BBC News: Vancouver's vanished women

The victims of serial killer/pig farmer Robert Pickton were also victimised by the system because many were drug addicts, drifters and prostitutes. Here's an excerpt:

'Invisible women'

Many were drug addicts, working in the sex trade to fund their habits - part of a transient and disenfranchised community.

There were 27 on the missing list, going back to 1995. That was a cluster. That was way too many missing people Kim Rossmo Professor of Criminology

According to Mr Rossmo, now a criminology professor at Texas university, the low social status of these women, many of whom were of aboriginal origin, contributed to the police's lack of concern.

"If these women had been from the affluent Westside of Vancouver, you can count on the fact that it would have been a very different response," he said.

Read the entire article here