The Vancouver women tragedy
Robert was pissed off at himself.
Up to that point, he had managed to get rid of his victims using some unbelievable ways.
For instance, his victims ended up in a rendering plant where they’d be turned into gelatin. Or they ended up as pig food or sausages. But this time, he was sloppy.
His actions had finally caught up with him.
Robert: They got me….they got me on this one.
Undercover agent: I find the best way to dispose of a body is to take it to the ocean.
Robert: I did better than that. A rendering plant…I was gonna do one more, make it an even fifty.
That’s why I was so sloppy…
I’d fill the syringes up with antifreeze and inject the stuff. You’re dead in about five to ten minutes.
Women From Vancouver Started Vanishing In Huge Numbers
The people from the downtown east side of Vancouver, Canada, noticed that women were disappearing in droves. But no one reported these disappearances.
The people there had a general distrust of the police. However, more and more women disappeared by the day. Rumors of a serial killer operating in that area started circulating.
The people of Vancouver finally contacted the police when more women continued to go missing at a rapid rate.
But the police believed that the missing women were to blame. Most of these women were sex workers or drug addicts. So the police believed that those women either ran away or overdosed.
Also, there were no dead bodies found for the police suspect that there was foul play involved.
A Man Heard a Frantic Knock on His Front Door
One year later, a man heard a knock on his door.
He opened his door only to find a panic-stricken woman hunched over. The woman placed one hand on her bleeding stomach. And she had a handcuff dangling from her wrist.
The man was shocked at what he was seeing.
He let the woman inside. Then he called an ambulance, and the woman was rushed to the hospital. She was immediately put into emergency surgery. Soon she recovered from her wounds.
Then she told her nurses that her name was Wendy. She was attacked at a party by one of the hosts. A man called Robert Pickton.
Wendy explained that Robert tried to put a handcuff on her. But, she fought back.
So Robert drew out a knife and stabbed her in the stomach.
Wendy managed to snatch the knife from Robert. She stabbed him in the face. She then turned and ran for her life.
Robert showed up at the same hospital later that day. He had a laceration on his face that showed that he was stabbed.
So the hospital staff called the police on him. And Robert was arrested.
Robert Told the Police That Wendy Was A Thief
The police found a handcuff key in Robert’s pocket.
The key matched the handcuffs that were found on Wendy’s wrist. Robert explained to the police that Wendy was a drug addict who had tried to rob him.
So when Robert caught Wendy in the act, he confronted her. Thereafter, Wendy drew out a knife on him. The two of them got into a fight. And they both got stabbed in the process.
The police believed Robert.
They dropped all of his charges, and they let him walk. The police then got a tipoff from one of Robert’s farm workers.
The worker believed that Robert had attacked Wendy. Not the other way around.
The Worker Believed Robert Was Causing the Women’s Disappearances
The worker also suspected that Robert was behind the cases of the missing women from the downtown east side of Vancouver.
Robert and his brother held a lot of parties at their pig farm.
And the worker knew that Robert regularly went downtown east side to pick up women. Robert brought those women back to his piggy palace parties.
But some of those women kept disappearing after the party.
The police were unable to secure a search warrant to investigate the matter. And they also didn’t have enough evidence to arrest either Robert or his brother.
So Robert and his brother continued to throw huge piggy palace parties.
Meanwhile, women continued to disappear from Vancouver.
Robert and His Brother Were Prohibited From Hosting More Parties
The city of Vancouver finally shut the piggy palace parties.
The parties were getting too loud and too frequent. Then a former employee of Robert’s farm told the police that he had seen illegal weapons inside Robert’s trailer. That was enough for the police to get a search warrant.
The police raided Robert’s pig farm.
They found the illegal weapons inside his trailer. But they also found more.
The police found the belongings of the missing women in the trailer in Robert’s trailer. Then they found blood that belonged to one of the missing women inside the trailer.
Robert was immediately arrested.
Robert went on to confess that he had killed a total of forty-nine women whilst he was talking to his cellmate in jail. He told his cellmate that almost fifteen people were involved in the killings.
Little did Robert know that the cellmate was an undercover police officer.
Robert’s Killing Spree Stretched Many Years Back
Robert’s killing spree started back in 1991.
But things kicked up a notch when he started hosting the huge piggy palace parties with his brother.
Robert used the parties to lure more female victims to his farm faster. Then he would lure the women into his trailer, handcuff them, and inject them with antifreeze or strangle them to death.
Robert moved the victim’s bodies to the slaughterhouse afterward, where he butchered them like pigs.
Robert Fed the Women’s Bodies to His Pigs
Robert fed a large portion of his victims’ remains to his pigs.
He also set aside some of the meat. He ground it up with pork. And he turned the mix into sausages. Those sausages were served at the piggy palace parties.
He also gave the sausages to neighbors, food banks, and orphanages.
Robert took some parts to the rendering plant in the downtown east side of Vancouver.
A rendering plant takes animal waste products, crushes them up, and turns them into gelatin. Gelatin is used in products like candy, cakes, ice cream, vitamin pills, cosmetics, etc.
The Aftermath
The police found little bits of the remains of 27 women around the pig farm.
So Robert was only charged with 27 murders. But also, only six of the murders turned into convictions due to lack of evidence.
Robert was sentenced in 2007 to life in prison with a possibility of parole after 25 years.
His brother was never charged in connection with the crimes.
Sources: Wikipedia,Robert Pickton Case, ListVerse, cbc.ca