To this day, Lori Shenher doesn’t understand why an attempted murder charge was dropped against serial killer Robert Pickton in 1997.
Testifying at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Det.-Const. Shenher — the Vancouver police officer tasked with investigating the disappearance of women in the Downtown Eastside — expressed her frustration that Pickton escaped justice because prosecutors deemed his escaped victim as an unreliable witness.
“I never came to know why these charges were stayed,” Shenher told commissioner Wally Oppal. “I found it incredibly frustrating that was their perception. Had she died, as morbid a thought as it is, we probably would have had a slam-dunk murder conviction without her testimony.”
In 1998, Shenher was following up on a Crime Stoppers tip linking Pickton to the disappearances of sex-trade workers in Vancouver when she learned about the dropped attempted murder case in Coquitlam.
She even tracked down the surviving victim and heard her story first-hand.
The woman agreed to accompany Pickton to his farm for $ 100 but grew increasingly alarmed as the night went on.
When she reached for a phone book to find a way off the property, Pickton allegedly slapped a handcuff on her arm and a vicious fight for survival broke out.
The woman was severely injured with stab wounds but still managed to run away and flag down a passing vehicle to safety.
Shenher debunked any notion that the victim would have somehow jeopardized the case because she was drug addict.
“There was nothing in my interactions with her that would have made me question her credibility at all,” Shenher asserted.
Pickton wasn’t arrested until 2002, five years after the initial attempted murder charge against him was dropped.
Local news from metronews.ca/vancouver
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