NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. - Many names now familiar to jurors in the Robert Pickton murder trial surfaced again Tuesday as a laboratory witness disclosed DNA results from a staggering number of exhibits, including clothes, sports bags, night vision goggles and hairs.
There were DNA matches for three of the women named on the indictment -- Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson and Andrea Joesbury.
The jury also heard about items that contained DNA matching Dinah Taylor, Pat Casanova, Nancy Plasman and Pickton.
Taylor and Casanova were initially arrested in connection with the investigation that led to 26 charges of first-degree murder being laid against Pickton, but they were never charged. Plasman was a Pickton friend.
Yvon de Moissac, who collected and analyzed some exhibits during the massive investigation of the Pickton property that began in February 2002, testified that a black, see-through blouse taken from a closet in the trailer where Pickton lived yielded a DNA profile matching Abotsway.
A pair of night vision goggle, de Moissac told Crown prosecutor Derrill Prevett, yielded a DNA profile matching Casanova, while other matches taken from the goggles's strap yielded a profile of the accused.
The witness said an orange garbage bag taken from inside the building that has become known as the slaughterhouse yielded a DNA profile matching Joesbury.
Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Marilyn Sandford, de Moissac acknowledged the match for Joesbury was only one of 269 swabs for DNA taken from the bag.
Sandford did not ask the witness about any other results.
De Moissac also acknowledged the evidence recovery unit's work on the site in the early stages of the investigation changed.
Sandford asked about a broken bottle found in a motorhome on the property that the jury has already heard yielded the DNA of Wilson.
He said he sent only a single swab from that particular bottle to the lab.
Sandford wanted to know why only one swab was sent when many swabs are often taken from other exhibits.
"In the early stages of the investigation, gridding was not considered an option,'' he said, explaining that in the early going the evidence unit had a general practice of submitting one example.
Gridding is the practice used by searchers to divide an object, such as a freezer or table, into small quadrants and take swabs from each quadrant.
De Moissac also told the jury that a sweater with DNA matching Abotsway was also swabbed in another area and yielded a DNA profile of a male.
De Moissac said the accused could be excluded as a possible contributor.
Sandford then took the jury into another area she labelled "other exhibits'' that yielded many DNA profiles matching Taylor.
But a rubber apron from the slaughterhouse, from which many swabs were taken, all matched Casanova with the exception of one.
In his opening statement to the jury in January, Prevett said there would be evidence in the trial that Casanova sometimes helped Pickton butcher pigs, which was one of the ways the accused earned a living.
The Crown said that it anticipated Casanova would testify at the trial.
Some of the clothing Sandford itemized in detail for the jury and that was seized from the trailer yielded DNA matching a woman named Monique Wood.
But she also went through about 30 items from the trailer, one by one, such as socks, sweatpants, overalls and jackets that all yielded DNA matching Taylor.
At least two of the items introduced to the jury by the defence contained DNA matching Taylor as well as semen from other males but not Pickton.
The investigators spent almost two years scouring virtually every square centimetre of the seven-hectare site in Port Coquitlam and sent more than 200,000 items for DNA analysis.
As an example of their thoroughness, they conducted DNA analyses on "floor sweepings'' from the trailer, arriving at DNA matches for the accused, Plasman and another person.
