Serial killer Robert Pickton killed 49 women at his isolated farm and fed some to his pigs and some to butcher's shop customers. He turned to his cell mate, a talkative man who had befriended the instinctive loner Pickton, and said: "I made my own grave by being sloppy. But he wasn't talking about robberies but murders and little did he know his words to the cell mate - an undercover officer from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police - were the confession which would seal his life sentence.
Pickton had killed 49 women and disposed of their remains in the most gruesome manner - by feeding them to the herds of pigs he kept on his farm. He even ground some of the human flesh into mince, mixed it with pork, and sold it to meat processing businesses, family members, friends, and even the local police. He had lured the women who mostly worked as sex workers in Vancouver's Red Light district to his home where he imprisoned them, tortured and then murdered them. Their bodies were then either fed to his pigs or put through an industrial meat grinder.
When the police finally arrived Pickton's pigs had foraged so furiously on the victims that there was nothing left of them. He was only caught after a search of his property revealed an asthma inhaler belonging to one of his victims. But he refused to co-operate with police and as a result an undercover Mountie posed as a cellmate - as they spoke Pickton began to brag about his crimes.
For years rumours had circulated about strange comings and goings at his pig farm but it was dismissed by local police - many of whom bought meat from him - as drunken gossip. He allegedly handcuffed and stabbed other victims, including one woman who managed to escape, naked and bleeding, in after stabbing Pickton with his own knife.
At the time the woman was considered an unreliable witness by police and Pickton was not prosecuted. The clothes and rubber boots Pickton had been wearing that evening were seized by police and left in an police storage locker for more than seven years. Not until did lab testing show that the DNA of two missing women was on the items seized from Pickton in When he was finally arrested in February , it was almost by chance.
