Editing Robert Pickton (section)

== Murders ==
All of Pickton's known victims were young women involved in the sex trade in Vancouver's infamous Downtown East Side. Women from this area had gone missing in unusually high numbers beginning in 1995, and locals suspected a serial killer was operating in the region. Due to their high risk lifestyles and lack of concrete information regarding the circumstances for many of their disappearances, however, these cases largely went uninvestigated by police.

In 2002, when police executed a search warrent for unregistered firearms on Pickton's farm, they found a perscription inhaler belonging to a missing Vancouver woman (Sereena Abotsway), along with a silver ski bag containing syringes filled with a blue liquid believed to be antifreeze.

When police returned to the scene, they discovered a freezer with buckets containing the head, hands, and feet of two women, later identified as Sereena Abotsway and Andrea Joesbury. In the slaughterhouse, they discovered a garbage can containing the head, hands, and feet of Mona Wilson. All three had been shot through the head by Pickton's gun. The slaughterhouse also contained two jaw bones - identified as Brenda Wolfe and Marnie Frey - and hand bones belonging to Georgina Papin. A rib bone was found later buried on his property, which matched the DNA of a partial skull found in a Mission swamp in 1995, but this has not been identified.

Although he has only been formally charged in these six murders, DNA evidence found in the freezers, as well as on personal items found on his property and bone/teeth fragments uncovered during excavation, tangibly connect him to the disappearances of twenty-seven others. While speaking to an undercover police officer in prison, Pickton admitted to killing 49 women in total. He is believed to have disposed of the bodies primarily by putting their remains through a wood-chipper and feeding it to his pigs, although he stated that he would also sometimes bring the remains to a rendering plant where they would be mixed in with the pork that he sold to the public.

Pork he sold was confirmed to be contaminated with human flesh, and this same meat was found packaged in his freezer, leading to accusations that Pickton was himself a cannibal. It has not been corroborated by evidence or witness testimony, however, that he consumed any of this meat.