And so this is how Robert Pickton’s life ends. He was killed by an inmate at a maximum security prison in Quebec. The details of the attack, which happened on May 19, were revealed on the day he died (Friday, May 31) by Rick and Lynn Frey, the father and stepmother of one of Pickford’s confirmed victims, Marnie Frey.

Rick Frey to CTV News:

The guy that assaulted him stabbed him first with a toothbrush in the neck, and then he broke a broom handle… And when you break something like a broom handle, you always get a sharp end, and so he took the sharp end and he stuck it into his nose, up into his skull.

The family members are of the opinion that Pickton, who exited at age 74, surely suffered, but not nearly enough. Though convicted for killing six women, Pickton “had bragged about killing 49.”

The identity of Pickton’s killer has not been made public, nor has the reason for the attack that resulted in a medically induced coma from which he did not recover. But such a violent end seems consistent with a character who had the nerve to write and publish a memoir that basically praised and exonerated himself, Pickton: In His Own Words. (Amazon distributed the book.)

“Good riddance,” wrote BC Premier David Eby in an official statement. But we can’t just leave it at that. It’s way too easy to fix all of the blame on Pickton, who, incidentally, was “eligible for day parole… and full parole in 2027.” The reason he was able to kill so many women between the mid-’90s and early ’00s is found in the fact of their class (mostly poor) and race (often Indigenous). Indeed, the police were repeatedly informed of a potential serial killer in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (a neighborhood with a famously bad reputation), but the department did next to nothing with the information. This went on for four years. Pickton brazenly picked up women, killed them with a knife, and then fed them to the pigs at his farm in Port Coquitlam, a suburb between Burnaby, BC, and the Pitt River. After his arrest in 2002 (at that point the evidence was too overwhelming), the police excavated the farm and found the remains and DNA of 33 women.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigators move debris on Robert Pickton’s pig farm February 19, 2002 in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. Don MacKinnon / Stringer

I saw and wrote about this excavation in 2003. Few nightmares could match its scale and location. All that mud and dung, the haunted barn, the grim roof of the house, the cold rain, the clanking conveyor belts, the men and women searching for bones, hair, and clothes, and the surrounding suburban developments.

From my article “Death Farm“:

Construction presses in along the border of the pig farm. The developers are still building and selling townhouses. One real-estate agent told me that the value of the homes near the farm have not decreased but increased. A house along Dominion Avenue goes for around $300,000 Canadian dollars—roughly $230,000 American. The developers want Pickton’s land, and a memorial to sex-trade workers and drug addicts who were murdered in the heart of this thriving suburban area just won’t do.

Many of those houses are now worth more than a million dollars. 

What you almost never find in Hollywood movies about fictional serial killers is an economic background that’s remotely realistic. The victims are not at all like Pickton’s or, for that matter, Gary Ridgway’s. And there’s a good reason for the absence of the obvious class factor. The public is not interested in the down and out. Who cares if you kill a drug addict or a woman of color? This common attitude of indifference and even hostility must not be dissociated with the way we treat the homeless in Seattle, Vancouver, and other North American cities.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

7 replies on “Serial Killer Robert Pickton Is Dead”

  1. Just like the Green River Killer, Pig F*cker was ID’d by a victim’s mother as the perpetrator and the cops DNGAF. Decades later, after dozens and dozens of additional victims, the cops finally put him away. He definitely deserved to die the way he died, only about 100X over. A vicious, disgusting POS.

  2. *to be clearer the cops knew who the GRK was decades before they “caught” him and the cops knew this guy was killing women at his pig farm “underground club” and their depraved indifference to life (specifically the girls and women’s lives being taken by these serial killers) meant they just shrugged their shoulders and did nothing until they decided to pretend they gave a shit.

  4. “The family members are of the opinion that Pickton, who exited at age 74, surely suffered, but not nearly enough. “

    I have not been in the position of the victim’s families but I find this desire for infinite painful revenge shocking. Horrific murders followed by the horrendous execution of the murderer by another inmate, and yet most everyone seems to want more blood. I don’t see how this continuing cycle of death by violent means is going to help anyone recover sanity and peace.

  5. @6: Although I agree with your sentiment, I think you shouldn’t worry overmuch about Charles, who as usual, states his unfounded opinion as if it actually was a fact. The embedded tweet doesn’t support Charles’ quote, and neither does the CNN story linked in the tweet. (I don’t have X/Twitter, so I can’t say for certain I’ve read everything in that tweet.)

    For an idea of the difference between Charles’ “reporting” and what actually happened, you may compare Charles’ version, which implies Amazon had a book deal with Picton:

    “ … a character who had the nerve to write and publish a memoir that basically praised and exonerated himself, Pickton: In His Own Words. (Amazon distributed the book.)”

    With CNN’s account, at the aforementioned link:

    “In 2016, a book allegedly written by Pickton and smuggled out of prison was published and offered for sale on Amazon but was quickly withdrawn following a public backlash.”

  6. “…and so he took the sharp end and he stuck it into his nose, up into his skull.” Yikes!! But sounds like it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. 33/49/65 women???!!! Yikes again!!

    “…and then fed them to the pigs at his farm in…” So that means the guy was a fan of the movie Snatch, no?

    But this (and that Abbotsford guy) is another example of what nonsense it is that America is the only one with the gun/murder problem. Yeah, we’ve got a lot of idiots with guns. But when people want to kill each other, they find a way.

    For me, this always points to a huge reason to not have children. (And I always wonder if the reason so many children are conceived seemingly by poor people is because they don’t have the knowledge or the resources to avoid conception, which then leads me to a contemplation of the miserable education system in the USA.) I don’t want to get into arguments about eugenics or if people have a right to have children. But it’s simply true that if you’re poor, your children start out at a disadvantage. (Which then always brings me to a contemplation of the possibility that a charitable,cooperative society might be better than a competitive society. You know, contemplation & philosophy really suck. “He who increases knowledge, increases sorrow.” really is true.)

  7. @2, “the cops knew….and their depraved indifference to life…..meant they just shrugged their shoulders and did nothing ” See, and not to defend the cops….who really is us and our dislike of spending tax dollars….but how is this indifference by police different from the indifference of the parents who drop children on this earth and let them wander around unprotected?

    @6, Yeah, I think it’s just a thought rather than an expression of political will. For example, I’m against the death penalty in principal, but I think you do a favor for guys like this if you put them to death. I think that life in prison is a far worse punishment than the death penalty. I doubt very much that I could survive long in prison. Even if no one killed me, I’d probably have trouble not killing myself as an escape.

    @7, I’m also not a fan of Charles’ reporting. But I didn’t get an implication that Chuckie was saying that Amazon published his book: “…had the nerve to write and publish a memoir…(Amazon distributed the book.)” I took it that he was just remarking that the book might have been widely distributed, not necessarily published by Amazon.

    I wrote a book. Amazon & the thieves selling on Amazon steal & sell my book when they can. But they didn’t publish it. (I once bought a copy of my book on Amazon. The royalty didn’t show up in my publisher’s account. But you’ve got to prove wholesale theft to make it worth a lawsuit. Bezos & Trump: Thieves of a feather IMHO.)

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