"I didn't really, I didn't really look," Brooks said, reading her statement. "I just see her hanging. ... If you didn't look how could you possibly give those details?"

She said her previous alcohol and drug addictions also affected her preliminary testimony.

"If it isn't alcohol, you blame it on crack," Brooks countered. "You're not prepared to take responsibility for this. You just blame it on your addiction."

Ellingsen is the only person to testify who has claimed to have seen accused serial killer Pickton with the body of a dead woman.

Ellingsen, a former sex worker, said she recognized the woman's body as that of a prostitute they had picked up earlier that night. She did not say when the event occurred.

Pickton is being tried on the first 6 of the 26 charges of first-degree murder he faces in the deaths of women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighborhood -- most of them prostitutes and drug addicts.

Pickton denies guilt, though he has acknowledged that human remains were found on the property he co-owns with two siblings east of Vancouver.

Pickton blamed the murders of prostitutes whose bodies were found on his Vancouver-area pig farm on Dinah Taylor, who spent time at his property, his friend Gina Houston told the court under questioning by Pickton's lawyer.

Houston, a friend of Pickton's for more than a decade, said Pickton made the comments in a February 20, 2002, conversation that happened after police raided his farm but before he was formally charged with any of the murders.

"Willie told me that she would take responsibility for what she said she would take responsibility for," Houston said.

Gina Houston cried as she told Pickton's murder trial he suggested they both kill themselves in a February 20, 2002, conversation shortly after police had raided his farm but before he was charged with murder.

"Willie told me we had to to do something. We had to do it before Friday ... He told me 'There was only one way out'," Houston told the crowded court in New Westminster, British Columbia, as Pickton watched from the prisoner's box.

Pickton was charged with murder on February 22, 2002. Police had raided his farm just outside Vancouver on Canada's West Coast on February 5, 2002, on a weapons charge, but evidence found in his trailer quickly turned the case into a murder probe.

Houston, who had been friends with Pickton since the early 1990s, said he admitted to her in the February 20 talk that there were women's bodies buried on the farm.

Arrest

"He said there was one, two, three, four, five or six bodies," a frail-looking Houston, 39, testified.

Pickton, 57, is on trial for six of the 26 murders he has been charged with since his arrest.

The court divided the case against the Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, pig farmer into two trials to make it easier for jurors to handle. He has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges.

Robert Korac, a butcher who befriended Pickton's parents shortly after he moved to Canada from Croatia in 1956, said he often visited the family to slaughter their pigs. He recalled meeting Pickton, now 57, when the accused was about seven years old.

"[He was] always polite, with everybody," Korac said in uneven and accented English. Pickton, a pig farmer and auto salvager, is accused of killing 26 women, though the trial in this community near Vancouver is on only six of the murder charges.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Pickton, who if convicted would be Canada's worst serial killer, has been in detention since his arrest in February 2002. The women Pickton is accused of killing were among more than 60 who disappeared from Vancouver's poor Downtown Eastside neighbourhood from the late 1980s to 2001.

Det. Const. Mike McDonald said Thursday that Dave Pickton is still being investigated in connection with women missing from Vancouver's seedy Downtown Eastside neighborhood.

Though Robert Pickton has been charged with the deaths of 26 women, 39 names remain on an official police list of women who have been declared missing. The investigation into their disappearances is still active.

"Police are continuing to investigate the possibility that David Francis Pickton was involved in the disappearance of some of the missing women who have been the focus of the Missing Women's Task Force, yes?" defense lawyer Richard Brooks asked.

"Yes," Vancouver police Det. Const. Mike McDonald quietly replied.

McDonald told the jury the most recent element of his investigation into Dave Pickton had to do a missing woman whom "we are not talking about here."

Dave Pickton was initially investigated after his brother was arrested, but the probe was believed to have later ended. However, McDonald's testimony indicates there is still an ongoing investigation into him.

McDonald ultimately seized 800 exhibits during the intensive search of Robert Pickton's home, as well as other buildings on the property owned by both brothers.

Robert Pickton, a pig farmer, is on trial for six counts of first-degree murder. If convicted of the 26 murders he is suspected of committing, he would become the worst serial killer in Canadian history.

Pickton was arrested in February 2002 by police investigating the disappearances of sex-trade workers from the Downtown Eastside district.

Pickton and his brother, Dave, used to throw parties at the hog farm in a barn they dubbed the "Piggy Palace," telling neighbors they were raising money for charity. Investigators have said the parties were drunken raves with prostitutes and plenty of drugs.

Sgt. Tim Sleigh and Sgt. Fred Nicks were trying to check whether the freezers in the building were working on April 4, 2002, when they lifted the lid of one freezer and spotted two buckets. Pickton had been arrested two months earlier.

Sleigh asked his colleague: "What do you see in the bucket, Fred?"

"It looks like a human head, Tim, " Nicks told the jury.

The buckets contained the severed heads, hands and feet of Sereena Abotsway and Andrea Joesbury.

Pickton, 57 is being tried on the first six of the 26 charges of first-degree murder he faces in the deaths of women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighborhood — most of them prostitutes and drug addicts. Pickton denies guilt.

Prosecutors said when the trial opened Jan. 22 that Pickton had told an undercover officer that he had killed 49 women but was caught before he could reach his goal of 50.

