We met in the autumn of 1990, at the closing night of The Classical Joint, a fabled Vancouver cafe. I was an aspiring freelance journalist, there for the first time, hoping that a story about the place might inspire an editor to buy my first article.

He was circling the room, taking photos with an expensive camera. A short, bandy man with ginger hair, he was clearly well known, because he greeted people by name, but also clearly not liked, because they turned their heads or made small talk before escaping.

At that time, professional cameras were something you rarely saw outside major cities. I knew that decent-quality pictures would make my prospective article more attractive to editors, so I waved him over. He sat down at my table. I introduced myself as a freelancer who was interested in his photographs of the cafe. He was flattered, and mentioned that he was a farmer and that he’d had photos published in local newsletters. We arranged to meet a couple of days later, after the pictures were developed. He also told me that he had boxes of photographs at his place in the country that I might be interested in. He said we could make a great team. I asked for his number, so he wouldn’t ask for mine, and wrote it down in my notebook along with his name: Willy.

The minute he walked away, two men came over to my table. One, an older gentleman, asked, “Willy’s not taking you home, is he?” I said he wasn’t, and he nodded and quietly said, “That’s good. Because not everyone is nice.” The other, a younger man, warned me that Willy’s car had no handle on the inside of the passenger door – Willy had removed it. He said sometimes horror stories are real, and we need to protect ourselves from monsters.

I decided to take precautions, but to go ahead and meet Willy anyway. The concept of danger was still theoretical to me. I’d just say no, I thought, and that would be the end of it. We met at a cafe a few days later, at about 2pm. He was dressed smartly – clearly he thought this could be a date.

Then I noticed the smell. It wasn’t the farm. When I described it later to the police, I said it was as if metal could rot. He showed me the photographs. There were perhaps 20 of them, and every single one was focused on one or more women. I picked two. (Later, I gave these photographs to the police, along with my notebook. They never returned one of the pictures, and I still wonder what happened to the woman in it.)

Willy wanted to discuss more stories on which we could collaborate, but insisted that we do so at his place in the country. We could have a barbecue, he said. He was very persistent.

At this point, I knew it was time to go. At 4pm, a friend showed up as arranged. She and I went to a diner, where we talked about the overkeen, creepy farmer. We thought it was funny. Then she said, “Don’t look up, but Willy’s circling the building.” We stopped laughing.

We paid the bill and waited for a few minutes. When he turned the corner, we ran for the bus. We went miles out of our way and changed buses twice on the way home to lose him. At some point, we started laughing again. This is just what girls did to get away from creeps, right?

Fourteen years later, I was watching the news with my father. A man appeared and I said, “I know him”, just as the news anchor said he’d been arrested on multiple counts of murder. It was Willy.

At my father’s insistence, I spoke to the police. Later, I learned that Willy had had many women out to his “place in the country” for a barbecue, where he murdered them, ground up their body parts and served them to unsuspecting friends. He is currently serving 25 years on six counts of second-degree murder. Footage was recently aired in which he admitted he killed as many as 49 women.

I don’t think about Willy much, but I think about his victims, and also about those two men in The Classical Joint. Without their warnings, I might have gone to Willy’s farm, just to be polite, or to pursue a story. Virtually all of the women Willy killed were working in the sex trade, a position that requires workers to enter the cars of strange men without asking too many questions. I not only had the ability to say no, but also the privilege of having been warned. Twice.

• This article was amended on 20 March 2018. An earlier version incorrectly referred to Willy recently admitting that he had killed as many as 49 women. That admission was made to a cellmate before his trial but footage of it was recently aired.



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