Robert Pickton, one of the most famous serial killers in Canadian history, died on Friday from the wounds of an attack suffered on May 19 in the prison where he was held, namely Port-Cartier, Quebec. He was 74 years old.
Pickton was sentenced to life in prison in 2007 for killing six women in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the Vancouver area. He died in hospital after being attacked by a 51-year-old inmate. Pickton would have been granted parole in 2032 at the latest, given that under Canadian law, like that of Italy and many other countries, a life sentence cannot coincide with a life prison sentence.
Pickton was extremely well known in Canada. During the trial he was accused of killing 26 women and once told an undercover officer that he had killed 49. They were mainly women who worked as prostitutes, often drug addicts or indigenous people. People still on the margins of society: which is why the Canadian police were later accused by the relatives of the dead people of not having done enough to look for the person responsible.
At the trial a witness said that Pickton had told him that he strangled his victims and then fed them to his pigs, whose meat was sold in the market. This detail hit the newspapers a lot, so much so that Pickton was nicknamed “the pig farm killer”.
