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“anchor point” – their home, workplace or other significant location. Using geographic profiling Rossmo maintained that the approximate location of an offender’s home or workplace could be worked out by analysing the spatial patterns of the attacks. In one case, he traced a serial killer to within two-fifths of a mile (0.6 km) of his home.
    Rossmo based his technique on research into the way that African lions hunt, believing that it matches the way serial killers work. Lions look for an animal that exhibits some indication of weakness – the old, the very young, the infirm, the vulnerable. They go to a watering hole and wait, knowing it is a draw for their victims.
    “We see that all the time with criminal offenders,” says Rossmo. “They go to target-rich environments to do their hunting. Spatial patterns are produced by serial killers as they search and attack. The system analyses the geography of these, the victim encounter, the attack, the murder and body dump sites.”
    However, in the Low Track investigation, his superiors questioned his theory and dismissed his conclusions. Rossmo resigned. Nevertheless, geographic profiling later became a respected technique used worldwide to track serial killers. The problem was that, at the time, Canada’s Violent Crime Linkage System did not track missing persons unless there was some evidence of foul play. In some cases, Dickson’s taskforce did not even have a date when the woman had gone missing. Pimps and other prostitutes were reluctant to cooperate with officers who might put them in jail.
    On 3 October 1996, twenty-two-year-old drug user and prostitute Tanya Holyk disappeared. Her family feared something had happened to her when she did not come home to see her son, who was about to turn one, after a night out with friends. However, they did not report her missing until 3 November. Pickton was later charged with her murder but, at the time, with no body, there was no murder investigation. It was just another missing-persons case that did not merit much police attention. And there was certainly no reason to connect her disappearance with Robert Pickton, a pig farmer at Port Coquitlam just outside Vancouver, although his name had already become familiar to the local police there.
    In 1992, Robert Pickton’s younger brother David had been convicted of sexual assault. He had attacked his victim in a trailer on the pig farm, but she had escaped. He was fined $1,000 and given thirty days’ probation. Soon after, the two brothers converted one of the farm buildings into what they called the Piggy Palace. Parties were held there under the auspices of the Piggy Palace Good Times Society. This was a non-profit body set up to “organize, coordinate, manage and operate special events, functions, dances, shows and exhibitions on behalf of service organizations, sports organizations and other worthy groups”. In fact, it was a drinking club for local bikers and prostitutes were shipped in from the Low Track to provide the entertainment for events that drew as many as 1,800 people. However, the Picktons fell foul of the zoning laws and, after a New Year’s Eve party on 31 December 1998, they were served with an injunction banning future parties and the Piggy Palace Good Times Society was stripped of its non-profit status.
    By then, Robert Pickton had already been charged with attempted murder. On 23 March 1997, Wendy Lynn Eistetter, a drug addict and prostitute with a wild and reckless past, had agreed to come out to the pig farm in exchange for $100. After they had sex, Pickton came up behind her and slipped a handcuff on her wrist. He then stabbed her repeatedly with a kitchen knife. But she managed to grab the knife and slashed him across the neck and arm, then bolted from the house. At 1.45 the following morning, she was picked up by a couple driving past. She was half naked and covered in blood. The handcuff was still on her wrist and she was carrying the