Convicted Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton died Friday at age 74 after being assaulted by another inmate at a maximum security prison earlier this month, prison authorities said.
One of Canada’s most infamous mass murderers, Pickton was convicted in 2007 of killing drug addicts and prostitutes and butchering their remains on his pig farm in the Pacific province of British Columbia.
He was convicted of murdering six women whose remains were found at his dilapidated property near Vancouver. Government prosecutors dropped charges for 20 more murders after he was sentenced to life in prison.
Canada’s Correctional Service said Pickton died after being assaulted on May 19 in the Quebec prison where he was serving his sentence. After the attack, he was transported to the hospital to receive treatment.
“We are aware that this offender’s case has had a devastating impact on communities in British Columbia and across the country,” the service said in a statement.
The victims were among more than 60 women who disappeared from Vancouver’s poor, drug-infested Downtown Eastside neighborhood for more than a decade until Pickton’s arrest in early 2002.
The remains or DNA of 33 women, many of whom were Indigenous, were found on Pickton’s pig farm in Port Coquitlam, about 25 kilometers east of downtown Vancouver.
In 2016, a book purportedly written by Pickton was removed from Amazon just hours after it went on sale. In the book, the serial killer said he was innocent and had been framed by police, the Vancouver Sun reported at the time.
The publisher requested its removal from Amazon and apologized to the victims’ families.
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