Life and times of Col. Russell Williams

Quiet student. Respected military leader. Alleged serial killer. Can the experiences of the boy help us understand the man?
Published On Sat Feb 13 2010

Raveena Aulakh
David Bruser
Katie Daubs Staff Reporters

While a young, fresh-faced Russell Williams was a student attending Toronto's elite Upper Canada College in the early '80s, a housemaster of the boarding school was quietly sexually assaulting some of the boys.

The housemaster, Douglas Brown, would eventually be convicted in 2004 of indecent assaults dating between 1975 and 1980.

The teenaged Williams, who spent his last two years of high school, 1980 to 1982, at UCC while his parents were living overseas, would graduate and move on, eventually joining Canada's armed forces to become one of the military's top commanders.

This week the country has been reeling over the news that Williams, now 46 and in charge of 8 Wing/CFB Trenton, is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of two women and the sexual assault of two others.

The coincidence – Williams, a boarder at the school at the same time Brown was molesting students – is hard to ignore although there is currently no evidence indicating they, in fact, crossed paths. Brown, who remained at UCC until 1993, was reached by the Star. He said he never had any contact with Williams.

But the shock of these events, coupled with the extent of Williams' career and life, have police officials, media and the public grappling for answers as to how such a highly successful, well-educated and well-respected career officer could face such serious charges.

He stands accused of killing 37-year-old Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, found dead in her Brighton home in November, and 27-year-old Jessica Lloyd of Belleville.

Hundreds of mourners are expected to gather Saturday as her family lays her to rest.

Meanwhile, police will be looking at every aspect of her alleged killer's life.

This week, news reports raised the possibility that Williams and convicted serial killer and rapist Paul Bernardo may have had a link, since both attended the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus during roughly the same time period when a series of unsolved rapes occurred.

Police say that is simply happenstance.

"They went to the same university and took some of the same courses on economics, the same campus, they lived in the same Scarborough neighbourhood ... that's a coincidental thing from what we can gather," a police source told the Star. "We are getting a lot of information on all kinds of different things."

As police forces across the country dig up cold cases and review Williams' history, the possibility of his connection to any crimes are pieces being carefully collected in an effort to answer one question: Who, really, is Russell Williams?

Williams was born on March 7, 1963, in the Midlands region of England. Within a few years his father, David Williams, a metallurgist, was hired by Canada's premier nuclear research laboratory in Chalk River, Ont. and the family moved there.

David and his wife, Nonie, had another son, Harvey.

The marriage didn't survive for long and they divorced. In 1970, Nonie married Jerry Sovka, a nuclear engineer who now lives in Aix-en-Provence, France.

According to reports, the new family moved to the Toronto area when Sovka got a job with Ontario Hydro. Their house was near the Scarborough Bluffs, overlooking Lake Ontario. Williams attended Birchmount Park Collegiate, where he went by the name Russell Sovka.

But the family didn't live there for long. Sovka's work took him around the globe and by 1979, the family was in South Korea where he was overseeing a reactor project.

Williams stayed back for his final two years of high school and became a boarder at UCC.

He was a serious student, hard-working and focused but didn't stand out, say friends and acquaintances from those years.

Permell Ashby, who attended Birchmount Park Collegiate from 1976 to 1981 and played flute in the band with Williams – who played trumpet – remembered Williams but nothing about him.

"I remember that I would often say hello," said Ashby. "He was in the band and everyone was friendly with each other."

At UCC, Williams was a house prefect and mentored young students.

Innes van Nostrand, who attended UCC with Williams in the early 1980s, said he was pretty good at flying under the radar. "That's how I think most people in the class would probably describe him: a serious student and a really good musician," said van Nostrand, now a vice-principal at the school.

Not much is known about Williams' social life. He mostly kept to himself.

After graduating from UCC, Williams made his way back to Scarborough and enrolled in economics and political science at the University of Toronto's satellite campus.

Williams was merely another face in the student population of about 5,000. When asked about a Russell Sovka or Williams, few professors could recall interacting with him.

After four years, he graduated from the U of T with a BA in 1986.

In 1987, he joined the armed forces and around that time took back his father's name.

As a young, eager lieutenant at Portage la Prairie, Man. – his first posting – Williams stood out due to his intensity, his former instructor Greg McQuaid told Maclean's.

From the tiny Manitoba community to Halifax in the early 1990s, he continued to rise through the ranks. He attended the Royal Military College in Kingston where he received his master's degree, then was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and appointed commanding officer of 437 Transport Squadron in Trenton in 2004. It was there, in July 2009 he took charge of Canada's largest airbase, Williams rose from one posting to the next, notching up perfect reviews, medals and promotions.

