, if they found more than fluids, they would charge him. In 2007, Pickton was convicted of the second-degree murders of six women, after the Crown dropped 20 other murder charges.

None were ever laid in Lane’s murder, or five others whose DNA was found on the notorious farm.

Last August—more than a decade after police raided Pickton’s property, sparking the largest police crime scene investigation in Canadian history—came an unexpected shock for Pineault. Accompanied by an apology from the Coroner;s Service, she learned the RCMP had her daughter’s partial skeletal remains in storage until 2010, when they transferred them to the coroner.

“They just repeated over and over that it was an oversight,” Pineault said, tearfully, in the offices of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. “She should have been at home years and years and years ago. To be told that there’s only DNA evidence found, to accept that, to live with that, and to know that you’re not going to have justice because of that—and to find out 11 years later they did indeed have evidence, it’s just not acceptable.”

The provincial coroner’s service apologized to Pineault for the delay, but in a statement to media said the remains are not considered new evidence because they were part of the initial investigation of Pickton’s Port Coquitlam property.

The “sole issue,” the statement read, “is the unfortunate delay in returning the remains to the family of Ms. Lane … The BC Coroners Service regrets it cannot explain this delay, as none of the current senior management team were in their positions at the time, and those who were involved are no longer employed by the BC Coroners Service.” The province’s justice ministry did not respond to an request for comment Wednesday.

In late 2011, the province launched a Missing Women’s Commission of Inquiry. More than a year later, it released a scathing report citing “critical police failures,” and racism and sexism, that hampered dozens of B.C. missing person cases.

Last year, the BC Liberal government announced it would invest $5 million towards implementing the inquiry’s recommendations and compensating victims’ families, but many advocates remain critical of what they call an inadequate response and unaddressed recommendations.

At Wednesday’s press conference, several organizations reissued their calls for a national public inquiry into what the RCMP admitted last year are more than 1,200 missing or murdered Aboriginal women’s cases across the country.

“I want justice for my daughter and grandson who’s lived his entire life without a mother,” Pineault said. “… I have no answers at all. That’s what I’m seeking.”