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Hey listeners. Welcome back to Beyond the Unknown. I’m your host Joli, and I’m Quinn, and today, we’re going to talk about a notorious Canadian serial killer who preyed on vulnerable women in the city of Vancouver.
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The story I’m about to tell takes place close to home, or the place I now called home in British Columbia. This story has so many articles written about it but biggest source was a multi-chapter online Crime Library article written by Micheal Newton.
The story starts in the bustling city of Vancouver, British Columbia. A beautiful oceanside city with amazing views of snowcapped mountains and large cedars. In 1980’s the population was a little over 1.3 million people and the city was experiencing an economic boom because of its established port, logging, and real estate. But the city, then and still to-date, has a growing population of people who have fallen on hard times, mostly residing in the lower east side, particularly on streets like East Hastings (also known as Low Track area), which is commonly referred to as the Skid row of Vancouver. This area is home to thousands of unhoused individuals, many struggling with addiction, like opiates, mental health issues, or have just generally fallen on bad times. The area is also well known during the 80’s as a place to find sex workers because there were many hotels and single room occupancy residences in the area. And unfortunately, sex workers were often physically abused either by their pimp or their patrons who preyed on the vulnerable population. To simply put it, these groups of people were not getting top of the line attention and support from officials at the time.
Many occupants of the Low Track, or East Hastings lived a transient lifestyle where they might not have lived in one spot for too long. So it wasn’t a surprise that the residents were frequently changing. However, it seemed that female sex workers started to vanish a little more than others. In 1983, it seemed noticeable to others who lived in the area but not enough of a concern for police. The police assumed the missing women skipped town or perhaps overdosed, because then and now this is unfortunately common and an ongoing crisis in the city due to easily accessible opiates. But each year, the number grew larger and the idea of women moving without telling a soul seemed less likely.
There was a brief hiatus of women going missing from 1992 to 1995. But the nightmare resumed in March 1995 with the disappearance of Catherine Gonzales.
In 1996, a woman on the Low Track, or East Hastings area, escaped her captor, Michael Leopold, who tried to kidnap her after brutally assaulting her. According to Michael himself, he was trying to live out his dark sexual fantasies and wanted to kidnap a sexworker to become his own sex slave and potentially, kill her. We know from many articles that Michael was very mentally ill and had extremely violent fantasies which he shared with law enforcement during his sentencing for the crime. Despite his attack and alarming desires, police felt that this was a one off attack and likely not the culprit for the growing number of missing women. Michael Leopold was cleared of any involvement in the other disappearances.
Before I go any further I should explain Vancouver and the nearby cities. I feel like it’s a bit confusing for those who don’t live here, but Vancouver is a well known large city in Canada. What many people might not realize is that it’s touching so many smaller cities that are essentially minutes away. So Vancouver is one city, right next to it is Burnaby, then Coquitlam, and then Port Coquitlam. So if I drive to the gym, I sometimes go through 3 cities within a span of 15 minutes because they’re all so squished together, but to be honest it all feels like one giant city to me.
Ok, that was a bit of a detour but I wanted to share that because we’re travelling over to Port Coquitlam, a city which is 20 ish km from Vancouver. At the time, Port Coquitlam was very rural since it was under developed. It was mostly land, farms, and a smaller city.
So one drizzly night in March of 1997, an elderly couple was driving in rural Port Coquitlam when suddenly they see a naked woman in the distance, barely visible with the rain and their headlights. As they get closer, this woman frantically tries to wave them down. They notice she’s covered in blood, her abdomen severely damaged, and she was wearing handcuff attached to only one of her wrists. The couple pulled over and helped this woman into the vehicle and took her to the nearest hospital.
This woman was Wendy Lynn Eistetter, a sex worker from Vancouver. Wendy was stabbed so many times that it was a miracle her bowls stayed inside of her body. She explained the attack to the police. She was picked up by a man named Willie Pickton, a man who for a lack of better terms wreaked, look disheveled, but was well known to frequent the Low Track to pick up girls and was willing to exchange alcohol and drugs for services.
