A lawyer for the missing women inquiry twice visited convicted serial killer Robert Pickton in prison to ask him to co-operate with the missing women commission of inquiry, CTV News has learned.

Pickton said he was willing to participate – but his cagey and evasive answers, as well as his continuing insistence of his innocence, suggested to the inquiry that bringing him aboard would be worse for the family members than leaving him out.

"I could put myself on the stand and prove everything," Pickton told CTV News in a brief phone call where he outlined the visits. "They don't want the truth to come out. They're covering it up."

Pickton has been convicted in six murders of sex workers in the downtown eastside during the late 1990s and the early 2000s in a case whose appeals went all the way up to Canada's Supreme Court.

He was charged with 27 counts of first-degree murder, and admitted while under surveillance to an undercover officer that he had killed 49 women on his Port Coquitlam farm, and he was planning to do one more to "make it an even 50."

But that's not the story that the 61-year-old is telling from his prison cell in Kent Institution in Agassiz, where he is serving a life sentence.

"I am like a shepherd taking on Goliath," Pickton said, demanding standing in the inquiry. "Goliath is the police department. I am taking on the police."

When asked if he had an alternate theory for who was responsible for the murders, Pickton said he "didn't have a clue."

As for his message to the victims: "I feel sorry for them a little bit, but what can I say? It's not that I had any control over this."

Inquiry commission spokespeople would not confirm or deny that the visit took place. However, others familiar with the situation indicated that Pickton's version of the interaction with commission staff was accurate.

An inquiry spokesperson did say it stood to reason that inquiry lawyers would try to get information from all possible sources. When asked if there was a reason that Pickton himself doesn't have standing at the inquiry, the spokesperson said it was because Pickton had never applied.

Criminologist Stephen Hart said it made sense for the inquiry to search Pickton out.

"If he had chosen to co-operate it would have been helpful. The chances of that are slim, but you don't ignore it," he said.

Hart said he had seen the bait-and-switch behavior before, and suggested Pickton's attitude was all about attention, power, and control.

"If you can't dominate people physically, you still can mess with them," Hart said. "We saw this with Clifford Olson. He said he would co-operate, then he didn't. You can drag it on for years."

Some victims' family members have travelled from Ontario to be at the Missing Women's Inquiry.

Lilliane Beaudoin's sister Diane Rock was one of the victims Pickton was charged with killing, but never convicted. She said it would be better to get Pickton to talk – but unless it's the whole truth, it's not worth it.

"I'm thinking, if he shows up, I can get some answers. That's unfair for me. He's a manipulator. He's going to say what he thinks I want to hear and not the truth," she said.

"He should stay away," she said.