Robert William Pickton - Canada's biggest serial killer

[Leaferne]

Robert Pickton faces 12 new charges

Last updated May 25 2005 12:43 PM MDT
CBC News

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. – Accused serial killer Robert William Pickton faces 12 new first-degree murder charges, Crown prosecutors in British Columbia announced Wednesday.

The new charges include the death of Cindy Feliks, a woman whose stepmother lives in Calgary.

Feliks, was 43 when she disappeared in the fall of 1997. Four years after her disappearance, and after pressure from her family, police added her name to the list of woman missing from downtown Vancouver.

Pickton, a former Port Coquitlam pig farmer, had already been charged with first-degree murder in the cases of 15 women who had gone missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside during the 1980s and '90s.

The 55-year-old Pickton, who appeared in a New Westminster courtroom via videolink to hear the new charges, now faces a total of 27 first-degree murder charges.

The names of the victims in the latest indictment include:

* Cindy Feliks
* Marnie Frey
* Tiffany Drew
* Sarah de Vries
* Angela Jardine
* Diana Melnick
* Debra Jones
* Wendy Crawford
* Kerry Koski
* Andrea Borhaven
* Cara Ellis
* Jane Doe (remains of woman found on farm but not identified)

Pickton was arrested in February 2002 after a police raid on his property and has been in custody since.

Investigators wrapped up a huge excavation of the property in November 2003.

Vancouver police continue to investigate the disappearances of more than 60 women from the city's Downtown Eastside.

Source

 

[TheQuixote]

Canadian pig farmer goes on trial

A Canadian pig farmer accused of being the country's worst serial killer goes on trial later on Monday. Robert Pickton has been charged with the murders of 27 women - most of them sex workers and drug addicts.

Mr Pickton was arrested four years ago when dozens of police swept onto his farm in the suburbs of Vancouver, and has been in custody since then.

Investigators spent months sifting the soil on the farm, conducting DNA tests to provide the evidence against him.

The police have been criticised for not taking the disappearances very seriously at first, but now there is no question that this is a major case, the BBC's Ian Gunn in Vancouver says.

Lengthy search

Since the arrest of Mr Pickton in 2002, the charges have slowly climbed to a gruesome 27 counts of first degree murder.

This followed a painstaking and lengthy search of the land and farm buildings, where the remains of 31 women have been found.

Most of the women he is accused of killing vanished over a period of 25 years.

The trial is set to begin at about 0900 (1730 GMT) in a small suburban courthouse.

However, a court ban prevents journalists from reporting any of the evidence until a jury has been chosen.



Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/w ... 661530.stm
Published: 2006/01/30 12:18:53 GMT

© BBC MMVI

 

[minkycats]

i dont know much about this case other than what i've just read here, can anyone tell me howcome it was him in particular who got arrested? i understand there was a raid on his property, was that due to suspicion of murder or related to other stuff?
very gruesome :shock:

 

[rynner2]

Two trials for Canada pig farmer

A Canadian pig farmer accused of being the country's worst serial killer will initially be tried on six counts of murder, prosecutors have said.
A judge had ordered that the case against Robert Pickton be split because a single hearing involving all 26 murder charges would be too long.

Mr Pickton, accused of murdering women over three decades, denies the charges.

The trial is set to begin on 8 January 2007, after hundreds of potential jurors are screened in December.

Mr Pickton was arrested in 2002 when dozens of police swept onto his farm in the suburbs of Vancouver.

Police say his victims were female drug addicts and prostitutes who began disappearing from a poor Vancouver neighbourhood in the late 1980s.

He was initially charged with 27 killings but one was dropped by the court.

Prosecutors said after the first trial on six counts, the second trial on the remaining 20 counts would be held at a later date.

"We looked at all the rulings and the nature of the evidence and it was determined from our perspective that it was the most prudent course of action to proceed with the six counts," prosecution spokesman Stan Lowe said.

A court ban prevents journalists from reporting any of the evidence until a jury has been chosen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5329518.stm

 

[ramonmercado]

Judges banned pre-trial reports of evidence against Pickton (far right)
A pig farmer accused of being Canada's worst serial-killer has pleaded not guilty to six charges of murder. Robert Pickton, 56, is suspected of killing at least 26 Vancouver sextrade workers over a period of three decades from the late 1980s.

