Canada’s notorious serial killer dies after prison assault

A Canadian serial killer, convicted in 2007 of murdering six women, died Friday after being attacked two weeks ago by a fellow inmate.

Serial killer Robert William Pickton(REUTERS)

Robert Pickton, 74, a former pig famer from western Canada, is one of the country’s most notorious killers.

Unlock exclusive access to the latest news on India’s general elections, only on the HT App. Download Now! Download Now!

Although he was sentenced to life in prison for six murders, he was suspected of killing many more women.

Pickton died in Quebec on Friday “in hospital following injuries resulting from an assault involving another inmate on May 19, 2024,” Correctional Service Canada said in a statement.

ALSO READ| Execution of serial killer by lethal injection halted in Idaho. Here’s why

His victims were killed between 1997 and 2001. Vancouver police were criticized at the time for not taking the women’s disappearances seriously because many were prostitutes, drug addicts or Indigenous.

Pickton was arrested in 2002.

During his 18-month trial the court heard gruesome evidence of how police found the heads and hands of some women stored in buckets on the ramshackle farm, bones under the pig shed, and the DNA and personal items of the six women in Pickton’s home.

In total, the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. He bragged to an undercover police officer that he had killed 49 women in total.