The Most Notorious Serial Killer in Canadian History | The Pig Farmer Murders
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Only on Netflix, October 18, rated R.

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All with Shopify POS, the go-to commerce platform trusted by millions of successful entrepreneurs. Want more? Check it out at shopify.com slash crimehub, all lowercase, and learn how to create the best retail experiences without complexity. Shopify.com slash crimehub. On May 31st, 2024, Canada's most notorious serial killer drew his final breath.

Twelve days prior, Robert "Willy" Pickton, who was 74 at the time, was attacked by a fellow inmate at Quebec's maximum security Porte Cartier institution. Willie was alone in a specialized unit for at-risk inmates when 51-year-old Martin "Spike" Charest snuck up and gored the back of his head with a broken broom handle. He teetered between life and death for the next several hours.

Emergency surgery brought him back from the brink, but he'd have to remain on life support and he was unlikely to recover. Willie had a chance, and a chance was more than he deserved. He never gave any of the 49 women he allegedly killed a chance. Society didn't give them much of one either.

Between 1995 and 2001, Willie abducted, raped, and murdered a confirmed 26 women from Vancouver's downtown Eastside, known back then as the Low Track. While in jail, he claimed to have killed 49. His only regret was not making it an even 50. But how does one kill over two dozen people on their property without leaving a trace? The answer is quite simple and boils down to one word:

Pigs. Willie Pickton and his brother David owned and operated a vast pig farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, a remote region about 17 miles east of Vancouver. Picture the most vile man you've ever met. Now, cover that man in dirt, make him smell like a wet pig, and give him a moral compass that only points towards his sexual desires. That was Willie and his brother David in a nutshell.

While Willie paid for his crimes with a lifetime jail sentence, David has gotten off scot-free. As one former Vancouver police detective put it, "It's been an open secret for more than 20 years that these murders were not committed solely by the hands of Robert Pickton." The only trouble is proving that secret. David has consistently denied any knowledge of his brother's crimes. Somehow, he never noticed all the sex workers Willie brought to their farm.

And, if he did, he never questioned why he never saw them leaving. Sadly, David Bicton wasn't the only one turning a blind eye to these women. Canada has a long, well-documented problem regarding justice for indigenous women. According to a leaked government inquiry in 2019, they face disproportionate violence mainly due to state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies.

That same document would classify the thousands of murdered and missing Canadian women over the past century as a genocide. Did Willie Pickton target these women because they were readily available? Or did he target them strategically, knowing police were unlikely to investigate their cases? Perhaps it was a mix of both. Part 1: A Mother's Love

Willie Pickton was born in October 1949 to Port Coquitlam pig farmers Leonard and Louise Pickton. He was the middle of three children, but only he and David grew up on the farm. Their parents sent their older sister, Linda, to live with relatives in Vancouver. To them, a pig farm was no place to raise a little girl, especially one run by Louise Pickton. By all accounts, Willie's mother ruled the farm with an iron fist.

She put her boys to work at a young age, and forced them to put pig farming ahead of everything else, even personal hygiene. According to some sources, whenever Willie wanted to escape his mother, he'd crawl into a recently gutted pig carcass to hide. He also had an irrational fear of showers, as his mother only allowed the boys to take baths. Perhaps showers were seen as a waste of water. As for their father, little is known about Leonard Pickton.

Sources claim he was an abusive man with whom Willie had little interaction. After long mornings on the farm, Luis would send the boys to school in their same rank clothing. They smelled like manure, thus earning the nickname "Stinky Piggies" in class. Willie fell behind in school and spent several years in special education classes. He'd eventually drop out partway through high school to dedicate himself full-time to the farm.

As you can imagine, he struggled in the dating world, as no girls could put up with his horrid smell. The smell also kept Willy from making friends. When he was 12, his only "friend" was a small calf he was raising on the side. Sadly, that friendship didn't last very long. One day, Willy came home from school to find his friend gutted, skinned, and hanging in the barn.

It's unclear who killed the calf, but most believe Luis did it to prove a point. Nothing was more important than the family and the farm. Another story of motherly love involves Luis and David. It was October 16th, 1967, eight days after Willy's 18th birthday. David was 16 and had just obtained his driver's license.

