Butcher by Gary C. King

They called him Uncle Willie. At night, Robert 'Willie' Pickton visited the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The women he picked up never came back... His Methods were rape and torture.For years, police built a long list of missing prostitutes, women at the edge of society. Some people claimed there was a serial killer. One detective lost his job for saying so. But investigators didn't have a single body.On land that had made his family millions, on a squalid pig farm near a school, a condo development and a Starbucks, Robert Pickton ran a house of horrors for decades. Friends, neighbours and community leaders came and went, while Pickton committed debauchery, torture, and bloodletting rivalling the worst on record. What he did to his victims was unspeakable. What he did to the bodies was unimaginable. How he got away with it is the most shocking crime of all...

I read this book at the best time for me.After reading the book on Andrea Yates and the drowning of her 5 children my nerves were done and I decided to take a hiatus from true crime books for a while.The reason this book Butcher was the best book to read after my hiatus is because it included no childhood details which would have induced another emotional reaction from me.This serial killer tortured and murdered 49 women so needless to say background details on the victims would have resulted in an extremely large book and an emotionally wrecked reader.

I enjoyed this book which contained the results of a massive and endless amount of research.I enjoyed the way this information rolled and was easy to keep track of.This is the perfect true crime book for the reader who is not interested in the emotional element of true crime stories but is instead concerned with real research,the evolvement of a crime case from the realisation that a crime is being committed,in this case that there was indeed a serial killer on the loose,the investigation,how the case broke open,the court case.It contains a lot of very interesting and pertinent information.In fact if you enjoyed the way Helter Skelter is written then you will enjoy this book.The style of writing is very similar and the story evolves in much the same way.

I loved this piece "Despite all of the fear and paranoia generated and fueled mostly through conspiracy theorists,Y2K passed with nary a significant event anywhere in the world.Many people stocked up on supplies and rations for what they believed was going to be an "end of the times" event, only to find out later that they should have saved their money for the hard times that would hit much later in the first decade of the new century" Boy,don't we know it now...

This serial killer case turned out to be the largest,most expensive serial murder investigation in Canadian history and by 2004,costs were estimated to exceed $70 million.Willie Pickton had indicated to an undercover cop in his cell that he was disappointed that he had not made his target of 50 kills by one short.That might lead anyone to conclude that by catching this man only then and spending so much money to investigate this case and convict him that they had actually saved one life only.For the reader who might have missed the next part in the conversation he does include that maybe after his initial goal of 50 he might have started another killing spree with a goal of 25 kills.This man is a monster.

I was flabbergasted by his sentence of second degree murder.The authorities must really start to look into the way they choose juries.A second degree murder charge indicates no premeditation.How do you by mistake kill 49 people?The sheer number of victims indicates premeditation surely.I must add though that he was only charged with much less murders than the 49 (there was a lack of evidence as many of his victims had been fed to the pigs on the farm he lived on)he did kill but still how do you even murder 2 people on different occasions with no premeditation,never mind 6??

Another mind boggling fact is that this Willie Pickton at the time of his arrest had personal assets to the value of $10 million.He was unkempt,dirty and disgusting.No one in their right mind could ever have guessed this man to be worth anything,never mind actually be quite wealthy.

I could not find this book on Amazon so I cannot provide the link but here are some more book details to help in your search of this book if you are interested in reading it.
Country: United States of America
Format: Mass market paperback
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
ISBN: 9780786019342
Publication date: April 2009
Length: 174mm
Width: 106mm
Thickness: 25mm
Weight: 168g
Edition: illustrated edition
Pages: 320

The book is fortunately available on Kalahari so in this case South Africans can still order it.See link below