Robert Pickton’s Bizarre Personality Emerges In Undercover Police Tape
Posted February 6, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
(Note: This story contains some disturbing details. Reader discretion advised.)
It is an eye-opening and intimate look at a man who police say is this country’s worst serial killer.
The jury at the Robert Pickton trial in New Westminster, B.C. is watching a tape of an undercover police officer posing as a criminal placed in the accused’s jail cell in 2002.
The footage shows an unrepentant Pickton alternately happy and nervous over the fact the RCMP was originally looking at laying more than 50 murder charges against him.
As the decoy looked on, the camera shows the suspect laughing, raising a glass of orange juice and shouting “whoopee.”
Pickton frequently imitates animals in his ramblings to the undercover plant, and talks of committing practical jokes – including releasing several hogs onto the streets of Vancouver one Christmas Eve.
“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the streets,” the 57-year-old recited, “not a soul to be found except two little pot belly pigs and two working girls.”
The officer, who can’t be identified, testified Pickton seemed concerned about the charges against him, but also took a twisted pride in becoming a de facto ‘celebrity’.
“Just a f***in’ a pig man, and here he is hitting the big time,” the accused boasts. He compared himself to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and admitted it would be nice to have that kind of notoriety.
He also told his cellmate he was worried about the evidence he left behind on his pig farm in Port Coquitlam, where officers eventually found the remains of dozens of victims.
“I’m buried now,” Pickton says in the video. “My name is mud.”
There were also reminiscences about his childhood and accusations police were trying to ‘set him up’ by pinning all the murders on him.
“Now I’m a murderer,” he noted sarcastically. “The only thing is, the only reason why, they haven’t got nothing, these 50 women.
“I’m screwed, tattooed, nailed to the cross, and now I’m a mass murderer,” he complained.
At the time, Pickton was only charged with two of the slayings. “I got a murder charge on me,” he’s heard saying. “And 48 more, 48 more to come. Whoopee.”
The accused killer was well aware he was being taped during the conversation but didn’t restrain much of what he said.
In the end, Pickton wound up facing 26 counts of murder, stemming from the disappearances and deaths of east end Vancouver women, most of whom were either drug addicts or prostitutes.
This current trial only deals with six of those victims. The rest will be heard at a later date.
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