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household’s rules, according to her mother.
    “You don’t get into drugs,” her mother would say. “You go back to school or you get a job.”
    Her family didn’t know where she was staying much of the time, but she would occasionally show up unannounced with a boyfriend that few mothers and fathers would approve of for their daughter. During such visits she typically asked for money or a temporary place to stay, and family members usually complied. But things often went missing from the homes where she stayed, and family members noticed that Andrea would sell items that they had purchased for her as gifts so that she could obtain money for drugs.
    “I asked her on occasion if that’s what she wanted for herself, and she seemed to think that she would never end up there,” addicted and on the streets, that is, said a relative. “But that’s exactly where she ended up.”
    Shortly before she disappeared, Andrea’s mother had reason to believe that her daughter wanted to make another attempt at getting clean and off the streets.
    “She was coming home,” said her mother. “All her clothes were sent home on the bus. I have all of her clothes. And then I didn’t hear from her.”
    Andrea did eventually get off the streets—and into a car that took her on a trip of unimaginable terror and horror—never to return.

3
    Robert William Pickton was born on October 24, 1949, and raised on a small thirteen-acre farm in an area of New Westminster, British Columbia, where little besides nature existed. His father, Leonard, was born in London, England, in 1896, and immigrated to Canada in the early 1900s. Young Leonard eventually settled in southern British Columbia, where his father, William Pickton, purchased a parcel of land next to Essondale Mental Hospital—named after its founder, Dr. Esson Young—in 1905. William raised hogs with the help of a few hired hands, and later with the help of his son, Leonard. It wasn’t a massive operation by anyone’s standards—far from it. By the time it became Leonard Pickton’s pig farm, after it had grown somewhat from its meager beginnings, the farm had anywhere from 150 to 200 swine on hand at any given time. It was enough to supply family and friends with enough meat to eat, and plenty left over to slaughter for meat sales to the public and a sufficient number to sell off at livestock auctions. There were a few milk cows on the farm as well by the time Leonard took over, perhaps eighteen to twenty, which family members, including Robert, when he became old enough, milked by hand. Since the farm was primarily a pig farm and not a dairy farm, the luxury of automatic milking machines was not feasible from either a practical sense or from a financial one during those early years. Although poor, Leonard Pickton always found a way to make ends meet and provided as many of life’s necessities as possible for his family. Although life on the farm was often harsh, Leonard and his wife, Louise, always made sure that they had food on the table and a roof over their family’s heads. Louise baked bread regularly, not out of fondness for baking but out of necessity. And they always ate pork—lots of it. Pork became one of Robert’s favorite foods.
    Louise typically made clothes for the children, and Robert, who grew up being called “Willie,” frequently wore secondhand clothes. Willie never had the opportunity to wear new clothes until he was four or five years old. It was around Christmastime one year that Louise, having either earned or saved some extra money, went into town and bought Willie a new outfit for the holidays. She dressed him up in a nice shirt and pants, but the garments had been heavily starched and the newness of the clothes irritated his skin to the point of being painful. As a result, he took off all his clothes and hid in one of his secret hiding places on the farm. That was one of the few times that Willie had received store-bought, brand-new clothes as a