RedHanded - Robert ‘Willie’ Pickton – Part 2: Canada’s Most Evil Murderer | #458

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

After the search of Vancouver’s missing women finally brought them to the gates of Robert ‘Willie’ Pickton’s grisly pig farm, Canadian police faced the gigantic task of bringing the country��s most prolific serial killer to justice. But with much of the evidence literally eaten by the pigs, how much would be left to piece together this puzzle? And even long after the cell doors clanged shut on old Willie Pickton, the case raised serious questions about the plight of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada – many of which remain unanswered to this day.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Thanks for listening to Red Handed. Make sure to listen to and follow Red Handed on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa. Alexa, play the podcast Red Handed on Amazon Music. And with Amazon Music Unlimited, you can now listen to your favorite music, podcasts and audiobooks, all in the Amazon Music app. In February 2002, Canadian police were on the verge of cracking a mystery that had blighted Vancouver for almost a decade. the wide-scale disappearances of vulnerable women from the downtown Eastside neighbourhood. After years of rumours, dead-ends and catastrophic institutional failures, investigators were finally inside Willie Picton's pig farm.

But the tasks that lay ahead of them would be no ordinary search mission, because across swathes of farmland, slaughterhouses, junk piles, trailers, and literal pigsties, they'd find fragments of evidence linked. to more than just one or two missing persons cases. Instead, they were standing on ground zero for the most prolific serial killer in Canada's blood-soaked history. It would become the largest and costliest investigation that police had ever conducted,

described more like an archaeological excavation than a crime scene. For the missing women's families, years of hazy confusion finally gained clarity, revealing a dirt track of tears that appeared to lead straight to that farm. But it would take more than just bone fragments and blood flakes to quell the questions that remained. Why did the authorities take so long to bring Willie Picton to justice? If the Indigenous community had been treated fairly by police, could more girls have avoided their grim fate?

Something stunk here, and it wasn't just those people. The Picton case sparked long overdue calls for social justice, forcing the authorities to tackle the nationwide epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women head on. But over two decades later, have things actually changed? I'm Hannah. I'm Surruti. And this is red-handed. In part two of our Willie Picton series, we are continuing our dive into the muddy case of Vancouver's notorious pig farm slaughterer, killer, Willie Picton. And the stain it has left behind for Canada's betrayed Indigenous community. So let's pick up where we left off.

On the 5th of February 2002, with both Picton brothers bailed on minor firearms charges and under surveillance, officers from the Joint Vancouver PD and RCMP Task Force, Project even handed, finally had a warrant to search the whole premises. Starting in Willie Pickton's squalid trailer, investigators stumbled upon a veritable treasure trove of incriminating items, including bags of female clothing, accessories and ID cards matching over two dozen missing women. They also found a loaded revolver with a dildo attached to the barrel, which is like something out of fucking seven. Oh my God, when I read that, I was just like, I can't, I can't cope. Apparently, and this is Pickedon's excuse for why he had a dildo attached to the end of a barrel of a shotgun,

he said that he was using it as a makeshift silencer. Which, like, okay. They also found boxes of ammunition, night vision goggles, two pairs of faux fur-lined handcuffs, a bottle of Spanish fly aphrodisiac, and a syringe containing three milliliters of an unidentified blue liquid. This last item particularly set off alarm bells, as informant Scott Chubb had told police that Willie Picton had once told him a good way to kill a female heroin addict

was to inject her with windshield washer fluid. Ugh! Yeah, I mean... Sure. Now, a grim picture was starting to emerge of how Picton had murdered his victims. But here was the million pound question. Where were the bodies? Inside the farm's buildings, forensic testing identified traces of blood and scattered bones and teeth fragments matching 32-year-old Brenda Wolfe,

34-year-old Georgina Pappin and 24-year-old Marnie Frey. The partial remains of 26-year-old Mona Lee Wilson were found in a rubbish bin inside Picton's slaughterhouse. And the grimace discovery of all? A freezer containing the complete head, hands and feet. of 29-year-old Serena Abbotsway and 22-year-old Andrea Josbury. As the largest remains uncovered, it was a no-brainer what happened to these particular women. But as far as the other suspected victims whose belongings were found at the farm, it was going to be a lot trickier to pin down their individual fates.

As we've alluded to throughout this story, this crime scene was never going to have neatly plotted graves. Because Willie Picton hadn't been spouting porkies when he told ex-worker Andy Bellwood about feeding girls to the pigs. He had actually gone and done it. So before we get into all this, let's clear something up about pigs. Because we don't want any kind of porcine slander on this podcast here.

People get very upset about animals. They really do. Do you remember when I said I didn't think dolphins were as smart as us and people got angry at me? Do you remember when people thought I was a cat murderer? I do. People think I'm my heroin addict, so, you know, just check it all in. Yeah, fair enough.

