Searcher Testifies at Pickton Trial About Sex Toy From Brother's Residence

Mar 29, 08:05 PM

Current Headlines: By GREG JOYCE

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. (CP) - A green sex toy found at the farmhouse belonging to the younger brother of accused killer Robert Pickton was examined and sent to the forensic lab for further DNA analysis, a search co-ordinator testified Thursday.

Note graphic contents may offend some readers

Lindsay Carter told the jury in the Pickton trial she examined the dildo from the house where Dave Pickton resided on the seven-hectare site in Port Coquitlam, B.C.

Carter told the jury she did a visual examination of the device and found no hair and no "blood-like staining" but it had some purple and orange staining on it.

She conducted a fast blue test for semen and it was also negative, as was a hemastix test that indicated negative for the presence of blood.

The sex toy was sent to the forensic lab for further analysis and it's expected a later witness will provide further details of any results.

Last month, Const. Daryl Hetherington of the Vancouver police department testified about her search in the farmhouse belonging to Dave Pickton.

In a closet in the bedroom, she said, she found a dildo and a tube of whipped cream, as well as a massager that was under a mattress.

Carter also testified about her work examining several knives, a saw and a clump of hair that were seized from the pig slaughterhouse on the site, adjacent to the trailer where the accused lived.

The knives and saw were all sent to the labs for further analysis and one knife tested positive for blood, which could be human or animal.

In an area just off the slaughterhouse, Carter said, a clump of hair was found and given to her for examination.

She said the clump contained about 70 hairs, of which she said five appeared to be human.

One hair was measured at about 21 centimetres and its root was sent to the lab for further analysis.

She also acknowledged that she had contaminated a piece of clothing seized from the site with her own DNA - as did some other searchers.

Another searcher, Nadia Graham, told defence lawyer Jessie Gill that she examined a tube of lubricant found in Dave Pickton's bedroom. She said she found some animal hairs on the tube, which was sent for DNA analysis.

She also examined two different leather restraints that had been seized in the younger brother's residence.

One animal hair was found on one of the restraints, Graham testified.

A pink, strap-on sex toy was also examined by Graham. She said it had black, yellow and brownish stains on it.

These items were all swabbed by Graham and sent to the forensic lab for DNA analysis.

Another search technologist, Ghislain Cormier, testified he swabbed the exterior and interior of a pair of metal leg cuffs that were seized from the property.

He told Crown prosecutor Derrill Prevett that they were swabbed and sent to a lab as well as four pairs of handcuff keys.

In the midst of the testimony of several searchers, the Crown decided to call a witness out of the usual order to provide more information about what has become known as the Mission skull.

Coroner Thomas Newell said he was called to the Mission area in February 1995 to examine a partial skull that had been found by a roadside vendor.

He told the jury that he found a right side of a human skull that still had some white "soapy substance" known as adipocere, a product of decomposition.

The coroner said he was in possession of the skull for several years and made extensive efforts to try to identify the victim, who has become known as Jane Doe and has not been identified to this day.

He got the assistance of a forensic anthropologist, an anatomist, a botanist, forensic entomologist and others, to no avail.

Last month, the jury heard that the skull, found seven years before police descended on Pickton's farm in February 2002, was cut the same way as remains found on the farm.

Police were never able to find out who the skull belonged to or how it got to an isolated area between a highway and a creek in Mission, B.C., about an hour's drive east of Vancouver.

The case of Jane Doe was a question mark, RCMP Sgt. Tim Sleigh testified last month, until the remains of Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury and Sereena Abotsway were found decomposing on Pickton's Port Coquitlam farm in 2002.

The way their skulls had been cut matched the one he'd seen years earlier.

Pickton is on trial for their deaths and those of Brenda Wolfe, Marnie Frey and Georgina Papin.

Sleigh, who has been with the RCMP for 26 years, said he'd never seen skulls bisected in that manner before.

The skull was added to the catalogue of at least 600,000 exhibits that were painstakingly seized over months of excavation at the Pickton property, Sleigh told the jury.

Sleigh said then that there were at least 80 instances of DNA from investigators and other searchers found on exhibits.

Newell acknowledged under cross-examination by defence lawyer Patrick McGowan that he sought the expertise of renowned entomologist Gail Anderson because an exotic-looking spider had been found in the skull and there was a thought that the skull might have initially been in another location.