Lawyer: Pig farmer didn’t confess killings

NEW WESTMINSTER, British Columbia (AP) — The lawyer for a pig farmer accused of being Canada’s worst serial killer opened the defense’s final arguments Monday by denying the man ever confessed killing six women.

Robert “Willie” Pickton went on trial last January on the first six of 26 first-degree murder charges filed against him in the deaths of women, most of them prostitutes and drug addicts from a seedy Vancouver neighborhood.

Prosecutors said early in the trial that the 57-year-old Pickton told an undercover officer he killed 49 women and was caught before he could reach his goal of 50.

The defense has acknowledged the remains of the six women Pickton is accused of killing were found on his farm outside Vancouver, but it denies the farmer was responsible.

The jury is supposed to begin deliberations next Monday.