Robert William "Willy" Pickton is a Canadian serial killer who was convicted in 2007 of the second-degree murders of six women. Arrested in 2002, he was the subject of a lengthy investigation that yielded evidence of numerous other murders. Pickton was charged with the deaths of an additional twenty women, many of them from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, but these charges were stayed by the Crown in 2010. Pickton was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 25 years – the longest sentence for murder under Canadian law at the time he was sentenced.