The family members had cried and prosecutor Michael Petrie choked up as he read victim-impact statements at Tuesday’s hearing. Prosecutors are pushing for a maximum 25 years in prison before Pickton can seek parole.
Staring directly at Pickton, Lynn Frey read a statement from her granddaughter Brittney, whose mother Marnie Frey, was among the victims. Part of Marnie Frey’s jaw bone was found on Pickton’s farm.
“Mr. Pickton, why did you hurt my real mother and those other women?” the teenager wrote. “I have to go through each day. I ask myself. ‘What would it be like if my real mother were here?’ Mr. Pickton, why did you do that?”
“When you took her from me, it was like ripping out my heart.”
Karin Joesbury wrote that her daughter Andrea was a “lovely, creative girl who wound up in a freezer, cut into parts.”
Rick Frey, Marnie’s father, smiled as he left the courtroom.
“That’s great, that’s good, that’s what we wanted,” said Frey. “We didn’t think we’d get that but, yeah, it’s perfect.”
Prosecutors had sought a first-degree murder conviction, but the jury found Pickton guilty of the lesser second-degree murder charges, finding that the killings were not planned.
Robert Pickton gets life… but is eligible for parole?
12 Wednesday Dec 2007
Posted robert pickton
inGood news… well, kind of. Robert Pickton, who was convicted on Sunday of the murder of 6 women, has been sentenced to a life sentence without being eligible for parole for 25 years, apparently the mazimum sentence. Now, this is good because he could have been eligible after 10 years. Still, it seems a little odd that after MURDERING and being convicted of murdering six women there isn’t an option in Canada for life imprisonment without eligibility for parole.
Of course, for Canada’s most notorious serial killer, there are still 20 murder charges yet to be heard against him. Also, let’s remember that the jury found him guilty of second-degree murder, believing that the murders were not planned. How do you murder that many people and not plan it?
Anyways, the AP reports on the family’s victim impact statements. They’re heartbreaking: