Let's say you're a pig farmer and you hire a sex trade worker.

While she's in your company, your dark side erupts and you kill her.

That is murder, as I understand the law, and would probably qualify as second-degree murder.

But then you go out and commit five more such murders. You get rid of the bodies by butchering your victims and feeding their remains to your pigs.

At what point does your pattern of behaviour start to become planning and deliberation, thus making you guilty of first-degree murder?

Here's something from The Globe and Mail:

Both Mr.  (John) Rosen* and Toronto defence counsel Cindy Wasser emphasized that the jury verdict was a clear signal that it believed somebody more culpable than Mr. Pickton remains at large.

* He defended Paul Bernardo

"The jury did not accept that he was the principal," Mr. Rosen said. "They were saying that one or more people were actual principals, and that Pickton's degree of participation did not amount to first-degree murder.

"This does not defy logic," he added. "A fair reading of the verdict is that he was not the murderer, but he was a helper."

Inasmuch as the verdict was a defeat for the Crown - since its case was predicated on Mr. Pickton having planned and carried out the murders -(Toronto defence lawyer Edward) Sapiano said that only the defence is likely to have sufficient grounds to mount an appeal.

He said its foremost ground of appeal involves the trial judge's correction - midway through the jury deliberations - to his instructions about how an accused can "indirectly" be guilty of murder.

"Coming that late in the jury deliberations, the defence can argue that it would have had an overwhelming impact, and superseded all the other instructions," he said.

Some observers say the answer lies in the fact that the jury didn't hear the entire story.

In an appearance this morning on Canada AM, author Stevie Cameron noted some letters between Pickton and a pen pal written in February 2006 -- and obtained by the Vancouver Sun:

"I know I was brought into this world to be hear today to change this world of there evil ways. They even want to dis-re-guard the ten command-ments from the time that Moses in his day brought in power which still is in existence today," wrote Pickton, who is facing another 20 counts of murder which are to be dealt with at a second trial.

The letter was written Feb. 26, 2006, at the beginning of Pickton's voir dire, to California resident Thomas Loudamy who has a hobby of corresponding with prisoners and collecting their return letters.

The second letter, written Aug. 22, 2006, is also replete with biblical references and Pickton provided his own interpretation of Ephesians 5:5.

"You can be sure that no immoral, impure or greedy person will in-herit the kingdom of God .... Don't be fooled by whose who try to excuse these sins, for the terrible anger of God comes upon all those who disobey him," Pickton wrote.

The Sun looked up Ephesians 5:5 in The Jerusalem Bible and found a chilling interpretation, given the fact Pickton has been convicted of killing sex-trade workers: "For you can be quite certain that nobody who actually indulges in fornication or impurity or promiscuity - which is worshiping a false god - can inherit anything of the kingdom of God."

Willie Pickton also had this to say:

Pickton insists in the letter that he is just the "fall guy" and that police arrested the wrong man.

"They are only interested in to charge any-one to get the heat off of their back and not for the truth at all," he wrote. "The police got so much money invested in this case, there will be many, many lies through-out as many things all come to surface. The police have paid many for them what to say when they are on the stand."

But Mr. Pickton also made some highly incriminating statements during his interrogation by police and during the time he spent in his cell with an undercover RCMP officer.

Retired RCMP Insp. Don Adam had this to say today:

Adam said no one should confuse Pickton's capabilities.

He noted he spent hours in the interrogation, sitting across from Pickton and concluded the serial killer is a "chameleon."

"I was left sitting there, looking into his eyes, with a real sense of malignant evil and I had just this sense that he was playing with me, of what it must have been like for those women when they were in his control and it didn't make me happy."

Like Cameron, he felt the jury didn't have the full story about Pickton and thinks "mega-trials" like Pickton's should be heard by judges alone.