Published On Fri Feb 19 2010
The Canadian Press
TRENTON—Leadership at an air force base rocked by scandal changed hands Friday with the new commander urging the men and women of CFB Trenton to break through the dark cloud left by their former commander, who is now facing murder charges.
A pair of signatures on a certificate officially made Col. Dave Cochrane the leader of the shaken eastern Ontario base. But it will take a lot more than that to truly move past the shocking allegations against Col. Russell Williams, a top air force officer said Friday.
“If (only) it was as easy as just signing a piece of paper and telling somebody, ‘You got the job’ and I’ll be satisfied that we have a new wing commander and everything is going to be fine,” Maj. Gen. Yvan Blondin, commander of 1 Canadian Air Division, said at an assumption of command ceremony.
Williams was not mentioned by name at the ceremony, but his alleged crimes and the inherent betrayal felt by those on the base hung heavy in the air.
“It’s like losing a bit of your innocence,” Blondin said of military members’ reaction to the charges. “You just can’t believe that this is happening. You expect people in uniform to be the white knight.”
Cochrane assumed command of Canada’s busiest air force base during the ceremony attended by hundreds of officers and dignitaries. With his family _ wife Sherri and children Jamie, 13 and Lindsay, 12, _ looking on he urged the soldiers under his command to stay proud.
“I realize this is a difficult period of time for the Canadian Forces, most notably 8 Wing Trenton and our local community,” Cochrane said.
“Stand tall, ladies and gentleman. You deserve it.”
Williams, 46, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau of Brighton and Jessica Lloyd of Belleville.
He is also charged with two counts each of forcible confinement, break and enter and sexual assault relating to attacks on women during home invasions in Tweed on Sept. 17 and Sept. 30.
Williams, who has hired high-profile Ottawa lawyer Michael Edelson to handle his case, was formally relieved of his command Thursday after making his first court appearance, via video.
He is being held at the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee.
Comeau, 37, was found dead in her home in Brighton last November. She was a flight attendant at CFB Trenton and served aboard the same military VIP flights Williams piloted for much of the 1990s, ferrying the Governor General, the prime minister and other dignitaries on domestic and overseas trips.
Lloyd’s body was found in Tweed two weeks after the 27-year-old failed to show up at her job in Napanee.
Police have said they don’t expect to release the cause of death of either Lloyd or Comeau, but various media have quoted sources as saying the women were asphyxiated.
According to a search warrant issued before Williams emerged as the primary suspect in the cases, detectives entered the home of a prior suspect looking for lingerie, baby blankets and computer data storage devices.
The warrant was related to the attacks on the two women who were bound and sexually assaulted in their homes. Both women lived within walking distance of Williams’ cottage.
Cochrane grew up in Toronto and received a mechanical engineering degree from Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., in 1986. During his long and varied career he has participated in several deployments, including the Gulf War and Kurdish re-supply air drop missions, before moving on to training and supervisory positions. He received a master’s degree in defence studies from RMC and has overseen Hercules, Challenger and Airbus projects.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Murder case's handling lauded by Col. Williams
Murder suspect praised corporal's work in man's slaying on Trenton base
Published On Mon Feb 15 2010
David Bruser Staff Reporter
Two months before Russell Williams is alleged to have begun terrorizing Hastings County with a string of home invasions and murders, the former commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton was photographed honouring a military policeman for helping to solve a murder on the base.
A Quinte West man, Marcus Wilson, 37, is charged with that murder.
It is not known if authorities investigating Williams will re-visit the case.
A source provided the Star with a photo of Williams presenting a commendation to a M. Cpl. Thickson for "outstanding professionalism" at the murder scene on July 26, 2009, in ensuring the security of the area and the emergency workers who were attempting to revive the victim while the suspect was at large.
James Read, 36, died at Trenton Memorial Hospital on the same day he was found stabbed at a home on the base.
Three days later, Wilson was arrested.
OPP Sgt. Kristine Rae said she has not heard that the Read case is being re-visited by authorities after revelations about Williams' alleged crime spree emerged last week. "I can't say at this point," Rae said.
About seven weeks after the murder on the base, police investigated two home invasions in Tweed where women were tied to a chair and photographed. The suspect entered the houses while the residents slept.
On Nov. 25, Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, 37, a flight attendant with CFB Trenton's 437 transport squadron, was found slain in her Brighton home. Her boyfriend discovered her body.
Another victim, Jessica Lloyd, 27, was reported missing Jan. 28 after failing to show up for her job in Napanee.
After Williams was arrested and charged, police found Lloyd's body in Tweed.
Hundreds of people from the Belleville area crowded into the John R. Bush Funeral Home on Saturday to mourn Lloyd, described as a woman with a "profound zest and love of life."
With files from The Canadian Press
Published On Mon Feb 15 2010
David Bruser Staff Reporter
Two months before Russell Williams is alleged to have begun terrorizing Hastings County with a string of home invasions and murders, the former commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton was photographed honouring a military policeman for helping to solve a murder on the base.