That night, around 7:40 p.m., he took his father's truck from the farm and drove east down Dominion Avenue towards Burns Road and Port Coquitlam. Up ahead, one of the local boys, 14-year-old Timmy Barrett, was walking down the street. It's unclear how it happened, but David allegedly veered off the road and struck Timmy. He didn't die on impact, but he would if he didn't get help right away.

As the story goes, David panicked and drove home. He told Louise what happened, and she insisted on going to the accident site. When they arrived, Louise found the mangled teenage boy barely clinging to life. But instead of calling an ambulance or taking him to the hospital, Louise kicked him over the road and into a watery ditch. Unable to move, Timmy landed face down and drowned.

Luis went home while David took the truck to a local mechanic who had worked on the Pickton family's cars before. The mechanic allegedly fixed the dent and a broken turn signal, but refused to repaint the area where David hit Timmy. Meanwhile, Timmy's parents were worried sick when he didn't come home. His father, Philip, called all his neighbors, asking if they'd seen his boy. Around 1:00 AM, he went to the local police station to report his son missing.

They searched until the morning, at which point Philip spotted one of Timmy's shoes along the road. It wasn't long before they found the body. Although he suffered a fractured skull and a dislocated pelvis, his injuries weren't enough to kill him. He drowned to death after Louise allegedly kicked him into the ditch. David did end up in juvenile court after the mechanic came forward and told police about fixing the Picton family car.

But, because he was a minor, those records are sealed, and it's unclear what kind of punishment David faced. As for Louise, she was never charged with any crimes related to Timmy Barrett's death. The truth was more like a rumor among neighbors. Willie confirmed the story later in life, but there's no hard proof that it ever happened. David could have just as easily struck Timmy, causing him to fall into the ditch and drown.

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Part 2. Millionaires. Leonard and Louise Pickton passed away between 1978 and 1979.

Upon their deaths, the farm and all the Picton family assets passed to Willie, David, and Linda, who were in their mid to late 30s at the time. Instead of nurturing and passing their family's legacy on to the next generation, the Picton siblings sold most of the land for 5.16 million Canadian dollars. Willie and David only maintained a small plot to keep farming as a stable income. The land went toward urban development.

If you look at Google Maps today, you'll see dozens of middle-class homes surrounding the pig farm. It's unclear if their owners knew they're living a few hundred feet away from a mass grave. They may not have looked like it, but Willie and David quickly became the wealthiest men in Port Coquitlam. They bought a salvage company and spent most of their cash throwing wild, drug-fueled parties at the pig farm.

One of their barns turned into an ad hoc nightclub called Piggy's Palace, where local elites would mix with Hells Angels and low-track prostitutes. In 1996, Willie and David launched Piggy's Palace Good Times Society. The federally registered charity was supposed to raise funds through events such as dances and shows, but it was just a cover for their wild parties.

At times, upwards of 1,700 people would show up for a Piggy's Palace event. Neighbors complained about the noise, rampant drug use, and strung out prostitutes roaming through their lawns. Most, if not all, of those prostitutes came from Vancouver's downtown Eastside, also known as Low Track. Low Track has been called the Skid Row of Canada. As one writer puts it,

No other slum or ghetto in the country matches the squalor of this 10-block urban wasteland. The sidewalks are cracked and stained and covered with tents and sleeping bags. There's a rundown hotel or a pawn shop on every corner. Garbage, needles, and used condoms cover most of the alleyways. At its peak, Lodetrak's junkie population ranged from 5,000 to 10,000 people.

crack and heroin were their drugs of choice, with most of it coming from biker gangs and Asian cartels. Most of the female addicts, and likely some of the men, supported their drug habit through prostitution. A writer from the Seattle Times described the women as "haunted, skeletal creatures living off the Jenny Crack diet." The words "safe" and "sex" were never used together.

According to reports, Lodetrack boasted the highest HIV rate in all of North America in the 90s, when Willie Pickton was on the prowl. The truly sick and twisted can head to Lodetrack's infamous kiddie stroll, where they can prey on prostitutes as young as 11 years old. In fact, a 1995 survey of Lodetrack's street girls revealed that 73% entered the sex trade as children.

