Accused Killer Tells Officer He Killed 49 and Was Planning to Go to 75

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. (CP) – The undercover officer who spent two days in a cell with Robert Pickton after his 2002 arrest will be back in the witness box Wednesday.

In a videotaped conversation, the jury heard Pickton tell the officer he was going to kill one more woman to make it an even 50, take a break and “do another 25 new ones.” Pickton also admitted he got caught by police because he was sloppy with four of the bodies.

“Four I was sloppy with,” Pickton said to the officer, who he thought was a fellow accused. “I just couldn’t finish it off, so I cleaned up and that’s it.”

He also boasted that he was bigger than Seattle’s Green River serial killer, who killed 42 people.

“Top of the world,” he said, laughing.

Pickton also sought to one-up the officer’s assertion that he would dispose of a body in an ocean.

“I did better than that,” the pig farmer said. “A rendering plant.”

Defence lawyer Peter Ritchie asked the officer whether he thought Pickton was a simple man whose thoughts and words were disjointed and hard to follow.

“I’m suggesting to you start to think you’re dealing with a simple chap here,” Ritchie said.

The officer said he disagreed.

After this witness, the trial is expected to move into the early days of the search with testimony from half-a-dozen officers who first went to Pickton’s farm with a firearms search warrant.

Pickton faces 26 counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of women who vanished from Vancouver’s rough Downtown Eastside. Many of the victims were drug-addicted sex-trade workers.

The current trial is for the deaths of Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Marnie Frey and Georgina Papin.

Pickton will face the remaining charges at a later trial.