For me it was an intense learning experience and I would not have traded the chance to do this book for anything. It was a much-needed break from politics, the issues were and remain so important, the people involved, on the whole, were wonderful: intelligent, compassionate and hard-working. Yes, there was the occasional idiot and the Vancouver police did not shine in the early years, but I felt so fortunate to be able to write the story.

I had great publishers, a brilliant editor in Diane Martin and dear friends and a loving family to support me in every way possible.

I am always happy to receive questions about the case and will answer them all — if I can.

August, 2010:

• The Supreme Court of Canada upheld Pickton’s conviction on six murder charges and long-held publication bans on evidence that had been secret for years were lifted, although the trial judge, James Williams, ordered a new publication be placed on the name of the most important witness during the 2003 preliminary hearing, a woman whose testimony he discarded during the pre-trial hearings.
• The B.C. Government decided not to proceed with a promised second trial on the remaining twenty charges of first-degree murder, much to the dismay of the families of the murdered women.

September, 2010:

• The B.C. government orders a public inquiry, to be headed by Wally Oppal, a former B.C. Attorney-General and Appeal Court judge. He will examine  the police investigations conducted between January 23, 1997 and February 5, 2002 into women reported missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. (February 5, 2002 was the day Pickton was finally arrested on his farm.)
• The Inquiry will also investigate a criminal justice branch decision to stay charges against  Pickton for attempted murder when he attacked a Vancouver prostitute in 1997, the woman whose name has been protected by Judge Williams’ publication ban.
• But — Wally Oppal’s appointment also stirs up strong opposition from victims’ families, upset that he did not support a second trial on the 20 remaining first-degree murder counts that had been promised by the trial judge after he severed the counts from 26 to 6, saying a trial on 26 counts was too much for any jury to manage.
• And many are also upset about the Inquiry’s severely limited terms of reference, terms that do not include much public participation in the process and seem to exclude events that happened outside the timelines.

February, 2011:
Jane Doe

• Police ask for help in identifying Jane Doe, a woman whose skull was found near Mission, B.C. in 1995 and whose rib and heel bones were found on the Pickton farm in 2002. A new drawing was released of what she probably looked like, along with the news that she was Caucasian, not part aboriginal, as was first thought. Pickton had been charged with her murder but the trial judge quashed the count before the trial began.

March, 2011:

• Wally Oppal responds to public outrage over his limited terms of reference and asked the government to expand them. ”We want to make sure that everybody who wants to be heard is heard, that’s really the object of this suggestion that we made,” he explains. ”When you have an inquiry of this sort many people come forward, particularly those people who feel aggrieved and people who are vulnerable. So for that reason we want people to feel comfortable.”



• Police seize weapons from Westley Baker’s military surplus store in new Westminster — the store used by the Pickton brothers for their own guns. Baker was selling starter pistols and showing customers how to convert them into lethal weapons.

“[Stevie Cameron is] the finest investigative reporter in the land.”
–Maclean’s

Stevie Cameron turns her renowned analytical eye from the “crooks in suits” of her previous books to the case of Vancouver’s missing women and the man who has been charged with killing 27 of them, who if convicted will have the horrific distinction of being the worst serial killer in Canadian history.

It’s a shocking story that may not be over anytime soon. When the police moved in on Pickton’s famous residence, the “pig farm” of Port Coquitlam, in February 2002, the entire 14-acre area was declared a crime scene — the largest one in Canadian history. Well over 150 investigators and forensics experts were required, including 102 anthropology students from across the country called in to sift through the entire farm, one shovelful of dirt at a time.

A woman who is considered by many to be this country’s best investigative journalist, Cameron has been thinking about the missing women of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside since 1998, when the occasional newspaper story ran about families and friends of some of the 63 missing women agitating for action — and being ignored by police and politicians. Robert William “Willie” Pickton has been on her mind since his arrest, that February five years ago, for the murders of two of the women, Mona Wilson and Sereena Abotsway, both drug-addicted prostitutes from the impoverished neighbourhood where all the missing women had connections.

Living half-time in Vancouver for the last five years, Stevie Cameron has come to know many of the people involved in this case, from families of the missing women to the lawyers involved on both sides. She writes not only with tireless investigative curiosity, but also with enormous compassion for the women who are gone and the ones who still struggle to ply their trade on the Downtown Eastside.

“Money, intrigue, war, a little sex, a couple of mysterious deaths – they’re all here. …The Last Amigo peel[s] away the actions, the machinations, the false bonhomie and the true nature of this group of the rich and powerful.”
–Toronto Star

“The practice and philosophy of Schmiergelder is at the heart of The Last Amigo. It’s a cautionary tale of globalization, a glimpse into a world that many of us suspect exists but, especially in the Canadian media, prefer not to acknowledge.”
–Montreal Gazette

In the mid-70s, Karlheinz Schreiber, a self-made German businessman with a keen eye for a deal and high ambitions for lucrative business enterprises, came to Ottawa to seek his fortune. And what a fortune he eventually found. By the time of his arrest on tax evasion and bribery charges in August 1999, Schreiber had brokered a series of deals that yielded millions in secret commissions shared between himself and a cadre of Canadian and German middlemen. Outgoing and charming, persistent and opportunistic, Schreiber’s talent lay in cultivating Canadian men of influence–lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, fellow businessmen–and using those connections to benefit his European clients. One of his greatest coups was expediting “the largest civilian purchase of aircraft in Canada’s history”: a $1.8-billion contract between Airbus Industrie and Air Canada that included almost $20 million in secret commissions. “Operation Fox,” which procured German military vehicles and tanks for the Saudis–skirting rigid German export laws and flagrantly disregarded Saudi prohibitions “against payments to third-party agents in any deal involving government purchases”–included commissions totalling almost half of the DM 466-million deal.

