ROBERT PICKTON

Robert William Pickton was born October 24, 1949 in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. He inherited property along with two other siblings and when portions of the family property were purchased for development the Picktons became quite well off financially.

The Piggy Palace 

Robert and his brother David threw outrageous and wild parties regularly, using a converted building near their pig farm that they dubbed "The Piggy Palace." These parties lasted all hours of the night and were attended by numerous citizens of Vancouver, friends, and prostitutes from downtown’s Eastside, which was a haven for drug addicts and sex workers.

The “Piggy Palace” was also used to host charity events and functions on behalf of worthy groups and sports organizations. The Picktons ran a registered charity called “Piggy Palace Good Times Society.” It’s believed Robert preyed on female victims he came into contact with during these wild parties.

BC Missing Women Investigation

Dating back to the early 1980’s women began disappearing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. At least sixty women were missing and most all were poor, disadvantaged drug addicts or prostitutes. A task force consisting of Royal Canadian Mounted Police and members from the Vancouver Police Department working together following leads and trying to solve the mystery of the vanishing women.

The Downtown Eastside of Vancouver is the oldest part of Vancouver and is known for it’s high volume of poverty, crime, drugs, and for the center of the cities sex trade. The areas urban decay made it the ideal hunting ground for a serial killer looking for victims who wouldn’t be missed.

One name kept reoccurring during the investigation and suspicions began falling on a local pig farmer named Robert Pickton. On February 5th, 2002 police acquired a search warrant to look for supposed illegal firearms that had been reported to police and Robert was arrested on firearms charges but later released. A second warrant was issued and when personal items belonging to some of the known missing women surfaced and the task force arrested Pickton on February 22nd, 2002 and charged him with murder.

Forensic Evidence

The Pickton property was subjected to extreme excavation by forensic anthropologists and heavy equipment, including a fifty-foot conveyor belt and soil sifters to help identify human remains on the property. Identifying the remains was made more difficult because of decomposition and the fact that many of the bodies may have been fed to the farms pigs.

Enough evidence and DNA was able to be collected to positively identify at least six different victims and allow the task force to make a case for at least six murders. Pickton freely bragged about committing forty-nine murders and was disappointed that due to sloppiness he would not be able to reach his goal of fifty victims.

Most Costly Investigation and Trial in BC History

Just the investigation alone is estimated to have cost seventy million dollars. The lengthy murder trial began on January 30th, 2006 and originally included 27 counts of first-degree murder, but due to the clever destruction of much of the evidence the prosecution had to settle for just six counts.

The conviction of Robert Pickton came on December 9th, 2007 and the jury found Pickton guilty of six counts of second degree murder. The maximum sentence for second-degree murder in Canada is 25 years. The possibility of “The Pig Farm Killer” ever seeing the light of day as a free man again are astronomical and it’s still possible that other murder charges may be brought against him in the future.

Although many of the murders were unable to be proven in court and are still unsolved it’s very probable that Robert Pickton will go down in history as the most prolific serial killer in BC history.