Pig farmer 'seen skinning woman on meat hook'

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.

Jurors also heard Robert Pickton appear to acknowledge his crimes during a videotaped interview as he told police they were making him out to be more of a killer than he actually was.

In the interview, played for the jurors during the fourth day of the sensational murder trial in New Westminster, British Columbia, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers tell Pickton they have enough DNA and eyewitness testimony to put him in prison for good, so he might as well just confess.

They then push him on how many women he actually killed, asking him, 10, 20 or 30?

“You’re making me more of a mass killer than I am,” Pickton replies to Staff Sgt Don Adam, the lead investigator on the case.

Though Pickton, 56, whose father was born in England, often denies any involvement in the murders and has pleaded not guilty, he also appears to repeatedly contradict himself during the 11 hours of interrogation that took place after his arrest in February 2002.

“I made my own grave,” he tells Adam, who also asks him how he avoided getting caught for so long. “Carelessness on my behalf,” Pickton replies.

Adam tells him he did not do a good job of cleaning up the women’s blood.

“I was sloppy,” Pickton appears to concede.

Prosecutors maintain Pickton told an undercover officer planted in his cell that he killed 49 women and intended to make it “an even 50”.

He is charged with 26 counts of first-degree murder. Most of the victims were prostitutes and drug addicts who vanished from a drug-ridden Vancouver neighbourhood in the 1990s.

Pickton is accused of luring women to his pig farm outside Vancouver, where investigators say he threw parties with plenty of alcohol and drugs. After his arrest in February 2002, health officials issued a tainted meat advisory to neighbours who may have bought pork from his farm, concerned that it may have contained human remains.

Pickton has pleaded not guilty to the first six murders of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey.

A separate trial will be held for the other 20.

His defence lawyer, Peter Ritchie, told the jurors on Monday that his client was innocent and asked them to play close attention to his level of intellect and sophistication during the police interview.

When the trial opened on Monday, prosecutors laid out some of the gruesome evidence against Pickton, including skulls and teeth of women found in the freezer, and blood and other DNA evidence found in the slaughterhouse and troughs at the farm.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police task force says more than 60 women remain on a list of missing women, as well as three unidentified DNA profiles from the Pickton farm.

Adam – who has since been promoted to RCMP inspector – tells Pickton during the interview that took place after his arrest in February 2002 that a former friend, Lynn Ellingsen, told police that she saw the defendant hang and skin a woman on a meat hook.

Pickton is seen on the video responding with laughter and saying: “Yeah, right.”

Adam tells Pickton that police knew Ellingsen was blackmailing him.

“She says it’s because she walked in and you were skinning a girl,” Adam says.

Pickton, wearing a white dress shirt with blue stripes, sat expressionless in his bullet-proof witness cubicle during the testimony yesterday, while Adam glared at him.