Colonel Russell Williams appears in a Belleville, Ont., courtroom on Oct. 7, 2010, as depicted by a sketch artist.Alex tavshunsky
Former CFB Trenton Commander Colonel Russell Williams videoed part of the two murders and two bizarre sexual assaults he will formally plead guilty to later this month, The Globe and Mail has learned.
The videos, confirmed by multiple sources, have never been disclosed publicly before and are the most shocking element of an overwhelming range of evidence against the decorated pilot.
The 47-year-old, hands balled in neat fists at his sides as though he were still on military parade, appeared briefly in Superior Court in this small eastern Ontario city just down the highway from the air base on Thursday.
To a room packed with media and relatives of some of Col. Williams' victims, his lawyer Michael Edelson dramatically announced that after reviewing thousands of pages of evidence with his client, he "was now in a position" to indicate Col. Williams will enter "a plea of guilty on all counts" at his next court date.
He is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the asphyxiation-torture deaths of 38-year-old Corporal Marie-France Comeau, a Trenton air attendant who was under his command, and 27-year-old Jessica Lloyd, who worked for a school-bus company in nearby Napanee; two counts each of sexual assault and forcible confinement in connection with two bizarre attacks in the area last fall, and a total of 82 residential break-ins involving the theft or attempted theft of women's lingerie and intimate apparel.
But the career air force officer confessed eight months earlier, on Sunday, Feb. 7, shortly after arriving as requested at the Elgin Street offices of the Ontario Provincial Police - wearing, according to one source, the same boots he wore when he abducted Ms. Lloyd.
At the same time that Col. Williams was sitting down for a police interview, other officers were executing search warrants at the two homes he shared with his long-time wife, Mary-Elizabeth Harriman - a cottage in the small village of Tweed north of Trenton where the sex assault victims lived, and a newly built house in the trendy Westboro area of Ottawa.
It was in the garage of the Westboro home that police found the hundreds of pieces of women's underclothing - catalogued and concealed in the rafters - which led to 82 more charges, break-ins or attempted break-ins, which were laid against Col. Williams this spring.
In the end on that Sunday in Ottawa, he gave detectives a nine-hour videoed statement, about six hours of it a crisp confession, and said then that he would waive a preliminary hearing, as he later did, and go directly to Superior Court and plead guilty.
His first order of business, however, was to take detectives to the body of Ms. Lloyd, who disappeared shortly after texting a friend she was home safe and had still not been found. She left behind her purse, cellphone and her car, so police knew to be worried.
That car is still parked in her driveway.
"He was cool as a cucumber," said one source who has seen the lengthy interview told The Globe. "It was, 'Here's what I did, and here's how.' It was efficient, detailed, a business proposition that needed to be resolved."
He wanted, Col. Williams said then, to do his "duty" by not prolonging things for either his wife or the military community he'd joined 23 years before.
Another driving reason not to go to trial, one police source said, is that there would be "a lot of stuff that comes in," much of it pornography - including fetish videos - that Col. Williams wanted to prevent being made public.
He will enter his plea on Oct. 18 as a formal sentencing hearing begins.
While the sentence itself is automatic - life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years - the hearing is expected to last several days and will involve prosecution and defence lawyers submitting what's called "an agreed statement of facts" and the reading of victim-impact statements.
Ironically, much of the prosecution case was assembled as a result of Col. Williams' own meticulous record-and-souvenir keeping.
The Globe has learned that in addition to the videos - he recorded large portions of both murders and the two sexual assaults where, in ordeals which lasted hours, the two victims were blindfolded, tied to chairs and crudely posed - Col. Williams also kept spreadsheets on his computer noting details of his crimes.
He is believed to have kept Ms. Lloyd, whose mother Roxanne carried a framed picture of her into the courtroom, prisoner for as long as three days before killing her, an eerie echo of convicted serial killer Paul Bernardo, who with his then-wife Karla Homolka kidnapped schoolgirl Kristin French and kept her at their rented home for days before killing her.
Both Ms. Comeau and Ms. Lloyd were also sexually assaulted, The Globe has learned; with both women, Col. Williams wore condoms.
As one source close to the investigation said, the notion that Col. Williams in any way wanted to get caught is "bullshit … if people wanted to get caught, we'd have a lineup at the door of all the police stations."
On Feb. 4, after finding unusual tire tracks left in the snow behind Ms. Lloyd's house, police set up a version of the familiar RIDE spot check along rural Highway 37, which runs north from Highway 401 at Belleville to Tweed.
Col. Williams happened to get caught in that roadside check - not in the BMW people most often saw him drive, but in his Pathfinder.
If it was a one-two fluke that he was stopped in that vehicle, his local reputation was so sterling he still almost got away with it.
"They were looking for a type of car, with these types of tires, and that was the only combination they were looking for," the source told The Globe.
Orders were that anyone who came through the roadblock was to be immediately put under surveillance.
But the officer who stopped Col. Williams didn't act right away, because he was wowed by the fact "he's a colonel at the base."
Although the plea was predictable, it's timing was anyone's guess, because of the last-minute nature of lawyerly brinksmanship.
Late last month, the base commander was transported to an Ottawa psychiatric unit to determine if he was fit for trial. Were he to have been found unfit, the court proceedings could have gone on hold indefinitely. The lawyers are also said to be debating how much evidence ought to be made public later this month.
During his stay at the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee, Col. Williams sometimes displayed erratic behaviour - he wrote letters in code which prison officials struggled to decipher, he was on hunger strike for a time and once tried to kill himself by stuffing a packed cardboard toilet roll down his throat. He had jammed the lock on his cell door, but prison guards were able to force their way in and save him.
Andy Lloyd, Ms. Lloyd's 30-year-old brother, spoke briefly outside court for his extended family. He said his mother had brought her daughter's picture to court to demonstrate "that this is not all about him [Col. Williams]" While Mr. Lloyd said the family was grateful and relieved there will be no trial, he said "I don't think I'm going to thank him for anything."
As if to demonstrate the gap between the local citizenry and the notorious Col. Williams, Mr. Lloyd was also full of praise for the kindness shown his family by townsfolk, local police and OPP.
KEY EVIDENCE IN THE WILLIAMS CASE
Here are some of the key pieces of physical evidence that contributed to Colonel Russell William's decision to plead guilty.
The Videos
Like Paul Bernardo, he videoed much of the suffering he inflicted on his two murder victims, sources say. Police seized that material, and had the case gone to trial, it would likely have been aired in court.
The Tire Track
In a snowy field behind Jessica Lloyd's rural home on the outskirts of Belleville was a highly distinctive tire track that matched the tires on Col. William's Nissan Pathfinder, pulled over in a police spot check six days after she vanished.
The Boot Track
A boot track was also found nearby, matching that of a pair of boots he owned. When Col. Williams was summoned by the OPP for the interrogation in which he confessed, he had on the same footwear.
The Fetish Trophies
In the garage rafters of the colonel's Ottawa home, police armed with a search warrant found hundreds of items of stolen lingerie, plus bathing suits and shoes, carefully stored in boxes and catalogued.
The Spreadsheets
Along with his "trophies," Col. Williams kept careful track of which houses he had burgled, on what dates, and what he had stolen. The information was carefully recorded on spreadsheets he created, also seized by police.
Pornography
Police also seized a cache of pornography videos that Col. Williams owned, depicting bondage.
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