The court in New Westminster was also due to begin screening some 600 potential jurors on Saturday for the first of two multiple-murder trials.

Mr Pickton, who was arrested in 2002, denies the charges.

He answered: "Not guilty, your honour," to each count.

In a letter from prison published in a Vancouver newspaper in September he claimed he was a "fall guy" for the police's failure to capture the real killer.

Farm razed

The court has imposed a ban on the publication of details in advance of the trial, which begins with opening statements on 8 January.


Investigators spent months combing the Vancouver farm
The decision to split the case against Mr Pickton was taken because a judge felt a single hearing involving all 26 charges would take too long.

Mr Pickton was arrested in 2002 when dozens of police swept onto his farm in the suburbs of Vancouver.

Police say his victims were female drug addict-prostitutes who began disappearing from a poor Vancouver neighbourhood in the late 1980s.

He was initially charged with 27 killings but one was dropped by the court when the remains could not be identified.

The investigation proceeded at a very slow pace, but culminated with police razing Mr Pickton's farm at a cost of millions of dollars to sift through acres of soil after his arrest.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6165851.stm

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Vancouver Pig Farmer Accused of Murdering 26 Women

Sunday, January 21, 2007


VANCOUVER — Jurors who begin hearing evidence Monday against a pig farmer accused of being Canada's worst serial killer have been warned by the judge to expect testimony "as bad a horror movie."

Robert William Pickton is charged with the deaths of 26 women, mostly prostitutes and drug addicts who vanished from Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside neighborhood in the 1990s.

He is accused of luring women to his family's 17-acre pig farm outside Vancouver, where investigators say he threw drunken raves with prostitutes and plenty of drugs. After his arrest in February 2002, health officials issued a tainted meat advisory to neighbors who may have bought pork from his farm, concerned that it may have contained human remains.

Pickton, 56, will first be tried for six of the deaths and has pleaded not guilty to each. British Columbia Supreme Court Justice James Williams decided that the other charges would be heard in a later trial to avoid overburdening the jury.

After Pickton was arrested and the first traces of DNA of some missing women were allegedly found on the farm, the buildings were razed and the province spent an estimated $61 million to sift through acres of soil at the farm.

Among the women Pickton is accused of killing is Sarah de Vries, a prostitute who disappeared in 1998 when she was 28. A 1995 entry in her diary revealed she feared for her life after women began disappearing in downtown Vancouver.

"Am I next?" she wrote. "Is he watching me now? Is he stalking me like a predator and his prey? Waiting, waiting for some perfect spot, time or my stupid mistake."

Allegations presented in more than a year of preliminary hearings has fallen under a publication ban that prevents the media from revealing details to avoid tainting the jury pool. Williams lifted the ban for the trial — expected to last a year — after neither the defense or the prosecution objected.

Evidence has been so gruesome that some journalists covering the preliminary hearing have sought psychological counseling. During jury selection last month, Williams warned the potential jurors about what to expect.

"I think this trial might expose the juror to something that might be as bad as a horror movie and you don't have the option of turning off the TV," he said as he excused one juror.

More than 300 reporters have been accredited to cover Pickton's trial, and a room has been constructed with closed circuit TV to accommodate them. The prosecution is expected to call about 240 witnesses.

If convicted of at least 14 of the deaths, Pickton would become the worst serial killer in Canadian history, surpassing Marc Lepine, who gunned down 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnic in Montreal in 1989 before shooting himself. Pickton's lawyer, Peter Ritchie, declined to comment.

Pickton sat in the pretrial hearings in a specially built defendant's box surrounded by bulletproof glass. Clean-shaven with a bald crown and shoulder-length hair, he barely moved, though occasionally he chuckled to himself or scribbled in a notebook.

In 1997, Pickton was charged with attempted murder and unlawful confinement in the case of sex worker Wendy Lynn Eistetter, who claimed she had been handcuffed and attacked at the farm. But Pickton countered he acted in self defense, and for reasons that were never really clear, the charges were dropped.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Vancouver Police Department have come under intense criticism by community activists and advocates for sex-trade workers, who claim authorities were slow to search for dozens of women who have disappeared in the area over the years.

