Robert Pickton: A Serial Killer and a Farm Full of Secrets

Summary

Podcast Summary: Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore Episode: Robert Pickton: A Serial Killer and a Farm Full of Secrets (March 11, 2026)

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Episode Overview

In this harrowing episode, hosts Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore (along with co-narrator Sarah Turney) explore the notorious case of Robert Pickton, Canada's most infamous serial killer. Pickton preyed upon marginalized sex workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside for decades, exploiting the indifference and systemic failures of law enforcement. With chilling forensic details, firsthand survivor accounts, and an exploration of community activism, the hosts delve into the clues that brought Pickton to justice—albeit far too late for most of his victims. The episode is both an indictment of institutional neglect and a call to action for listeners to advocate for vulnerable and missing persons.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and Systemic Neglect

• Setting the Scene: The Downtown Eastside was home to many sex workers and people with substance use disorders, disproportionately affecting Indigenous women (04:21).
• Criminalization and Policing: Sex workers faced heavy legal penalties, while “johns” received minor consequences (05:29).
• Police Apathy: “[The police] insisted that women would just leave the area willingly… young women continued to vanish from the streets.” — Courtney, (06:35).
• Activism Emerges: Community groups composed largely of First Nations peoples started tracking missing women when police refused (06:56).

2. Survivor Story and the Missed Opportunity

• Wendy Lynn Istetter Attack (March 22, 1997): Wendy fights off a brutal assault by Pickton, narrowly surviving, and reports him by name to RCMP while both are hospitalized for their injuries (13:10–16:05).
  • “Her assailant’s name, Robert Pickton… was easy to confirm because [he] was actually recovering in the very same hospital.” — Sarah, (16:02).
• Police Inaction: Despite compelling evidence, Pickton was released on bail and charges were dropped when prosecutors decided Wendy, traumatized and intoxicated, could not testify. The case was never pursued further, allowing Pickton to continue his crimes (20:12–21:49).

3. Timeline of Disappearances and Institutional Failures

• Escalation: 21 women vanished between 1995–1999, most were not seriously investigated (30:18).
• Botched Investigations: The hosts keep tallying institutional mistakes on their “botchboard”.
  • “No task force after this many women go missing is crazy.” — Sarah, (31:45).
• Community Outcry and Media Exposure: Only after American TV covered the case did authorities finally offer a reward, catalyzing new tips (34:11–34:52).

4. The Pickton Family and Pig Farm

• Background: The Pickton brothers were wealthy pig farmers with deep ties to local biker gangs, a history of family cruelty, and suspected involvement in organized crime (23:04–27:00).
• Piggy’s Palace: Their property hosted notorious parties, often attended by off-duty police and filled with sex workers (27:08–27:16).
• Potential Human Trafficking: Police suspected, but couldn’t prove, the family’s involvement in trafficking and organized crime (27:16).

5. Key Witnesses and Clues Ignored

• Informant Tips: Multiple informants described Pickton’s violent acts, the trophies he kept, and his admissions about disposing of bodies by feeding them to pigs or sending remains to a rendering plant (34:52–37:42).
• Unheeded Evidence: Despite a “golden ticket”—Pickton himself offering police permission to search his farm—they inexplicably declined (40:02–40:48).

6. The Farm Excavation & Horrific Discoveries

• The Search Finally Begins (Feb 2002): Junior constable Nathan Wells receives a tip about illegal guns, gets a search warrant, and stumbles on a missing woman’s inhaler during the raid (44:53).
• Two-Year Search: Excavations uncovered human remains, buckets of body parts, and ground meat containing human DNA. No full bodies were ever found—just fragments, bones, severed heads, and personal effects (47:57–48:40).
  • “No full bodies were ever found… Robert was taking byproduct to that rendering plant. It’s just horrible.” — Sarah, (48:40).
• Possible Human Contamination of Pork Supply: Investigators believe some victims were indeed fed to the pigs and potentially entered the local food chain (48:20–48:31).

7. The Arrest, Confession, and Trial

• Arrest: Pickton is initially arrested on weapons charges, then finally held for murder after DNA evidence from the farm linked him to missing women, most notably Mona Wilson (48:40–49:00).
• Cellmate Confession: Undercover officer posing as Pickton’s cellmate records him bragging: “I’m a legend already… I had planned to do one more murder, to, quote, make it an even 50.” — Sarah, quoting Pickton (50:14–50:51).
• Trial Farce: Only six out of an estimated 49 murders proceed to trial. First-degree murder charges were thrown out; he was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder (54:06).
  • Prosecutorial and judicial choices meant jurors never heard about Wendy Istetter’s attack or overwhelming evidence of premeditation. “That was deemed unrelated to six of the murders…” — Courtney, (55:29).

8. Aftermath and Ongoing Impact

• Lack of Closure and Ongoing Lawsuits: Many families continue to wait for justice; some are suing Pickton’s brother David for alleged complicity (58:50–58:54).
• Pickton’s Death: Beaten by a fellow inmate in 2024, Pickton died in prison in May 2024 (57:01–57:48).
• Unidentified Victims: At least one victim, “Mission Jane Doe,” remains unidentified. Her skull, found in 1995, matched later remains from Pickton’s property (60:43–62:14).
• Systemic Failures: Files destroyed, evidence mishandled, and authorities allowed to dispose of untested or potentially critical evidence despite protests from victims’ families (63:53–65:28).

9. Legacy: Activism and Calls for Justice

• National Crisis Highlighted: The case intensified scrutiny on violence against Indigenous women in Canada, culminating in national inquiries—though only 2 of 231 Calls for Justice have been implemented as of 2024 (66:12–67:42).
• Ongoing Organizing: Listeners are urged to stay vocal, support organizations, and remain vigilant on missing and murdered women’s cases (68:01–68:24).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Morgan: “I was nauseous preparing for this case. Like, it is a heavy one and it will leave you really, really pissed off.” (03:03)
• Courtney: “We’re gonna fill up this entire botchboard… it will be blacked out.” (21:26)
• Sarah: “You literally had a golden ticket. He gave you permission.” (40:48)
• Sarah, quoting Pickton: “I’m a legend already… I had planned to do one more murder, to make it an even 50.” (50:14–50:51)
• Courtney: “If they had taken [Wendy’s] account seriously... all they had to do was act accordingly. It’s absolutely pathetic.” (52:08–52:26)
• Sarah: “Negligent. Absolutely negligent. And the fact it’s happening, just despicable.” (65:30)
• Courtney: “Now there’s a little bit, I guess, of activism that can come from this case. So the Robert Pickton case put a huge spotlight on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.” (65:46)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 04:21 — Downtown Eastside context, sex worker vulnerability
• 13:10-16:05 — Wendy Istetter’s attack, police apathy, and missteps
• 23:04-27:16 — Pickton family history and Piggy’s Palace
• 34:52-37:42 — Informant tips & chilling witness accounts
• 40:48 — Police refusal to search Pickton farm despite his consent
• 44:53 — Breakthrough: illegal gun tip leads to discovery of clues
• 47:57-48:40 — Discovery of body parts, forensic evidence, and tainted meat
• 50:14–50:51 — Pickton cellmate confession clip
• 54:06–56:01 — Verdict details and trial critiques
• 58:50–60:43 — Post-trial civil suits, Pickton’s death, and Mission Jane Doe
• 65:46–68:24 — Inquiry, national policy, activism, and ongoing challenges

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Final Thoughts and Calls to Action

The episode closes with a focus on missing Indigenous women, urging listeners to support advocacy organizations, participate in activism, and demand accountability from officials. The hosts reflect on the emotional toll not only of Pickton’s crimes, but of a justice system that repeatedly failed the most vulnerable. They underscore the importance of sharing information and pressuring authorities for meaningful change.

Audience Takeaway:
This episode is a dense, emotionally charged chronicle of one of North America’s worst serial killings—a case as much about institutional failure as it is about individual violence. It’s both a cautionary tale and a call to pursue justice, loudly, especially for those whose voices are so often silenced.

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Support and Activist Resources Mentioned:

• Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS)
• Assembly of First Nations (AFN)
• Missing Person support line: 1-844-413-6649
• For tips on Mission Jane Doe: canadiancrimestoppers.org or 1-800-222-8477

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Next Week’s Focus:
Missing person case: Renell Rose Bennett — coverage and tip lines provided in the episode’s closing minutes.
(Timestamp: 68:40–71:26)

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Listener Engagement
Share thoughts, theories, and missing persons for future coverage at @CluesPodcast (Instagram) or @CluesPod (YouTube).

