In August 2010, a Vancouver Police Department report on the missing women investigation also criticized Coquitlam RCMP, saying the promotion and transfer of a key investigator in the Robert Pickton case contributed to the investigation stalling.
The report into Vancouver's missing women case was written by Doug LePard, a deputy chief constable with VPD. It states Mike Connor, then a corporal and an investigator with Coquitlam RCMP, was the driving force behind the investigation locally, first getting involved in the case in August 1998, when he took on responsibility for the inquiry.
A month later, he requested surveillance of Pickton by the RCMP's Special 'O' team but several days of monitoring revealed nothing. In November 1998, Connor requested aerial surveillance of the Pickton property, according to LePard's report.
But in August 1999, a year after Connor had taken over the file, VPD investigators learned he had been promoted and transferred.
The report's conclusion of the effect of this move: "With the transfer of Corporal Connor, who was the driving force in the investigation, and the Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit's conclusion that [a witness] was not credible, the investigation was effectively derailed. Incredibly frustrated with the turn that the RCMP-led investigation had taken, and their inability to change its course, [VPD] Detective Lepine and Detective Constable Chernoff returned to the [Missing Women Review Team] to pursue other investigative avenues."