He later said he intended to take a break and then "do another 25."

He also told the officer a rendering plant was an effective means of getting rid of bodies.

Nicks also testified he found a bone in a piggery on the farm. He and another officer had been scooping dirt into a container, and sifting through it to find evidence against Pickton.

"I said: 'Look, there's a bone,"' Nicks testified. "It was immersed in the muck and manure. I lucked it out and moved it to the staging area."

He called Sleigh to examine the finding.

"There was a filling in the teeth," he said. "At this point, we thought it was very likely human remains."

The bone was later identified as the jawbone of Brenda Wolfe.

Nicks had been working on gathering evidence outside a motor home on the property when Sleigh approached him.

That motor home contained a mattress soaked in blood later identified as that of Mona Wilson.

Her head and hands were also found in a bucket at another location on the farm.

Later Wednesday, Sgt. Michael Coyle testified he had been in charge of excavation work at the farm.

It was during sifting of earth taken from a fenceline on Aug. 21, 2002, he said, that a jawbone was found. It was taken for DNA testing and identified as being that of Marnie Frey.

Coyle testified that the 17-acre (7-hectare) farm was divided into 216 grid sections.

Soil from the grid sections was sifted and run across conveyers for examination by more than 130 archeologists and anthropologists.

Coyle said teeth were taken from Joesbury's and Abotsway's jaws to be handed over to forensic dentists who ground them to extract DNA so the remains could be identified.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Jack Mellis held a large book of color photos of the motor home, which his team began searching Feb. 7, 2002.

As the trial began its fourth week, the testimony focused on the sleeping platform at the rear of the dilapidated home. Mellis said it appeared that "bloodletting" had taken place on or above the foam mattress and in other parts of the mobile home.

"The stains at these location are indicative of the mattress being in a position at the time of bloodletting," he said, adding that the "passive soaking is consistent with a bleeding person, bleeding continually."

Prosecutors alleged in their opening statement that they believe the 56-year-old pig farmer lured sex-trade workers and drug addicts from Vancouver's seedy Downtown Eastside neighborhood out to his farm, where he killed them and disposed of the bodies by feeding them to his pigs.

Prosecutors said DNA tests indicate that the blood in the mobile home came from Mona Wilson, the last woman reported missing from the Downtown Eastside in December 2001.

Earlier in the trial, the 12-person jury was shown a tape of an interview done by RCMP Sgt. Bill Fordy with Pickton shortly after his arrest. In that 11-hour interrogation in February 2002, Fordy showed Pickton photos of the mattress that Mellis examined.

"That's human blood. This is Mona Wilson's blood," Fordy told Pickton, who appeared in the interview to shrug off the suggestion that the blood belonged to Wilson.

The woman's head, hands and feet were later found in a pail inside Pickton's slaughterhouse in June 2002. Her DNA was also found on a sex toy attached to a 22-caliber handgun found in Pickton's trailer.

Pickton is currently standing trial for six counts of first-degree murder. Pickton, who has pleaded innocent, faces another 20 counts of murder at a subsequent trial.

His defense attorney has suggested that Pickton is mentally challenged and might not have understood questioning by police.

Meticulously taking the jury through photos taken inside the motor home, Mellis said the headboard had "stains consistent with a hand transfer wipes in a downward direction."

He told the 12-person jury that on the carpet area in the sleeping area, he found "probable cast-off drops that are shed from a moving hand."

Mellis, testifying before British Columbia Supreme Court Justice James Williams, is the ninth of an estimated 240 witnesses the prosecution has suggested will be called to testify.

Accused serial killer Robert "Willie" Pickton, told an undercover police officer that he eventually wanted to kill as many as 75 women, a Canadian jury has heard.

The comment came in a conversation in which Pickton also talked about using a rendering plant to dispose of the bodies of the women that he had already killed, the officer testified, describing a taped conversation the jury was about to hear.

Pickton is alleged to have made the comments in a jail cell conversation with the undercover agent shortly after his arrest in 2002.

The officer, who cannot be named by court order, said Pickton signalled first with his hands and then words that he had killed 49 women and then wanted to kill one more.

Pickton then later said he planned to pause after the 50 killings but then resume and kill an additional 25.

Pickton has been charged with 26 murders although this trial deals with only six. The court divided the case into two trials to make it easier for the jury.

In their opening comments on January 22, prosecutors mentioned Pickton's comments on killing 50 women but made no mention of 75.

Prosecutors have never described Pickton's comments as a confession.

Police say Pickton, now 57, lured drug addicts and prostitutes to his farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, near Vancouver. There, police say, he killed them, butchered the bodies and then disposed of the remains both on the property and at an animal waste rendering plant.

The victims were among more than 60 women who disappeared from Vancouver's drug-ridden Downtown Eastside neighbourhood from the late 1980s until late 2001.

The jury of seven men and five women has already viewed a tape of a lengthy police interrogation of Pickton, made after his arrest in February 2002 on two murder charges.

In that tape, Pickton initially denies knowing anything about the missing women, but later suggests he would be willing to tell police about the killings if they agree to stop searching his farm.

The search lasted for 18 months and police say they eventually found the DNA of more than 30 of the missing women at the ramshackle farm.

