Case overview
He is believed to have murdered at least 26 women, many of them sex workers from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The discovery of Pickton's crimes sparked widespread outrage and forced the Canadian government to acknowledge the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, with the British Columbia provincial government forming the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry to examine the role of the police in the matter. [1]
In 2007, he was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years—the longest possible sentence for second-degree murder under Canadian law at the time. After Pickton lost his final appeal at the Supreme Court of Canada, the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry chaired by Wally Oppal was called to examine the role of the Vancouver police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the disappearances and murders of women in the Downtown Eastside. Families of the missing and murdered women have been calling for public hearings since before Pickton was arrested and eventually convicted of six murders. [2]
