Hey, it's Deborah Roberts. This week on inside the midnight order, our all woman team of investigators turned their attention to one of the biggest murder cases in North America, the case of a pig farmer named Robert Pickton, who claims he killed 49 women. Here's episode three.

Hey there. I'm ABC News correspondent Kayna Whitworth.

And I'm Nancy Schwartzman, the director and executive producer of Sasha Reid and the.

Midnight Order from ABC audio and Freeform. This is inside the midnight order. You can see in this episode Doctor Sasha Reed, in the midnight Order, examine the case of one of Canada's most notorious serial killers, Robert Pickton. How was this case viewed in Canada and beyond?

The Robert Pickton case is a huge wound for Canada. He is the most notorious serial killer in the country. He admitted to murdering 49 women. The charges of 20 plus women were stayed. He was only convicted of six. It really exposed systemic harms that led to such a vulnerable population. 20 years of unchecked disappearances that were nothing properly investigated. It really just showed so many pieces of canadian society that needed healing, that needed addressing, that needed advocacy. Something that's interesting is pickton himself. When he confessed in his jail cell, he was trying to get the big 50. He was frustrated. He only got to 49. He was competing with american serial killers. So there's a way that these predators compete with each other. They know about each other. They want the notoriety.

Why did the midnight order want to focus on this case in particular?

This was Sasha's passion project when we initially met. Sasha grew up learning about Picton in high school. There she is, high school student, fresh with ideas about the world, and oh, my God, how does this happen? I think the scale, the amount of victims, the images from the farm, it just is so horrifying. Unless you study crime, the average person cannot wrap their head around that level of depravity. Of course, because Sasha is who she is. This fascinated her. How did this happen? Who are the victims? What was going on in this perpetrator's mind? Like, in a way, you're fascinated by the horror, and then you go deeper into the historic and systemic reasons this was able to happen. So I think there's, like, a level of sophistication to really analyzing this crime from a legal perspective and a societal one. And then there's just the dark psychology and that sort of level of fascination.

In this episode, we get a sense of how much evidence there is in this picked in case and how many threads the team would follow. But what the episode really focuses in on is who Robert Pickton targeted these vulnerable women in Vancouver, including many indigenous women. What did you learn about the plight of these women in Canada?

Yeah, I learned so much from digging into the Picton case and I think there are many parallels between Canada and the United States, and I think perpetrators and predators know these are vulnerable women. These are also women living in more rural areas. These are underserved communities. If you drive all along what's known as the highway of tears, there is no wi fi, there are no busses. Girls have to hitchhike to get around. If you go to reservations in the US and the west, there is no wi fi. It's very remote. This really sets up ways in which girls can be taken or harmed.

To learn more about why indigenous women are overrepresented in the missing and murder database, Nancy is going to talk with midnight order members Aya and Hannah. Aya is a psychotherapist and she works with former offenders and Hannah is the team's database expert. Nancy's conversation with them after the break.