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Transcript

[Sarah Turney]

When someone goes missing, the headlines focus on what happened. But the truth often lives in the smallest details. I'm Sarah Turney. After my sister disappeared, I learned how those final hours, the last conversations, the last decisions, can haunt families forever.

[Courtney Nicole]

And I'm Courtney Nicole. After seeing crime impact my own family, I've learned how overlooked moments, missed red flag flags, and unanswered questions can change everything.

[Sarah Turney]

Together, we're bringing those lived experiences into the work. This is the Final Hours. A Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. A podcast that puts the moments before

[Courtney Nicole]

a disappearance under a microscope. Listen to and follow the final hours wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday.

[Sarah Turney]

This is Crime House.

[Courtney Nicole]

A woman stumbles out of the woods. She's bleeding, she's frantic. She's got a knife in her hand and one handcuff locked on her wrist. It's the middle of the night, but she's able to flag down a car, an elderly couple, who immediately slams on the brakes.

[Sarah Turney]

Their headlights illuminated a massive wound on her stomach. She's narrowly escaped death, but she's one of the only survivors. Today we are getting into the horrendous case of one of Canada's most notorious serial killers. Hi, guys. Welcome back to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence, find some of the most gripping true crime cases.

[Courtney Nicole]

I'm Kayla Moore and I'm going to be the one diving deeper into the timelines, the backstories and the court files released on these cases.

[Sarah Turney]

And I'm your Internet sleuth, Morgan Absher. I'm the one who's diving into Reddit forums to talk about the lesser known details and pulling out threads that just don't add up.

[Courtney Nicole]

Don't forget to share your thoughts on social media. If you want ad free listening and early access, you can subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Okay, let's get into this case and the clues that defined it. Before we jump in, can I shout out a listener?

[Sarah Turney]

Let's go.

[Courtney Nicole]

Okay, so I got a message from Linda. She's in Australia.

[Sarah Turney]

Hi, Linda.

[Courtney Nicole]

Linda says, dear Morgan and Kaylin, good day from down under. She goes on to basically say that she found our podcast and she's been really into true crime. But the other night, she was listening with her husband to the episode that we did on the Martin family mystery.

[Sarah Turney]

Wow.

[Courtney Nicole]

And she heard you talking about that combo tool where you can rip the seat belt and crack open. And she asked for that for Christmas and her husband got it for her already. She knows okay. Yay. Everyone needs one.

[Sarah Turney]

They're so good to have.

[Courtney Nicole]

So thank you, Linda, for that message and thank you, Linda's husband, for getting that for her.

[Sarah Turney]

That was very nice. Sticks to the list. Does a good job. I love it.

[Courtney Nicole]

We love it.

[Sarah Turney]

I love it. I love all your comments. Please leave them for every episode. Any missing people case you want us to highlight. We really, really love seeing all your thoughts. We actually just highlighted a missing person case a couple weeks ago and the listener who recommended it wrote another comment and was like, oh, my God, you shared this case. This was my friend's case. So I think it was about Tony's case. So we really appreciate your comments. And this is going to be a case. I think you guys have a lot to say about it because I. I was nauseous preparing for this case. Like, it is a heavy one and it will leave you really, really pissed off.

[Courtney Nicole]

It's the last case recovering before I give birth.

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah.

[Courtney Nicole]

And it's a really intense one. It might send me into labor. We'll see.

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah, let's hope not.

[Courtney Nicole]

A quick reminder, if you're watching this on YouTube, you are going to see some images. It's not going to be anything too graphic or gratuitous, but if you are listening to the episode, you can find those same pictures videos on our social media and you should follow our social media. Anyways, no matter listen. That's going to be at Clues podcast on Instagram.

[Sarah Turney]

A warning for this episode. It does contain some pretty graphic descriptions of murder, sexual assault, dismemberment, violence against animals, and possible cannibalism. So please really take this warning and listen with care.

[Courtney Nicole]

Okay? Our case today takes place in Vancouver. And before we get too deep into the story, I just want to give you a few details about Vancouver's downtown east side where this case takes place, because that's going to really inform how this case unfolded. About a third of the residents in the Vancouver downtown eastside Des lived with substance use disorders and thousands were sex workers. Somewhere between 50% and 80% of those sex workers were indigenous, even though they only made up 2% of Vancouver's total population. And many of them use sex work to escape domestic violence or family abuse. Men came from all over British Columbia to hire sex workers from this area. There was a local stroll known as the load track where they would go. And the sex workers there were, I don't want to say used to, very shady customers coming from all over Canada. But there were very few police calls made when abuse or assault would Happen in this area, the punishment for solicitation was up to two years in jail and a fine of up to three years. $5,000 that these workers just could not

[Sarah Turney]

afford so much money.

[Courtney Nicole]

Whereas the punishment for hiring a sex worker at the time was, quote, john's school, which was kind of a program like traffic school. You could get arrested, but that arrest would be expunged after you graduated the school. So a crime for performing it, but not a crime for hiring someone to perform it?

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah, it's like that should maybe be opposite there.

[Courtney Nicole]

And that's why in this area, sex workers would protect each other by handing out these things known as bad date lists, and they would include photos of known predators. So everyone tried to have each other's back in this area. And like many of the cases that we've covered here, the police mostly ignored when these sex workers would disappear, and they insisted that women would just leave the area willingly. But some of the sex workers started getting this feeling in the 90s, like the police almost wanted them to keep disappearing. See, when sex workers disappeared, the local police often would refuse to take reports. In one case, they told a woman who was trying to report her friend missing to, quote, go down to the needle exchange and leave her a message there. Woof.

[Sarah Turney]

Holy.

[Courtney Nicole]

This was a problem that had been happening since at least 1978. So by February of 1997, I mean, almost 20 years later, the community really started to take things into their own hands. A first nations group called a meeting with a community liaison officer assigned to the downtown east side named constable Dave Dixon. And when we say first nations, that's specific to Canada. It's a term for the indigenous tribes in the southern part of Canada. They handed him a list of 55 women that they believed were missing or murdered. And that list, you know, it was taken seriously, at least for a little while. Dixon was added to the unsolved homicide unit so that he could investigate some of these cases. And through that, he added some more names to the list after he was reviewing police records that brought up the total list to 71 people. But it turned out most of these women were not actually missing. Some had moved home. Some had gone to rehab. Some just left the area. Dixon could account for all of the women except for two, which raised the question of whether or not foul play was involved. But the Vancouver police department still didn't budge. They took this as more confirmation that sex workers had moved from place to place all the time without telling their friends or family where to find them. And because of that, Young women continued to vanish from the streets.

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah. And this is also at a time where what is now known as the highway of Tears was really, really notorious and terrible too. And for those that aren't familiar, the highway of tears, it's a 720 kilometer stretch of Yellowhead Highway 16 in northern British Columbia, Canada. And it's infamous for many women, predominantly those that are indigenous who have gone missing or been murdered there since the 1970s.

[Courtney Nicole]

We covered one of these cases on Hartzart's pounding of an indigenous family that went missing after a guy promised them work and they got in his car. Never seen again.

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah.

[Courtney Nicole]

Also not really investigated by police.

[Sarah Turney]

