VANCOUVER - The Vancouver police kept only a single investigator in charge of missing sex workers until April 1999 -- two years after a sudden increase in disappearances and months after officers first floated the possibility of a serial killer.
The public inquiry into the Robert Pickton case has highlighted the scant resources the force dedicated to reports that women were disappearing from the Downtown Eastside, where Pickton was hunting his victims.
Deputy Chief Doug LePard confirms that Det. Const. Lori Shenher was the only officer in the force dedicated full-time to investigating missing sex workers, while the other officer in the missing-persons unit helped out occasionally.
Shenher was effectively on her own until April 1999, when Const. Dave Dickson, a well-known beat cop in the Downtown Eastside, was assigned to missing women investigation.
In the fall of 1998, both Shenher and Dickson warned their superiors that the disappearances appeared suspicious and likely related, while a working group preparing to investigate the possibility of a serial killer was disbanded.
LePard also admits the force spent two years minimizing the possibility of a serial killer, repeatedly suggesting there was no evidence to support the claim even though in 1999 the force was acknowledging it was a potential theory.
