The King Road Killings: An Idaho Murder Mystery · ABC News

Introducing "Inside the Midnight Order"

·30 min·1 clip

Lorimer Schenherr says the Pickton case has a "split screen" between horrific evidence and the investigation's public narrative.

1. Inside the Midnight Order focuses on the Robert Pickton case and what remains unsettled after his death. 2. Kena Whitworth hosts the discussion with Nancy Schwartzman, and guests Lorimer Schenherr and Brian Buckmeyer provide investigative and legal context. 3. The episode asks what the Pickton case means now that the central defendant is gone and the evidence remains contested. 4. Lorimer Schenherr says he joined Vancouver Police in 1991 and the Missing Persons Unit in 1998. 5. He says his unit was told to focus on 17 missing women cases from Vancouver’s downtown east side. 6. Brian Buckmeyer recalls first hearing about Pickton as a high school student and remembers headlines about an RCMP botched investigation. 7. Schenherr says he started writing That Lonely Section of Hell after the case search began on the Pickton farm in February 2002. 8. He says he felt the investigation was close to breaking in the summer of 1999, then was shelved. 9. The episode revisits the 1997 victim 97 case, where a woman escaped Pickton’s trailer with a handcuff still on her wrist. 10. Schenherr says Pickton arrived at the same hospital after she cut him across the neck while escaping. 11. The prosecutor did not call the case because the woman was described as not credible and too high on drugs to testify. 12. The transcript says the inquiry report later noted that more could have been done to prepare victim 96. 13. Schenherr describes the 2002 search of the Pickton farm as a long process involving hazmat suits and the discovery of body parts. 14. He says skulls had been split in half and hands had been placed in them during the search. 15. Schenherr argues that the RCMP curated a flawed narrative from the start to satisfy institutional aims. 16. He says the jury later asked what to do if Robert Pickton was guilty but did not act alone. 17. Buckmeyer explains that 33 women’s remains were found on the farm, along with countless DNA profiles. 18. He says the court narrowed 27 charges to 6 because trials depend on proof, juror time, and sentencing limits in Canada. 19. The conversation sounds measured and procedural, with repeated back-and-forth between the hosts and two specialists. 20. People following British Columbia true crime and criminal procedure will get the most from it, while listeners avoiding detailed case review may skip it.

As heard by us

A restrained legal true-crime chapter about a case that seemed poised for conviction before it stalled.

The episode follows a case that seemed poised for conviction before the Crown attorney chose not to proceed. Its best work is procedural: it stays close to what police had, what the prosecutor left undone, and how later inquiry testimony changes the reading of that decision.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want the legal dead ends, not the loudest theory.

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