American Reacts to Canadian Serial Killer Robert Pickton 

For anyone curious, Picton died because an inmate fashioned a broom handle into a spear and rammed it through his brain...

I lived in Vancouver at the time of the Robert Picton reign of terror on women, particularly the sex trade workers in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. I worked at a women's emergency shelter in the Downtown Eastside , just a couple of blocks from what was known as hooker alley where Pictons' victims worked. It wasn't unusual for sex trade workers to be beaten by men and the police would bring them to us if we had a spare bed for them. It was a terrifying time especially for the working women. When the story broke, it was all people could talk about for awhile. There were those who didn't care because the women were the dregs of society in their minds but most of us did care, especially those of us working in Social Services . There was palpable relief in the city when he was found guilty. Thanks for showing this, an ugly side of Canada but it could be the reality of living in any big city, anywhere in the world. RIP all the women who had the misfortune to ever lay eyes on this very sick man in the first place.

He is wrong, we did report the women missing, we even gave the police Pictons name

Hi Tyler! I'm a Canadian and would agree with you that there is no sympathy to be found for this monster! The police failed those women and their families so badly! Thanks for all the good work you do and how you always entertain us!

When the investigation into Pickton was underway in the lower mainland of B.C. I was living in Mission and if you drove from Mission toward Maple Ridge, there was an area where backfill had been used along the side of the highway during a highway-widening project. However, this backfill had included backfill from property owned by Pickton; you would see teams of searchers in white haz-mat suits sifting through the soil as you drove past, looking for biological material belonging to the victims. They found it. This would include tiny fragments of teeth and bone, from multiple victims. It was surreal, disturbing and bizarre. This kind of thing is almost unheard of in Canada. To this day, driving by there, you have to wonder how many victim's remains are still there, too small to have been recovered. He kidnapped marginalized people, mostly Indigenous, and murdered them for sport. He fed some of them to pigs and used a chipper on others, after hanging them from meat hooks and draining their blood. It took far, far too long for any investigation to get underway because, as happens in the U.S. as well, the victims were considered "unimportant", and far too many serial killers take advantage of this heinous bias by law enforcement and the public alike. Can you see the parallels between this case and the Jeffrey Dahmer case? Particularly the authorities believing the murderer over the escaped victim.

He didn't die immediately, it took something like 11 days and he was put in a medically induced coma. I hope he felt it for at least some of that time. I hope he was scared for his life, like all of the women he tortured and murdered.

I know of over fifty women who went missing, I worked with street women at the time and knew most of the women.

I am from B.C., not too far from where all this took place. I was in junior high school when he was arrested. In the wake of his arrest and subsequent Coroner’s Report, it was made clear both the Vancouver Police Department and RCMP completely crapped the bed. Their combined gross incompetence was effectively swept under the rug as the B.C. government slowly adopted some of the recommendations of the Coroner’s Report. Most notably, Greater Vancouver has no less than 10 different police services and RCMP Detachments, making any cross jurisdiction investigations extremely disjointed, and the grossly incompetent police services weren’t inclined to share information on their own investigations. This lead to the Coroner’s Report’s recommendation that Greater Vancouver unite all their homicide teams into 1 chain-of-command. It is called IHIT (Integrated Homicide Investigation Team), consisting of detectives from all of the lower mainland’s police services. The RCMP still has a subpar reputation with investigating major crimes outside the lower mainland, but they are slowly improving along with IHIT. It’s sad to think so many women had to be murdered for such no-brainer lessons be learnt by our police services.

His sister, who new nothing of her brother Robert’s murders until the news broke, was regardless so disgusted with her two brother‘s general behaviour she upped and moved away to Australia where she owned a horse farm and raised a lovely family. She (Linda Louise nee Pickton) was raised by relatives in Vancouver as a child. Her mother didn,t think the pig farm was a place for a girl. The only good decision she made as a mother. The boys were ill kempt and abused especially by their dad.