Check it all in. So anyway, while it's commonly claimed that pigs will eat anything, that's not to say that they're homicidal killing machines. Pigs would much rather chow down on cabbages than a human, most likely because the cabbage won't fight back. But pigs are omnivores, and they have sharp teeth, powerful jaws, and strong stomachs. So it means they can ingest both plant and animal matter.

And since food sources were unpredictable for their wild boar ancestors, farm-reared pigs have the evolutionary instinct to basically eat opportunistically, which in practical terms means they'll basically keep eating whatever the hell is in front of them. It doesn't matter what's on the menu. If you put it in that pig's trough,

it'll probably guzzle it down. And yes, that technically includes even tough stuff, like shoes and clothes, although this can cause internal blockages that can kill the pigs, so it is obviously not recommended. Now with all this in mind, the fact that this huge crime scene was also an active hog farm posed an immense challenge to investigators. Because just how much would be left out there of the victims to find, well, it really depended on just how hungry Picton's pigs had been.

It wasn't unfeasible to imagine that they might have digested entire bodies without leaving behind a trace. So the best the search team could do was go over the entire farm with a fine tooth comb to find even the tiniest traces of these poor women. A chip of tooth enamel here, a bone shard there. And when you add in factors like decomposition and insects, each tiny clue could mean the difference between identifying a victim or her vanishing forever. It was time for the police to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in. They just did not have a choice anymore.

No. This is exactly what they wanted to avoid. Yes. This is exactly what they wanted to avoid. And it's come back on them fucking a hundredfold. And I'm not glad because they probably didn't get a lot of the victims because they didn't act quickly enough. But I am glad that they're having to shovel around and pick shit because of how long they fucking put this off. It is quite the comeuppance, isn't it?

Mm-hmm. The farm was spread across a cluttered, jolted, junk-strewn expanse of land stretching over six hectares, which is about six city blocks, far and away the largest crime scene in Canadian history. The farm and its outbuildings were divided into 216 grids that had to be excavated down to what's called virgin ground beneath any farming. Considering that the farm had been operating continuously for at least 50 years, this was an extremely tall order.

To achieve it, the police had to bring in the serious big, guns, commissioning specialist equipment to process almost 4,000 cubic yards of soil in total. And if you're struggling to get your head around that, I certainly am. To put that into perspective, that's enough soil to fill over 153 Olympic swimming pools. The heavy-duty gear included massive conveyor belts and industrial soil lifters that could dig up to 30 metres underground. Hundreds of archaeology and anthropology students were brought on board to painstaking. makingly analyze each chunk of dirt as it passed through the conveyor belts. Investigators actually took inspiration from 9-11's Ground Zero,

sending three RCMP officers to New York City to learn from the work that was still being done there in 2002. Ultimately, the search yielded over 2,000 pieces of tangible evidence. From these exhibits, they extracted over 600,000 separate forensic samples, such as hair, blood, semen, and other stains to be sent out for further time. testing. Forensic labs across the country couldn't keep up with the sheer amount of material they were having to process from this single case. The full search lasted 21 months at an estimated cost of a whopping $70 million, making it not just the biggest, but the most expensive investigation in Canadian history. At the end of the search, police initially identified

criminally significant amounts of DNA belonging to 27 women. So obviously criminally significant amounts of DNA, meaning that there's enough here to assume that this person is no longer walking around somewhere alive or something very, very bad happened to them here. Except for one, Jane Doe, all of them could actually be identified from Project Even Handed's list of missing women from the downtown East Side area. More DNA profiles were found belonging to an additional six women, bringing the total to 33 potential victims. There wasn't enough evidence, however, to press charges for these six additional. All in all, not one single intact body was found. Police theorised that Picton had used a wood chipper and his pigs to destroy the evidence as much as possible, leaving only microscopic traces of DNA behind for most of the victims identified on the farm.

And while the authorities now knew where these women had ended up, there was still a huge unanswered question. How did they meet their deaths? Investigators sought advice from various experts, including pathologists, anthropologists, an entomologists, a botanist, a radiologist, an anatomist, and a forensic dentist to work out what they could from the bodies, or should I say the bits of remains that they found.

But from a biological point of view, it was impossible to conclude these women's cause of death. Relying on testimony from Picton and his associates, police theorised that his M.O. was to ply the victims with drugs, take them back to his farm, have sex with them, and then kill them by either shooting or strangling them. He'd then mutilate the bodies in his slaughterhouse and scattered the evidence on his farm to cover his tracks.

What they didn't know was why. Detectives interrogated Willie Picton for over 11 hours after his arrest, hoping that he would shed some light on the murders. They'd expected him to be a simple-minded character, fitting what they imagined of a rural oddball, but instead, Pigtin came across as calculating and cocky. Although he stubbornly denied being a serial killer, Picton repeatedly contradicted himself

by blaming his capture on his own sloppiness, saying, I made my own grave. RCMP Inspector Don Adam described seeing the same meanness in Willie Picton that he imagines the victims saw in their last moments. He was utterly remorseless and cold and flat out refused to admit his guilt.

