Lynne Ellingsen waited three years to tell police about seeing her former friend Robert William Pickton with a dead woman's body, the defence said Wednesday at Pickton's first-degree murder trial.

Ellingsen, a key prosecution witness, did not mention the story in the first two statements she gave to police in 1999, defence lawyer Richard Brooks said in the B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster.

Witness Lynn Ellingsen didn't initially tell police about seeing Robert William Pickton with a dead body.
(Chuck Stoody/Canadian Press)

He said she waited until Feb. 24, 2002, two days after Pickton's arrest, to relay the gruesome tale. Brooks suggested she only did so because she had just been arrested and questioned on 11 counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

Brooks said she told the story so she would no longer be considered a suspect, noting that she only provided the details once she signed an agreement granting her immunity from prosecution.

Ellingsen, 37, disagreed, saying she waited three years out of fear.

"I was afraid for my life," she told Brooks, claiming that Pickton threatened her the night she saw him standing, covered in blood, next to a dead woman hanging from a chain.

Ellingsen, a former drug addict, has not been able to say when she encountered the body in the slaughterhouse on Pickton's pig farm in Port Coquitlam. She has testified she was high on crack cocaine when she stumbled upon the scene.

Ellingsen has been on the stand for five days and has been facing intense cross-examinations from the defence, which is trying to attack her credibility.

On Wednesday, Brooks questioned her explanation that she was afraid of Pickton. He pointed to police statements where Ellingsen said she spent at least a day at the farm after the night in the slaughterhouse. She also called Pickton on the telephone to chat, the statements show.

"Do you recall that?" Brooks asked.

"No, but I wasn't always truthful," Ellingsen replied.

In the preliminary hearing, she said she only went back to the farm once to collect some of her belongings.

Signed deal to avoid prosecution

On Wednesday, Ellingsen said she only signed the immunity agreement to avoid being prosecuted for offences like welfare scamming and other "illegal behaviours."

"I didn't do anything wrong," she testified before the jury of seven men and five women. "I was never a suspect. I never did anything wrong."

Pickton 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.

Pickton is being tried 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.

With files from the Canadian Press