A Quinte West man, Marcus Wilson, 37, is charged with that murder.
It is not known if authorities investigating Williams will re-visit the case.
A source provided the Star with a photo of Williams presenting a commendation to a M. Cpl. Thickson for "outstanding professionalism" at the murder scene on July 26, 2009, in ensuring the security of the area and the emergency workers who were attempting to revive the victim while the suspect was at large.
James Read, 36, died at Trenton Memorial Hospital on the same day he was found stabbed at a home on the base.
Three days later, Wilson was arrested.
OPP Sgt. Kristine Rae said she has not heard that the Read case is being re-visited by authorities after revelations about Williams' alleged crime spree emerged last week. "I can't say at this point," Rae said.
About seven weeks after the murder on the base, police investigated two home invasions in Tweed where women were tied to a chair and photographed. The suspect entered the houses while the residents slept.
On Nov. 25, Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, 37, a flight attendant with CFB Trenton's 437 transport squadron, was found slain in her Brighton home. Her boyfriend discovered her body.
Another victim, Jessica Lloyd, 27, was reported missing Jan. 28 after failing to show up for her job in Napanee.
After Williams was arrested and charged, police found Lloyd's body in Tweed.
Hundreds of people from the Belleville area crowded into the John R. Bush Funeral Home on Saturday to mourn Lloyd, described as a woman with a "profound zest and love of life."
With files from The Canadian Press
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
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
Col. Williams retains top lawyer to fight charges
Published On Wed Feb 17 2010
The Canadian military commander charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of two women near the eastern Ontario military base he oversaw has retained a top defence lawyer from Ottawa.
Michael Edelson will take on Col. Russell Williams’ case, but will send an agent to a scheduled video appearance in a Belleville, Ont., court Thursday.
Williams, 46, is being held without bail in the Quinte Detention Centre in nearby Napanee. He is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd.
The charges have rocked the Canadian military to its core and have left the communities in which the alleged crimes occurred badly shaken.
Edelson has a number of other high-profile clients, including Nova Scotia Bishop Raymond Lahey, who is charged with possessing and importing child pornography. He also represented Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien, who was found not guilty last August of influence-peddling.
Edelson has represented over 55 clients charged with murder in his 29-year career, according to his website.
Williams, of Tweed, Ont., served as commander of Canada’s largest military airfield, Canadian Forces Base Trenton, until his arrest Feb. 7 in Ottawa.
Comeau, 37, was found dead in her home in Brighton, Ont., last November. She was a flight attendant at CFB Trenton and served aboard the same military VIP flights Williams piloted for much of the 1990s, ferrying the Governor General, the prime minister and other dignitaries on domestic and overseas trips.
Lloyd’s body was found in Tweed two weeks after the 27 year old failed to show up at her job in Napanee.
Besides two first-degree murder charges, Williams faces two counts of forcible confinement and two counts of break and enter and sexual assault relating to the attacks in Tweed last September.
Police have said they don’t expect to release the cause of death of either Lloyd or Comeau.
According to a search warrant issued before Williams emerged as the primary suspect in the cases, detectives entered the home of a prior suspect looking for lingerie, baby blankets and computer data storage devices.
The warrant was related to the attacks on the two women who were bound and sexually assaulted in their homes last September. Both women lived within walking distance of the Williams cottage.
The Canadian military commander charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of two women near the eastern Ontario military base he oversaw has retained a top defence lawyer from Ottawa.
Michael Edelson will take on Col. Russell Williams’ case, but will send an agent to a scheduled video appearance in a Belleville, Ont., court Thursday.
Williams, 46, is being held without bail in the Quinte Detention Centre in nearby Napanee. He is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd.
The charges have rocked the Canadian military to its core and have left the communities in which the alleged crimes occurred badly shaken.
Edelson has a number of other high-profile clients, including Nova Scotia Bishop Raymond Lahey, who is charged with possessing and importing child pornography. He also represented Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien, who was found not guilty last August of influence-peddling.
Edelson has represented over 55 clients charged with murder in his 29-year career, according to his website.
Williams, of Tweed, Ont., served as commander of Canada’s largest military airfield, Canadian Forces Base Trenton, until his arrest Feb. 7 in Ottawa.
Comeau, 37, was found dead in her home in Brighton, Ont., last November. She was a flight attendant at CFB Trenton and served aboard the same military VIP flights Williams piloted for much of the 1990s, ferrying the Governor General, the prime minister and other dignitaries on domestic and overseas trips.
Lloyd’s body was found in Tweed two weeks after the 27 year old failed to show up at her job in Napanee.
Besides two first-degree murder charges, Williams faces two counts of forcible confinement and two counts of break and enter and sexual assault relating to the attacks in Tweed last September.
