Pig farmer on trial for first 6 of 26 murders
Pig farmer Pickton confessed to 49 killings, planned 50, prosecutors say
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:25 p.m. ET Jan 22, 2007
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - An accused serial killer allegedly confessed to killing 49 women and intended to murder one more to make it an even 50, a prosecutor told jurors Monday during opening arguments of his trial.
Robert William Pickton has been charged with 26 counts of first-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty to the first six counts in what is expected to be the most macabre and lengthy murder trial in Canadian history.
The 56-year-old pig farmer is charged with murdering the women, most of whom vanished from Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside neighborhood in the 1990s.
The first trial covers the murders of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey, and is expected to last a year.
Hundreds of people began lining up before dawn outside the small courthouse in the Vancouver suburb of New Westminster, vying for the 50 seats in the courtroom.