The heads, hands and feet of two women were found in a freezer at the home of a pig farmer accused of being Canada's worst serial killer, a court heard today.
The heads had been cut in half vertically using a power saw, prosecutor Derrill Previtt told jurors at the trial of Robert "Willie" Pickton.
He is charged with murdering 26 women, most of them prostitutes and drug addicts from Vancouver's red light district.
The current hearing only relates to six of the deaths.
Mr Previtt told the 12-member jury at New Westminster Supreme Court: "The Crown will say that over the course of several years he had these women to his farm.
"There he murdered them, butchered their remains and disposed of them. He had the expertise and the equipment for the task. He had the means of transportation available and the means for the disposal of the remains."
The heads, feet and hands found in a freezer at the farm in Port Coquitlam, outside Vancouver, were matched by DNA samples to two of the alleged victims, Mr Previtt told the court.
Mr Pickton (56) denies murder.
DNA evidence of all six women Pickton is alleged to have murdered was found on the farm, Mr Previtt told the jury. It included partial jaw bones, hand bones and teeth.
He told the court that when the farmer was arrested on suspicion of two of the murders in February 2002, he shared a cell with an undercover police officer pretending to be a fellow suspect in another crime. Their conversation was videotaped.
Mr Previtt said: "Mr Pickton explained he had been arrested for two murder charges and police are looking at him for 47 others.
"He repeatedly tells his cellmate he believes he is nailed to the cross and being considered as a mass murderer, his words." The jury will be played the tape.
During his interview with police, Mr Pickton says he knows nothing, does not know the women and is "just a pig farmer", Mr Previtt said.
But, he alleged at one point the defendant said: "I don't deserve to eat." And at another: "I should be on death row."