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Pig Farm Killers
Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network
Show Name: Real Cases Fictional Minds
Episode Title: Pig Farm Killers
You are listening to Real Cases Fictional Minds, the podcast with your host Jaylli Kushi.
In this episode of Real Cases Fictional Minds Podcast we discuss: Season 4 Episode 25 and 26 titled “To Hell… and Back” and how it's considered one of the most heavily real-life-inspired Criminal Minds stories of Robert Pickton.
Listener engagement: For my last episode of my podcast, I would like to thank my listeners for coming along for the scary and suspenseful ride of the criminal minds world mixed with the true crime world. If you'd made it this long and enjoyed the show, I'd love your support. Take a moment to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and leave me a review; it really helps me reach more people like you. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope you enjoy this last and very disturbing episode!
Segment 1: To Hell… and BackThe episode begins in Detroit, Michigan, with a man moving quietly through the streets of a homeless area, carrying a gun, searching desperately for his sister. His search leads him to a motel, where he impulsively grabs a random man and holds him hostage, the gun pressed to his neck. They drive toward the Canadian border, tension rising with every mile, until they crash into a toll booth and are finally stopped by border control and Detroit police. Calmly, almost eerily, the man tells the authorities, “You’re going to want to call the police. I’ve killed 10 people in the last month,” pointing them toward photographs of homeless people in the car, claiming he’s responsible for all of them. Back at Quantico, the BAU pieces the case together and identifies the man as William Hightower, a former U.S. Army sergeant who served two tours in Iraq and lost his left leg in a roadside ambush, earning a Purple Heart before being discharged just two months earlier. William has been documenting the missing people, recording their names, taking photos, and noting dates, all from Detroit’s Cass Corridor, an area notorious for drugs, prostitution, and homelessness. Agents Morgan and Prentiss take to the streets, talking to locals about William and the missing people. Some victims haven’t been seen in days, and while William is a familiar figure in the area, nobody interferes with him because he carries a gun. Meanwhile, Agent Hotch interviews William to understand where the victims went, and the situation quickly becomes tense. William reveals he didn’t actually kill anyone, but he has been tracking people on the streets because he knows many are missing. Hotch asks him about the night he tried to cross the border, and William explains that every night he goes out to do a headcount, not just for protection but out of love, searching for someone specific — his baby sister, Lee. After returning from Iraq, his mother told him she was living on the streets. He once found her and brought her home, but two weeks later, she returned to the streets. William keeps all the information he has gathered about her hidden in a spare tire in his car. The team listens in on a phone call from Lee that night — she is scared, confused, and says a man is taking her somewhere, the fear in her voice making the stakes painfully clear. Meanwhile, the unsub is introduced: an older white man on a pig farm, a seemingly quiet property hiding unimaginable horrors. He keeps victims chained in a barn, using the pigs on the farm to dispose of bodies, a method as shocking as it is methodical. Back at Quantico, the team gains custody of William to help locate potential victims. Garcia uncovers that on five of the nights victims disappeared, Detroit police reported break-ins at medical facilities, with stolen items including anesthesia, syringes, IV tubing, O-negative blood, and chest tubes, suggesting the unsub may be performing experiments on the people he abducts. The BAU builds a chilling profile: a sexual sadist who derives pleasure from torture, someone smart, highly organized, and possibly with medical knowledge. This case with Lucas Turner and Robert Pickton reminds me of other real-life killers, like Dennis Nilsen in the UK, who lured men to his home and methodically killed them, or Israel Keyes in the U.S., who planned his abductions and murders in meticulous detail. While every case is different, what connects them is how these killers targeted vulnerable people, often in isolated settings, and were able to evade law enforcement for years. As the investigation unfolds, the team brings in Lee’s mother to gather more information while continuing to track the unsub’s patterns. On the farm, we can see a table stained with blood and the unsub attempting to paralyze one of his victim, dismembers him, and feeds parts of the body to the pigs, demonstrating a twisted method of control and concealment. The team searches the streets with William, watching for potential victims and the unsub’s next moves. At the farm, they discover hundreds of shoes of different sizes and polaroids of victims, evidence of the scale of his crimes. Reid notices childlike drawings in the barn loft where the unsub sleeps, hinting at autism but showing that despite his disorder, he is fully capable of understanding and committing horrific acts. Meanwhile, Kelly, a young victim, is held underground and becomes central to the investigation. As Lucas, the unsub, grows increasingly agitated, Garcia discovers that Mason Turner and his brother had been conducting experiments on victims, trying to manipulate and control life in disturbing ways. Kelly cleverly builds trust with Lucas and persuades him to let her go outside “to use the bathroom,” secretly turning on a phone that Garcia is tracking, giving the team a location. The BAU and Detroit police move through the woods, following the signal to a trap door, eventually finding the underground shelter and rescuing Kelly while confronting Lucas. The tension reaches its peak as William Hightower enters Mason Turner’s room, grabbing a shotgun and shooting him. Lucas senses his brother is in danger and charges toward the team, leading to a fatal response by police. By the end, nearly 100 lives have been affected, questions linger, and the team is left grappling with the sheer scale, planning, and cruelty of the unsub’s crimes, showing just how far someone can go when obsession, opportunity, and the exploitation of vulnerable people intersect.