The same percentage were unwed mothers with an average of three kids each. Of them, 90% had lost their babies to the state, and fewer than half knew where their children ended up. Many of Lautrak's prostitutes were born and raised outside of Vancouver. They came to the city seeking adventure, but were sucked into a world of drugs, depravity, and early death. Sadly, most of these women are of indigenous descent.

A survey taken between 1999 and 2001 revealed that violent acts against these women were commonplace. They were robbed, beaten, kidnapped, and raped. Then, a general distrust of local police would prevent them from reporting these crimes.

It was a vicious cycle that Willie Pickton slid right into. He became familiar with low track whenever he drove his converted bus to a local rendering plant to dispose of animal waste and parts. On his way home, he'd drive the 10-block strip and offer women money and drugs to come back with him. Police say Willie's killing spree began in 1995, though there's reason to believe it started much sooner.

Missing and murdered low-track women date back to 1978, and while Willie is responsible for a significant portion, dozens more cases remain unsolved. Part 3: The Missing Low-tracks sex workers aren't the easiest people to study. They're an elusive group by nature. They may use fake names and false addresses. And, as you can imagine, most aren't willing to talk to the police.

Many of them were runaways, so when they went missing, it wasn't unreasonable to assume they'd simply ran away again. It's hard to say if they vanished by choice or due to foul play. The issue of missing women got so bad in the late 1970s that the Vancouver Police Department launched a dedicated task force aimed at compiling names and closing cold cases.

Dozens of names were added to the list throughout the 1980s as drugs became more prevalent on the Vancouver streets. The first of these names was Rebecca Gunnow, a 23-year-old who was last seen alive three days before anyone reported her missing. Next was 43-year-old Sherry Rail, who hadn't been seen in three years. In March of 1986, 33-year-old Elaine Auerbach told her friends she was moving to Seattle.

She never arrived and was reported missing in mid-April. Teresa Ann Williams was among the first native Canadian women to be reported missing. She was last seen in July 1988, but wasn't reported missing until March 1989. In many of these early cases, the GAPs made it hard, if not impossible, for police to track their last movements.

By the mid-90s, dozens of Vancouver women had already gone missing, never to be heard from or seen again. Some were lucky enough to escape low track to build better lives elsewhere. Most were not. And almost all were forgotten by the year 2000. The official search began in September of 1998, when Native groups demanded the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to do something about Vancouver's missing and murdered women.

By the time police made their first arrest in 2001, the list had ballooned to 54 names. It's unclear who this arrested party was, though we assume police couldn't link him to all the missing women between 1983 and the new millennium. They didn't know if several men or women were acting alone or if they had a serial killer on their hands. Police refused to admit the latter at the time, nor did they pay the theory any regard.

When pressed on the issue, Inspector Gary Greer told reporters, "We're in no way saying there is a serial murderer out there." After receiving a punitive demotion, the only detective who believed the serial killer angle was worth exploring resigned from the RCMP. To play devil's advocate, the RCMP didn't believe a sole suspect could be committing all of these kidnappings and murders. It was more likely that dozens of men were abusing their power over these women.

They knew the girls wouldn't go to the police, no matter how badly they beat, raped, and robbed them. Low track was a vicious cycle of mistrust and misinformation. Willie Pickton thrived under the circumstances. He was the mass murderer the police refused to acknowledge. He was the boogeyman, the shadow, the pig farmer killer, and he operated with impunity until 1998, when a drug-addicted gambler spilled the beans on Piggy Palace.

Part 4: One Step Ahead In late 1998, 37-year-old Bill Hiscox came to the RCMP task force with crucial information on his employers, Willie and David Pickton. Bill was a widower who'd fallen hard on drugs, alcohol, and gambling. His sister pulled him from the gutters and got him a job at P&B Salvage in Surrey, a small city southeast of Vancouver. Willie and David owned P&B Salvage.

Whenever Bill needed to pick up his paycheck, he'd drive to the pig farm, which he described as a creepy-looking place. For starters, the Picton brothers didn't have guard dogs. Instead, they had a 600-pound boar that patrolled the grounds and chased away would-be intruders. Unfortunately, Bill wasn't telling the police anything they didn't already know. Both Picton brothers had been on their radar for some time.

