wow! illustrious guy! i'll try to find more on him.
BELLEVILLE, Ontario – A commander who was a rising star in Canada's military pleaded guilty Monday to the murders of two women, the sexual assaults of two others and dozens of breaking and entering charges in which he stole panties from the bedrooms of girls as young as 11.
Col. Russell Williams, who once flew prime ministers and served as a pilot to Queen Elizabeth II during a 2005 visit, was the commander of Canada's largest Air Force base until he was charged earlier this year.
He pleaded guilty Monday to two first-degree murder charges, two sexual assaults and 82 breaking and entering charges in a Belleville, Ontario court. The 47-year-old faces an automatic sentence of life in prison with no possibility for parole for at least 25 years.
Williams was expressionless and dressed in a somber dark suit, and he kept his head down as the charges were read. The list of charges was so long that it took nearly 40 minutes to read it into the record.
"Guilty, your honor," he said after the charges were entered.
Prosecutors said Williams targeted girls and women in their teens and 20s and often photographed himself in their underwear.
At the sentencing hearing following his guilty plea, prosecutors warned the court they would be presenting evidence that was "extremely disturbing." Prosecutor Lee Burgess said much of the facts will be difficult for his victims to hear, but said it was "important to have a full account of the crimes."
Burgess began presenting photos showing Williams wearing a 12-year-old girl's cartoon-decorated underwear. Other photos showed him wearing underwear belonging to 11-year-old twins.
Many of the photos showed Williams masturbating in the stolen lingerie, either wearing it or with it draped over himself. People in the courtroom, many of them victims and their families, were in tears and appeared stunned. Roxanne Lloyd, the mother of murder victim Jessica Lloyd, clutched a frame photo of her daughter, wiping away tears as the prosecution relayed details of Williams' fetish behavior.
In another photo, Williams appears to be wearing his military uniform with his trousers dropped to show he is wearing pink panties. Burgess also presented evidence of Williams photographing himself naked with one of his victim's sex toys.
In each photo, he looks serious, with little expression. As prosecutors presented the evidence, Williams was again void of expression, his eyes cast downward the entire time.
Authorities said Williams carefully catalogued the photos of himself in the victims' underwear with time and date stamps on hard drives in his Ottawa home. Some of the photos were panoramic shots of the victims' bedrooms. He would take the lingerie with him, keeping them in bags and boxes in his home and would sometimes burn them if he ran out of space.
Prosecutors also said Williams videotaped the assaults and murders.
Williams, who was born in England and raised in Canada, had a promising future with the military. The square-jawed officer was pictured with the British queen and her husband, Prince Philip, on the front page of the newspaper of Canadian Forces Base Trenton during their visit five years ago. He was photographed in January with Defense Minister Peter MacKay and Canada's top general during an inspection of a Canadian aircraft on its way to support relief efforts in Haiti.
He is alleged to have killed his second victim just over a week after he appeared with MacKay.
Williams pleaded guilty to the murder of Jessica Lloyd, 27, whose body was found in February, and Marie Comeau, a 38-year-old corporal under his command who was found dead in her home last November. Both women were asphyxiated.
Williams also pleaded guilty to forcible confinement, breaking and entering and sexual assault after two other women were attacked during separate home invasions in the Tweed, Ontario area in September 2009.
Williams, a 23-year military veteran, has never been in combat but has been stationed across Canada and internationally, including a stint in 2006 as the commanding officer for Camp Mirage, the secretive Canadian Forces base widely reported to be near Dubai. Investigators looked into other areas where he has been posted.
Williams' wife, Mary-Elizabeth Harriman, works as the associate executive director at the Heart and Stroke Foundation in Ottawa.
OTTAWA - In the warrior culture of the new Canadian Forces, it couldn't get much more humiliating.
His crimes were heinous but images of Col. Russell Williams, the confessed murderer, frolicking in women's and girl's underwear added a new, unexpected layer of shame for the straight-laced military community.
"Freak" was among the words tossed around the military messes late Monday after the sensational case resurfaced in an eastern Ontario court.
The disturbing pornographic photos, which showed the former base commander and rising military star indulging in his fetishes, served to hammer home questions about he was able to evade the military's extensive psychological screening for command positions.
Williams pleaded guilty to the murders of two Ontario women, two sexual assaults and 82 break and enters.
The trophy shots shown in court, some of which showed him dressed in women's underwear and a training bra while masturbating, have the potential to do serious damage to morale within the Forces, especially when cast alongside a series of other embarrassing cases this year.
