A Vancouver Police detective who felt alone in trying to catch a serial killer preying on sex trade workers tearfully relived her emotional trauma when she learned Robert Pickton was finally caught.
“I was completely in shock,” Detective Const. Lori Shenher told the Missing Women Inquiry of the day in February, 2002 she heard the Pickton farm was being excavated. “I thought ‘Anybody but him.'”
She said she was stunned that “it was this person who was so in my sights the whole time.”
Shenher testified at the inquiry that she had been tipped in mid-1998 that Pickton might be responsible for the women vanishing from the Downtown Eastside and by mid-1999 strongly considered him the prime suspect.
But the sole officer focused on the missing women case had no significant backup or oversight and said she felt the force had little interest in the case.
“Professionally, I felt out in the wilderness,” Shenher said.
“There just seemed to be no acknowledgement of what a very serious file this had been.”
Neither the VPD nor the RCMP searched the Pickton farm after a flurry of tips came in about the Port Coquitlam pig farmer in 1998-99 and by 2000 police thought the disappearances had stopped.
In late 2000, Shenher transferred out of the Missing Persons Unit and later turned down her dream assignment to work on the VPD’s homicide squad when that job was offered.
By then, she was “grief stricken”, deeply disillusioned and contemplated leaving policing altogether.
“I felt no confidence in the VPD, and in the RCMP in my dealings,” she told the inquiry. “I wanted no part of it.”
Shenher said she took some stress leave and spent the years since “hidden away” at the VPD in the financial crime section.
She confirmed she found the climate uncomfortable at the VPD because of some officers she found racist, sexist and homophobic and considered lodging a harassment complaint.
“I would like to hope that there’s room in policing for people like me,” she said, brushing back tears. “Because I think we’re needed.”
When the Pickton farm began yielding evidence in early 2002, Shenher – who knew many of the street workers who ultimately vanished before Pickton was caught – recalled counting the number of women who vanished after mid-1999.
“Every time someone’s DNA was found on that farm, I was right back there.”
The cross-examination of Shenher continues and the inquiry will also hear more in the days ahead from RCMP officers involved in the investigation.