Willie drove himself and Wendy to his pig farm in Port Coquitlam. It was isolated and messy. The property was mucky, full of junk and old cars, and had multiple delapitated buildings along with a couple of trailers where Willie and his brother David lived. One of the building on the property, a converted slaughter house, was called Piggy Palace or Piggy Palace Good Times Society which would host community parties or ragers that would go all night and be fuelled with drugs. My husband knows someone who actually went there when they were younger. Isn’t that wild!?!? Anyways…
The two engaged in intercourse, and afterwards Wendy asked to use the landline to call her boyfriend. As she was dialling his number, Willie came up behind her and handcuffed her wrist. He tried to get the other wrist but Wendy fought back. So, Willie attacked Wendy with a butchers knife. Luckily, she managed to get the knife from him, and slashed him in the neck. He went down, and she was able to run out onto the road for help.
Police realized the assailant was actually in the same hospital. A man came in not too long after Wendy with knife injuries to his neck. And in his pocket, nurses found a key to the handcuffs on Wendy’s wrist.
Shortly after the attack, while Wendy is still recovering in the hospital, Willie Pickton is charged with aggravated assault and attempted murder, and unlawful confinement.
Unfortunately, Wendy was so scared of Willie that she didn’t want to testify because she would have to see him again. Even though the police had a description of the attack, an assailant in the hospital with the same injuries, and the handcuff keys in his pocket, they didn’t think they had enough to charge him. Plus, they figured because Wendy was a sex worker with a drug addiction, no one would believe her.
The official search for Vancouver's missing women began in September 1998 after an Aboriginal group sent the police a list of potential victims, demanding a thorough investigation. Although some listed had died of natural causes or were later found alive, Detective Dave Dickson took the complaint seriously. He compiled a new list of women who had vanished without a trace. This list was concerning enough for his superiors to form an investigative task force.
Vancouver police started with 40 unsolved disappearances of local women, dating back to 1971. They identified a pattern focusing on 16 missing sex workers from the Low Track area. Despite this pattern, there was debate over whether these disappearances were related to a serial killer or were coincidental.
In May 1999, Detective Inspector Kim Rossmo reported an unusual concentration of disappearances in Downtown Eastside, but police dismissed his theory publicly, suggesting the women might have left Vancouver voluntarily.
Five names were removed from the list of missing women after they were able to identify that they had either died of an overdose or were found living elsewhere, but new names quickly filled their places.
Police also received reports of an unidentified rapist in August 2001, who boasted of assaulting and killing other women. The victim's description of the attacker didn't lead to an arrest, and the predator remained at large.
So the police have a growing number of missing women from a concentrated area in Vancouver, and many dead end suspects over many years.
Luckily, things are about to shake up. A breakthrough came in late 1998, from 37-year-old Bill Hiscox. Bill was employed at P&B Salvage in Surrey, another city really close to all the others I mentioned. it’s basically like 5 minutes below Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam area.
and he became suspicious of his employer Robert William "Willie" Pickton. Sound familiar?
Yes, this is the same Willie Pickton who owned the pig farm in Port Coquitlam where Wendy was attacked in 1997.
Hiscox became alarmed by Pickton when he visited the farm to pick up a cheque and saw numerous purses and IDs belonging to women, so he decided to inform the Police.
To there surprise, Pickton wasn’t a stranger. In face, he and his brother David Pickton had a run in police a while back. Of course we know that Willie was charged but not convicted of the assault against Wendy Eistetter. But Willie’s brother, David, was also known because he had been convicted of sexual assault in 1992.
So the police went to check things out. But, to everyone's surprise nothing came of it. Many articles say that they didn’t find anything, while others say a thorough search might not have been conducted. But either way, no women were found, and no charges were laid against the two brothers.
