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Robert Pickton's Murder Trial Opens in New Westminster, and He Pleads Not Guilty to 26 Women's Deaths

The trial began with months of hearings on what evidence the jury could hear, under a publication ban. A judge later threw out one count and split the rest.

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Illustration of an open notebook, pen and glass of water on an empty press bench in a modern courtroom. Not an actual scene from the case.

Nearly four years after his arrest, Robert Pickton's murder trial began. On January 30, 2006, in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster, he pleaded not guilty to murdering 26 women.

Pickton, a Port Coquitlam pig farmer charged with 27 counts of first-degree murder, refused to enter a plea on the 27th count, which concerned an unidentified woman known in the proceedings as Jane Doe, so the court registered a plea of not guilty on his behalf. The trial opened with a voir dire, in which lawyers argue over what evidence can be admitted, and reporters were barred from disclosing what was presented. Most of the women were sex-trade workers from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

On March 2, 2006, Justice James Williams quashed the Jane Doe count, ruling that it did not meet the minimal requirements of the Criminal Code. On August 9, he split the remaining 26 counts and ordered six to be tried first, saying a trial on all of them would place an unreasonable burden on a jury. The six were the murders of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey. "Knowing that Marnie hopefully will be one of the first six in January, I feel like getting on the bridge and screaming," said Frey's mother. Pickton was later convicted of second-degree murder on all six counts.

The hearings that began in January 2006 were a voir dire held under a publication ban; jury selection for the first trial on six counts was not scheduled until December 2006.

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