The trial begins in Canada today of a pig farmer accused of murdering 26 women.
A judge warned jurors to expect testimony "as bad as a horror movie" during the trial of Robert William Pickton (56), who is charged with murdering the women, most of whom vanished from Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside neighbourhood in the 1990s.
Mr Pickton has pleaded not-guilty to six first-degree murder charges in his first trial, which is expected to last at least one year.
British Columbia Supreme Court Justice James Williams, who is presiding over the case, ruled that the other charges will be heard in a later trial so as not to overburden the jury.
Evidence presented in more than a year of preliminary hearings, which has been under a publication ban, has been so gruesome that some reporters have sought psychological counselling.
Mr Pickton was arrested in February 2002 and has been in custody since then. It is believed he lured women to his family's 17-acre pig farm outside Vancouver in Port Coquitlam.
If convicted on more than 14 charges, Pickton would become the worst serial killer in Canadian history after Marc Lepine, who gunned down 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnic in Montreal in 1989 before shooting himself.
AP