A female friend of Robert William Pickton made death threats against one of the 26 women he is accused of killing, a witness testified at Pickton's murder trial on Thursday.

The witness, Gina Houston, told the B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster that Dinah Taylor telephoned her in June 2001 and threatened to kill Andrea Joesbury.

Joesbury, who knew Taylor and Pickton, was reported missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside on June 8, 2001, when she was 22. Her partial remains were found by police in 2002 in a freezer on Pickton's farm, the court has already heard.

Pickton is currently being tried for first-degree murder in the deaths of Joesbury and five other women. He is to face a separate trial on the other 20 murder counts at a later date.

Houston said Taylor was "enraged" during the telephone conversation in which she mentioned a woman named Andrea.

"She was getting really angry, kept going on about how she was going to kill the bitch because Willie gave her more money than he gave Dinah," said Houston, who was a friend of Pickton and Taylor.

"She was talking about Andrea."

Houston's testimony Thursday marked her second appearance at the Pickton trial in the B.C. Supreme Court since the trial began in January. In May, Houston testified that Pickton told her that Taylor was responsible for some of the killings. The defence recalled her to the stand Thursday for further cross-examination.

Taylor, who lived temporarily on Pickton's farm, was arrested in connection with the case, but never charged.

Houston says she smoked crack with Joesbury

On Thursday, Houston testified that before she got the angry phone call from Taylor, she went to visit Pickton on his pig farm in Port Coquitlam and noticed his trailer on the property was "very, very clean."

Pickton told her he often hired "girls" who were drug addicts to clean his trailer. He mentioned he had to pay one of the girls and said he was going to meet her and Taylor in New Westminster.

Taylor's angry phone call came a few hours later, Houston said.

Houston on Thursday testified that she believes she met Andrea only once, when she picked up Taylor and a woman Taylor introduced as "her friend Andrea." The three spent less than an hour together smoking crack.

Defence lawyer Marilyn Sandford asked Houston to pick Joesbury off a poster displaying the pictures of 48 women who went missing from the Downtown Eastside. She chose the correct picture.

Witness admits she can't be sure it was Joesbury

But under questioning by the Crown, Houston admitted she couldn't be sure the woman named Andrea who Taylor threatened over the telephone was the same Andrea with whom Houston smoked crack.

"Why did you conclude that it was the same person that you had met in Vancouver?" Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie asked.

"She never told me she had two friends named Andrea," Houston replied.

"So do you know today whether or not the person you identified in that photograph was the person she was talking about?"

"No, I don’t," Houston said.

Pickton is facing 26 counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of women who went missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

He is currently being tried for the deaths of Joesbury, Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Brenda Wolfe, Marnie Frey and Georgina Papin, all women who disappeared between 1997 and 2001.

He has pleaded not guilty.

With files from the Canadian Press