The trial covers the murders of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey.

The parents of Marnie Frey said they were upset that it took the prosecution until last week to summon them as witnesses.

"Pickton was charged in 2002. This is 2007," Rick Frey told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp on Friday. "Does it take them five years to figure out that we're going to be possible witnesses?"

Lynn Frey said she would sit through the trial's first day.

"I want to know what happened to Marnie," she said of her daughter, who was 25 when she disappeared in August 1997. "I don't know if I can handle it, but I want to hear it."

www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245118,00.html

 

[Leaferne]

Lepine was a mass murderer or spree killer, not a serial killer; he shot those young women in a single spree before turning his gun on himself.

I haven't really been following the Pickton case too closely, but some of the details are quite horrific: split heads found in the the freezer, his alleged plan to make it an even 50 victims, and a friend who walked in on a rather Ed Gein-like moment. *turns green* Here's a link to some stories in the Tronno Star.

 

[rynner2]

*turns green* Here's a link to some stories in the Tronno Star.

..which brings up the message "server is too busy"! :shock:

 

[ramonmercado]

Pig farmer says he was 'set up'

Prosecutors allege Mr Pickton disposed of his victims on his farm
The trial in Vancouver, Canada, of alleged serial killer Robert Pickton has been watching a key videotape made secretly in his jail cell.
The police video shows pig farmer Robert Pickton in conversation with an undercover officer in the cell after he was arrested for two murders.

Mr Pickton tells the undercover officer he has been "set up" for 50 murders.

The 57-year-old has been charged with 26 murders but is initially being tried for six. He has pleaded not guilty.

Most of the women Mr Pickton is accused of murdering were prostitutes and drug addicts who disappeared from Vancouver's gritty Downtown Eastside during the 1990s.

'Nailed to the cross'

The videotape was made after Mr Pickton was arrested on 22 February 2002 in connection with two of the murders.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer posing as a suspect for a violent crime was placed in his cell and their conversation was secretly videotaped.

I'm screwed, tattooed, nailed to the cross, and now I'm a mass murderer

Robert Pickton

"I'm screwed, tattooed, nailed to the cross, and now I'm a mass murderer," he told the officer.

The officer told the court he thought police wanted to charge him with 50 murders.

At the trial's opening three weeks ago, prosecutors told the court that Mr Pickton had admitted to the undercover officer to killing 49 women and that he wanted to kill one more to make it an "even 50".

Prosecutors allege that Mr Pickton butchered the women after he killed them and disposed of the remains on his pig farm outside Vancouver.

Police investigators spent months sifting through the farm collecting evidence.

A judge decided to split the case in two because the volume of forensic evidence collected from Mr Pickton's pig farm could have overwhelmed the jury.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6333811.stm

 

[rynner2]

The trial draws to a close..

Pig farmer prosecutor rejects 'bizarre theory'
By Tom Leonard in New York
Last Updated: 3:05am GMT 24/11/2007

Jurors in the trial of a man accused of being Canada's worst serial killer have been asked to use "common sense" in deciding how the remains of six women were found at his pig farm.

In its closing arguments at the trial of Robert Pickton, who is accused of killing 26 women, the prosecution said the evidence clearly pointed to him and rejected as "bizarre" defence claims that someone else was responsible.

Michael Petrie, prosecuting, told the trial in New Westminster, British Columbia: "Let's have a reality check here. This case is about the police finding the remains of six dead human beings essentially in the accused's backyard.

"Could you accept that someone else snuck on that farm with a bunch of body parts, bones... all without him knowing it?"

The prosecution has called 98 witnesses and 30 have appeared for the defence since Pickton went on trial in January for the first six murders.

He denies first degree murder in the deaths of 26 out of more than 60 prostitutes and drug addicts who disappeared from Vancouver's poor Downtown Eastside area from the early 1990s until shortly before his arrest in 2002.

Police say Pickton, 58, lured the women to the ramshackle farm at Port Coquitlam where, after having sex with his victims, he killed them and chopped up their bodies in his slaughterhouse.

He then disposed of the bodies in the farm's rendering plant or by feeding the remains to his pigs.