No. There are many of these cases and we do want to continue highlighting some of them. So if you have any that you think we should cover, please put them in the comments. But this is also happening in this area and so police really just, they kind of scoffed at all of these people missing.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah. And that really brings us to March 22, 1997. So around 11:45 that night, this woman named Wendy Lynn Istetter is hitchhiking in the downtown east side when someone approaches her. It's this scruffy balding white guy in a red pickup truck. And he offers her a hundred dollars for oral sex. But he wants her to come back to his place. He doesn't want this to happen in the car. It's 19 miles away in Port Coquitlam. He promises that he's going to have her back where he found her by 2am Now I'm sure there were some bells going off in her head, but she needs the money. So Wendy agrees to this. And as they're heading back to his place, he takes her down this long winding route making what should have been a 35 minute drive, closer to 50 minutes when they finally get to his trailer home on a 10 acre pig farm. It's nearly 1am they have sex and Wendy asks afterwards if she can use a phone to call a hotel in the Des. She's supposed to be staying there with a friend that night, but the man refuses to let her use the phone. She tries to get the phone anyways and use it and that's when she feels something cold attached to her wrist. And the man is trying to handcuff her. Wendy freaks out. She starts fighting back with everything she has and with her free hand she grabs an 8 inch knife that's nearby and she slashes the man's throat which cuts his jugular vein. But the man just keeps attacking her. This doesn't slow him down all that much. The struggle moves outside. He gets the knife out of her hand, and he stabs Wendy in the stomach. And Wendy remembers thinking, quote, that's it. I'm history. He's got me now. She fully expected to die, but he was losing a lot of blood as well. And soon the man collapses. And that's when Wendy runs across the road looking for help. And an elderly couple spots her, takes her into their car and drives her to a local hospital. Four days later, Wendy miraculously recovers from this abdominal stab, Enough so that she can tell the Royal Canadian Mounted Police what happened. But that does not stop more women from disappearing later that year. By the end of 1997, nine more sex workers would go on to vanish from the downtown east side. And In April of 1998, a little more than a year after Wendy's attack, 28 year old Sarah Jean Devries also disappears. Now, Sarah had a lot in common with these other missing women. She also did sex work. She also struggled with substance use disorder. But unlike most of her peers, Sarah had enough connections to make the police take her case seriously. See, Sarah was raised upper middle class by her adoptive family in a wealthy part of Vancouver. She rode horses, she sketched, and she loved to write poetry. She was mixed race. She was black and latina and also had indigenous ancestry. Everyone else in her adoptive family's household was white, though. So Sarah struggled with her identity a lot. Growing up, she wrote in a journal, quote, I have no people, I have no nation, and I am alone. By age 14, Sarah started running away from home. She also began using drugs and began doing sex work, which continued into adulthood. She ended up being trafficked for sex as a teenager. But even at her lowest, Sarah made time to help others. She befriended young girls on the downtown east side and even looked after them. At just 28, though, Sarah thought she was too old to start over. She'd been on the street for half her life at that point. She'd seen women that she was close to die violently. One of her poems started with the lines quote, woman's body found beaten beyond recognition. You sip your coffee, taking a drag of your smoke, turning the page, taking a bite of your toast. Just another day, just another death, Just one more thing you so easily forget. But Sarah also was staying in touch with some people from her past, like her adoptive sister Maggie, and also her best friend, Wayne. So when no one hears from Sarah in over a week, Wayne goes to the downtown eastside to look for her. And that's around April 21, 1998. When that didn't produce any results, he tries to file a police report, but he's rejected because he's not a family member. So next, Wayne calls Sarah's sister Maggie, who filed the report instead. And it took the police six days to follow up on this report.

[Sarah Turney]

Did I hear that right?

[Courtney Nicole]

Grabbing that.

[Sarah Turney]

Six days to follow up.

[Courtney Nicole]

Six days for a missing person?

[Sarah Turney]

Come on. We know the first 48 are crucial so fast.

[Courtney Nicole]

By the time a detective spoke to Wayne, it was May 5, more than three weeks since Sarah was last seen insane. By early July, there's still no news on what happened to her. So Wayne sets up an informational website and a 1-800-tip- line. Not just for Sarah, but Wayne does this actually for all of the missing women from the downtown east side. And Wayne's efforts end up attracting a lot of media attention. And it also brings in one really good tip.

[Sarah Turney]

So on July 27, 1998, a new Vancouver detective was assigned to the case. 34 year old Laura Merschenner. Now, Detective Schenner is a trans man, but at this time was living as a woman, which really helped him go undercover to kind of ingratiate themselves in this case. Detective Shenner actually would pose as a sex worker to try and bust johns and did not have this job easy. I mean, Detective Schenner was threatened, assaulted more than once during these undercover missions. And so he really understood the fear and kind of every danger that sex workers could face on the street. Now, he is the one who investigated the tip that Wayne received, which is our first clue. Wayne did record this anonymous caller's message. The male voice said a person named Willie had recently bragged to him about grinding up human bodies on his farm in Port Coquitlam. The caller also mentioned a woman who saw multiple purses and ID cards out and about this Willie person's trailer. And so Wayne told the tipster like, hey, you should also contact the police like this is. This is a big deal. Instead, this person ended up calling Crime Stoppers. But they did give Crime Stoppers more specific information like Willie's full name. 47 year old Robert William Pickton. When Shanner looked that name up, he immediately found Wendy Istatter's case because it turns out she had given that name to police right after her attack. Already up number two right there on

[Courtney Nicole]

the bottom, right there. We already have the name of the person, you guys.

[Sarah Turney]

So let's back up this clock a little bit back to March 27, 1997 to get our second clue. That is when two RCMP constables, aka Mounties, interviewed Wendy in the hospital just four days after her attack. And during that conversation, Wendy told the Mounties that she actually did catch her assailant's name, Robert Pickton. Which was also super easy to confirm because the 47 year old pig farmer was actually recovering in the very same

[Courtney Nicole]

hospital, the same exact hospital he had

[Sarah Turney]

checked himself in with the exact injury that Wendy had described giving her attacker. And his pants pocket had the key to the handcuff that was still on her wrist. Today's episode is brought to you by Alma. It can be challenging to find the right therapist. Someone that gets you, teaches you strategies. Strategies that are actually going to work for you and your needs. And it can sometimes be costly. Well, Alma is on a mission to change all that. They want to simplify access to high quality, affordable mental health care and they have over 20,000 diverse therapists and an easy to use platform. One thing I love about Alma is that you can do consultations with a therapist. It's almost like an interview and you can make sure you guys match each other's vibes before you really jump in and get started. Their directory helps you find a therapist that takes your insurance and meets your specific needs with filters like gender, race, therapeutic approach and more. And you're going to know exactly how much you're paying upfront with their free insurance cost estimator calculator. We're entering a new year so now is the perfect time to start addressing things you might want to work on. A year from today isn't that far away. Get started [e-mail] clues that's hello a l m a.com clues. One of this week's partners is Shopify. Starting your own business can be intimidating. You have to learn how to do so many things and wear so many different hats. When I started my podcast I had no idea what I was doing. Especially when it came to selling merch and getting that in your guys hands. That is where Shopify came in. They've been such a good business partner and made my merch store easy and pretty self sufficient. Shopify could be the right tool for you that helps tackle your ever growing list of things to do. Shopify has its own design studio with hundreds of ready to use templates to help you build an online store that matches your brand style. They also have tools to help you write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. And you can get the word out a lot easier. With a marketing team behind you. You can easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And if you ever get stuck, they have 24. 7 customer support. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.comclues. go to shopify.comclues. that's shopify.comclues.

[Courtney Nicole]

so then the case is over. We can just wrap this up. We know like we have all the information and he's in the room next door.

[Sarah Turney]

If only that's how this case went. Wendy described him accurately. Five' eleven, 175 pounds, white, with blue eyes, stringy brown hair in a mullet. Wendy also said that she didn't think that she was the first woman he had assaulted. She even told investigators that she was sure there was, quote, broads on that property. In fact, Robert had told Wendy he picked up sex workers about once a week. After this, Wendy's case was assigned to staff sergeant Mike Connor with the mounted police. He took her story seriously and did apply for a search warrant for Robert Pickton's truck and trailer. The mounties seized hairbrushes, condoms, a sleeping bag, anything with blood on it. But at the time, the police didn't try and figure out if, like, this blood belonged to anyone else. They did at least interview Robert in the hospital. But he goes on to tell this story that Wendy had attacked him first after he confronted her for stealing. Robert said that he only stabbed Wendy and tried to handcuff her in self defense. But Connor wasn't buying it. Instead, he actually sent out a warning about Robert to all police departments in southern British Columbia. He then urged them to consider Robert as a suspect in similar crimes against sex workers. It could be giving a little bit of a Sherlock moment for us here if you want to.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah, we could add that up because

[Sarah Turney]

I'm like, okay, he's doing something.

[Courtney Nicole]

At least the bar is in hell. But we we sure we can add it.

[Sarah Turney]

Bar is in hell. And on April 1, a week after the attack, Robert was arrested and charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon, unlawful confinement, and aggravated assault. However, he was out on bail by the very next week.

[Courtney Nicole]

I'm erasing the Sherlock moment.

[Sarah Turney]

The bail was set for 2000 Canadian, or about 1350 US dollars. His trial was set for February 2, 1998. After this, Wendy was never formally interviewed or asked to make a sworn or written statement. So instead, Wendy, you know, had to go about her life. She returned to the downtown east side where she continued to do sex work unprotected while this guy is out on bail. And it wasn't until January 1998, when the trial was a week away, that the prosecutor tracked her down and tried to prepare her for court. She was allegedly intoxicated when she arrived, so the prosecutor felt that she was in no condition to testify. Instead of proceeding forward with this case, they decided to stay the charges, which basically means that they dismissed the case.

[Courtney Nicole]

Oh, my God. Yeah, we're going to fill up this entire botchboard. By the time we even get to the halfway point, it will be blacked out. Oh, my God.

