The Pickton Farms Murders

Discovery

Despite committing so many terrible crimes over such a large span of time, Pickton was not actually ever caught, or even noticed by the police until early 2002. There were even multiple opportunities for police to catch him, all of which were missed.

In 1997, Wendy Lynn Eistetter managed to stab Pickton with a kitchen knife and break free, although she also received stab wounds in the process. Eistetter went to the hospital for treatment, and at that exact time, Pickton was also at the same hospital for his wounds. Police found the key to handcuffs Eistetter had on Pickton, and so he was arrested and charged with attempted murder, among other things. They almost caught him, but he was released because Eistetter was determined to not be a trustworthy witness due to heavy consumption of alcohol and drug use.

Then, in 1998, the charity event/nightclub Pickton had set up on his farm held a special new year's celebration, which got so crazy that police had to be involved. They swept the whole place, and started arresting people who were there, although somehow, they completely missed or just ignored any evidence of the murders.

But there are somehow still more opportunities that the police missed. In 1999, police received a tip that Pickton had human flesh in his freezer, and that a woman's body was hung up in his slaughterhouse. At the time, police ignored the tip believing it to be made up, and the person who sent it in even said themselves that it was all made up. It wasn't until years later that they admitted the tip was true, and they denied it for fear of Pickton.

Finally, in 1999 again, there was another huge opportunity that the police missed. Bill Hiscox, an employee for the farm, told the police that a close friend of Pickton, Lisa Yelds, had told him about seeing many objects belonging to multiple women she didn't know on the farm, such as clothes, purses, or even personal IDs. Unfortunately, Yelds wasn't being cooperative, and the police couldn't put together enough evidence to catch Pickton without her.

It may have been just because of incompetence on the side of the police, or because almost all the disappearances were indigenous women and the police just didn't care about them as much as other people, but it wasn't until 2002, when the RCMP put together a dedicated investigation on the people who had been going missing in the area that Pickton was finally caught. The police had acquired a search warrant for illegal firearms on the farm, and they had found items belonging to multiple missing women from the area while they were there. A little while later, they came back and finally managed to arrest him for good.