Robert Pickton: The Pig Farmer Killer

hello everybody welcome back to another episode of the casual criminals this one's all about the pig farm killer oh hello i'm simon uh the host here what happens is callum has put me together what is can only be described as a hefty script my printer told me it was 17 pages as printing this out so buckle in for a bit of a long ride today uh obviously this is one of our long episodes we also have short episodes there are two a week so if you're not subscribed to this podcast or youtube channel however you consume the casual criminals make sure you are i've got an empty cup of coffee there's about half a centimeter of coffee in this cup which is not enough to keep it going so at some point there's going to be an edges here while i go fill up my coffee in a previous episode i mentioned something about you know disposing of bodies with pigs like that there was a movie i think it was snatch or one of these uh and people were all in the comments telling me what movie it was and i've already subsequently forgotten but well today we're talking a lot about i think pigs and pigs eating bodies and stuff actually i have absolutely no idea to be honest because what happens here is calum writes me something 17 pages of something and i've never read it before so we're gonna learn together let's just jump in [Music] canadians enjoy a funny reputation around the world we know they're a bit like americans only milder sort of i would one thing that always amused me there's like a a map of the world how like america or an american uh someone from the usa sees the rest of the world and canada was just america's hat it's the same basic recipe just with about 75 percent less guns a dollop of socialized healthcare and a sprinkle of french zest for a sophisticated flavor but much as our canadian friends enjoy this more sensible reputation there's callum come on it's very sensible to own a ton of guns i don't know what you're talking about it's very sensible to be able to purchase an ar-15 in walmart i don't know you probably can't purchase an ar-15 a walmart i think i told the story before on casual criminals i went to walmart in the usa and you could purchase a machete for three dollars that surprised me there's plenty going on north of the border which i'm sure they'd like to sweep under the rug that much will be clear by the end of today's episode because today we're exploring probably the most infamous case in canadian history the story of the pig farm killer while the world has only just finished collectively trying to wrap its head around the strange story of tiger king the zoo owner arrested on suspicion of hiring a hitman canada is still processing the horrific legacy of its own hillbilly prince of crime just like the tragic ballad of joe exotic his story is filled to the brim with drugs sex money and murder i can't believe i i haven't seen it yet but i haven't seen tiger king and i must be the only person in the world who hasn't seen this i do have the excuse and people about simon you've been inside literally for a year because of coronavirus how have you not watched tiger king and i think it's mostly because while i work a lot and also i've got a very young kid who uh leaves me with less less free time than i used to have or would perhaps like surprisingly though the canadian case is far more extreme and fair warning if you happen to be eating pork mince right now you might want to put it aside oh god oh no let's jump in the brothers at the center of the story are two brothers david and robert picton from port coquitlam from uh not far from vancouver here the brothers and their sister linda owned a pig farm which they had inherited from their parents in the 70s not fancying spending the rest of their lives tending to swine the siblings decided to sell off the land to real estate developers piece by piece pocketing a pretty penny in the process yeah because the value of land for building houses on is way more than the value of land for farming like i vaguely have considered building a home like and i look at the price of land and you're like wow this land's super cheap is that oh yeah because you can't build on it and then you look at some other land that is literally hundreds if not thousands of times the price it's like why is this so expensive oh because it's got permission to build a large home on there or series of homes or an estate they started doing this in the early 1980s when the pig industry took a massive hit big pork industry maybe so it became more profitable to just dismantle most of the operation it was a smart decision one single land sale netted the siblings a cool 5 million canadian dollars in the 1980s that is a lot more than 5 canadian 5 million canadian dollars today they're rich is what we're saying they are rich by the mid-1990s they had amassed millions of dollars in property as a result the farm was still operational but only just david and robert had much bigger concerns than attending to the dwindling family business despite being in the mid-40s the two bachelors were massive party animals their reputation in the area for their wild lifestyles which caused plenty of friction with the law over the years foul mouth david was the younger of the two he looked a little bit like robin williams if robin williams had gone into meth dealing rather than comedy oh sh it's like toothless robin williams who looks like a ghost still you'd have to call him the handsome brother because big bro robert looks a bit like moby hey people say i look like moby if moby was into barbecuing roadkill rather than veganism callum this is savage from that someone in the comments the other was like don't image shame people and i was like what i i just read what callum writes and then broadcast it all over the internet and i pay calum so yeah i am kind of responsible i suppose i apologize for that we can thank his unholy monster of a mullet proof that you could be a paper millionaire and still look like you steal shopping trolleys for the scrap metal how did this guy look moby's like famously bold i guess he just really has moby's like facial structure robert smith and anyone who thinks i look like moby is just because i am bald that is the own it's like i the number of times i see on twitter is like hey look i found your twin and it's just a picture of someone who looks is just bald wears glasses and has a beard and i'm like that's just a dude who's got who's bald and has glasses and has a beard the one i used to get like who actually has like a similar facial structure to me it's ralph finds like people like you like ralph finds uh yeah no i get that one because i do look a bit like ralph but these the bald and beard thing is i don't look like him he's just bald and bearded robert's misfortunes didn't end with his hairstyle he was also known for carrying around the unbearable stench of sweater manure oh by the way i want people i i know i'm going on about this i apologize we'll