Missing Women Inquiry: Bias Against Pickton's Victims Led To Police Failures, Indifference

VANCOUVER - The families of Robert Pickton's victims have received public confirmation of something they already knew to be true: if their daughters, sisters and mothers weren't poor, drug-addicted sex workers from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, many of them aboriginal and all living on the margins of society, some of them might still be alive.

If they were a different group of women, living in other, richer parts of town, the police would have done more to find the killer. The public would have been outraged.

Pickton Inquiry: Wally Oppal Says First Nations Have Not Been Silenced

VANCOUVER - The head of a public inquiry into the Robert Pickton case defended the process Tuesday against allegations it's ignoring the voices of aboriginals, as a lawyer appointed to represent that community resigned and one of the few remaining First Nations groups left in the process pulled out.

Aboriginal activists have long dismissed the inquiry as a lopsided and favouring the police, and the latest departures suggest commissioner Wally Oppal has so far been unable to convince the First Nations community he's committed to listening to them.

The first to leave was Robyn Gervais, an independent lawyer appointed to advance the interests of the aboriginal community, who told Oppal on Tuesday morning that the hearings have been too heavily focused on police and not on the poor native women who overwhelmingly accounted for Pickton's victims.

That prompted the First Nations Summit, which represents many First Nations and tribal councils in British Columbia, to formally withdraw from the inquiry.

Pickton investigators were indifferent, Mountie says

A high-profile Mountie who recently came forward with allegations of sexual harassment in the RCMP has now made sensational new claims about the investigation of serial killer Robert Pickton.

Cpl. Catherine Galliford told CBC News earlier this month about abusive treatment inside the national police force, including sexual advances from several senior officers.

Galliford was the RCMP's spokeswoman during the Robert Pickton investigation and is scheduled to speak at the ongoing inquiry into the case, and told CBC News some of what she will reveal at the inquiry.

Galliford says she saw numerous problems inside the investigation, including investigators who were more interested in padding their paycheques and drinking alcohol than catching a serial killer.

"They would break between noon and 2 p.m. PT to just drink and party and go for lunch, but then they would go back to work on Friday and claim double-time," she said Wednesday.

Pickton Inquiry: Leadership Failures Stalled Probe Of Missing Sex Workers

VANCOUVER - A massive leadership failure within the Vancouver Police Department stalled the investigation into reports of missing sex workers in the late 1990s, the public inquiry into the Robert Pickton case heard Monday.

That failed leadership extended all the way up to the chief, who was apparently unaware of the most basic details of the case and did nothing to ensure it was taken seriously, according to a review prepared by an outside police agency.

"While some recognized the increased number of missing women as significant, certain officers failed to take ownership and ensure the proper resources were dedicated to the problem," says the report by Deputy Chief Jennifer Evans of Ontario's Peel Regional Police.

Evans' report offers scathing criticism of both the Vancouver police and the RCMP, which together failed to stop Pickton as he hunted sex workers in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was able to continue killing for years after he was first identified as a suspect.