Police have said they don’t expect to release the cause of death of either Lloyd or Comeau.
According to a search warrant issued before Williams emerged as the primary suspect in the cases, detectives entered the home of a prior suspect looking for lingerie, baby blankets and computer data storage devices.
The warrant was related to the attacks on the two women who were bound and sexually assaulted in their homes last September. Both women lived within walking distance of the Williams cottage.
Colonel's murder charges fuel rumours on cosy country lane
It was a quiet, dead-end dirt road in the country. Then the military man next door was charged with rape and murder. Now, the 21 houses on the lane and the nearby village are bubbling with rumours and gossip. Some of them may even be true
Published On Sun Feb 28 2010
Jim Rankin
Sandro Contenta
TWEED–Police tape no longer surrounds the blue-grey cottage at 62 Cosy Cove Lane. Gone, too, are the media satellite trucks and idling Ontario Provincial Police SUVs, its officers coming and going with tools, bags and boxes of potential evidence.
But an alleged serial rapist and killer – the colonel who lived at No. 62 – has left a mark, fuelling rumours and suspicions. In a rural lane where doors were left unlocked, keys are now required.
"I don't think anything (bad) ever happened before this," says Ernestine Cole, who is in her 80s and has lived on the dirt road for two decades with her husband Frank. "We used to call it Geritol Lane because it was full of old people."
Now, she has a new name for Cosy Cove: "Danger Bay."
Life began changing in September when, in the space of two weeks, two women were blindfolded, tied up, photographed and sexually assaulted, one on Cosy Cove and one in a nearby home, reached by a path from the end of the lane.
Suspicion fell on the affable "mayor" of the lane, Larry Jones, when his home was raided by Ontario Provincial Police last October. Police searched for lingerie stolen by the rapist from his victims. Jones pleaded his innocence, but word spread quickly though the close-knit community, and many drew their own conclusions.
Seemingly unconnected crimes followed. A soldier was murdered in her home in Brighton, about 80 kilometres south of Cosy Cove. Then another young woman who lived alone, 35 kilometres south on Highway 37, disappeared.
Three weeks ago, attention turned to the one-storey blue-grey home of Colonel Russell Williams, the soft-spoken base commander of CFB Trenton. A decorated pilot who once flew around VIPs, including a prime minister, he was charged with two rapes and two murders.
"There was not a clue," says Lt.-Col. John Komocki, who has worked and golfed with Williams for the past decade. "There wasn't anything like some facial tic that made you wonder, mmm. No, the guy was a professional."
Komocki is commanding officer of 437 Squadron at Trenton, which flies troops and VIPs on Airbuses. Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, who was found dead inside her Brighton home Nov. 25, worked as a flight attendant in his squadron.
The Star has learned that Comeau and Williams flew together on a job to Germany last fall.
Such connections have many in this community looking to make more links. Among them, the Jan. 23 disappearance of Deborah-Ann Rashotte, 27, of Belleville. She left her home without her wallet and phone. Police and relatives say she often roams and believe her disappearance is unrelated to Williams, but in recent days police have ramped up searches near Tweed, where she has relatives.
Jones, 65, recalls Williams being curious about the location of his hunting camp. Police found the body of 27-year-old Jessica Lloyd near the camp, on Cary Rd., reportedly with the help of Williams.
"Everybody thought it was me," says a relieved Jones.
Two weeks ago, Williams appeared in a Belleville court through a video link from a detention centre. He looked a broken man.
"His job and his wife were everything to him," says Williams' neighbour and friend, Monique Murdoch. "That's what nags me – why? I have to look at this house every day and it kills me because I don't understand how anybody could just throw it all away."
TO UNDERSTAND the life residents hope one day returns, look no further than the hand-painted wood sign at the lane's entrance: "Cozy Cove." It was the handiwork of a now-deceased resident. No one is bothered enough by the spelling error to change it.
The lane hugs one side of a heart-shaped inlet on the northern end of Stoco Lake, named after a Mississauga chief who killed a Mohawk rival and drove away his band. It's lined at points by soaring pines.
Little visible evidence remains of the events that wrenched the residents of this dead-end road out of their idyllic reverie. The ice fishing is good and locals play shinny on a cleared section of the lake.
There are 21 houses – a few traditional cottages, most converted into year-round homes. Several are inhabited by retirees, Larry Jones among them. The other residents are a mixture of local and former city people who commute to work. Williams' daily trip to CFB Trenton took an hour each way.
In the winter, fishing huts and pickup trucks dot the bay. Kids on ATVs do doughnuts. Come summer, it's mainly about the fishing. "Pickerel, pike, muskie, bass, sunfish, crappies, mudcats, suckers – everything," says Jones.
After retiring from the Ministry of Natural Resources, he became Cosy Cove's handyman. He maintains the private road, can fix a leaky pipe, build a house and tell a city-slicker neighbour – namely Williams – where to get lawnmower blades sharpened.