Due to the complex nature of the case, legal proceedings against Picton was slow. The charges didn't come all at once. Instead, they trickled in over time. On the 22nd of February 2002, Picton was officially charged with his first two counts of murder against Serena Abbotsway and Mona Lee Wilson.

On the 2nd of April, three more charges were added for the murders of Jacqueline MacDonald, Diane Rock, and Heather Bottomley. Andrea Joseberry and Brenda Wolfe joined the list a week later. In September and October came Georgina Pappin,

Patricia Johnson, Helen Hallmark, Jennifer Furminger, Heather Chinnock, Tanya Hoyke, Sherry Irving and Inger Hall. And almost three years later in May 2005, Picton was charged with a further 12 charges for the murders of Cara Ellis, Andrea Borehaven, Deborah Lynn Jones, Marnie Frey, Tiffany Drew, Kerry Cossack, Sarah DeVray, Cynthia Felix, Angela Jardin, Wendy Crawford, Diana Melnick and One Jane Doe, bringing the grand total to 27 women. But even this sickeningly high number might not have been telling the full story. As we said, at least six other women were likely murdered on the farm,

but those DNA samples weren't strong enough to warrant criminal charges, much to the frustration of their loved ones. And geographic profiler Kim Rosmo of the Vancouver PD reckons there were probably even more victims than that, those who went missing from the late 1970s to the 1990s, whose remains didn't leave any trace. Plus, there's what Willie Picton himself had to say. That is when he didn't realise that the feds were listening.

Whilst awaiting trial in jail, he confided in his next-door cellmate that he'd actually killed 49 women and was annoyed that he hadn't been able to make it to the Big 50. That cellmate turned out to be an undercover RCMP agent. Whether Pickton was genuinely confessing or whether he was just chatting shit to impress someone he thought was another inmate. It does cast the case in an even darker light.

Imagine you've been charged with a crime, and the only witness pointing the finger at you isn't even human. I remember thinking, are you serious? What is this thing? It's something artificial, created by a mysterious Canadian, and it's coming for all of us. A life-defining technology. Crime as we know it will never be the same.

I'm like, oh my God, he's lying. From CBC's Uncover, the expert witness. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. As prosecutors built a case against Willie Picton, suspicion obviously fell on those closest to him. How the hell had he pulled off a years, years, years, years long killing spree at a working farm without any of his employees noticing something? something was amiss. More importantly, were they in on it? Police arrested three people who had

been staying at the farm. A sex worker named Dina Taylor, a butcher named Pat Cassanova, and his former secretary, quote-unquote, Lynn Ellingskin, who we met last week. Pickedon's close pals, Gina Houston and Lisa Yelts, were notably not arrested, and nor was his brother David, beyond that initial firearms arrest. We'll get back to these glaring omissions later. For now, the three people who were arrested and taken into questioning were all later released without any charges. As far as the police were concerned,

Willie Pickton was very much a solo act. And the stage was set for him to be tried as the women's lone killer. Now look, what I will say here is, I don't know. I don't know if these people were actively involved in helping him or if they just knew something and they didn't say. I think probably a few of them did know quite a lot and didn't say whether they were actively involved with the murders, I don't know. And I think once again, it's possibly the police being like, that is another fucking ginormous can of worms. If we open that one, we are well and truly fucked.

We got this guy. We pulled him out that pervert haystack. We got him. We got the DNA. Let's push forward with a conviction. Let's shut this horrible nasty chapter and move on. I don't think they wanted to know if anybody else was involved because then you've got a situation where different people are pointing the finger at each other,

you don't know who's guilty, and you might not even get any sort of conviction. So, I don't know. I totally agree. Yeah, we'll never know. Willie Pickton's trial proceedings officially began in January 2006. But just like the crime scene search, it would be anything but straightforward. The voir dire phase of the trial, deciding what evidence would be allowed, to be admitted before a potential jury took the best part of that year.

And during this limbo period, the murder charge for the unidentified Jane Doe was dropped due to lack of evidence, reducing the total to 26 counts. That was still a huge number of individual victims for a potential jury to consider. So the judge, Justice James Williams, made the smart decision to split the case into two lots of charges to be tried at separate trials. He argued that trying all of them at once would put an unreasonable. burden on the jury and could lead the trial to drag out over two years increasing the possibility of a mistrial. Imagine being on a jury for two years. Fucking out. Oh!

I just, have we ever come across anything like that? That sounds absolutely unreasonable, unfathomable. What the actual fuck? I mean, OJ was months and months and months, but I don't think I've ever heard over a year. Let's see. Longest trial in history. Okay. The Guinness World Record for the longest criminal trial is the McMartin preschool trial in the US. Oh, of course. Fucking hell. That is, of course, if you guys don't know. I don't think we've ever covered this in detail.

