A number between one and 60-plus

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Ricky Papin's face clouds with pain and his voice quavers as he recalls the first time he sensed that something terrible had happened to his sister Georgina. Ricky said he felt powerless at the time.

"I started asking questions and I couldn't find nothing," he recalls. "I didn't know what to think. I was in prison and couldn't get out. I kept asking questions, but they wouldn't listen to me. I asked to see a cop and an investigator while I was in there, but they wouldn't listen to me. 'My sister is gone.' I just knew in my heart."

Ricky and his other siblings tried to block the fear and frustration from their minds as Canada's largest serial killing investigation began to break. Ricky said he felt sick inside when the gruesome details began to unfold from the Port Coquitlam pig farm near Vancouver.

Robert William Pickton, the owner of the farm, is now charged with 15 counts of first degree murder and is suspected in the disappearance of 50 other women, all of whom began to vanish from the streets of downtown Vancouver as far back as the 1970s.

This summer Ricky was asked to provide a sample of DNA to help identify evidence found at the Pickton farm. On Sept. 17 he received a call confirming his worst nightmare. The DNA was a match and Georgina, the sister who had always been there for him, was identified as one of the murdered women.

In the days to follow, Ricky Papin gathered his siblings George, Randall, Elana and Bonnie in Edmonton. They enlarged pictures of Georgina smiling, laughing, and hugging her children tightly. They shared funny stories and memories, and not so funny ones, as they planned her memorial to be held at the Enoch First Nation. All the while struggling to come terms with the immensity of their loss and the injustice of it all.

The seven siblings had been split up into foster homes, except for Ricky and Georgina who were kept together. Ricky was two and Georgina was one when they were sent to Bethany Homes where they stayed for the next four years. After that they were placed in a home in Rembine. It is here that Ricky says the abuse first started and they started running.

"My sister was very pretty," Ricky said. "Every time we got picked up this would always happen [the abuse]. If not with the people's sons, then the husbands themselves. And we took off; we just accepted it as this was the way things were. This was they way life was. We never knew better."

As hard as it was, Ricky said some of his best memories are also of that time. He smiles at the thought of him and Georgina as young as six years old packing knapsacks and camping in the woods, making plans to find their parents.

A particular horrible incident that left a 12-year-old Georgina badly battered sent her to the streets of Calgary and Ricky followed. Ironically, it was on those streets where Georgina first discovered their mother, just one month before they lost her for good.

Although the contact was short-lived, Georgina vowed to reconnect with the siblings she had never known.

When she was 12, Georgina's youngest sister, Bonnie Fowler, received a call from Georgina at the foster home where she was living. Bonnie was grateful for her ingenuity in tracking her down and still can't believe her sister is gone.

The tears flow as she reflects on how much Georgina meant to her. To her and to many others, Bonnie said, Georgina was much more than the statistic she has become. To Bonnie and her brothers and sisters, Georgina was much more than the stark description of 'drug addict' and 'prostitute' that they read in the paper and see on the news.

"She was really funny. She laughed all the time and would make you laugh. She always liked putting make-up on me and stuff like that and playing with your hair...what sisters do, right? She was really kind. She spoke her mind all the time. She was a good sister," Bonnie said.

What makes looking at the pictures of Georgina even harder for the family is the circumstances in whichmany were taken. They are of Georgina at her home in British Columbia, hosting a family get-together, bursting with pride at her home, her children, and the job she was holding down at a friendship centre.

This gathering was the last time any of them would see Georgina.

After a fall-out in her relationship, Georgina turned to the addictions that had haunted her in the past, and they led her to Hastings and Main in Vancouver. That was March 1999. Georgina was 34 years old and the mother of seven children. After Georgina failed to pick up her mail and social assistance cheques, Bonnie reported her sister missing that following spring.

Ricky said he isn't surprised by the lack of action by the police about the disappearance of so many women who were using drugs and working on the streets, many of whom were Aboriginal. He describes it as typical. But he is sure if they had known who Georgina was, if they knew how she grew up, thought of her life as worthy as anyone else's, the outcome may have been different. His sister may have been spared, and any number of women may have been saved.