[imagesource: An-Nahar]

Robert William Pickton, or Willie to those who knew him, appeared to be an unassuming pig farmer in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada.

He portrayed a simple farm-life exterior, although one former neighbour described him as a “good-natured little bastard”.

The now 73-year-old’s horrific secrets came to light in 2002 when police executed a search warrant for illegal firearms at the property owned by Pickton and his three siblings.

They would find personal items that belonged to a number of women believed to be missing at the time and the lid was slowly lifted on one of Canada’s most disturbed criminal minds.

The tale of Jeffrey Dahmer is once again in the news but there is reason to believe that Pickton may have been a more prolific serial killer.

Murderpedia states that while he was convicted of six murders in 2007 and sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 25 years, he actually confessed to 49 murders in total.

He reportedly told one officer he wanted to kill one more woman to finish on a round 50 and was only caught because he had become “sloppy”:

On March 10, 2004, it was revealed that human flesh may have been ground up and mixed with pork from the farm. This pork was never distributed commercially, but was handed out to friends and visitors of the farm. Another claim made is that he fed the bodies directly to his pigs.

In total, the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his pig farm. It’s believed he started his killing spree in the 1980s.

Dahmer murdered 17 men, dismembering, having sex with, and taking photos of their corpses.

In Pickton’s case, a 2010 internal investigation found that he could have been caught far sooner had police from different forces communicated and cooperated properly.

Multiple individual officers said they suspected a serial killer was on the loose but they were never given the go-ahead to fully investigate.

The fact that he targeted sex workers and other vulnerable women, many of whom were Indigenous women with addictions or mental health challenges, also helped him fly under the radar.

YouTuber ‘MinutesOfHorror’ tells the story of Pickton in just over eight minutes:

[source:murderpedia]