get back to the story whenever someone says this to me like oh you look like johnny sins is another classic just because he's bald um he's a porn star by the way if you are unaware uh and uh anywhere anytime someone says that or says i look like anyone or like binge with babish i'm like yeah no no we're cousins we're cousins i just embrace it i've got hundreds of bald cousins this was partly because he was the one left in charge what was left of the livestock business which he saw to in the evenings after working low-level jobs in david's new businesses during the day yep despite dressing like the head of a biker gang david was actually a fully legitimate businessman he had a few ventures on the go throughout the 80s and 90s mainly a top soil and salvage demolition operation he was also famously paranoid always traveling around with his trusty german shepherd by his side the quirks why would you be involved in like i mean topsoil and demolition doesn't sound like the most although being a demolition person would actually be fairly awesome but if you're super rich do you have to do this the quirks of the brothers can probably be traced back to their troubled upbringing louise picton the matriarch of the family was famously harsh with them she forced the kids to work grueling shifts on the farm from a young age if they refused or otherwise misbehaved they'd be hosed down as punishment that bit of trauma might explain robert's deep-seated aversion to showers he likely got the brunt of all this mistreatment as he was a slow kid in school he was required to attend special education classes after being held back grades he often told his friends in later life how his parents had gifted him a calf to love and care for only to have it slaughtered that why why i mean i don't understand like i understand like punishing a kid not by hosing them down but you know some level of discipline is important i'm not some like montessori school person but it's like why you don't need to be cruel when he was feeling a bit overwhelmed from all this awfulness young robert would climb inside a hollowed-out pig carcass to hide dude again they probably couldn't have helped much with the stench or is his mental well-being to be honest so life wasn't exactly easy growing up on the pixen pig farm the domineering control of their mother persisted until the siblings were well into their twenties it was then that they inherited full ownership of the business their father died in 1977 and their mother just two years later with a bag of cash each and a sack of social dysfunction flung over their shoulders the picton kids went on to lead some pretty colorful in it alex adult lives the piggy palace good time society in 1996 david and robert decided they wanted to share some of their wealth with the community they filed an application for their very own non-profit organization dubbed the piggy palace goodtime society in the application they wrote that their plan was to organize coordinate manage and operate special events functions dances shows and exhibitions on behalf of service organizations sports organizations and other worthy groups it just sounds like they're founding a party organization and getting some like non-profit tax advantages or something maybe it sounds lovely so what kind of charitable fundraisers were they running sports tanks charity auctions community picnics actually no the philanthropic activities of the pictons were a little more r-rated than that we're talking drugged-up raves filled with prostitutes and hells angels all for the good of the community of course if you were stupid enough to accept an invitation to one of these parties you'd have arrived to find that the palace wasn't quite as swanky as buckingham the yards around the farm buildings littered were littered with dilapidated vehicles and piles of rubble from david's demolition and topsail business as you pass through the front gate you'd have spotted the charming sign hanging on it claiming that the property was guarded by an hiv-infected pit bull the dog breed not the wrapper i'm assuming interestingly i you can say that your dog has hiv right because this probably is a canine version of hiv but it's probably not i don't know this is a fact it's probably not transmissible to humans i remember i stayed in an airbnb once and the owner was like oh yeah this is our cat is really sick he's got cat aids i don't like one cat aids really a thing and then he's like i know what you're thinking and no you can't get cat aids you can't get aids from a cat with cat aids at least that's what he told me if there are any virus people listening sound off in the comments can i get cat aids can i get aids from a cat with aids what are we doing here let's get back to the story this was just a sick little joke on the part of the owners of course but it set a nicely menacing tone to match the parties inside you'd then walk through the mud to a converted slaughterhouse where hundreds of rebels would regularly gather for so-called community events it was reported that these events would often descend into violence crystal meth and biker gangs tend to have that effect on on the vibes one unidentified party goer once told the canadian television network i've actually had to take friends to emergency rooms because they've gone to the booze can after we left the bar my one friend looked at a girl wrong and ended up getting beat up so bad the bouncers picked him up and were beating him more as they were throwing him out the door throwing him on the pavement outside yeah i mean that was pretty bad english i apologize for my stumbling over my words but we get the idea i'm told that booze can is canuck slang for a shady or illegal bar and they don't come much shadier than this when the city intervened to try and have the parties shut down on the grounds of illegal liquor sales the brothers reaffirmed they were raising money for the community you can't stop us having our drug and sex parties think of the children strangely some in the community seem to agree although most people complained about the rowdy parties of up to 1 700 guests several long-term residents told the papers that the picton brothers were hard-working and generous and donated a lot of money to charitable courses around town that doesn't make your above mean you're above the law though does it i mean you can get some slack and maybe people won't report you to the police but when you get reported to the police by someone the police can't be like oh no you're a good dude you give to charity he's like no you have some sort of crazy drug party even if this made up for all the noise and substance abuse there was some stuff going on behind the scenes which i'm sure even the most tolerant neighbors wouldn't have approved of er scene so it's clearly not all good times at the piggy palace david and robert's idea of altruism turned down to be illegally selling whiskey to bikers and sex workers and they've drawn the irritated