Meet Robert Pickton – a demented serial killer who fed his victims to pigs.
A monster who claimed he was disappointed with himself that he had only killed forty-nine and did not “make the big five-O.”
Between 1978 and 2001, at least 65 women, mostly sex workers, began disappearing from the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, Canada.
With rumors of a serial killer at large beginning to spread, sex workers began walking in groups and writing down the license plates of cars that picked up women.
The disappearances continued, but the Vancouver police denied the serial killer theory, as no bodies were ever found.
On 22 March 1997, a woman came forward claiming that she managed to escape the clutches of a man named Robert Pickton who attempted to kill her.
Although Pickton was charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon, and forcible confinement, the charges were dropped because the woman, due to her drug addiction, was not considered a reliable witness. Pickton argued that the woman attacked him, not the other way around.
However, it didn’t take long for Pickton’s name to resurface.
In the spring of 1999, an informant told the Vancouver police that a friend, Lynn Ellingsen, had seen a womanâs body hanging at Robert Picktonâs farm.
Police brought Ellingsen in for questioning, but she denied ever seeing such a thing. Later, she confessed that she had, in fact, seen the body but feared Pickton might hurt her. Ellingsen also told the police that she depended on Pickton for drugs.
The same year, a 37-year-old man named Bill Hiscox, who worked for Pickton, reached out to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police claiming that Pickton’s friend had told him she had seen womenâs clothing, purses, and ID papers at the pig farm.
To everyone’s disappointment, once again, the reports led nowhere as police could not obtain a search warrant based on hearsay. They required an eyewitness report or physical evidence.
It took three more years for the big break on the case to come.
In 2002, a former truck driver who worked for Pickton told the police that he had seen illegal guns in Picktonâs home.
This time, the police were able to obtain a search warrant and raided Robert Pickton’s farm on February 5, 2002.
Investigators found several illegal and unregistered guns, as well as items linking missing women to the property, such as clothing and shoes, jewelry, and an asthma inhaler prescribed to one of the victims.
The blood of another missing woman, Mona Wilson, was found in a motorhome of the farm.
On December 9, 2007, Pickton was found guilty of six murders and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.
Although the Pig Farmer Killer claimed to have killed 49 women, he was only charged with the murders of 26 who were identified through evidence found on Robert Pickton’s farm.
