Serial killer smuggles memoir out of prison, manages to get it on Amazon

Pickton: In His Own Words went up for sale on Amazon Canada on Monday, only to be pulled when the author was revealed to be a serial killer, The Guardian reports. Colorado-based self-publisher Outskirts Press had published the book originally on January 29 under the name of Michael Chilldres. In fact, serial killer Robert Pickton had written the memoir to argue his innocence; the handwritten manuscript was then smuggled out of the prison by another inmate, who sent photocopies to Chilldres.

Chilldres claimed he had no idea Pickton was a serial killer, and was typing out the manuscript as a "favor" to a friend who had met Pickton. "I got on Wikipedia and looked up his arrest record and stuff, and he was kind of creepy," Chilldres told The National Post. "If I had to do it all over again, I would say 'no'...I didn't think this book was going to be as big of a deal as it is; I just thought it would be a little deal."

Chilldres had submitted the manuscript to Outskirts Press for $2,500 Canadian dollars; Pickton reportedly received none of the money the book made but asked that 10 percent of the proceeds went to charity. The families of Pickton's victims urged the public not to read the book after it went up on Amazon, and over 50,000 people signed a petition calling for Amazon Canada to remove the book from the website; a number of others gave the memoir one-star reviews. Amazon and Barnes and Noble both swiftly removed the product.

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A multi-millionaire pig farmer, Pickton was convicted of murdering six women in 2007; charges relating to 20 other deaths were suspended. Pickton's victims numbered among almost 70 women, who vanished in Vancouver in the 1980s through 2001. At one point, Pickton reportedly confessed to 49 murders.