Robert Pickton Victims

Case background and investigation

Robert Pickton operated a pig farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, east of Vancouver. According to a timeline published by The Globe and Mail, the RCMP searched the property on February 5, 2002 under a warrant relating to firearms. The following day a joint task force of RCMP and Vancouver police officers sealed off the farm and began a much larger search connected with the disappearances of women from the Vancouver area.

Pickton was charged with a weapons offence on February 7, 2002, and on February 22 he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. More counts were added as the search of the farm continued, and by May 2005 he stood charged with the first-degree murder of 27 women, The Globe and Mail reported. The charges were later divided so that six counts would be tried first.

The jury trial opened on January 22, 2007. The Globe and Mail reported that the Crown and defence presented 129 witnesses. On December 9, 2007, the jury convicted Pickton of six counts of second-degree murder; Wikipedia's account, citing court records, names the six women as Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey. Two days later he was sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 25 years, the maximum for second-degree murder.

The British Columbia Court of Appeal rejected Pickton's appeal on June 25, 2009, and the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the convictions on July 30, 2010. On August 4, 2010, the remaining 20 first-degree murder charges were stayed, so those cases were never tried. Global News and other outlets have reported that Pickton told an undercover officer he had killed 49 women; that claim was never tested in court beyond the six counts.

A public inquiry into how police handled the reports of missing women released its findings on December 17, 2012. According to The Globe and Mail, it identified serious failures in the police investigations.

On May 19, 2024, Pickton was assaulted by another inmate at Port-Cartier Institution, a federal maximum-security prison in Quebec. He died on May 31, 2024, aged 74, the Correctional Service of Canada said. The service released the findings of its investigation on July 4, 2025, and accepted recommendations on inmates' access to items that could be used as weapons. Global News reported that the inmate, Martin Charest, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder on September 25, 2025 and was sentenced to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 25 years.