[Sarah Turney]

But it did still allow for them to refile the charges if they were filed within the year. But after that, it was like the case just disappeared along with more women.

[Courtney Nicole]

I'm gonna give another botch. Well, I guess this is.

[Sarah Turney]

I feel like it deserves, like, five just for this bull.

[Courtney Nicole]

I put five, but they're in the wrong order because I forgot how to do tallies. So it's just. They're all next to each other.

[Sarah Turney]

It's okay. We still. We can count.

[Courtney Nicole]

After hearing about this anonymous tip and Wendy's interview, Detective Schenner had no doubt that Picton was suspicious. But it was going to take more than that to get a search warrant. Which is why Shenner called Staff Sergeant Cooper, the Mountie who handled Wendy's case previously. And he asked for all the information that they had on Robert Pickton. And here is what we learned about Robert and his family. So Robert was born on October 24, 1949, in Port Coquitlam. His parents were third generation pig farmers. He had pig farmer blood. Robert had a sister Linda, and a brother, David. Their parents shipped Linda off to boarding school in Vancouver. But the boys got their education the hard way. When Robert was 11 or 12, he bought a calf at auction. And he told his family that he wanted to keep it as a pet. But one day he comes home and he can't find his calf anywhere. And his parents tell him, hey, go check the barn. Robert walked in and saw his pet calf hanging upside down from the ceiling. Butchered.

[Sarah Turney]

Psychopaths like that is such psychological torture to subject your child at that point, 11 or 12, your child to.

[Courtney Nicole]

It's like one thing if you live on a farm, right? Because animals, that's like, part of it, but, like, they're big farmers. If your kid is specifically making a bond with an animal to slaughter it and be like, hey, go check out the animal that you liked that we just killed.

[Sarah Turney]

Insane.

[Courtney Nicole]

And I think something Similar happened to Ed Gein as well. And it's just like these moments that make them crack. Robert later said that this taught him an important life lesson. In his words, quote, that's life. We're only here for so long and that's it. When your time is over, your time is over and you let someone else take over. So clearly this had deep psychological wounds for him. Robert grew up to be a farmer, just like his parents wanted. But he dreamed of getting off the farm one day and building a house with a tennis court, a pool, and his own indoor planetarium. The problem was he felt like he lived in the shadow of his younger brother, David. He always did what David told him to do, and David saw Robert as being submissive and gullible. But things changed a bit for the family after the parents died, and that was in 1978, in 1979. So all three kids after that inherited equal shares of this farm. Linda wanted nothing to do with either the land or her brothers, though. And David was now a biker in his late 20s, supposedly associated with Hell's Angels. David lived on and off the farm, as did his two kids. But David always hated pigs, especially the smell of blood after they were slaughtered. So Robert decided to take on a bulk of that work. Meanwhile, David managed the financial side of the farm, but he spent most of his time running a construction business. And in 1992, David was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman and allegedly threatened to kill her if she told anyone. And he got off on a thousand dollars fine and a year of probation. Mark it on the botchboard. In 1994, 1995, the Pickton saw another lucrative opportunity. They were able to sell some of their land for a total of 5.2 million Canadian dollars, which they divided between themselves. That's around in US currency, around $8 million today. Robert finally had the money to build that dream house he had been talking about. But he ended up staying on the 10 acres of the farm they had and continued raising pigs. Now, since Robert didn't need the farm to pay the bills because of the lump sum of money he had made, he didn't maintain his license to sell meat commercially, but he kept operating anyways. The Barn had these 30 foot ceilings with a pulley system to hoist pigs overhead for butchering and a vat on the floor to catch blood and entrails. And this waste material was later pumped out and trucked to a local rendering plant which processed it into things like gelatin and pet food, where your pet food comes from, as for the meat. Robert gave a lot of it away for free. And everyone in town knew that he was good for a donation if you were hosting a community barbecue. Robert would go on to raise thousands of pigs there. Over the years, everyone in Port Coquitlam probably ate meat from the Picton farm At one point. They also had a cockpit for roosters and chickens and, you know, a hidden room where it was reported that Robert hosted illegal cockfights. Meanwhile, David bought himself a property down the road, this barn that he fashioned into a biker bar where he and all of his friends could hang out. And he called it Piggy's Palace. By day, they hosted everything from school dances to little league fundraisers. But after dark, Piggy's palace was known for having drug fueled parties. And people said the crowd was often full of sex workers. And at this point in his life, David was considered one of Port Coquitlam's wealthiest and most powerful business owners. The Mounties suspected the Pictons were making money from not only their farm, but also organized crime like theft, fraud, drug trading, potentially even human trafficking. But the cops just weren't ever able to prove it.

[Sarah Turney]

I know. I saw in one source that it was reported that they made like $40,000 a night at Piggy's Palace.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah, from these parties.

[Sarah Turney]

They would throw these parties and, like, detectives off duty would even go there. Like, it sounds like it was small town.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah.

[Sarah Turney]

Vibes and. Yeah, it's really something. So after learning more about Robert, Detective Shanner knew that he had to dig deeper. The first step was figuring out who called this anonymous tip in. And Detective Shanner was actually able to trace this number back to a men's shelter and found a guy named Bill Hiscox. He moved in after quitting his job on the Picton pig farm. It took another month for Detective Shenner to get this guy to Bill to talk. And that brings us to our third clue. On September 22, 1998, Bill told Detective Shenner why he called the tip line. Robert was trying to find Wendy Istudder to, quote, finish her off like he should have the first time. According to Bill, a woman named Lisa Yelds said that Robert asked her to help with a plan to find Wendy. We don't know what Robert's plan was exactly, but Lisa and Bill were childhood friends who both ran in the Picton Circle. Bill did odd jobs on the farm. Lisa was a biker who spent a lot of time on the farm and at Piggy's Palace. Bill also said he thought Wendy was Robert's real target. But when he couldn't find her, that's when he started killing other sex workers as revenge. Apparently, Lisa also told Bill that Robert was keeping bloody clothing, purses, and jewelry as trophies inside of his trailer. After hearing all of this, Shenner wanted to talk to Lisa directly and, like, stat. But as an outlaw biker, Lisa's not just going to walk into a police station willingly and start talking. This just kind of goes to show, like, how big of a badass detective shanner is. He had the idea of, like, having an undercover officer pose as Bill's girlfriend to then introduce her to Lisa. And Bill actually agreed initially. But then he started ducking detective Shenner's calls again. When he did pick up, he just kept saying that he hadn't heard anything from Lisa.

[Courtney Nicole]

So over the next several months, Detective shunner tried a bunch of different tactics to corner Robert. From September Into October of 1998, he worked with Staff Sergeant Connor's team on a surveillance operation. They would watch the farm, and they would follow Robert if he ever left. They didn't find anything necessarily suspicious initially. It was also incredibly difficult to do effective surveillance on the picton farm. Because it was such a large property. You couldn't really surround the whole place with personnel or cameras, or else you would alert the family to the fact that you were there.

[Sarah Turney]

Also, if you guys, we're gonna put some pictures of this farm in here. Like, this family, they were also kind of hoarders. Like, it looked like a junkyard.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah, it did look like a giant junkyard.

[Sarah Turney]

And it's like, it's got a bunch of different buildings and junk and just everything. It's also a pig farm. Like, it's just kind of a dirty place at a baseline.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah. So it's, like, hard to see what's going on.

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah.

[Courtney Nicole]

On side. Like, on the farm if you're parked outside.

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah. Especially if you're just in a car.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah. So In February of 1999, Jenner goes to the downtown eastside with a photo of Robert, and he asks 130 different sex workers if they know him, and they all deny it. And constable Dave dixon, who was the community liaison officer to the downtown eastside community, felt like a lot of these women were lying. Dixon thought that Robert Pickton was probably considered a good date, which, you know, just meant that he wasn't violent and he paid very well. And any sex worker who got a good date in trouble with the law might face violence from women who depended on that guy's business. He couldn't necessarily prove any of this, but that was just like the feeling he got from knowing the community. So instead, Detective Schenner worked with Constable Dixon, that community liaison officer, to create a new list of missing women. It had 21 names of sex workers who had disappeared between 1995 and 1999. That's only four years. 21 people going missing in four years is outrageous. And they knew that they were missing because they had all stopped picking up their government benefit checks. They had all left personal items behind when they vanished, and most of them had been in regular contact with their families before they disappeared. Once again, police do not really do much about this. It had been two years since Wendy was attacked. 21 women are now missing. And there was still no official task force, no cash reward, and really no chance of making an arrest anytime soon.