From late October until the arrest of the colonel, Larry Jones was also, in the minds of many, the area rapist. Police searched his home two days before Halloween.
He also sat down for a series of interrogations, during which he says he gleaned a few clues about who police were looking for: a strong, young, hairless man. Jones, married 43 years, is none of those things.
"I'm as hairy as they come, eh," says Jones, opening his shirt.
"This poor guy was getting blamed for everything," says Cosy Cove neighbour Bill Page. "We knew it was never Larry. He told me he has a lot of friends who think he did it. It'll be a while to get trust back."
From the window of his garage, which is tricked out with a full bar, Jones has a clear view of Williams' home. He would see Williams work his remote-controlled camera to photograph birds. He would see Williams stomp on the grass before mowing the lawn to chase out frogs and spare them a horrible fate. And he would see Williams stroll around with his cat, Rosebud, over his shoulder, stroking it "just like it was a baby."
Williams was born in England in 1963. His parents, Nonie and David Williams, soon moved to Canada, where his father, a metallurgist, took a job at Canada's nuclear research lab in Chalk River. The couple had another son, Harvey, but their marriage didn't last.
Williams' mother married Jerry Sovka, a nuclear scientist, in the 1970s. In the late '70s, Sovka's work took the family to South Korea. Williams began high school at Birchmount Collegiate, but finished at Upper Canada College.
A fellow boarder at the college remembers Williams being locked in his room by other students as a prank. The boarder, who asked not to be identified, says Williams got out by tying together bed sheets and climbing out the window.
In the military, one of his first postings, in the early 1990s, was as a rookie flight instructor at the Canadian Forces flying school at Portage la Prairie, Man. There, he married Mary Elizabeth Harriman.
In 2001, Williams' mother and stepfather reportedly divorced. His brother, a Bowmanville doctor, told the National Post that the second divorce caused a deep rift between Williams and him and their mother, which they recently made efforts to repair.
Jones saw Williams' birth father last summer, out in the yard on Cosy Cove pruning a bush with kitchen scissors. Jones offered David Williams an electric trimmer.
Contacted by The Star, the father, who lives in the southern United States, declined to comment. "Please respect my privacy," David Williams wrote in a brief email. Then came a similarly worded email from Williams' mother, Toronto physiotherapist Nonie Sovka, which ended with: "Please respect my need for privacy at this terrible time."
Neither has spoken publicly since their son's arrest.
Harriman and Williams bought the Cosy Cove cottage in 2004 for $178,000. In December, they paid $694,000 for a townhouse on Edison Ave. in Ottawa.
Williams spent most of the year at the cottage. Harriman, executive director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, lived and worked in Ottawa. They would see each other on the weekends. But Murdoch says the cottage became a permanent residence last fall, while they waited for their new Ottawa home to be finished.
"They would walk by and they were always walking hand in hand," said Monique Murdoch, 47, who lives on the other side of 62 Cosy Cove from Jones. "I really think he really loved his wife."
Of the residents of Cosy Cove Lane, Murdoch perhaps knew the couple best. They played cards together, and her husband would sometimes ice fish with Williams.
"We actually taught him how to play cribbage, and he caught on pretty quickly. And he liked ... water skiing – he kind of enjoyed that too," says Murdoch. "He was never cocky or aloof or a loner – I can tell you that much."
The arrest has been hard on her son, a guitar player who bonded with Williams over a mutual love for music.
"I think anybody that really knew him are asking that question: `How could this be possible?'"
Murdoch has kept in touch with Harriman by email since the arrest. Harriman is on leave from her job.
"She's an absolutely wonderful person, a very caring and considerate woman," says Ross Fetterly, the air force officer assisting Williams' wife.
Janet Wright was Williams' executive assistant for two years while he was head of 437 Squadron at Trenton, a position he held until 2006. During that stint, he also served six months as commander of Camp Mirage, a secret air force staging base in Dubai. Williams invited Wright to Cosy Cove soon after he'd bought it. "He was very happy. It was just what they were looking for, he'd say."
She says Williams "couldn't have been nicer" as a boss, but she did recall one incident that stuck with her. "One day I went into his office and the phone looked like it had been broken, you know, like when you put the receiver down really hard."
Wright spoke with Williams after the home invasion sexual assaults had turned Cosy Cove upside down. Williams said he didn't know much about the attacks, but mentioned that "Mary Elizabeth is upset about it."
She last spoke with Williams the week before his arrest. Nothing seemed amiss. The news that he'd been charged not only with the attacks but with murder, hit hard. She has received counselling from a psychologist and padre at the base.
IN THE VILLAGE of Tweed, population 1,500, it is hard to find anyone who doesn't know someone who is part of the Cosy Cove drama. Take Michael Devolin, a 55-year-old meat cutter at the Value Mart. His cousin is Jones' wife. Her nephew is with the local OPP. Devolin works with a relative of one of the sexual assault victims.