They just weren't suspects in the case of Vancouver's murdered and missing women. They should have been, though. In 1992, David Pickton was convicted of sexual assault and given 30 days probation along with a $1,000 fine. For the multi-millionaire, it was a slap on the wrist. According to the victim, David had attacked her in his trailer on the pig farm. She only escaped when someone walked by and distracted David momentarily.

Shortly after starting Piggy's Palace Good Times Society, the Picton siblings were back in court for violating the city's zoning ordinances. Without getting too deep in the weeds, they were in trouble for throwing wild parties on the property, which was only zoned for farming use. In other words, you can't just throw a 2,000-person party in your barn and call it charity.

The parties ended after New Year's Eve 1998, when siblings were slapped with an injunction banning all future parties at Piggy Palace. The Good Times Society finally lost its charity status in 2000, when the Pickton brothers could not prove they had done anything charitable. The most serious run-in came three years prior, when Willie Pickton was charged with attempted murder. It was March 22nd, 1997.

Wendy Lynn Eistetter was a drug-addicted low-track sex worker who'd gone with Willie to the pig farm. By all accounts, she is the only person who survived an encounter with Willie at Piggy Palace. The following is her version of events. It began on the corner of Princess and Cordova in the heart of downtown Eastside. Willie picked and pulled up in his red pickup and asked Wendy, who was 30 at the time, how much for oral sex.

She quoted him at $40. Willie wanted more. He paid her $100 to accompany him to his farm and promised to have her back on the corner by 1:00 AM. Desperate, Wendy went. According to Wendy, his trailer was a pigsty. A butcher's knife was in plain view on the kitchen table. She remembers it vividly as it seemed out of place.

They entered a back bedroom, but there was no bed, just a sleeping bag on the floor and a long roll of plastic that resembled a rolled-up rug. Willie pulled $100 from his pocket and exchanged it with Wendy for a condom. They had sex for all of five minutes before getting dressed. Wendy went to the bathroom and injected a speedball, a mix of heroin and cocaine. She, however, missed the vein and didn't get high.

Then, she asked to use Willy's phone, but he refused. He said the last girl he let borrow the phone made several expensive, long-distance calls. Instead, he'd drive her to a gas station, where she could use a payphone. Next, she asked to see a telephone book, in case the one on the payphone was missing. As she leaned over to read it, she could feel Pickton standing close behind her.

When she spun around, Picton grabbed her wrist and slapped a handcuff on it. Wendy went into fight or flight. She remembered the butcher's knife on the table and kept stepping backward until she was close enough to reach it. She picked it up and slashed at Willie, slitting his throat. It wasn't enough to kill him though. Instead, it only angered him further. He attacked her with a long stick while she picked up everything she could to throw at him.

She ran for a window but couldn't escape. That's when Willie grabbed the butcher's knife and plunged it into her stomach. She blacked out, and the next thing she knew, they were standing by Willie's truck, and she was holding the knife once more. Somehow, she slipped away and began running down the road.

She tried a neighbor's house, but nobody answered. Then, she saw approaching headlights and flagged down the driver. The driver, Brian Stryleski, later told police that Wendy was covered in blood and had a large kitchen-type knife in her hand and what appeared to be a handcuff on her left wrist. She claimed she'd been stabbed and was begging for help. Wendy arrived at Royal Columbian Hospital via ambulance around 2 a.m.

Doctors treated her for two severe stab wounds to the abdomen. She had several slashes on her hands and arms, and a single stab wound on her right side, which had punctured a lung. When she arrived, she had lost 3 liters of blood and had no pulse. It's a miracle they were able to save her life. About an hour later, Pickton arrived at the same hospital, having also lost 3 liters of blood.

Doctors treated him for a large cut on the left side of his neck and the top of his left arm. While in the trauma room, an orderly found a key in Pickton's pants pocket. He took it to where Wendy was staying and tried it on the handcuffs attached to her left wrist. They fell right off. Willie was arrested and charged with attempted murder. However, the charges fell through because Wendy was considered unreliable and incompetent due to her drug habit.

Willie claimed she was just a random hitchhiker who attacked him and that he was only defending himself. For Bill Hiscox, the stabbing incident confirmed everything he feared to be true about Willie Pickton. It explained why people kept finding women's clothes, IDs, and paperwork scattered around the farm. Unfortunately, Bill hadn't seen any of it for himself. It was all hearsay, meaning police couldn't obtain a search warrant.

