Murder at Piggy’s Palace: The Bizarre Serial Murder Case of Robert “Willie” Pickton

New York, NY, December 15, 2007 --(PR.com)-- The case of the missing women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, long known as the poorest neighborhood in the city, began as all such cases do: with no one noticing and no one caring. Although the case may have actually begun in September 1978 with the disappearance of Lillian Jean O’Dare, it would be several years into the future before an investigation would be launched by the police and the case made official. Early on the police seemed to have ignored the concerns voiced by loved ones of the missing women, some say for as long as 20 years, because of their particular lifestyle. Most of the victims were either prostitutes or drug addicts and, in many instances, both. But they were human beings—someone’s mother, daughter, sister or granddaughter—and someone, if not the police, cared that they had vanished. At first, when the police finally began to see that an erratic pattern was emerging, they were simply baffled, in part because they had no crime scene with which to work and no suspect to investigate. Because of the initial lack of clues, the police hadn’t even believed that any crimes had been committed for them to investigate. By the time the massive case finally broke in February 2002, homicide investigators suddenly realized that they were dealing with one of the worst serial murder cases in history.

This compelling and fascinating story is centered around Robert William “Willie” Pickton, 52 years old when the case broke, an evil and depraved sex killer who made his living as a pig farmer and how he, along with a relative, had run a registered charity known as the Piggy Palace Good Times Society. But, as the police would learn, the Piggy Palace wasn’t a charity at all. Located in a separate building on Pickton’s pig farm, it instead was a place where the most depraved acts of hellish entertainment occurred on a somewhat regular basis in which the “stars” of the show did not return for an encore performance. After Pickton was finished with a victim, each would be killed in a variety of ways and their bodies fed to Pickton’s pigs. By the time the police had formed a task force to try and catch the serial killer whose acts and numbers had already easily exceeded those of many of his Pacific Northwest predecessors, 31 women would have vanished. By the time Pickton was stopped, it is believed that he was responsible for the disappearances and subsequent deaths of 49 women and, by his own admission, had been planning on an even 50.

Gary C. King, a freelance author and lecturer, is regarded by readers and critics alike as one of the world's foremost crime writers, a reputation he has earned over the last 28 years with the publication of 11 books and more than 400 articles in true crime magazines in the United States, Canada, and England. King's true crime books and articles are hard-hitting and factual, key elements of a style that his readers tend to appreciate. He is the author of Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer, Driven to Kill, Web of Deceit, Blind Rage, Savage Vengeance, An Early Grave, The Texas 7, Murder in Hollywood, Angels of Death, Stolen in the Night, and Love, Lies, and Murder. King’s latest book, An Almost Perfect Murder, will be published by Kensington under their Pinnacle imprint in September 2008. King lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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