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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast, THE podcast dedicated to serial killers, who they were, what they did, and how. Episode 186.
I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Roseland Weyborg Thun. Tonight, we travel back across the Atlantic Ocean and once again find terra firma on the shores of North America. Canada, to be precise. This is a serial killer case so twisted it could easily have been ripped straight from the classic horror film Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Our subject is somewhat infamous in the West, especially in Canada, but for some reason has not reached the levels of infamy as the darkest serial killer superstars. This strikes me as rather odd, considering that not only did our subject murder far more innocent people than most serial killers, at least 26,
But the method of murder and the setting for the murders are extremely bizarre and revolting. I am, of course, talking about none other than Robert William Willie Pickton, the pig farm killer. And this is his saga. Enjoy.
As always, I want to publicly thank my elite TSK Producers Club. Their names are...
Emily, Fawn, James, Janine, Jennifer, John, Johnny, Jonathan, Caitlin, Kathy, Christina, Kylie, Lance, Lisa, Lisbeth, Magic Man, Marilyn, Meow, Missy, Nick, Oakley, Operation Brownie Pockets, Robert O., Robert R., Russell, Sabina, Skortnia, Scott, Sputnik, The Radio, Trent, Val, and Vanessa.
You are the backbone of the Serial Killer podcast, and without you, there would be no show. You have my deepest gratitude. Thank you.
I am forever grateful for my elite TSK Producers Club, and I want to show you that your patronage is not given in vain. All TSK episodes will be available 100% ad-free to my TSK Producers Club on patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast. No generic ads, no ad reads, no jingles. I promise.
And of course, if you wish to donate $15 a month, that's only $7.50 per episode, you are more than welcome to join the ranks of the TSK Producers Club too. So don't miss out and join now. Imagine, if you will, a run-down, truly dilapidated farmstead.
The yard is filled with rusting cars without wheels, piles of garbage, out-of-control weeds, and in the middle a few buildings that look like they haven't been cared for in decades. There are also large piles of earth covered in plastic tattered tarp, rustling in the wind. The address is 963 Dominion Road, Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada.
The year is 1995. Usually, when coming across such places, they are located far away from town, not the Picton place. Right across the street is a brand new shopping mall, and all around the property new residential buildings are popping up. The owners of the farm were the Picton brothers.
A shed that had housed a pig pen has fallen down completely, and no one had bothered to tidy up the mess. With no place to keep the pigs, you can see a very, very, very disheveled man herding some small newborn pigs into a small horse trailer. The man's name is Robert Pickton.
Only an unpainted, hip-roofed Dutch barn looks as if it could last a few more years. Even though Port Coquitlam was a working-class town of 50,000 people, where few had money to spend fixing up their places, the Picton farm was infamous among locals.
People knew that the Pictons, who were making a fortune selling off chunks of the land to real estate developers, could easily afford to keep the farm in good repair. It just never occurred to them. That was just how they had been brought up. Not to mind a little, or in this case massive amounts of, mess. The property was not the family's original farm.
The brothers Picton had inherited being farmers from their parents, Louise and Leonard Francis Picton. They had in turn inherited a family homestead a few kilometers west, on the other side of town, in the lodging adjoining community of Coquitlam. Louise and Leonard called that place the L.F. Picton Ranch Poultry and Pigs. The address, in those days, was 2426 Pitt River Road.
but it later changed to 2426 Cape Horn. Today much of this land is crammed with tract housing, but the area in those days was like a vast park, blessed with woods, fields and streams, and bears that roamed through the forests around a new local hospital.
The rivers brimmed with salmon, wild blackberry bushes competed with abundant harvests from the fields and gardens, and the climate was mild. The Coast Mountains to the north and the Cascade Mountains to the south, along the Canada-United States border, girdled the entire area, except the western side, towards Point Grey, at the far end of Vancouver.
