Alleged Canadian Serial Killer Pleads Not Guilty

NEW WESTMINSTER, British Columbia — A Vancouver-area man accused of killing 27 women denied in court on Monday that he was responsible for one of North America's deadliest serial killing cases.

Robert Pickton, a pig farmer and scrap dealer who went by the first name "Willy," pleaded not guilty to 26 charges. He entered no plea on the 27th count—murder of an unknown woman identified only as "Jane Doe"—and the court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

The women were among nearly 70 drug addicts and sex trade workers who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, one of Canada's poorest neighborhoods, from the late 1980s to late 2001.

Pickton, dressed in a grey-green shirt and jeans as he stood in the prisoner's box, answered in short sentences of "Not guilty" and "Not guilty, your honor," as the clerk read the murder counts one by one.

The small courtroom was packed with friends and relatives of the missing women, and supporters of the victims' families at a rally outside beat on traditional aboriginal drums to remember the dead, most of whom were native Indians.

"There are some families who want answers to what happened to their loved ones. They want justice," said Beverley Jacobs, president of the Native Women's Association of Canada.

Pickton was arrested in February 2002 after police raided his ramshackle farm in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam, which then became the subject of a more than year-long search involving dirt sifting equipment and forensic archeologists.

Police say they found the DNA of at least 31 of the missing Vancouver women at the farm. Although evidence was still being analyzed, prosecutors in May set the number of first degree murder charges at 27 so the trial could go ahead.

Monday's session before a British Columbia Supreme Court trial judge in New Westminster, British Columbia, was the start of what will likely be several months of hearings on the admissibility of some evidence to be presented in Pickton's trial, which is expected to start in the early fall.

A standard Canadian court publication ban prohibits the media from reporting details of that evidence. The ban is designed to prevent bias among the jurors eventually selected for the case.

Although Pickton, 56, has been in custody since his arrest, the case moved very slowly through the court process because of the time needed by DNA laboratories across Canada to test samples from the farm.

"We want this trial to move ahead," defense attorney Peter Ritchie told reporters.

Ritchie said Pickton did not enter a plea on the charge of killing Jane Doe because the defense believes there is a legal problem in that portion of the murder indictment.

Pickton is the only person charged in connection with the missing women cases.

Police have denied accusations they ignored warnings that a serial killer was at work on the Pacific Coast city's Downtown Eastside for several years because the women who disappeared without a trace were poor.