Segment 2: Robert PicktonNow let’s take a look at the real-life case that inspired the Criminal Minds season 4 finale, “To Hell and Back,” the story of Robert Pickton. Robert Pickton was a Canadian serial killer who was active in British Columbia from the 1980s to the 2000s. He was born on October 24, 1949, in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada, and he spent most of his life living and working on his family’s pig farm, where he lived a very quiet and isolated life. People who knew him thought he was strange and awkward, but not someone they would expect to be dangerous. Over time, the farm stopped being just a normal farm and became a place where people would sometimes hang out or party, and Pickton used this to meet people, especially women who were struggling with homelessness, addiction, or poverty. Many of these women came from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which already had a serious problem with missing people. During the late 1980s and 1990s, women from that area started disappearing more and more often, and even though friends and family tried to get help, the cases were not taken seriously enough for years, mostly because many of the women were sex workers or dealing with addiction, and their disappearances were often ignored. In public, Pickton just seemed like a dirty, odd farmer, but in private, he would offer women rides, money, or drugs and invite them back to his farm, and for many of them, that was the last place they were ever seen. In 1997, police actually searched his farm once after a woman reported being attacked there and survived, but because of poor follow-up and not enough evidence, nothing happened, which was a huge missed chance to stop everything sooner. It wasn’t until February 2002 that police came back to the farm again, this time to investigate illegal guns, but while searching, they started finding items that clearly belonged to missing women, which led to one of the biggest investigations in Canadian history. After months of searching, investigators found DNA and remains from many victims, and at least 26 women were identified. Pickton was arrested, and while in jail, he was placed in a cell with an undercover officer pretending to be another inmate, and during their conversations, Pickton admitted that he had killed 49 women and even said he was disappointed he didn’t make it to 50, which showed how disturbing he really was. When the case went to trial in 2007, prosecutors focused on six victims: Serena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin, and Marnie Frey, and in the end, Pickton was found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, which is the harshest sentence possible under Canadian law. Many people were angry that he wasn’t tried for all the murders he confessed to, but prosecutors said it wouldn’t change his sentence and would only put the families through more pain. After the trial, a public investigation showed that police had made serious mistakes and ignored warnings for years, and the case became a symbol of how society often fails to protect vulnerable people, especially Indigenous women and those struggling with addiction or poverty. Pickton stayed in prison for the rest of his life, and in 2024, he died after being attacked by another inmate, and what makes this case so disturbing isn’t just how many victims there were, but how long it went on and how many chances there were to stop it earlier, and just like the Criminal Minds episode shows, sometimes the scariest part of these stories isn’t only the killer, but how long they’re able to keep going.
Segment 3: Compare and ContrastLucas Turner from Criminal Minds is clearly inspired by Robert Pickton, but the show changes some details to make it fit the story. Both Lucas and Pickton run pig farms and target vulnerable people from the streets, using their property to hide evidence. Pickton’s crimes were mostly about control and killing, while Lucas has extra story elements, like using welfare checks to isolate victims and involving a brother for added tension. The show also exaggerates torture and experiments, while Pickton’s methods were horrifying but less theatrical — he mostly killed and disposed of the bodies on his farm. The way they’re caught is different, too. In the show, the team tracks a victim’s phone and rescues her, while Pickton was caught after a long investigation involving police work and missing persons reports. Both cases show how law enforcement can take time to uncover the truth, and how these killers preyed on marginalized communities. Even with the show’s added drama, the real story of Pickton is just as disturbing, if not more, because of the scale of his crimes and the vulnerability of his victims. Reality doesn’t need exaggeration to be terrifying.
Sign Off: Some killers hide in fiction, others walk among us… until next time on Real Cases, Fictional Minds
Music Credits:- Intro/Outro: Deep Breath by KonovalocMusic
- Transition: From the Underworld by KonovalocMusic
Connect with us on Social Media
- @theHVSPN
View all episodes
By Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network 2026Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network
Show Name: Real Cases Fictional Minds
Episode Title: Pig Farm Killers
You are listening to Real Cases Fictional Minds, the podcast with your host Jaylli Kushi.