It was an idyllic place to be a farmer and to start a family. Leonard had three siblings growing up, Harold, Clifford, and Lillian. They all went to Millside Elementary School, which had been built in 1905 at 1432 Burnett Street in Coquitlam. The family attended church services at St. Catherine's Anglican Church in Port Coquitlam.
Lillian married at a young age and left the farm. Clifford wound up running a nursing home called the Royal Crescent Convalescent Home, and Harold became a night watchman at Flavel Cedar, a local lumberyard. When Leonard finally inherited his parents' property, he stayed on the farm.
During the 1940s, Leonard, who had been born in England on the 19th of July, 1896, three years before his parents emigrated to Canada, was considered lazy and unambitious by most people who knew him. He seemed to be a confirmed bachelor, content just to work on the farm, but he astonished his relatives by announcing that he was engaged
Helen Louise Picton was twenty years younger than Leonard, and had been born on the 20th of March 1912 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She was far more driven than her older husband, and soon became the person de facto running the Picton place. By anyone's standards, Louise Picton was strange.
She did not just look odd, she behaved outside the norms of convention almost all the time. Like her husband Leonard, she did not pay attention to her teeth, and eventually most of them rotted out. She lost most of her hair, and covered the remaining wisps with a kerchief. Her chin sprouted so many hairs, she developed a little goatee.
Stout and short, with a round face, Louise always wore a cotton house dress over a pair of men's jeans. When it rained, she would put on an old jacket belonging to her husband. He dressed in much the same kind of costume as his wife, a grubby T-shirt hanging over dirty heavy blue jeans rolled over black rubber boots, and a beat-up old hat.
Although their neighbors and friends thought both of them was wildly unattractive, the couple was happy in each other and ended up having three children of their own. Linda, their eldest, was born in 1948. Robert, who was called Robbie as a toddler and then almost always Willie,
followed on the 24th of October 1949, and David arrived a year later in 1950. Willie's birth was difficult. He was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, and his family wondered afterwards if that had caused some kind of brain damage due to his aberrant personality and later behavior.
Two of Louise's children, Linda and Dave, who were also round-faced and short, resembled her, while Willie, tall and narrow-faced, with a long pointed nose, looked like his father. All his life people would say that Robert Willie Picton was rat-faced. Louise and Leonard did not take good care of their farm. Animals went in and out of their house, their barn, and all over the property.
They had chickens, ducks, dogs, pigs and cows. All the animals left huge piles of manure that no one in the family cared to clean up. Most of the animals were pigs. As you might know, dear listener, pigs are the closest relative to humans, aside from chimpanzees. I mention this because the feces left by pigs smell very much like that left by humans.
The stench of piles of pig manure is almost like a gas attack. It stings your nose and clogs the back of your throat. When exposed to it for long enough, you start to smell as well, which is what happened to the Picton children, who ended up smelling of shit, as well as walking around in clothing smeared with manure and unidentified stains.
To absolutely no one's surprise, the children, especially the boys, were ruthlessly bullied at school. Willy had a particularly rough time at school. In addition to having a rat-like face, smelling like shit, and wearing rags, he had serious trouble understanding what was being taught in class.
His teacher decided Willie needed to be held back and repeat the second year of grade school. Like all the other kids, Willie had to take the standard education tests. By the end of his second try at grade two, he was performing at an quote-unquote average level.
By the time he was ready for grade three, in the fall of 1958, the school made a decision to place Willie in a class for slow students. He remained in special education for the rest of his years in school, even after transferring to a different public school, Mary Hill Elementary in Port Coquitlam.
The special ed classes, as they were known, usually had fewer students and more help from teachers, and his tests did show slight improvements year over year in both reading and arithmetic, from outright failure to bare passes in most courses. Robert's teachers at Maryhill Elementary
nudged him in the direction of occupational classes in high school, blue-collar jobs that would not require a high level of education or training. And Robert ended up following his teacher's advice when he turned 13 and moved on to Grade 8 at Maryhill Secondary School in September 1963. As dawn broke over the seven seas, the pirates of the Crimson Galleon set sail for adventure.