Accused serial killer Robert "Willie" Pickton lamented that he never moved away from the family farm where police allege he killed 26 women and butchered their remains, a Canadian court heard on Monday.

"I was supposed to stay on the farm till I hit the age of 40... Now I'm 53 and now it's buried me. My name is mud," Pickton told an undercover police officer hours after his arrest in 2002.

The jury at his murder trial in New Westminster watched a videotaped recording of the conversation, which took place in a jail cell with a police officer who was posing as a suspect arrested for attempted murder.

Prosecutors say that on a section of the tape not yet viewed by the jury, Pickton talks of having killed 49 women and planning to kill one more.

Pickton, now 57, has pleaded not guilty, and prosecutors have not described any of his comments as a confession.

He has been charged with 26 murders, although this trial deals with only six of the charges. The court divided the case into two trials to make it easier for the jury.

Pickton tells his cell mate that he was a pig farmer who did not drink or do drugs, and could not believe he was facing murder charges. He also complained that the police search had kicked him off the farm where he had lived for almost his entire life.

"I'm screwed, tattooed, nailed to the cross..." he complains, saying police want to charge him with 50 murders.

Pickton, in court on Monday, read a transcript of the taped conversation and occasionally looked up at the officer, who was in the courtroom as a witness but cannot be identified by the media because of a court order.

Police say Pickton lured drug addicts and prostitutes to his farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, near Vancouver. There, police say, he killed them, butchered the bodies and then disposed of the remains both on the property and at an animal waste rendering plant.

The victims were among more than 60 women who disappeared from Vancouver's drug-ridden Downtown Eastside neighborhood from the late 1980s until late 2001.

The jury of seven men and five women has already viewed a tape of a lengthy police interrogation of Pickton, also made after his arrest in February 2002 on the first two murder charges.

In that tape Pickton initially denies knowing anything about the missing women, but later suggests he would be willing to tell police about the killings if they agree to stop searching his farm.

Defence lawyers say interrogators tricked Pickton by lying to him about the evidence, and he was too tired at the end to know what he was saying.

The search lasted for 18 months and police say they eventually found the DNA of more than 30 of the missing women at the ramshackle farm in a Vancouver suburb.

Pickton, his brother and sister had been slowly selling off the family's farmland to housing developers, and Pickton told the undercover officer he was about to close it down.

"Hey, they (the police) just closed me down," Pickton said.

Baptie wrote that nothing had prepared her for the first day of the trial, 'listening to the Crown describe how heads of victims were cut in half, how bodies had been mutilated and other atrocities I will let other media report', she wrote.

The details of the serial murders of six prostitutes and drug addicts in Canada's Vancouver have turned so grisly in the second week that some newspapers have stopped printing them, or are offering them only online.

Robert Pickton, 56, stands charged with killing at least 26 of 61 women who vanished over nearly 20 years from the seedy lower east side of Vancouver. For years, police barely raised an eyebrow until they found gruesome evidence on a pig farm outside the western Canadian city.

But for two Canadian reporters, telling the full story is not up for debate.

Pauline VanKoll, 42, and Trisha Baptie, 33, former prostitutes and drug addicts who worked in the same poverty-stricken Vancouver neighbourhood as the victims, are reporting on the trial for orato.com, a citizen journalism website.

The numbing work of the police, sifting through 292,824 cubic metres of soil and sending 400,000 swabs of evidence to the laboratory, helped sweep away Baptie's distrust of the police.

'The police might not have taken the missing women seriously at first, but when they found the first signs of something seriously wrong, it is pretty evident they threw all the resources they could at it,' she wrote.

And while still bitter that her 'friends will still be dead no matter what new policies and procedures', she writes they may not have died 'in vain if through all this, some very serious and open discussions happen around drug detoxification beds, drug rehabilitation', better supports for kids in care and 'safety for the girls on the streets'.

Only the first six cases Pickton is charged with are on trial now, and the remaining 20 are to be tried later over the coming year or more.

Pickton, who has pleaded not guilty, was arrested in 2002, triggering an 18- month forensic marathon on his farm in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam. Prosecutors say DNA evidence was found from some of the missing women.

The bloody details - of decapitated heads being split in half and other violations - have drawn criticism from readers. Media interest has dropped off dramatically for the second week of the trial with the number of reporters at the courtroom far less than the 350 that were initially accredited.

When the trial opened early last week, many Canadians were angered at the sensational tone of coverage, prompting several media outlets to change their coverage and issue warnings about the graphic material. Some papers offered two formats of coverage: a censored version in print and an uncensored version online.

But for VanKoll and Baptie, the focus is not on the terrifying details but on the victims.

Paul Sullivan, editor-in-chief of orato.com, explained that the women, who have been off the street and drug-free for several years, were selected for their life experiences rather than their journalism backgrounds.

'We tried to find people to give first-person accounts. We wanted people who had lived the story and feel the story - who are the story,' he said.

Sullivan said the testimony has been hard on the fledgling reporters, and that their job is to add to the context of the story by explaining life on the street.

'Both women see this as part of their healing but it's been tough,' he admitted. 'I don't know if they were ready for the impact of sitting in the same courtroom as Pickton.'

VanKoll and Baptie's reports are raw and emotional.

