AFTER almost a year of testimony, lawyers for the Crown and the defence in the trial of accused serial killer Robert Pickton are beginning what is sure to be one of the most complex and crucial final arguments of their careers.

A former friend of a Canadian pig farmer accused of killing 26 women said she saw him hang and skin one of his alleged victims on a meat hook, a court heard.

Police filed three more murder charges today against a man already charged with two counts of murder involving some of the 50 women who have disappeared from the Vancouver area over the past two decades.