I think we should do it at some point because it is just what the actual fuck is the only thing you can say about this case. It's basically like a satanic panic case. It's the satanic panic case. Yeah. It is the flagship fucking satanic panic case of like child sex abuse allegations being made in a nurse. This was back in 1987 in Manhattan Beach, California. And Hannah, would you like to guess how many days the McMarton preschool trial lasted? Longest ever in history. 666.

919. Whoa, Jesus. That's two and a half years! Wow. Oh, that's disgusting. Never mind. Good decision by the judge. prosecutors identified the six charges in this case

that they felt they had the best chance of achieving a conviction for first-degree murder with the remaining 20 charges to be tried later. The chosen six, Serena Abbotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joseberry, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Pappin and Marnie Frey. Their trial officially kicked off on the 22nd of January 2007 in New Westminster. Following her arrest, Lynn Elzengen had finally come clean about seeing a woman's body in the barn back in 1999,

so she was now the star witness for the prosecution. And with so much physical evidence making it seem obvious that these women had been murdered on Picton's pig farm, you might assume the prosecution had it in the back. Still, Willie Pickton's defence team came out swinging, the best they could. Their key argument was that the most the police could actually. actually prove was that these women had died on Picton's farm. But Willie Pickton didn't live or weren't there alone. They claimed that the investigation had tunnel vision on Picton,

failing to aggressively pursue other potential suspects, such as his brother and associates who spent a lot of time on the farm. And to be honest, they do have a point there. However, prosecutors maintain that none of the DNA found at the crime scene could conclusively link the victims to any other alternative suspects other than Willie Pickton. After a grueling trial involving 130 witnesses over 10 months, it took the jury of seven men and five women 10 days to reach a final verdict. On the 9th of December 2007, there were screams in the courtroom

when the jury foreman announced that they had found Picton not guilty of first-degree murder. But don't panic. They did find him guilty of second-degree murder. The jury apparently just weren't convinced. that Picton had planned the murders in advance. Something that Detective Scherner found bizarre, and I completely agree. Surely you can't claim it was a crime of passion

on six occasions across multiple years. I don't get it. I do not get it. It's absolutely baffling. The idea that you would find a man guilty of being a serial killer on six counts of murder, six counts of second-degree murder. Like, what the actual fact?

Like, the difference between first-degree murder and second degree murder, specifically in Canada, it's just that first degree murder means it's planned and deliberate. Like, that's the difference. I'm like, how can you say it's anything other than at least deliberate when you've done it again and again and again and again six times? Yeah. Imagine being an accidental serial killer. It does seem bizarre. It's bizarre that they would come to that conclusion. It's such a wet wipe of a verdict. I hate it. It didn't end up making that much of a difference, though, from a sentencing point of view. But that's just a way. not really the point. That's not what justice is. No. On the 11th of December, Judge Williams

sentenced Willie Picton to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years, which is the maximum possible term for second-degree murder in Canada. And it is equivalent to the sentence for first-degree murder. But I'm going to take your phrase, fob job, man. Just not good enough. No. So with Picton already facing life in prison, in August 20, 10, prosecutors announced that they would not be proceeding with the following 20 counts of murder. They use the logic that it would be a waste of time and money to do another trial, as he'd already been handed the harshest sentence and would most likely already die behind bars. And look, I get it.

Like, I can understand why it's very, very difficult for the families of the 20 remaining victims who have not had their day in court, of course. But like, I understand the prosecution being like, we've got the end that we wanted. he is going to die in prison, there's no point going through another trial. It's such a difficult thing. And as you can imagine, the decision did not go down well with the victim's families, who wanted to seek individual justice for their loved ones by getting, as I said, their chance at a day in court.

Detective Lorimer Shurna slammed it as a miscarriage of justice. On the other hand, some of the victim's families were also relieved to be spared another long and difficult trial, rehashing the horrors that had taken place on the farm, because that's the thing. It's very easy to also say they deserve their day in court. And of course, like, if a victim's family feels that way, I would never be here to undermine that. But the reality of going through a trial

is that it is going to be grueling and horrific and drawn out and like a wound gouging. Any wounds that may have even slightly start to heal, it's like going to be taking an axe to them. So I think some of them were, like I said, relieved. Now, while Pickton wasn't officially found guilty for murdering these women, It's widely accepted that he did, of course, kill them.

The police also named Picton as implicated in the deaths of four more women that didn't result in charges. Marianne Clark, Stephanie Lane, Dawn Cray and Yvonne Bone. And in an absolutely wild twist that we feel like not enough people talk about when they're talking about this case, is that Stephanie Lane's partial remains were misplaced by the lab between 2003 and 2010. The decision to stay the charges meant that the legal proceedings against Willie Picton were officially over. And with that, the press were finally able to reveal shocking details

of the investigation that were previously kept under wraps. For the first time, the public heard about the dropped attempted murder charges from 1997 against Stitch. And it, understandably triggered quite a lot of backlash, realizing that the courts had literally let a serial killer slip through their fingers at the height of his murder spree. Many Canadians questioned their faith in the justice system. The case also seriously damaged the image of Vancouver's police forces who were seen as incompetent and lazy at best and corrupt at worst.

