John Pickton Case

The John Pickton case is a very well known and well documented mass murder case. It occurred in Port Coquitlam, BC, on the property that was in my best friend’s backyard. He was the owner of a pig farm, and had a charity that was called the “Piggy Palace Good Times Society. It was advertised as hosting dances and events for good causes, but really ended up hosting wild parties that had a long guest list of prostitutes from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Also known as the “Low Track”, it is the poorest neighbourhood in Canada. It is overrun with drug traffickers and prostitution, and boasts the highest rate of HIV infection in North America. From as early as 1978, Pickton had been luring prostitutes to his farm where he presumably sexually assaulted

This gave them means to obtain another search warrant as part of the BC Missing Women Investigation. As they searched a second time, they found human remains including skulls that were cut in half and stuffed with human hands and feet. They also found the DNA of 33 women, bloody clothing belonging to one victim, and the jawbone and teeth belonging to another victim. Other things found included a .22 revolver with a dildo attached to the barrel, .357 Magnum rounds, two pairs of faux fur-lined handcuffs, a pair of night vision goggles, and photos of a garbage bin containing the remains of a victim. When asked about the dildo, which had the DNA of both Pickton and a victim on it, he claimed it was used as a “makeshift suppressor”. The gun also contained a spent cartridge. While John Pickton was in custody, he admitted to an undercover officer that he had wanted to kill one more in order to make his victim count an even 50, or as Pickton put it, the “big five-o”. This suggests that he was responsible for 49

He pleaded not guilty to all 27 counts, and one was later disbanded due to the lack of evidence. The 26 charges were split so that six of them were processed first, because the judge ruled that doing all 26 at once would put far too much pressure on the jury, and that the first six were “materially different” from the others. On December 6th, 2007, Pickton was found guilty of 6 counts of second-degree murder and was sentenced to the highest possible consequence of second-degree murder at the time - life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. Essentially, he earned the same punishment that he would have earned regardless of whether it was second- or first-degree murder. On August 4th, 2010, the other 20 charges were stayed. Three appeals have been filed since to the British Columbia Court of Appeal. The first one made by the defense was rejected, and the one made by the prosecution was allowed on the terms that the trial judge had made a mistake in excluding some evidence and in splitting the charges. Pickton's defense then filed an appeal with the Canadian Supreme Court, which was rejected on July 30, 2009. He is currently incarcerated. A spokesman for the Crown stated that the other 20 charges are probably going to be discontinued due to the fact that any additional convictions could not result in any increase to the sentence that Pickton has already