[Sarah Turney]

No task force after this many women go missing is crazy.

[Courtney Nicole]

Well, it goes back to what the women were saying at the beginning where they're like, I kind of feel like they want us to go missing. Yeah, just like reading through this, it does.

[Sarah Turney]

I mean, if you have an officer who you go in and you try to report your friend missing and they say, ah, go try the needle exchange. Come on.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah, that's not helpful at all.

[Sarah Turney]

No. So it's not until April of 1999 where Robert Pickton gets in some new legal trouble and in a new place, which gives us our fourth clue. On April 15, police in New Westminster, which is about nine miles southwest of Port Coquitlam, end up contacting the Mounties. Robert was suspected of assaulting a sex worker. The victim said that Robert hired her for one sex act and then wanted more. And when she refused, he beat her viciously. Shortly after making her initial report, the victim stopped cooperating with the investigation. Still, it did give police some new information, though, because Robert Pickton hadn't been seen on the downtown east side lately, which meant that he was likely going to the sex workers stroll in New Westminster instead. So investigators asked the New Westminster police to show their local sex workers a photo of Robert Pickton. Two months later, in June, one of them did identify him. The sex worker said he tried to hire her, but she refused. After he called her a whore, Robert got super angry and threatened to, quote, punch her face in. After this, Detective Shiner requested six more officers for the missing women investigation. He did end up getting three. But still no task force was created, no reward was offered, which didn't really. I mean, it didn't provide any incentive for a lot of people. And like, no what are three people going to do with this many women missing?

[Courtney Nicole]

21 cases split amongst three people. Oh my God. So at the same time, Wayne and Maggie are still fighting for their friend Sarah. They repeatedly went to the media with their demands for a task force and a reward. And this did bring more awareness to the case as Canadian outlets started covering it on the news. There was even speculation in the US that the Green River Killer, who was active in Washington State at the same time, could possibly be going up to Canada to kill there. America's Most Wanted even announced that they were going to cover the Vancouver case at the end of July in 1999.

[Sarah Turney]

And isn't that crazy? You have an American television show highlighting cases in your country because you're just not doing about it.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah. The fact that like the TV channels are doing more than the police in any of this is outrageous. Botched market, botched. Around this time, police finally announced, because now they're embarrassed at how bad they've been doing, they finally announced a reward of a hundred thousand Canadian dollars, which was about 68,000 US at the time. And even before the episode aired, even before it goes up on America's Most Wanted, now that they've announced that they have this reward money, someone new comes forward. That's all it took.

[Sarah Turney]

All it took. So on July 19, 1999, a man named Ross Caldwell spoke to police. And what he had to say is our fifth clue. He was a neighbor of Robert's who lived right behind the farm and he had personally seen a few suspicious things around Robert's trailer. He had seen a gun, handcuffs, night vision equipment and wigs that Robert used when visiting the downtown east side. Ross had also heard Robert brag about how he disposed of the bodies. Robert had said that he ground them up and fed them to his pigs. Apparently, Robert also put the ground up bodies in large drums and took them to that local rendering plant, a facility that processes all of these animal byproducts to make dog food, candles, soaps. And that is not all. Ross was also friends with a woman named Lynn for the past five years. And Lynn Ellingson was a 28 year old woman who had been working for Robert for quite some time. Robert had let Lynn live in his trailer and he would give her drugs as a form of payment in exchange, Lynn would do all of these chores. Housekeeping, driving the trucks and convincing sex workers to come home with him. And so Lynn had shared a story with Ross that was a bit horrifying. Lynn said that in early 1999, she had helped Robert pick up a sex worker. It was a cold February March night, and when they went downtown, Lynn told the woman that they were a couple looking for a threesome, which was a lie, but it got the sex worker into the truck. Back at the farm, things went bad pretty quickly. Robert had demanded sex acts that the woman didn't consent to. Now, Lynn says when they got back to the farm, she went outside and took some drugs. But she could hear screaming from the next room. But she didn't dare interfere. Not even when Robert led the woman out of the trailer and into the barn. Now, some time passed and Lynn kept hearing some pretty horrible noises. And it. It kind of just became too much for her to ignore. So when she goes out to the barn and pushes the door open, what she saw next was more horrifying than whatever she could have imagined. When she went out to the barn, she found that the woman had been strung up similar to that of an animal after being butchered. And this woman had been murdered. She said that Robert forced her to stay in the barn. She just looked at the table, couldn't really look anywhere. And she remembers that he had started dismembering her and even started scalping her.

[Courtney Nicole]

Horrible. Now Staff sergeant Mike Connor of the Port Coquitlan Mounties was ready to finally take some action. But despite typing up a full 33 page report with everything that we've mentioned so far, A senior prosecutor told Connor that he did not have enough evidence for a search warrant or even a wiretap.

[Sarah Turney]

How? How?

[Courtney Nicole]

I. Ugh.

[Sarah Turney]

You have multiple women. One of which was in the hospital after being stabbed in the stomach.

[Courtney Nicole]

And described the perpetrator as someone who was literally in the hospital there too, with the same wounds that he would

[Sarah Turney]

have had a key to. Her handcuffs in his pocket as it still hangs from her wrist. And you don't have enough for a

[Courtney Nicole]

warrant and you don't have anything. You. You don't have enough evidence for a search warrant. And then instead, a month later, Connor was promoted to a position that removed him from the missing women investigation for good. The Mounties investigation pretty much was inactive after this, but they did try one Hail Mary move. They invited the now 50 year old Robert to come in for a voluntary interview on January 19, 2000. They figured that he would say no, but he did show up. The Mounties were very shocked.

[Sarah Turney]

I'm shocked.

[Courtney Nicole]

So shocked that they actually forgot to read him his rights. So. Anything? Yeah, I know. Just color the whole botchboard in for me.

[Sarah Turney]

I'm literally erasing the Sherlock? Cause I don't think we're gonna have one.

[Courtney Nicole]

You don't even. No one deserves that in this case.

[Sarah Turney]

Oh, my God.

[Courtney Nicole]

Like horrible. And yes, if you aren't familiar, basically the fact that they forgot to read him his rights. Anything he said could not be used

[Sarah Turney]

in trouble could not be used.

[Courtney Nicole]

So when Robert comes in, though, he's not alone. He brought a friend with him, this 32 year old woman named Gina Houston. Gina was very close with Robert. Her three kids even called him Daddy, and he gave her $80,000 in cash gifts over the course of their friendship. He even offered to marry her. But Gina claims that the two of them were never intimate, though she also helped Robert pick up sex workers. During this interview, Gina jumped in and redirected Robert anytime he was about to say something suspicious. So she's kind of playing lawyer for him. Police didn't really want to kick her out because they were afraid that if they did, Robert would walk out with her. And it was a miracle that he even agreed to sit down and talk to them in the first place.

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah.

[Courtney Nicole]

So Robert would go on to deny killing any of the missing women throughout that conversation as they brought them up. Eventually, though, they asked him for permission to search his farm. And once again, in a very surprising move, he does say yes, only just get the botchboard. They never take him up on this.

[Sarah Turney]

Why do I even say that?

[Courtney Nicole]

He literally goes to the police station where just like, it physically is like, hurting me to read this out loud. They don't take him up on it. He says that they can go search his pig farm, and they just are like, you know what? We actually don't want to.

[Sarah Turney]

I'm sorry, what?

[Courtney Nicole]

The reasons were never explained either. Like, they never had an actual explanation as to why they didn't go, oh, my God.

[Sarah Turney]

Okay, so for those listening and can't see the botchboard, we're up to 10 right now. And if you're at home keeping your own count, I'm very curious where you're at at this point in the episode. Are you at more you at 15? You're 20. Like, this is insane. You literally had a golden ticket. Essentially. He gave you permission.

[Courtney Nicole]

He even came in. He voluntarily came to talk to you and then volunteered for you to go look through stuff. And then they just didn't do anything. By December 2000, Detective Laura Mershenner, who seems to be the only person that cares about this, was transferred out of the Missing persons unit. And shortly after Shannon's department, two more Women Don Cray and Deborah Jones were reported missing. So when Shannon's absent from this case, it leads to more public pressure and media attention. So in January 2001, a multi agency task force was finally created for the missing women.

[Sarah Turney]

And the thing is, like Shanner, this whole time was like, I need more officers. I need more people.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yes, begging for help, begging for help.

[Sarah Turney]

So, like, finally this task force is established.

