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Hey, it's me, Gavin Crawford, host of the Because News podcast. If you're looking for some kind of group therapy for the news, well, we've got you. On Because News, I quiz the brightest and funniest Canadians about what's going on in the world, all in front of a live audience. So whether you spent the week quoting aphorisms of Thucydides or binge watching heated rivalry, we'll catch you up on the Canadian headlines. Follow us wherever you get your fine podcasts for free.

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This is a CBC podcast. Hi there. Most people know about the case of the Canadian pig farmer who confessed to murdering 49 women on his farm near Vancouver. It's often sensationalised into a grotesque caricature of a lone monster in muddy boots on a junkyard farm and an indistinct group of largely nameless sex workers and indigenous women. What you might not know is that Robert Pickton was recently murdered in prison by a fellow inmate who claimed it was all for the victim. And while the final chapter of Canada's most prolific serial killer might now be over, the evidence suggests he did not act alone. I'm Kristi Lee, writer and narrator of Canadian True Crime, a podcast I started nine years ago as a passion project and it still is today thanks to the Devil you Know and CBC Podcasts. I'm sharing this first episode of my special new series with you. It's. It's called Robert the Final Chapter. In this four part series, I trace the case from the very beginning right up to where it stands today. Drawing from court records, historical news archives, the final report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, investigative journalism and personal stories with a trauma informed approach from a disturbing childhood on the Picton family farm where cruelty and exploitation was normalised and morality optional with where Robert Pickton and his brother were shown that bad deeds can be covered up using privilege and intimidation, cleaning evidence and coordinating stories to the blatant police failures, systemic injustice and deep rooted societal prejudice that enabled that violent culture to continue long after the Picton parents were dead. Most importantly, this series restores the identities and humanity of the vulnerable women who were targeted through the personal accounts of those who loved and missed them, making space for the unanswered questions still being asked to this day. Proceeds are being donated to the Wish Drop in Centre Society supporting street based sex workers on Vancouver's downtown east side since 1984. Content warning please be aware that this series includes disturbing content and graphic details that will be distressing for many listeners to hear and might cause trauma there's mention of sexual assault, residential schools, indigenous issues, child abuse and suicide. Please see the show notes for Crisis Referral services. Thanks again to CBC Podcast for sharing this first episode of Robert the Final Chapter. The second episode is available now at Canadian True Crime, wherever you get your podcast. Foreign It's a cold night in March of 1997 and a 30 year old woman named Wendy is working a street corner in Vancouver's downtown east side. Often referred to as the poorest postal code in Canada, the downtown eastside is known for high concentrations of poverty, homelessness, mental illness, hazardous substance use, crime and sex work. A red pickup truck pulls up to the corner. The driver is in his late 40s, balding, with greasy scraggly hair hanging down the back and sides. He asks Wendy how much she charges for oral sex. She tells him the going rate is $40. He offers her $100 if she comes back to his place in Port Coquitlam. Wendy needs the money, but that's about a 40 minute drive away. Can't they find somewhere closer? The driver insists, promising to drop her back by one in the morning. She gets into the pickup and they drive out of the city. The man doesn't want to make conversation. After a while the silence starts making Wendy uneasy. She might only be 30, but she's already lived a far heavier life than her years suggest. Wendy started using drugs in her teens and joined forces with two men 10 years older than her with criminal records. They would be arrested for stealing cigarettes and other goods. She gave birth to a daughter with one of those men, but according to an obituary, their little girl passed away as a toddler. Wendy retreated to drugs for a while, but she pulled herself together. Vancouver is a port city and she found a job on a local fishing boat as a deckhand and crew cook. She fell into a relationship with the captain and gave birth to two children with him. For a few years, Wendy's life was mostly stable, but the urge to use was not easy to overcome. The relationship broke down and she left her children with their father to get help for hazardous sister substance use. Cocaine and heroin were her drugs of choice, but she was also desperate to see her kids again. Wendy ended up living on Vancouver's downtown east side with some of society's most vulnerable, marginalised people, trying and failing miserably to get clean. That cold night In March of 1997, she was stuck in survival mode, sustaining her drug use through stealing and outside sex work. In the red pickup truck. Wendy is feeling increasingly uneasy as they