eye of the law as a result but you'll be amazed at how much the local police were willing to let slide case in point robert's arrest in 1997. it was no secret that the older of the two brothers was a big fan of curb crawling i don't even know what is that twice a week he would transport okay we're gonna find out he'll transfort a truck full of waste barrels to a processing plant in the lower east side of vancouver where the employees referred to him as the pig man the area is one of the most deprived in all of canada which for a time had worse hiv rates than north america drugs and prostitution were rife making it a perfect playground for a guy like rob as a regular in the area he would pick up prostitutes oh does curb crawling mean like to pick up a prostitute i see apparently we're not supposed to call them prostitutes anymore they're sex workers uh so come on callum get it together and i also should know better on other occasions he would have his biker gang friends bring them along to parties it takes a desperate soul to accept the invitation of a creepy stinking mulleted dude to come back to his slaughterhouse which is why robert tended to target women with crippling drug addictions the piggy palace became known as a place to score an easy fix even if it meant a pretty considerable risk to your safety one woman who lived to regret visiting told a reporter that farm was the dregs of the earth it was a hell hole you can say to someone don't go but if they are an addict the addiction overcomes the senses police had known about the farm for some time but nothing changed one weekend in 1997 a woman wendy lynn ice tetter fell into that exact trap she had been working as a sex worker in vancouver's lower east side at the time and was struggling with substance abuse robert pulled up alongside her on the way back from the plant and gave her the usual offer drugs party place to sleep shook him up on his offer and hopped in the car back at the farm the two slept together before the mullet had wonder started acting strange he brought out a pair of handcuffs and forced them onto wendy's left arm she wisely decided to opt out of this total game and shoved robert away in response he drew a knife and stabbed wendy in the stomach things have escalated quickly she was no meek little victim though she managed to grab the knife off her attacker and stab him right back before making a run for it good for her she was found later that night by a driver on the nearby motorway he picked her up and took her to the hospital when she arrived the police were already there investigating another stabbing quite a coincidence as it turned out robert had beaten her there and was currently getting treated for his own wound in the emergency room fancy seeing you here he had told the authorities that a hitchhiker woman had tried to rob him the police took a conflicting statement from wendy but she was still under the effects of the drug so wasn't at her most coherent this meant that they had obvious reason to question her story but it was soon backed up with some concrete evidence any doubt over who initiated the tit-for-tat stabbings was dispelled when they found the handcuff keys in robert's pocket then they fit the shackle hanging off of wendy's wrist dude come on i know i'm always saying on the catch a criminalist criminals just do better this is a good example of that come on with that robert picton was arrested and charged with attempted murder the officers collected his clothes and boots as evidence and once he recovered they carted him off to jail surely it would be a pretty clear-cut case right it should definitely be clear-cut this guy should go to prison when your handcuff victim rocks up to the same hospital and you have the key in your pocket you're to use the legal terminology totally screwed but unfortunately not since wenzi was a known and addict and was high at the time of the attack the prosecution decided that her testimony would be wouldn't be reliable enough to secure a conviction that is very unfortunate on january 27 1998 the charges were is that were stayed indefinitely robert picton was allowed to walk free and the piggy palace parties continued on bringing joy and prosperity to the community for years to come sarcasm sometimes doesn't come across in text but that was definitely sarcastic the piggy palace good times weapons raid but that wasn't the end of the palace's trouble with the law for some reason the cops were reluctant to let these hillbilly humanitarians go about their fundraising in peace all because of a few little stabbings and brutal beatings in 2000 they were successful in crashing the party for good and the piggy palace closed down even though they couldn't legally hold events there the brothers continued to make it their base of operations likewise rumors continued to circulate of strange happenings at the farm and it never lost its dangerous reputation among the working women of vancouver several visitors to the farm had started to notice some strange things which suggested that there might be something in the rumors in 1999 a close female friend of the pictons thought she spotted some bloody female clothing in bags behind a trailer along with discarded aboriginal id cards she reported what she saw to bill hiscox a salvage worker in the employ of the pictons and he in turn went to the police why didn't you just go straight to the police be like yeah i'm going to go to the guy who works for them be like what if he's in on it he might murder me i'd immediately just be like let's go to the police anonymously tip them off whatever that's what i would do i don't okay maybe there's more to this anyway they told him that his report legally only amounted to hearsay as it was secondhand information to get a warrant they needed something more tangible like the original person going to the police for god's sake ok well if it's tangible you want how about this later that year the police received an anonymous tip telling them that a woman named lynn ellingson had gone to the farm and spotted the body of a woman hanging from a hook in the slaughterhouse however when the police went to question her she vehemently denied seeing anything i should add that lynn was a struggling single mother who relied on robert pigton to supply her with drugs the police brought their concerns to robert nonetheless who agreed to let them search the farm but the officers decided to pass come on police you have one job it's catching criminals this is part of it once again nothing was done even though robert was already strongly suspected of attempting to murder a prostitute the police just decided to leave him to run his business this is especially infuriating when you consider the context it's infuriating already callum i get the fear i'm just to be more infuriated around 65 women had gone missing from the red light districts of vancouver since the late 1970s seriously guys uh when the authorities started properly tracking