Who the fuck ate Willy Pickton's Friends?

They later ate pork chops together, which Brooks said doesn't make sense if the conversation had really happened.

"You would never sit down and eat pork chops with Willie Pickton, who is cutting up and butchering his own pigs," Brooks said.

Pickton's lawyer says Crown witnesses lied

The Crown's star witnesses lied in court and gave contradictory evidence, and therefore jurors could disregard everything they have said at Robert (Willie) Pickton's murder trial, a defence lawyer said this morning as closing arguments began.

METRO VANCOUVER – The Crown's star witnesses lied in court and gave contradictory evidence, and therefore jurors could disregard everything they have said at Robert (Willie) Pickton's murder trial, a defence lawyer said Monday as closing arguments began.

"You are entitled to throw out the entirety of their evidence," defence lawyer Adrian Brooks said.

The start of closing arguments at Pickton's murder trial -- where he is accused of killing six sex-trade workers who disappeared from the Downtown Eastside -- finally marks the last chapter in this trial, which started 10 months ago.

The defence's strategy will include challenging the credibility and stories of three Crown witnesses who linked Pickton to the murders, as well as the forensic evidence found on Pickton's farm.

"If you have a reasonable doubt it is your duty to acquit Mr. Pickton," Brooks told the 12 jurors, aided by a power point presentation broadcast on TV screens throughout the packed courtroom.

Brooks focused on the evidence of key witnesses Scott Chubb, Andrew Bellwood and Lynn Ellingsen.

Chubb testified that Pickton once said a good way to kill "junkies" was to inject them with a syringe of windshield wiper fluid. Police found a syringe filled with windshield wiper fluid inside a stereo console in Pickton's office.

However, when Chubb was on the stand in June to testify for the prosecution, he nearly forgot to mention the syringe. "That's just an actor forgetting his lines," Brooks charged.

A toxicologist testified that for windshield wiper fluid to be toxic, a person would have to be injected with between 150 and 375 of the exact syringes found in Pickton's trailer. "This story makes no sense at all," Brooks said of Chubb.

Brooks noted the toxicologist also said windshield wiper fluid could be used by drug users to clean a syringe.

Brooks said the defence could not prove this allegation, but asked the jury to consider whether Chubb -- who had worked on the farm in the past -- had planted the syringe in Pickton's trailer. "It wasn't beyond him," Brooks suggested.

Brooks said the witness's testimony at trial was so unreliable that the Crown may do "a 100 yard backward dash to get away from Mr. Chubb."

Andrew Bellwood told the court that in 1999, Pickton confided to him that he lured prostitutes to his Port Coquitlam farm and killed them. Pickton demonstrated on his bed how he would handcuff the women and then strange them with a wire, before dismembering their bodies in the slaughterhouse.

After the shocking conversation they went back to watching TV, said Bellwood, who initially thought Pickton was joking.

They later ate pork chops together, which Brooks said doesn't make sense if the conversation had really happened.

"You would never sit down and eat pork chops with Willie Pickton, who is cutting up and butchering his own pigs," Brooks said.

"You would stay away from him. You would be scared to death, at the one in one-billion chance that what he said accords with reality."

Brooks also argued the forensic evidence doesn't back up Bellwood's story: Andrea Joesbury, Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson, whose remains were found in buckets on the farm, were all shot in the head and a pathologist could find no proof they had been handcuffed.

Also, the Crown alleges that there was a blood-letting of Wilson inside Pickton's motorhome, but Brooks said Bellwood's story mentions only strangulation before the victims are taken to the slaughterhouse.

In addition, police found no wire or handcuffs under Pickton's bed when they searched his farm.
Brooks also argued Bellwood's story has changed over time, as he has told it repeatedly in court and to police. "This is where you catch people who aren't telling the truth," he said.

Brooks suggested the characters of Chubb and Bellwood lacked credibility because of their run-ins with the law and histories of telling lies in court.

"[Bellwood] is and remains, I say to you, a conman," Brooks said. "He is a leopard who has never changed his spots."

Finally, Brooks said the jury has heard evidence of many people coming and going from the farm, and asked why Pickton would choose to confide in Chubb and Bellwood. At least one defence witness has testified that Pickton didn't trust Chubb.

"Willie never trusted Scott Chubb and would have never had these conversations with him," Brooks' power-point presentation told the jurors.

Brooks said the defence will also challenge the statements Pickton made to police interrogators and to an undercover officer in his jail cell, which the Crown has called confessions.

"This is nothing like a confession. It's not a confession at all," Brooks said.
Brooks estimated his closing arguments will take two days, which means the jury will likely not begin deliberating until some time next week.

The Crown will be next to deliver its closing statements, followed by the judge who will deliver a three-day address to the jury.

Several relatives and friends of the victims are in court today.

Pickton, 58, is facing 26 counts of first-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty.

This trial is focusing on the deaths of six women who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside: Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe and Marnie Frey. A second trial on 20 charges is expected later.

Original story here...

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