When I was 12, I spent a whole summer reading about Ted Bundy while my friends were at the mall. My mom thought it was “concerning” (her word, not mine), but that early obsession taught me something crucial: serial killers don’t just appear out of nowhere. They exist in environments that enable them.
Robert Pickton didn’t happen in a vacuum.
The women who disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in the years before his arrest were vanishing into a system that barely noticed they were gone. It’s like they were written in invisible ink in the city’s ledger – present but unseen.
The Women Nobody Missed (Except Those Who Did)
As early as 1978, women started disappearing from Vancouver’s poorest neighborhood. Lillian O’Dare was among the first reported missing, but she wouldn’t be the last.
By the time Pickton was finally arrested in 2002, more than 60 women had vanished from those streets. Sixty. Let that sink in. That’s an entire high school classroom plus the teacher and a couple of parent volunteers.
DNA from 33 women was eventually found on Pickton’s farm, but investigators believe the actual number of victims was much higher. (I’ve spent enough nights falling down Reddit rabbit holes about this case to know the estimates are truly horrifying.)
The families knew something was terribly wrong long before authorities bothered to connect the dots. They reported their loved ones missing, they put up posters, they begged police to take action – all while being told their daughters, sisters, and mothers had probably just “moved on” or were “living that lifestyle.”
That “lifestyle” excuse makes my blood boil faster than my coffee in the morning. (Ryan, my husband, has learned to change the subject when I start ranting about this particular police dismissal tactic.)
A Perfect Storm of Vulnerability
The Downtown Eastside wasn’t just any neighborhood. It was (and still is) one of Canada’s poorest areas – a place where substance abuse, poverty, and sex work created the perfect hunting ground.
Many of the women who disappeared were Indigenous, adding another layer to the systemic neglect. The intersection of racism, sexism, and classism created a trifecta of indifference that allowed these disappearances to continue for decades.
I’ve spent hours listening to the Crime Junkie podcast episode on the missing women of Vancouver, and what strikes me most is how predictable the pattern becomes. Woman disappears. Family reports it. Police file paperwork. Nothing happens. Repeat.
It’s like watching a horror movie where you’re screaming at the characters not to go into the basement, but they do it anyway. Except this wasn’t fiction, and the monster wasn’t just Pickton – it was an entire system that failed these women.
“Not The Kind of Victims People Care About”
Let’s be honest about something uncomfortable: society ranks victims. There’s a hierarchy of who deserves immediate attention and resources.
The women of the Downtown Eastside – many struggling with addiction, many involved in sex work, many Indigenous – were at the bottom of that hierarchy. They were what one Vancouver Police Department report later acknowledged as “not the kind of victims people care about.”
That sentence makes me want to throw my criminology textbooks through a window.
When local activists like Maggie de Vries (whose sister Sarah was among the missing) pushed for action, they were initially met with resistance. The community had to fight for the creation of a task force, for reward money, for basic acknowledgment that something sinister was happening.
By the time authorities finally took the cases seriously, dozens of women had already vanished.
The Ghosts That Remain
What haunts me most about this case (besides literally everything about it) is how many women remain unidentified. How many cases remain unsolved. How many families still don’t have answers.
The Pickton case didn’t end with his arrest. For many families, the nightmare continues – a perpetual limbo of wondering if their loved one was among his victims or if some other predator was responsible.
The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry that followed exposed deep, systemic failures in how these cases were handled. But inquiries and reports don’t bring back the dead or heal the wounds of those left behind.
They’re just paper. And these women deserved so much more than that.
So the next time you hear about Robert Pickton, remember this: before he became a household name, dozens of women disappeared while a city looked away. Their stories matter just as much as the monster who took them.
And honestly? They deserve to be remembered for more than just how they died.