You’d think that working on a book about Canada’s worst serial killer would be way more of a freakout than writing about, say, Brian Mulroney.
But Stevie Cameron, whose book On The Take: Crime, Corruption And Gred In The Mulroney Years? caused a media and legal firestorm, says no, she’d take a serial killer any day.
“I wrote a speech for the press gallery in Fredericton citing the 10 reasons why,” says the author, whose latest release, On the Farm: Robert William Pickton And The Tragic Story Of Vancouver’s Missing Women ($35, Knopf) was on the short list for this year’s Charles Taylor Prize for nonfiction.
“Among those reasons? While writing about a serial killer, I wasn’t afraid for the lives of my children. I wasn’t afraid for the job of my husband. I didn’t worry that my phones were tapped or that somebody was going to break into my house or my publisher’s office.
“I didn’t look behind me when I crossed the street. I didn’t have to drive carefully on the highway so nobody could run me off the road.
“And the numberone reason why I prefer serial killers? Serial killers don’t sue.”
Litigious politicians make life hell for a writer. Cameron describes how, at her peak as a political scribe, verything was heavily lawyered, and even then publishers might back away from releasing a book for fear of legal reprisals.
In Mulroney’s case, the PM enlisted his supporters in a pointed campaign to discredit Cameron and tarnish her image.
In fact, if I say the name Stevie Cameron, what’s your first thought?
If you’re in the journalism business, it’s not about her new book on Pickton. You’re probably remembering the accusation that she shared information on the Mulroney Airbus affair with the RCMP.
That’s a shame because, first off, she insists she did no such thing, and second, On The Farm is a really good book. It’s about one of Canada’s most important criminal cases, peers into the mind of serial killer Pickton and sheds light on his victims and the police indifference that, she says, allowed them to be victimized.
“It’s a fascinating story,” she says. The book is organized chronologically, starting with the police refusal to deal with the disappearance of women on Vancouver’s Downtown EastSide, why they failed and why they didn’t care.”
And while Cameron delves into Pickton’s personal background, On The Farm puts the emphasis on the 49 women he killed. She didn’t want a replication of the Montreal Massacre, about which everyone can namecheck the killer but practically no one knows the name of even one of the 14 women he killed.
“I decided to tell the story of every single woman who was on the official victim list, because Picton admitted to killing 49 women but was convicted of killing only six. I heard the testimony on the other cases, and I thought the lives of these women mattered. I’d met their families, their friends, their children. I knew that people loved these women.”
Good thing she’s taken on the stories of all 49 women slaughtered on Pickton’s pig farm, because the BC inquiry looking into police inaction over nearly a decade may not.
“I have mixed feelings about the inquiry,” she allows. “The government isn’t going to let this inquiry just go all over the place. They’re strict about the terms of reference, so I’m worried it won’t deal with some of the victims who weren’t dealt with in the trial.
“And Wally Oppal, who’s heading it up, was the attorney general during the period Pickton was active, and he’s the one who determined that a second trial wasn’t necessary.
“When his name was announced, the Vancouver police held a meeting to tell the public, and citizens were screaming at them asking, ‘How can Oppal be running the inquiry when he decided there shouldn’t be a second trial?'”
Ironically, it was while she was sitting in on Pickton’s trial that Cameron began to figure out how police had been able to give the impression that she had shared information with them about Mulroney.
“There was endless wrangling over the search warrant police used to get access to Pickton’s farm, because the defence were trying to overthrow the search warrant. I realized that police lie about informants and lie about the evidence. I wouldn’t have known that if the police hadn’t taken such a raking through the coals by Pickton’s lawyers. (In the Pickton case, it turns out, the police weren’t lying and the search warrant held).
She later discovered that the RCMP had needed a search warrant related to an RCMP investigation into a particular helicopter company. The documentation for the search warrant indicated that they’d received information from an informant, and that that informant was Cameron.
“But I knew nothing about that helicopter company. I’d never interviewed anybody about it. I’d talked to police because I was covering the story – I was trying to get them to tell me if Mulroney was under investigation. It turns out they constructed an informant. They did it in secret and they held a secret trial. I couldn’t even find out who the judge was.
“Informants have a code. They get paid, they have a contract,” Cameron goes on, “and I had none of those.”
With the help of some highpriced lawyers – Cameron’s legal bill totalled about $160,000 – she got the Mounties to release an affidavit detailing the information they said she had given them, including hundreds of contacts with police, all of which was false.
“I put this info up on my blog, and no one paid attention,” says Cameron. “The Mounties lied about me, and nobody believed me. Then, a few years ago, I was subpoenaed by the Oliphant Commission, which asked for all my stuff, all my research – everything – everything I’ve ever done.”
Her lawyers helped her refuse, but that didn’t stop Mulroney from mentioning Cameron in his opening remarks at the inquiry. As the result of more legal action, the inquiry decided not to include Mulroney’s comments in the official transcript.
“Robert Pickton had nothing to lose,” says Cameron. He was never going to sue me. We knew we had to be careful about Mulroney. He could say any thing he wanted and knew I couldn’t afford to sue him.
“The Mounties felt the same way, but they hid what they did. It cost me a fortune to wring the admission out of them that I hadn’t had 4,000 contacts [with them] and that I hadn’t given them anything that wasn’t public.”
