SoundSalvationArmy

Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag/
past empty lots and early graves

Sometimes, I think we should mark certain areas of our modern highway maps the same way sailors used to mark dangerous or unknown waters: Here there be monsters. The area of the pacific northwest United States and the lower mainland of British Columbia would qualify. There are plenty of monsters.    

In November of 2001, Gary Leon Ridgway was arrested and charged with the murders of seven women. Two years later, he would confess to being the Green River Killer and plead guilty to killing 48 women. He is currently rotting in prison for life since he agreed to a plea bargain. They would take the death penalty off the table if he lead them to the bodies of his victims. What a prince. 

In February of 2002, police served a search warrant at the Port Coquitlam, B.C. pig farm owned by Robert William “Willy” Pickton. They were looking for evidence in the deaths of several dozen Vancouver sex trade workers and drug addicts from the downtown east side. They found it. Human remains stuffed in buckets and in old freezers. Bisected heads. Severed hands and feet. Bones. Teeth. A horror show of a trailer loaded with DNA evidence and personal effects from some of the missing women. Pickton was arrested and charged with two murders. In the months that followed, more charges would be added. A jury was picked December 12, 2006 and it was decided Pickton would face six counts of second degree murder. During the trial, police testified he confessed to killing 49 women and expressed regret he didn’t get to make it an even 50. A gentleman and a scholar.

Today, almost a year after they were first told they’d be deciding the fate of a man suspected of being one of Canada’s most prolific serial killers, the jury came back with a verdict. Guilty. Six counts of second degree murder. Six families have some small measure of comfort. And 20 more families are in for a long road, as Pickton faces another 20 charges of first degree murder. He may or may not stand trial. 

Much as I love to write about music, my true love is hard news. My job as a copy editor and layout desker means that I have read countless stories about the Pickton trial, which has lasted for a year and seen me through editing jobs at two daily newspapers in Canada. Another day, another story. Birdcage lining and packing material for most. A job for me. The news don’t get much harder than that and it has tested my ability to detach from my work something fierce.  

In the early ’80s, Neko Case was an impressionable young woman growing up in Tacoma, Washington. In the early ’80s,  The Green River Killer was murdering impressionable young women who lived in and around Tacoma and Seattle. In the mid ’90s, Neko Case moved to Vancouver to study art. She was far removed from the sex workers who plied the oldest trade in the world in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, but she was living in the city when women began disappearing from the area.

Case’s 2002 album Blacklisted featured “Deep Red Bells,” a song about growing up in the Green River area while a killer was on the loose. I find it interesting that at different times, in different places, Case has lived under the shadow of two of North America’s most infamous serial killers. Both men operated in the same area at around the same time. Both were born in 1949. Both frequented prostitutes. Both had zero regard for the lives of the women they killed. Between the two of them, they are allegedly responsible for the deaths of 100 or more women. One. Hundred. Women. I almost can’t believe it. Every time I read their names on the wire – victims and killers – and my mind goes to “Deep Red Bells.”

The song is beautiful, jarring, innocent, tragic and ultimately, one of the most soul-tearing, haunting, affecting pieces of music I have ever listened to. It makes me feel helpless, small, frightened. I would never describe myself as any of those things, but the grisly details of the Pickton case, the stuff newspapers are both loathe to publish at all and eager to print in 100 point font in banner headlines across front pages, is the stuff of my nightmares. It gives me chills and I watch my back when walking home late at night. I am no victim. But then, nobody ever expects to be. Until they are.

Even as Pickton is convicted, there are 39 more missing women cases in Vancouver. I think of those women, and of the women who died, and the lyrics “Who shook the Valley of the Shadow?” flash into my mind. Human beings. Women. Not garbage, but thrown away as if they were. There are families, lovers and friends, left to wonder. Where does this mean world cast its cold eye? Who’s left to suffer long about you? Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag, past empty lots and early graves?   

Those like you who lost their way/
murdered on the Interstate/
while the red bells rang like thunder

 

 Neko Case - Deep Red Bells: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Neko Case’s music can be purchased online:
In Canada, you can buy physical manifestations of her music at Mint Records.
Stateside, she sells her wares at Bloodshot Records. 
There’s also this little thing you might have heard of called iTunes. 
Neko would, I am sure, love to see you at one of her live shows. She is currently touring with the New Pornographers. For tour dates, check out her website.

Tanis entries alt country, British Columbia, crime, Gary Ridgway, Green River Killer, journalism, Neko Case, Robert Pickton, serial killers