continue driving out to Port Coquitlam. Or at least that's where the man told her they were going. She asks him to stop at the next gas station so she can use the washroom. He refuses and continues driving silently. The man stops the truck at a property with a padlocked gate. He gets out, unlocks the gate and drives in. Wendy realises the man lives on a farm, not a house. There's old cars and junk everywhere. He parks beside a mobile trailer home and ushers Wendy inside. It's filthy in there. The air is stale and there's mess everywhere. She notices a large butcher knife lying on the table as he leads her through the kitchen and into a back room. There's no bed, only a sleeping bag on the floor. The man gives Wendy the hundred dollars and she performs oral sex followed by intercourse. Nothing out of the ordinary. She gets dressed and asks to use the phone to call a friend. She senses the man behind her and he gently takes her left hand. Then, without warning, he snaps a handcuff onto her wrist. Wendy is jolted by an intense fear for her life. For a split second, she freezes. Then her body's trauma response activates automatically, deferring to habits she learned earlier in life. And Wendy has always been a fighter. She punches and kicks him. She grabs a potted plant and whatever she can reach and swings it at him. As he fights back, she finds herself backing toward that butcher knife she saw on the kitchen table. She grabs it and slashes the man across the neck. He roars as the blood starts flowing, but he grabs a cloth, holding it to the wound and keeps fighting. Now there's an intense struggle for the knife and Wendy suddenly feels herself losing consciousness. When she comes to, the man is over her, holding her down, and they're now back outside the pickup truck. She's still gripping the knife in her right hand and jabs at him, screaming at him to let her go. She feels him weaken and seizes an opportunity to slide out from under him. Still holding the knife, she staggers down the driveway, covered in blood. Wendy doesn't realise she has suffered catastrophic injuries because adrenaline has taken over, numbing the pain and keeping her moving with a singular focus. Escape. Terrified he's going to come after her, she limps across the street and knocks on a house. No answer. She tries to break a window to get inside, but then she sees headlights approaching. It's him. She ducks down, but as the car gets closer, she sees it's not him and there's a woman in the passenger seat. Feeling safer, Wendy runs out and screams for help. The car stops. It's an elderly couple, but they hesitate at the sight of this small woman, half naked, soaked in blood, with her internal organs exposed, holding a knife. Wendy throws it on the ground and the man opens the back door and helps her into the car. As they call 911 for police and an ambulance, Wendy points toward the farm. She tells the couple that if anything happens to her, the man living in the trailer there was responsible. And he's been injured too. Wendy is rushed to emergency surgery. With significant blood loss, deep stab wounds to her abdomen and a punctured lung. She's lucky to be alive. Wendy would have known that an increasing number of women just like her had been disappearing from the downtown eastside in recent years. That's why she was on high alert. What she didn't know was that the DNA or remains of at least seven of those women were already on the farm she'd just escaped from, waiting to one day be discovered. And there would be more to come. Years later, when Robert Pickton was identified as the man now considered Canada's worst serial killer, the remains or DNA of 33 missing women would be found on that farm. Most of them were sex workers, disproportionately indigenous and thought of as expendable, disposable, not worthy of care. It's believed there were many more victims than that, and years later, Robert Pickton would confirm it himself. When the details began to emerge about how their remains may have been handled and disposed of, the implications were so sure, shocking and grotesque that many struggled to even grasp what they were hearing. This case has been described as a tragedy of epic proportions, leaving the families of all those women with a lasting legacy of grief. At least 98 children without their mother and a lot of unanswered questions. In 2024, Robert Pickton became a victim himself of prison vigilante justice. His death might have closed his chapter, but this story is far from over. The evidence suggests that others knew what was happening. And worse, he likely did not act alone. Robert William Pickton was born in 1949 to parents Leonard and Louise Picton. They were pig farmers who lived in Port Coquitlam, a city in the metro Vancouver area about 35 minutes drive from downtown. They didn't live on the property we now know as the Picton Farm, though. Leonard had inherited his family's homestead and farm a few kilometres away and worked on it through his 20s and 30s, showing no other interests. When he was 47 years old, he surprised his family by bringing home a much younger woman he'd met in a coffee shop. Her name was Louise arnall. She was 31 years old and from Saskatchewan. They got married and Louise moved into the Picton family homestead five years later. The couple had their first child, a daughter, Linda, in 1948. Then first son Robert, followed by second son