"The reaction is one of absolute dismay and absolute abhorrence," said Alec Morrison, a professor and military expert at Royal Roads University in Victoria.
Morrison said the Afghan mission has given the Canadian Forces a large pool of goodwill and public sympathy, and how badly that is depleted by the Williams case depends on how firmly the leadership responds.
Within hours of the guilty pleas, the military moved to drum Williams from the ranks, beginning a month-long administrative process that will strip him of his rank, medals and eventually lead to explusion from the air force.
The exercise is as much about damage control as it is justice.
"The whole affair will reflect badly on the Forces, but how long lasting it will depend on whether the leadership maintains a serious, well-measured and mature approach," said Morrison.
There are still tough questions the military will have to answer in the wake of the sensational case, including what it is doing to root out other potential deviants and whether there have been unsolved crimes on military bases related to Williams. Those in uniform are subject to an entirely separate justice system if crimes are committed on military property.
Brig.-Gen. Neville Russell, the head of air force personnel, said the military plans to tighten its psychological screening, but insisted the revisions had been planned before the Williams case exploded in the media. He noted there are a number of layers to the current system, including annual fitness and performance reviews.
But all of them failed to spot Williams, a decorated, motivated officer in charge of the country's largest military air base and, by all accounts, on his way to a senior command in Ottawa.
"To be honest, there are no tests that the CF conducts that could, or are designed to detect psychopathic behaviour, as in this case," said Russell.
"I just don't think they exist."
Senior defence officials, speaking on background, said since the charges were laid there have been a battery of soul-serarching reviews related to how the military conducts its mental health evaluations. Both Russell and the officials declined to say precisely how the system will change and what safeguards are being built in.
Earlier this year, the country's ground commander in Afghanistan, Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard, was fired after being accused of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a female subordinate. The same accusation was also leveled at the army's top officer in Haiti last summer.
victims:
Comeau, 37, a much-loved military flight attendant who had flown with the pilot Williams, was murdered Nov. 25, 2009.
Lloyd, a fun-loving 27-year-old who worked at a Napanee, Ont., bus company, disappeared Jan. 28, and after an unsuccessful exhaustive search was located weeks later on Feb. 8, on a rural road near her hometown of Tweed, one day after the Feb. 7 arrest of Williams.
Toronto Star
BELLEVILLE—Col. Russell Williams didn’t just take thousands of pornographic pictures during the escalating fetishism of his 82 break-ins — he videotaped the actual murder of at least one of his victims.
The Crown confirmed in court Monday that both murder victims, Marie-France Comeau, 38, and Jessica Lloyd, 27, were videotaped by Williams.
In Comeau’s case, her actual murder is on tape.
The murders, last November and January, followed an increasingly obsessive and predatory pattern that started with 26 months of break-ins in Tweed, Belleville, and Ottawa, and two sexual assaults.
Williams’ photographic record of the first of those assaults, against a woman known only as Jane Doe on Sept, 17, 2009, ended Monday’s hearing.
A two-page description of how he attacked Doe was part of his computer folder on her, one of many Williams confessed he hid online from his wife of 19 years, Mary Elizabeth Harriman.
The decorated career soldier who commanded Canada’s largest air force base tried to use the receiving blankets of the woman’s newborn baby to tie her up.
He admitted he didn’t know her, but “thought she was cute.”
The Crown is presenting the evidence against Williams chronologically: the break and enters that started three years ago, the sexual assaults 13 months ago, the murders 11 and 10 months ago.
Through the afternoon, the Crown steadily flashed up increasingly grotesque images taken by Williams to show the “escalation of aggression” of the break-ins, leading up to first sexual assault against Jane Doe. Crown attorneys carefully emphasized several cases involving teenage girls or younger.
During the break-ins, Williams stole lingerie after methodically recording a pattern of sexual perversity in each home.
After one theft, he spent four hours at home photographing, wearing and cataloguing the lingerie he stole, an obsessive pattern in Williams’ life traced back to his university days in Toronto.
A pilot once entrusted with flying government dignitaries and with training in tactics and strategy, Williams often spent an hour or two in the house during each break-in.
First, he took a panorama photograph, concentrating on wall decorations and honours. Then, he photographed the underwear drawer and took “catalogue” snapshots of each piece. Then, the colonel photographed himself in various poses wearing the lingerie or masturbating, his expression blank.
“I personally think the guy is disgusting. He's absolutely grotesque,” said Trish Allison, a photo journalism student at Loyalist College.
