Pigs, broom handles, dead bodies…and self-publishing???
Look, with a summary like that, you’d assume that we would have to be talking about a good old fashioned American serial killer. But no. This describes the life and “career” of Robert Pickton, a notorious serial killer from the Great White North. Further proof that while the U.S. takes the gold in serial murder, our neighbors to the north do their best to get on the medal stand.
Despite his crimes, it’s actually difficult not to feel a modicum of sympathy for Pickton. Raised on a pig farm in Vancouver, he had a mom who prioritized the pigs over her own children, to the point that she used to send her sons to school unwashed and in the filthy farm clothes they’d used to perform their swinish chores before school. Fortunately, kids are kind and I’m sure he was never bullied over this, right? He raised a calf of his own and came home from school one day to find it slaughtered in the barn. That sort of life.
From a young age, Robert struggled in school. Being taunted with the nickname “Stinky Piggy” probably didn’t help…and may explain why he dropped out to keep working on the pig farm…which he eventually inherited…and then lured sex workers to…and killed them…and (yes) fed their remains to the pigs.
Any sympathy we had for Pickton is surely drained away by now. Fortunately for humanity, he was arrested and put in jail…where he self-published an autobiography and sold it for cold, hard cash! Which, of course, pissed off a lot of people and caused such an outcry that Amazon eventually removed it.
He was eligible for parole in 2024, but another inmate broke a broomstick in half and shoved it through Pickton’s face, killing him, and obviating the possibility of Pickton ever walking free again.
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