'My anger at the end of last week's trial was almost uncontrollable. It reminded me of the anger I once felt when I was on the street. I couldn't hold back my tears for the street sisters killed,' VanKoll wrote last week.

Baptie wrote that nothing had prepared her for the first day of the trial, 'listening to the Crown describe how heads of victims were cut in half, how bodies had been mutilated and other atrocities I will let other media report', she wrote.

Pickton is the first person to be charged in the disappearances, which were not initially probed because, police explained, women working in the sex trade are difficult to track and there was no evidence that they had been abducted. 

As the first week of the sensational Robert Pickton trial wrapped up yesterday, former Vancouver cop Kim Rossmo said he couldn’t help but feel a sense of failure.

Rossmo is the veteran officer who warned his bosses in 1999 about the possibility of a serial killer preying on prostitutes in the Downtown Eastside – several years before Pickton’s arrest. At the time, Rossmo’s superiors stubbornly dismissed the theory.

“There was a key individual whose mind was made up quickly,” he told the Sun today, accusing his former supervisors of contracting a “serious case of tunnel vision and a little bit of group think.”

Eight years later, Rossmo is in a position to say, “I told you so,” but he finds no comfort in gloating.

“It’s one of those cases where you wish you were wrong,”_he added. “How can you feel good about it? It’s hard to feel any sort of satisfaction.”

By his count, there were 10 more confirmed deaths before the Port Coquitlam pig farmer was arrested.

“It’s frustrating and it’s a tragedy,” he said.

In 1998, the criminal profiler began looking at Vancouver’s missing women cases. He wasn’t ready to buy into the widely held belief that all these transient women from skid row had simply moved.

“If they moved, you’d expect them to notify the welfare office to collect their cheques and that wasn’t happening,” he said, calling that a significant warning sign. Rossmo obtained records of missing people dating back 20 years and discovered the tally jumped dramatically in 1995.

After further investigation, Rossmo refused to chalk it up to a statistical anomaly.

“You have too much happening in too short a time period in too small an area for it to be random,” he explained.

Among the questions he asked were: Why was it happening here? And why weren’t they finding any bodies? “To me, the only explanation was a serial killer,” he said.

Rossmo, whose sister lives in Edmonton, is now a research professor at Texas State University’s criminal justice department and a management consultant with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He won’t say if he’s involved with Project KARE – the RCMP-led investigation looking into the deaths and disappearances of 70 people, including prostitutes – in Edmonton and surrounding areas because the investigation is ongoing. But he readily admits Mounties and Edmonton cops have learned a lot from the Vancouver snafu.

“That’s arguably one of the good things that came out of the missing women mess,”_he said.

Rossmo wrote a book on geographic profiling, which is based on the premise that most criminals commit their crimes close to home. He advised that the public – “the greatest group that helps solve crimes” – must stay informed and vigilant.

Wedged between white-capped mountains and sparkling blue ocean, Vancouver is lauded for multicultural livability, ranked worldwide as a top travel destination and is preparing to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. But lately a grim pall has blanketed the western Canadian city of 2.2 million, for reasons far worse than the freak winter storms. The harrowing details of a grotesque serial killer case are bringing to the surface the city's seamy underworld, usually confined to the squalid 10-block open drug and sex market known as the Downtown Eastside.

The seaminess surrounds the trial of pig farmer Robert William Pickton, charged with murdering 26 drug-addicted prostitutes. The trial, which an earlier judge warned would be "as bad as a horror movie," began Jan. 22 and is expected to last a year. A jury will hear evidence on the first six charges of murder. (The remaining 20 charges will be brought to court after the first six.) Prosecutor Derrill Prevett described in his opening statement how police searching Pickton's ramshackle suburban pig farm about 15 miles east of Vancouver in 2002 found two women's heads in a freezer, cleaved in two and packed with their hands and feet. Human bones were found buried deep under an old pig pen. In Pickton's mobile-home trailer, said Prevett, police discovered a gun and a sex toy with DNA from Pickton and Mona Wilson, one of the alleged victims.

"I couldn't imagine," said Wilson's former foster mother, Norma Garley, nearly wordless. "Something like that happening to somebody in my family." Garley and her family took Wilson in at age seven, after the girl was sexually abused by family members. When Wilson was 14 social workers moved her, but the Garleys kept in touch and Wilson telephoned them just before December 2001, when she vanished. Until the trial, the Garleys had no idea the girl they called "Running Bear," the name honoring Wilson's aboriginal heritage, had grown up to become a drug addict selling sex on Downtown Eastside streets. In her last call to the Garleys, Wilson told them she was engaged to be married and doing well, Garley sobbed in an interview with TIME. "Mona always wanted us to have a good opinion of her."

The fates of Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Ann Wolfe, Marnie Frey and Georgina Faith Papin are emerging in British Columbia Supreme Court, in the gritty Vancouver suburb of New Westminster. There, Pickton sits calmly behind bullet-resistant glass, an unimposing slim man with a fringe of lank grey hair around a bald pate. Now 57, he has become well-known in legal circles since his arrest in February 2002. But only now has the end of a Canadian publication ban, intended to ensure an impartial jury hearing, revealed the gruesome details of his case. Pickton has become instantly famous. "You're like the pope," a police officer told Pickton in a recorded interrogation played before the jury. Some 350 journalists are accredited and the trial is making global as well as local headlines. Each day curious spectators, including a class of teenagers from a local Christian school and several elderly people, jostle with family and friends of the victims for limited public seating.

