Smuttynose Island, at 25 acres, is the third-largest island. It is known as the site of Blackbeard’s honeymoon, later for the shipwreck of the Spanish ship Sagunto in 1813, and then for the notorious 1873 murders of two young women. The latter is recalled in the story, “A Memorable Murder”, by Celia Thaxter, in the 1997 novel, The Weight of Water, by Anita Shreve (and in the film of the same name), and in the song, “The Ballad of Louis Wagner” by John Perrault.

Dozens of women met a gruesome end on Pickton’s isolated property. In 2007, Robert William “Willy” Pickton was convicted of murdering six women and sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole for 25 years—the longest sentence that he could possibly receive at the time. He was charged with the deaths of many more—and, while in prison, admitted to an undercover officer that he had killed 49 women, and that he wanted to bring that number up to “an even 50.”