'I'm a legend': Pickton
Transcripts include revealing chats with police officer posing as cellmate
Last Updated: Friday, August 6, 2010 | 7:27 PM PT
CBC News
An artist's sketch shows Robert Pickton in the prisoner's box on the first day of his trial in B.C. Supreme Court on Jan. 22, 2007. (Felicity Don/Canadian Press)Serial killer Robert Pickton bragged that "everybody knows about me" in a jail cell conversation after he was arrested, according to newly released transcripts from police.
The transcripts are from conversations the Port Coquitlam, B.C., pig farmer had with an officer posing as his cellmate after his arrest in 2002.
Their release follows the lifting of publication bans from Pickton's 2007 trial. The bans were lifted Wednesday, after the Crown stayed the remaining 20 murder charges against Pickton.
The 60-year-old is serving a life sentence for the murders of six women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside between 1997 and 2002.
In expletive-laced interviews with his cellmate released Friday, Pickton admits to getting "too sloppy" at the end, resulting in his arrest.
He references his apparent notoriety repeatedly, saying "I'm a legend already."
Later in the transcript, Pickton says, "You must have heard about me from the … news or the paper. Everybody knows about me, right?" He continues: "The whole f--king world knows me, all the way to Hong Kong everywheres."
He initially appears to deny any involvement or knowledge of the killings, saying he's only being charged because the police don't have any leads on the women disappearing from the troubled Downtown Eastside.
"Now they are trying to charge me for 50 murders. Fifty f--king murders."
But later, Pickton says he was "gonna do one more, make it an even 50."
'I'm buried now'
He also complains the investigation has ruined his life, saying, "I'm buried now" and "I hear I'm dead." He laments police taking "everything away from you, everything you worked for."
When asked by the undercover officer what evidence police have against him, he says they found DNA and "old carcasses."
He also refers to a "rendering plant" while discussing ways to dispose of things.
Pickton reveals details of his life growing up, talking about working on the pig farm and saying his family lived in a chicken coop when he was two years old.
He tells the informant he has no vices, saying, "I don't do drugs, I don't smoke, I don't drink … I am just a farm boy."
Other people involved: Pickton
In the second transcript, an interrogation by police after his arrest, Pickton vehemently denies any involvement for most of the interview, finally breaking down toward the end and indicating he did not work alone.
"There's other people involved," he says.
"There will be other murderers or whatever, other people, other, other people charged, but that's here not there."
When pressed by an officer who says Pickton did not do a good job of cleaning up the blood at his pig farm, he agrees, saying, "That's right. I was sloppy."
Later in the interrogation, when asked repeatedly how many women investigators might find on the property, he says, "I'd say two — probably two, maybe three."
Toward the end of the interview, he stops denying that he was involved, but accuses police of blowing things out of proportion.
"You're making me more of a mass killer than I am," he says at one point.
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