the statistics it was especially dangerous around the lower east side where uh wendy lynn isetta had been working at the time of her ordeal things had only gotten worse in the 90s despite public demand for action with dozens of women disappearing between 1995 and 2001. despite the police's baffling in action at least the farm was on their radar in the end they finally took their opportunity to search it when an ex-employee named scott chubb reported seeing illegal guns on the property the the woman hanging from a hook in the slaughterhouse was not what got them to search it it was illegal guns all right then the detective who interviewed him probably tried his best to dismiss it all as hearsay so he could clock off early and go grab a beer standard vancouver pd procedure but scott was adamant good and so warranted the royal canadian mounted police better known as the mounties descended on the farm on the 5th of february 2002 in their ridiculous red outfits wielding hockey sticks attack grizzlies on standby yes i refuse to deal with anything but national stereotypes it means a grizzly bear pictures from the day show a long line of police cars and news vans parked out front of the property they did manage to find some illegal guns at the farm and although both brothers were arrested only robert ended up with any charge against his name it was hardly a surprise that the hillbilly party ranch had some illegal weapons but that wasn't all the cops found during a search of robert's trailer they found something which would be very interesting to the detectives working on the disappearances a prescription inhaler with the name of one of the missing women on the side this was enough to involve the british columbia missing women investigation a joint venture between the mounties and the vancouver pd founded in 2001 to look into all the disappearances are there mounted police like the fbi or something this sounds like you know the fbi working with the local police like the federal agency or whatever we call that in the uk like mi5 or scotland yard or something like that i think this was also something that was explained to me in the comments like everyone was wondering i was wondering what does scotland yard do are they the british fbi so i know more i swear i know more about american police because i just watched so many like there's so many american cop shows the task force had a lot in their of cases on their plate by this point most of them women who barely existed to normal society and whose disappearances had gone largely unheralded save for the grief of a few family members as a clearer picture of what was going on at the farm for all those years emerged any hope they still had for a happy reunion with their loved ones was about to be shattered i mean one i wouldn't hold on to a ton of hope the full search for the moment the brothers were free to go after posting bail for robert's weapons charges he was kept under close police surveillance probably on account of the stabbing in guns and missing women's stuff the farm was now cordoned off as a crime scene meaning all the pig man could do was go about his days knowing full well what the police were about to discover the search began on the 6th of february just one day after the firearms raid the federal agents handed over control to their colleagues on the project even-handed task force who picked apart every inch of the farm for clues the picture they were painting would soon turn into something straight out of a horror film their discovery started with a pair of id cards belonging to two of the missing women these were found in robert's trailer alongside used syringes containing a mysterious blue substance there were also pieces of clothing jewelry and makeup strewn around dna testing would take some time but it was safe to assume that these were not the property of the subject unless he had a fledgling drag career that slipped the attention of the law the hillbilly drag queen theory was thoroughly debunked with the next discovery in a freezer located in robert's workshop officers found the severed heads hands and feet of two women these were serena abbotsway and mona wilson their killer had barely even tried to hide the crimes i don't understand this criminals like the police are closing in i mean i i know destroying evidence is a crime and all that but dude finding a head in the freezer i mean that is like the worst case scenario on the 22nd of february robert picton was once again arrested and charged with two counts of murder in the first degree he was carted off to jail and held without bail while the police went about establishing the extent of his crimes there were plenty of questions left unanswered by the preliminary search after all like why are their heads in your freezer one which stands out is the mystery of the dildo gun oh my yes you heard that correctly why you must wonder did the authorities find a 22 caliber revolver with a dildo fastened over the barrel and one round shot right through it pikton would later decl claim that like a deranged x-rated matlock he'd improvise the device as a makeshift silencer cracking idea for the next bond movie if any screenwriters happen to be listening more importantly though in trying to ascertain just how many victims they should be looking for at the farm the police cooked up a clever scheme they would send an undercover detective into jail to share a cell with picton and see if he would give up any details given what we know about the killer's personal hygiene i hope the officer got ignited for his bravery as we mentioned before robert wasn't the brightest his brother described him as overly trusting and gullible so the police's gambit it worked like a charm he gladly shared details of his crimes with his new roommate even getting a kick out of being the center of attention you are a bit of a dim dem aren't you mate robert gleefully told stories behind his murder souvenirs which helped in identifying some of the victims in his mind he was set to become a big celebrity when the news broke his only regret was that he got sloppy with his crimes and never got to cap off his kill count at a nice round number as for the total number of murders he did manage to commit robert boasted i got a murder charge on me and 48 more 48 more to come this got horrific excavations now the challenge for investigators was to find the physical evidence to make sure every one of those murder charges could be slapped on the slack jawed slaughterer yes i've given him another nickname they dug up the yards raked through all of the rooms and even dismantled the buildings personal effects from dozens more victims turned up along the way conveyor belts and other machinery were brought in to help sort through the dirt and the piles of rubble left from the salvage business all in all a total of 383 000 cubic feet was sifted through in search of evidence and the farm became the largest crime scene in canadian history i'd also be surprised