Convicted serial killer's book pulled from Amazon
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - A book reportedly written by a Canadian serial killer was removed Monday from Amazon's website a day after being put on sale online following protests by British Columbia authorities.
Outskirts Press, which published the book, issued a statement saying it had asked Amazon to remove the book from its website.
"Outskirts Press apologizes to the families of the victims for any additional heartache this may have caused," the statement said.
Robert Pickton, now 66, was convicted in 2007 of six counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of sex workers. Pickton slaughtered the women at his pig farm and fed some remains to his pigs. He was sentenced to life in prison.
By Monday afternoon, the 144-page memoir titled "Pickton: In His Own Words" was no longer available from the online retailer's Canadian website. In the book, Pickton claimed he was innocent and was framed by the police for the killings, the Toronto Sun reported.
More than 50,000 people signed a petition on the Change.org website urging Amazon to remove the book from its website to respect "the families who were affected by the horrible crimes of this predator ... and who are still going through their healing processes."
Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told Parliament that the Correctional Service of Canada is investigating how the manuscript was smuggled out of the Kent Institution maximum security prison near Agassiz, British Columbia.
Authorities in British Columbia promised to introduce a law to prevent offenders from profiting from their crimes.
"I am at a loss for words. To think about the pain that he's prepared to willingly cause all of the families of those people who he murdered," British Columbia Premier Christy Clark told reporters in Vancouver.
"I have trouble understanding it and I think people will want to know that their government is doing everything it can to want to stop him from profiting from this at the very least."
British Columbia Solicitor General Mike Morris had asked Amazon to stop carrying the book, saying he considers it "despicable" that someone could profit from their crimes.
There is no confirmation that Pickton actually wrote the book, but a statement from Morris said the province is investigating every means possible to ensure that the 66-year-old from Port Coquitlam will not profit in any way.
While Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder, 20 other charges of first-degree murder were stayed. Pickton picked the women up from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, several square blocks of squalid hotels, drug dealers and street-level, survival prostitution. He lured them to his muddy, garbage-strewn farm with promises of money, alcohol and drugs.
Authorities said Pickton butchered the womens' remains and fed them to his pigs. Health officials once issued a tainted meat advisory to neighbors who might have bought pork from Pickton's farm, concerned the meat might have contained human remains.
Pickton will not be eligible for parole until he has served a minimum of 25 years, the maximum penalty allowed by law. However, it is unlikely Pickton will ever be released from jail. Pickton had faced 20 more murder charges for the deaths of women, most of them prostitutes and drug addicts from a seedy Vancouver neighborhood. However, the prosecution eventually declined to pursue those cases because it could not have increased Pickton's sentence. Police had also been investigating the cases of almost 40 other missing women which may be related to the Pickton case.
During his trial, videotaped interviews were played in which Pickton denied knowing the victims and asked a police officer: "Do I look like a murderer?"
Slumped in his chair, often with his head in his hands, Pickton said that despite DNA evidence against him, "that don't mean I did it."
Prosecutors have said Pickton told an undercover officer planted in his jail cell that he killed 49 women and intended to make it "an even 50."
In the videotaped interview, a police officer tells Pickton a "huge amount" of blood was in his trailer on the farm.
"That's human blood, lots of it," the official said. "That's Mona Wilson's blood. This is where she'd been dumped. There's DNA all over the place; it's on the floors, it's on the walls."
"But that don't mean I did it," Pickton said.
Pickton was charged with attempted murder and unlawful confinement in 1997 in the case of sex worker Wendy Lynn Eistetter. She claimed she had been handcuffed and attacked at the farm, but Pickton countered he acted in self-defense and for reasons that remain unclear, the charges were dropped.
When police first went to the farm to investigate in 2002, they found two skulls in a bucket in a freezer in Pickton's mobile home.
"The heads of the individuals had been cut in two, vertically," an official at the time said. "With the skulls were left and right hands and the front parts of the left and right feet."
Both skulls had wounds caused by 22-caliber bullets. Investigators found a Smith & Wesson rifle in the laundry room of Pickton's home.
After the first traces of DNA of some missing women were found on the 17-acre farm, the buildings were razed and the province spent an estimated $61 million to sift through acres of soil at the farm.