Robert William Pickton is accused of killing all six women and his long-awaited murder trial begins on Monday.

Family members of the six women have been subpoenaed to appear as witnesses during the trial.

Traditionally, witnesses cannot sit in the courtroom and hear testimony before they testify. The rule is intended to ensure that the witnesses' remarks are not influenced by what they hear in court.

Rick and Lynn Frey, parents of Marnie Frey, were extremely upset to receive the subpoenas on Thursday. "How can they drop this bombshell on us at the 11th hour?" Mr. Frey asked.

The family began searching for Marnie almost 10 years ago. It was important to them to be in the courtroom and listen to the evidence, he said.

Nearly five years after the arrest of Mr. Pickton, the faces of these six women are familiar to many Canadians. Their photographs have appeared in countless newspaper articles and television programs. Most of these photos are the grim, unflattering mug shots that were used for police posters of Vancouver's missing women.

Their families barely recognize these photos. Some say they bear no resemblance to the girls and women they remember.

Over the years, they say, the notoriety of the case has stripped the missing women of their individuality. Many of the missing are simply referred to as "the drug-addicted prostitutes," a term that offends many relatives. One grandfather of a victim ended a brief e-mail exchange as soon as the phrase "drug addict" was written.

Elaine Allan, who once worked at a Vancouver drop-in centre for prostitutes, knew five of the six women. Ms. Allan said drug addiction, in its final stages, robs people of their personalities.

"The reality of it is that addicted women are lonely and they're vulnerable and they're isolated and they're afraid and they get beaten up a lot. Once you're here, there's no way out."

At least three of the women suffered unimaginable abuse as young children, and simply never recovered. All six began using drugs as teenagers.

From interviews with dozens of family members, The Globe and Mail compiled portraits of Georgina Papin, Marnie Frey, Sereena Abotsway, Brenda Wolfe, Andrea Joesbury and Mona Wilson.

Real life for little Mona Wilson was more frightening than the worst imaginable childhood nightmare.

As Mona cowered under her bed, her mother would chase her out with a broom, then hand the little girl over to her boyfriend, who raped her.

Mona was eventually rescued after a neighbour discovered her bleeding and sobbing in an apartment hallway.

Mona's mother and boyfriend were jailed for their crimes and at the age of 8, Mona was sent to the hobby farm of Norma and Ken Garley, who lived in the B.C. Fraser Valley community of Langley with their brood of six children, chickens, turkeys and peacocks.

For a time, Mona thrived, and she revelled in the simple childhood pleasures that her natural family had denied her: playing with baby chickens on the farm, camping and fishing with her foster family and one memorable trip to Disneyland.

Her foster brother, Greg Garley, was four years older than Mona, and remembers the small, dark-haired girl with a tough exterior, who softened instantly when she was near animals.

"You'd have to search her, just about, at dinnertime because she'd smuggle in baby chicks and stuff," Mr. Garley, 43, said in an interview. "She'd bring them into her bedroom at night."

Despite the love offered by her foster family, Mona carried the scars of her early childhood.

They revealed themselves in a dark temper, a defiant attitude and, as she reached her teen years, long crying jags.

Puberty seemed to rekindle memories of the childhood attacks, Mr. Garley said. "She would shriek and shriek and shriek like someone was killing her. She associated the blood with the rapes."

Eventually, the Social Services Ministry removed Mona from the Garleys, saying it was better for the teen to try a stint at independent living. They placed the 15-year-old in a home in East Vancouver with a single mother of a teenaged boy.

Mona did not thrive there, and eventually contact between the Garleys and the young woman grew sporadic. The family retired to B.C.'s Okanagan Valley but they still heard from Mona on birthdays and holidays. She did not visit. The Garleys had no inkling their foster daughter was a drug addict or prostitute until after she died.

"We feel so naive now," Greg Garley said. "It was all 'would haves' and 'could haves.' We could have tried to get her off the street. We should have gone and got her."

Sereena Abotsway was born with alcohol-related birth defects and spent her earliest years in the care of foster parents. As an adult, she lived in the Downtown Eastside, fighting to escape drug addiction.

And then she disappeared.

Ms. Abotsway was 29 years old when she was last seen in August, 2001. Those who knew her cherish memories of her warm personality, quirky mind and mischievous behaviour. But they also recall another side — the enduring, childlike gestures she used while struggling to cope with the world as an adult.

"Every day was difficult with Sereena," her long-time foster mother, Anna Draayers, said in an interview. "You could not tell what was going to happen with Sereena."