David, a year apart. Linda and David were said to take after their mother, Louise, physically anyway, short with round faces. The middle child, Robert, or Willie as his family started calling him, took after father Leonard. Tall and slim with a narrow face and a long pointed nose. The Picton family lived in Port Coquitlam, known as Poco by the locals. Today the city has a population of almost 60,000 people, but back in 1949 it was around 3,000. It was known for being rural farmland territory. Leonard Pickton was reportedly a workaholic who had minimal interaction with any of his three children. He was not an engaged parent. He specialised in livestock and the production of pork and expected sons Robert and David to work on the farm as soon as they were able to, aiding in the slaughtering and butchering of pigs. Some accounts by neighbours and co workers paint Leonard as a violently abusive and abrasive man, all too ready to dole out punishment to his sons in the form of beatings. It seems that daughter Linda might have been spared from this treatment. In later interviews, she would portray Leonard in a positive light, as a respectable father with good intentions. But she said her younger brother Robert, was never close to his father. In fact, he seemed a bit scared of him. Linda described Robert as shy and naive, a mummer's boy. Robert himself would later say that he and his mother were like two peas in a pod. The reasons for that label are not entirely clear. In town, residents reported hearing Louise nag and publicly shame Robert in front of other children. He became increasingly withdrawn, often remaining silent for long stretches and hiding when he feared he was in trouble with either parent. The responsibilities of homemaking and child rearing fell to Louise Picton by default. And she was not a nurturing or maternal presence to any of their three children. Her focus was also on the family business. Pigs. Everything else came a distant second. As a mother, Louise was remembered as harsh and abrasive and was frequently heard screeching orders at her children. Those who came into regular contact with her described her as odd, eccentric, an unkempt workaholic who paid little attention to her own health or appearance. Former neighbours recalled her rotting teeth and apparent indifference to personal hygiene. The children were reportedly bathed only about once a week. Which wasn't enough to remove the farm stench. Those same neighbours went inside the Picton home briefly and would describe it as dirty and foul smelling. Farm animals were allowed to wander freely through the farmhouse, relieving themselves indoors without consequence. Louise made little effort to clean, seemingly unfazed by the conditions. She always wore men's rubber gumboots. Louise was strict and demanding. She required her children to spend long hours slopping pigs and caring for animals, sometimes even on school days. To outsiders, the Picton family appeared to be poor, living below the poverty line. As one local resident put it, everyone knew the Pictons and no one knew the Pictons. The reality was they owned the family homestead outright and some additional parcels of land, and the farm was profitable. They just chose to live that way. It was said that the general attitude of the Picton family was that there was nothing wrong with a bit of mess or a lot. Many of the memories Robert Pickton would recall from his childhood and early adulthood were disturbing, if true. He would claim that one time his father left him sitting in his truck and he accidentally moved the gear stick into neutral, which caused the truck to start rolling down a hill and crash. Robert would claim his father beat him severely for not stopping that truck. He was just three years old at the time. In another story, he recalled being about 4 years old when his mother, Louise, caught him smoking a cigarette. As punishment, she forced him to smoke a whole cigar, thinking it would cure him for good. And it did. Robert would say it was the last cigarette he ever had. He would also tell a particularly disturbing story later about a pet calf he had when he was young. This was noteworthy because he suddenly became animated when he remembered the calf story and recalled vivid details. According to Robert, when he was about 12, he developed a close emotional attachment with this calf, spending as much time as he could with it, day or night. One day he came home from school to find his favourite animal was missing. He looked over the house and then the farm and he asked his family members, where's my calf? He was horrified when they suggested he look in the barn, knowing that's where the animals were slaughtered. It seemed his family wanted him to discover his pet calf hanging upside down in a shed, slaughtered and disemboweled. Robert would tell investigators he was distraught at the sight and refused to speak to his family for four days. They promised to buy him a new calf, but he didn't want a new one. He wanted his pet back. He was traumatised by the incident, and even as an adult, it was Only something he would share with people he'd become close to. After that, he seemed to develop the sentiment that life goes around and around with little meaning. Robert and younger brother David were being groomed by their father, Leonard, to take over the family farm. He taught them animal husbandry and