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Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton, who took female victims to his pig farm during a crime spree near Vancouver in the late 1990s and early 2000s, has died after being assaulted in prison, authorities said Friday. He was 74.

The Correctional Service of Canada said in statement that Pickton, an inmate of Port-Cartier Institution in the province of Quebec, died in hospital following injuries in the May 19 assault involving another inmate. He was one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers and his case made international headlines.

A CANADIAN SERIAL KILLER WHO BROUGHT VICTIMS TO A PIG FARM IS HOSPITALIZED AFTER A PRISON ASSAULT

A 51-year-old inmate was in custody for the assault on Pickton, police spokesman Hugues Beaulieu said earlier this month.

Robert “Willie” Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2007, with the maximum parole ineligibility period of 25 years, after being charged with the murders of 26 women.

Police began searching the Pickton farm in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam more than 22 years ago in what would be a years-long investigation into the disappearances of dozens of women from Vancouver’s seediest streets, sex workers and drug addicts abandoned on the margins of society.

The remains or DNA of 33 women were found on the farm. Pickton once bragged to an undercover police officer that he killed a total of 49 women.

During his trial, prosecution witness Andrew Bellwood said Pickton told him how he strangled his victims and fed their remains to his pigs. Health officials once issued a tainted meat advisory to neighbors who might have bought pork from Pickton’s farm, concerned the meat might have contained human remains.

Cynthia Cardinal, whose sister Georgina Papin was murdered by Pickton, said Pickton’s death means she can finally move on from her sister’s murder.

“This is gonna bring healing for, I won’t say all families, I’ll just say most of the families,” she said. “I’m like — wow, finally. I can actually move on and heal and I can put this behind me.”

Vancouver police were criticized for not taking the cases seriously because many of the missing were sex workers or drug users.

Canada’s correctional service said it was conducting an investigation into the attack on Pickton.

“The investigation will examine all of the facts and circumstances surrounding the assault, including whether policies and protocols were followed,” the service said in the statement. “We are mindful that this offender’s case has had a devastating impact on communities in British Columbia and across the country, including Indigenous peoples, victims and their families. Our thoughts are with them.”

Pickton’s confirmed victims were six: Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Ann Wolfe, Papin and Marnie Frey.

“Earlier today, I was made aware of the death of an inmate at Port-Cartier Institution,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in statement. “At this time, my thoughts are with the families of the victims of this individual’s heinous crimes.”

At the time of Pickton’s sentencing, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice James Williams said it was a “rare case that properly warrants the maximum period of parole ineligibility available to the court.”

After February landslide win, 42-year-old set to govern for another five years with near-total control of parliament and other state institutions.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele is set to be sworn in for a second term, riding on a wave of popularity that has helped him consolidate his power and influence in the country.

The 42-year-old, who unapologetically describes himself as a “cool dictator”, was re-elected in February with 85 percent of the vote. He is set to govern for another five years with near-total control of parliament and other state institutions.

The former publicist and mayor will take the oath of office at the National Palace in the capital, San Salvador, on Saturday.

The ceremony is due to be attended by dignitaries including Spanish King Felipe VI and Argentinian President Javier Milei, with whom Bukele shares an admiration for former United States President Donald Trump, whose son and namesake is also attending the event.

On Friday, inauguration preparations were disrupted by reports that police thwarted a plot to detonate explosives at locations across the country.

Bukele enjoys sky-high approval ratings due to his brutal crackdown on criminal gangs, credited with returning a sense of normalcy to a violence-fatigued society.

The campaign has drawn criticism from rights groups but has made Bukele the most popular leader in Latin America, according to a regional poll.

Bukele’s New Ideas party scored a near-clean sweep in legislative elections, where it took 54 of 60 seats.

Yet experts warn his extended honeymoon with voters may be nearing its end as economic worries overtake safety concerns in the public discourse, amid high government debt and fast-rising prices for consumer goods in a country where more than a quarter of the six million population lives in poverty.

Food inflation, meanwhile, has outpaced salary increases while public debt has skyrocketed on his watch to more than $30bn, or 84 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Gangs as a ‘cancer’

Bukele will have even more power in his second term after the legislative assembly approved a reform that will make it easier for him to push through constitutional changes.

The president has laughed off criticism of authoritarian tendencies, but he was only able to seek re-election after a loyalist Supreme Court ruling allowed him to bypass a constitutional ban on successive terms.

“What he has demonstrated is that the law is irrelevant and that he can do whatever he wants, how he wants,” public policy expert Carlos Carcach told AFP news agency, describing Bukele as an “all-powerful” president.

With his preferred getup of jeans and a baseball cap, millennial Bukele came to power in 2019 promising to crush the country’s gangs, to which he attributes some 120,000 murders over three decades – more than the 75,000 lives lost in El Salvador’s civil war from 1980 to 1992.

During Bukele’s first term, authorities rounded up more than 80,000 presumed gangsters under a state of emergency in place since March 2022 that allows for arrest without a warrant.

His government also built the largest prison in Latin America to hold them.

The result, Bukele has boasted, has been turning “the murder capital of the world, the world’s most dangerous country, into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere”.

But it has come at a cost.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported the killing and torture of detainees, and thousands of innocent people – including minors – among those arrested.