“I wouldn't say I'll be scarred by them, but I'll definitely remember them,” she said of the photos of Williams fondling or licking underwear flashed up on the screen.
Several people walked out in horror during the afternoon session.
“It’s shocking. It’s horrifying,” Neil Matthews, a member of the armed forces said at the morning recess. “The general sense in the military would be, you know, horrified. It’s a complete surprise,” he said. “This needs to be wrapped up.”
His wife, Fidel, was particularly disturbed that a 12-year girl had been targeted by Williams. The couple has a 13-year-old daughter.
“It’s more devastating than I thought,” Fidel said.
“These facts will be disturbing,” Hastings County Crown Attorney Lee Burgess had warned before unleashing a torrent of Williams’ self-made pornography.
“The underwear had a little cartoon character on the front,” said Burgess of one photograph.
Of another: “Williams is photographing himself, while naked, with a red garment draped around his erect penis.”
Said Burgess, “The offences emphasize his unusual behaviour, his unusual sexuality.”
As the photographs flashed on a giant screen in the court, often to gasps from the crowd, Williams fixed his eyes on the floor. By mid-afternoon, his head was hanging down, limp. He looked slumped over.
In one house, he shot 25 pictures of a girl’s underwear. In others, he left a “merci” message for his victim.
Williams, 47, photographed himself wearing just orange panties and a training bra taken from a girl’s underwear drawer. Other shots show him wearing a 15-year-old girl’s dress or holding another girl’s stuffed animal and masturbating.
A few times, he was nearly caught when families came home. His obsessive cataloguing included media accounts of the crimes.
Williams formally admitted Monday to all 86 of the charges against him.
“Count 54, he did...”
This is how the clerk began each of the charges laid against Williams in a courtroom filled with media, victims and their families, and police.
Family members of victims, who filled the left side of the courtroom, sat quietly, some crying, as the clerk worked methodically through each incident over a 26-month period. Lloyd’s mother, Roxanne, arrived carrying a large framed portrait of her daughter, who was last heard from the night of Jan. 28 when she reported arriving home safely.
Sixty-one of the break-ins were undetected or unreported until Williams confessed to them after his arrest on Feb. 7. He kept stolen lingerie in bags and boxes at home. When they overflowed, he burned some of his loot.
The first burglary was Sept. 9, 2007. The last one was Nov. 17, 2009, a week before the murder of Comeau on Nov. 24 or 25 of last year in her home in Brighton.
What was not clear Monday was how the court will handle the videotape of her murder when the evidence is presented, likely on Tuesday.
In the case of schoolgirl killer Paul Bernardo, convicted in 1995, Justice Patrick LeSage ruled videotaped evidence of teen victims being attacked and tortured would be heard by the public, but not seen.
They were later destroyed, with transcripts of the tapes kept on file.
Williams’ first pleas as the hearing started at 10 a.m. were to two charges of first-degree murder, his voice quieter on the second one. Wearing a dark suit, he stood straight and still as he spoke.
He faces an automatic sentence of life in prison, with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years.
Ken and Sharon Jones, who live in Belleville, tucked themselves in a corner behind the cameras on the courthouse steps. The couple attends all the repatriation ceremonies in nearby Trenton for the slain Canadian Forces soldiers whose bodies are returning from Afghanistan. They had taken photos of Williams as a celebrated colonel when the Olympic torch came through last year.
“This has done so much damage to the image of the forces,” Sharon said sombrely.
The couple planned to return each day of the hearing.
“It has hit the community really hard,” Ken said of how the case has affected Belleville. “But it’s bringing everyone together. It’s on everyone’s mind.”
The formal process to kick Williams out of the military would begin on conviction, Gen. Walter Natynczyk, Chief of the Defence Staff for the Canadian Forces, said in a statement.
“The tragic events surrounding Col. Russell Williams stunned all Canadians and none more so than the members of the Canadian Forces,” he wrote.
“Today's guilty plea is the first step in a healing process that will no doubt take many years.”
Neither Williams’ family nor friends came to the court Monday.
Lt.-Col. Tony O’Keeffe, a friend and colleague from CFB Trenton, attended early court appearances but had not been seen in court recently. Harriman is reported to have made multiple visits to Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee to see Williams.
It was on Feb. 7, at some point during his nine-hour interrogation by the Ontario Provincial Police, that Colonel Russell Williams finally got around to addressing that which had been haunting him.