butchering and when they weren't at school, they were expected to work. But Linda, the eldest of the three Picton children, wasn't much of a fan of farm life and wanted to be as far away from it as possible. She was always described as the smart one. According to Stevie Cameron's book On the Farm, when she was in grade nine, Linda decided to move in with relatives closer to Vancouver. She was away from the farm and after that she reportedly had as little to do with her family as possible. Leonard and Louise purchased more land just a few kilometres away on Dominion Avenue and moved over there with their sons. This is the property that would come to define the Picton family far more than they could have ever imagined. If Robert Pickton were in school today, he might well have been diagnosed with a learning disorder and offered support and treatment. People who knew him would say he was far more intelligent than he was given credit for. But back in the 1960s, when he started high school, he was labelled slow and placed in special education classes at school. This embarrassed him and made him an easy target for bullies. His severe lack of personal hygiene combined with the ratty, stinky clothes he wore did not help. Robert dropped out of high school as soon as he could in grade eight. Louise was not at all troubled by her son's decision. She put him to work right away, full time on the farm. She told him he needed to learn how to slaughter the pigs himself and at first he said he didn't want to, but he eventually relented and began learning the trade. This was Robert's life. He'd never really known anything else but school and the farm. In October of 1967, 14 year old Timothy Barrett left home at about 8pm to walk to a friend's place. It wasn't a long walk, just up the road and down Dominion Avenue, the same street as the new Picton farm. Timothy put on his jacket and told his parents he'd be home later. He never returned home. After a few hours, his parents found out that Timothy never actually arrived at the friend's home. They panicked and started checking in with neighbours to see if anyone had seen him or knew where he might be. At about 1am, Timothy's parents reported him missing to the local RCMP and the search continued throughout the night with no sign of him. In the early daylight hours, Timothy's father was still on Dominion Avenue searching alongside the road with a neighbour when he spotted a shoe on the side of the road. It looked like Timothy's. About 10ft away was a deep ditch running alongside the road. He walked over and peered down. Submerged in several feet of water was his 14 year old son. Timothy Barrett was dead. The RCMP quickly developed a theory that Timothy must have been walking along the road when he was struck from behind by either a car or a truck and then hurled over into the ditch. The car was probably speeding and Dominion Avenue was poorly lit. The houses were sparse because it wasn't a developed area. As the body was sent for autopsy, the RCMP received a phone call from a local mechanic who said he'd seen the news reports of a hit and run and had something strange to report. He said the son of one of his regular clients had shown up the night before wanting a fast repair to an old red beaten up farm truck. Specifically, he wanted the smashed front indicator light repaired along with a dent on the front fender which he also wanted to be painted over. The young man told him a log had fallen on the truck back at the farm, but the mechanic looked at the dent and was suspicious. Also, the entire truck was old and completely banged up. Why the sudden request to repair this one area? Hours later, that mechanic saw the news about Timothy Barrett and contacted the police, giving them the name of the young man who requested the repairs. David Pickton. That's Robert Pickton's younger brother. At the time, David was 16 and had just earned his driver's licence. David Picton was charged in juvenile court with failing to remain at the scene of an accident. He would be placed on indefinite probation and his driver's licence suspended for five years. As far as the criminal justice system was concerned, Timothy Barrett's death was the result of a careless accident. Partial blame was assigned to Timothy himself for walking on the side of the road where cars would be coming up behind him, wearing dark clothing on a dimly lit night. A coroner's inquiry concluded that David Picton was the one most at fault for driving the truck that hit Timothy from behind and for not stopping as Timothy was hurled into the water filled ditch. The autopsy confirmed Timothy suffered a fractured skull and a broken pelvis. But those injuries would not have been fatal. The actual cause of his death was drowning in the water. But there was more to the story. It began as whispers among neighbours, but some 25 years later it was Confirmed to journalist and author Stevie Cameron. Robert Picton himself would later tell a friend that he knew exactly what happened that night. At the time he was 17 years old and he recalled David bursting into the farmhouse saying he'd hit someone with his car and they were probably badly hurt. He pointed to the red truck. Robert saw a new dent in the front right fender with marks and what looked to be blood. Mother Louise sprang into action. She ordered 16 year old David to clean the blood off and drive the truck