"Everybody is going on living, but people don't talk more than three minutes before gravitating to this subject. Everyone is just freaked out," Devolin says. "You know what a small town is like. Everyone embellishes the story."
There's talk along the lane that the Williams cottage should one day be razed, as was done with the Port Dalhousie home of killers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka.
"It'll be pretty hard to walk by that house," says Cosy Cove resident Bill Page. "Everybody is thinking about it. Come spring, when everyone gets outside, it'll be a little better."
Coincidentally, the judge who handled the Bernardo trial, Patrick LeSage, was in Tweed in October to sell the family cottage on Stoco Lake. He grew up here. His family ran a car lot and garage, and later a fuel business.
LeSage's cottage is a short stroll from both Cosy Cove Lane and the home where the first woman was attacked, but he'd never heard of Williams before he was charged.
"It just puts a whole community under a pall for a long time," says LeSage, "everybody looking, you know, sort of at everybody else, saying, `Who did this?'"
Police have officially released 62 Cosy Cove Lane to Williams' family. After a fresh carpeting of snow this week, the driveway, which Larry Jones used to offer to plow, remained unshovelled.
There are no signs of life.
Published On Sun Feb 28 2010
Jim Rankin
Sandro Contenta
TWEED–Police tape no longer surrounds the blue-grey cottage at 62 Cosy Cove Lane. Gone, too, are the media satellite trucks and idling Ontario Provincial Police SUVs, its officers coming and going with tools, bags and boxes of potential evidence.
But an alleged serial rapist and killer – the colonel who lived at No. 62 – has left a mark, fuelling rumours and suspicions. In a rural lane where doors were left unlocked, keys are now required.
"I don't think anything (bad) ever happened before this," says Ernestine Cole, who is in her 80s and has lived on the dirt road for two decades with her husband Frank. "We used to call it Geritol Lane because it was full of old people."
Now, she has a new name for Cosy Cove: "Danger Bay."
Life began changing in September when, in the space of two weeks, two women were blindfolded, tied up, photographed and sexually assaulted, one on Cosy Cove and one in a nearby home, reached by a path from the end of the lane.
Suspicion fell on the affable "mayor" of the lane, Larry Jones, when his home was raided by Ontario Provincial Police last October. Police searched for lingerie stolen by the rapist from his victims. Jones pleaded his innocence, but word spread quickly though the close-knit community, and many drew their own conclusions.
Seemingly unconnected crimes followed. A soldier was murdered in her home in Brighton, about 80 kilometres south of Cosy Cove. Then another young woman who lived alone, 35 kilometres south on Highway 37, disappeared.
Three weeks ago, attention turned to the one-storey blue-grey home of Colonel Russell Williams, the soft-spoken base commander of CFB Trenton. A decorated pilot who once flew around VIPs, including a prime minister, he was charged with two rapes and two murders.
"There was not a clue," says Lt.-Col. John Komocki, who has worked and golfed with Williams for the past decade. "There wasn't anything like some facial tic that made you wonder, mmm. No, the guy was a professional."
Komocki is commanding officer of 437 Squadron at Trenton, which flies troops and VIPs on Airbuses. Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, who was found dead inside her Brighton home Nov. 25, worked as a flight attendant in his squadron.
The Star has learned that Comeau and Williams flew together on a job to Germany last fall.
Such connections have many in this community looking to make more links. Among them, the Jan. 23 disappearance of Deborah-Ann Rashotte, 27, of Belleville. She left her home without her wallet and phone. Police and relatives say she often roams and believe her disappearance is unrelated to Williams, but in recent days police have ramped up searches near Tweed, where she has relatives.
Jones, 65, recalls Williams being curious about the location of his hunting camp. Police found the body of 27-year-old Jessica Lloyd near the camp, on Cary Rd., reportedly with the help of Williams.
"Everybody thought it was me," says a relieved Jones.
Two weeks ago, Williams appeared in a Belleville court through a video link from a detention centre. He looked a broken man.
"His job and his wife were everything to him," says Williams' neighbour and friend, Monique Murdoch. "That's what nags me – why? I have to look at this house every day and it kills me because I don't understand how anybody could just throw it all away."
TO UNDERSTAND the life residents hope one day returns, look no further than the hand-painted wood sign at the lane's entrance: "Cozy Cove." It was the handiwork of a now-deceased resident. No one is bothered enough by the spelling error to change it.
The lane hugs one side of a heart-shaped inlet on the northern end of Stoco Lake, named after a Mississauga chief who killed a Mohawk rival and drove away his band. It's lined at points by soaring pines.
Little visible evidence remains of the events that wrenched the residents of this dead-end road out of their idyllic reverie. The ice fishing is good and locals play shinny on a cleared section of the lake.