Things can be two things, they can be both. Deputy Chief Constable Doug Lepard of the Vancouver PD issued an institutional apology to the victim's families at a press conference stating the following. I wish that all the mistakes that were made we could undo and I wish that more lives would have been saved. On my behalf and behalf of the Vancouver Police Department and all the men and women that worked on this investigation,

I would say to the families how sorry we all are for your losses because we didn't catch this monster sooner. But a public sorry wasn't going to be cutting it for anybody. This case exposed issues of safety, particularly with regards to women from indigenous backgrounds. Because despite only making up roughly 4% of the population of Canada, over half of Willie Picton's victims were indigenous. Was he choosing his victims because they were indigenous?

I personally don't think so. There's no evidence that I've seen that he was doing that. I think Willie Picton, of anything, is a very opportunistic killer. I think he was just taking whoever he could get. And sadly, that's the profile of who he could quote, unquote, get. Yeah. And that's because, sadly, more indigenous women were working the streets where Willie Picton hunted.

So it makes sense that we see this represented in his victim pool as well. Research does show that Canadian women with indigenous ancestry are overwhelmingly more likely to be the victims of violence and murder. And they go missing at astronomically higher rates than other races of women. The national homicide rate for indigenous women has been estimated to be up to the state. six times higher than the national average. Those are all incredibly alarming numbers. And while murder rates generally fell in Canada towards the end of the 20th century, for indigenous victims, this figure skyrocketed from 9% in 1980 to 24% in 2015. And of course, all those numbers sound horrific. They sound very, very alarming. Like what is going on here? Is this some sort of institutional

racism, institutional corruption? Those things could be the case and those cases could be overlooked because of these victims being poor, being marginalized. Though we do also have to say that in 86% of the solved homicides between 2009 and 2021 of indigenous women, the perpetrator was also indigenous. So I think it's not this thing of like necessarily indigenous women are being killed by white serial killers or men who are preying on them from outside communities. As we see often, people who are killed are typically killed by people within their own communities. And there is something startlingly alarming going on here. Indigenous communities, as we

sadly know, do tend to experience disproportionate rates of social deprivation, poor education outcomes, higher addiction rates and poverty. And is that leading to an increased level of violence against the women in those communities? I think Willie Picton shone a light on the plight of indigenous women because they were so overrepresented in the street level sex work from where he was hunting. but I don't think he was picking them because of that. No. And unfortunately, these women were being targeted by opportunistic killers all around them. The women who went missing during the Picton investigation weren't just indigenous.

They were sex workers with drug addictions, like a lot of people in the downtown Eastside area. And that way of being does put a person at a higher risk of violence. It's just a part of daily life out there. And that is of course why serial killers like Willie Picton choose these women. That's why they're the less dead. It's high risk. I hate saying high risk lifestyle because it sounds like it's like a fun choice. No. But I don't really know how else to put it into words. Like people in those situations are just much more vulnerable to serial killer. Absolutely. And I think that I think saying something is true is not the same as judging it. And I think that's. like the distinction that I want to make. I know people will be out there and argue to like, you know, legalize sex work and therefore it will make things less dangerous. I don't know if I'm entirely convinced by that argument from like other places that we've seen that be done and women are still at risk of being trafficked. Now we're even seeing the rise of like only fans being

fucking turned to the playground of pimps and people who want to control and abuse women. I think these are high risk lifestyles, especially when you're working at street level sex work. But that's not the same as saying Well, therefore they deserve to get killed and therefore the state shouldn't bother to intervene or to look into them when they go missing or violence is brought upon them. Of course not. But it also would be a lie to say that it is not an incredibly risky situation to be in. And of course these women who were there were there because they were incredibly desperate. And like you said, Willie Pictum chose them because of that. Like the easiest prey for serial killers is always going to be going after street level sex workers.

They're more transient, they're more fluid, their movements are. less like obvious and the police are less likely to take it seriously because they can easily brush it off as just being like, well, who knows, who knows where they've gone. Yeah, and, you know, desperate people take risks. Yeah. And while Willie Picton might hold the dubious title of Canada's most prolific serial killer, this issue is by no means unique to him. An epidemic of violence against women, especially indigenous women, literally stretches across the country. Most notably, in a cluster of over 80 unsolved murders and disappearances associated with the so-called Highway of Tears. The name refers to Highway 16 in British Columbia, from which women have been disappearing at an alarming

rate since its construction in 1969. To put it bluntly, it's a murderous paradise. Patchwork policing, zero phone signal, ample forests and loamy soil, loads of places to hide a body. Again, a significant percentage of the highways victims have been indigenous. Poor transportation links between rural reserves historically meant that women, often in difficult domestic circumstances, relied on hitchhiking to travel vast distances. Many of these cases remain unsolved, even today, with no single serial killer identified, which is honestly even more scary than there being one bogey man to blame. These cases were largely swept under the rug and hushed up without adequate investigation or media coverage