But there was one problem: paperwork. Mountains of it. Filing, invoices, you name it. "This work can't fit for a pilot." Luckily, their captain had an idea. She used the smart buying tools on Amazon Business so they could work more efficiently and get back to doing what they do best.
I know, right? Amazon Business, your partner for smart business buying. Millions of people have lost weight with personalized plans from Noom. Like Evan, who can't stand salads and still lost 50 pounds. Salads generally for most people are the easy button, right? For me, that wasn't an option. I never really was a salad guy. That's just not who I am. But Noom worked for me. Get your personalized plan today at Noom.com.
Real Noom user compensated to provide their story. In four weeks, the typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results may vary. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. As a family man with three kids, I know firsthand how extremely difficult it is to make time for self-care. But it's good to have some things that are non-negotiable. For some, that could be a night out with the boys, chugging beers and having a laugh.
For others, it might be an eating night. For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever.
If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Everyone needs someone to talk to, even psychopaths, even your humble host. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp.
Visit BetterHelp.com slash SerialKiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash SerialKiller. In 1963, when Willie was 14 and Dave 13, their parents bought a new parcel of land on the far eastern side of Port Coquitlam.
Coquitlam itself was expanding so quickly that the city had expropriated the original Picton homestead on Cape Horn for a new highway and housing developments. Linda did not go with them. She could not waste to get away from the family. By far the smartest one in the family, Linda finally made her escape.
She left her grade 8 class at public school in Port Coquitlam at Christmas and moved in with relatives in Vancouver, attending Lord Bing High School in the city's Dunbar area, a comfortable neighborhood close to the University of British Columbia. After leaving, she had as little to do with her family as possible.
Louise and Leonard paid a family called the Mernickle $18,000 for 40 acres of low-lying property at 993 Dominion Avenue, on the eastern edge of Port Coquitlam, about six kilometers from the Dawes Hill homestead. They had their old blue and white farmhouse pried off its foundations.
lifted onto a flatbed and towed over to Dominion, where the neighborhood was still rural. Later they hauled a Dutch-style hip-roofed barn from a property a few houses down on Dominion Avenue and resettled it behind the farmhouse. It did not take long before the Picton's new farm was just as slovenly as the old. The family kept about 700 pigs and hundreds of chickens,
There were several sheds and barns on the place, and animals were allowed to run in and out of most of them as well as in and out of the farmhouse. Willie and Dave were expected to get up very early each morning to feed the pigs. They came home from school at noon to feed them again, and did it again after school and before bed at night. The Picton brothers worked so hard on the farm they often missed school altogether.
There was no improvement of personal hygiene involved in the move. The farmhouse had running water, but no shower. Once a week, sometimes less often, the family took a bath. They did this using the quote-unquote traditional method of using the same bath water for all the family members. First, the father would take his bath in a tub of clean water.
His wife would follow, then the eldest son, then the youngest. By then, the water would look more like mud than water. Louise was known around town as a brash and exceptionally ugly old woman. She always wore the same clothes, had no teeth, had a high piercing voice that was very difficult to understand due to having no teeth, and she did not spend a calorie on housekeeping.
While the outside areas of the farm were cluttered with manure and garbage, the inside of the farmhouse was no better. It was literally a pigsty.
In the kitchen, it was difficult to see the counter for all the dirt and dishes. The floor was covered in slop, dirt, and animal droppings. Old newspapers and moldy remains of food were all over the place, and there were no furniture anywhere. The living room had a filthy mattress in it, and the bedrooms contained little but filthy mattresses and garbage.
as i said earlier louise ran the farm by the time of the move to dominion leonard was an old man of seventy-seven he usually slept or sat on an old chair outside the house
By the early 1970s, the Picton brothers' work patterns had become established. Willie was working as an apprentice meat cutter, while Dave worked on demolition and construction sites. They were still living at home, managing all the farm chores, while Willie spent any extra time he had tinkering with cars, trucks, and farm machinery.