if it didn't turn up the most individual fragments of evidence too all in all there were six hundred thousand separate exhibits and two 000 dna samples this was mainly because picton hadn't buried his victims whole it's thought that he dismembered the bodies before forcing the pieces through a meat grinder and throwing whatever was left to the pigs amazingly that's not the most appalling part dude how much worse does this can this possibly be in 2004 investigators reported that some of the ground human remains may have even been sold to the public mixed in with pork oh god i don't want to i was planning on having burgers tonight not anymore oh no i'm supposed to give content warning before stuff like that my bad to be to be fair you're listening to a podcast called the casual criminalist in the true crime section i think you know what you're in for once the samples were recovered the hard part began forensic anthropologists were faced with the task of sorting through all those thousands of small pieces of bone hair and teeth to try and determine exactly who they belonged to it was no easy task as some of the samples were heavily decomposed due to both the time they had been left in there and the method of disposal some were more intact though and provide a deeper insight into robert's sick methods he had cut apart some victims skulls and placed their hands and feet inside dude the families of the women who had gone missing from vancouver were asked to provide dna samples to make the process easier however some of the women sadly had no relations to contact a forensic toxicologist was able to ascertain that many of the victims had been using drugs when they died both prescription and illicit this was backed up by the needles and other drug paraphernalia in robert's trailer this process ran all the way through until november with each new positive identification robber was hit with another round of murder charges on the 2nd of april he was charged with the deaths of jacob macdonald heather bottomley and diane rock on the 9th andrea joe's brew and brenda wolfe the day after in september georgina papen patricia johnson helen hallmark jennifer firminger in october tanya hulk sherry irvin ingerhall and heather chinook these were the 15 victims the robber was officially charged with by the end of 2002. not quite the full 49 he claimed to have killed but it was a start it was around this time that lynn ellingson came forward to reveal that actually she had seen that body hanging in the slaughterhouse back in 1999 and now she wanted to tell the truth we hope someone gave her a medal had she come forward sooner or the police had just gone ahead and searched the damn farm ten women's lives would have been saved this is a recurring theme on casual criminalist where people witnesses police don't take some action and then just these horrific crimes continue and it's always like come on another blast from the past came when officers re-examined the small matter of robert's botched murder from 1998. as i mentioned his clothing and boots from that day were seized and when they were recovered from storage in 2004 forensic analysts were actually able to match samples found on them to two more missing women these joined the fresh batch of charges laid against pickton in 2005. for the murders of andrea borhaban marie frey tiffany drew cara ellis deborah lynn jones kerry koski sarah devries angela jardine wendy crawford cynthia felix and diane melnick and one final unidentified woman the total number of murder charges now sat at 27. although police were fully convinced that he had been speaking truthfully about his 49 total victims they were unable to find any conclusive evidence for the rest they'd already spent over 70 million dollars just to get this far it's thought that his murderous career might have stretched back decades however all of the confirmed cases occurred between 1995 and 2001. they might not have managed to prove everything they had wanted but even one of these charges would have been enough to let prosecutors pursue the maximum possible sentence with 27 to go on they prepared to prosecute the pig farm killer the trial the court case began at the supreme court of british columbia on the 30th of january 2006. robert picton entered a not guilty plea for every one of the 27 charges against him meaning the whole thing would go to trial the following year in case you're not familiar with this whole crime and punishment thing 27 murders is actually quite a lot had all the charges been heard in the same trial the jury would have set aside their own lives for about two years just to take part and it's not like in courtroom tv dramas real jury duty is filled with so much tedium that two years of it would drive any reasonable person insane it's also like massively disruptive to your life like if someone if i was like called to jury duty fortunately when i live they don't have juries like which i mean i don't know i kind of like the idea of being trialed by your peers but here i live in the czech republic and everything's just done by judges so you don't have jury duty which is convenient not that i'd be a very good jurist because my check is not that great so over the course of 2006 the judge went about whittling down the charges and evidence into a more manageable package in the end it was decided that the first trial would go ahead with only the six strongest charges the case of the unidentified jane doe was even thrown out entirely the remaining six charges were the murders of wilson abbotsway papin wolfe frey and josebury when the main part of the trial began on january 22nd 2007 the jury heard how picton had lured each of these women into his trailer offering them heroin and other drugs before ending their lives and brutally disposing of their bodies we already know that he used a knife to kill some of his victims but during the trial some witnesses revealed more horrific details of his murder methods scott chubb the guy called the police about the illegal guns had once gotten an unsolicited murder tip from his boss robert told him that one of the easiest ways to kill a drug addicted prostitute is to inject window shield washer into her veins that explained the blue substance in the syringes another witness revealed how picton had bragged about strangling his victims to death he would bind them kill them and then process them just like he was told to do with livestock this meant draining the blood from the bodies removing the organs and dumping the remains into the pig pens why are these people not like if some dude came up to me it was like hey mate um you know i've got some experience in killing people and i just thought i'll give you some tips on how to get rid of them i'd be like go to the police i'm going to the police are you pay are you not what the mollison maniac's tongue had clearly loosened up over the years as he grew more confident in his crimes his behaviors had likewise changed over the