Background
Throughout the 1990s, dozens of women vanished from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Many were living with poverty, addiction or homelessness, and a disproportionate number were Indigenous. Families and community groups said for years that their reports were not taken seriously by the police.
In Port Coquitlam, east of Vancouver, Robert Pickton and his family owned a pig farm. The property was among the places named in tips about the missing women.
The investigation
In February 2002 police entered the farm to carry out a search for firearms offences. They found personal belongings of missing women, and a large forensic excavation of the property followed, one of the largest in Canadian history. Remains or DNA of 33 women were reported to have been found on the property.
Pickton was arrested in February 2002 and was initially charged with the murders of 26 women. Because of the size of the case, the trial was divided into stages.
The convictions relate to Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey. Families of the other women whose remains or DNA were found on the farm lived for years with uncertainty.
Trial and sentence
In December 2007 a jury found Pickton guilty of six counts of second-degree murder; he was acquitted of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years. His appeals ended in 2010, when the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously dismissed his final appeal, and prosecutors stayed the remaining 20 charges the same day.
He was reported to have told an undercover officer posing as a cellmate that he had killed many more people, but his convictions relate only to six women. In May 2024 he was assaulted by another inmate in prison and died in hospital later that month.
The British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld the convictions in 2009. A separate Missing Women Commission of Inquiry reported in December 2012 and criticised how police and prosecutors handled the missing-person reports.
Legacy
The case led to intense scrutiny of how police handled reports of missing women. A public inquiry found that the response to the reports was slow and inadequate, and Canada's later national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women highlighted related concerns. Memorial events are held in the Downtown Eastside each year. This page is dedicated to the memory of the women who should be remembered by name and as people.