A police request form for surveillance of Robert Pickton more than three years before he was arrested for multiple murders was eerily accurate, the missing women inquiry has heard.

The first RCMP officer to investigate Pickton told the inquiry Monday he filled out the form, asking that officers watch Pickton in September 1998.

Mike Conner, who’s now retired but was then a corporal at the Coquitlam detachment, testified that he wrote the request but that his claims were of “unknown reliability.”

“You said Pickton was believed to be picking up prostitutes and apparently taking them to his home where he killed them,” commission counsel Art Vertlieb asked Conner.

“Correct,” Conner replied.

“There’s a statement that the subject intimated that he disposes of bodies in a food grinder and feeds the remains,” Vertlieb said, leaving his sentence unfinished.

Conner agreed.

The document also said Pickton had numerous female purses and identification on the farm that he apparently used as trophies.

Conner said he received the information from a source who had heard second hand about the horror taking place on the farm.

“It needed to be considered and acted upon,” Conner said of the information.

Evidence revealed much later at Pickton’s trial proved the source was incredibly accurate, but the 30 days of police surveillance turned up no proof that Pickton was trolling Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside for his victims, most of them sex-trade workers.

The inquiry — which is examining the police actions around the Pickton investigation — has already heard police missed several opportunities to stop Pickton but failed.

Pickton was convicted of killing six women, but the DNA of 33 women was found on his farm.