Quebec inmate who killed notorious serial killer Robert Pickton pleads guilty

This story first appeared in the Montreal Gazette

The man who killed one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers inside a federal penitentiary in Quebec last year pleaded guilty to the homicide on Thursday. A judge at a courthouse in Sept-Îles heard the guilty plea from Martin “Spike” Charest, 52, who appeared by videoconference.

Charest is currently at a federal penitentiary in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, located north of Montreal. When he was connected to the courtroom, he first said: “Do you want a pizza or not?” It appeared to be an attempt at a joke for his defence lawyer Sonia Bogdaniec.

Charest then proceeded to plead guilty to first-degree murder. He attacked Pickton inside the Port Cartier Institution, a maximum security federal penitentiary 850 kilometres northeast of Montreal, on May 19, 2024.

Pickton was taken to a hospital in Quebec City, where he died days later. Pickton, 74, was serving a life sentence after a jury in British Columbia convicted him in 2007 of killing Georgina Papin, Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Ann Wolfe and Marnie Frey.

In all, DNA from 33 women was found on his Port Coquitlam farm and Pickton once bragged to an undercover officer that he killed 49 women. When the judge asked Charest, who has a long grey beard and tattoos all over his forearms, if he had anything to add, he said Pickton set him off by talking about the many people he killed in British Columbia.

“He said that a child was with one of the women (he killed). He said he wanted to eat the liver of the child,” Charest said. “(Pickton) did 49 victims and maybe more. I couldn’t let him go on. “I have no remorse. I did it for the victims.” With the guilty plea, Charest automatically received a life sentence, with his period of parole ineligibility set at 25 years.

Since 1999, Charest has spent much of his life behind bars inside maximum security federal penitentiaries. While he was a resident of Lévis, he was arrested as a suspect in a series of armed robberies and on Dec. 15, 1999, he pleaded guilty at a courthouse in Querbec City to four counts of armed robbery and other related offences.

He was sentenced to a 52-month prison term the same day and, according to court records, he has spent almost all of his time since then inside Canadian penitentiaries, including the Port Cartier Institution where he killed Pickton last year. In 2005, he was out and had returned to Lévis when he was arrested and charged with assault.

In that case, Charest pleaded guilty quickly and was sentenced to a 21-month prison term. Two years later, he pleaded guilty to three armed robberies and was sentenced to an eight-year prison term that appears to have been extended several times, keeping him behind bars up to today.

In 2014, while Charest was close to completing the eight-year sentence, he was at Port Cartier when he was charged with uttering threats. He was ordered to serve a 48-month prison term after he pleaded guilty to the threats. Four years later, he was inside a maximum-security penitentiary in Dorchester, N.B., when he assaulted a male nurse.

The assault left the nurse unconscious and Charest used a pen to keep guards at bay. In November 2018, a judge in Miramichi extended Charest’s sentence by another five years. In 2021, while he was at the Donnacona Institution, a maximum security penitentiary near Quebec City, Charest was charged again with uttering threats and his sentence was extended once again.

Last year, after he killed Pickton and before he was charged with the homicide, he was charged again with two counts of uttering threats and was sentenced, on Jan. 30, to a three-year prison term.

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