There was always high praise for Williams.

Last month Gen. Walter Natynczyk, the chief of defence staff, and Defence Minister Peter MacKay commended him for managing the deployment of some 2,000 soldiers and thousands of kilos of supplies to post-earthquake Haiti.

Williams also handled the purchase of two C-17 Globemaster jets as well as the acquisition of a fleet of C-130J Hercules planes.

As CFB Trenton's commander, he was highly visible at community events and featured in local newspapers presenting cheques, posing with hockey players and supporting the troops. He had a home on the base, and a cottage on Cosy Cove Lane facing Lake Stoco near Tweed; he also owns a house in Ottawa where he lives with his wife, Mary-Elizabeth Harriman, associate director of the heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

Andy Coxhead, a retired major and resident of Brighton, was a public affairs officer on the Trenton base when Williams took over the 437 squadron. Coxhead said he came in contact with Williams a couple of times a week in 2004 and 2005. He says Williams was forthright and easy to deal with.

"When he was named commander, one of my first reactions was, `Hey, he's going to do well, people will like him; he's a nice, easygoing guy,'" said Coxhead.

But if police are correct, there is a sinister side to Williams that no one saw, not even the superiors who praised and promoted him.

According to police reports, the first attack occurred on Sept. 17.

A young couple in their 20s had recently moved into a small cottage on Charles Rd. on the outskirts of Tweed. They had just had a baby. He was originally from Tweed; she had moved there to escape big city life, according to the owner of the local bar.

But terror found her on the September night when a man broke into the house, tied her up and sexually assaulted her.

Two days after the assault, Williams was attending a Belleville Bulls season opener where he was invited to drop the puck. A day later he attended a Battle of Britain parade at CFB Trenton.

"`Larry, I got a question for you: Is there a secret to dropping a puck? Do you throw it up in the air?'" Larry Jones, a neighbour of Williams, recalls the colonel asking him prior to the game. Jones and his wife dragged out hockey sticks to give Williams an impromptu lesson.

Jones has lived on Cosy Cove Lane for 43 years and remembers when Williams and his wife bought their cottage in August 2004. Williams was a city slicker who didn't always understand rural life, says Jones.

He recalled one windy day when Williams backed his fishing boat down the launch into the water. He didn't tie it down properly and the boat drifted into muddy weeds.

On Sept. 30 another woman on Cosy Cove Lane was awoken in the middle of the night, blindfolded, and sexually assaulted. The single mother couldn't recognize her attacker – his voice was muffled.

By this time, the first woman who was attacked on nearby Charles Rd. had moved away.

No one suspected the colonel. Here was a man who, when mowing the lawn, watched for frogs, dragging his feet through the grass to avoid hurting the amphibians.

On Nov. 25, Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, a Trenton-based military flight attendant, was found dead in her Brighton, Ont., home. Police called it an isolated incident.

John Williams, the mayor of Quinte West, which includes the Trenton base, met with Williams almost every week. Sometime after Comeau's death he recalls asking Williams about the investigation.

It was a casual question, and it got a casual answer.

"`Yeah, they're going through their investigation,'" the mayor says Williams replied.

"I wasn't looking for any feedback there at all other than to say that they were investigating and that's basically what he told me," he said. "It's sort of a weird conversation when you think about it now."

Life at CFB Trenton was busy for Williams in December and January. He welcomed the Olympic torch and then took Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Gen. Walter Natynczyk around the base.

On Jan. 28, Jessica Lloyd went missing and police launched a massive search. CFB Trenton sent a helicopter to help with efforts to find her. While the helicopter wouldn't find anything, the police would. On Thursday, Feb. 4, one week after Lloyd went missing, the Ontario Provincial Police put up a roadblock on Hwy. 37, which connects Belleville with Tweed, not far from her red brick bungalow.

From 7 p.m. that evening until 6 a.m. Friday, officers stopped every vehicle travelling in either direction and asked questions.

They were looking to match unusual tire treads found outside Lloyd's house.

Williams, behind the wheel of his Pathfinder – not the BMW he usually drove – was reportedly stopped. An officer noticed his tire treads resembled the ones left at Lloyd's home.

Investigators won't say what happened next, but by Sunday Williams agreed to sit down for a chat with a behavioural sciences expert from the provincial police. Some reports say he confessed to dozens of lingerie break-ins, but police will not confirm. He was arrested later that day and, on Monday, Feb. 8, officers found Lloyd's body on a dirt road near Tweed.

Williams was charged with the two murders and two sexual assaults. He has made one court appearance and will appear in court again via video-link on Feb. 18.

With files from Noor Javed and the Star's wire services