Robert Pickton is a notorious serial killer in Canada, responsible for the murders of several women in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Beginning

Robert Pickton was born in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, in 1949. He grew up on a pig farm. Robert’s older sister Linda was sent to live with relatives in Vancouver because her parents believed that the family pig farm would not be a suitable environment for raising a young lady. Robert and his younger brother David began working on the farm at a young age.

Robert’s mother, Louise Pickton, would sometimes send her sons to school in unwashed, dirty clothes that reeked of manure, earning the brothers the unflattering nickname “stinky piggy” from their classmates.

Robert Pickton struggled academically throughout his school years, eventually dropping out around 1964. He then worked as a meat cutter for nearly seven years before leaving to work full-time on the family farm.

Life as a Criminal

In the 1970s, Miyazaki’s parents passed away, and he and his siblings inherited the family farm.

The Pickton brothers abandoned their farm operations in Port Coquitlam, Canada, and instead founded the Piggy Palace Good Times Society, which hosted parties and events for up to 2,000 people, including Hells Angels members.

The Hells Angels are widely regarded as the largest motorcycle club in existence, with approximately 3,500 members and hundreds of charters located all over the world.

Robert Pickton was charged in March 1997 with attempting to murder Wendy Lynn Eistetter, a sex worker who had visited his farm. Pickton stabbed Eistetter after her hand was handcuffed during an altercation. He was also injured in the incident and sought medical attention at a nearby hospital before being arrested for attempted murder.

Although Wendy’s account was treated with contempt because she was a drug addict, the charge was later dismissed. The incident, however, made farmworker Bill Hiscox more aware of a larger problem on the farm.

The brothers were sued for zoning violations, but they ignored the legal pressure and continued to throw parties until their non-profit status was revoked in 1999.

In 1999, Canadian police received information that Robert Pickton had a freezer full of human flesh on his farm. Despite interviewing Pickton, who denied any involvement in the women’s disappearance, and obtaining his permission to search the farm, the police did not conduct a search at the time.

Hiscox noticed that women who visited the farm went missing over the next three years. He eventually informed the police, but it wasn’t until 2002 that the farm was searched. Items belonging to missing women were discovered on the farm property during the search.

Further investigations and searches of the farm turned up DNA evidence of at least 26 missing women.

It was the largest investigation of any serial killer in Canadian history when Robert Pickton was arrested and charged with the murder of the missing women. Excavations at the farm continued until 2003, and forensic analysis was difficult due to the bodies’ decomposition. Pickton may have ground up human flesh and mixed it with pork that he sold to the general public, and he may have fed the bodies to his pigs.

Robert Pickton was arrested on two murder charges at first, but three more were added soon after, and by 2005, he was facing a total of 26 murder charges. As a result, he became one of Canada’s most notorious and prolific serial killers.

During the investigation, police learned the grisly details of Pickton’s murder of the 26 women. The women were killed in a variety of ways, according to police reports and a taped confession from Pickton. Some were handcuffed and stabbed, while others were given antifreeze injections.

After murdering the women, Robert Pickton either transported their bodies to a nearby meat processing plant or ground them up and fed them to his farm’s pigs.

Despite being charged with 26 murders, Pickton was only convicted on six counts of second-degree murder because those were the cases that were proven to be his. The charges were separated during the trial to make it easier for the jury to evaluate.

Pickton was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years, the maximum sentence in Canada for a second-degree murder charge. All other charges were dropped against him after the courts determined that they could not increase his sentence, which was already the maximum allowed.

The Police Negligence- How Wendy Lynn Eistetter’s Testimony was Treated With Contempt

On January 27, 1998, the attempted-murder charge against Pickton was stayed due to concerns that the woman who accused him had drug addiction issues and was too unstable to provide testimony that could help secure a conviction.

However, police seized Pickton’s clothes and rubber boots, which had been left in a storage locker at the police station for more than seven years. Laboratory testing revealed in 2004 that the DNA of two of the missing women, Borhaven and Ellis, was found on items seized from Pickton in 1997. If this had been discovered earlier, the serial killer could have been apprehended sooner.