Robert ‘Willie’ Pickton – Part 1: The Pig Farm Killer | #457

**Suruthi** (0:00)
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**Hannah** (0:28)
They say that pigs will eat anything. And in 2002, Vancouver police learned this eerie truth for themselves. When the DNA of over 30 missing women was found on a sprawling hog farm just outside the city, without a single complete body.
The grizzly crime scene at Robert Willie Pickton's farm quickly became the heart of the largest and most complex homicide investigation in Canadian history. But due to the community in Vancouver's impoverished downtown Eastside, this horrifying discovery hadn't come out of nowhere. Instead, it was the sickening answer to questions that had been building for years. But law enforcement agencies had systemically failed to answer. Instead, it was the sickening answer to questions that had been building for years. But law enforcement agencies had systemically failed to answer. Because even whilst women were vanishing from the streets every single day, the powers that be refused to admit there was a serial killer operating in Vancouver. As drug-addicted sex workers, many from Canada's vulnerable indigenous community, the victims were invisible and ignored by authorities, chewed up and spat out by the pigs in more ways than one.
And the discovery of their partial remains was just the beginning of the twisted story. I'm Hannah.

**Suruthi** (2:07)
I'm Suruthi.

**Hannah** (2:08)
And this is RedHanded, where today we are diving into part one of the disturbing case of Canada's most infamous serial killer, The Butcher of Vancouver.

**Suruthi** (2:22)
Back in the 90s, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside had a pretty grim reputation. Dubbed Canada's poorest postcode, it was notorious for high rates of poverty, homelessness, drug abuse and prostitution.
80% of the women engaged in sex work in the area didn't actually come from Vancouver. Many were indigenous and grew up in Canada's rural reserve communities, but had become estranged from their families amid battles with drug addiction. They were isolated, vulnerable and living an incredibly risky and dangerous existence. And despite frequent acts of violence against them, incidents rarely got reported. Because Downtown Eastsideers had an intense distrust of the authorities, who they knew were much more likely to lock them up for working the streets than cracking down on the clients who were abusing them.

**Hannah** (3:16)
Life here was undeniably tough, but by the late 90s, things took an even darker turn. Whilst vulnerable girls had always come and gone from the Downtown Eastside from 1997 onwards, there was an alarming surge of missing persons cases.
At least 69 women disappeared from the area between 1997 and 2002 A sudden spike that even the police couldn't write off.

**Suruthi** (3:40)
That's unbelievable. That's in five years for nearly 70 women. And those are just the ones that they like, realize have gone missing.

**Hannah** (3:50)
Understandably, fear gripped the community with whispers of a serial killer targeting sex workers. The families of missing women begged the authorities to launch a proper investigation into the suspected murders. But did they? Nope. At multiple press conferences, Vancouver police consistently denied the existence of a potential serial killer at large in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood.
They pointed to the lack of bodies and argued that these women often had complicated family relationships. That meant they probably wanted to go off-grid. Those who actually lived in the area, though, knew that that just wasn't true. Still, without the authorities acknowledging the scale of the problem, and more importantly, refusing to fund a proper investigation, there was nowhere else to turn. The disappearances were labelled missing persons cases, and they all swiftly went cold. For the next five years, the community's cries for help would fall on deaf ears.
All the while, more and more women vanished without a trace.

**Suruthi** (4:59)
It's a really tricky one because, and I'm not going to defend the Vancouver Police Department, because as we will see, they make a lot of mistakes during this investigation once it eventually actually turns into an investigation. But I understand at the very start, at the very start, it's the only grain of any leniency that I'm willing to give this department, that they are like, there are no bodies. It's not like we're talking about bodies are turning up dead, and even they're just passing them off as ODs, or something, or accidents, or misadventure. There are literally no bodies turning up. There is nothing turning up. There's just women going missing. Yes, at alarmingly high rates, but they are living a very, very high risk lifestyle. And as you said, some of them are very, very, well, most of them were addicted to drugs. They were in a very difficult time in their lives, and maybe the police can just brush it off as like they're being transient, whatever. One thing we do know here that is different to other cases, and it was kind of painted like this at the time, it's definitely not the case, is that nobody was looking for these women. Nobody cared about them, nobody was looking for them. The victim's families, they may have been estranged. They may have had difficult relationships because of drug addiction, because of the working the streets, that kind of thing. But these girls' families, these women's families were looking for them. They were pressuring the police. They were out there putting up missing posters. They were demanding answers. There were people looking for them.