Robert Pickton: The Pig Farm Serial Killer

On a 17 acre farmland, lived Robert William Pickton currently known as the

“Pig farm serial killer”. He was noted as a quiet, polite and socially awkward man,

which to a lot of people, sounded like the perfect “description of a serial killer” (Pig

Farm, 2012). In Vancouver 1997, drug addicts and prostitutes started disappearing

in front of local police without any red flags (Mudede, Selcer, Berentson, & Lovejoy,

2003). These drug addicts and prostitutes resided along the downtown eastside and became the prime location of where Pickton singled out his prey. Pickton would

pick up his delirious victims convincing them that they had a place to stay until they

got better and there, at his farm would pursue a wide variety of butcheries

The police searched Robert Pickton’s farm, and found 80 DNA profiles of

both men and women retrieved on pillowslips, inhalers, syringes, jackets, lipsticks,

boots, bags and many more objects that were identified by forensic biologists

(Palmer et al., n.d.). Additional assistance in this case was from “forensic scientists,

odontologists, foot morphologists, chemical biologists, and archaeologists” (Mudede,

Selcer, Berentson, & Lovejoy, 2003). However, due to the location and brutality of

this investigation, forensic anthropology was the major forensic discipline in this

case. Forensic anthropologists analyze human remains and apply it in a legal

context. They use the study of bone and from that, they determine how a person

died as well as the age, gender, height and ancestry of the deceased that leads to the

identification of a human being (Forensic Anthropologist, 2015). There were 102

anthropologists assigned to the case and for two years, used equipment like

conveyor belts and sifters through 370,000 cubic yards of Pickton’s farm in

Forensic anthropologists discovered the hands, feet

and jawbones of victims Sereena Abotsway and Andrea Joesbury in a bucket at

Pickton’s farm. The same body parts of victim Mona Wilson were found in the

freezer. 50 small hand bones of Georgina Papin were found under the floorboards as

well as her dismembered wrist (Tangient LLC, 2014). Forensic anthropologists

looked for specific details on the bones that determine gender, age and

identification when examining the human remains found at the crime scene. These

small details identified the victim and were used in the arrest of Robert Pickton. Due

to the brutality of this investigation, forensic anthropology was significant in

identifying the victims at Pickton’s farm compared to any other forensic discipline

because of how the victims were dismembered and left nearly unidentifiable.

On February 22nd 2002, Robert Pickton was arrested on 2 accounts of first-

degree murder of two women, however, by the end of 2005 Pickton was charged

with first degree murder in a total of 27 accounts. After a long trial, on December 9th

2007, he was convicted of six-second degree murders and was sentenced to life