Robert Pickton, one of Canada's most notorious serial killers whose crimes drew attention to the violent deaths of Indigenous women by police and society, died Friday in a Quebec prison where he was serving a life sentence after being attacked by a fellow inmate. He was 74.
Correctional Services Canada announced he died in hospital, saying he was attacked at Port-Cartier prison on May 19 and died from his injuries. The statement did not reveal a motive for the attack.
In 2007, Mr Pickton was convicted of murdering six women, but he boasted to an undercover police officer that he had killed 49 women in total.
The victims' remains were found on a run-down pig farm he owned outside Vancouver, where authorities conducted what was then the largest crime scene investigation in Canadian history. Over 18 months, they found the remains of 33 women.
The victims were primarily Indigenous, mostly sex workers and drug users whom Pickton met in Vancouver’s scenic and affluent Downtown Eastside.
Mr. Pickton was able to continue killing for so long. A survey by the British Columbia governmentbecause of police bias against the victims’ race and marginalized status.
Despite reports from the missing women’s families, Vancouver police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were slow to suspect a serial killer lurking in the Downtown Eastside. An official report released in 2012 listed 67 women who had been murdered or disappeared in the community in the 20 years before Pickton was arrested in 2002.
“The pattern of predatory violence was clear and should have been addressed swiftly and severely by responsible professional agencies, but it was not,” the report said.
The evidence of Mr. Pickton's rampage was discovered almost by accident when a RCMP team arrived in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam to investigate a report that Mr. Pickton had an unlicensed shotgun on his property.
He co-owns a 15-acre farm with his brother, and a sign at the gate warns intruders: “No Visitors, Agents, Peddler or Salesman Allowed – By Appointment Only!! (No Exceptions)”
Police found gruesome human remains, including dismembered hands and feet and a woman's severed head, and believed Mr Picton had either fed the remains to pigs or destroyed them in a wood chipper.
according to A 2002 New York Times articleMr Pickton and his brother and sister inherited the pig farm from their father, who died in the 1970s. Mr Pickton never married and had no children.
Robert William Pickton, also known as Willie, was born in Port Coquitlam on October 24, 1949 to Leonard Pickton and Louise Helen (Arnal) Pickton. No information on survivors is available at this time.
He was charged with 26 murders, but the judge limited the trial to six so the jury could process the evidence. Prosecutors then paused the other 20 cases after Mr. Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. (Canada does not have the death penalty.)
The women convicted of his murder include Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey.
In 2014, a RCMP report found that approximately 1,181 Indigenous women were murdered or missing across Canada between 1980 and 2012. Although Indigenous women and girls make up 4% of Canada's female population, they account for 16% of murders.
In 2019, a national survey It concluded that police and the criminal justice system failed Indigenous victims by viewing them “through pervasive racist and sexist stereotypes”.
The chief commissioner of the inquiry called the murders “genocide” in scale.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government approved the three-year inquiry after his Conservative predecessor blocked it. “This is an uncomfortable day for Canada, but a critical day,” Trudeau said when the findings were released.
A statement Correctional Services Canada said on Friday it acknowledged the racial undertones of Mr. Pickton's murder: “We recognize that this offender's case has had a devastating impact on communities in British Columbia and across the country, including Indigenous peoples, victims and their families. Our hearts are with them.”
