The Case Of Robert Pickton

Between 1978 and 2001 “at least 65 women disappeared from the Downtown Eastside district of Vancouver, British Columbia” (Robert Pickton Case 2016). Robert Pickton, the most infamous serial killer in Canadian history, admitted to a cell mate that he murdered forty-nine of those women. Pickton was charged with twenty-six counts of second-degree murder and convicted of six. He never plead guilty to any of these charges in court and has shown no remorse for the brutality he released on these victims. The factors included in the Pickton case are his childhood, Victimology Theory, Routine Activity Theory, and Social Process Theory, as well as the advancement of Geographical Profiling this case brought. This unsuspecting multimillionaire pig farmer

The theory of Victimology is defined as “The study of the victim's role in criminal events” (Siegel, 2017, 55). Victimology usually looks at six different sub-sections including gender, age, social status, marital status, race and ethnicity, and repeat victimization (for the purpose of this report the six victims he got charged of murdering are being used). When looking at the gender category of the Victimology theory, it states that men are more likely to be a victim of a physical assault while women are more likely to be victims of sexual assaults. However, in the case of Robert Pickton, all of his victims were women. Of the six accounts of murder he was charged with, the average age of the victims was 28 with the ages ranging between 22 and 35 years old. The social statues states that the “poorest Canadians are the most likely victims of physical and sexual assaults” (Siegel, 2017, 61). Of the six victims, all but one of were prostitutes living on the street selling their bodies to fuel their drug habits. The one exception was Brenda Wolfe who was in charge of protecting prostitutes. The marital status portion of Victimization theory states that never married, divorced or separated males and females have the highest victimization rate. None of the six women Pickton murdered were reported ever being married. Being unmarried as well as their high risk lifestyle could have played a factor in their terrible ends. The

Routine Activity theory states that for crime to occur there must be three prevalent factors: “the availability of suitable targets, the absence of capable guardians, and the presence of motivated offenders” (Siegel, 2017, 67). Pickton would pick up the women he murdered in an area where there was a lack of capable guardians due to the high traffic coming in and out and most of the people on the streets being drug addicts and fellow prostitutes. The women that Pickton had been picking up were prostitutes, meaning that they would enter his vehicle and from that moment on it was just them and Pickton. He would continue to take them to his farm where he would do unspeakable things to them and no one was around to help the women or stop Pickton himself. When it comes to the suitable target section of Routine Activity theory, all of his victims were perfect. They were low risk victims, most were living on the street and drug addicts. These women for the most part were detached from their families and had limited connections. This made them perfect targets for a serial killer. The fact that all the victims are women made it easy for Pickton, women for the most part are physically weaker than men. This meant that there would be less of a struggle for Pickton and he can maximize his odds of completing the kill. It was the perfect storm for a deranged, detached serial