RIP Giselle Ireson: Pickton Witness Dies

You may remember Giselle Ireson, who hauntingly testified a few months back that she was positive that Pickton did not act alone. She glared at him from the stand and looked unflinchingly at him when she pointed him out in court. She knew who he was. When she testified, she was in custody herself, but I never reported that, for I did not want it to take away from what she said or change anyone's opinion about what she said.

Well, through a series of events and people seeking me out to talk to me about her, I found out late last week that she was no longer in custody; she had been released and was now, in fact, in St. Paul's Hospital in ICU after being found dehydrated and and unconscious, suffering from sort of respiratory attack.

Giselle Ireson passed away today, July 24, 2007 in the afternoon with her mother by her side after all of her organs, including her brain, shut down.

It broke my heart; I cry as I write this for I had every intention of going in to see her tomorrow. As I was getting this news, I was out of town on holidays and could not do much.

I now find myself compelled to write about her. The friends that have contacted me, were people who knew her "before" before addictions, before survival sex trade work, before she had her soul slowly pick away and robbed from her by the streets of the Downtown Eastside.

These friends seemed at a loss as to what to do with the information they had gathered about her in the last week. What can one do when a friend 20 years later re-surfaces as one of the witnesses in the biggest murder trial in the country?