True Crime Society - The Pig Farmer – Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton

Robert Pickton was also known as the Pig Farmer or the Butcher. Robert confessed to 49 murders and ended up being convicted of 6 of those. Most of his victims were vulnerable sex workers.

Robert William Pickton – known as Willie to many – was born on October 24, 1949 to Leonard Pickton and Louise Arnal. Robert had an older sister – Linda Louise Wright and a younger brother, David Francis Pickton.

(Not sure why Linda has a diff last name – can’t find it online anywhere).

The Picktons were a family of pig farmers. They lived in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. This is around 27km (17 miles) east of Vancouver.

Linda was sent off from the family to live with relatives when she was a child. Her parents apparently believed a pig farm was not a great place to raise a little girl.

Robert and David were made to work at the pig farm from a very early age. Their mother Louise was said to be very tough on her children.

She was said to have prioritized the pigs over the brothers’ personal hygiene, and forced them to work long hours, doing hard work.

This is info about the family from the Toronto Star:

A workaholic who ran the family meat business in Port Coquitlam, Louise supervised the kids, expecting them to put in long hours slopping pigs and looking after other animals, even on school days. At one point during his boyhood, people told me, when Willie wanted to hide from someone, he would crawl into the gutted carcasses of large hogs.

This info about Louise is from a medium.com article by Tim Connolly:

Louise Pickton, his mom, had few teeth and the ones she had left were rotten. She was loud, fast-talking, and often screeched. She had little hair on her head, so often wore a scarf. Louise had long hair that grew out of her chin as well as a mustache. She habitually wore only a housedress and jeans.

When the brothers did go to school, they were often filthy and smelled of pig manure. Other kids called them ‘stinky piggies.’

Robert was said to be very attached to Louise. Leonard, their father, was said to be abusive.

When Robert was 12, he purchased a calf with his own money.

“I wanted to sleep with it,” he would later say. “I played with the calf, everything else.”

This info about what happened to the calf is from the Vancouver Sun:

He walked around the house, looking everywhere, asking family members, “Where’s my calf, where’s my calf?”

He was horrified when they suggested he look in the barn.

“No. No way. They kill animals down there. . . . I told him [the calf] not to go down there cause they butcher anim–” he says. Little Willie hesitated, first looking around the barn, but avoiding the butchering area.

Finally, Pickton recounts, “I’ll just sneak around back there and have a look. . . . Anyways, there’s my calf upside down, cleaned out. . . . butchered it.”

Robert dropped out of school in 1963, aged around 14. He began working as a meat cutter. He did that job until he was around 21 when he returned to the Pickton pig farm to work full time. The farm housed around 700 pigs that needed to be cared for three times a day.

Leonard (dad) died in 1978 and Louise died in 1979. The three siblings inherited the farm. The brothers are often referred to in media articles as ‘The Bacon Brothers.’

In the early 1990’s, the siblings sold off parts of the farm for around $5m.

A farm employee named Bill Hiscox spoke about conditions of the property. He said it was a ‘creepy looking place’. He also said that a 600lb (275kg) boar would roam freely around the farm.

“I never saw a pig like that, who would chase you and bite at you,” he told police. “It was running out with the dogs around the property.”

Bill described Robert as a “pretty quiet guy, hard to strike up a conversation with”, whose occasional bizarre behaviour, despite no evidence of substance abuse, would draw attention.

After Robert sold off some of the farm and became wealthy, he also established a makeshift ‘nightclub’ at the farm. He called it the Piggy Palace. Bill said that many drunken raves that featured “entertainment” by an ever-changing cast of Downtown Eastside sex workers were held there.

As some background into the Downtown Eastside, it is the site of a complex set of social issues, including disproportionately high levels of drug use, homelessness, poverty, crime, mental illness and sex work.

Over the years, David got into trouble. He was convicted of sexual assault in 1992, fined $1,000 and given probation. The victim told police that David had attacked her on the pig farm but that she had managed to escape.

The brothers started a charity in 1996 called ‘The Piggy Palace Good Times Society.’ This was said to be a non-profit society intended to “organize, co-ordinate, manage and operate special events, functions, dances, shows and exhibitions on behalf of service organizations, sports organizations and other worthy groups.”

After the siblings opened the Piggy Palace, they were taken to court for violating city zoning ordinances.

According to the complaint, their property was zoned for agricultural use, but they had “altered a large farm building on the land for the purpose of holding dances, concerts and other recreations” that sometimes drew as many as 1,800 people, including Hells Angels. Following a New Year’s Eve party on December 31, 1998, the Picktons were slapped with an injunction banning future parties, the court order noting that police were henceforth “authorized to arrest and remove any person” attending public events at the farm.