There are 21 houses – a few traditional cottages, most converted into year-round homes. Several are inhabited by retirees, Larry Jones among them. The other residents are a mixture of local and former city people who commute to work. Williams' daily trip to CFB Trenton took an hour each way.
In the winter, fishing huts and pickup trucks dot the bay. Kids on ATVs do doughnuts. Come summer, it's mainly about the fishing. "Pickerel, pike, muskie, bass, sunfish, crappies, mudcats, suckers – everything," says Jones.
After retiring from the Ministry of Natural Resources, he became Cosy Cove's handyman. He maintains the private road, can fix a leaky pipe, build a house and tell a city-slicker neighbour – namely Williams – where to get lawnmower blades sharpened.
From late October until the arrest of the colonel, Larry Jones was also, in the minds of many, the area rapist. Police searched his home two days before Halloween.
He also sat down for a series of interrogations, during which he says he gleaned a few clues about who police were looking for: a strong, young, hairless man. Jones, married 43 years, is none of those things.
"I'm as hairy as they come, eh," says Jones, opening his shirt.
"This poor guy was getting blamed for everything," says Cosy Cove neighbour Bill Page. "We knew it was never Larry. He told me he has a lot of friends who think he did it. It'll be a while to get trust back."
From the window of his garage, which is tricked out with a full bar, Jones has a clear view of Williams' home. He would see Williams work his remote-controlled camera to photograph birds. He would see Williams stomp on the grass before mowing the lawn to chase out frogs and spare them a horrible fate. And he would see Williams stroll around with his cat, Rosebud, over his shoulder, stroking it "just like it was a baby."
Williams was born in England in 1963. His parents, Nonie and David Williams, soon moved to Canada, where his father, a metallurgist, took a job at Canada's nuclear research lab in Chalk River. The couple had another son, Harvey, but their marriage didn't last.
Williams' mother married Jerry Sovka, a nuclear scientist, in the 1970s. In the late '70s, Sovka's work took the family to South Korea. Williams began high school at Birchmount Collegiate, but finished at Upper Canada College.
A fellow boarder at the college remembers Williams being locked in his room by other students as a prank. The boarder, who asked not to be identified, says Williams got out by tying together bed sheets and climbing out the window.
In the military, one of his first postings, in the early 1990s, was as a rookie flight instructor at the Canadian Forces flying school at Portage la Prairie, Man. There, he married Mary Elizabeth Harriman.
In 2001, Williams' mother and stepfather reportedly divorced. His brother, a Bowmanville doctor, told the National Post that the second divorce caused a deep rift between Williams and him and their mother, which they recently made efforts to repair.
Jones saw Williams' birth father last summer, out in the yard on Cosy Cove pruning a bush with kitchen scissors. Jones offered David Williams an electric trimmer.
Contacted by The Star, the father, who lives in the southern United States, declined to comment. "Please respect my privacy," David Williams wrote in a brief email. Then came a similarly worded email from Williams' mother, Toronto physiotherapist Nonie Sovka, which ended with: "Please respect my need for privacy at this terrible time."
Neither has spoken publicly since their son's arrest.
Harriman and Williams bought the Cosy Cove cottage in 2004 for $178,000. In December, they paid $694,000 for a townhouse on Edison Ave. in Ottawa.
Williams spent most of the year at the cottage. Harriman, executive director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, lived and worked in Ottawa. They would see each other on the weekends. But Murdoch says the cottage became a permanent residence last fall, while they waited for their new Ottawa home to be finished.
"They would walk by and they were always walking hand in hand," said Monique Murdoch, 47, who lives on the other side of 62 Cosy Cove from Jones. "I really think he really loved his wife."
Of the residents of Cosy Cove Lane, Murdoch perhaps knew the couple best. They played cards together, and her husband would sometimes ice fish with Williams.
"We actually taught him how to play cribbage, and he caught on pretty quickly. And he liked ... water skiing – he kind of enjoyed that too," says Murdoch. "He was never cocky or aloof or a loner – I can tell you that much."
The arrest has been hard on her son, a guitar player who bonded with Williams over a mutual love for music.
"I think anybody that really knew him are asking that question: `How could this be possible?'"
Murdoch has kept in touch with Harriman by email since the arrest. Harriman is on leave from her job.
"She's an absolutely wonderful person, a very caring and considerate woman," says Ross Fetterly, the air force officer assisting Williams' wife.
Janet Wright was Williams' executive assistant for two years while he was head of 437 Squadron at Trenton, a position he held until 2006. During that stint, he also served six months as commander of Camp Mirage, a secret air force staging base in Dubai. Williams invited Wright to Cosy Cove soon after he'd bought it. "He was very happy. It was just what they were looking for, he'd say."
She says Williams "couldn't have been nicer" as a boss, but she did recall one incident that stuck with her. "One day I went into his office and the phone looked like it had been broken, you know, like when you put the receiver down really hard."