Him and Paul Bernardo are despicable. Karla Homolka is no better…definitely 3 people that would have received the death penalty if Canada had it. My stomach is turning right now 🤢🤮

Another story along the same lines to look into would be The Highway of Tears...as beautiful as BC is, we have our nightmares😢

Grew up very close to Port Coquitlam and heard so many rumors about Bobby at the time. The police flat out saying it wasn't him despite the people in the Downtown East Side all saying it was Robert Pickton. Years later I lived just across the bridge from "Piggy Palace" which as since been bulldozed and turned into a mini-mall and a bunch of apartment buildings. There's more to the story than was covered in the video, specifically Robert Pickton's connection to the Hell's Angels biker gang and his farm being used for more than just his Piggy Palace murders. The other big part left out was the tie-in to the major issue in the DTES (but a problem that's all across Canada) with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). That's an incredibly disturbing story if you're feeling particularly dark

Criminal Minds did the most INCREDIBLE two part episode based on this story. Deep, powerful, and so heartbreaking. I'm sure the entire audience was in tears at the end of it. It was one of the best that they did in the show's entire run.

And the Police said it couldn't be him, they ignored evidence and eye witnesses and made every mistake in the book for years.

Oh, I am so happy he is doing this story. It is such a huge story here in Canada.

The police work was so horrific on this case. For myself, what really poured salt on the wounds for everyone was the fact that when the police finally converged onto the property, put a fence up and held the media, family members and onlookers, it was then that a media crew noticed garbage in the ditch where they were standing and took a closer look. There was pieces of ID from various missing women.

Hello young fellow. Vancover island here again. Having a stake through was too good for him. He killed my friend Nancy. She left behind a 5 year daughter and a 6th month old.

Tyler, after he was killed in prison his uncle was interviewed and all he said was, "forget about Willie." What a horrible time for Canada, loved watching your reactions as it kept ramping up.

When you were trying to be so sensitive at the start, I was thinking, "Oh, you won't be worried about his feelings for long."

Had a guy decapitate another guy on a greyhound bus... Was kinda gruesome too.

There were a lot of people that tried to raised the alarm, but the Vancouver City Police & RCMP (and other jurisdictions) simply were negligent. The important phrases: 'dozens of women' & 'over several years'.

It was definitely ironic justice because it was this year that Picton was up for parole - I guess even the other inmates didn't want him out.

I met and spent time with a woman who knew very well most of the women who were killed, and was nearly a victim herself. What she shared was horrifying for me to hear - for her, it was unbearable to live with what she knew. Mr. Ballen is an excellent storyteller, but there's only so much time in one video, and there's so much more that I don't know could or should be shared in this format. Shortly after I met this woman, I heard she decided to not be alive any longer. I felt outraged and, at the same time, glad that she was relieved of the unspeakable horror of what she witnessed. The 49 women Pickton bragged about were not the only victims in this story.

There was one woman who was at one of those parties when she saw a dead woman hanging from one of those hooks and hightailed it out of there. She later reported it to the police who told her that her story was a drug induced hallucination. As far as the distrust of police == Honouring truth for Vancouver’s Missing and Murdered Women by Joyce Arthur - November 2, 2012 "The report’s title says it all: “Wouldn’t Piss on Them If They Were on Fire: How Discrimination Against Sex Workers, Drug Users and Aboriginal Women Enabled A Serial Killer”. It is a direct quote from the Inquiry testimony of a VPD officer assigned to the “Missing Women” case. To read the report on your own is heartbreaking enough - but to read it aloud, to hear the callous sexism and racism of the police laid bare in the public square - was almost overwhelming. Some of the readers - 25 of them taking turns - broke down at the mike. One was unable to continue. "

Pickton and his disgusting crimes are the single reason why I haven't consumed pork products for the past 20 years.

As a child I grew up right where this happened. We found a bone (femur) in our dirt which was supplied by the pickton farm. My dad was like ‘this has to be from an animal but it doesn’t look like it’ and months later he was arrested. I should note lots of cops went to the piggy palace parties, that’s how he got away with it for so long. I am relieved I don’t have to worry about him getting free anymore.

Once he died, I haven’t seen a single condolences or commiserations for him online. Sad to say that people could rejoice in another’s passing but I’m one of those that doesn’t feel sad to see him gone. Maybe the families & friends of his victims can begin the healing process now. God bless them.

I was taking grade 12 Law when this story was in the news, and it was horrifying to know that his farm was only a 30 minute drive from the home I lived in for a decade. 😑

One thing known about the "national police" in Canada, they are really very prejudiced against indigenous, drug users, and prostitutes. This has been a well known stereotypical characteristic this police force is known for. I trust our local town peace officers way more than those federals. Many know what happens in cruisers and jail cells, and the lack of care to properly investigate when "less desirables" are involved. I pray that the families of the victims have found some peace with some sort of justice in all this.

