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Jury Hears the Crown's Case Against Robert Pickton: An Alleged Admission to Killing 49 Women

Pickton's jury trial on six counts of first-degree murder began in New Westminster. His lawyer told jurors he neither committed nor took part in the killings.

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Illustration of satellite trucks and reporters under umbrellas outside a concrete courthouse among evergreens in the rain. Not an actual scene from the case.

Robert Pickton was charged with murdering 26 women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. On January 22, 2007, the first day of his jury trial, prosecutors told jurors he had admitted killing 49.

Pickton, 57, a pig farmer from Port Coquitlam, was on trial in B.C. Supreme Court before Justice James Williams on six counts of first-degree murder. In his opening, prosecutor Derrill Prevett said Pickton allegedly told an RCMP officer that he had killed 49 women and wanted to make it an even 50, but got sloppy. Prevett said the Crown would prove that Pickton took the women to his property, killed them there and disposed of their remains, and that a search of the farm triggered in 2002 by the discovery of one woman's belongings in his trailer had lasted nearly two years.

The six women were Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin and Brenda Wolfe. All disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside between 1997 and 2001. Pickton had pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer, Peter Ritchie, told jurors his client had neither committed the murders nor taken part in them. The other 20 counts were left for a later trial.

On December 9, 2007, the jury found Pickton guilty of second-degree murder on all six counts.

The Crown said Pickton claimed to have killed 49 women, while he was charged with the murders of 26.

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