Canadian Farmer on Trial for 26 Deaths
NEW WESTMINSTER, British Columbia - Prosecutors say accused serial killer Robert William Pickton wanted to murder 50 women, and jurors are expected to watch videotaped interviews on Tuesday in which he acknowledges coming just one victim short of his that macabre goal.
Pickton, 56, is charged with 26 counts of first-degree murder in what many consider the most sensational murder trial Canadians have ever faced. Most of his alleged victims were prostitutes and drug addicts who vanished from a drug-ridden Vancouver neighborhood in the 1990s. He has pleaded not guilty to the first six counts.
The other 20 counts of murder are to be heard in a separate trial.
Prosecutor Derrill Prevett opened the trial Monday, stunning the courtroom by saying Pickton had told investigators, including an undercover police officer planted in his jail cell, that he had slain 49 women.
“I was going to do one more and make it an even 50,” Prevett quoted Pickton as telling investigators. “I made my own grave by being sloppy.”
Pickton went on to describe himself as a mass murderer who deserved to be on death row, according to Prevett.
But defense lawyer Peter Ritchie told jurors Pickton did not kill or participate in the six murders he is on trial for now. He asked them to pay close attention to Pickton’s demeanor when they watch the upcoming videotapes of his interrogations, in particular his level of sophistication. He did not address Pickton’s alleged murder confessions.
“When you watch the videotapes, when you listen to them, pay close attention to what Mr. Pickton says and the manner in which he expresses himself,” Ritchie told the jurors.
Ritchie also asked the jury to listen closely to details regarding Pickton’s relationship with his brother, David.
Both brothers raised pigs on the family’s 17-acre farm outside Vancouver, where investigators say they threw drunken raves with prostitutes and drugs. After Robert Pickton’s 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.
Jurors had been warned that details of the case, until now under a publication ban in Canada, would be horrific. As details began to emerge Monday, some relatives of the victims began to cry and leave the courtroom.
After Pickton was arrested and the first traces of DNA from some missing women were allegedly found on the farm, the buildings were razed and the province spent an estimated $61 million to sift through soil there.
Prevett said the government would prove that Pickton murdered the six women and butchered their remains. As a successful pig farmer, he said, Pickton had the expertise and equipment to dispose of them.
The trial covers the murders of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey.
When police first visited the farm in 2002 to investigate, they found two skulls in a bucket inside a freezer in Pickton’s mobile home. DNA testing identified the skulls as belonging to Abotsway and Joesbury, two missing sex workers from an impoverished Vancouver neighborhood.
“The heads of the individuals had been cut in two, vertically,” Prevett said. “With the skulls were left and right hands and the front parts of the left and right feet.”
He said both skulls had wounds caused by 22-caliber bullets. Investigators found a Smith & Wesson rifle in Pickton’s laundry room, sheathed in plastic with a sex toy attached. The toy had the combined DNA of Pickton and another victim, Wilson, Prevett said.
Prevett said one of Joesbury’s earrings was found in the slaughterhouse. He said human bones were found mixed with manure and that part of Wolfe’s jaw, with five teeth still attached, was found in a pig trough.
Pickton, clean-shaven with a bald crown and shoulder-length hair, sat emotionless in a specially built defendant’s box surrounded by bulletproof glass. During pretrial hearings, he occasionally chuckled to himself or scribbled in a notebook.
If found guilty of more than 14 charges, Pickton would become the worst convicted killer in Canadian history.