The attention is new, but that Downtown Eastside prostitutes die gruesome deaths is old news, and largely ignored. Scores of women from that area have vanished since 1978. Only in 2001 did Canada's national police force, then investigating a separate case of prostitute serial killings in the province, team up with Vancouver police. The joint task force now lists more than 60 missing women; police said the DNA, remains or belongings of about half of those have been linked to Pickton's pig farm.

The missing women case has been the catalyst for a sea change in public attitudes to illegal drugs in British Columbia. Vancouver now leads North America in treating addiction as a health and social problem as well as a crime. It hosts the continent's only supervised heroin injection site, as well as a clinic dispensing free heroin in a scientific trial. But not much has changed at street level in the Downtown Eastside. Some 15,000 injection-drug addicts, many of them mentally ill, are concentrated in Canada's most impoverished neighborhood. An estimated 1500 female addicts continue to sell so called "survival sex," at all times and in all weather. Reporters interviewing the women about the Pickton trial were shocked to find that many didn't know about it, or care.

"Women who still live and work down here knew women who have died and gone missing," said Kate Gibson, executive director of WISH, a drop-in center for sex-trade workers. "They are still out there working on the street, and they still face the same violence, stigmatization, and discrimination every day."

Pickton's lawyer Peter Ritchie says his client is innocent, and that he will refute the prosecution's evidence. Pickton's own voice is directly heard only in a videotaped police interrogation after his arrest and the first two charges were brought in February 2002. Played to the jury, the tape shows him mumbling and at times appearing barely cognizant of events. "I'm just a pig farmer," Pickton tells police. "I'm a working guy, that's all I am." When told he was charged with two murders and was being investigated in the disappearances of 50 more women, he laughed. "Hogwash," he said, slouched over a chair in the interview room beside some potted palms. "I'm nailed to the cross," he said repeatedly. And when police asked if he killed as many as 50 women, Pickton complained: "You make me out to be more of a mass murderer than I am."

His trial on sensational charges that he murdered and dismembered six sex-trade workers from Vancouver's gritty Downtown Eastside had begun. But as Crown prosecutor Derrill Prevett opened the case with a chilling but dispassionate recital of the evidence against the pig farmer, Pickton stared straight ahead, motionless and little different from the way he has responded in court during years of preliminary arguments.

Dressed in white sneakers, casual black pants and a grey short-sleeved shirt, Pickton scribbled a few notes on a white legal pad, but showed no emotion and did not look at the seven men and five women of the jury.

Mostly, he sat still as a mannequin.

The stringy hair remains, but the straggly beard he was wearing in a television clip that has aired hundreds of times is gone. Instead, his angular features are clean, showing baby-faced skin.

Beyond the floor-to-ceiling plexiglass barrier that separates Pickton from family members of those he's accused of killing, the horror of what the Crown was alleging took its toll on some.

A man who was sitting with relatives of alleged victim Marnie Frey lurched forward and began sobbing. The man, in his 30s, left the courtroom moments later and was helped outside by staff from Victim Services.

At other times, stifled sniffles could be heard in the courtroom and some people wiped their eyes.

Jury members, however, did not wince as Prevett spent an hour explaining the grisly crime scene police encountered after executing a routine search warrant looking for illegal firearms on the pig farm.

Court heard investigators eventually uncovered three severed heads, other human bones, guns, ammunition, leg irons, handcuffs and at least one sex toy.

Lead defence lawyer Peter Ritchie, sitting closest to the jury box, glanced at the jurors as Prevett made his opening statement.

He later urged the jurors to listen to all the evidence, watch the witnesses' testimony and demeanour and, above all, keep in mind his contention that "Mr. Pickton did not kill or participate in the killing of these six women."

The case has attracted hordes of media for the trial but there were a couple of empty seats in the main courtroom and many of the seats in the overflow courtroom were not taken.

Some people began gathering outside the Vancouver-area courthouse before dawn. Television and radio stations delivered their morning programs from in front of the courthouse.

But despite saturation coverage, most of the people lining up to go through security in the predawn were family members or reporters.

Tight security has been in place at the courthouse since last year when arguments under a publication ban began. It was slightly more elaborate Monday.

In the past, visitors were asked to empty out their pockets before going through a metal detector, but on Monday they had to line up a second time to go through same process to gain entry to the two courtrooms.

Purses and briefcases were searched.

One man who stood in the damp morning darkness to be assured of a seat was turned away at the second check point because he was wearing shorts. Not appropriate courtroom attire, he was told.

Kristina Fetterholt, a criminology student at Simon Fraser University, did manage to get into the courtroom.

She said when Pickton's Port Coquitlam pig farm was raided and he was charged, she was a 16-year-old student at Terry Fox Secondary School there.

She's now a year away from graduation at Simon Fraser University and hopes to go to law school.

She said one of the new textbooks her class is studying contains a picture and a reference to Pickton.

Accused serial killer Robert Pickton pleaded not guilty on Saturday as jury selection began in the first of two trials he faces in the deaths of 26 Vancouver women.