Way more details than I remember. Such a horrible case.

Excellent choice using Mr Ballen as your reference.

BCers like me are simply delighted that the trash took-out worse trash!

An episode of Criminal Minds (“To Hell And Back Part 1”) was based on Robert Pickton, although on the show the pig farm was near Windsor, Ontario and most of the victims came from Detroit, hence the involvement of American FBI agents.

This wasn’t the first time Vancouver, BC was touched by a serial killer. Clifford Olsen was a local to Metro Vancouver . One time I was looking through stuff belonging to my mother and I saw this book with birthday dates written down. And in that book I read Clifford Olsen. My mom had passed away years before so I ran to my dad, “dad, tell me mom wasn’t friends with Clifford Olsen. His name and bday is written down here in mom’s hand writing. Like oh em gee dad!” My dad told me Clifford Olsen was in the same Sunday School class as my mother. The guy made everyone in my home town believe he was a good religious man. My mom lived just long enough to see Clifford Olsen on the news being taken into custody. My dad said my mom was in complete and utter shock when Clifford Olsen was arrested.

Vancouver Island resident here, I was taking Criminology classes when Pickton was in the Kent Institution in B.C. (He was transferred to a prison in Québec about 6 years ago). In one of our 2nd year Sociology classes, we had a tour of a couple of the Maximum Security prisons on the mainland. Pickton was kept in a solitary confinement cell and not the general population as he would have definitely been killed quickly. We walked past the hallway his cell was in. We were around 100 feet from him. A couple of years earlier, a previous class on the tour saw Pickton being moved to a different cell. Our professor said that they had 4 prison guards surrounding him; he was very short, like 5 feet short and looked like he wasn't even physically capable of strangling a chicken. He was not very well educated and prefered to look at picture books rather than read novels or really anything with with lots of words. I wonder why they transfered him to a Québec prison. Letting inmates anywhere near him was just asking for him to be gank'd. I've heard of guards "accidentally" putting SA offenders in the general population which inevitably led to them being killed by the other inmates quickly. Serial killers, SA offenders, and the ones that do horrible things to children are the most despised inmates. Canada doesn't have a death penalty, inmates like Pickton either die of natural causes in solidarity or get killed by other inmates. Pickton was sentenced to 25 to life with no chance of parole for 25 years. This February, 2024, he became eligible to apply for a day pass to go outside of prison, of course all the victim's families were outraged. Perhaps, he would have killed more people if he hadn't been killed by that inmate in Québec.

If we had a society that actively looked after mentally ill people, the attempt to help the Picton brothers would have caught their crimes. One of the many ways individuals end up paying for our attempts to cut government spending.

Glad we not paying for his housing and food anymore!!! He murdered many more but never charged...like their names didnt matter!!! Hate our justice system!!

MRBALLEN FTW. Love this guy and his Strange Dark and Mysterious Channel! Can't Believe one of my favorite youtubers is featuring another of my favorite youtubers! :D

Pickton bragged to an undercover police officer that he killed 49 women. He was charged with murdering 26 but only convicted for 6 counts.

Im not from Vancouver but i am Canadian and this made me disgusted and sad .Question the police compency

My ex-wife was the manager of an Alice Cooper cover band that played at the "Piggy's Palace" back in the '90's. She was collecting the cover charge at the door when a very famous American actor, who was filming in Vancouver at the time, showed up to party. Apparently word went around in "higher social circles" about Pickton's pig farm and its wild parties.

Pickton didn't die in prison. He was later transported to a nearby hospital and put in an induced coma.

The Toronto police behaved the same way with another serial killer, Bruce McArthur. People were dying while the authorities sat on their hands

I LOVE the MR. BALLEN SCARY STORIES, SO GREAT CHOICE OF VIDEO TO REACT TO!! 👍👍👍👍

Most Canadians cheered!!

Over half of his victims were Indigenous women, which played a large part in law enforcement's (lack of) response. That Lonely Section of Hell by Lorimer Shenher provides a good look at the investigation from the inside, by someone who was a detective on the case at the time.

Back in the 80’s my dad traded fish for pork. I still remember playing along this wooden fence. Looking into the farm. It gave me the creeps. My dad told me and my brother to stay in the car and don’t enter the farm. We grew up around farm land. The one thing we never did was enter a space with free running pigs. Thankfully it was the one time my brother and I were that close to Pickton’s farm. It gave me the creeps and it was eerie. When we found out about Robert Pickton and him feeding the pigs with the remains of victims, I got sick to my stomach. It was a while before we had any pork or bacon in the house.

