NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. - The defence lawyer intensely questioning the key witness in the Robert Pickton murder trial suggested Thursday that Lynn Ellingsen threatened to withhold her testimony unless the RCMP gave her more money.
Ellingsen didn't strongly deny the suggestion, at first saying No but then adding that she was "not sure how I said it.''
Defence lawyer Richard Brooks spent part of Ellingsen's third day under detailed cross-examination going through the many thousands of dollars that the RCMP provided her over the past five years for living expenses, rent, bills, clothes and a dental appointment.
Ellingsen, who has admitted she is an alcoholic and crack cocaine addict, has testified she saw Pickton butchering a woman one night in his pig slaughterhouse. Her testimony is vital to the Crown because she is the only witness to testify to seeing Pickton with a body.
Ellingsen has admitted she was smoking crack cocaine that night but has also testified that the drug does not make her hallucinate.
Brooks suggested Thursday that she had read a newspaper article about the Pickton trial in March that recounted how one witness had been given money by the RCMP for rent and for drug rehabilitation treatment.
"I recall making a call,'' she said.
He suggested she asked the RCMP for more money.
"It could have been a bad day,'' she said. "It set me off.''
He then suggested she threatened to go to the media.
"I remember something to the extent (sic) of that,'' she said.
Brooks said she called her RCMP handler, Cpl. Sandra Lavallee, and was told the officer would have to speak to her supervisor. Without more money, she'd decline to testify, he suggested to her.
"I'm not sure how I said it. I'm not saying that I didn't say it to them.''
In March, a man who the Crown said will be a witness in the case, Andy Bellwood, was wined and dined extensively by an RCMP officer.
The jury has also heard an interview that police conducted with Bellwood after Pickton was arrested in February 2002. Bellwood told police at the time that Pickton once told him he killed women from behind, bled them and fed them to his pigs.
The interview with Bellwood was played to Pickton while he was being interrogated after his arrest.
An RCMP officer testified he met with Bellwood in September 2004 and paid for his dinner as they discussed the case as part of a "witness maintenance program.''
The RCMP agreed to pay Bellwood's $925 monthly rent for three months while he attended a drug program at the Edgewood Treatment Centre, which the police also paid for.
In January 2005, the officer again met with Bellwood and his common-law wife and agreed to pay for the woman to take a course at the same treatment centre for $1,000.
Questioning on inconsistencies
In an exchange about Ellingsen's relationship with Pat Casanova, another acquaintance of Pickton's whose name has surfaced repeatedly at the trial, Brooks took her through some inconsistencies between her testimony at this trial and her testimony at the 2003 preliminary hearing.
While struggling to answer one of his questions, she said: "There are some things you just don't forget. I'm here for an important reason. It's not something I'll forget.''
Brooks asked her about borrowing money from Casanova, who was arrested but never charged in the Pickton investigation.
She was unable to say Thursday how much she had borrowed from Casanova, who used to butcher pigs with Pickton.
She was shown her testimony from 2003 which indicated she told a police officer that she believed she had borrowed about $2,500, which included some "expensive hand jobs.''
She said she didn't recall that testimony in 2003, then paused, and asked to try to explain.
"If I was giving hand jobs I don't think that's borrowing money.''
She didn't deny a suggestion that the RCMP had paid more than $16,000 for her various expenses.
Brooks said the RCMP provided Ellingsen $118 to fix a front tooth in preparation for the current trial.
"It wasn't cosmetic,'' she said. "My front tooth fell out during a Crown interview.''
The RCMP paid $120 for her to buy some clothes for the trial.
"I had nothing appropriate to wear,'' she said, in part because various landlords over the years had often thrown out some of her clothes.
Justice James Williams stood the court down for about 10 minutes early into Thursday's proceedings when Ellingsen struggled to keep her composure and asked him for a break.
He granted the break but not before advising her that she would have to get through the cross-examination.
The judge told Ellingsen she will have to "work through it.''
Pickton is on trial on six counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of Sereena Abotsway, Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe, Mona Wilson and Andrea Joesbury. He faces another 20 counts at a later date.
