The defence grilled a key prosecution witness at the Robert William Pickton murder trial on Thursday, suggesting Lynn Ellingsen threatened to withhold her testimony unless police paid her more money.

Defence lawyer Richard Brooks listed all the money Ellingsen received from police in various forms since 2002, a bill that totalled more than $16,000, covering things like rent, electricity bills and bus tickets.

Witness Lynn Ellingsen was questioned Thursday about her March 20 phone call to the RCMP.
(Chuck Stoody/Canadian Press)

Less than two weeks ago, police gave Ellingsen money for clothes and took her to the dentist to fix a tooth, Brooks said.

Ellingsen, 37, is a crucial witness for the prosecution because she was the first to testify about seeing Pickton with a dead body.

Pickton, a former friend of Ellingsen, is facing 26 counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He is currently on trial for six of the deaths and will be tried on the remaining 20 later.

Since Ellingsen began her testimony Monday in the B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster, the defence has been trying to attack her credibility.

On Thursday, Brooks asked Ellingsen about a phone call she made to the RCMP on March 20, 2007.

He suggested Ellingsen was calling to ask for more money after she read a newspaper story about police covering the cost of rent and drug rehabilitation programs of another Pickton witness.  
 
"I recall making a phone call, yes," Ellingsen replied. 

She added that she and her boyfriend had been fighting drug addictions at the time and were trying to get help, so the newspaper story leapt out at her.

"It just set me off wondering why," she said.

Brooks then asked her if she told police she would go to the media if she didn't get more money.

"I remember a conversation, something to the extent of that," she initially replied, but then denied it.
 
Brooks kept questioning her, asking if she told police she would refuse to testify if she wasn't paid.
 
"You told them if they didn't give you more money, you wouldn’t be here. That is what you told them isn't it?" he asked.
 
"I am not sure how I said it," she replied.
 
"Are you saying you didn't say that to them?" he asked.
 
"I am not saying that I didn't say it to them," she answered.

Ellingsen denies wanting $100,000 reward

Ellingsen testified Thursday that she was never interested in the reward money being offered for clues about the whereabouts of the women who went missing from the Downtown Eastside.

The Missing Women's Task force, a joint Vancouver police-RCMP squad formed in early 2001 to probe the case, had offered $100,000 for information. 

One witness who worked on Pickton's farm, Pat Casanova, testified earlier in the Pickton trial that Ellingsen told him she wanted reward money. Ellingsen denied that Thursday.

"I have never had any conversation with anybody about any sort of money," she testified.
 
When Ellingsen first took the stand Monday, she said she was smoking crack cocaine the night she walked into the slaughterhouse on Pickton's Port Coquitlam farm and saw him standing, covered in blood, next to a dead woman hanging from a chain.

Pickton is on trial for the deaths of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Marnie Frey and Georgina Papin — all women who went missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside between 1997 and 2001.