This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. What do you do when you get caught up wishing your life looked like someone elses comparison is the thief of joy and its easy to envy other peoples lives. It might look like they have it all together on their instagram, but in reality they probably dont. Therapy can help you focus on what you want instead of what others have so you can start living your best life. If youve benefitted from therapy in the past, you know how useful it can be. It can help you to learn positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. Therapy empowers you to be the best version of yourself, and it isnt just for those whove experienced major trauma. If youre thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. Its entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with also it all creates stereotypes that lead to further ostracization and discrimination. So when you hear that an indigenous woman has gone missing, the police are always so slow to respond. Systems are already set for people to respond callously and in a victim blaming way. It's kind of like, oh, what was she doing? Where is she going? Oh, she that Sasha emphasized with both databases. She always wanted us to work really hard to find an image of the victims, because she was like, I really want to put faces to names and give us this opportunity to humanize them, to not just exclusively focus on the offender or the potential suspect, and to really give these victims the focus and the attention that they deserve. And so she emphasized the photo a lot, but also going beyond the photograph and humanizing them and recognizing the different roles that they played in their life, not just as this potential victim, but as daughters, children, mothers, whomever.That's the ecosystem. That's the victim population. I want to talk specifically now about the case itself and how it was handled from a sort of behind the scenes perspective. In the show, it's mentioned there's a large amount of evidence, hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence. This evidence is both the number of potential victims and also just the massive scope of the crime scene. Hannah, how can the amount of evidence affect an investigation?There's a lot to go through. So even if it were thoroughly examined, like, that would just take so much time. My understanding is that there was a lot of public pressure, too, to get this case wrapped up for various reasons. And so I think when you have that kind of public pressure contradicted with this mountain of evidence, it can just get really overwhelming, and I think police may have succumbed to some of that pressure.In the series, Sasha brings out this large map of the Picton farm and demonstrated how many hits of DNA, how many different people touched part of that crime scene. How did the midnight order get that info and categorize it?Sasha requested this information from the Supreme Court of Canada and spent hours just categorizing everything, the location on the farm, whose DNA it is, and just color coded everything. Obviously, we can't go back in time and see how things were set up. It's helpful to have something like that so that we can know the logistics of how things worked or how messy the place was, how everything was scattered. And it just gives us, like, a better picture of what was we have in Canada and in particular in BC in the Vancouver area. It's just really amazing.I just want to say a big thank you to both of you, Aya and Hannah, and I really appreciate you spending time with us today.Thanks, Nancy.Yeah, thank you for having us.That was Nancy's interview with Aya and Hannah. We'll be back next week with Angeli, a medical student who specializes in forensic psychiatry, and hasti, a legal powerhouse who puts victims first. We'll dig deeper on Robert Pickton's family and also revisit some of those horrifying details from the crime scene. Inside the Midnight Order is a co production of free form and ABC audio and a companion podcast to the Freeform true crime documentary series Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order, now streaming on Hulu. You can also stream the soundtrack. It's available now on all platforms. I'm Kayna Whitworth. My co host is Nancy Schwartzman, director and executive producer of Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order. This series was produced by Camille Peterson, Meg Fierro, Amira Williams, and Jalen McDuffie, with assistance from Freeforms, Katie Celia, and Megan Watiera. Susie Liu is our supervising producer. Music by Nick Senna. Special thanks to ABC Audio's Liz Alessi, Josh Cohan, Madeline Wood, and Arielle Chester, and Freeform's Amanda Kell, Allie Braman, Lindsey Chamnis, Jasmine Karamzada, Heather Taylor, and Mike Wong. Laura Mayer is executive producer of podcast programming at ABC Audio.

also it all creates stereotypes that lead to further ostracization and discrimination. So when you hear that an indigenous woman has gone missing, the police are always so slow to respond. Systems are already set for people to respond callously and in a victim blaming way. It's kind of like, oh, what was she doing? Where is she going? Oh, she that Sasha emphasized with both databases. She always wanted us to work really hard to find an image of the victims, because she was like, I really want to put faces to names and give us this opportunity to humanize them, to not just exclusively focus on the offender or the potential suspect, and to really give these victims the focus and the attention that they deserve. And so she emphasized the photo a lot, but also going beyond the photograph and humanizing them and recognizing the different roles that they played in their life, not just as this potential victim, but as daughters, children, mothers, whomever.That's the ecosystem. That's the victim population. I want to talk specifically now about the case itself and how it was handled from a sort of behind the scenes perspective. In the show, it's mentioned there's a large amount of evidence, hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence. This evidence is both the number of potential victims and also just the massive scope of the crime scene. Hannah, how can the amount of evidence affect an investigation?There's a lot to go through. So even if it were thoroughly examined, like, that would just take so much time. My understanding is that there was a lot of public pressure, too, to get this case wrapped up for various reasons. And so I think when you have that kind of public pressure contradicted with this mountain of evidence, it can just get really overwhelming, and I think police may have succumbed to some of that pressure.In the series, Sasha brings out this large map of the Picton farm and demonstrated how many hits of DNA, how many different people touched part of that crime scene. How did the midnight order get that info and categorize it?Sasha requested this information from the Supreme Court of Canada and spent hours just categorizing everything, the location on the farm, whose DNA it is, and just color coded everything. Obviously, we can't go back in time and see how things were set up. It's helpful to have something like that so that we can know the logistics of how things worked or how messy the place was, how everything was scattered. And it just gives us, like, a better picture of what was we have in Canada and in particular in BC in the Vancouver area. It's just really amazing.I just want to say a big thank you to both of you, Aya and Hannah, and I really appreciate you spending time with us today.Thanks, Nancy.Yeah, thank you for having us.That was Nancy's interview with Aya and Hannah. We'll be back next week with Angeli, a medical student who specializes in forensic psychiatry, and hasti, a legal powerhouse who puts victims first. We'll dig deeper on Robert Pickton's family and also revisit some of those horrifying details from the crime scene. Inside the Midnight Order is a co production of free form and ABC audio and a companion podcast to the Freeform true crime documentary series Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order, now streaming on Hulu. You can also stream the soundtrack. It's available now on all platforms. I'm Kayna Whitworth. My co host is Nancy Schwartzman, director and executive producer of Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order. This series was produced by Camille Peterson, Meg Fierro, Amira Williams, and Jalen McDuffie, with assistance from Freeforms, Katie Celia, and Megan Watiera. Susie Liu is our supervising producer. Music by Nick Senna. Special thanks to ABC Audio's Liz Alessi, Josh Cohan, Madeline Wood, and Arielle Chester, and Freeform's Amanda Kell, Allie Braman, Lindsey Chamnis, Jasmine Karamzada, Heather Taylor, and Mike Wong. Laura Mayer is executive producer of podcast programming at ABC Audio.