years picton had grown progressively more bold as his killing career matured own with only one confirmed murder in 1995 and seven in 2001. these were all just allegations at this point of course but surely a conviction was inevitable right when callum uses the right question mark thing in his scripts i'm always i always brace myself for disappointment but this guy murdered dozens of people he's going to jail and if they had death penalty in canada which i'm almost certain they don't he would be getting the death penalty well on the 9th of december 2007 the jury returned their verdict not guilty of first-degree murder but 100 guilty of second-degree murder i'd go in there for a second for those unclear on the law the difference between these two types of murder is intent if you plan to kill someone in advance or do so as part of another crime like kidnapping that counts as first-degree murder in canada well wait he intended to kill them that is not without doubt and he did it as part of another crime drug use and or soliciting prostitution no if you intentionally kill someone on the spur of the moment that second degree that's not what's going on here is it surely given everything i've said so far the jury must have made a mistake i mean if the guy boasted to his mates about his favorite murder methods you have to assume a fair bit of premeditation went into the crimes especially when you've done it a second time you know what's going down but remember pikton wasn't short of pocket change he had enough to get a decent legal team on his side his defense went about picking apart the prosecution's evidence by portraying poor robert as a slow-witted simpleton manipulated into his confession by the nasty police it's what i like to call the forrest gump defense his lead counsel adrian brooks repeated during the closing argument that robert wasn't the sharpest tool in the slaughterhouse a series of witnesses had been called to prove as much with the aim being to discredit the confession of robert himself so let's just go on the numerous bits of evidence one of his neighbors testified that he was kind of a hilly billy type half backward and not as intelligent as the most of us his own ex-sister-in-law told the court that he would often struggle to keep up with the jokes and complex conversations brooks laid into his client's intelligence again and again before claiming that the video evidence of his jailhouse confessions couldn't be trusted to paraphrase johnny cochran if the man's a dimwit you must acquit that makes no sense whatsoever i mean if he's of a mental capacity where he can't stand trial yes sure he's a mental capacity he can't stand trial but this guy's just dumb some people commit crimes all the time i'd say dumb people commit more crimes using a poster board he showed links between what picton was told by investigators the day of his arrest and what he said in the cell the day after there were some stark similarities which the defense claimed was evidence that this simple little hillbilly boy was just parroting back what he had been accused of by the detectives apparently he was so worried about his farm and his family that the mullet maniac was willing to confess to anything just to make the investigation go away the poor dear so if that were the case what did they have to say about all the human remains when you boil it down they were basically saying that on a busy farm like that a man like robert picton couldn't have done it all alone he was taking the heat for one or more accomplices who may even have pressured him into participating or taking the blame all of this defense is well and good right but he's killed a lot of people for second-degree murder right so i mean they're not going to have those prison sentences to serve concurrently they're going to be consecutive so even if he gets a few years for each one he's going away forever so why this defense unless the the punishments for second-degree murder can be served consecutively in uh concurrently in canada or something like that but really i mean jail forever it was enough to convince the jury to downgrade the murder conviction to second-degree murder but the judge still seemed pretty convinced of picton's maliciousness he handed out a fittingly harsh sentence life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years that's the absolute maximum penalty possible under canadian law over the next few years picton's defence team would raise appeals all the way up to the canadian supreme court but none of them were successful wow so they really do have to bundle all of them together and he can get 25 years and then he can get parole which is wildly an under punishment in my opinion as for the other murder charges left hanging they were eventually abandoned it was ruled that pursuing them to trial was unnecessary since any convictions wouldn't result in an increase in robert's sentence many of the families were understandably outraged and you have to wonder if his victims had been from less deprived backgrounds would their deaths have gone unanswered like that i think it's very likely that they would have caught him sooner how the police failed the victims i'd say it's a fair enough assumption given how much the police had already failed the victims by this point vancouver deputy police chief doug lapard issued a public apology for the time it took to catch on to the goings-on at the piggy palace he said i wish that the several agencies involved that we could have done it better in so many ways and i wish that more lives would have been saved so on my behalf on behalf of the vancouver police department and all the men and women that worked on the investigation i would say to the families how sorry we all are for your losses and because we did not catch this monster sooner now's all well and good doug but come on it was staring you right in the face so many times and i don't mean to be rude but i had the guy pinned as a serial killer the moment i saw a picture of him callum you can't just be like you're a serial killer because you look like a weirdo how did the police fail to follow up a stabbing and reports of women hanging in the slaughterhouse is a bloody good question well as i mentioned before many of the women who had gone missing were indigenous canadians and most were working as prostitutes they were already fairly invisible to society even before they went missing one woman named sherry rail wasn't even reported missing until three years after her disappearance in 1984. ever since 1991 the people of vancouver had been demanding the police do more to combat their disappearances starting with the first annual women's day memorial march the police had disbanded their first task force to combat the issue back in 1989 and now they basically just told the angry public that there was no evidence of foul play and that the women probably just moved on elsewhere when many of the missing women were alone in the world it was a hard thing to