Tales of Ms. Abotsway's life reflect many of the characteristics common among those with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, a condition caused by having mothers who drank during pregnancy. Ms. Abotsway was bright, Ms. Draayers said. She could talk a mile a minute. She was reading well by the time she was in Grade 1 and became quite knowledgeable. She had a good ear for language, often speaking to her foster mother in Dutch, Ms. Draayers' native language.

But Ms. Abotsway was also difficult to control. She could be impulsive and hyperactive. She often had no recollection of what she had done moments after doing it. "She did whatever came into her head," Ms. Draayers said, recalling when Sereena threw paint around her classroom. When she was asked later why she did it, the child said it never happened.

Ms. Abotsway was born on Aug. 20, 1971. Her parents' involvement in her life was limited. Her father, a long-time resident of the Downtown Eastside, died of a drug overdose. Her mother remarried but later committed suicide.

Ms. Abotsway was four years old when she arrived at the Draayers' home with her two younger siblings. All three stayed with the Draayers until adulthood.

Ms. Abotsway found school too challenging and dropped out. She was moved into a group home when she was 18, which proved to be much worse. The group was too free, Ms. Draayer said. "That was not what Sereena needed. She needed something very structured and a caring place."

Ms. Abotsway was introduced to drugs at the group home, where she stayed for a few months. When she turned 19, she was legally on her own, without supervision.

Her descent into drugs led to prostitution and violence. During an incident in the mid-1990s, she was badly beaten, which left her with a severe head injury. Those who knew her from that period had the impression that she then tried to change her life.

Religion was a mainstay. She went to church with the Draayers every Sunday and while living in the Downtown Eastside, she was a familiar figure at the First United Church Mission and The Street Church, an evangelical Christian church.

Ms. Abotsway was baptized at least twice — as a Roman Catholic while living with the Draayers and later, as an evangelical Christian. When her Roman Catholic foster parents asked her why she was baptized a second time, Ms. Abotsway said she had forgotten that she had been baptized previously.

Randy Barnetson, a pastor at The Street Church, saw Ms. Abotsway in the years before she disappeared. She was trying to change her life, he said.

The church baptized her in 1998 in the ocean adjacent to a neighbourhood park. "She had cleaned up, she was baptized, she was a member of the Church," Mr. Barnetson said. "She was volunteering and helping out others."

Kristina Bateman doesn't remember the first three years of her life when she lived with her mother, Georgina Papin, on the Enoch Cree Nation reserve in Northern Alberta.

The only life Ms. Bateman knows is growing up in the comfortable, two-storey, suburban Las Vegas home of her paternal grandparents, Ruth and Baldwin Bateman.

Now a young woman, Ms. Bateman has her mother's large eyes and wide smile. She works as a receptionist. She doesn't remember the frantic telephone calls Ms. Papin's aunt, Pauline Papin, made to the Batemans in 1987, warning the couple that Canadian authorities were threatening to seize Kristina.

Georgina was using drugs and neglecting the girl.

Shortly after the call, Georgina Papin flew to Las Vegas with her daughter and handed the girl to her grandparents.

Mr. Bateman died two years ago and Kristina still lives with her grandmother. But her thoughts often drift to Canada, to the land of her birth. She has vivid memories of a trip she took at the age of 12 to visit her mother in Mission, B.C.

Ms. Papin was pregnant with twins, off drugs and engaged to a man she met in a treatment centre. She introduced her daughter to her First Nations heritage, took her to a powwow and a ceremony to give her a native name — Snowbird.

The reunion was joyful, but Ms. Bateman recalls that her mother was reflective and emotional.

"I remember she woke up and she wanted to talk to me, tell me things that she thought. She told me how she had been through a lot and that she was happy that I was with my grandparents," Ms. Bateman said.

Ms. Bateman said she thinks about her mother all the time.

"The last time I saw her was when I was 12 and the last time I talked to her, I was 14. I've changed a lot, you know. I wish my boyfriend could have met her.

"I would have visited her more as I got older. . . . I would try to fly her out."

Ms. Papin was born to George and Alice Papin, who had nine children, all of whom were sent to foster homes. Only Georgina and her younger brother, Ricky, were able to stay together. Ms. Papin's father was an alcoholic and her mother was a drug addict. By the time she was 10, Ms. Papin was smoking marijuana. By 18, she had lived in 32 homes and institutions.

Drug addiction dogged Ms. Papin but it did not define her. She was, in fact, a hugely popular woman wherever she lived. In prison, she charmed wardens and fellow inmates. In Mission, where she kept an apartment, she organized baby showers for her friends.

At the now-closed Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women, former warden Nancy Wrenshall said Ms. Papin was a natural leader who had a talent for motivating others.

"She was very bright," Ms. Wrenshall said. "That's what's so sad [about drug use]. It's such a loss."