in what has been criticised as a nationwide scandal. By the mid-naughties, the stars finally aligned. While the Picton case was splashed across the headlines, Indigenous activist groups were also applying pressure on the Canadian government to fully investigate the cold cases along the highway of tears. The two cases overlapped in a way that finally pushed the powers that be into publicly acknowledging the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls' crisis,

and it became a touchstone moment for the movement. In 2010, British Columbia's provincial government launched an official Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, chaired by former Supreme Court Justice Wally Opel. It set out to review the Picton investigation and how it failed the Indigenous community. And let's just say there are a lot of takeaways from this inquiry. In a final report entitled Foraken, published in December 2012, Opel concluded that blatant failures were made by law enforcement at each stage of the investigation. This included inept criminal investigation work, poor senior leadership,

and a combination of institutional and societal prejudice affecting sex workers and indigenous women, and a shambolic lack of cooperation between the RCMP and Vancouver PD. Declaring the case a tragedy of epic proportions, Opal damningly ruled that there was systemic bias at the heart of the police's operations that specifically impacted the women of downtown Eastside. I remember trying to write an episode on the highway of tears a few years ago and I had to give up. I was just like I actually can't do this.

Like there is so little information. I do not know how to weave this story. Yeah. Because it was so disparate and sparse in the coverage. It's obviously, you know, part of the tragedy of all of it, but I've just found it so sort of grimly ironic that these women are so invisible I couldn't even write about them. Yeah.

By this point, irreparable damage had been done. So what exactly was supposed to happen next? Well, the Opal Inquiry made 63 recommendations for change. One of these proposals was for adequate funding to be given to the downtown Eastside's vulnerable residents, which would include emergency women's shelters and compensation for the children of Picton's victims. And that sort of came to fruition. In May 2013, a group of these children fled a civil lawsuit against the Vancouver PD, RCMP and the Crown for failing to protect their mothers.

The case ended in a settlement of $50,000 in compensation for each child, though there was no admission of liability. After being dragged over the coals in the Opal Report, the Vancouver PD made several internal policy and procedural changes in a bid to avoid repeating the same mistakes. The missing persons unit that was set up in the 90s became a regular part of the force, following stricter rules about accountability and family liaison. But one of the inquiry's most ambitious proposals

to establish a greater Vancouver regional police force which would provide a more effective and cohesive policing strategy was never actually implemented. To this day, the entire region is still policed by a fragmented patchwork of municipal police departments and RCMP detachments. So in terms of real change, there kind of wasn't any. So with that said, let's return to Willie Picton,

thankfully rotting away in prison while all this was happening. In 2016, he briefly returned to the headlines when Amazon started selling a book allegedly written by the man himself that had been smuggled out of prison to a small publishing house based out of Denver. The book called Picton, in his own words, was swiftly withdrawn from Amazon after public outcry. We didn't actually manage to get our hands on a copy of this for, you know, research prep for this episode as illuminating as I'm sure the ramblings of a serial killing

maniac would have been. And look, I get people might be interested in that kind of book to hear what these people actually have to say for themselves. I'm not. They are by nature liars and by nature fantasists. And like, even when people are like, why did he do it? I'm like, who cares? He could have done over any number of fucking batshit mental reasons. Like, I'm not interested. I'm really not interested in hearing why he did it. I'm interested in like theorizing about his childhood and where that power struggle may have come from and why he went the way he did. But like, who cares what they have to say? And look, I'm not saying it in a way of like, I'm sure it's important for the FBI to fucking interview them and put together profile. But like, reading a book written by

Willie Picton, what is that going to add to anybody's life? Absolutely fucking nothing. I think it kind of like, I read Dennis Nilsen's book. Okay. I did find that quite useful because because it is in their own words, I found it gave me a much better grasp on how he saw the world. Yeah, no, that's fair. Maybe I'm being harsh. And how far removed he was from anybody normal. Like just how every inch of his existence was completely untethered to reality. And I did find reading how he thought of himself interesting. No, that makes sense. But I also wonder whether like, because he never confesses, he doesn't do the big Ed Kemper reveal at the end.

Maybe that's why it's not as well known. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we had a, not necessarily his book, but if we had a confession where he's like, this is how I chopped them up, like I think maybe people would be more aware of it. Yeah, I think you're right. Because it would be more sensational. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you're right. And look, I don't want to sound like I'm completely intellectually lacking curiosity into why these people do these things. Of course, I'm not.

I've spent 10 years doing this podcast. I think for me what it is is just like the grandiose ramblings of like people who think that, you know, they're just talking about whatever and something is larger than it is and so, so important and they get to feel the superiority. I just, fuck off. Fuck off. It just, it drives me mad. Oh, there I agree.