disprove when pigson ramped up his criminal activities in the 90s rumors floated around among the lower east side sex workers were serial killer on the loose the women took it upon themselves to organize into pairs and pass along warnings about violent clients even when they were victimized they rarely trusted the police enough to report the assaults and robberies that they regularly endured their problems this is just this is a huge failure on the part of the police their problems in receiving adequate care and respect from the authorities didn't stop with death either the family of georgia papin first nations canadians told the papers that the victim services department discriminated against them denying the meal and bus tickets during the trial the worst part was that they weren't informed they'd be hearing a traumatic play-by-blade count of georgina's death until they were already entering the courtroom later the family of cara ellis revealed how they had only been given part of her remains and better chase after the authorities for three years to get the rest if you think this all sounds completely awful you're not alone two separate inquiries were set up in response to the case in 2016 the national government issued an investigation into the treatment of missing person cases involving indigenous women and girls four years earlier the british colombian regional government found that their police forces prejudice against sex workers had led to a tragedy of epic proportions yet that would be a fair way to describe it guys they set up a separate branch of the police force dedicated to missing persons cases as a result the appalling irony of the whole thing is that on account of their marginalized lives these women's words couldn't be trusted as evidence in court but their bones could if you were an at-risk woman working on the lower east side the only chance you really had of having your story heard was if it had already come to an end did the others know but we cannot end on that i don't want you walking yet callum there's a bunch more pages i don't want you walking around weeping for the rest of the day how about a bit of conspiracy theory to take the edge off you like conspiracy theories don't you of course you yeah i mean who doesn't love a good conspiracy theory even if it's just on it for this one let's circle back to something said by robert's defense lawyer it does seem a little bit strange that the remains of 27 women could be scattered around a busy farm without anyone being involved this was the hub of david's business as well after all both brothers lived there despite being the older brother robert was largely subservient to david dave was the brighter of the two and he mostly ordered his big brother around as audrey stebanuk the court witness who called robert a hillbilly said of the family business willie was the worker or slave kind of thing and dave was the boss some friends of the two even said the younger brother dictated when the slack jawed slasher went to bed despite all of that david wasn't even called to testify at trial which seems extremely strange several of the victim's families asserted that there was no way he could have been ignorant to what his brother was up to as a result nine families launched lawsuits against robert picton in 2013 and seven of those lawsuits also mentioned david as a codependent with some throwing blame towards their sister linda too although she lived miles away around the same time david was reportedly spotted driving around the lower east side and women there started spreading the word at the local homeless shelters and drug clinics warning fliers were posted on the walls reporting that the brother of a serial killer was trying to pick up women the man himself argues that there's no way he could pick up a street walker even if he wanted to because his german shepherd hates strangers i wouldn't stand for it that is that is a flimsy ass excuse but david was no stranger to violence against women those who would have digging into his background shows as much in 1992 he was convicted of sexually assaulting a co-worker on a building site he cornered the woman in a trailer and groped her before being interrupted when someone else entered he allegedly threatened to rape and kill her if she told anyone about it david was only fined a thousand dollars and served 30 days probation as a result of the assaulter slap on the wrist basically he was ordered to refrain from contacting the victim and so she never saw him again until about 10 years later when his face popped up in the news this triggered a panic attack the woman threw up and impulsively bleached her house before going to the hospital in 2015 she won her own lawsuit for psychological trauma receiving 45 thousand dollars in damages it doesn't paint a particularly pretty picture of the hells angel wannabe and there's one final detail of the story that sounds eerily similar to much of what we've heard today the woman revealed how shortly after filing her original police report one of pikton's work buddies threatened that she'd be cut into pieces if she stayed in town now for the part where i spray my lawyer repellent into the air because i'm coming close to accusing a man who's not been found guilty of court so all of this is absolutely alleged 100 allegedly none of this has been proven that it's just wild speculation with that out of the way i mean come on his mentally challenged brother murders 27 women right under his nose and david doesn't notice a single thing he never goes into the brother's trailer and sees all the handbags and id cards never wanders into the workshop to grab a beer out of the dismembered head freezer he never asks about the dildo gun it's a stretch isn't it it really is allegedly i won't bother speculating on exactly who might have been involved and how i'm sure you're quite capable of filling in those blanks by yourself and also don't want to be sued suffice for me to say it seems very unlikely that robert was the only one who knew about his crimes and i'm far from the first person to suggest this bill hiscox the former employee of david is one of the biggest proponents of the theory and even goes so far as to suggest a cover-up including local police officers and officials wow that is extreme it stems from the fact that according to bill the police turned down his offer to blow the lid off the case too easily he told a reporter in 2012 i was willing to go inside i was more than willing and more than happy to do whatever it took to stop this guy i went as far to suggest as they put a wire on me but the police decided against it when officer laurie stenner was quizzed on the situation she claimed that hiscox was unwilling to go undercover for them because he himself was a recovering addict he still asserts that's completely false and that the officer just cut off contact with him for no reason citing false claims of harassing officer so why does he think the police would want