While the defence has acknowledged the remains were found on his farm, it argued that other suspects have been ignored and that the evidence - including skulls, hands and feet - was no proof of his guilt.

Adrian Brooks, defending, argued earlier this week that testimony at the trial indicated the feet were dismembered gingerly and that, as a commercial butcher, Pickton would not have handled them that way.

Pickton was not intelligent enough to be a serial killer and conceal so many crimes, Mr Brooks added. The defence also argued that in making supposedly incriminating statements to police, Pickton was simply "parroting" back what they told him.

But Mr Petrie told the court: "What was he trying to say? 'I'd like to have a sandwich', and it just came out, 'You're making me out to be more of a mass murderer than I am'."

Many friends and family of the missing women have been in court this week to hear the closing submissions. The jury is expected to begin deliberating next week.

A second trial for 20 more murders is expected later. The victims in the current trial are Georgina Papin, Marnie Frey, Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury and Brenda Wolfe.

http://tinyurl.com/279hs6

 

[rynner2]

Serial killer farmer who butchered women and fed them to pigs loses appeal
Friday, 26 June 2009

The British Columbia Court of Appeal today rejected the appeal of a farmer convicted of butchering six women and feeding them to his pigs.

Today's decision means Robert Pickton may not go to trial for the 20 other deaths with which he is charged.

Pickton is already serving the maximum sentence of life with no possibility of parole for 25 years.

The Canadian government has said it would not proceed with a second trial if Pickton lost his appeal of the 2007 conviction on six counts of second-degree murder.

Most of the women were prostitutes and drug addicts. Police say it is Canada's worst serial murder case.

The judge in the first trial proceeded with just six of the 26 murder charges.

From The Belfast Telegraph

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 20369.html

 

[James_H]

Serial killer farmer who butchered women and fed them to pigs loses appeal

Wouldn't have thought he had much in the first place.

 

[ramonmercado]

Canadian court releases new details on serial killer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10888632

Robert Pickton's farm Pickton was convicted of killing six women at his farm outside Vancouver

Fresh testimony has emerged involving a convicted Vancouver serial killer after prosecutors opted not to try him for 20 more murders of which he is accused.

Robert Pickton, jailed for killing six women, was denied a new trial by the Canadian Supreme Court last week.

The trial judge this week lifted a ban on publishing details of a case in 1997 in which Pickton was accused of trying to murder a sex worker at his pig farm.

Prosecutors had believed she was not a credible witness and halted the case.

That attack took place in March 1997. The six Vancouver sex workers for whose murders Pickton was jailed in 2007 were all killed subsequently.

The new details have come out since the publication ban on pretrial evidence was lifted on Wednesday, after British Columbia's attorney general formally stayed the 20 additional murder charges against Pickton.

In a case that has jarred Canadian media accustomed to the gruesome details of the Pickton trial, the newly released testimony reveals how the unnamed woman said at a preliminary hearing that Pickton had picked her up from a Vancouver street.

Pickton promised her 100 Canadian dollars (£62) for sex if she would return with him to his pig farm in Port Coquitlam, about 35 minutes' drive away, the court heard.
Struggle

After sex she went to a bathroom to inject drugs. When she returned, Pickton slapped a handcuff on her left wrist, according to the testimony. A struggle ensued and she was stabbed several times while she managed to slice his throat with a kitchen knife.

The two were treated at the same hospital, and the woman nearly died after losing three litres of blood. The handcuff was still on her wrist; its key was among Pickton's belongings.

Police arrested Pickton and accused him of attempted murder and forcible confinement.

The Globe and Mail reported that after his arrest, Mr Pickton told an undercover police officer that the woman had tried to rob him and slashed him when he resisted.

The case was stayed the following January before it went to trial.

Four years later, investigators found women's butchered and frozen body parts on Pickton's property.

After an 11-month trial, the largest serial killer case in Canadian history, Pickton was found guilty in killings of six woman and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for at least 25 years.

He appealed against the verdict, arguing the judge's final instructions to the jury precluded a fair trial.

But last week the Supreme Court court ruled unanimously he had received a fair trial.

He was accused of killing 20 more times, and once bragged to an undercover police officer he had slain 49 people.

But prosecutors this week declined to pursue more charges, sparing the victims' families the ordeal of a public trial.