He was also doing all the family's hog and cattle butchering, sometimes as many as two dozen animals a day. Willie was awkward with girls, but not Dave. By 1972, he had a steady girlfriend, Sandy Feilauer, who lived just north of the Harvey's Blueberry Farm on Devon Road.
Sandy was a beautiful girl, with blue eyes, long pale blonde hair, and high cheekbones. She had a gentle manner, and was liked by everyone who knew her. No one really understood why she fell for Dave Pickton, who was only five feet five inches tall, sported a rough beard, and was almost as unkempt in appearance as his older brother. He was, however, very confident, and very handy.
Sandy quit school after completing Grade 8 and went to work in a door factory. On the 14th of April 1973, when she was just 17 and Dave was 22, Sandy moved into the Picton farmhouse with Dave. She found herself sharing it with Leonard, Louise, Willie and two hired hands, elderly men who managed the barns.
Sandy later told people that Willie slept upstairs, and sometimes there were six or seven extra people staying in the house, which was larger than it looked, about forty-five feet across and forty-two feet deep, with a small room about ten by twelve feet added at the western end. It had a full basement and a second floor.
On the roadside, the main floor held a living room with a fireplace and a large kitchen that faced Dominion Avenue. Along the back of the house, facing the barn, were three bedrooms and a bathroom. There were two doors into the house, one at the front and one at the side. Upstairs were three more bedrooms, while the basement held one other bedroom, almost always used for the hired hands.
By 1973, Leonard Pickton was 86 years old and too riddled with dementia to recognize anyone. It had been many years since Leonard had any influence with his family. Quiet and mercilessly bullied by his wife, he kept out of everyone's way. On the 11th of January 1974, Sandy gave birth to a girl they named Tammy.
A year and a half later, Douglas John was born. Everyone always called him DJ. Even with two babies, Sandy started every morning at six and worked like every other farmhand on the property until about eleven at night. That meant hiring babysitters to keep an eye on the kids.
Along with Willie, who had given up his meat-cutting job and was now driving a truck part-time for BC Electric, Sandy worked in the barns feeding and cleaning the animals, shipping them to the slaughterhouse and helping to collect animals from the auction. Having enough hogs and beef cattle on hand to meet the demand from their customers meant a trip to the livestock auctions every week.
This was a family affair, and thus led by the matriarch, Louise. In these years, from 1973 to 1977, there would be as many as 700 hogs on the farm and 120 head of cattle. The farm could not generate enough income from the animals to support everybody, which meant Dave would continue to work in construction and demolition.
But he also saw an opportunity in the topsoil business. He realized he could simply remove it from the farm and sell it to farmers, gardeners and people building new homes in the developments that were springing up all around them in Port Coquitlam. He bought a ramp truck, a truck with a rear ramp that lowered, allowing other vehicles to be pulled up onto the back.
so he could cart a bulldozer around to jobs to deliver the soil and spread it. He went into business with Sandy's brother, Sigmund, and they called their new operation DNS Bulldozing. To this day, a major part of his business remains hauling soil and fill, and the name remains the same.
During these years, Willys, who I am going to call Robert from here on out, life seemed to be Spartan at best. He did not smoke or drink. He did not hang out in bars. He did not date, never had a girlfriend, but he had finally managed to get out from under his mother's yoke. When she nagged and yelled at him, he no longer humbly acquiesced to her demands, but simply told her to shut up.
In 1978, Leonard became sick. It was cancer and he died at 91 on the 1st of January 1978, not long after the diagnosis. Sandy and Dave, who had never married, were not getting along well, mostly because he had met other women and had their eye on them. Sandy finally moved out with the two children.
