Student found human remains at Pickton farm, jury hears
This story includes disturbing details
Last Updated: Tuesday, March 6, 2007 | 7:06 PM PT
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One of the anthropology students hired to help search Robert William Pickton's farm found a partial jawbone on the property, the jury at Pickton's murder trial heard Tuesday.
Brienne DeForest-Rusnak told the court she made the discovery on the morning of Aug. 21, 2002 while manning equipment being used to sift soil for evidence.
Pickton, who has a pig farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C., is on trial for the first-degree murders of six women who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Students had been asked to look for anything on his property that was not soil and remove it.
At the end of one of DeForest-Rusnak's shifts, she was taking a bucket containing possible evidence off a conveyor belt when she looked down and saw what she believed to be human bone, she testified.
She described it as a partial jaw bone with fragmented edges and three teeth.
Earlier in the trial, the Crown said a right mandible with three teeth attached discovered on the Pickton property matched the DNA of Marnie Frey, one of the six women who had disappeared. The others are Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe and Andrea Joesbury.
In court Tuesday, DeForest-Rusnak also described processing a variety of papers and notes found on the property.
Earlier in the day, RCMP Cpl. Lisa Stuart testified she seized more than 600 items from the property, including knives from the slaughterhouse and a piece of "blood-spattered" Plexiglas from a work bench.
RCMP Sgt. Kenneth Griffin testified he discovered bone fragments while dismantling an area in the slaughterhouse.
This is the seventh week of the trial. Pickton has been charged with 26 murders in total, with a second trial expected to be held later.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
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