Willie Gets Porked

The Picton trial has come to an end. The jury found the pig farmer guilty of second degree murder in the six cases with which he was charged. That's like saying they got killed , even by Willie, but he didn't mean to do it. It's worse than manslaughter, where he really didn't mean to kill anybody, but it's not like he planned it, or anything. Bottom line, as Willie might well appreciate, as a pork producer, and a man who needed regular service, he got 'screwed'.

What else to expect. He ran party central where the denizens of Vancouver's nether parts could gather to kick back and dope up in an atmosphere free of police pressure. And this went on for a number of years without attracting undue attention from law enforcement.... Willie and his version of Swine Lake.

There is no evidence that anybody was coerced into attending the 'ballet', just that some attendees failed to return. The physical and DNA evidence makes it apparent that many met a gruesome end at the farm. But who dunnit?

The prosecution would have led us to believe that Willie Picton managed to eliminate more than 40 women - completely, in most cases, all by his slow little lonesome. Willie the special ed kid and momma's boy was shrewd enough to dispose of more than 40 corpses, some of which won't reappear until the Second Coming. But he was stupid enough, or brazen enough, to brag to a 'cellmate' he'd never met before, that he hadn't 'done fifty'. Willie did what he wanted to do for a decade without raising any suspicion? Then he brags it all away to some goof he met in a holding cell? That's entirely credible.

I think the verdict is a sop to a miserable case of policing. Don't get me wrong, I think Willie Picton was in it up to his eyeballs, how could he not be, he lived there. But the policing in this case was flawed from the day the first girl disappeared. That thing about 'not being able to track prostitutes' was an excuse for an uncaring attitude. That had a lot to do with Willie's 'success'. With a little hard work Willie might have been stopped before he hit double digits. All the 'lowlifes' in Vancouver seemed to know about him, the police didn't?

Willie's looking at life in the slammer, and I think he deserves that, but the sentence, too, is a sop to sloppy enforcement and a sloppy prosecution. Given the millions spent on this case, how could any judge with an eye to his future rule otherwise? It could be that the 'error' in instructing the jury might lead to a successful appeal and that couldn't be good.

There are probably some nervous people running around BC now, worrying if Willie, like Clifford Olsen, might be hoping to 'soften the blow' by telling what he knows about his slaughterhouse, and his parties. I think Willie had help.

The murdered girls, we trust, are in better hands, in a better place.