B.C. has put $10M mortgage on Pickton's land

The B.C. government has put a mortgage worth $10 million on accused serial killer Robert Pickton's notorious pig farm to cover his publicly funded defence.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press show a mortgage principal of $10 million with no interest rate and no repayment schedule.

B.C. Assessment, which tracks property values for tax purposes, valued the seven-hectare pig farm at about $5.9 million as of last fall, up from $4.2 million in the previous assessment. The Burns Road property is assessed at about $140,000.(Robert Pickton's share is roughly $1.96 million...over 8 million shy.)

Pickton, his brother David and sister Linda Wright each own one-third shares in the pig farm located on Port Coquitlam's Dominion Avenue, which they inherited from their parents. The Pickton brothers split the ownership of the smaller Burns Road property that housed Piggy's Palace, often used for parties.

An expert in real-estate law who didn't want to be named says it's not unusual for mortgages not to reflect the value of a property. The $10-million principal in the Pickton mortgage may represent an estimate of the government's maximum security, he says.

Whether it can recover any of that is another question.

If the government wants to foreclose on the properties it would have to take Pickton's brother and sister to court and apply to force a sale because of their joint ownership, the real estate lawyer says.(yet more costs to the tax payers of BC over and above the $8 million already possibly lost)

Once it does, the rule of "first in time, first in line," applies, meaning earlier creditors would be paid before the province.( and oh...how much would that be?... sounds like you folks in BC are going to be giving a bunch of lawyers a ton of cash and not going to see a penny of it returned)

How on earth in this day and age did it ever come to this? Yes it is a huge case and involves a ton of evidence, but 7 lawyers paid for by the tax payers of BC? Seems a bit extreme to me. Has this man not already cost the people of BC enough already? If found guilty, he will serve 20 years thanks to our spineless legal system.(I refuse to call it a 'justice system') That is less than 1 year for each murder he is accused of!(Unless by some chance they declare him a 'dangerous offender') Major reforms on in order!