But Ms. Bateman noticed sadness in Ms. Papin's in one of her mother's last phone calls. "She said goodbye like she would never see me again. I believe she knew."

It is a parental nightmare. Your teenaged daughter meets new friends and starts experimenting with mushrooms and marijuana. She hangs out at the mall with a new crowd that parties with cocaine and heroin. By the time you figure out what is going on, she is pregnant and addicted.

That's what happened to Marnie Frey, according to her father and stepmother Rick and Lynn Frey.

Marnie grew up in the sleepy fishing village of Campbell River on Vancouver Island. Her parents separated when she was a toddler and her father obtained custody. Lynn became part of the family about four years later.

In an interview, Ms. Frey recalled a loving child who wanted to be a nurse. She cared about animals and wanted to be helpful. She was the type of child who would give up her seat on the bus to an older person, Ms. Frey said.

Ms. Frey believes Marnie started using cocaine when she was 16 or 17. Drug dealers with fancy cars and cash in their wallets wandered about in the mall looking for girls. "They were nice-looking boys, young men, her age or a bit older. They talked to her. She had coffee with them. They would eat at the mall. Then they'd say, 'Come over to our place. We're going to have a party tonight,' " Ms. Frey said.

Ms. Frey found out that Marnie was taking cocaine when her stepdaughter tried to get some drugs without paying for them. Marnie told her friends that her mother would pay. "Of course, I did not have a clue what she was doing," Ms. Frey said. Her drug dealer began to push her around when the payment was not made. "She phoned me and said, 'Mom, you have to give me $20,' " Ms. Frey recalled.

Then Marnie got pregnant. She had a daughter in July of 1992, a month before she turned 19. The Freys discovered at that time how drugs had taken over Marnie's life. She loved her baby but it was more important to get high. Ms. Frey recalled a phone call from an RCMP officer saying that the baby's life was in danger. "We went down and got her and never took her back," she said.

Marnie moved to Vancouver shortly afterward, leaving her daughter with her parents. She would return to Campbell River to see her daughter, but always left again for her life of drug addiction and prostitution in the Downtown Eastside. She was last seen on her 24th birthday, Aug. 30, 2001, and was reported missing days later.

Andrea Joesbury was the young beauty of the Downtown Eastside. She had long, strawberry-blond hair and, at 22, still had the youthful disposition of a teenager. Barely five feet tall, she teetered around the neighbourhood in platform shoes.

People would often pronounce her name wrong, former drop-in centre worker Elaine Allan recalled. Ms. Joesbury always corrected them. "It's Ahn-drea," Ms. Joesbury would firmly reply.

"She was a lovely, lovely young woman. She was sweet. She was kind-hearted. She was someone who I used to wonder how she could survive living on the mean streets of the Downtown Eastside."

"I was just heartbroken when I heard she had gone missing," Ms. Allan said.

Ms. Joesbury grew up in Victoria with her mother and younger sister, Heather, according to a report by The Canadian Press. As a child, she witnessed alcoholism, physical abuse and mental illness.

But Heather also recalled good times. As children, Ms. Joesbury and her sister would dance to Madonna songs and Heather would emulate her older sister's moves.

Ms. Joesbury's dream was to be a wife and mother.

Brenda Wolfe was a heavy-set, street-smart woman, who would often be seen in a black leather jacket, blue jeans and sneakers. She was a waitress and bouncer who liked to use her fists.

But Downtown Eastside residents could not recall much more. Unlike other missing women, Ms. Wolfe remains a mystery to many who have tried to profile her.

She was born in Pincher Creek, Alta., on Oct. 20, 1968, and grew up in Calgary. According to an Internet posting, she was pregnant and in a drug rehabilitation program at the age of 17. Ms. Wolfe was last seen in February of 1999, at the age of 30. She was officially recorded as missing in April of 2000. Her family and friends have remained tight-lipped since her disappearance.

Maggy Gisle, who lived in the Downtown Eastside from 1983 to 1998, said she often saw Ms. Wolfe in the neighbourhood. "She was not vulnerable, in a physical sense, at all," Ms. Gisle said.

"She seemed gruff; she would yell and bark at you. And she would stand up for people when things got rough."

Ms. Allen, the former drop-in-centre worker, recalled when Ms. Wolfe would go to a centre for sex-trade workers. "She was very nice, quiet, polite." Ms. Allan was not surprised that Ms. Wolfe was not reported missing until 14 months after she disappeared.

"She had people who cared about her. She had people who knew when she was not there," Ms. Allan said.

But people who reported missing women in the late 1990s got nowhere, she added. "We all felt a sense of powerlessness, that we were not taken seriously."