VANCOUVER — A lawyer says his client was sexually assaulted and threatened with rape and murder by the brother of serial killer Robert Pickton on a Vancouver-area construction site.
Jason Gratl has told a B.C. Supreme Court jury that his client is suing David Pickton over the alleged incident in 1991 when she was a construction worker and first aid attendant in Burnaby, B.C.
Gratl says Pickton was convicted in 1992 of sexual assault, fined $1,000 and sentenced to a year of probation and those facts are not in dispute.
He told jurors they must now decide whether his 55-year-old client should be awarded damages for threats such as being told to get out of town after she complained to police.
Gratl says an employee of the excavation company threatened the woman on Pickton’s behalf, saying that if she didn’t leave her body would be cut up and spread all over so the pieces wouldn’t be found.
The trial is expected to continue for seven days after being postponed three times since the woman’s notice of civil claim was filed in November 2013.