Robert Pickton — The Pig Farmer Killer

Robert Pickton was a pig farmer from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, who became the subject of one of the largest serial killer investigations in Canadian history. He is suspected in the deaths of up to 49 women, the majority of them sex workers and drug users from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighborhood — a community whose disappearances had been reported to police for years before Pickton was identified as a suspect. Investigators were criticized for their slow response to missing persons reports from this marginalized community. The investigation gained momentum only after a 1997 tip and then accelerated following a 2002 search of Pickton's farm, which uncovered human remains mixed with animal parts. The farm became a massive forensic excavation site, employing hundreds of investigators and taking years to process. DNA from 33 women was recovered from the property. Evidence suggested victims had been killed in a slaughterhouse-style outbuilding on the farm. Pickton was tried on six counts of second-degree murder in 2007, in a trial that was separated from additional charges for logistical reasons. He was convicted on all six counts and sentenced to life with no possibility of parole for 25 years — the maximum sentence available under the charges. The remaining 20 charges were stayed by prosecutors after the conviction. He was beaten to death by a fellow inmate at Mission Institution in August 2023. His case prompted a national public inquiry into the systemic failures that allowed so many women to go missing and unprotected. The inquiry, which concluded in 2019, issued sweeping recommendations about how Indigenous and marginalized women are treated by police and the justice system, and sparked the national conversation that led to Canada's formal recognition of a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women.