The pig farmer and junk dealer who went by the name "Willie" Pickton initially will be tried on only six of the 26 murder charges. The court has divided the charges into two trials in an effort to make it easier to get a jury.

About 500 potential jurors filed through a court in New Westminster, with some saying they were worried about the expected length of the trial.

Lawyers have said it could last more than a year.

"It's a civic duty, but obviously it is going to be a hardship for anyone who has got to do it," said one woman as she prepared to join the line of people entering the court.

Pickton, accused of being Canada's worst serial killer, had to re-enter his plea on the first six murder counts because of the decision to have two trials.

"Not guilty, your honour," he said in a soft but firm voice to each count.

His back was to the audience as he sat in the prisoner's box, and he never turned around to see the prospective jurors as they were brought before the judge in groups of 30 for initial instructions.

The 26 victims were among nearly 70 drug addicts and sex trade workers who disappeared from Vancouver's poor Downtown Eastside neighbourhood from the late 1980s to shortly before Pickton's arrest in February 2002.

The missing women's investigation drew wide publicity even before Pickton was accused, and prospective jurors who talked to reporters admitted they were familiar with the case.

"Everybody knows about it," one man said.

Due to the case's notoriety, the prosecution and defence will question prospective jurors more thoroughly than usual to determine potential biases.

Both sides said Saturday's hearing went smoothly and predicted they would be able to select a jury of 12 people. Arguments in the trial are set to begin January 8.

Police searched Pickton's ramshackle farm and junkyard in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam for nearly two years after his arrest using earthmoving equipment and search teams trained in forensic archaeology.

Investigators say they found the DNA of at least 31 of the missing women -- although not all could be used as evidence to support murder charges.

"We have come up with estimates as high as 90 weeks, which is alarming - 90 weeks with adjournments, and that could put us close to a two-year trial," Peter Ritchie told Justice James Williams in B.C. Supreme Court.

Ritchie cautioned the time-frame is the defence's guess based on the Crown going ahead with the 26 murder counts that Pickton is charged with.

"Our best guess is, admittedly highly speculative," Ritchie told Williams.

After listening to Ritchie's submission, the judge said, jokingly: "You may need a younger trial judge."

Ritchie noted a two-year trial length "gives rise to some very serious issues about a jury."

In Canada, defence and Crown lawyers pick 12 jurors and two alternates. But once the trial starts hearing evidence, the two alternates are dismissed. Under the law, a trial must start over if the number of jurors drops below 10.

"Just to make sure we are all clear here," said Ritchie as the accused sat behind him in the prisoner's box.

"Our jury laws in selecting alternates for jurors are, in my respectful view, pathetically poor. We can't put additional alternates on in any way in an effective manner.

"If this trial lasts something like two years, the chances of holding a jury together are difficult, if not highly remote."

"If we lose more than three we are out luck and we have to start again," said Ritchie.

It would be "disastrous" if the trial went so long that the jurors' attrition ended up in the trial having to start over, he said.

Pickton has actually not yet formally opted for a jury to hear the case, but Ritchie has said that is the intention.

Kevin Church, a defence lawyer in Kamloops and a criminal justice spokesman for the Canadian Bar Association, said lawyers are obligated to not mislead the court.

"I imagine he's telling (the judge) the truth because that is what Peter Ritchie would do," said Church. "If he said his best estimate is 90 weeks then I guess it's 90 weeks."

Church noted that 26 counts entails "a lot of evidence. When you consider an average murder trial may last a month, multiply that by 26."

Church said he could not think of a jury trial in Canada that lasted two years.

"That's beyond my knowledge and it would certainly be exceptionally difficult. It's an exceptional thing to ask of somebody but (Pickton) has a right to a jury trial."

A phase of the trial began in January that involves defence and Crown lawyers making arguments on what evidence should be admitted. The judge decides what evidence can be put before a jury when one is selected.

Pickton has been in custody since February 2002 and is facing 26 counts of first-degree murder in connection with an investigation over a long list of missing women from Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside.

While the current phase of the trial is under a publication ban, the judge allowed some parts of what the lawyers said in court Wednesday to be exempt from the ban, as long as they didn't touch on evidence.

Outside court, Ritchie said the defence is struggling to try to shorten the length of time the case will take.

"When the Crown chooses to go on so many counts there is a lot of evidence, and it's going to be a jury trial, and it would be extraordinarily difficult for jurors to deal with something over a long period of time."

He said it was "highly unusual" to ask a juror to take a year or two out of his or her life.

"It may be impossible to do that. It may be unfair to do that."

Ritchie told the court that as many as 500 witnesses could be called in order just to make the case that the women named in the indictment are actually missing.

"We are speculating about that because the Crown is the authority that decides how to present a case. We don't know how many witnesses they are going to call. Are they going to be calling a huge number or a very small number?"

Ritchie said everyone - including his client - wants the trial to move forward as soon as possible.

"(But) I have grave concerns whether our sights are properly levelled at starting in September or October given the fact that there is so much more to be done pre-trial."

He told the judge the defence team has had a huge amount of material disclosed to it by the Crown.

But the defence still needs a better idea of what witnesses and exhibits the Crown will present to a jury.

Crown counsel Derrill Prevett said the Crown is in the process of supplying that information to the defence, as well as a trial plan.