In this episode of Real Cases Fictional Minds Podcast we discuss: Season 4 Episode 25 and 26 titled “To Hell… and Back” and how it's considered one of the most heavily real-life-inspired Criminal Minds stories of Robert Pickton.
Listener engagement: For my last episode of my podcast, I would like to thank my listeners for coming along for the scary and suspenseful ride of the criminal minds world mixed with the true crime world. If you'd made it this long and enjoyed the show, I'd love your support. Take a moment to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and leave me a review; it really helps me reach more people like you. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope you enjoy this last and very disturbing episode!
Segment 1: To Hell… and BackThe episode begins in Detroit, Michigan, with a man moving quietly through the streets of a homeless area, carrying a gun, searching desperately for his sister. His search leads him to a motel, where he impulsively grabs a random man and holds him hostage, the gun pressed to his neck. They drive toward the Canadian border, tension rising with every mile, until they crash into a toll booth and are finally stopped by border control and Detroit police. Calmly, almost eerily, the man tells the authorities, “You’re going to want to call the police. I’ve killed 10 people in the last month,” pointing them toward photographs of homeless people in the car, claiming he’s responsible for all of them. Back at Quantico, the BAU pieces the case together and identifies the man as William Hightower, a former U.S. Army sergeant who served two tours in Iraq and lost his left leg in a roadside ambush, earning a Purple Heart before being discharged just two months earlier. William has been documenting the missing people, recording their names, taking photos, and noting dates, all from Detroit’s Cass Corridor, an area notorious for drugs, prostitution, and homelessness. Agents Morgan and Prentiss take to the streets, talking to locals about William and the missing people. Some victims haven’t been seen in days, and while William is a familiar figure in the area, nobody interferes with him because he carries a gun. Meanwhile, Agent Hotch interviews William to understand where the victims went, and the situation quickly becomes tense. William reveals he didn’t actually kill anyone, but he has been tracking people on the streets because he knows many are missing. Hotch asks him about the night he tried to cross the border, and William explains that every night he goes out to do a headcount, not just for protection but out of love, searching for someone specific — his baby sister, Lee. After returning from Iraq, his mother told him she was living on the streets. He once found her and brought her home, but two weeks later, she returned to the streets. William keeps all the information he has gathered about her hidden in a spare tire in his car. The team listens in on a phone call from Lee that night — she is scared, confused, and says a man is taking her somewhere, the fear in her voice making the stakes painfully clear. Meanwhile, the unsub is introduced: an older white man on a pig farm, a seemingly quiet property hiding unimaginable horrors. He keeps victims chained in a barn, using the pigs on the farm to dispose of bodies, a method as shocking as it is methodical. Back at Quantico, the team gains custody of William to help locate potential victims. Garcia uncovers that on five of the nights victims disappeared, Detroit police reported break-ins at medical facilities, with stolen items including anesthesia, syringes, IV tubing, O-negative blood, and chest tubes, suggesting the unsub may be performing experiments on the people he abducts. The BAU builds a chilling profile: a sexual sadist who derives pleasure from torture, someone smart, highly organized, and possibly with medical knowledge. This case with Lucas Turner and Robert Pickton reminds me of other real-life killers, like Dennis Nilsen in the UK, who lured men to his home and methodically killed them, or Israel Keyes in the U.S., who planned his abductions and murders in meticulous detail. While every case is different, what connects them is how these killers targeted vulnerable people, often in isolated settings, and were able to evade law enforcement for years. As the investigation unfolds, the team brings in Lee’s mother to gather more information while continuing to track the unsub’s patterns. On the farm, we can see a table stained with blood and the unsub attempting to paralyze one of his victim, dismembers him, and feeds parts of the body to the pigs, demonstrating a twisted method of control and concealment. The team searches the streets with William, watching for potential victims and the unsub’s next moves. At the farm, they discover hundreds of shoes of different sizes and polaroids of victims, evidence of the scale of his crimes. Reid notices childlike drawings in the barn loft where the unsub sleeps, hinting at autism but showing that despite his disorder, he is fully capable of understanding and committing horrific acts. Meanwhile, Kelly, a young victim, is held underground and becomes central to the investigation. As Lucas, the unsub, grows increasingly agitated, Garcia discovers that Mason Turner and his brother had been conducting experiments on victims, trying to manipulate and control life in disturbing ways. Kelly cleverly builds trust with Lucas and persuades him to let her go outside “to use the bathroom,” secretly turning on a phone that Garcia is tracking, giving the team a location. The BAU and Detroit police move through the woods, following the signal to a trap door, eventually finding the underground shelter and rescuing Kelly while confronting Lucas. The tension reaches its peak as William Hightower enters Mason Turner’s room, grabbing a shotgun and shooting him. Lucas senses his brother is in danger and charges toward the team, leading to a fatal response by police. By the end, nearly 100 lives have been affected, questions linger, and the team is left grappling with the sheer scale, planning, and cruelty of the unsub’s crimes, showing just how far someone can go when obsession, opportunity, and the exploitation of vulnerable people intersect.