This was a huge loss for Robert, who worshipped her. In fact, he told anyone who would listen afterwards that he had asked her to marry him, but she turned him down. And then the piggery barns burned down, destroying at least 600 pigs. Robert spent all his spare time trying to rebuild them, but never finished the job. The next year, 1979, was not any easier. By now, Louise was sick,
and again the diagnosis was cancer as she became weaker and more in pain it was robert who fed bathed diapered and dressed her until she was moved to hospital for her last few weeks where she died at sixty seven on the first of april that year
Losing his mother was very difficult for Robert. He had always been a mama's boy, and even though he had in later years managed to stand up to her, he had never stopped loving her. For Dave's part, he didn't bat an eye about losing Sandy or his mother. Soon after Louise died, his new girlfriend, Vicky Evans, moved into the house.
Sandy's parting with Dave had been amicable, and she would bring the children to visit him once or twice a month. While his younger brother Dave never had trouble getting romantically involved with women, Robert remained forever single and awkward. Local women found him harmless enough, even kind at times, but he stank of shit and garbage, and everyone agreed he was very weird.
He would stare at women for long periods of time. If they talked to him, he would answer extremely awkwardly in his grating voice. No one knew what really went on behind his beady eyes. By then, in the early 1980s, Robert lived in his own small burrowed. He had an aptitude for mechanics and a passion for cars and trucks, which explained the many pieces of scrap and old cars on the farm.
By the early 1990s, Picton Farm looked like a municipal dump. Spills from the trucks and heavy equipment covered the old laneway, the one they called Piggery Road, that ran from the front entrance on Dominion Avenue through the property to the back. Piles of crushed glass, pavement and dirt, along with odd bits of machinery and other junk, littered the road, infuriating Robert.
He was always shoving it out of the way, but what really got to him was the crushed glass which cut the tires of his vehicles. Dave just laughed it off, which made Robert even angrier. Finally, after one particularly violent argument, Dave told Robert to leave the farmhouse and find another place to stay. He did not care where he went, just to get out.
Robert made a bed on top of a freezer in a shed on the property and stayed there for several months. But soon Dave had worked out a solution that suited them both. Because equipment was being stolen from the farm, it made sense to buy a couple of motorhomes to park on the farm. That way, someone could stay there while the work was going on in order to keep an eye on everything.
Robert could have one of the motorhomes on the farm, until they worked out something more permanent. His choice was a small, boxy Dodge Fargo DeSoto motorhome. The only door opened into the driver's and passenger's seat area.
Behind these was a narrow corridor dividing two bench seats and a table from a counter with a stove, sink, and refrigerator. A tiny shower, toilet, and sink, and a narrow closet were beyond the table area, opposite a larger closet, and at the end were a pair of narrow beds on either side of the corridor, with a cabinet between them.
The brothers agreed that this would be Robert's place and moved it closer to the back of the property so that they could stay out of each other's way. Dave was happy. He could party all he liked in the farmhouse without his brother creeping out the other people who hung around. And Robert was happy too. Now he finally had some proper privacy.
As dawn broke over the seven seas, the pirates of the Crimson Galleon set sail for adventure. But there was one problem. Paperwork. Mountains of it. Filing, invoices, you name it. This work ain't fit for a pirate. Luckily, their captain had an idea. She used the smart buying tools on Amazon Business so they could work more efficiently and get back to doing what they do best.
I know, right? Amazon Business, your partner for smart business buying. Need new glasses or want a fresh new style? Warby Parker has you covered. Glasses start at just $95, including anti-reflective, scratch-resistant prescription lenses that block 100% of UV rays.
And so ends part one in the Robert Pickton saga.
We'll continue this series in the next episode. So as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. What follows is a message to my dear Norwegian listeners in Norwegian. Seriemordepodden har lansert i det du hører dette sin sjette episode. Sagaen om Jeffrey Dahmer er ferdig, og en fersk ny følgetong er lansert. Denne gangen om ingen ringere enn BTK.
Finally, I wish to thank you, dear listener, for listening. If you like this podcast, you can support it by donating on patreon.com slash theserialkillarpodcast, by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, facebook.com slash theskpodcast, or by posting on the subreddit theskpodcast. Thank you. Good night.
Good luck.