The Last Amigo, a thorough and painstakingly researched examination of Schreiber’s shadowy career in Canada and abroad. It includes a detailed account of investigations by journalists, the German government, and the RCMP that not only prompted allegations of conspiracy and fraud against former prime minister Brian Mulroney but touched off a scandal that ultimately brought down German chancellor Helmut Kohl. Observers of jet-setting global politics will find this story chillingly familiar: how bribes, kickbacks, and secret commissions grease the wheels of government contracts, how shell companies and numbered Swiss accounts shield identities, launder cash, and frustrate the tax man. And most distressingly, it proves how well Karlheinz Schreiber understood “one tenet of the middleman’s creed … that every man has his price.” – Svenja Soldovieri

“Cameron’s storytelling is excellent, with characters and events introduced early on and a climax that pays off later … this true-life tale is thrilling and tragic.” –The Gazette (Monteal)

Blue Trust has all the ingredients of a gripping thriller — except it’s all true. In the late 1980s Bruce and Lynne Verchere had it all. He was a successful tax lawyer whose clients included Brian Mulroney, and bestselling novelist Arthur Hailey. She was a computer software entrepreneur whose innovative systems revolutionized office management throughout North America.

When Lynne’s company was sold Bruce could finally afford the extravagances he had long coveted: a plane, a yacht, a summer home in Maine, and a condo in Telluride. Through intricate manipulation, he was able to secrete his family’s wealth beyond the reach of the taxman and even his wife.

Then Bruce Verchere fell in love. The desperate affair and dangerous ultimatum that followed provide this true story with a chilling climax. Blue Trust is a complex tale of high drama brilliantly told by one of Canada’s most admired investigative journalists.

Published in 1994, a year after Brian Mulroney left office after nearly a decade in power, On the Take is investigative journalist Stevie Cameron’s blistering account of the corruption of the Mulroney years. Told with the verve (and the glee) of a thriller, On the Take, with its details of backroom deals and shady hangers-on, was the final nail in the coffin of the old Progressive Conservative Party.

When On the Take came out in 1994, it made author Stevie Cameron a household name in Canada. Her book’s revelations about the rampant corruption and petty greed of Brian Mulroney’s decade in the prime minister’s office reverberated for many years in the Canadian political landscape and helped destroy his Progressive Conservative Party. (The party, one of Canada’s most venerable, never recovered from Mulroney’s stewardship and eventually merged with the Canadian Alliance Party.) Cameron, one of the country’s leading investigative reporters, was one of the few reporters to consistently question and probe the corruption of the Mulroney years. She has a wonderful ear for storytelling, which helps make On the Take a page-turner. Cameron seems to rejoice in recounting the numerous unseemly episodes of the Mulroney administration and depicting all its seedy characters and hangers-on. Mulroney comes across as having been most comfortable in a powerbroker’s backrooms, surrounding himself with dodgy bagmen and devious lobbyists. Cameron suggests that the country was “open for business,” with a “for sale” sign on the front lawn. She writes that even in their final official act, as the Mulroneys departed from office in disgrace amid record-low popularity ratings, they tried to stiff taxpayers into buying their used furniture.

If On the Take can be faulted, it’s because it feels a tad partisan. The implication seems to be that Mulroney was somehow much worse than other Canadian leaders–when, in fact, the subsequent regime of Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was also marred by many corruption scandals. Cameron does a fine job of exposing Mulroney, but she seems to blame corruption too much on personality rather than any deeper, systemic causes. That said, On the Take is still a classic of Canadian nonfiction and a masterful depiction of how power is wielded in Ottawa. –Alex Roslin

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Not in the Pickton case. The trial judge, James Williams, recently decided to keep a publication ban on the name of the woman who fought for her life in 1997 when Pickton tried to handcuff her after taking her to his farm. Both of them nearly died in their fight ; she stabbed him and he stabbed her.

Her name is on the public record but today the ban remains in place despite an appeal from the media to remove it. I used her name in my first book on the case, The Pickton File, but did not describe her testimony which was still under a ban. (Her testimony does appear in On the Farm.)

Her name is well-known and has appeared in hundreds of websites and in press reports in the past. Because of the judge’s decision my publishers had to reset the type in On the Farm and give her a pseudonym — “Sandra Gail Ringwald” — a name that has the same number of letters as the woman’s real name.

There are also bans in place on the BC Appeal Court’s reasons for criticizing Williams in the way he handled Pickton’s trial. The criticisms are interesting:

The court said Williams should not have severed the original counts from 26 to 6, that he should not have thrown out the count for Jane Doe, whose severed skull was found in a slough near Mission with other bones found buried in the dirt near Pickton’s house, and he should not have refused to hear the evidence of  ”Sandra Gail Ringwald” — the now-anonymous woman who survived the knife fight in 1987.

Lawyers are meeting with Judge Jim Williams, the man who presided over the trial, to argue about the bans — in particular, the one that prohibits the media from using the nameof the woman who barely escaped with her life, in 1997, from a knife fight with Pickton in his trailer on the farm.

If the judge decides to keep the ban on her identity, I will have to use a pseudonym for her just as other journalists have been doing.  But keeping a ban on her name is pointless in my view; there are literally hundreds of websites on the Internet that tell her story and use her name. I named her myself in my book, The Pickton File, in 2007. At that time there was a ban on the testimony she gave during the 2003 preliminary hearing; today that testimony is public but her real name has been put under a ban.