The man accused of murdering serial killer Robert Pickton intends to plead guilty to first-degree murder, he announced through his lawyer Wednesday.
Martin Charest appeared at the Sept-Îles, Que., courthouse by videoconference from a prison in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines in the company of his lawyer Sonia Bogdaniec.
According to prosecutor Mélissa Hogan, the situation Wednesday wasn’t ideal to record Charest’s plea, she explained over email. Judge Jean-Louis Lemay has scheduled the plea hearing for Sept. 25.
On May 19, 2024, Charest allegedly attacked then 74-year-old Pickton while they were both inmates at Quebec’s Port-Cartier maximum security prison.
The assault happened in a common room when Charest was picking up his medication, according to an independent observer’s report into the matter. The report says he thrust a broken broomstick into Pickton’s face, who then had to be transported via air ambulance to a Quebec City hospital.
Pickton died there nearly two weeks after the assault. He was in a medically induced coma and on life support in the days before he died.
Charest was charged with first-degree murder in July 2025.
Pickton was convicted in 2007 on six counts of second-degree murder but was suspected of killing dozens more women at his pig farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C. He was serving a life sentence.
His confirmed victims were Georgina Papin, Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Ann Wolfe and Marnie Frey.
The remains or DNA of 33 women, many of whom were Indigenous and went missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, were found on Pickton’s farm.
He once told an undercover police officer that he had killed 49 women.