Robert Pickton
Robert William "Willie" Pickton (born October 24, 1949) of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada is a former multi-millionaire pig farmer and serial killer convicted in 2007 of the second-degree murders of six women. He was also charged in the deaths of an additional twenty women, many of them from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside; however, these charges were stayed by the Crown in 2010. In December 2007, he was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 25 years – the longest sentence then available under Canadian law for murder.
During the trial's first day of jury evidence, January 22, 2007, the Crown stated he confessed to 49 murders to an undercover police officer posing as a cellmate. The Crown reported that Pickton told the officer that he wanted to kill another woman to make it an even 50, and that he was caught because he was "sloppy".
Background
By 1992, Robert William Pickton and his brother David owned a Port Coquitlam farm. Worker Bill Hiscox called it a "creepy-looking place", noting that it was patrolled by a 600-lb. boar, one of the few actual pigs on the farm. "I never saw a pig like that, who would chase you and bite at you," he said. "It was running out with the dogs around the property." He later described Pickton as a "pretty quiet guy, hard to strike up a conversation with," whose occasionally bizarre behavior, despite no evidence of substance abuse, would draw attention. Pickton's only vehicle was a converted bus, with deeply tinted windows, to which he was emotionally attached.