Jumping ahead slightly, their ‘charity’ finally lost its nonprofit status in January 2000, for failure to provide mandatory financial statements.

From the 1990’s, women – mainly those who lived on the Downtown Eastside – began to go missing. Many of the missing women were Indigenous, suffered from addiction and were sex workers.

In March 1997. Robert was charged with the attempted murder of Wendy Lynn Eistetter. Wendy Lynn was a sex worker. Robert stabbed her four times during a fight they had while at his farm. She told police that he had restrained and handcuffed her, but that she had managed to escape.

After she freed herself, she stabbed Robert and he had to go to hospital to seek treatment.

He was released on $2,000 bond, but the charge was later dismissed without explanation in January 1998. It is theorized that the charge was dropped due to Wendy Lynn’s addiction issues.

Bill Hiscox (who we previously mentioned) started to become concerned about the Pickton brothers after he read reports about missing women.

Bill went to the police and told them that some items belonging to the missing women were on the farm.

“All the girls that are going missing, and all the purses and Ids that are out there in his trailer and stuff.”He also told police that Robert, “frequents the downtown area all the time, for girls.”

Police went to the Pickton property three times to search and allegedly found no evidence.

In June 1999, a tip was called in that alleged Robert had a freezer full of human flesh on his property but no real investigation was undertaken.

In February 2002, police executed a search warrant on the Pickton property. They were searching for illegal firearms.

Both of the brothers were arrested.

Police got a second search warrant based on what they had found on the property. They now had grounds to search as part of the investigation into the BC Missing Women. 67 women had been reported missing from the Downtown Eastside in previous years.

Robert was bailed on the firearms charge but was arrested again and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

Authorities identified the victims as Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson.

In March 2002, authorities confirmed that Sereena’s DNA had been found at the farm.

In April 2002, Robert was charged with three more counts of murder. These victims were named as Jacqueline McDonnell, Heather Bottomley and Diane Rock. A sixth murder charge, for Angela Josebury, was added days later.

In May 2002, Robert was charged with a seventh first-degree murder charge after the remains of Brenda Wolfe were found on the farm.

In September that year, Robert was charged with the murders of Georgina Papin, Patricia Johnson, Helen Hallmark, and Jennifer Furminger. Another four for Heather Chinnock, Tanya Holyk, Sherry Irving, and Inga Hall were laid on October 3.

On May 26, 2005, 12 more came for Cara Ellis, Andrea Borhaven, Debra Lynne Jones, Marnie Frey, Tiffany Drew, Kerry Koski, Sarah de Vries, Cynthia Feliks, Angela Jardine, Wendy Crawford, Diana Melnick, and Jane Doe, bringing the total to 27.

Between February 2002 and November 2003, the investigation at the Pickton farm was estimated to have cost around C$70M.

Forensic analysis of anything found was difficult because the bodies had been left to rot, or had been eaten by pigs on the farm.

In 2004, British Columbia health officials issued a warning. They said they believed that Robert may have ground up human flesh and mixed it with pork that he sold to the public.

“Given the state of the farm, and what we know about the investigation, we cannot rule out the possibility that cross-contamination may have occurred,” British Columbia Health Officer Perry Kendall said in Victoria.

“Cross-contamination could mean that human remains did get into or contaminate some of the pork meat,” Mr Kendall added.

“The risk to human health for those who consumed the products is extremely remote, based on the fact most pork products are typically well-cooked, which is known to effectively destroy most infectious agents,” local health authorities said in a statement.

Robert’s trial began on January 30, 2006. He pleaded not guilty to all 27 charges of first-degree murder.

The voir dire phase of the trial took most of the year to determine what evidence might be admitted before the jury.

What does voir dire mean? A preliminary examination of a witness or the jury pool by a judge or counsel.

“voir dire interrogation of the board members did not bode well for their case”

Reporters were not allowed to disclose any of the material presented in the arguments. On March 17, one of the counts was rejected by Justice James Williams for lack of evidence.

By August that year, the judge had severed the charges – splitting them into two groups – one of six counts and another of 20.

The trial ended up proceeding on six counts. The other 20 charges were stayed. The judge explained that this occurred because it would have placed an unreasonable burden on the jury – the trial could have lasted for up to two years. It would have also increased the chance of a mistrial.

These are the victims that Robert was tried for the murders of:

Marnie Frey, Sereena Abotsway, Georgina Papin, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, and Mona Wilson.

These is some information about each of the victims that Robert was charged with murdering:

Marnie Frey – Marnie went missing in 1997. Around the time of her disappearance, her father Rick was commercial fishing. He recalls being alone on his boat seeing news flashes that bodies were being found and he wondered if it was his daughter.