Ritchie said that might help reduce the wait.

"I'm very relieved to hear that we are finally going to be getting a trial plan so that we can press our team in the right direction."

The lead lawyer for the man accused of being Canada's worst serial killer says a jury trial for Robert Pickton could go on for almost two years and testimony may not begin this fall as planned.

"We have come up with estimates as high as 90 weeks, which is alarming - 90 weeks with adjournments, and that could put us close to a two-year trial," Peter Ritchie told Justice James Williams in B.C. Supreme Court.

Ritchie cautioned the time-frame is the defence's guess based on the Crown going ahead with the 26 murder counts that Pickton is charged with.

"Our best guess is, admittedly highly speculative," Ritchie told Williams.

After listening to Ritchie's submission, the judge said, jokingly: "You may need a younger trial judge."

Ritchie noted a two-year trial length "gives rise to some very serious issues about a jury."

In Canada, defence and Crown lawyers pick 12 jurors and two alternates. But once the trial starts hearing evidence, the two alternates are dismissed. Under the law, a trial must start over if the number of jurors drops below 10.

"Just to make sure we are all clear here," said Ritchie as the accused sat behind him in the prisoner's box.

"Our jury laws in selecting alternates for jurors are, in my respectful view, pathetically poor. We can't put additional alternates on in any way in an effective manner.

"If this trial lasts something like two years, the chances of holding a jury together are difficult, if not highly remote."

"If we lose more than three we are out luck and we have to start again," said Ritchie.

It would be "disastrous" if the trial went so long that the jurors' attrition ended up in the trial having to start over, he said.

Pickton has actually not yet formally opted for a jury to hear the case, but Ritchie has said that is the intention.

Kevin Church, a defence lawyer in Kamloops and a criminal justice spokesman for the Canadian Bar Association, said lawyers are obligated to not mislead the court.

"I imagine he's telling (the judge) the truth because that is what Peter Ritchie would do," said Church. "If he said his best estimate is 90 weeks then I guess it's 90 weeks."

Church noted that 26 counts entails "a lot of evidence. When you consider an average murder trial may last a month, multiply that by 26."

Church said he could not think of a jury trial in Canada that lasted two years.

"That's beyond my knowledge and it would certainly be exceptionally difficult. It's an exceptional thing to ask of somebody but (Pickton) has a right to a jury trial."

A phase of the trial began in January that involves defence and Crown lawyers making arguments on what evidence should be admitted. The judge decides what evidence can be put before a jury when one is selected.

Pickton has been in custody since February 2002 and is facing 26 counts of first-degree murder in connection with an investigation over a long list of missing women from Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside.

While the current phase of the trial is under a publication ban, the judge allowed some parts of what the lawyers said in court Wednesday to be exempt from the ban, as long as they didn't touch on evidence.

Outside court, Ritchie said the defence is struggling to try to shorten the length of time the case will take.

"When the Crown chooses to go on so many counts there is a lot of evidence, and it's going to be a jury trial, and it would be extraordinarily difficult for jurors to deal with something over a long period of time."

He said it was "highly unusual" to ask a juror to take a year or two out of his or her life.

"It may be impossible to do that. It may be unfair to do that."

Ritchie told the court that as many as 500 witnesses could be called in order just to make the case that the women named in the indictment are actually missing.

"We are speculating about that because the Crown is the authority that decides how to present a case. We don't know how many witnesses they are going to call. Are they going to be calling a huge number or a very small number?"

Ritchie said everyone - including his client - wants the trial to move forward as soon as possible.

"(But) I have grave concerns whether our sights are properly levelled at starting in September or October given the fact that there is so much more to be done pre-trial."

He told the judge the defence team has had a huge amount of material disclosed to it by the Crown.

But the defence still needs a better idea of what witnesses and exhibits the Crown will present to a jury.

Crown counsel Derrill Prevett said the Crown is in the process of supplying that information to the defence, as well as a trial plan.

Ritchie said that might help reduce the wait.

"I'm very relieved to hear that we are finally going to be getting a trial plan so that we can press our team in the right direction."

The charge had differed from the other murder counts filed against the Port Coquitlam pig farmer because the female victim's name was never determined by police and she was listed only as "Jane Doe" in court documents.

The remaining 26 charges of first degree murder involve named victims who were among nearly 70 sex trade workers and drug addicts who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighborhood.

Pickton's jury trial is not expected to begin until later this year so there is a publication ban on all evidence in the case, including that involving the murder count that has been dropped.

Pickton has pleaded not guilty to the 26 charges with named victims, but did not enter a plea on the "Jane Doe" charge because his defense attorneys argued that portion of the indictment was legally defective.

Robert Pickton, a pig farmer and scrap dealer who went by the first name "Willy", pleaded not guilty to 26 charges. He entered no plea on the 27th count -- murder of an unknown woman identified only as "Jane Doe" -- and the court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

The women were among 70 who disappeared in the Vancouver area from the 1990s, most of them sex trade workers from Vancouver's poor drug-infested downtown eastside.

The small courtroom was packed with friends and relatives of the missing women, and friends outside beat on traditional aboriginal drums to remember the dead, most of whom were native Canadians.

Pickton was arrested in February 2002 after police raided his ramshackle farm in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam, which then became the subject of a more than year-long search involving dirt sifting equipment and forensic archeologists.