to intentionally botch the investigation well apparently the hells angel gang connection was more significant than many thought some even claim that david picton himself was a member and that the body of a murdered gangster was hidden on his property again some claim all alleged nothing proven speculation in the wildest degree in the version of events hinted at by hiscox the money and influence of the gang meant that the piggy palace and its owners might have had a bit more power around town than anyone thought enough that the goings on there were intentionally allowed to let slide it's an interesting theory but we've really slipped too far into speculation and i promised i wouldn't do that it's probably just enough to state that it seems unlikely that robert's crimes went undetected by all of his associates and if david really was just turning a blind eye it might not be the first time that he's seen a family member ends someone's life one last bonus murder what do we have there's so much killing already callum there's one more tragic page actually there are three uh from the picton family scrapbook okay to take a peek at before we finish up today this one takes us all the way back to the 1960s an origin story for one of today's miserable miscreants which gives us another window into the troubled upbringing of the picton kids writing for the toronto star in 2007 journalist steve cameron went digging into some of the rumors which had sprung up around his troubled family over the years the story at the centerpiece of her article was sourced from one of robert's close friends who confided to him in the 1990s on the 16th of october 1967 david picton had just got his driver's license and decided to take his father's truck out for an evening drive while driving around a road not far from the farm he accidentally ran over one of his neighbors tim barrett a 14 year old boy david rushed home to tell his mother he went back to the scene with him rather than call an ambulance guys she apparently decided to be better for the family just to dispose of the kid and so and she then shoved and agonized him into a ditch about 10 feet from the side of the road and just left him there dave was left to try and cover up what had happened taking the car to a mechanic to get the damage the front end repaired it wasn't until the next day that tim was found a neighbor had seen him walking down the road earlier on and offered to help his parents search along it it was his father he found the body his son had drowned in the water at the boss this is horrific he drowned in the water at the bottom of the ditch his other injuries were severe but not fatal a fractured skull broken pelvis and cranial hemorrhage if he had been taken to hospital he would have likely made a full recovery david's juvenile record is sealed so we don't know if he ever received punishment for his role in the death of tim barrett louise picton faced none as nobody could prove that she had moved the boy into the water still it became common knowledge around the neighborhood that she had some part in the death wait so how do we know we don't know okay speculation if the story is true it seems like the criminal credentials of picton of the picton clan predate robert and david if the latter really was roped into the first his first murderous cover-up so young maybe turning a blind eye to his brother's deeds would have been so difficult after all allegedly that concludes today's field trip to america's friendly northern neighbor after all that we really call it friendly calib it started with a horrific tale of how robert picton killed and dismembered up to 49 victims before feeding their remains to his pigs and ended up a profile of one of the most morally questionable clans in canadian criminal history now the worst of them is thankfully behind bars and the farm where he played out his horror movie murders has been paved over a strip mall now stands in its place it's depressing that robert was able to continue his reign of terror for so long without being captured you can believe that it was the result of a cover-up if you want but the likelihood is that the whole shambles was the result of the same old social problem that rears its ugly head time and time again extremely vulnerable people not being afforded the protections that they desperately need picton took advantage of the anonymity of his victims counting on the fact that nobody not even their families the police nor a passerby would give a damn about what he did to them sadly he was right time and time again the police failed to treat the violence against these women with proper urgency and gravity and more died because of it other than that the only other takeaway from today is that the next time you get invited to some smelly hillbilly slaughterhouse do the sensible thing go grab a few drinks do a bit of networking or you know stay as far away as possible your choice dismembered appendices despite apparently having limited mental capacities robert victon is a published author the book was released in 2016 entitled picton in his own words it said that he managed to send the manuscript to an associate in california who had it published you'll struggle to find a copy now though an online petition gained almost 58 000 signatures causing amazon and the publisher to drop picton's grammatically questionable debut good number two the police botched more than just the initial investigation into picton when transcripts of the undercover jail cell conversations were released in 2010 they forgot to censor the officer's name several times he thankfully never faced any retribution from the pictons or their hell's angel's buds but i'm sure he got sweaty palms whenever he heard a harley davidson coming up the street for a few years after you can bet the family's victims weren't the only ones launching lawsuits in 2009 the two non-incarcerated picton kids filed a suit against the rcmp claiming that they had disturbed disrupted killed and destroyed the various plants trees ground covers and other vegetation and fish in the pond i mean yes it's a shame for the plants plants but your brother did bury 27 human heads under them so yeah jesus this has been a long felt long it's not actually that long less than an hour episode of the casual criminalist i do hope you enjoyed it thank you callum for putting it all together i never thank jen but jen makes the magical graphics and the music that you hear if you're listening or watching that sort of stuff if you like the show please do leave a review if you're watching as a podcast make sure you subscribe leave a review if you're listening as a podcast leave a like if you're watching on youtube uh subscribe if you're on on both platforms that is possible please do that and thank you for thank you for watching

Channel: The Casual Criminalist

Views: 391,397

Keywords: true crime

Id: k3YeXEgbL6s

Length: 49min 58sec (2998 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021