At the time, he had murdered two young women by suffocation, beaten and tied up two of his neighbours before photographing them naked, and stolen about 500 items of lingerie and clothing from the closets of unsuspecting women. But one of the things that had been most distressing for him, he confided to his interrogator, Detective Sergeant Jim Smith, was the death of his old black and white cat, Curio.
“The only thing he expressed regret about was his cat. He mentions it on two or three occasions,” said a source close to the investigation who has reviewed Col. William’s detailed statement to police.
normally i'd be cracking jokes about this sick perverted scum-sucking evil demon in his panty-shots, but there's nothing funny about the murders. this is heart-rending:
from Times-Colonist, Vancouver.
BELLEVILLE, Ont. — The gruesome details of the murder of a Canadian Forces soldier at the hands of Col. Russell Williams left family members sobbing Tuesday as they were read out at his sentencing hearing.
Williams sexually assaulted and killed Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, 37, after breaking into her home on Nov. 23, 2009.
He videotaped and photographed the assault, which lasted for almost two hours and ended with Comeau pleading for her life.
"You're going to kill me, aren't you?" Comeau asked before Williams covered her nose with duct tape. She suffocated to death.
Family members sobbed Tuesday as the details of the attack were read out in a Belleville courtroom.
No photos or video taken by the confessed sex predator and murderer will be shown in court. The Crown has instead chosen to outline for the public what is contained in the photographs and videos, while keeping the images under wrap.
Prosecutors say a description of those details is "disturbing enough" without people having to see the images.
According to the agreed statement of facts read out in court, Williams, 47, used his authority as commander of Canada's busiest air base, CFB Trenton, to learn Comeau's schedule and address.
Comeau, a flight attendant who was under Williams' command, had caught his eye during a military flight.
After learning that she lived alone, he broke into her home, returning a week later to hide in the basement until she fell asleep. Comeau went down to the basement to look for one of her cats, which was staring at Williams from his hiding place behind the furnace.
His face was covered and she screamed at him and called him a bastard, prompting him to strike her several times on the head with a flashlight. When she fell, he restrained her as she bled badly from head injuries, court heard.
He bound her naked body to a post and took two photos, which show her face and mouth covered with the duct tape he brought, and her body bound in rope.
Williams took her to the bedroom and repeatedly raped her, videotaping and photographing it all.
He had broken off a key in Comeau's door, unplugged her nightlights and used a blanket to cover the window in her room. He used knives to hold the blanket in place.
Williams had his head down as the Crown read out the graphic details of Comeau's death.
When Williams left the bedroom briefly, Comeau fled, but he chased her down and subdued her again.
"No, no, please. I don't want to die. I don't want to die," Comeau pleaded.
Although bound with rope and gagged with duct tape, she was able to fight him off. At one point, he stopped assaulting Comeau long enough to move his camera closer.
"I don't deserve to die," Comeau told Williams. She promised if he went away, she wouldn't tell anyone he was there.
"Have a heart please. I've been really good. I want to live," Comeau said.
The video then stops.
Williams took photos of Comeau after her death. Then, he washed her bed sheets with bleach. He covered her body with a duvet, took nine pieces of lingerie and left through the back patio door.
Williams then drove to Ottawa. He got rid of the shoes he was wearing and burned the rope he used to bind her.
Police later found a letter to Comeau's father signed by Williams as commander of the base, offering his sympathy.
I don't consider myself to be a vindictive person until I read some of these stories & then it is my fervent wish that these bastards endure the unimaginable agony of a violent death. I want them to die in pain & terror.
I'm most vindictive when it comes to lowlife fucks like this nutcase. I would happily put a bullet in his skull and call it a day!
What a horrible way to die...my heart aches for that girl, her family and all his victims.
As her attacker faces having to spend the rest of his life in jail, Laurie Massicotte speaks on TV for the first time about the night of the attack and her relief that she wasn't one of the ones who was killed.
Russell Williams was sentenced to life in jail last year after he admitted to 88 lurid sex crimes, including two counts of first-degree murder, two counts each of sexual assault and forcible confinement and 82 break-ins and attempted break-ins.
On paper and in appearance, he was not only a handsome, upstanding Canadian citizen, but an Air Force Colonel who had flown jets carrying both his country's prime minister and the British Royal family.
Yeah, i saw it elsewhere, but interesting, the guy just keeps on saying my wife, my poor wife, if he gave the slightest fuck about her he wud not be in the position hes in.
![[Image: Zy3rKpW.png]](https://i.imgur.com/Zy3rKpW.png)
She died terrified.
![[Image: 51bunKkOxLL._SS500_.jpg]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51bunKkOxLL._SS500_.jpg)