Meanwhile, the killings ramped up between 2000 and 2001. 12 more women vanished off the streets. The only glimmer of hope, if you could call it that, is the speed at which these women were reported missing. For example, 43-year-old Deborah Lynn Jones was last seen on December 21st, 2000, and reported missing on Christmas Day.

The record holder was 24-year-old Heather Bottomley, who was reported missing the same day she vanished. Still, nothing brought the police closer to Willie Pickton. Then, everything changed in 2002, when a former Pickton family truck driver ratted on Willie and David regarding illegal guns they kept on the property. Part 5: The Body Farm

The truck driver's eyewitness account of illegal guns on the Picton pig farm was enough for the RCMP to obtain a search warrant. On February 5, 2002, officers raided the property, finding way more than a few illegal firearms. Personal items belonging to dozens of missing women turned up, including purses, IDs, jewelry and body parts.

Willie and David were arrested on weapons charges while police continued the search. On February 22nd, Willie was hit with his first murder charge after police found personal items belonging to Serena Abbotsway and Mona Wilson. Three more charges came in early April for the murders of Jacqueline MacDonald, Diane Rock, and Heather Bottomley. Each week brought another three or four murder charges against Willie Pickton.

DNA evidence helped police identify the few bones and body parts that remained. By late May 2005, Willie was staring at 27 first-degree murder charges. It was during these searches that police learned how Pickton disposed of his victims. He'd either take the bodies to a nearby meat rendering plant or grind them up and feed them to his pigs.

In 2004, the British Columbian Health Authority said Picton may have mixed human flesh with pig meat that he later sold to the public. In a later statement, the department said, "The risk to human health for those who consumed the products is extremely remote, based on the fact most pork products are typically well cooked, which is known to effectively destroy most infectious agents."

As for how he killed his victims, Willie would either handcuff and stab them to death or inject them with antifreeze. The latter would explain the syringes of blue liquid police found lying around the pig farm. While police raided his home, Willie was locked up in Surrey, British Columbia. He shared a cell with an undercover RCMP officer posing as a fellow detainee. During their chats, Willie confessed to killing 49 women.

His only regret was not making it an even 50. Ultimately, the Picton pig farm raid became the largest crime scene in Canadian history. Investigators collected 200,000 DNA samples and seized 600,000 exhibits. Forensic experts also used heavy machines to move 338,000 cubic yards of soil.

In all, the raid and investigation cost the Canadian government $70 million. Part 6: Trial of the Century The Pig Farmer's trial began on January 30th, 2006, nearly four years after the initial raid on Willie and David's property. Willie faced 27 counts of first-degree murder, to which he pleaded not guilty.

The prosecution, meanwhile, believed they had enough evidence to send Willie to prison for the rest of his life. In fact, they may have had too much evidence. It took another year to parse what would be shown to the jury and what wouldn't. Some of that evidence included an asthma inhaler belonging to Serena Abbotsway. Then there was Mona Wilson's DNA found inside his trailer home. According to a Fox News report,

Police found human body parts in freezers used to store unsold meat. They also discovered remains in a wood chipper. This is where the victims' bodies were turned into pig feed. The Toronto Star reported that Willie would entice these women onto his property with food, drugs, and wild sex parties.

Police feared that the food Willie was serving was the ground-up remains of past victims. According to police, they found a loaded .22 caliber revolver with a dildo strapped over the barrel. Willie claims he used it as a makeshift silencer, which would be highly unlikely to work, if not impossible. The most compelling evidence included the 30 unique DNA samples found around Picton's farm.

Of them, 27 matched women on the missing persons list. The other three were never identified. Willie's excuse was that these women were prostitutes. Of course their DNA wound up all over his farm. Thankfully, that excuse only worked for one of the 27 cases. It was thrown out, leaving Willie with 26 first-degree murder charges.

Six were compelling and 20 required more investigation. So, the judge split the charges into two groups to ensure a timely trial. Willie would stand trial for the first six and the other 20 would be delayed until August 2010.

During Willie's initial trial, the jury watched multiple videotapes in which the farmer implicated himself in his crimes. In one, his buddy Scott advises him on a good way to kill heroin addicts: injecting them with windshield washer fluid. In another, Pickton talks about handcuffing prostitutes, strangling them, bleeding them, and then gutting them before feeding them to his pigs.