My older cousin was the late Georgina Papin. She was one of the 26 women he was charged with but wasn’t one of the 6 he was convicted of unfortunately

An (albeit old) Mr.Ballen video in a Tyler video, best of both worlds.

the DTES is a sad story all by itself-for those not familiar w/ vancouver it was the hub of business and high end hotels 100 yrs ago when vancouver was a boom town downtown shifted 10-15 blocks away and the once wealthy area began to decay the hotels were bought by landlords for their land values and put nothing into the buildings and they ended up housing the least fortunate including mentally ill and substance abusers-which still goes on today

the man was convicted of 6 killings, but was suspected of killing up to 50.. he thought he could get away with it by feeding the body parts to his pigs..

So the cops believed the pig farmer over the nurse, interesting choice and I'm sure sexism had nothing to do with it.

Lived and worked in a restaurant on Commercial Drive at that time. Commercial Drive was a funky part of Vancouver to live, and not far from the Eastside "drag". There was nothing to alert all women about what was going on. The police didn't care, period. It saddens and maddens me to this day. I believe so many women could have been saved but for the police and their "so what" attitudes regarding women. Would like to know how he will be put to rest by his family. Don't believe for one second he was the brains behind this horror house sty. Thank goodness for Mr. Rossmo.

As rough as a topic this may be, you did a great job describing it. Very educational even for someone from BC. You're reactions are genuine, and probably what many found at the time. Context is key: reminding the audience, continuously, of the era may help in understanding the mindset of the time.

Was thinking you might do a whole video, because you didn't mention it in your news video the other day. I personally think it was a great day for Canadians, the guy who attacked him, I'm curious who he is and what he did to get into prison, but they didn't release his name. You should do a video on Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. Also curious to know how many Canadians vs. Americans watch your videos, keep up the good work!

Back then, it was a weird story and made the nation very upset at what happened, especially knowing that by the time the public knew about the story, the police had already wasted so much time that many more women went missing.

Picton was reported to the police. I personally know someone who reported what he was told by someone who saw a body in the barn.. Police chose not to believe him and never checked out his story. At the time I worked in a hospital and was given a job to find, if possible , stored specimens of relatives and/or of suspected victims from surgery they may have had. This could be used to identify remains. It took longer than I expected for someone to dispatch this monster and prevent him from using up any more perfectly good oxygen.

This man is believed to be the worse serial killer in all of Canada's history, in fact, in some lists of serial killers he is rated as number 10 world wide of all documented serial killers throughout history. That's a bit more complicated though since there is the question of how many victims are proven, how many suspected, and how many possible.

Grew up very close to where this happened. When he was finally caught, and his trial date was set, they had a HORRIBLE time finding jurors for this case, because there didn’t seem to be anyone in a 100km radius who wasn’t following it avidly. Both my parents (and all my adult neighbours) got jury summons for his trial, but of course they recused themselves.

I heard he was attacked by broom handle thru his head while in prison and no sympathy here. I worked in Ident at the time and of course this was one of those awful cases. What a mess.

Don't ask what's in the sausage

It was such a shock when his crimes were finally uncovered. How he affected so many. Probably poetic justice for what he finally got. Hearing that he got a broomstick rammed up his nose and into his brain only gave me 1 thought. "What goes around, comes around", he died like so many did at his hands. This was so shocking that the TV show "Criminal Minds", incredible series, did a 2 part show during 1 season based on him.

Don't know if there is another comment about this but this story was used as part of a plot on the TV show Criminal Minds. I, too; had to drive by on my work commute, part of the investigation in the Mission/Maple Ridge area. It was a very scary time for everyone.

Mr Ballen does a great coverage, I must say.

There was a recall on some pork sold to different stores.

I will carry the phrase "excess pig material" in my head for at least the rest of the day. Thank you.

i now live in Coquitlam and every time i visit Home Depot here i can't help think about these murders as the farm is only a stones throw away

back in the late 90's i drove past pickton farms and it was a creepy place you could see the piggy palace from the range road

Love Podcaster John Ballin 😊

The name of Robert Pickton sends chills down every Canadian over the age of 30... This man was INSANE and stained the clean image of Canada forever.... he remains to this day the third worst serial killer of the 20th Century... and Canada's all-time worst

I used to know someone who had been to a few BBQ's at that farm, when the news broke that he had been feeding the women to the pigs and to the guests at their home, well as I'm sure you can imagine there were a lot of folks feeling sick after.