straight to their mechanic for a rush repair job. She told him to tell the mechanic that he'd hit a pole, a story that would have been slightly more believable than the one he actually told of a log falling on the truck. Then Louise got into another vehicle to look for the person that David hit. She later told her son Robert and at least one other person that she was driving down the road and around the corner when she spotted Timothy Barrett lying injured at the side of the road. He was there because of her son's actions. But instead of helping the 14 year old, she said she dragged him 10ft over to the water filled ditch and pushed him in. Robert and David Pickton were still teenagers themselves, learning how the world worked. Their mother had just shown them that basic morality could be overridden if self preservation was at stake. That responsibility for causing serious harm, even death, could be managed by cleaning evidence and coordinating stories that human life was disposable. It's telling that Robert Pickton later expressed a deep admiration for his mother's strength and and discipline. There were never any consequences for Louise Picton's alleged actions. By the time this all came to light, decades later, she would be dead. Father Leonard was in his late 70s by this point. His health was deteriorating and he couldn't work the farm like he used to. Now it was up to his wife Louise, their two sons and whoever else they could find to help on a regular basis. Louise sent Robert to the Woodlands School in New Westminster for children with developmental disabilities, runaways and wards of the state. The school allowed Robert to pick up children, drive them back to the farm and use them as cheap or unpaid farm labour for the day before returning them in the evening. Years later, an investigation would expose rampant abuse of children at the Woodlands School. It shut down in the 90s. But perhaps the big takeaway for Robert Pickton was reinforcement of his mother's message that some lives carried less value than others. That vulnerable people could be exploited, harmed and discarded for personal gain with little risk of consequence simply because they existed. On the margins, and no one cared enough to intervene. By the early 1970s, the Picton brothers were in their early 20s. David was the more outgoing one and was now dating regularly. But Robert did not have much luck. He didn't smoke, drink or do drugs and didn't hang out at bars or nightclubs like others his age. And even if his hygiene and appearance issues had been taken care of, which they weren't, he was socially awkward. He was never seen dating or with a girlfriend, but instead had pen pals all over the country. He was starting to feel a certain way about one of them. Her name was Connie and she lived in Pontiac, Michigan. At 24 years old, Robert decided it was time to take his first ever vacation so he could meet Connie in person. He booked a bus ticket and told his mother he'd be gone for six weeks if Louise tried to stop him from leaving. It didn't work. By this point, Robert had gained some confidence and was able to talk back to her and assert himself when needed. The bus ride would have been close to 40 hours one way, and it took Robert across America, stopping in several cities along the way. He would later tell a different female pen pal that at some point he was stopped by a scout and offered $40 an hour to be a male model, the equivalent of about $240 an hour in today's currency. It seems a pretty unlikely story, but he claimed he wasn't interested and turned the opportunity down. He eventually arrived in Pontiac, Michigan and met Connie. He claimed they were engaged by the time he caught the bus back to British Columbia, even calling her the love of his life. But Connie did not want to move to Port Coquitlam and Robert could not leave the pig farm. That's as far as it went. He threw himself back into the farm while also dabbling in horses and truck driving to supplement his income. Robert still did not date, but his siblings had each found partners and careers outside the farm. Older sister Linda was married and lived in a well to do area in Vancouver. She continued to avoid the farm and the family unless she was needed for business decisions. Brother David lived on the farm with his girlfriend and their two young children, while Louise had David's girlfriend. Working long hours on the farm, David was not interested. He was into truck driving, construction and demolition, and other women besides his girlfriend. They broke up and she moved out with their kids. The next big family event was in 1977 when family patriarch Leonard was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died at age 82 a little over a year later. Louise also Passed away from cancer aged 67. It was a shock for Robert to lose both parents so quickly. But perhaps the biggest shock was in his mother's will. The Picton estate included the farm and several other parcels of land, plus some cash. Leonard's idea of dividing it among their children showed his preference. All Linda would receive was a lump sum payment of $20,000, and everything else would be divided between the two sons. But after Leonard passed away, Louise changed things around, dividing the estate equally between the three children, but with a twist. Linda and David were each given about $88,000 immediately. But Louise's will