The final piece, feeding them to pigs, dominated headlines in Canada and Greater North America. But is it practical? Are pigs an effective way of covering up a murder? The answer is yes, to an extent. Pigs will eat just about anything you put in front of them. That includes people, and there are several well-documented cases from around the world to prove it.

In 2012, 69-year-old Oregon farmer Terry Garner went to feed his pigs and never returned. When his concerned family went looking for him, all they found were his dentures and pieces of his body. They believed Terry suffered some kind of medical emergency. He lost consciousness, fell into the pig pen, and was overwhelmed by his 700-pound hogs. In 2019, a Russian woman suffered an epileptic attack while feeding her pigs.

She collapsed in the pen, and the hungry hogs began eating her face, ears, and shoulders. 24 hours later, her husband found her mauled to death in the pig pen. In 2015, a Romanian farmer bled to death after being attacked by his pigs. His family claims he suffered a heart attack and fell into the pen.

In 2014, a two-year-old Chinese boy was killed and partially eaten by pigs after crawling into a pig pen during a game of hide-and-seek. According to the Daily Mail, an aggressive mama pig attacked him while trying to protect her piglets. Organized crime syndicates have been using pigs for centuries. In 2013, a mob boss was eaten alive when members of a rival family fed him to the hogs.

In Rio de Janeiro, drug traffickers are known to raise hogs for the sole purpose of body disposal. The only things pigs cannot digest are teeth, large bone fragments, and hair. They'll also throw up foreign objects, like dentures, pacemakers, and hearing aids. Otherwise, it'll take a pig about two days to consume and digest a human body. But don't go throwing your dead bodies to the hogs just yet.

The method doesn't really work anymore in the 21st century. That's because pigs can't destroy DNA. Police are also wise to the technique. If you own a pig farm and are suspected of murder, you best believe they'll check the pen. Back in Canada, the public was in for the shock of a lifetime when Willie Pickton was found not guilty of first-degree murder. Instead, the jury found him guilty on six counts of second-degree murder.

Why does that matter? Well, in Canada, the maximum penalty for second degree murder is life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Willie was sentenced in December 2007, meaning he'd be eligible for parole in 2032. After his sentence, Canada decided to discontinue the 20 remaining murder charges. If they couldn't get first degree on the compelling six, they'd never get it on the weaker 20.

Some of the victims' families appreciated the decision. They were already in enough pain and didn't want to relive everything they'd been going through for decades. Others, however, believe it was a miscarriage of justice, that Canada simply didn't feel like spending the money to try Willie Pickton on his remaining charges. Part 7: Lasting Legacy Willie Pickton may have been in jail, but that doesn't mean life in Low Track got any better.

In 2010, British Columbia jumped headfirst into the RCMP's handling of the Picton case. In their final report, they stated that blatant failures by police, paired with prejudice against sex trade workers and indigenous women, led to a tragedy of epic proportions. In the Picton aftermath, Vancouver police enacted several policy changes regarding their missing persons unit. For starters, the unit would become an official branch of the department.

Investigations must begin without delay, and family members will receive regular updates regarding their case. The case file is also kept open until the person is located, dead or alive. As for David Pickton, he maintains that he had no idea Willie was luring prostitutes back to the farm, killing them, and feeding them to his pigs. In a 2024 interview, he described his life as a never-ending nightmare.

The divorced father of two grown children now lives in a family home about a mile from the old farm. As for that farm, the barn and slaughterhouse have been torn down. Willie's old trailer is also gone. If you look on Google Maps, you'll see an empty plot covered in tire tracks from where machines used conveyor belts to sift the soil for human remains. It's a graveyard surrounded by life on all sides.

Families live in modern, middle-class homes. There's a wedding planner, a Home Depot, and an at-home photography studio. They all live within one square mile of the worst crime scene in Canadian history. Some can even stand on their porches and gaze over the empty graveyard. On May 19th, 2024, Willie was attacked in prison.

He bled profusely, fell into a coma, and died about two weeks later on May 31st. The pig farmer saga was over, but his legacy is everlasting. He'll likely go down as the worst serial killer in Canadian history, assuming somebody doesn't surpass his record.