A key witness says she saw accused serial killer Robert Pickton in his barn with a female body hanging from a hook.
That is the first eyewitness testimony to put Pickton, on trial for the murders of six women from the blighted Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, together with a body.
Warning: Graphic testimony. Reader discretion advised.
Ellingsen, who turned 37 on Monday, testified Monday she went with Pickton for a drive one night. They picked up drugs and a prostitute. She described the woman as a pretty native woman with chipmunk cheeks.
After returning to the Pickton farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C., she smoked some crack and went to bed. Pickton and the prostitute went into his room.
After being awakened by a noise then seeing an unusual light, Ellingsen told the seven-man, five-woman B.C. Supreme Court jury she went to the barn.
"I kinda got sick before I got to the barn door, there was an awful smell," she said in response to questions from Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie.
In there, she saw a woman hanging "the same way (Pickton) hangs his pigs."
"I saw this body, it was hanging and uh, Willie pulled me inside around the door, walked me over to the table and he made me look. And he told me if I were to say anything, I'd be right beside her.
"This woman we had picked up; my eye level was where her feet, like her legs were -- I seen red toe nail polish. On this big shiny table, there was lots of blood. Black hair, like horse hair, kind of."
Pickton was covered in blood. So were the knives on the table, she said.
Ellingsen told the jury she fled the farm and never returned.
Partial remains of women Pickton has been accused of killing have been found in or near the slaughterhouse on the property. That building was near Pickton's trailer.
The defence has admitted that remains were found on Pickton's property, but deny Pickton killed them.
Drug use
Petrie had the 37-year-old talk in her morning testimony about drug use that began after high school, where she had been a star athlete before becoming a teenage mother.
CTV's Todd Battis, who is covering the trial in New Westminster, told Newsnet that Ellingsen testified she unknowingly befriended a cocaine dealer shortly after graduating.
That act led to her becoming a heavy user.
During her binge periods, a boyfriend and her would spend up to $500 per day on crack cocaine, he said.
After one such episode, she went into a safe house and befriended Gina Houston, who turned out to be a friend of Pickton's. Houston introduced the two.
"She got a job cleaning his trailer and cleaning up around the farm and making money and lived in the trailer for some time," Battis said.
Ellingsen admitted to using cocaine as recently as two weeks ago but has also claimed long periods of being off drugs and alcohol.
She testified about the effect of her drug use on her memory.
Using crack "doesn't mean you're going to see something that's not there," Ellingsen testified.
"It numbs you, it doesn't make you see things that are not there. It doesn't make you hallucinate."
Ellingsen had been arrested but not charged in the deaths of women at the farm.
During recent testimony by Crown witness Scott Chubb, Ellingsen's name came up.
Chubb testified that Pickton once told him that a good way to kill junkies was to inject them with windshield washer fluid.
The comment came while Pickton and himself were pulling nails from boards and discussing Ellingsen.
After about three months, he said Pickton had evicted Ellingsen and wanted Chubb to "talk" to her. Chubb presumed that Pickton thought Ellingsen had been stealing from him.
Pickton offered him $1,000 to speak with Ellingsen, but Chubb said he didn't know what the accused had in mind.
Pickton, 53, faces first-degree murder charges in the deaths of Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Andrea Joesbury. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges.
He will face trial on 20 other charges stemming from other womens' deaths at a later date.
With a report from CTV's Todd Battis and files from The Canadian Press