Segment 2: Robert PicktonNow let’s take a look at the real-life case that inspired the Criminal Minds season 4 finale, “To Hell and Back,” the story of Robert Pickton. Robert Pickton was a Canadian serial killer who was active in British Columbia from the 1980s to the 2000s. He was born on October 24, 1949, in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada, and he spent most of his life living and working on his family’s pig farm, where he lived a very quiet and isolated life. People who knew him thought he was strange and awkward, but not someone they would expect to be dangerous. Over time, the farm stopped being just a normal farm and became a place where people would sometimes hang out or party, and Pickton used this to meet people, especially women who were struggling with homelessness, addiction, or poverty. Many of these women came from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which already had a serious problem with missing people. During the late 1980s and 1990s, women from that area started disappearing more and more often, and even though friends and family tried to get help, the cases were not taken seriously enough for years, mostly because many of the women were sex workers or dealing with addiction, and their disappearances were often ignored. In public, Pickton just seemed like a dirty, odd farmer, but in private, he would offer women rides, money, or drugs and invite them back to his farm, and for many of them, that was the last place they were ever seen. In 1997, police actually searched his farm once after a woman reported being attacked there and survived, but because of poor follow-up and not enough evidence, nothing happened, which was a huge missed chance to stop everything sooner. It wasn’t until February 2002 that police came back to the farm again, this time to investigate illegal guns, but while searching, they started finding items that clearly belonged to missing women, which led to one of the biggest investigations in Canadian history. After months of searching, investigators found DNA and remains from many victims, and at least 26 women were identified. Pickton was arrested, and while in jail, he was placed in a cell with an undercover officer pretending to be another inmate, and during their conversations, Pickton admitted that he had killed 49 women and even said he was disappointed he didn’t make it to 50, which showed how disturbing he really was. When the case went to trial in 2007, prosecutors focused on six victims: Serena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin, and Marnie Frey, and in the end, Pickton was found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, which is the harshest sentence possible under Canadian law. Many people were angry that he wasn’t tried for all the murders he confessed to, but prosecutors said it wouldn’t change his sentence and would only put the families through more pain. After the trial, a public investigation showed that police had made serious mistakes and ignored warnings for years, and the case became a symbol of how society often fails to protect vulnerable people, especially Indigenous women and those struggling with addiction or poverty. Pickton stayed in prison for the rest of his life, and in 2024, he died after being attacked by another inmate, and what makes this case so disturbing isn’t just how many victims there were, but how long it went on and how many chances there were to stop it earlier, and just like the Criminal Minds episode shows, sometimes the scariest part of these stories isn’t only the killer, but how long they’re able to keep going.
Segment 3: Compare and ContrastLucas Turner from Criminal Minds is clearly inspired by Robert Pickton, but the show changes some details to make it fit the story. Both Lucas and Pickton run pig farms and target vulnerable people from the streets, using their property to hide evidence. Pickton’s crimes were mostly about control and killing, while Lucas has extra story elements, like using welfare checks to isolate victims and involving a brother for added tension. The show also exaggerates torture and experiments, while Pickton’s methods were horrifying but less theatrical — he mostly killed and disposed of the bodies on his farm. The way they’re caught is different, too. In the show, the team tracks a victim’s phone and rescues her, while Pickton was caught after a long investigation involving police work and missing persons reports. Both cases show how law enforcement can take time to uncover the truth, and how these killers preyed on marginalized communities. Even with the show’s added drama, the real story of Pickton is just as disturbing, if not more, because of the scale of his crimes and the vulnerability of his victims. Reality doesn’t need exaggeration to be terrifying.
Sign Off: Some killers hide in fiction, others walk among us… until next time on Real Cases, Fictional Minds
Music Credits:- Intro/Outro: Deep Breath by KonovalocMusic
- Transition: From the Underworld by KonovalocMusic
Connect with us on Social Media
- @theHVSPN