that Sasha emphasized with both databases. She always wanted us to work really hard to find an image of the victims, because she was like, I really want to put faces to names and give us this opportunity to humanize them, to not just exclusively focus on the offender or the potential suspect, and to really give these victims the focus and the attention that they deserve. And so she emphasized the photo a lot, but also going beyond the photograph and humanizing them and recognizing the different roles that they played in their life, not just as this potential victim, but as daughters, children, mothers, whomever.

That's the ecosystem. That's the victim population. I want to talk specifically now about the case itself and how it was handled from a sort of behind the scenes perspective. In the show, it's mentioned there's a large amount of evidence, hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence. This evidence is both the number of potential victims and also just the massive scope of the crime scene. Hannah, how can the amount of evidence affect an investigation?

There's a lot to go through. So even if it were thoroughly examined, like, that would just take so much time. My understanding is that there was a lot of public pressure, too, to get this case wrapped up for various reasons. And so I think when you have that kind of public pressure contradicted with this mountain of evidence, it can just get really overwhelming, and I think police may have succumbed to some of that pressure.

In the series, Sasha brings out this large map of the Picton farm and demonstrated how many hits of DNA, how many different people touched part of that crime scene. How did the midnight order get that info and categorize it?

Sasha requested this information from the Supreme Court of Canada and spent hours just categorizing everything, the location on the farm, whose DNA it is, and just color coded everything. Obviously, we can't go back in time and see how things were set up. It's helpful to have something like that so that we can know the logistics of how things worked or how messy the place was, how everything was scattered. And it just gives us, like, a better picture of what was we have in Canada and in particular in BC in the Vancouver area. It's just really amazing.I just want to say a big thank you to both of you, Aya and Hannah, and I really appreciate you spending time with us today.Thanks, Nancy.Yeah, thank you for having us.That was Nancy's interview with Aya and Hannah. We'll be back next week with Angeli, a medical student who specializes in forensic psychiatry, and hasti, a legal powerhouse who puts victims first. We'll dig deeper on Robert Pickton's family and also revisit some of those horrifying details from the crime scene. Inside the Midnight Order is a co production of free form and ABC audio and a companion podcast to the Freeform true crime documentary series Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order, now streaming on Hulu. You can also stream the soundtrack. It's available now on all platforms. I'm Kayna Whitworth. My co host is Nancy Schwartzman, director and executive producer of Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order. This series was produced by Camille Peterson, Meg Fierro, Amira Williams, and Jalen McDuffie, with assistance from Freeforms, Katie Celia, and Megan Watiera. Susie Liu is our supervising producer. Music by Nick Senna. Special thanks to ABC Audio's Liz Alessi, Josh Cohan, Madeline Wood, and Arielle Chester, and Freeform's Amanda Kell, Allie Braman, Lindsey Chamnis, Jasmine Karamzada, Heather Taylor, and Mike Wong. Laura Mayer is executive producer of podcast programming at ABC Audio.

we have in Canada and in particular in BC in the Vancouver area. It's just really amazing.

I just want to say a big thank you to both of you, Aya and Hannah, and I really appreciate you spending time with us today.

Thanks, Nancy.

Yeah, thank you for having us.

That was Nancy's interview with Aya and Hannah. We'll be back next week with Angeli, a medical student who specializes in forensic psychiatry, and hasti, a legal powerhouse who puts victims first. We'll dig deeper on Robert Pickton's family and also revisit some of those horrifying details from the crime scene. Inside the Midnight Order is a co production of free form and ABC audio and a companion podcast to the Freeform true crime documentary series Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order, now streaming on Hulu. You can also stream the soundtrack. It's available now on all platforms. I'm Kayna Whitworth. My co host is Nancy Schwartzman, director and executive producer of Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order. This series was produced by Camille Peterson, Meg Fierro, Amira Williams, and Jalen McDuffie, with assistance from Freeforms, Katie Celia, and Megan Watiera. Susie Liu is our supervising producer. Music by Nick Senna. Special thanks to ABC Audio's Liz Alessi, Josh Cohan, Madeline Wood, and Arielle Chester, and Freeform's Amanda Kell, Allie Braman, Lindsey Chamnis, Jasmine Karamzada, Heather Taylor, and Mike Wong. Laura Mayer is executive producer of podcast programming at ABC Audio.