[Courtney Nicole]

Its codename was Project Evenhanded, and it was led by Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Don Adam, who believed that most of these missing women were probably still alive. For the rest of 2001, Project Even handed spent a lot of time and money on national searches trying to prove that the missing women were out there. They kind of went in with an agenda, it seems like instead they got this even longer list of potential victims. By the end of 2001, there were now 50 missing women who still could not be located, including three new victims who disappeared in November and December of that year. When Detective Shanner left, he had three names on his list of top suspects. And of course, Robert Pickton was number one. By February of 2002, Project Evenhanded hadn't tried to arrest any of them until there was a break in the case. Do you have $10,000 or more in credit card debt? Maybe you're even barely getting by by making minimum payments. With credit card debt hitting record highs, National Debt Relief offers real debt relief solutions for people struggling to keep up. These options may reduce a large portion of credit card debt for those who qualify. You don't need to declare bankruptcy, and you may be able to pay back less than you owe regardless of your credit. National Debt Relief has already reduced the credit card debt for more than 550,000 consumers. So don't wait. If you owe 10, 20, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, you can now take advantage of this financial debt relief as the cost of living increases. To find out how much you could save, Visit National Debt Relief.com that's NationalDebtRelief.com

[Sarah Turney]

Every disappearance has a moment where everything still feels normal. A text that doesn't raise concern. A routine that goes unchanged. A door that closes just like it always has. Until it doesn't.

[Courtney Nicole]

When someone goes missing, investigators zoom out out the headlines focus on what happened. But the truth often lives in the smallest details.

[Sarah Turney]

I'm Sarah Turney. After my sister disappeared, I learned that those final hours, the last conversations, last decisions, can haunt families forever.

[Courtney Nicole]

And I'm Courtney Nicole. After seeing crime impact my own family, I'VE learned how overlooked moments, missed red flags, and unanswered questions can change everything.

[Sarah Turney]

Together, we're bringing those lived experiences into the work. This is the Final Hours A Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. A podcast that puts the moments before

[Courtney Nicole]

a disappearance under a microscope. We examine the timelines, the clues hiding in plain sight, and the questions that never stop being asked.

[Sarah Turney]

Because when it comes to justice, there's no such thing as overanalyzing.

[Courtney Nicole]

Listen to and follow the final hours on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Sarah Turney]

New episodes are out every Monday. In February 2002, a junior constable with the Port Coquitlam Mounted Police named Nathan Wells got a tip. C There were illegal guns at the Picton farm in Canada. You actually need a special license to own automatic weapons and Robert didn't have one. But the informant said that he was hiding a fully automatic pistol amongst others. It was completely unrelated to all of these missing women cases, but Wells ended up getting a search warrant super easily to look for the guns, adding it to the botchboard, I mean, which gives us our sixth clue. Wells saw Robert had a flag on his file, so he reached out to project Evenhanded and did invite them to join the search. Shockingly, they showed up and they waited outside the farm at first. Meanwhile, Constable Wells and his team went in with a battering ram, broke down the door, and soon enough he found a round of ammunition in a dust drawer. But amongst the drawer, Wells spots something else. It is a prescription inhaler with one of the missing women's names on it. That name is Serena Abbotswe. 29 year old Serena went missing in August of 2001, two years after Staff Sergeant Connor was denied a search warrant for the Pickton farm. Two years after they then at this point do seal off the entire property, they get another search warrant for the actual Evenhanded team. And at this point, they are prepared for a full scale excavation. Two days later, on February 6, they begin a massive search that would actually continue for nearly two years. So police dig up the entire farm. Essentially they're sifting the dirt for any tiny fragments of human remains, clothing, anything. But I think they find something that's like even more disturbing than anything they could have imagined. Robert wasn't just keeping clothing and personal items as trophies. As investigators searched the farm's meat lockers, they found other mementos of victims. Which is our seventh clue. Now this does get pretty graphic, pretty gory. So if you can't handle that today Please skip ahead to the next section. There, detectives found three severed heads, all of them cut in half vertically. The same three victims, hands were also found. A foot was found. Additional human hand bones were dug up from the dirt floor of a pig pen. Some of the skulls were stored in buckets. Plus there were two suspicious looking packages of ground meat in the freezer. Later, tests showed results that the meat contained DNA from two missing women, Inga hall and Cindy Felix. Afterwards, police had to issue a tainted meat warning for all of the pork from the Picton farm.

[Courtney Nicole]

I know this, this is the part that always, like, really gets me about the case. Like, because they were selling meat, they're selling meat.

[Sarah Turney]

Like they gave up their commercial license. But like, in some of the sources, they talk about how, like, they were still selling a lot of meat out of Pity Palace.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah, it was just like a small town community. You're still buying meat from like, your neighbors.

[Sarah Turney]

And because of this, the task force did believe that Robert had likely fed victims to his pigs. And I mean, someone came forward and said he told him just that.

[Courtney Nicole]

I know, yeah, someone had already said that that was what was happening. And then those pigs were then sold and eaten by other people.

[Sarah Turney]

No full bodies were ever found on the farm. But I mean, Robert knew what he was doing. Like he was taking all this byproduct and bringing it to that rendering plant. And it's just horrible. So there was no question at this point that Robert Pickton was indeed a serial killer. But police, despite this and everything they found, still had to jump through hoops to arrest him. He was first arrested on the weapons charges, but then he was released. Released. He was, however, placed under constant surveillance. He couldn't return to the farm because it was still an active crime scene. And on February 22, 2002, nearly two and a half weeks after the weapons search, police finally got DNA results back that they had collected from the farm. Blood in Robert's motorhome matched a missing woman named Mona Wilson. This, this finally gave the task force enough to re arrest Robert on murder charges and hold him. And this time it was without bail. Immediately after the February 22 arrest, the task force sent an undercover officer to Robert's jail cell. Cannot imagine being the one to draw the short stick for that job.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah, holy smokes.

[Sarah Turney]

And so they posed as his cellmate, hoping to get him to just confess

[Courtney Nicole]

to everything which he had already confessed to. Other, like, people have come forward and told police that he had been confessing.

[Sarah Turney]

This brings us to our eighth and final clue in Official interrogations, Robert Pickton denied everything. But in recorded conversations with his cellmate, Robert bragged about his notoriety, saying, quote, I'm a legend already. As soon as the cellmate left, Robert stripped naked and masturbated and would do so again several times throughout the night. And when they came back, Robert just kept talking. That's when he told him he had planned to do one more murder, to, quote, make it an even 50.

[Courtney Nicole]

And that's how big their list is at the time, just about that they're looking for.

[Sarah Turney]

Which if he was telling the truth, meant that Robert Pickton had killed 49 women, which is horrible. And how many could they have prevented if they. Well, yeah, I mean, acted accordingly.

[Courtney Nicole]

Exactly. I'm sure the vast majority of them happened after Wendy. So due to the complexity of the search, it took years for Robert Pickton to be brought to trial. And he was ultimately charged with 27 of the murders. And among those victims were 29 year old Sarah Jean Devries, who Wayne and Maggie led the public push for. In August of 2006, the court decided to split up the 27 charges into two trials because the evidence was so different in them. They also thought that this would maybe make it easier to get a jury. Robert went to court in January of 2007 on the first six charges where the evidence was deemed the strongest. And those were for the cases of 29 year old Serena Abatsuay, 26 year old Mona Wilson, 22 year old Andrea Jonesbury, 32 year old Brenda Ann Wolf, 34 year old Georgina Faith Papin, and 24 year old Marnie Lee Ann Frey. All of them were killed after Robert stabbed Wendy Istudder in March of 1997.

[Sarah Turney]

Can I just black it out? Like, can, can I just black it out?

[Courtney Nicole]

Like, is everyone. They had taken her account seriously after she had been stabbed in the stomach.

[Sarah Turney]

All they had to do was act accordingly. Like it's absolutely just pathetic.

[Courtney Nicole]

Pathetic. Now, Lynn Ellingson, the woman who helped lure the sex workers back to Robert's farm, testified against Robert, speaking about what she saw that night in the barn. Gina Houston, by then, who was suffering from terminal cancer, she testified against him too. She said that as the police closed in, that Robert admitted there were human bodies buried in the pen where he held the cockfights. Apparently he had approached Gina and asked her to die by suicide with him. During this time, investigators also said that they found a livestock trailer that was full of neglected pigs on the property. They didn't have any food or water. Seemed like Robert had bought A load of pigs right before the raid. And then after realizing that, his luck ran out. He never unloaded them or cared for them. There was also a note from a friend, Friend in Robert's trailer scolding Robert for having gone six days without a shower.

