Marnie Frey

Lynn Frey, the stepmother of Marnie Frey, testified today that the search for her missing daughter led her to Willie Pickton’s pig farm in September of 1998, years before Marnie’s remains were eventually found there.  Ms. Frey described how she would travel from Campbell River to Vancouver’s downtown east side after Marnie vanished in 1997 and show Marnie’s photograph to people she encountered there.  These inquiries led to information about “Willie’s pig farm” in Port Coquitlam and she drove out there, only to be turned back by two dogs as she tried to scale a fence.  Ms. Frey immediately reported this information to Det. Shenher of the Vancouver Police Department.  It would be February 5, 2002 before evidence of the missing women would be found at the Pickton farm, while a junior Coquitlam RCMP member was executing a search warrant there on an unrelated firearms complaint.  Pickton was convicted of Marnie’s murder, and the murders of five other women, in 2007.  Twenty more first degree murder charges against him were stayed by the Crown last year.