The case of missing women from Vancouvers Low Track still remained a mystery, and the numbers kept growing.
In 2002, the investigation intensified. On February 7, police searched the Pickton farm again, initially arresting Robert (aka Willie) on firearms charges. While Willie was being detained, police exercised their latest warrant and searched the property again. This time, leaving no stone unturned. And what they found was truly horrifying.
In one of the meat freezers, police found and head and other women's body parts which they later identified as Sereena Abotsway and Andrea Joesbury. Two missing women from the Low Track area. Further searches uncovered DNA from multiple victims, leading to more charges. Officers also found a skull and jaw bones in the pig pen, and then thousands of bone fragments. They searched every inch of the property.
By October 2004, a thorough search of the farm had linked the DNA of 33 women to the property. Pickton still denying any involvement. But like, come on, they knew it was for sure him. More disturbingly, British Columbia's provincial health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, suggested that human remains might have been mixed with pork processed for human consumption, a deeply disturbing possibility, but never validated.
While in prison, police placed an undercover officer in the cell with Pickton, pretending to be a killer, to see if he’d give any detail into the murders. He confessed to the undercover officer that he frequently picked up women from the Low Track area, luring them with drugs and alcohol. He’d bring them to his place, and eventually murder them. He said that his goal had been to kill 50 women but he only made it to 49, because he was getting sloppy. He even says that he discarded some of the body parts by hiding them in pig pens, feeding them to pigs, or discarding them in the bins he should send to rendering plants, which are essentially plants that take animal fat and stuff to be used in other products like cosmetics, soap, etc. For police and the justice system, this was the smoking gun.
By the way listeners, a lot of his confession was secretly recorded and available on Youtube, so if you want to watch this confession, it’s there to watch. It will also be linked in our show notes.
In 2007, Robert Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and was sent to a prison in Quebec, Canada. He received a life sentence with no eligibility for parole for 25 years. Unfortunately, he was not convicted of the remaining 26 murders he confessed to. The remaining charges were stayed, which is a term to describe a rare situation where they feel there’s no need to drag out a trial because the accused already has the maximum sentence possible. Unlike in the United States, where someone can be sentenced to multiple life sentences, like 100 years, in Canada this is considered unconstitutional and unfair, so if you get multiple life sentences, you still only serve 25 years. So this means Robert Pickton is eligible for parole in 2027, however, he can apply for day parole three years earlier. So… now in his 70’s, as of February 22nd, 2024, Robert Pickton can apply for day parole, which is where he can leave prison with essentially a day pass.
This eligibility not only outraged the public but other inmates within the prison. On May 19th of this year, like a week ago from the time we’re recording this, Robert Pickton was attacked in prison by another inmate and is currently in critical care under a chemically induced coma. So by the time we release this, something more dramatic could occur.
Robert Pickton’s crimes remain some of the most horrific in Canadian history. Although Pickton's conviction brought some closure to the victims' families, it couldn't erase the immense pain and loss they had suffered. The story highlights not only the horrors of Pickton's actions but also the systemic failures that allowed these crimes to continue for so long.
This story is a stark reminder of the importance of a functioning justice system, and the responsibility we all share in protecting vulnerable members of our society. Our hope is that by shedding light on this dark chapter in Canada's history, we can remember the victims, honour their memory, and ensure that such atrocities are never repeated. The names of all known victims will be posted on our website in this episodes show notes.
[Outro]
Quinn: Thank you for joining us for another episode of "Beyond the Unknown." If you have a story you’d like to share, please email us at moody.mediaprod@gmail.com. You can reach out on our website, and who knows, your story might be featured in our next episode.
Joli: All of our sources for this episode can be found on our website: beyondtheunknownpod.com.
And don’t forget, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review.
Quinn: Until next time, listeners. Stay curious and remember that the unknown is always just beyond the shadows.
Both: BYEEEE