[Sarah Turney]

That was one thing that kept coming up in the research like this. He did not want to shower. He was scared of showering.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yes, that did keep coming.

[Sarah Turney]

It just kept coming up.

[Courtney Nicole]

Multiple people reported that about him.

[Sarah Turney]

Everyone was like, he stunk. He stunk.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah.

[Sarah Turney]

Like, a lot of these sex workers, too, when he would approach them. Like, a lot of them, like, didn't even want to get in the truck because of how bad he smells.

[Courtney Nicole]

They all reported the same thing, that he smells really bad. Now, the prosecution used Gina's testimony, alongside his poor hygiene to say that Robert was clearly overcome with guilt in the final days of freedom.

[Sarah Turney]

Nope. Don't believe it.

[Courtney Nicole]

No.

[Sarah Turney]

No.

[Courtney Nicole]

You were not showering the whole time?

[Sarah Turney]

No.

[Courtney Nicole]

Defense attorney said that the police failed to rule out any other suspects who had access to the farm and Robert's butchering equipment. And with that, the jury ultimately found Robert Pickton not guilty of first degree murder.

[Sarah Turney]

I'm, like, disassociating.

[Courtney Nicole]

I just. I feel like I'm above myself watching this happen. They did find him guilty on all six charges of second degree murder. Jurors are not required to share their reasoning for choosing one charge over another. So we don't exactly know why they reached this conclusion, though. Like, if I had to guess, it would be that they felt like he committed these crimes in the heat of the moment when he was denied. Right. Because in all of them, he's being denied a sex act, and that's when he commits the murder.

[Sarah Turney]

How many times can you commit a crime of passion? Like, no, this is a serial killer, apparently unlimited, because this is premeditated. He keeps going back.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah. And he's picking out people specifically, but they still. Nope. They say that it's not first degree murder. It's not premeditated.

[Sarah Turney]

Who instructed these jurors? Like, I'm so curious what instructions they were given. Like, on. Like, this is what first degree means. Like, this is like.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah, right. I think that's up to the judge to explain to them. Now, Sergeant Adam of Project Even Handed believes that this is because the judge excluded a lot of evidence related to premeditation from the trial. The jury did not get to hear Wendy's story about the 1997 stabbing because that was deemed unrelated to six of the murders that were being Tried deemed unrelated. The fact that he had already tried to kill another woman they felt was unrelated to the other six murders.

[Sarah Turney]

That's five instant. Five.

[Courtney Nicole]

A lot of evidence related to the other murders was excluded as well. Like the DNA found on a saw, women's jewelry that he kept, his trophies, bones and teeth buried around the farm, and the packages of frozen ground meat containing the victim's DNA. All of that excluded.

[Sarah Turney]

How are you going to exclude that?

[Courtney Nicole]

Did not hear any of that because they felt like it wasn't relevant to this trial. Some of that evidence could have been introduced at the second trial for the other 20 victims, but the government decided that they were not going to try Robert again.

[Sarah Turney]

Five instant.

[Courtney Nicole]

They felt it was unnecessary to put their witnesses and another jury through so much trauma.

[Sarah Turney]

What about these women, the families? What about these families? Like these survivors?

[Courtney Nicole]

How much trauma has the family gone through at this point or like all those families gone through?

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah, and, and a lot of because of your negligence, your inability to take what's in front of you and actually proceed forward and stop this.

[Courtney Nicole]

Now ultimately Robert was given life in prison and he had no possibility of parole for at least 25 years. But something that we hear from victims families a lot is it's still nice to have closure knowing that your loved one's case was part of the punishment instead of just a lump sum of like, oh well, everything he did was bad, so we'll just give him life. It's like, nice to hear like you have a hundred life sentences for the things you did because each life did matter and is worthy of its own of like you serving time for that individual crime.

[Sarah Turney]

Absolutely.

[Courtney Nicole]

And they don't get that. And that was kind of where this case was left until May 19th of 2024 when Robert Pickton was in the prison common room waiting for his medication. Another inmate, this 52 year old man named Martin Shire, attacked him. Charay locked corrections officers out of the room and he viciously beat Robert. Then he picked up a broomstick and he drove it forcefully into Robert's head. Now Robert did survive this attack, but barely. But he was evacuated by air to the Quebec city Hospital. And 12 days later, on May 31, 2024, Robert died at 74 years old. In September of 2025, Charay pleaded guilty to first degree murder. But he told the court that he killed Robert. Quote, for the victims also, that seems

[Sarah Turney]

like a crime of passion. Charay, that's not first degree.

[Courtney Nicole]

I know first degree murder. Well, if you lock the guards out, maybe you planned it a Little bit

[Sarah Turney]

crime of passion, heat of the moment.

[Courtney Nicole]

He claimed that Robert was constantly bragging to other inmates about his crimes and that the last straw was when Robert said he wanted to cannibalize a victim's child. And that drove Sheree so up the wall that he committed this crime. At sentencing, Robert actually said, quote, I lost control Mr. Judge. It's regrettable, but it happened and I don't have any remorse. So he admitted to not feeling bad about these crimes. Family members of the victims told reporters that they did cry tears of joy when they heard about Robert's death.

[Sarah Turney]

So finally are like some justice, celebrate

[Courtney Nicole]

it finally if you're out there. If the families felt like that was enough, then that's enough. But some of them are still fighting for justice and like a, in a very different kind of courtroom. As of December 2025, there were nine civil lawsuits ongoing against Robert's estate and a against his brother David.

[Sarah Turney]

I mean, how did he not know how he knew? He knew.

[Courtney Nicole]

He absolutely knew. The plaintiffs are the children of Robert's victims. They're hoping to hold the now 75 year old David accountable for what they say is his role in hiding his older brother's crimes. But David has repeatedly denied any involvement in any of the crimes. So there could still be another chapter to clothes in this horrific case and maybe even some new clues that could be revealed over the coming years. Now a couple little like loose ends about this case though. So after Robert's death, authorities searched his cell and they actually found a 200 page handwritten tell all book titled Telling My Story. However, they claimed that it actually had no information on the crimes in it, which is interesting. Also not his first attempt to write a memoir. In 2016, this self published manuscript showed up on Amazon. It apparently had been smuggled out of his prison cell that was immediately pulled down. I'm sure it's still out there, but yeah, it somehow got up on Amazon. But in that book Pickton insisted that he was innocent and that he was actually the fall guy for the real killers. Try to come up with like a whole conspiracy about it.

[Sarah Turney]

Such a loser.

[Courtney Nicole]

Now according to some Reddit threads, family of the victims have requested to see this 200 page tell all but they're not being allowed.

[Sarah Turney]

This was a big thing on Reddit where like people are in the comments, you know, loosely connected to family or friends of the family and they want to see it if there's any information. Yeah, they want to see it. There's some people that are, you know, their family member is a victim or missing. And they're like, nothing's ever been tied to Robert. What if they're mentioned in there?

[Courtney Nicole]

Right. He. I mean, he talked about there being 49 victims. He was tried for 27. There's still a bunch of people out there that could be connected, a lot

[Sarah Turney]

of names, and people just want closure. They want answers.

[Courtney Nicole]

I know, it's. Yeah, it's really, really devastating. And throughout all of this, there is still one known victim who has not been identified. This victim proves that Picton started killing at least two years before he stabbed Wendy. She goes by Mission Jane Doe. And her skull was found in 1995 by a hiker filling their water bottle in a creek in Mission, British Columbia. Her skull was split in half vertically, the same way that the other skulls were found on the Picton farm. In August of 2002, authorities confirmed that other bones found on Picton's farm were a genetic match to the skull. And despite ongoing efforts to compare the remains to any known missing persons who are potential matches, the woman has not been identified. In July of 2025, investigators submitted her DNA for genetic genealogy in hopes of finally giving this woman back her real name. And in the meantime, a forensic sketch of the woman is available to the public, and police have released the following information. She is believed to be Caucasian, between 20 and 40 years old. When she died. She had missing teeth in her upper right jaw and may have worn dentures, and she likely died between 1985 and 1995. Now, anyone who has any information regarding that woman's identity can submit a tip at canadiancrimestoppers.org or by calling 1-800-222-8477. And a recent Reddit thread featured some very interesting comments from B.C. residents who believed Pickton might have disposed of other victims remains in the Mission area as well.