Wright spoke with Williams after the home invasion sexual assaults had turned Cosy Cove upside down. Williams said he didn't know much about the attacks, but mentioned that "Mary Elizabeth is upset about it."
She last spoke with Williams the week before his arrest. Nothing seemed amiss. The news that he'd been charged not only with the attacks but with murder, hit hard. She has received counselling from a psychologist and padre at the base.
IN THE VILLAGE of Tweed, population 1,500, it is hard to find anyone who doesn't know someone who is part of the Cosy Cove drama. Take Michael Devolin, a 55-year-old meat cutter at the Value Mart. His cousin is Jones' wife. Her nephew is with the local OPP. Devolin works with a relative of one of the sexual assault victims.
"Everybody is going on living, but people don't talk more than three minutes before gravitating to this subject. Everyone is just freaked out," Devolin says. "You know what a small town is like. Everyone embellishes the story."
There's talk along the lane that the Williams cottage should one day be razed, as was done with the Port Dalhousie home of killers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka.
"It'll be pretty hard to walk by that house," says Cosy Cove resident Bill Page. "Everybody is thinking about it. Come spring, when everyone gets outside, it'll be a little better."
Coincidentally, the judge who handled the Bernardo trial, Patrick LeSage, was in Tweed in October to sell the family cottage on Stoco Lake. He grew up here. His family ran a car lot and garage, and later a fuel business.
LeSage's cottage is a short stroll from both Cosy Cove Lane and the home where the first woman was attacked, but he'd never heard of Williams before he was charged.
"It just puts a whole community under a pall for a long time," says LeSage, "everybody looking, you know, sort of at everybody else, saying, `Who did this?'"
Police have officially released 62 Cosy Cove Lane to Williams' family. After a fresh carpeting of snow this week, the driveway, which Larry Jones used to offer to plow, remained unshovelled.
There are no signs of life.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Events leading to Col. Russell Williams arrest
Published On Tue Feb 09 2010
Jesse McLean
Sept. 17 and 30, 2009: Police investigate two home invasions in Tweed where women were tied to a chair and photographed. The suspect entered the houses while the residents slept.
Nov. 15, 2009: Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, 37, a flight attendant with CFB Trenton's 437 transport squadron, is found slain in her Brighton, Ont., home. Her boyfriend discovers her body after she misses work.
Jan. 28: The last time anyone hears from Jessica Lloyd, 27. She is reported missing after she doesn't show up for her job in Napanee.
Feb. 4: While doing a roadside canvass on Highway 37, investigators get some information that leads them to Col. Russell Williams' home in Tweed.
Feb. 7: Ontario Provincial Police and Belleville Police arrest Williams, 46, a commander at CFB Trenton. He is charged with the first-degree murders of Lloyd and Comeau. He also faces two counts of forcible confinement and two counts each of break and enter and sexual assault.
Feb. 8: Investigators find Lloyd's body off Cary Rd. in Tweed.
Jesse McLean
Sept. 17 and 30, 2009: Police investigate two home invasions in Tweed where women were tied to a chair and photographed. The suspect entered the houses while the residents slept.
Nov. 15, 2009: Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, 37, a flight attendant with CFB Trenton's 437 transport squadron, is found slain in her Brighton, Ont., home. Her boyfriend discovers her body after she misses work.
Jan. 28: The last time anyone hears from Jessica Lloyd, 27. She is reported missing after she doesn't show up for her job in Napanee.
Feb. 4: While doing a roadside canvass on Highway 37, investigators get some information that leads them to Col. Russell Williams' home in Tweed.
Feb. 7: Ontario Provincial Police and Belleville Police arrest Williams, 46, a commander at CFB Trenton. He is charged with the first-degree murders of Lloyd and Comeau. He also faces two counts of forcible confinement and two counts each of break and enter and sexual assault.
Feb. 8: Investigators find Lloyd's body off Cary Rd. in Tweed.
Is Trenton commander a “Macho Man” killer?
Criminal profilers share their thoughts on Col. Russell Williams
Published On Tue Feb 09 2010
DANIEL DALE STAFF REPORTER
A serial killer and serial sex offender need not be obviously abnormal. He need not be a loser in life. And, indeed, he may sometimes wear a uniform.
Col. Russell Williams, charged with two murders and two sexual assaults, is innocent until proven guilty. If he is guilty, he is not entirely unique – though, according to criminal profiler Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, he would appear to be the rarest type of serial offender: a “Macho Man.”
Schurman-Kauflin identified the Macho Man category in a 2005 book after interviewing 25 serial killers. Macho Man killers, she said in an email Tuesday, tend to be articulate men with significant others who “do well in the workplace,” “are drawn to law enforcement or military,” display an obsessive-compulsive need for things to be “done a very specific way,” “prefer to dress in uniform,” and “stand up very straight, even in personal life.”
