Pickton Investigation Failures

Scope of this page. This page documents the institutional findings of the Oppal Commission and the LePard Report — the public-inquiry record of how the Vancouver Police Department and RCMP failed to investigate. It identifies named officials and their institutional roles as set out in those reports. It does not make individual criminal allegations beyond what those public reports established. For individual case histories, court records, or unresolved allegations, see the canonical sources cited at the bottom of this page.

The case at a glance

22 Feb 2002

Date Pickton was finally arrested

RCMP Press Release; Pickton trial record

26+

Women Pickton was charged with murdering; 6 went to verdict (convicted of second-degree murder)

BC Crown Counsel; trial transcripts (R. v. Pickton, 2007)

1997

Year Pickton was first identified as a suspect by Vancouver Police — five years before arrest

Oppal Commission Vol. IIA; LePard Report

~67

Women estimated by the Oppal Commission to have been victims of the missing-women cluster including those Pickton was charged with

Oppal Commission Final Report, Vol. I (2012)

The Oppal Commission — what it concluded

The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry was established by the Government of British Columbia in 2010 under Order in Council 596/2010. It was chaired by the Honourable Wally T. Oppal QC, former BC Attorney General and BC Court of Appeal justice. Its Final Report — formally titled "Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry" — was delivered to government on 30 November 2012 and released publicly in December 2012. It runs four volumes (Vol. I, IIA, IIB, III) plus an executive summary.

Finding: "Blatant failures." The Commission concluded that the missing-women investigations were "a blatant failure," that the women were "forsaken twice" — first by the perpetrator, second by the institutions that should have protected them. The phrase "blatant failure" is the Commission's own language, in the Final Report's executive summary. Source: "Forsaken" — Executive Summary (Dec 2012); same language echoed in Vol. I and Vol. III recommendations.
Finding: critical errors and missed opportunities. The Commission identified specific dates and decision-points where institutional actors had information sufficient to investigate Pickton further but did not act. These are documented chronologically in Vol. IIA. Source: "Forsaken" Vol. IIA — Chronology of the Investigation (2012).
Finding: systemic bias against marginalized victims. The Commission found that the women — most of whom were poor, many Indigenous, many sex workers — were treated by police as less worthy of investigative resources than other missing persons. This is an explicit finding, not an inference. Source: "Forsaken" Vol. I — Findings on Marginalization (2012).
63 recommendations. The Commission made 63 specific recommendations for police, Crown counsel, government, and Indigenous community partners. Implementation tracking by the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and independent journalists shows the majority of recommendations remain incomplete more than a decade later. Source: "Forsaken" Vol. III — Recommendations (2012); UBCIC progress reports.
The MMIWG continuity. The 2019 MMIWG Final Report cites the Pickton case and the Oppal Commission's findings as part of the evidentiary base for its conclusion that the pattern of institutional failure constitutes ongoing genocide. The Pickton record is one of the case studies in that broader analysis. Source: MMIWG Final Report Vol. 1a (2019); Supplementary Report on Legal Analysis of Genocide.

The LePard Report — VPD's internal admission

Independent of the public Commission, the Vancouver Police Department conducted its own internal review. The LePard Report — "The Missing Women Investigation Review" — was authored by then-Deputy Chief Constable Doug LePard and released publicly in August 2010. It is significant because it is the police force's own documented admission of institutional failure, written by a senior officer of that force, before the Oppal Commission completed its work.

VPD's own conclusion: investigation was inadequate. The LePard Report concluded that VPD's missing-women investigation was inadequate, that interagency coordination with RCMP failed, and that the unique status of the Downtown Eastside victims contributed to the inadequacy. Source: D. LePard, "Missing Women Investigation Review" (VPD, August 2010).
Pickton flagged as suspect to VPD by 1997–1999. The LePard Report documents that Pickton was identified as a person of interest within VPD records by 1997 at the latest, with multiple internal flags between 1997 and 1999 — but no investigative action sufficient to secure an arrest was taken until 2002. Source: LePard Report, Investigation Chronology section (2010).

Named institutional roles per the public reports

The following officials are named in the Oppal Commission Final Report and/or the LePard Report in the institutional roles they held during the missing-women investigation period (roughly 1997–2002) and the inquiry phase (2010–2012). Inclusion here reflects what the public reports document about their roles. Where an individual is named for a specific failure, the Commission's language is used; where named for a constructive role, that is noted.

Name	Role / Tenure	How named in the public record
Wally T. Oppal QC	Commissioner, Missing Women Inquiry (2010–2012)	Authored the Final Report. Former BC Attorney General; former BC Court of Appeal justice.
Doug LePard	Deputy Chief Constable, VPD; author of LePard Report (2010)	Authored the VPD's internal review documenting institutional failure. Written from inside the police force.
Lori Shenher	Detective Constable, VPD Missing Persons Unit (1998–2000)	Sole VPD officer assigned to the missing-women file at peak; documented her warnings to superiors in subsequent memoir "That Lonely Section of Hell" (2015) and in Oppal Commission testimony. Treated as a whistleblower for raising the alarm internally.
Don Adam	RCMP Inspector (later Chief Superintendent), led Project Evenhanded (2001–2002)	Led the joint task force that ultimately built the case for Pickton's arrest in February 2002. Project Evenhanded is the RCMP code name for the joint VPD/RCMP missing-women investigation.
Bev Busson	Commanding Officer, RCMP "E" Division (BC), during the era covered (later RCMP Commissioner)	Named in Oppal Commission record for her command tenure during the joint-investigation period.
Bruce Chambers	VPD Chief Constable, 1995–1998	Chief during the early period when missing women were first being reported and Pickton was first flagged.
Terry Blythe	VPD Chief Constable, 1998 (briefly), and earlier Deputy	Chief during transition period covered by the LePard chronology.
Jamie Graham	VPD Chief Constable, 1999–2002	Chief during the critical 1999–2002 window in which Pickton was an internal suspect but no arrest occurred until February 2002. Tenure covered by the LePard Report chronology.
Cameron Ward	Counsel for families of missing/murdered women, Oppal Commission	Represented victims' family interests at the Commission. His public statements during and after the Commission are part of the public-inquiry record.

Note on completeness: Other officers are named in the Oppal Final Report and LePard Report — including specific detectives, supervisors, and RCMP members — for roles in individual investigative steps. The full roster is in Vol. IIA of the Oppal Final Report. This page lists the most senior-role named individuals and the key decision-point names. For the complete roster, see the canonical Final Report linked below.

Why this page exists in the dossier

The Pickton case is a textbook of what the MMIWG Final Report describes as the pattern: institutional response to violence against marginalized women — particularly Indigenous women, sex workers, and women with addictions — characterized by under-investigation, under-resourcing, and dismissal. The Oppal Commission's "blatant failure" finding and the LePard Report's internal admission together form one of the most documented cases of institutional failure in Canadian policing history. They are also part of the evidentiary base of the broader genocide analysis on this site.