Serial killer Robert Pickton is in hospital in grave condition after he was attacked by another inmate at a maximum-security prison in Quebec.
Mr. Pickton, 74, was injured in an attack Sunday at the Port-Cartier Institution in northeastern Quebec, Correctional Service Canada spokesperson Kevin Antonucci said in a statement.
The assault did not involve any prison staff, he said.
The Sûreté du Québec said the attacker was a 51-year-old inmate at the prison, which is located about 700 kilometres from Montreal.
Provincial police spokesperson Hugues Beaulieu said in an interview that Mr. Pickton, who he did not identify by name, was seriously injured and still fighting for his life on Tuesday. He said the suspect had not yet been interrogated by police Tuesday morning and was still incarcerated at Port-Cartier.
Mr. Pickton was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years after he was convicted in 2007 of second-degree murder for killing six women. The Crown stayed murder charges against him for the deaths of 20 other women.
The serial killer’s high-profile trial and a subsequent public inquiry revealed how a combination of police failures and indifference toward his victims – sex workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, many of them Indigenous – allowed Mr. Pickton to continue killing undetected for years.
Cynthia Cardinal said she was “overwhelmed” with happiness when she heard about the attack on her sister’s killer. Georgina Papin, a member of the Enoch Cree First Nation, was among the six women Mr. Pickton was convicted of killing.
“I don’t think anybody that evil should be walking on Earth, as far as I’m concerned,” Ms. Cardinal said on Tuesday. “I have happy tears. Very happy tears.”
The attack was first reported by the Vancouver Sun.
Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc told journalists Tuesday that Mr. Pickton – without naming him – was evacuated to a hospital in the Quebec City region. “The Correctional Service has a process in place to review all of these circumstances,” he said of the incident.
Mr. LeBlanc said the internal review would likely focus on the management of interactions between inmates.
Marilyn Sandford, a former criminal lawyer for Mr. Pickton, criticized prison officials in the wake of the attack.
“It’s very unfortunate that Corrections Canada can’t, in a maximum-security institution, ensure the safety of a high-profile inmate like this who clearly is going to be a target for those who want to make a name for themselves,” she said.
“I think Corrections Canada should be doing better.”
Mr. Pickton was initially charged with 27 counts of murder, though that was later reduced to 26. He was tried on six counts and the remaining 20 were later stayed after his conviction. The remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his sprawling property, a pig farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C., after a search that began in 2002. After his arrest, he told an undercover officer that he killed 49 women.
The case prompted the B.C. government to launch a public inquiry, which was headed by former attorney-general Wally Oppal and examined why police failed to catch Mr. Pickton sooner.
Mr. Oppal released his final report in 2012, concluding that police failures were the product of systemic bias against Mr. Pickton’s victims, who he said were “forsaken” by the police and the public.
He also found that a lack of communication or collaboration between the police in Vancouver, where Mr. Pickton found his victims, and the RCMP in Port Coquitlam, B.C., where he murdered them, contributed to those failures.
Mr. Pickton became eligible for day parole in February, which sparked outrage from advocates, politicians and victims’ family members who criticized Canada’s justice system, saying he should never be released from prison.
The case also made headlines last year when families of victims and dozens of justice organizations fought the RCMP’s application to destroy an estimated 14,000 exhibits collected as part of the investigation into the murders. Preserving such evidence is necessary in order to be used to convict other people or solve some of the dozens of unsolved cases of women who went missing from the Downtown Eastside, advocates say.
Some of the victims’ families launched civil proceedings against Mr. Pickton and his brother, David, who, they allege, knew that victims faced danger on the farm and took no steps to protect them. A trial date for those lawsuits has yet to be scheduled; David Pickton filed a statement of defence denying the allegations, which have yet to be tested in court.
Lawyer Jason Gratl, who represents 16 children of nine women connected to Mr. Pickton’s property, said his clients want to make sure that the evidence seized by the RCMP on the farm can be used for these civil proceedings. Mr. Gratl said he does not think Robert Pickton’s “health or well-being can have a significant impact on the destruction of evidence application.”
With files from Kristy Kirkup in Ottawa and The Canadian Press
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the site of the assault as Port-Quartier Institution. It is Port-Cartier Institution. This version has been updated.