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah, there's definitely more out there, and hopefully we'll be coming to you guys soon with an update on that. That we do have a name. I do just want to highlight to Detective Schenner, who did end up writing a memoir in 2015, called that Lonely Section of Hell. Shenner alleges that police repeatedly refused to treat the missing women issue as a murder investigation and constantly rejected his requests for more resources, which, I mean, we got a few marks on the board for just a couple. He also claims that the missing women investigation he led was an empty gesture to placate activists. Shanner says that he suffered with severe ptsd, leading to his retirement from the police force. And Sergeant Connor of The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who tried to get the search warrant for the farm in July 1999 and was denied, also developed PTSD as a result of this case, which. How could you not like knowing you're right there, you're so close, you could stop this, and yet you're denied. It's like. And then you find out in hindsight everything that happened, like, yeah, I can't imagine the feelings they're. They're dealing with.

[Courtney Nicole]

The burnout's gotta be unreal for someone who's trying so hard to fight for victims and being told no every step of the way. And then also, to walk into a crime scene like that too, has got to be so psychologically damaging.

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah. And I mean, records show that, like, investigators, you know, did know what was going on, and they were even worried that they had already bungled this case. They. They kind of knew. They botched it a little bit. There was one officer who wrote in his notebook, quote, also discussed Pickton again, if he turns out to be responsible. Arrow inquiry. Arrow deal with that if the time comes.

[Courtney Nicole]

It came.

[Sarah Turney]

It came. In 2001, the British Columbia Criminal Justice Branch destroyed their file on the Wendy Lynn Istatter assault for unknown reasons. I mean, we're already blacked out on the board here, but it's just crazy. I mean, the coroner's office has repeatedly been accused of mishandling victims remains. The remains of Car Ellis were forgotten or misplaced and not returned to her family upon their request. And then they were mysteriously found after the family complained. So just across the board, I mean, it's got to get better. Like, this has got to get better.

[Courtney Nicole]

It's so sad. There was another victim too, Marnie Frey, who was cremated after the police no longer needed her remains as evidence. But her family accused the coroner's office of doing a poor job with the cremation and then physically smashing up her bones to fit them into the urn, which is just like another sad little detail that we found. And actually now the government is trying to destroy 14, 000 remaining pieces of evidence from the case. The government says that the evidence is no longer needed and is expensive and cumbersome to store. It's annoying to them, they said. Victim's family said that some of the evidence might point to additional suspects. There's still people out there, or it could help them in their lawsuits against David Pickton. This is still active. There's still things that can be done. But the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled in October of 2025 that the government can go forward with releasing or destroying the evidence.

[Sarah Turney]

Botched, botched, botched, botched.

[Courtney Nicole]

Get that out of my face. I don't even want to look at that.

[Sarah Turney]

Are you kidding me? I mean, there's so many victims that are potentially unknown. And again, like these families, these families are saying, don't, please don't, please, please, please don't. Negligent. Absolutely negligent. And the fact it's happening, just despicable.

[Courtney Nicole]

Now there's a little bit, I guess, of activism that can come from this case. So the Robert Pickton case put a huge spotlight on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. In 2010, British Columbia began an official investigation called the, quote, Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. But we also know how the other British Columbia investigations have gone, so hopefully a lot of good comes from this.

[Sarah Turney]

I think also public pressure does help.

[Courtney Nicole]

It does help a lot.

[Sarah Turney]

See that in a lot of these cases. So talking about, get vocal, guys, like, get vocal. Calling them, sharing the cases, like, I mean, we try to highlight them, but like, in your community, if you're in bc, like, share this stuff.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yes, get vocal, get mad. Inquiries are a process using Canada to formally investigate wrongdoing by authorities like police departments or government agencies. Unfortunately, the British Columbia inquiry was accused of ignoring indigenous people and sex workers, though. So there are demands for more action. And in 2016, Canada launched a national inquiry into violence against Indigenous women, girls and members of the LGBTQ2S community. Over the next three years, the national commission held hearings across Canada and spoke with nearly 1500 survivors or family members of victims. In 2019, when the inquiry concluded, it officially classified the high rates of violence against Indigenous women in Canada as a genocide. The final report made 231 specific policy recommendations known as the Calls for justice. And as of a 2024 review, only two of those 231 recommendations have been fully implemented. I've already thrown the botchboard on the ground, so I can't mark that one. Meanwhile, millions of dollars allocated towards first nations and Inuit policing went unspent, partially due to mismanagement. I'm gonn spot in half. Okay, so there's obviously a lot more that has to be done, but at least more people are paying attention to this. There's more call outs. There's a little bit more action.

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah, I mean, the highway of Tears has been talked about more. I mean, I think there's been a big initiative with, you know, the red handprint, and you have celebrities showing up red carpets and calling attention to these victims and saying their names. And so again, it's. It's going to take us. It's going to take us.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yes, you can stay informed. We can stay informed, too, on first nations issues by visiting AFN CA to sign up for emails from the assembly of first nations and another Canadian organization advocating for the Picton victims. Surviving Relatives is the Battered Women's Support Services. You can connect with them and support their [e-mail] and lastly, if you've been personally affected by the murdered and missing Indigenous crisis in Canada and you need support, you can call 1-844-413-6649 24 hours a day to speak to a crisis counselor and get referrals to support and services. Spread that number around.

[Sarah Turney]

Yeah, absolutely. And on that note, we move on to our Missing Person of the Week. This week we are highlighting the case of Renell Rose Bennett. Renell is a part of the Navajo Nation. Renell was last seen by her mother at her residence in Hogback, New Mexico on June 15, 2021. She has two children. Both of them lived with Bennett's mother at the time of her disappearance, but she called and texted them every day and had never gone on an extended time period without seeing them. On the day she was last seen, Ronell went to her mother's home to discuss her daughter's upcoming 10th birthday party. When she left, Ronell hugged her mother for a long time and appeared to be crying, which her mom found odd. She never showed up for her daughter's party, which is uncharacteristic of her behavior, and her mother was unable to get in touch with her. Her mom then filed a missing persons report on June 21. For unclear reasons, the report wasn't entered into the law enforcement database for days, though Ronell was never heard from again. Three months after she went missing, family members found her shoes and sweater in North Shiprock, New Mexico and turned them over to police to be processed for evidence, but it is unknown whether this led to any leads. There has been no indication of her whereabouts. At the time of her disappearance. Renell was dating a man named Kendall K.J. johnson. They'd been seeing each other for about a month. In July 2021, Johnson and five other people were arrested. The group are suspects in a slew of Shiprock area crimes, including home invasions and auto theft. Johnson initially escaped the July 14 police pursuit that ended in the apprehension of the other five individuals. He wasn't arrested until July 16th. The police had been investigating the group for some time, and at one point thought Renell was involved in the crimes because of her association with Johnson. A photo of him is posted with this case summary. He said he had last seen her a couple of days after her mother did. It's not clear whether Johnson is a suspect in Renell's disappearance. However, her case remains unsolved and the circumstances of her disappearance are unclear. Ronell was 33 years old at the time of her disappearance. She would be 37 now, described as being 5 to 125 pounds, last seen wearing an orange tank top and black sweatpants. Renell is a Native American female, has black hair, brown eyes, is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. She has a tattoo of the name Trayston on the inside of her right forearm and a tattoo of the letter B behind her left ear. Her ears are pierced. Her nickname is Tiny. If you have any information in regards to Renell Rose Bennett, please contact the Navajo Nation Police Department, ShipRock district at 505-368-1350. You can also contact the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of justice services at 505-563-3600.

[Courtney Nicole]

That is all we have for this episode of Clues. This was a big one, a heavy one, an ongoing one. Yes, but now we turn it over to you guys. Your thoughts, your theories, feedback, anything missing persons of the week that you'd like to see us cover. We're always checking the comments, both on YouTube, on socials, on Spotify, wherever you listen, I really listen. So please let us know, let us

[Sarah Turney]

know what you think and take a bit after this one. You know, go for a walk, decompress. It's. It's a heavy one, but I think there's, there's a lot of action items for us all out there listening.

[Courtney Nicole]

Yeah, definitely.

[Sarah Turney]

And at Crime House, we really value your support. So again, remember to rate, review, share your thoughts and feedback. Subscribe, really want this show to grow and get others out there listening. So we appreciate all the help and support. Thanks, guys.

[Courtney Nicole]

Thanks.

[Sarah Turney]

Bye. We're Sarah Turney and Courtney Nicole. Crime has impacted both of our families, teaching us how the last conversations, the missed red flags, can change everything.

[Courtney Nicole]

On the final hours, we examine the moments before a disappearance and the questions that never got answered.

[Sarah Turney]

Listen to and follow the final hours wherever you get your podcasts, new episodes every Monday.