VANCOUVER - The families of women Robert Pickton plucked from Vancouver's troubled Downtown Eastside will finally get to bury the remains of their sisters, daughters and mothers, which have until now been locked away as evidence.
What remains of the six women Pickton was convicted of killing, along with the remains of 20 others for which he is still charged, have been evidence since they were unearthed on his sprawling farm nearly a decade ago.
The Supreme Court of Canada decision Friday to dismiss Pickton's request for a new trial effectively brought an end to the criminal case against him and opened the door for the women's relatives to reclaim what is, in some cases, little more than DNA.
"In some cases there were physical remains; in other cases, there was forensic evidence, DNA and so forth," Michael Petrie, one of the prosecution lawyers, told reporters in Vancouver following the court ruling.
"So when you talk about remains it was a bit difficult to know what could be returned. In some cases, there are no specific remains to return."
British Columbia's coroner said he has issued death certificates for the six women Pickton was convicted of killing, and has been talking to the families about the return. For the remaining 20, that is expected to happen soon.
That will let family members like Cynthia Cardinal, whose sister Georgina Papin was among Pickton's victims, finally bury their relatives.
"I have some sort of closure, but the thing that would complete it would be to get the remains back of hers so we can lay it to rest," Cardinal said in an interview from her home in Edmonton.
"We'll arrange a funeral for her, and we'll try to bury her by my mother."
It is a milestone marking the end of a seemingly unending investigation and legal process for the serial killer, convicted in December 2007 of killing Papin, Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Brenda Wolfe, Marnie Frey and Andrea Joesbury.
But it also means Pickton will likely never stand trial on 20 more murder counts, to say nothing of the nearly two dozen more victims he bragged about to undercover police. The former pig farmer was charged with 26 murder counts in total, but the trial judge split the charges into two groups and a trial on the remaining 20 charges was put on hold.
The end of the legal process does mean, however, that the victims' families and the public may finally get some answers about why Pickton was able to kill so many women for so long.
Following the top court's decision, the Vancouver Police Department offered its strongest admission yet that the force failed Pickton's victims.
"On my behalf and on behalf of the Vancouver Police Department and all the men and women who worked on this case I would say how sorry we all are for your losses and because we did not catch this monster sooner," said Vancouver police deputy chief Doug LePard.
"When faced with the worst, we should have been better."
LePard said he will always be haunted by the case.
Both the Vancouver police and the RCMP said they have conducted internal reviews of their investigations, which they will make public.
Relatives and friends of the women who had disappeared from the Downtown Eastside first sounded the alarm in the early 1990s.
But it was nearly a decade, in 1998, before Vancouver police formed a special team to review missing women files. By 2001, that investigation had gone nowhere and mounting public pressure saw the RCMP get involved, forming a joint task force to calm public fears.
Rumours were rife, but when police descended on Pickton's farm in 2002 they found it was worse than imagined.
Police found dismembered women, their severed heads, hands and feet stuffed into buckets. The bones and DNA of the others were scattered across the property. Prosecutors alleged Pickton fed some to his pigs.
RCMP Insp. Gary Shinkaruk, of the missing women task force, noted Pickton had once claimed to have killed a total of 49 women.
Pickton had initially been charged with 27 counts of murder, but a charge for killing a "Jane Doe" was dropped. The remains of six more women were found on the farm but no charges have been laid in those cases.
The failure of police to take the initial reports of missing women more seriously spurred demands for a public inquiry, which were repeated Friday from both the victim's family, Vancouver's mayor and even police.
B.C. Attorney General Mike de Jong held a news conference to offer his condolences but still didn't say whether an inquiry will take place.
Papin's sister said she had mixed feelings about the decision because of the outstanding charges and those victims' families.
"I know they deserve to know what happened to their loved ones, too," said Cardinal. "Although I am very happy that he will never get out and he's convicted for my sister."
In explaining the decision to stay the remaining charges against Pickton, Crown spokesman Neil MacKenzie said Pickton is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years — the maximum allowed under the law.
"In reaching this position the branch has taken into account the fact that any additional convictions could not result in any increase to the sentence that Mr. Pickton has already received," MacKenzie told reporters.
The Supreme Court of Canada was unanimous in ruling that Pickton had a fair trial, and noted that the evidence he participated in the murders was "overwhelming."
The 60-year-old serial killer will be eligible to apply for full parole on Feb. 22, 2027. Corrections Canada said it cannot disclose any information, including where he is serving his time.
However, law professor Janine Benedet of the University of British Columbia said Pickton will likely never step foot outside of a prison.
"(He'll be) well into his 80s by the time he's even eligible for a parole hearing, and it's really unimaginable that the parole board would release someone who had been convicted of six murders and was implicated in many more," said Benedet.
"As a practical matter he'll be in prison for the rest of his life."
The missing women task force has reviewed dozens of cases stretching back decades, and many remain under investigation.
Shinkaruk said they'll be looking at whether any of those might be linked to Pickton, but he said some of them are clearly the work of someone else, including three that investigators believe involve another serial killer.
"There's a number of active investigations that we know are homicide that, again, we are not attributing to Pickton, so we are fully engaged in those investigations," he said.
- With files from Stephanie Levitz in Ottawa and Beth Leighton in Vancouver