Canada's most notorious serial killer is dead: he claimed to have killed 49 women
Steph Deschamps / June 2, 2024
Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton, convicted in 2007 of murdering six women, died in hospital in Quebec on Friday after being attacked two weeks ago by another inmate.
This 74-year-old former pig farmer from western Canada is considered one of the country's most notorious killers. Although he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of six women, he was suspected of killing more.
Robert Pickton, an inmate at the Port-Cartier facility in the province of Quebec, died in hospital as a result of injuries sustained in the assault of another inmate on May 19," the Canadian prison service said in a statement.
We are aware that this offender's case has had a devastating impact on communities in British Columbia and across the country, including Aboriginal peoples, the victims and their families. Our thoughts are with them," they added.
Vancouver police were criticized at the time for not taking the disappearances seriously, because many of the women were prostitutes, drug addicts or aboriginals.
The Vancouver natives were killed between 1997 and 2001. Robert Pickton was arrested in 2002.
During Robert Pickton's trial, one of the costliest and longest in Canadian history, a witness explained that he had told her how he strangled his victims and fed their remains to his pigs.
The remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. And he had boasted to an undercover police officer that he had killed a total of 49 women, whose bodies were butchered.
Canadian authorities have launched an administrative inquiry to "examine all the facts and circumstances surrounding the assault". A 51-year-old inmate was in custody.