stipulated her middle son, Robert, would have to wait until he was 40 years old to receive his share. For now, he was given an additional lump sum of $20,000. The way Louise structured this suggests she did not trust Robert with that money now. And he was devastated. At the time he was 30 years old. It would be 10 more years until he turned 40. And even though in the end he'd receive more money than either of his siblings, he needed it now. They earned their own money and didn't care for the farm. It was up to him alone to keep it going. Which was not easy because a recent fire had destroyed one of their piggery Barns along with 600 pigs. The barn needed to be rebuilt. He'd been trying to do it himself, but would never finish. He saw the whole thing as a betrayal by his mother. Robert took his $20,000 and drowned his sorrows by purchasing a nearly new Ford truck. He got into junking old cars, selling the usable parts, separating the copper and selling it to scrapyards. Whatever he couldn't get rid of remained on the farm. Before long, there was a growing collection of old cars and machines, along with random scraps of wood and metal cropped up around the outskirts. In the meantime, Robert's brother David had seen an untapped opportunity to profit from the farm without actually having to do farming work. The surrounding area of Port Coquitlam was rapidly being developed into housing and shops. And there was strong demand for topsoil, for landscape structure. And one place that had plenty of topsoil was the farm. David Picton started a business ripping up the farm with a bulldozer, collecting the topsoil and selling it to local developers. What was once a series of green fields was torn up. The farmland turned into dirt pits with trucks, bulldozers and other heavy equipment. Fortunately, neither David nor Robert cared about aesthetics. David had also started making friends with the Howells Angels. It was now the early 80s and the first biker war was winding up. The Howells Angels had established dominance over rival club the Outlaws and were now focused on expanding across the country. David Pickton had already started making friends with the new Vancouver chapter. He wasn't a biker himself, but he was keen to get in on whatever they were doing. Before long, David roped Robert into letting the Hells Angels use the farm as a chop shop. He'd already been junking old cars, some of them were stolen, and there was a lot more room on the farm, so it was a natural fit. Besides, Robert was fascinated with outlaw biker culture. He ended up running the chop shop completely, which included managing and arranging payment for a gang of teens he'd hired to steal cars. Robert also dabbled in cock fights and selling illegal cigarettes and alcohol. The Picton brothers became known to local gangs and other crime syndicates in Port Coquitlam, and soon the police were eyeing them up too. They came out to investigate rumours that the farm was being used as a Hell's Angels chop shop, but ultimately decided to focus on a more urgent priority catching a psychopathic serial killer who'd been preying on local children in the area. Clifford Olson was arrested in 1982 and would confess to murdering 11 children and sexually assaulting others. For a time, he was known as Canada's most prolific serial killer. That is, until another took his place. In the 1980s, indigenous women were showing up dead in Vancouver's downtown Eastside at an increasing rate. Many were sex workers. It was too easy for the police to dismiss each death as lifestyle related. This is one of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, just east of the financial district and once described by the Vancouver sun as four blocks from hell. The downtown Eastside is a small area with a high concentration of poverty, homelessness, drug use, mental illness, sex work and social exclusion. But it wasn't always like that. Indigenous communities were stewards of the land. For thousands of years, long before the Europeans arrived, the colonisers had set their sights on Vancouver's deep natural harbour as the perfect shipping hub for the British Empire. The Indigenous communities were forcibly displaced from the area. By the early 1900s, the Downtown Eastside was the bustling commercial and retail heart of Vancouver, with City hall, the city courthouse, libraries, banks and shops. It was a hub for transportation and hospitality, with lots of lots of hotels to serve transient workers. But then came the Great Depression, causing a surge of unemployment and poverty worldwide. In the 1930s, many people came to Vancouver looking for work and many became stranded there without jobs. Depression set in and the Downtown Eastside became increasingly defined by alcohol, brothels and general survival. Then the city started relocating key institutions and services. First City hall was moved away, then the main library. The streetcar route disappeared and foot traffic followed. Local businesses started failing. Those hotels, once built for workers, were converted into single room occupancy housing for people with nowhere else to go. Instead of investing in safety, housing and social supports, government and city officials looked away. Once the bustling city centre, the downtown Eastside was now treated as a containment zone of poverty, trauma and marginalisation. Then came World Expo 86. Expo 86 in Vancouver.