Missing women: Dave Pickton among 20 outstanding witness requests ignored since 2011

“Jane Smith”
Much has been said about witness “Anderson” -- a sex worker who escaped Pickton's trailer after a bloody knife attack in 1997, who miraculously survived despite her heart stopping twice en-route to hospital. But another sex worker said she was picked up by Pickton in late 2000, realizing too late he was the smelly pig farmer other girls were warning each other about.

Pickton wanted to take her to a biker party on his farm, but when “Jane Smith” accused him of being behind the missing women, “he confessed that he was,” the lawyers' submission states, and threatened to kill her. She jumped out of his moving vehicle and called the police – but says cops were rudely dismissive of her story, telling her they were “too busy,” and that their “hands were tied.”

Peter Ritchie
Robert Pickton's lawyer, the document argues, could shed light on the inquiry, particularly since revelations last week that police destroyed the files in 2000 relating to a 1997 attempted murder charge against Pickton. In Jan. 1998, the Crown dropped all its five charges, despite Pickton being accused of handcuffing a sex worker in his trailer and attempting to strangle her before stabbing her repeatedly. With the Crown's files mysteriously destroyed, only Ritchie may hold the remaining copy – which could explain how Pickton was allowed to continue killing women in the same way he tried to kill the witness known as “Anderson.”

Bev Hyacinthe
A civilian employee at the Coquitlam RCMP Detachment, which investigated the Pickton farm on several occasions, Hyacinthe claims she saw Robert Pickton with Dawn Crey -- a missing woman whose remains were found on the pig farmer's land -- at the brothers' nightclub, Piggy's Palace, on New Years Eve 1999. When she told police that Pickton had become aware of their months-long surveillance on him during their investigation, police officer Mike Connon allegedly failed to include the information in his report of the investigation. Furthermore, just before Pickton's arrest – on coincidental gun warrant charges – Hyacinthe met with police on Feb. 1, 2002 and told them her own son had discovered bloody clothing in Pickton's truck.

Pat Casanova
Police found the DNA of this butcher and Robert Pickton employee mingled with that of murdered women found in his boss's slaughterhouse, as well as on the doors going in. Despite protestations of his innocence, police also found a saw – similar to the type used to saw apart women's skulls and hands – in his house that contained human DNA, though they were never able to identify victims from it. After years of families' demanding his presence at the current public inquiry, Casanova died last year, months before the Commission began – likely on May 29, 2011, according to obituaries.

Brian Oger
A then-22-year-old civilian staffer with the missing women investigation – Project Evenhanded – Oger was extremely troubled by what he saw, according to the document. He wrote an internal report, “The Serial Killer Theory: A Report on the Downtown East-side Missing Prostitutes,” which made him the subject of “reprimand and criticism” from other police.

Peder Gulbransen
This Crown Counsel lawyer was assigned to the Pickton investigation in 1999, three years before his arrest. He soon requested a warrant to conduct electronic and video surveillance of Pickton's property – but his request was either ignored or refused for unknown reasons.

Ujjal Dosanjh
The province's Attorney General from Aug. 1995 to Feb. 2000 – when many women were disappearing from the Downtown Eastside – Dosanjh allegedly kept close watch on the police investigations, and was in charge when Pickton's attempted murder of the sex worker known as “Anderson” was mysteriously dropped by police and the files destroyed.