But no, I totally agree with you. Like the inner machinations, the inner workings of these people's minds that I'm interested in for sure. And maybe, maybe there would have been something illuminating and picked. book, but we will never know. We'll never know now. Sir Picton served most of his sentence at a maximum security prison in Quebec until May 2024, when fellow inmate Martin Cherished stabbed him in the head, in the head, with a broken broom handle in a vicious prison assault. Wow. Picton was airlifted to a Quebec City hospital

and put on life support in a medically induced coma but ultimately died from complications on the 31st of May. He was 74 years old. Charged with first-degree murder Charis pleaded guilty in July 2025 and declared that he did it for Picton's victims. Willie Picton's dramatic death revived interest in his case online. And of course, this came with more than a few bonkers conspiracy theories. And we've got tinfoil hat theory number one for you. People started gossiping that senior political figures and cops hadn't just been blind to

what was going on at the pig farm, they were actively involved in it. It was alleged that those famous piss-ups at Piggy's Palace actually involved ritual murder. And even the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, Fidel Castro's son, had a slice of the action. Now, it is true that during the late 90s, Trudeau was working as a substitute teacher at a high school, just a short drive from the Picton farm. But fact-checkers have thoroughly debunked any rumours that he had,

ever stepped foot on the premises, let alone was he involved in some weird Epsteinish murdering. How does one prove that he never set foot on that farm? In the same way you can't prove I'm not a CIA agent, you can't. So whatever. Fucking Trudeau, man. Whatever, I'd believe it. Yeah, Katie Perry can have them. Alongside this rumor, there was speculation that Picton was planning to write another tell-all book just before he was attacked in prison.

Picton had repeatedly made the claim that he was blocked by his lawyers from telling the full story during his trial lamenting the truth never came out which brings us to tinfoil theory number two did somebody have him bumped off to keep him from squealing I don't know who the fuck knows possibly maybe not maybe maybe I'm sure he wasn't an easy person to live with

and the guy who hit him in the head with a broom probably just fucking hated him but there might well be more to this tale than authorities want us to believe From the moment they raided the pig farm, the police seemed dead set on presenting Willie Picton as your classic lone wolf serial killer. Now, we talked about why that helps them to do that. It's a much easier investigation, etc., etc. But one thing about this whole case

that has never really sat right, with, you know, quite a few people, us included, is the fact that Picton had a pretty bustling social life amid his entire killing career. We can absolutely believe that Pickton was the main man responsible for the murders. But whilst he was busy murdering women and feeding them to his pigs, are we really supposed to believe that nobody around him knew a thing about what he was doing? Ah, it seems like pokey pies, doesn't it? Because look, all the serial killers we know.

Typically, very isolated, even if they've got a family, they've got a room, a garage, a shed, whatever, a man cave that nobody else has allowed in, nobody else that's very secretive. They're doing it in a way not to get caught. Picton is there, surrounded by a bunch of people on his farm. he is sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. I don't know. I can absolutely believe that other people knew what he was doing. Maybe we're even involved.

Yeah, I could believe it. Loads of people believe that those living and working on the farm might not just have been aware of Picton's proclivities. Perhaps they were actively involved in the murders as well. Former lackey Andy Bellwood has said that although Picton carried out some of the killing solo, he reckons he also recruited people to help him with others. He even suspects Picton was grooming him for a murderous apprenticeship. And our favourite detective, Laura Machena, claims, quote,

It's been an open secret for more than 20 years that these murders were not committed solely by the hands of Robert Picton. So whose muddy hands might also have blood on them? Well, Pat Casanova, Picton's right-hand man, who helped him butcher pigs, admitted to police that he had slept with sex workers on the premises. And while no charges were pressed against him, his proximity to the areas where Picton is thought to have mutilated his victims does make a side-eye him a bit. And also, everyone's wasted all the time. Someone is going to have let something slip.

Yeah, for sure. And I also think if you look at the psychology of Picton, right, one thing he enjoys is controlling and manipulating these vulnerable people. It's getting people there who have nowhere else to go, who don't have a job, who are addicted to drugs, offering them money, work, all that sort of stuff. and keeping them under his thumb with that control. As we've seen with other killers who tend to get other people involved in their kills in this sort of like mini-culti way of like pushing people into doing things they otherwise wouldn't do without you, that is like a big power play for him. And I think one of the biggest things driving Picton is the power. All of these people that made him for powerless his entire life and I'm taking it back.

Not only the victim, but maybe even forcing other people to do these depraved things, knowing you have to do it if you want a place to live. And you better not tell anybody because they're not going to believe you. And if they do, I'll fucking kill you. Or you'll lose all of this. You'll lose access to the farm, access to the money and the drugs I provide you. I would not be surprised, not just because of the sheer number of people who would have been around him, but because of the profile of Willie Picton and his desire and hunger for power

and making people do things. I think he would have loved that. Oh, I mean, it's the ultimate power trip, isn't it? getting someone to do your dirty work. Yeah. Just do something they would never do without you. I did that. I created that in that person. I made them do it. That's going to be incredibly seductive to somebody like Willie Pictum. Now it's also been suspected that the various women who were inexplicably close pals with Picton were in fact accessories to his crimes. How? Well, as we touched upon earlier, by luring other women to the farm for him. The old Rose West.

