Farmer who fed his victims’ remains to pigs sentenced

A CANADIAN pig farmer convicted of killing six women and butchering their bodies like his animals has received a life sentence with no chance of parole for at least 25 years.

Robert “Willie” Pickton was convicted on Sunday of second-degree murder of six women and received a life sentence, though he could have been eligible for parole in as little as 10 years.

After hearing statements from the families of the victims, Judge James Williams sentenced Pickton, 58, and said he would not be eligible for parole for a minimum of 25 years.

Pickton still faces 20 further murder charges for the deaths of women, most of them prostitutes and drug addicts in Vancouver.

If convicted on all those charges, he would become Canada’s worst serial killer.

“Each of these women were murdered and their remains were dismembered; What happened to them was senseless and despicable,” said Judge Williams.

“Mr Pickton, there is really nothing that I can say to adequately express the revulsion that the community feels about these killings.”

Authorities said Pickton butchered the women’s remains and fed them to his pigs. Health officials once issued a tainted meat advisory to neighbours who might have bought pork from Pickton’s farm, concerned the meat might have contained human remains.

Earlier, the 15-year-old daughter of a woman murdered by Pickton said her killing was “like ripping out my heart”, in a statement read by her stepmother in the New Westminster, British Columbia, court.

Family members cried and prosecutor Michael Petrie choked up as he read the victim-impact statements.

Karin Joesbury wrote that her daughter Andrea was a “lovely, creative girl who wound up in a freezer, cut into parts”.

Prosecutors had sought a first-degree murder conviction that would have meant no parole eligibility for a minimum of 25 years, but the jury found Pickton guilty of the lesser second-degree murder charges, finding that the killings were not planned.

Pickton turned down a chance to speak at his sentencing hearing as advised by legal counsel because he faced the other trial next year on 20 counts of first-degree murder.