Robert Pickton: The Pig Farmer Killer

Robert William Pickton, born here in Port Coquitlam on October 24, 1949, became known as the "Pig Farmer Killer." He was a Canadian pig farmer and serial killer, and it's believed he murdered at least 26 women. Many of his victims were sex workers from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Pickton confessed to 49 murders to an undercover RCMP officer. In 2007, he was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years. This was the longest possible sentence for second-degree murder under Canadian law at the time.

His crimes spanned from 1983 to 2001, which is the confirmed period. He was apprehended on February 22, 2002. In 2010, the Crown attorney officially stayed the remaining 20 murder charges. This allowed information that hadn't been public before to come out, including details about an attempted murder charge against Pickton in 1997 that had been dropped. Prosecutors explained that staying the additional charges made sense because Pickton was already serving the maximum sentence allowed.

The discovery of Pickton's crimes caused a lot of outrage and made the Canadian government acknowledge the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women. The British Columbia provincial government formed the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry to look into the police's role in the case. Pickton died on May 31, 2024, at the age of 74 in Quebec City, after being attacked in prison by another inmate.

He was born to Leonard Francis Pickton and Louise Helene Arnal, who were pig farmers here in Port Coquitlam. This spot is about 27 kilometers east of Vancouver. His older sister was sent to live with relatives in Vancouver because their parents considered a pig farm an inappropriate place to raise a young girl. Both Robert and his younger brother, David, worked on the family farm at 953 Dominion Avenue from an early age.