Pig Farmer Accused of Killing 26 Women in Canada.

[Major Blood]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/2...canada.article

NEW WESTMINSTER, British Columbia -- Years after their loved ones disappeared from the seedy streets of Vancouver's red-light district, families learned some of the gruesome details of how the women allegedly were killed.

Some relatives fled the courtroom; others stayed, but sat in tears as prosecutors detailed the case against Robert Pickton.

Pickton, a 56-year-old pig farmer, showed no emotion during Monday's session. Clean-shaven with a bald crown and shoulder-length hair, he sat in a specially built defendant's box surrounded by bulletproof glass.

Arrested five years ago, Pickton has been charged with killing 26 women and has pleaded not guilty to the six counts covered the first trial. The other 20 counts will be heard at a later trial.

Prosecutor Derrill Prevett stunned the courtroom by saying Pickton told investigators, including an undercover officer planted in his jail cell, that he had slain 49 women.

''I was going to do one more and make it an even 50,'' Prevett quoted Pickton as telling investigators. ''I made my own grave by being sloppy.''

Pickton told one officer that he would be ''nailed to the cross'' and went on to describe himself as a mass murderer who deserved to be on death row, Prevett said.

Defense lawyer Peter Ritchie told jurors that Pickton did not kill or participate in the murders of the six women covered in the first trial. If convicted, Pickton faces life in prison. Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976.

Ritchie asked the jury to pay close attention to Pickton's demeanor in the videotapes with his interrogators, in particular his level of sophistication. He asked the jury to listen closely to details regarding Pickton's relationship with his brother, David.

The brothers reared pigs on the family's 17-acre farm outside Vancouver, where investigators say the Picktons threw drunken raves with prostitutes and drugs. After Robert Pickton's arrest in February 2002, health officials issued a tainted meat advisory to neighbors who may have bought pork from his farm, concerned that it may have contained human remains.

Ritchie did not address Pickton's alleged murder confessions in his opening statement.

''This case will unfold slowly; this case is complicated,'' he said.

Before opening arguments, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice James Williams warned the seven male and five female jurors that some of the evidence and witness testimony would be horrific.

''Some of the evidence to which you will be exposed to during the trial will be shocking and is likely to be upsetting. I must ask each of you to deal with that the best you can,'' he said.

As some of the initial details were described later, some relatives of the victims to cried and left the courtroom. Some family members of victim Marnie Frey fled when prosecutors said the jawbone and several teeth later identified as hers were discovered on the farm. Her brother, Rick Frey, remained, but sat in tears.

Prevett said the government would prove that Pickton murdered six women, butchered their remains and then disposed of them. He told the jury that as a successful pig farmer, Pickton had the expertise, equipment means to dispose of the victims' remains.

When police first went out to investigate at the farm in 2002, they found two skulls in a bucket inside a freezer in Pickton's mobile home, Prevett said.

DNA testing would later identify the skulls as those belonging to Sereena Abotsway and Andrea Joesbury, two missing sex-workers. The other four women covered in the trial are Mona Wilson, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Frey. They were among hundreds of sex-trade workers and drug addicts who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighborhood in the 1990s.

''The heads of the individuals had been cut in two, vertically,'' Prevett said. ''With the skulls were left and right hands and the front parts of the left and right feet.''

He said both skulls had bullet wounds caused by 22-caliber bullets. He said investigators found a Smith & Wesson rifle on a shelf in the laundry room of Pickton's mobile home.

Prevett said the rifle was sheathed in plastic and a sex toy was attached to the end. The combined DNA of Pickton and another victim, Wilson, were found on the sex toy, he said.

The prosecution is expected to call about 240 witnesses, including relatives of the victims.

If found guilty of more than 14 charges, Pickton would become the worst convicted killer in Canadian history, after Marc Lepine, who gunned down 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnic in Montreal in 1989 before shooting himself.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Vancouver police have come under intense criticism by community activists and advocates for sex trade workers who claim authorities were slow to search for the missing women. Authorities countered that their resources were limited and the magnitude of the case overwhelming.

A police task force says it has located at least 102 women who were believed to be missing. Another 67 women remain on the list, as well as three unidentified DNA profiles from the Pickton farm.

Frey's mother, Lynn, was lined up with other relatives outside the courthouse early Monday, hoping to get one of the 35 seats reserved for family members of the victims.

''It's been a long haul,'' she told The AP. Her daughter was 25 when she disappeared in August 1997. ''I need answers, then hopefully I can carry on with my journey and my life, and let Marnie be at rest.''

AP

What really wierds me out about this is the fact that for about 10 years i lived within a 20 minute walking distance from his farm...