Definitely not Canada’s finest moment 😶

He didn't act alone...

Robert Pickton died the same way as Jeffrey Dahmer…

This is difficult for me to watch. My Late Beloved Mama Cat once told me that if I hadn't met her during that time, she could have been one of his victims. We were a couple until 2010, when she passed away.

I know of over fifty women who went missing, I worked with street women at the time and knew most of the women.

“I don’t know what the Piggy Palace is…” Oh boy. Off to a great start 😬 Also, I can’t even eat jello to this day because I just think about this.

Wow! You went here, eh. If you're into checking out Canadian trash, check out the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka story.

This is information about a monster. He does not deserve the notoriety this sort of coverage gives him. I would prefer to forget this man ever existed. May his victims rest in peace and the families and friends my condolences.

I'm shading no tears for that monster.

I LOVE MR. BALLEN!!! His podcasts are even better than his RU-vid channel, but you don’t get the pictures. Mr. Ballen himself has an amazing backstory!

The Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur used to live in my building until he was arrested. I'd even spoke to him a good amount of times in the elevators and everything. It's scary to even think about because he seemed like such a sweet old man. That's how they get you i guess.

Criminal minds did an episode on this!

His brother owns a demolition company or did about 5 years ago they worked on a jobsite I was running heavy equipment on. It was kinda weird there was definitely a weird feeling the whole time he was there.

I mentioned before about the homeless and addiction problem in Vancouver, I hear it's really bad

😆 Who’s watching and thinks it’s funny to see Tyler’s reaction to how the farm was run? Oh, dear boy, just you wait. 😢

the rumour was his brother was a member of hells angels and that they made snuff films at the farm with those women.

Mr. Ballen make great videos in story formats 🤘

I dated a girl who worked at North Fraser pretrial where he was held and she told me that he refused to eat pork. "Piggy Palace" was basically an after hours booze can. I also had a beer with a RCMP officer who worked on the dig, searching for bone fragments on the property. It was an absolute, horrific case. He succumbed to the "Mr. Big" RCMP sting operation that police use inside of prison, it's still very controversial in Canadian law.

Your face when you realized they were fed to people......... priceless!!

Tyler: I can only imagine what they found Me: No, no you can’t…. I’m from the BC lower mainland and I remember this. It was terrifying. It’s the nasty horrific kind of thing they make horror movies about. 😢

Was curious how you’d react to this news. We just call him the pig farmer. He’s name will not cross my lips. We live not far from where the farm used to be. I don’t normally celebrate a death but my FB post that day was “Ding Dong the pig farmer is gone.”

26:04 "Rendering is a process that converts waste animal tissue into stable, usable materials. Rendering can refer to any processing of animal products into more useful materials, or, more narrowly, to the rendering of whole animal fatty tissue into purified fats like lard or tallow. .... Rendering can be carried out on an industrial, farm, or kitchen scale. It can also be applied to non-animal products that are rendered down to pulp. The rendering process simultaneously dries the material and separates the fat from the bone and protein, yielding a fat commodity and a protein meal."

You seem astonished, Tyler. I think your ACTING SKILLS are improving. YOU COVERED THIS STORY 6 months ago.

Tyler, If you want to learn about other Canadian serial killers, check out Carla Homolka, The Montreal Massacre of 1989, Allan Legere (monster of the Miramichi) and more recently, Gabriel Workman who killed 22 people in NS in 2020.

He was also eligible for Day Parole right before he died. Good old Canadian justice system.

At this point, Tyler knows more about us than the typical, average Canadian. ;)

my moms best friend went to the picton parties when she was in college, she went on a date with roberts brother. she still has a polaroid picture of the 3 of them and the vase with a note she got from his brother. she keeps it out as a conversation piece 😂😂

lived just over a mile away from their farm, was on their farm in 73 when i was 12. whole town knew about willy at his s&x with the cows. a lot more to the story funny they never let him speak at his trial. he had to much to say and bigwigs to out.... power of love over love of power..... HAKAD

We saw the eagles circling when they found dna on the farm. It was a sunny Sunday.