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Robert Pickton Faces 12 More Murder Charges, Bringing the Total to 27 Women

The new first-degree murder counts came three years after his arrest at his Port Coquitlam pig farm, where investigators later found the DNA of 33 women.

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Illustration of case-file boxes and a desk lamp on a table by a window looking out on misty British Columbia mountains. Not an actual scene from the case.

Robert Pickton had been charged with killing 15 women. On May 25, 2005, prosecutors in British Columbia laid 12 more first-degree murder charges, leaving him accused of murdering 27.

Pickton, a pig farmer from Port Coquitlam, had been arrested in February 2002 after police searched his farm, as investigators looked into women missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The search and excavation of his property eventually uncovered the DNA of 33 women.

One of the 27 counts was later dropped at a preliminary stage for lack of evidence. The judge split the case and tried six counts first, and in 2007 a jury acquitted Pickton of first-degree murder but convicted him of second-degree murder on all six. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years. The British Columbia Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the convictions, and prosecutors stayed the remaining 20 first-degree murder charges.

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