Robert Pickton

Serial killer, pig farmer

• Born: October 24, 1949
• Place of Birth: Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada
• Died: May 31, 2024
• Place of Death: Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

Significance: Robert Pickton was a notorious Canadian serial killer who may have murdered as many as forty-nine women. Formerly a wealthy pig farmer, Pickton lured numerous sex workers and women addicted to drugs to his family farm, killed them, and disposed of their remains in various ways. He was caught in 2002 and eventually convicted on six counts of second-degree murder. He served a life sentence in prison until his death in 2024.

Background

Robert "Willie" Pickton was born the son of Leonard and Louise Pickton on October 24, 1949. He was the second of three children. His older sister, Linda, was born in 1948 and a younger brother, David, was born in 1950. The Pickton family owned and operated a sprawling pig farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada. While their father toiled on the farm, the Pickton children were primarily raised by their mother. Louise Pickton was anything but a skilled caregiver. Described as odd and eccentric by most of those who knew her, Louise did her best to teach her children the importance of hard work, but otherwise paid little attention to their personal needs. Pickton was especially isolated from others, in part because his social awkwardness and struggles in school made him something of an outcast. This rejection and isolation caused Pickton to develop sociopathic tendencies and a quiet desire for establishing dominance over others. When his mother died in just a few years after his father in 1979, Pickton was left in charge of the family farm. Around this time, he also began an effort to change his image in hopes of finding companionship. Pickton began hosting wild parties and inviting women looking for food, shelter, or drugs to the farm. Although Pickton made sexual advances toward many of these women, few indulged him. Left with no other option for finding physical fulfillment, Pickton resorted to hiring sex workers from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighborhood.

Criminal History

Pickton knew Downtown Eastside well because he regularly visited a rendering plant there to dispose of waste animal parts from his farm. While he was in town, Pickton frequently drove through the Low Track, a part of the neighborhood where sex workers could easily be found. Promising money and drugs, Pickton lured many Downtown Eastside sex workers back to his farm.

Around the same time that Pickton started picking up sex workers in Downtown Eastside, a growing number of sex workers began disappearing from the neighborhood. This disturbing trend began with the disappearance of Lillian Jean O'Dare in 1978 and continued for more than twenty years. Little progress was made in investigating these disappearances until Pickton was first associated with them in 1998. Pickton's connection to the disappearances became known thanks to the testimony of Bill Hiscox, a man who worked at a salvage company that Pickton owned. Hiscox told police about the unnerving Pickton farm and revealed that he found identification cards belonging to some of the missing women there. When a subsequent search of the farm failed to turn up any incriminating evidence, however, Pickton appeared to be off the hook.

The official investigation into the disappearance of Downtown Eastside sex workers continued with little success until Pickton's name came up again in 2002. Early that year, a person formerly addicted to drugs familiar with Pickton's farm alerted police about unlicensed firearms being stored there. Police again raided the farm, but they found no weapons. What they did find, however, was an inhaler prescribed to Sereena Abotsway, a Downtown Eastside sex worker who went missing a year earlier. This discovery was enough to convince the authorities to undertake a more thorough investigation of Pickton and his farm. That investigation subsequently led to the discovery of numerous body parts that were later identified as belonging to a host of other missing Vancouver women. Twenty-six victims were identified by the remains found on the farm. The remains of a twenty-seventh victim were also found, but never identified. In the months that followed, murder charges were levied against Pickton for each of the identified victims.

Pickton went on trial in January 2007. To condense the overwhelming case, he was initially tried only in the deaths of six alleged victims, including Marnie Frey, Georgina Faith Papin, Brenda Ann Wolfe, Andrea Joesbury, Sereena Abotsway, and Mona Wilson. Prosecutors painted a grim picture of Pickton's supposed crimes, indicating that he lured victims to his farm for sex, killed them, mutilated their bodies, and fed some of their remains to his pigs. Evidence also suggested that Pickton may have mixed human remains from at least two of his victims into pork products that he sold to the public. On December 9, 2007, nearly a year after his trial began, Pickton was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. His convictions were later upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2010.

After another prisoner at Québec's Port-Cartier Institution, the maximum-security federal facility where Pickton had been serving his life sentence at that point, reportedly assaulted him and left him injured, Pickton died at a hospital several days later on May 31, 2024, at the age of seventy-four.

Impact

Many consider Pickton to have been the worst serial killer in Canadian history. In addition to the six victims he was convicted of murdering and the more than twenty other victims whose remains were found on his farm, Pickton is believed to have killed many more. While in prison awaiting trial, he admitted to an undercover officer posing as his cellmate that he killed forty-nine people and lamented the fact that he would never get the chance to make it an even fifty. As his crimes were largely committed against Indigenous women, his case drew further attention to the issue of missing Indigenous women and prompted calls for more equal treatment by law enforcement of Indigenous peoples and victims as well as people struggling with substance abuse and/or experiencing poverty.

Thanks to the staggering number of victims and the horrific manner in which he disposed of his victims, Pickton achieved great notoriety. He had been the subject of several books, including one by author Steve Cameron called On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver's Missing Women that became the basis of the 2016 film On the Farm, which starred actor Ben Cotton as Pickton.

Personal Life

Pickton resurfaced in the public consciousness when a book he allegedly wrote while in prison called Pickton: In His Own Words was published in 2016. According to reports, Pickton penned the book and got a former cellmate to send it to Michael Chilldres, a retired California construction worker who sold the work to publishers and credited himself as author. The book's release caused a public outcry from people who felt it was wrong for Pickton to potentially profit from his crimes. The uproar culminated in a successful petition demanding that massive online retailer Amazon.com discontinue sales of the book.

Bibliography

Butts, Edward. "Robert Pickton Case." The Canadian Encyclopedia, 3 June 2024, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/robert-pickton-case. Accessed 21 June 2024.

Cameron, Stevie. On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver's Missing Women. A.A. Knopf Canada, 2011.

Culbert, Lori. "The Women Robert Pickton Was Convicted of Killing." Vancouver Sun, 4 Aug. 2010, www.vancouversun.com/news/women+robert+pickton+convicted+killing/3360234/story.html. Accessed 5 Sept. 2017.

Gabriel, Trip. "Robert Pickton, Notorious Canadian Serial Killer, Dies at 74." The New York Times, 1 June 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/06/01/world/canada/robert-pickton-notorious-canadian-serial-killer-dies-at-74.html. Accessed 21 June 2024.

"'In His Own Words': Serial Killer Robert Pickton Selling Book on Amazon That Claims He's Innocent." National Post, 21 Feb. 2016, nationalpost.com/news/canada/in-his-own-words-serial-killer-robert-pickton-selling-book-on-amazon-that-claims-hes-innocent. Accessed 5 Sept. 2017.

Mellor, Lee. Cold North Killers: Canadian Serial Murder. Dundurn, 2012.

Miller, Michael E. "'Worst Serial Killer in History,' Who Fed Prostitutes to Pigs, Sparks Rage by Publishing Book." Washington Post, 23 Feb. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/23/worst-serial-killer-in-history-who-fed-prostitutes-to-pigs-sparks-rage-by-publishing-book/?utm‗term=.d054da6da780. Accessed 5 Sept. 2017.

"The Robert Pickton Case: A Timeline." CityNews, toronto.citynews.ca/2007/01/22/the-robert-pickton-case-a-timeline/. Accessed 5 Sept. 2017.

Shenher, Lori. That Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away. Greystone Books Ltd., 2015.