Accused Canada serial killer said farm 'buried me'

NEW WESTMINSTER, British Columbia, Feb 5 (Reuters) Accused serial killer Robert ''Willie'' Pickton lamented that he never moved away from the family farm where police allege he killed 26 women and butchered their remains, a Canadian court heard today.

''I was supposed to stay on the farm till I hit the age of 40... Now I'm 53 and now it's buried me. My name is mud,'' Pickton told an undercover police officer hours after his arrest in 2002.

The jury at his murder trial in New Westminster watched a videotaped recording of the conversation, which took place in a jail cell with a police officer who was posing as a suspect arrested for attempted murder.

Prosecutors say that on a section of the tape not yet viewed by the jury, Pickton talks of having killed 49 women and planning to kill one more.

Pickton, now 57, has pleaded not guilty, and prosecutors have not described any of his comments as a confession.

He has been charged with 26 murders, although this trial deals with only six of the charges. The court divided the case into two trials to make it easier for the jury.

Pickton tells his cell mate that he was a pig farmer who did not drink or do drugs, and could not believe he was facing murder charges. He also complained that the police search had kicked him off the farm where he had lived for almost his entire life.

''I'm screwed, tattooed, nailed to the cross...'' he complains, saying police want to charge him with 50 murders.

Pickton, in court on Monday, read a transcript of the taped conversation and occasionally looked up at the officer, who was in the courtroom as a witness but cannot be identified by the media because of a court order.

Police say Pickton lured drug addicts and prostitutes to his farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, near Vancouver.

There, police say, he killed them, butchered the bodies and then disposed of the remains both on the property and at an animal waste rendering plant.

The victims were among more than 60 women who disappeared from Vancouver's drug-ridden Downtown Eastside neighborhood from the late 1980s until late 2001.

The jury of seven men and five women has already viewed a tape of a lengthy police interrogation of Pickton, also made after his arrest in February 2002 on the first two murder charges.

In that tape Pickton initially denies knowing anything about the missing women, but later suggests he would be willing to tell police about the killings if they agree to stop searching his farm.

Defence lawyers say interrogators tricked Pickton by lying to him about the evidence, and he was too tired at the end to know what he was saying.

The search lasted for 18 months and police say they eventually found the DNA of more than 30 of the missing women at the ramshackle farm in a Vancouver suburb.

Pickton, his brother and sister had been slowly selling off the family's farmland to housing developers, and Pickton told the undercover officer he was about to close it down.

''Hey, they (the police) just closed me down,'' Pickton said.

Reuters SRS VP0355