Yeah, exactly. Even though she was probably the worst one out of the pair. But yeah, like a Myra. Absolutely. Like, I'm there to make you feel comfortable. I'm there to, like, get you down to the farm. And yeah, Lynn Ellingsen basically admitted as much in the case of the woman that she saw hanging from the barn,

who'd only agreed to come back to the farm because she felt safer with Lynn there. And while it's impossible to say how much members of Picton Strange Little Harim actually knew about what lay in store for the women that they brought back, unwittingly otherwise they played a tragic role in what ended up happening to them. And according to various residents from the downtown East Side area, who testified during the subsequent inquiry,

a fellow addict named Dinah Taylor did a lot more than just bring other women to the farm. They claim that she shot and killed at least three of the victims herself. Now since Taylor has never been charged with any crime linked to the Picton case, despite her initial arrest, this may well just be an urban legend. But between her shifting stories and her reluctance to answer journalist's questions about the victims, several of whom were known to be her friends, it's not hard to see why suspicion still follows Diana Taylor around. And as for Picton's closest gal pals Lisa Yelds and Gina Houston, even if we give them the benefit of the doubt about not knowing that Picton was a killer,

their weird loyalty to him honestly still gives us the hebi-jeebies. If you watch the 2011 documentary on this case, the pig farm, those two will have you yelling at the TV. And last but not least, the other two Picton siblings have also never quite escaped suspicion that they knew more about their brother's dirty secret than they let on. A 2013 lawsuit brought by some of the victims' kids basically accused David Pickton and Linda Wright of knowing sex workers were being abused and killed at the farm

and covering up just how dangerous Willie Picton really was. Again, these allegations have never been proven in court. Still, according to Associate slash Snitch, Scott Chubb, David Picton grimly remarked after his brother's arrest, If Willie goes down, we all go down. But the thing is, they didn't. Regardless of who else may or may not have been involved, Willie Picton ultimately took the fall

for everything that happened at their farm. And that might just have saved all of their bacon. I wonder why he didn't squeal on everybody else if they were really involved. I think that is interesting. Is it that he doesn't want it to seem like anybody else was involved? Does he want to be seen as the mastermind? But surely that would make him look even more mastermindy

that he was managing this group of people that were killing all these victims. I don't know. I don't know. It's weird. I don't know. I think maybe he would have seen it as like an admission of weakness. that he hadn't done it all himself. Yeah, possibly. Possibly. And I guess he never actually admits to the crimes. He always denies them and he's found guilty.

So then you can't really be like, oh, these other people were helping me. And the defence do try to say it could have been anybody else. You didn't look at them. So I guess he couldn't point the finger at anybody else without actually admitting that he had done it. Yeah, and the police were actively not looking for other people. So they wouldn't have been leading him in that direction during questioning either, I don't think. Yeah. Almost 30 years on, you might think.

that this story has been over for a while. But even today, it continues to pop up in Canadian headlines and is just as controversial as ever. Just before Willie Pickton's death in 2024, the RCMP applied for permission to destroy over 14,000 pieces of evidence collected from the Picton crime scene. Interestingly, Picton himself wasn't happy about this prospect and claimed from prison that it would prevent other perpetrators from being brought to justice one day. Then again, he He croaked not long after that, and nobody really gave a shit about what he wanted anyway. Still, after a lengthy battle, led by the victim's families, British Columbia Supreme Court ultimately ruled in April 2026 that the RCMP could go ahead

with their spring cleaning as planned. They based the decision on the fact that the police have apparently exhausted investigative angles and photographs of the exhibits were sufficient as backup. For the victim's loved ones who still have many unanswered questions, the ruling came as yet another slap in the face. Because destroying the exhibits might free up the huge amount of money and resources spent storing them, but it also closes the door on any future testing. And while the authorities might want to leave the butcher of Vancouver in the past,

in our eyes this case is far from closed. I think nothing else is going to happen. I think, if anything, I think the worst. world is lucky that Willie Pichton was ever caught and ever convicted of these crimes. I think it's far too much of a stretch to hope that anybody else would ever be. I agree. It died with Willie Picton in that induced coma. I agree.

I think they all got away with it, it's what I think. Yeah. That's it, guys. You've wanted us to cover that for a very long time. And we finally have. Yeah, heavy hitter. Absolutely. I think my sister's actually in Vancouver right now.

Oh, lovely. Whoops. I won't tell her. Thanks for listening. That's our little jaunt on our North American road trip into Canada. And next week we'll be back with a trip south of the border down into Mexico. We'll see you then. Goodbye.