“Do you know how hard that is when you’re by yourself? Is that my daughter?” said Rick. “Tears run down my face when I think about it.”

Sereena Abotsway – Sereena was 29 when she disappeared in August 2001. She was reported missing by her foster mother. Sereena’s brother wrote that “Sereena did not choose to live life the way she did, circumstances chose it for her.” He continues later by stating that “Sereena quite often, when talking to us on the phone, would ask us to make sure that the younger [foster] children would never end up living the life that she was living.”

Georgina Papin – Georgina Faith Papin is remembered by her friends and

family as a caring mother, sister and friend. A talented artist and writer, Georgina was the mother of seven beautiful children. She is described as a warm and funny

woman who could talk to anyone, the sort of person who made friends wherever she went. Georgina took deep pride in her identity as a Cree woman.

Traditional dancing, songs, art and teachings had an important place in her life.

Andrea Joesbury – Andrea ran away at age 16 and lived on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with a boyfriend twenty years her senior. She had a child with him who was removed from their care after her partner was incarcerated.

She kept in touch with her family through frequent phone calls and was in a methadone program at the time of her disappearance at age 23.

Brenda Wolfe – Brenda was born in Lethbridge, AB, the oldest of five children (two sisters and two brothers). She was a member of the Kahkewistahaw First Nation and was raised in Calgary.

She grew up with her father’s family while her mother battled alcohol addiction, but moved in with her mother in 1980. Her mother later learned Brenda had been abused by members of her father’s family.

Brenda was a badminton champion in school and was a talented hairdresser, completing her certificate in 1991.

She had two daughters, one in Alberta and one in Ontario. In 1996 she moved to Vancouver. Her common-law spouse was abusive, and Brenda was afraid of him, even living in a shelter in an attempt to leave.

She worked as a waitress and bouncer at the bar in the Balmoral Hotel in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. She was well-known in the community as a protector, and was a soft-spoken, well-liked person.

Mona Wilson – Mona was born in Kelowna, BC, the youngest of seven children. She belonged to the O’Chiese First Nation in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta.

She moved to Vancouver with her mother when she was young, being separated from some of her siblings. Mona was removed from the home and placed in foster care after being abused by her mother’s boyfriend.

She lived with a foster mother who was a community worker on the Downtown Eastside until she was eight, then lived in the Fraser Valley with another family, and eventually lived in group homes as a teen.

She moved to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in her late teens having dropped out of Grade 9. Before she went missing she was living in East Vancouver with her common-law partner and was often seen cleaning car windows on 1st and Commercial Drive.

She was last seen at the end of November in 2001.

The trial started on January 22, 2007.

A media ban on the trial was eventually lifted and we found out some of the information that was presented during proceedings.

Robert confessed to murdering 49 victims. “I was going to do one more and make it an even 50,” he told investigators. “I made my own grave by being sloppy.”
Around 80 unidentified DNA profiles were found on evidence taken from the Pickton farm. Those profiles were around 50/50 male/female.
Police seized .22 revolver with a dildo over the barrel and one round fired, boxes of .357 Magnum handgun ammunition, night-vision goggles, two pairs of faux fur-lined handcuffs, a syringe with three millilitres of blue liquid inside, and “Spanish fly” aphrodisiac from Robert’s trailer.
Robert tried to explain the dildo – he said he had attached it to create a makeshift silencer.
The prosecution described the discovery of two heads in a bucket in a freezer during a search at the farm. “The heads of the individuals had been cut in two, vertically. With the skulls were left and right hands and the front parts of the left and right feet.”
A friend of Robert’s, named Scott Chubb testified. He said that Robert suggested that a good way to kill a female heroin addict was to inject her with windscreen washer fluid.
Another associate named Andrew Bellwood stated that Robert mentioned killing sex workers by handcuffing and strangling them. He said that Robert said he would bleed and gut the women before feeding them to the pigs.
Photos of the slaughterhouse were shown. One photo showed a garbage can that held some remains of Mona Wilson.

On December 9, 2007, Robert was found not guilty on the six counts of first-degree murder. He was thankfully found guilty though on six counts of second-degree murder.

On December 11, 2007, after reading eighteen victim impact statements, British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Justice James Williams sentenced Robert to life with no possibility of parole for 25 years—the maximum punishment for second-degree murder—and equal to the sentence which would have been imposed for a first-degree murder conviction, stating: “Mr. Pickton’s conduct was murderous and repeatedly so. I cannot know the details but I know this: What happened to them was senseless and despicable.”