Like the rest of us, profiling experts contacted about Williams could only speculate on his psyche. But they offered insights, gleaned from knowledge of high-functioning offenders, which may help explain how a top military official could commit heinous crimes – and how a criminal could achieve such prestige in the first place.
Mark Zelig, a forensic psychologist and former Salt Lake City police lieutenant, said many serial offenders are experts in “compartmentalization” who are able to separate their secret deviant behaviour from their respectable daily lives. “If they can’t separate it, then their behaviour comes to attention early in life, and they probably never have the opportunity to be coined a serial offender,” he said.
Schurman-Kauflin said it would not be surprising if a serial offender fooled military brass into believing he was a good man. “A serial offender who is very organized can hide his dark side,” she said. “In fact, he will go out of his way to cultivate relationships with others so that he is viewed in a positive light. Doing so is another way he is expressing his power. He can fool the top guys, and he enjoys doing that.”
Schurman-Kauflin, Zelig and Pat Brown, a profiler and U.S. television commentator, said Williams could have been drawn to the military by some of the same traits that made him an alleged offender.
Brown noted that a job as a military officer allows for “a level of extreme power and control,” the goal of many sex offenders. Zelig said many serial offenders possess low levels of anxiety; if this were true of Williams, it could partially explain his success as a military pilot. And Schurman-Kauflin said an offender may deliberately seek to attain an elite job because such a position would “help him in many ways,” such as minimizing the possibility he would be suspected of an offence.
“Everything a serial offender does,” she said, “is to further his compulsion to fulfill his deviant desires.”
Like the other profilers, Mark Safarik, a consultant who formerly worked for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, said it is likely the offender in the latest crimes has been active for far longer. Typically, he said, an offender progresses from relatively minor transgressions like prowling or peeping to “fantasy fulfilment,” perhaps with willing partners; when “that isn’t enough of a thrill,” Safarik said, “he crosses over into non-compliant victims.”
“People don’t just wake up one day and say, ‘I’m going to abduct someone and murder them,’” he said. “I’m sure there’s a history.”
With files from Cathal Kelly
Published On Tue Feb 09 2010
DANIEL DALE STAFF REPORTER
A serial killer and serial sex offender need not be obviously abnormal. He need not be a loser in life. And, indeed, he may sometimes wear a uniform.
Col. Russell Williams, charged with two murders and two sexual assaults, is innocent until proven guilty. If he is guilty, he is not entirely unique – though, according to criminal profiler Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, he would appear to be the rarest type of serial offender: a “Macho Man.”
Schurman-Kauflin identified the Macho Man category in a 2005 book after interviewing 25 serial killers. Macho Man killers, she said in an email Tuesday, tend to be articulate men with significant others who “do well in the workplace,” “are drawn to law enforcement or military,” display an obsessive-compulsive need for things to be “done a very specific way,” “prefer to dress in uniform,” and “stand up very straight, even in personal life.”
Like the rest of us, profiling experts contacted about Williams could only speculate on his psyche. But they offered insights, gleaned from knowledge of high-functioning offenders, which may help explain how a top military official could commit heinous crimes – and how a criminal could achieve such prestige in the first place.
Mark Zelig, a forensic psychologist and former Salt Lake City police lieutenant, said many serial offenders are experts in “compartmentalization” who are able to separate their secret deviant behaviour from their respectable daily lives. “If they can’t separate it, then their behaviour comes to attention early in life, and they probably never have the opportunity to be coined a serial offender,” he said.
Schurman-Kauflin said it would not be surprising if a serial offender fooled military brass into believing he was a good man. “A serial offender who is very organized can hide his dark side,” she said. “In fact, he will go out of his way to cultivate relationships with others so that he is viewed in a positive light. Doing so is another way he is expressing his power. He can fool the top guys, and he enjoys doing that.”
Schurman-Kauflin, Zelig and Pat Brown, a profiler and U.S. television commentator, said Williams could have been drawn to the military by some of the same traits that made him an alleged offender.
Brown noted that a job as a military officer allows for “a level of extreme power and control,” the goal of many sex offenders. Zelig said many serial offenders possess low levels of anxiety; if this were true of Williams, it could partially explain his success as a military pilot. And Schurman-Kauflin said an offender may deliberately seek to attain an elite job because such a position would “help him in many ways,” such as minimizing the possibility he would be suspected of an offence.
“Everything a serial offender does,” she said, “is to further his compulsion to fulfill his deviant desires.”
Like the other profilers, Mark Safarik, a consultant who formerly worked for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, said it is likely the offender in the latest crimes has been active for far longer. Typically, he said, an offender progresses from relatively minor transgressions like prowling or peeping to “fantasy fulfilment,” perhaps with willing partners; when “that isn’t enough of a thrill,” Safarik said, “he crosses over into non-compliant victims.”
“People don’t just wake up one day and say, ‘I’m going to abduct someone and murder them,’” he said. “I’m sure there’s a history.”
With files from Cathal Kelly
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