By Tracy Holmes - Peace Arch News
Published: December 27, 2010 4:00 PM
Updated: December 27, 2010 4:24 PM
Of all the pain, suffering and injury that happens around the world, there is none more horrific than that inflicted on humans by humans.
As a coroner, South Surrey’s Owen Court has seen more than enough evidence to make this statement with confidence.
“Every time I say I’ve seen everything, something happens that proves me wrong,” Court said. “I’ve seen a lot of people who didn’t deserve to die the way they did.”
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Court, 37, began determining answers to deaths about a decade ago, and went on to take charge of reviewing all child deaths in B.C.
But it was in 2004 that he took on the role that would prove to be the most important in his career to date: leading the coroner’s side of the Vancouver missing-women investigation.
Spanning nine years, the Robert Pickton file was the largest and most graphic serial-killer investigation in Canada’s history.
Previously, that horrific distinction was held by the Clifford Olson investigation. Olson, now 70, remains in prison after pleading guilty in 1982 to killing 11 B.C. children.
Pickton – who confessed to an undercover officer to the killing of 49 women – is now serving life in prison following convictions on six counts of second-degree murder. He was initially charged in connection with more than two dozen killings, and forensics linked 33 missing women to his Port Coquitlam pig farm, including one whose identity remains a mystery.
“Unfortunately, we’ll never know exactly how many there were,” Court said in an interview. “The evidence says there were 33.”
At the time Pickton was arrested on Feb. 22, 2002, Court was a general-duty officer with Burnaby RCMP.
Court had a taste of coroner’s work before joining the police force, and made the decision to return to the field after 27 months as a Mountie – drawn by the satisfaction he’d found in death investigation and prevention.
At the time, then-Fraser Regional Coroner Kent Stewart had charge of the Pickton file. Court inherited the case after Stewart was appointed chief coroner in Saskatchewan.
Court doesn’t know if he had the option of declining the investigation. It didn’t matter. The thought “never once” occurred to him.
At times, over the years that followed, the file consumed entire weeks of Court’s life.
And every aspect of it was graphic.
“Nothing’s more horrific than the things that humans do to each other,” he said.
Court described the investigation as massive – from the number of victims and amount of evidence, to the volume of investigators and stakeholders involved.
His greatest challenge, he said, was to provide the families of the missing women with the information they needed, while respecting the sensitive nature of the ongoing criminal investigation.
“Once the case was officially concluded, it was a relief to be able to have frank conversations with the families and finally return the remains of these women.”
Such was his connection to the families, Court was invited in September to attend the funeral of one of the victims. In a career where he has always learned about people through their deaths, it was a rare opportunity to learn, from the woman’s friends and family, who she was in life.
Despite the investigation’s size and graphic nature, Court insists the deaths never followed him home; they took no toll on his personal life.
“This has never been about me. The focus has always been on the victims and their families,” he said. “At the heart of it are still people who’ve lost somebody very close to them. They lost them under horrific circumstances and in some cases, waited 8½ years or longer, to have some type of closure. They’ve been through a lot more than any reasonable person can be expected to. I’d be hard-pressed to think of family members who have endured more.”
In an interview six years ago, Court told Peace Arch News of a case that haunted him; that of a woman in her 30s who collapsed and died at home alone. He was never able to determine – to tell her family – why she died. Such cases don’t happen often, but the Pickton investigation has left Court with yet another unsolved death: that of a woman whose skull was found in Mission in 1995, years before the Pickton investigation got underway.
Seven years later, DNA of two bones uncovered at the pig farm – a rib and a heel – was linked to the skull. To this day, no one knows who she was or how she died.
She has yet to be reported missing.
“That one will sit with me,” Court said. “All the evidence suggests she was the victim of homicide. She’s the only one we haven’t identified… In my mind, there’s no doubt she met the same fate as the others.”
And like all the other women whose final days were inextricably linked to Pickton’s pig farm, Court said she, too, is worth the effort it will take to answer those questions.
“Her case will remain open until we determine her identity and that will be one of my greatest challenges moving forward.
“Everyone deserves to die with a name.”
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