NEW WESTMINSTER - The key witness at the Robert Pickton murder trial didn't mention see Pickton with a body in his pig slaughterhouse in two statements to police in 1999, a defence lawyer suggested Wednesday.
Lynn Ellingsen didn't tell the story of walking into the "barn'' and seeing a woman hanging from a chain until Feb. 24, 2002, two weeks after she was arrested, and after signing an agreement that she would only be a witness and not a suspect, the jury heard.
Defence lawyer Richard Brooks, who is questioning Ellingsen for the fifth day of her six days on the witness stand, said she gave two statements to police in August 1999 and didn't mention seeing a dead woman in the slaughterhouse next to his trailer.
"I was afraid for my life,'' said Ellingsen, repeating again that Pickton had threatened her the night she said she walked into the building and saw him butchering a woman.
Brooks suggested that she related the "barn incident" three years after her first police statements -- on Feb. 24, 2002 -- when she was told she was under consideration on 11 counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
The lawyer asked if she recalled signing an agreement that marked her only as a witness and not a suspect.
Ellingsen said she was not sure what Brooks was asking and he repeated that he was suggesting she signed the agreement on the understanding she would only be considered a witness, not a suspect.
"I didn't do anything wrong,'' she said, explaining that she signed the agreement as protection against being prosecuted for other matters such as scamming welfare and other "illegal behaviours.''
"I was never a suspect,'' she repeated. "I never did anything wrong.''
"It gave you immunity and no prosecution,'' Brooks barked at her. "That's what it meant.''
"I didn't want anything to do with this,'' said Ellingsen. "I didn't expect to get high one night and be here testifying eight years later.''
Brooks also asked her about being shown "lineups'' -- photos of dozens of missing women who were the subject of the missing women's task force investigation.
The photo lineup includes pictures of the 26 who are listed on the indictment in connection with the first-degree murder charges against Pickton.
Ellingsen agreed that in looking at the photos on Jan. 26, 2005, she identified Georgina Papin as the woman picked up one night in Vancouver by her and Pickton.
Brooks said a police officer will testify later in the trial that it was March 20, 1999, when Pickton and Ellingsen were stopped at a New Westminster roadblock -- the same night she has testified that they went to Vancouver to pick up a prostitute. It was the same night, she said, that the prostitute and Ellingsen smoked crack and then Pickton and the woman went into his bedroom.
Later that night, Ellingsen she saw a light in the barn and went in to find Pickton and the dead woman.
But Brooks produced a document, an agreed statement of facts between the Crown and defence, that indicated Papin was in St. Paul's Hospital on March 20, 1999. A nurse said she left the hospital the following day.
Pickton is on trial on six counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey, Papin, Brenda Wolfe, Mona Wilson and Andrea Joesbury. He faces another 20 counts at a later date.
Brooks spent considerable time Wednesday on the subject of drugs and hallucinations.
He asked Ellingsen whether she hallucinated when she was high on crack cocaine, pointing to statements she made at the preliminary hearing in 2003 that she does sometimes hallucinate on crack
She has admitted she was smoking crack cocaine the day and night of the incident as well as drinking alcohol.
She agreed then with a suggestion that it's possible to hallucinate when smoking cocaine and that it depends on the amount.
She has said previously that crack cocaine doesn't give her hallucinations but she had difficulty explaining her answer.
"I guess I used it in the wrong manner,'' she told the jury. "There is a difference between an hallucinetic (sic) drug and cocaine.''
Brooks, who has been cross-examining Ellingsen since June 26, again attacked her memory and credibility, suggesting that she had added many details to her testimony last week about the woman in the slaughterhouse _ details she never mentioned in the many, many versions she had given previously.
In her February 2002 statement, said Brooks, there was no mention of things she recalled last week, including that she believed the woman was native, there was "long black hair'' and polish on the toenails.
Ellingsen has testified that she lived briefly on the Pickton property, in a separate room in Pickton's trailer, although she is unsure of exactly when and how long.
