Years after his conviction on six counts of murder and facing a life sentence, convicted serial killer Robert William Pickton is still adamantly defending his innocence.
Pickton told CTV News in an exclusive interview that police visited a B.C. prison twice this week in the hopes of gleaning new details about the murder of prostitutes from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, but were told nothing.
That's because Pickton says he has nothing to say.
"They're still hunting," Pickton said on the phone from the North Fraser Pre-Trial Centre in Port Coquitlam on Thursday. "They're looking for a scapegoat."
The RCMP's Missing Women Task Force confirmed Friday that officers had visited Pickton in prison, but refused to discuss the details.
Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder three years ago after a grueling trial of what may be the biggest serial killing in Canadian history. He was charged with 21 other counts of murder, but one was thrown out by the presiding judge and the remaining charges were stayed on Wednesday.
In an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada that was denied last week, the majority judges declared that the evidence of Pickton's guilt was "overwhelming."
Part of that conviction was inspired by a jailhouse recording that caught Pickton bragging to an undercover police officer that he "got sloppy" before he could make it to "an even 50."
‘They didn't understand me'
In his interview with CTV News, Pickton claims he was tricked into the prison admission.
"They didn't understand me," he said. "They didn't get anything right. It's a one-sided story. They can dream up something what they believe was there, that's it. They're tunnel vision to that."
As to who was the real culprit, Pickton repeated accusations in the preliminary hearing that it was the Hells Angels motorcycle club, as well as people who hung about the farm, though he says he doesn't know precisely who.
He says the story was never told because his lawyer, Peter Ritchie, would not let him take the stand in his own defence.
"I could blow the whole thing apart," he said. "I want to go on the stand. I'd do anything to go on the stand."
Pickton said he even wrote a letter to the judge asking to be given a chance to speak, but the letter was circulated in the courtroom and eventually made it back to his own lawyers.
"I wrote a letter, gave it to the sheriffs, the sheriffs gave it to the judge and the judge gave it to the lawyers," he said.
When asked why he didn't fire his lawyers and get new ones, or represent himself, the former pig farmer replied, "Because you can't."
‘A lack of empathy'
CTV News showed the transcript of the interview to criminologist Stephen Hart.
"He displays a lack of remorse, a lack of empathy, an arrogance," said Hart. "Those characteristics go together and make it seem as if there is a psychopathic personality disorder."
Maggie Devries, whose sister Sarah was among those police believed was murdered on the Pickton farm, said she was disappointed Pickton was not going to offer her some more information about what happened.
"He's already done the most heinous things imaginable, so why would I expect better from him?" she said.
Pickton disputes prosecution witnesses
Pickton also had choice words for the prosecution's witnesses. Andy Bellwood testified that Pickton told him in detail about how he murdered women -- Pickton said he was lying out of revenge for an incident on the farm in which Bellwood was beaten up.
In response to the woman who claimed she saw another woman hanging in the barn while Pickton butchered her, he said drugs had addled her brain to the point that she couldn't remember anything.
"Lynn Ellingsen? She's a spaghetti brain. You're on the drugs and everything else, you know what I mean. She doesn't know her back side from her front side," Pickton said.
And as for the lone survivor of an attack on the pig farm, Pickton said she attacked him to steal his money.
"She was shooting herself with drugs," he said. "I had $3500 on me…. She cut me pretty good…. The left side of my head is completely dead."
He said his story was so strong that if he could be proved false on any single claim, his whole story would fall apart.
"If there's even one flaw in what I say, that I'm guilty in any which way, I'm guilty enough," he said.
