Vancouver-area pig farm searched in investigation of 50 missing women

Friday, February 8th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

PORT COQUITLAM, British Columbia (AP) _ The arrival of investigators at a Vancouver-area pig farm has sparked speculation that a break may be imminent in the case of 50 missing British Columbia women.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Catherine Galliford said only that the site 22 miles east of Vancouver was of interest in the investigation.

The search of the 27-acre farm, which contains a house, a trailer and other buildings, could take days or months, Galliford said Thursday. More than three dozen officers were on the scene.

``It's too early to speculate on the outcome,'' she said.

Galliford said investigators had talked to the farm's owners but didn't know where they were.

A law enforcement task force has been investigating the case, steadily adding the names of more victims, some of whom disappeared as early as 1984. The missing women were mainly sex-trade workers from downtown Vancouver, and all were addicted to drugs or alcohol, police said.

Many relatives of the missing women have been contacted about the search at the farm. One of them showed up Thursday.

Sherry Koski, whose sister Kerry Lynn Koski has been missing since January 1998, wept as she spoke to police officers. She brushed by reporters, saying she didn't feel like talking to the media.

Ernie Crey, the brother of one of the missing women, told the Vancouver Sun on Wednesday that police told him they had a suspect. He said he wasn't told whether officers believe the suspect is involved in his sister's disappearance.

Police have also been looking into possible links to the so-called Green River killings of 49 women in Washington and Oregon from 1982 to 1984. Last fall, U.S. authorities arrested truck driver Gary Leon Ridgway and charged him with four slayings. He has pleaded innocent.