At 22 years old, Andrea Joesbury was a mother to a young daughter and was remembered by her family as a lovely and creative person. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, on November 6, 1978, she had her whole life ahead of her. Her family recalls her kindness and her dreams for the future, which included getting off the streets, getting clean, and returning to her family in Victoria.
Her grandmother, Laila Cummer, said Andrea was like their own child, and they shared many wonderful memories at beaches and parks. The last time her family heard from her, Andrea was excited about going to a party, getting dressed up in her best clothes.
In June 2001, Andrea vanished from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. She was officially reported missing on June 8, 2001. Her disappearance was one of many from the same area, sparking fear and confusion but initially leading to few answers. For her family, the lack of information was agonizing. Her mother, Karin Joesbury, tried multiple times to bring her daughter home from the Downtown Eastside but couldn't afford to make the trip a final time. The family's worst fears began to materialize as a massive police investigation started to focus on a pig farm in Port Coquitlam owned by a man named Robert "Willie" Pickton.
The search of Pickton's farm was one of the largest forensic investigations in Canadian history. In 2002, investigators made a horrifying discovery: Andrea's partial remains were found in a freezer on the property. Her DNA was also identified on an orange plastic bag inside a slaughterhouse on the farm. On April 9, 2002, Robert Pickton was charged with the first-degree murder of Andrea Joesbury, the sixth of what would eventually become 26 murder charges against him.
The subsequent legal process was long and harrowing for the families of the victims. Pickton's trial for six of the murders, including Andrea's, began in January 2007. The court heard disturbing evidence linking the women to the farm. During the trial, a witness testified that a friend of Pickton's had threatened to kill Andrea in June 2001 over a dispute about money. On December 9, 2007, a jury found Robert Pickton not guilty of first-degree murder but convicted him of six counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of Andrea Joesbury, Sereena Abotsway, Mona Lee Wilson, Brenda Ann Wolfe, Georgina Faith Papin, and Marnie Lee Anne Frey.
Two days later, during sentencing, the court heard powerful victim impact statements. Andrea's mother, Karin, spoke of an "ongoing nightmare" and the unimaginable pain of losing a child in such a horrific way. "My daughter was a lovely creative girl who wound up in a freezer cut into parts," her statement read. "The pain will always be with me. My mind creates images that I can't get out of my mind." The judge sentenced Pickton to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years, the maximum sentence for second-degree murder.
The years that followed brought little peace for Andrea’s family. They, along with other victims' families, expressed anger that police had not stopped Pickton sooner, believing many lives, including Andrea's, could have been saved. "She would have been alive today, but they didn't care," her sister Heather Joesbury said in 2010, calling for a public inquiry to hold those responsible accountable. Andrea's mother expressed the hope that her daughter's death would not be in vain and would lead to changes in how society's most vulnerable are viewed and protected.
Robert Pickton, known as the "Pig Farmer Killer," was responsible for one of Canada's most horrific killing sprees. While he was convicted of six murders, he once confessed to an undercover officer that he had killed 49 women. The remaining 20 murder charges against him were stayed in 2010. Pickton died in May 2024 after being assaulted by another inmate. For Andrea's family, the loss remains a grim reality, a wound that will never fully heal.