“Mr. Pickton, there is really nothing I can say to express the revulsion the community feels about these killings.”

B.C.’s Attorney General Wally Oppal told CBC News at the time that regardless of the judge’s decision, it is very unlikely that Robert would ever convince a parole board to release him.

“It will be difficult to ever conclude that Mr. Pickton will ever see the light of day again,” Oppal said.

On January 7, 2008, the Attorney General filed an appeal to the BC Court of Appeal against Robert’s first-degree murder acquittals.

The relatives of the victims expressed concern that the convictions would be jeopardized if the Crown argued that the trial judge had made errors.

The families of the victims had not been told that this appeal was going to occur.

B.C.’s Attorney General Wally Oppal apologized to the victims’ families for not informing them of the appeal before it was announced to the general public. He also said that the appeal was filed largely for “strategic” reasons, in anticipation of an appeal by the defence.

Under the applicable rules of court, the time period for the Crown to appeal expired thirty days after December 9, when the verdicts were rendered, while the time period for the defence to appeal expired thirty days after December 11, when Robert was sentenced.

On January 9, 2008, Robert’s lawyers launched their own appeal and attempted to overturn his six second-degree murder convictions.

To keep this chronological, in February 2009, Robert’s siblings sued the Attorney General and others for damages resulting from the searches on their farm. The lawsuit claimed that the RCMP search of the farm where Robert lived destroyed equipment and terrain the siblings had lawful rights to use.

“As a result of the said actions by the RCMP, the properties are presently useless and the plaintiffs have suffered significant loss and damage,” in a statement of claim filed this week in B.C. Supreme Court.

“The RCMP disturbed, disrupted, killed and destroyed various plants, trees, groundcovers and other vegetation and the fish in the pond on the properties.”

The British Columbia Court of Appeal issued its decisions on June 25, 2009, including some banned from publication.

It dismissed the defence’s appeal by a 2:1 majority.

Due to a dissent on a point of law, Robert was entitled to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, without first seeking leave to appeal.

The Court of Appeal allowed the Crown appeal, finding that the trial judge erred in excluding some evidence and in severing six counts from the rest. The order resulting from this severance was stayed, so that the conviction on the six counts of second degree murder was not set aside.

Robert and his team confirmed on June 26, 2009, that he would appeal to the Supreme Court.

On November 26, 2009, the Supreme Court of Canada granted this application for leave to appeal. The effect of this was to broaden the scope of Robert’s, allowing him to raise arguments that had been rejected unanimously in the British Columbia Court of Appeal.

On July 30, 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered its decision dismissing the appeal and upholding all of his convictions.

Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously rejected the idea that Robert should be given a new trial.

That same year, British Columbia Crown spokesman Neil MacKenzie announced that prosecution of the 20 other murder charges would likely be discontinued: “In reaching this position, the branch has taken into account the fact that any additional convictions could not result in any increase to the sentence that Mr. Pickton has already received.”

In 2013, the children of the 13 of the victims filed a lawsuit against the Vancouver Police Department, the RCMP and the Crown for failing to protect the victims. A settlement was reached in 2014 and each child received around C$50,000.

The families claimed in their lawsuits that Vancouver police and the RCMP were negligent when they investigated reports of missing sex workers and the possibility that Pickton might be responsible.

The court action also said the Crown was wrong when it didn’t put Robert on trial for attempted murder following an attack on a sex worker in 1997.

In January 2013, Louise and David dropped their lawsuit against the federal and provincial governments for damage they said was to their property during the RCMP’s search for missing women.

The lawsuit was resolved without a settlement or costs being assigned to any of the parties involved.

In February 2024, Robert became eligible to apply for day parole. No Parole Board of Canada hearing was scheduled.

On May 19, 2024, Robert was attacked by another inmate at the Port-Cartier Institution in Quebec. The prisoner, Martin Charest, described as having a history of assaulting other prisoners, “speared” Robert in the head with a “broken broom-like handle.” Robert was taken to hospital and put on life support. He died on May 31, 2024 from complications of his injuries.

The location of the former pig farm is basically abandoned now.

Over the years, people have petitioned to have the location turned into a memorial park.

Sex-trade rights activist Jamie Lee Hamilton said the land is a cemetery and should be treated with dignity.

This info is from a 2008 article but it doesn’t seem like anything has happened with the site:

Former city councillor and Liberal MLA Art Cowie has been designing the proposed memorial.

“What we do need to do is make this a beautiful place where people can come, where there’s flowers, there’s trees and it’s a welcoming place for memorialization not only for the women who died here, but the many people in the surrounding community and region,” Cowie said.