Canada serial killer sentenced to life
Pastor Dale Morgan
Canada serial killer sentenced to life*
VANCOUVER, Canada (AFP) - - Convicted mass murderer Robert "Willy"
Pickton was sentenced by a Canadian court Tuesday to life in prison,
with a chance of parole after serving 25 years.
A jury found Pickton, 58, guilty on six counts of second-degree murder
Sunday. He faces a second trial next year on another 20 charges of
murdering women in this Pacific Coast city.
Prosecutors in the first trial said Pickton had picked up prostitutes
from Vancouver's squalid Downtown Eastside, killed them, butchered them
and disposed of their bodies by feeding them to pigs or taking them to a
rendering plant.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Pickton to the maximum 25
years in jail before possible parole. "The extent (and) depravity of the
circumstances are unique," said prosecutor Geoff Baragar.
He said remorse is always a consideration in lenient sentencing and
added, "There is no evidence of remorse."
The defence had asked for incarceration of 10 to 20 years.
Judge James Williams pegged Pickton's sentencing starting in 2002, when
he was first arrested for the murders. His punishment is the maximum
under Canadian law.
Before sentencing, onlookers sobbed and hugged each other in the public
gallery as 18 statements were read by relatives of the six victims --
Marnie Frey, Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Ann
Wolfe and Georgina Faith Papin.
Most were read out by prosecutor Michael Petrie, whose voice cracked
repeatedly with sobs. "Having someone you care about deeply cut up into
pieces is a fact I have difficulty coming to terms with," said a letter
by Wilson's foster mother Antoinette Zanda.
"My daugher, a lovely creative girl, wound up in a freezer cut into
parts. I cannot get it out of my mind," Joesbury's mother Karen Joesbury
wrote to the court. "I don't know how we will ever recover from this."
Some of the relatives said they blamed themselves for what happened to
their loved one. And most statements criticized media reports for
debasing the six women to mere addicts and prostitutes.
"I feel angry when I hear these women were just drug users and
prostitutes because I didn't know Georgina that way," Papin's sister
Bonnie Fowler told the court in person.
A letter read from the daughter of Wolfe, whose name was not given, said
the media "sensationalized a lot" and "said "she does not want her
mother's story to be (only) that of a crack addicted prostitute, whose
journey was cut short by Robert Pickton."
Wolfe's mother addressed part of her letter to Pickton: "I have tried to
forgive you ... this is impossible to do. The tears that I shed would
fill an ocean."
A letter from a younger sister of Wolfe said that when they were
children Wolfe had been her protector and friend. "When mom and dad beat
me, she would put her arms around me... she was a mother, sister, she
was so much to us."
Papin's sister Elana Papin looked directly at Pickton, from her seat in
the witness box, and said angrily: "I will never forget the damage you
caused our family with your evil deeds."
Pickton, in a new Christmas sweater he wore for the verdict, sat
motionless throughout the entire procedure in the bullet-resistent
prisoner's box, looking straight ahead and showing no visible reaction.