Police say they found the DNA of at least 31 of the missing Vancouver women at the farm. Although evidence was still being analyzed, prosecutors in May set the number of first degree murder charges at 27 so the trial could go ahead.

Monday's session before a British Columbia Supreme Court trial judge in New Westminster, British Columbia, was the start of what will likely be several months of hearings on the admissibility of some evidence to be presented in Pickton's trial, which is expected to start in the early fall.

A standard Canadian court publication ban prohibits the media from reporting details of that evidence. The ban is designed to prevent bias among the jurors eventually selected for the case.

Although Pickton, 56, has been in custody since his arrest, the case moved very slowly through the court process because of the time needed by DNA laboratories across Canada to test samples from the farm.

Some of the missing women have not been seen since the 1980s, but most disappeared from the streets of Vancouver from 1992 to just before Pickton was arrested.

Police have denied accusations they ignored warnings that a serial killer was at work on the Pacific Coast city's Downtown Eastside for several years because the women who disappeared without a trace were poor.

A defence bid to effectively seal the courtroom for hearings in accused serial-killer Robert Pickton's murder case was rejected Wednesday by the trial judge.

Justice Jim Williams of the B.C. Supreme Court said a section of the Criminal Code that spells out the scope of publication bans in pre-trial hearings is sufficient even to deal with defence fears about Internet publication of what's heard in court on this high-profile case.

Williams said the law applies to posting of information on the Internet but in case it didn't he added a common-law ban on Internet publication to reinforce the provision.

Pickton's defence team worried widespread media interest in the sensational case, especially from foreign news organizations, would prompt widespread dissemination of evidence discussed in pre-trial hearings that run through the rest of this year at least.

They argued a sweeping ban that included prohibiting anyone discussing what they heard in court was necessary to ensure an untainted pool of jurors, should Pickton elect a jury trial.

But Williams, an experienced criminal lawyer before being appointed to the bench three years ago, accepted arguments from lawyers representing major Canadian news outlets that details of Pickton's 2003 preliminary hearing have been kept under wraps except for one hiccup early in those proceedings.

"The experience since the preliminary hearing would appear to suggest that notwithstanding the notoriety of this case, there is reason to be confident that the statutory publication restrictions will be observed," Williams writes in his 19-page ruling.

Nevertheless, Williams added a specific rider to the statutory ban that automatically applies to pre-trial hearings, barring publication or broadcast of any information that would identify Internet sites or other sources of prohibited information, including web addresses.

The defence noted last week that some Canadian news outlets pointed people to foreign websites where they could find banned information in past high-profile court cases.

Williams left open the possibility of imposing additional restrictions - including on access to the courtroom - if people don't comply with the ban.

"This court will be vigilant in protecting Mr. Pickton's rights to a fair trial and will treat failure to comply with publication restrictions seriously," Williams told the court.

He also set out guidelines if lawyers seek future bans, including issuing two days' notice to the media if possible and e-mailing the information to them. Where notice isn't possible, Williams said any bans he issues would be temporary unless confirmed after a full hearing.

Pickton, 55, is accused of killing more than two dozen women, mostly drug-addicted prostitutes, from Vancouver's seedy Downtown Eastside. More than 60 have disappeared from the neighbourhood since the early 1980s.

Lawyers for various news organizations argued the ban that chief defence lawyer Peter Ritchie was seeking was an unprecedented infringement of Charter guarantees to free expression, as well as being unworkable.

Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie agreed some form of publication ban is warranted but that Ritchie's request for a gag order was tantamount to closing the courtroom.

Williams's ruling sets an interesting precedent, said Heather MacConachie, lawyer for CityTV and CBC.

"What the judge is saying is you don't need special rules for high-publicity murder cases," she said outside the court. "The Criminal Code rules that apply are there to protect the accused's (right to) a fair trial and they don't need any further protection."

Media lawyers also pointed to the way Williams dealt with the potential threat of Internet publication, including a ban on reporting web addresses.

"That's to ensure that even if there is leaks of information out there that they stay pretty minimal, and we don't get a situation like what happened with the Gomery (sponsorship scandal) inquiry, where even though there was a publication ban the media mentioned an American site where people could find out what the testimony was about," said MacConachie.

Michael Skene, acting for CTV and the Globe and Mail, said this is the first instance he's seen of an order regarding directions to Internet sites.

"The point to these bans is that a lot of the information over the next few months may never get in front of the jury," he explained. "All of these types of bans are meant to protect a potential jury pool from hearing information they're not supposed to consider."

A defence bid to effectively seal the courtroom for hearings in accused serial-killer Robert Pickton's murder case was rejected Wednesday by the trial judge.

Justice Jim Williams of the B.C. Supreme Court said a section of the Criminal Code that spells out the scope of publication bans in pre-trial hearings is sufficient even to deal with defence fears about Internet publication of what's heard in court on this high-profile case.

Williams said the law applies to posting of information on the Internet but in case it didn't he added a common-law ban on Internet publication to reinforce the provision.

Pickton's defence team worried widespread media interest in the sensational case, especially from foreign news organizations, would prompt widespread dissemination of evidence discussed in pre-trial hearings that run through the rest of this year at least.

They argued a sweeping ban that in