Canadian Commander Pleads Guilty to Murders

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New York Times

Canadian Commander Pleads Guilty to Murders
By IAN AUSTEN
Published: October 18, 2010

BELLEVILLE, Ontario — Last April, Canadians reacted with shock after a top Canadian military commander, who frequently piloted planes for top political figures and dignitaries, including Queen Elizabeth II, was charged with rape, murder and an extensive campaign of perverse home break-ins.

On Monday, gasps were intermixed with tears in a courtroom here as prosecutors reviewed evidence that made clear for the first time the scale and perversity of the crimes of Col. David Russell Williams — hundreds of underwear thefts, many from young girls, that escalated to the assault and murder of two women.

The unmasking of Colonel Williams as a sexual killer has been a blow for the Canadian Armed Forces. Until his arrest, he commanded Canada’s largest air base, the logistical fulcrum for the country’s military mission in Afghanistan.

Apparently bringing his logistical and organizational skills bear, Colonel Williams cataloged his crimes on a spreadsheet and meticulously photographed the evidence, compiling the data in an elaborate network of files on two computer hard drives.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/world/americas/19canada.html?_r=1&ref=americas

[Siwsan]

1. The Fifth Estate, on the CBC, recently ran this story

It was so very unnerving to think he was such high profile, and so deeply disturbed. A real Jeckle and Hyde, that's for sure.

[herbm]

2. If he were in the states he'd be in politics.

[iverglas]

3. and if he were in the States

these events wouldn't have happened in Canada.

I can never understand this urge by so many people here to see a report of something that happens not in the US and make it somehow about the US.

[herbm]

8. Because these events do happen here. As a US citizen I believe the Canadian Militery is tougher in

general about weeding out psychpaths. Here at worst we turn them out and rehire them as "contracters". I have a sick feeling there are roving bunches of US military psychopaths committing atrocities hidden by war.

[iverglas]

4. an interesting article in the Toronto Star on the weekend

Local sources are usually best.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/873244--col-russell-williams-a-serial-killer-like-none-police-have-seen?bn=1

Col. Russell Williams: A serial killer like none police have seen

... “This guy is quite unusual,” says psychologist Vernon Quinsey, who spent 16 years assessing criminals at the Oak Ridge maximum security psychiatric hospital in Penetanguishene.

“We're learning from this case,” adds an informed source, who requested anonymity.

“We haven't seen guys like this in the past and we don't expect to see a lot of them in the future.”

Williams had a successful career and a long, apparently loving marriage, and didn't embark on a life of crime until he began a series of fetish home burglaries in September 2007, at the age of 44.

“It's very unusual for a guy who's got his act together like that ... to all of a sudden start committing crimes at a late age,” says Quinsey, professor emeritus of psychology, biology and psychiatry at Queen's University.

Misogyny does come in all shapes and sizes, I guess.

In my own case, the offender was a man in his 30s who had apparently not committed sexual assaults before the weekend in question in 1974. He abducted and assaulted two teenaged sisters on one day, terrorizing them into compliance by threatening each that he would kill the other if one escaped. He made an attempt with three teenaged girls the next day; they threatened him with a hairbrush and persuaded him the plan was not a good one. On the third day, he picked up me and my boyfriend hitchhiking ... you couldn't tell the girls from the boys those days ... and to his undoubted delight, my boyfriend wasn't going as far as I was. There was no doubt in my mind that he would have killed me afterward had I not disobeyed his instruction to get out of his car and go for a walk in the woods, and run like the wind instead.

Mind you, that one by no means "had his act together". Illiterate and alcoholic and unemployed. But all the same: somehow, it's women who are the targets for acting out whatever grievance or disturbance they have.

[Hardrada]

5. There was a movie about WWII with a theme like this. It was

called "Night of the Generals" and starred Peter O'Toole as a German general who was a secret sex killer.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

6. I turned on the Canadian news tonight to this dude in a little girls bathing suit

The Smoking Gun must be in tears that this guy plead guilty,

[herbm]

9. The Hooter girls in Canada are sure ugly.

[Crowman1979]

7. It's always the ones who are too perfect that you have to watch out for in the military.

Regardless of which nation. The ones with slight imperfections or eccentricities tend to perform better and are more liked in the long run.

It's always officers like this who turn out to be nutcases.

[iverglas]

10. interesting idea

Kind of like that Frank guy in M*A*S*H. ;)

The imperfections/eccentricities do need to be slight, though.

The members of the Canadian Airborne who tortured a Somali teenager to death some years ago belonged to a group well known in the small towns of eastern Ontario for being more than slightly imperfect. Their conduct in the towns around their base was more along the lines of appalling, and no one who had encountered them thought they should ever have been assigned to those duties in Somalia. The Airborne was subsequently disbanded.

It's a bad idea to make generalizations, but misogyny does have deep roots in militaries. This is much less the case in Canada than elsewhere, our military being institutionally far more egalitarian. Williams seems to have been a case unto himself.


http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/877592--belleville-court-braces-for-another-difficult-day

BELLEVILLE — The public will be spared videos Col. Russell Williams took of his sexual assaults of two women and murders of two others, Crown Attorney Lee Burgess said Tuesday.

He spoke before the second day of a hearing for a man the world now knows as an obsessive sexual predator with an escalating history of perversion and violence.

Nevertheless, people will be “shocked and overwhelmed” by what will be heard in court, said Ontario Provincial Police Det. Insp. Chris Nicholas, the lead detective on the case.

“I think today the nation is getting a good dose of reality,” said Nicholas. “Of just how evil people can be.”

Even Williams’ own lawyer, Michael Edelson, said Tuesday’s evidence would make for “an extremely difficult day.”

The documenting of the offences and retention of trophies - apparently integral to the offences - made conviction a foregone conclusion. It's interesting to note that it was the failure to find the videos retained by Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, infamous for serial sexual offences and homicides a decade ago here, was the main factor in Homolka being able to portray herself as a victim and cut a deal, before they were found.

[arbusto_baboso]

11. Was he in the Canadian Para Regiment? Just asking because the paras...

were disbanded not long ago for committing what amounted to war crimes during some of their "peacekeeping" activities. And shit like that doesn't happen without the tacit approval of officers...

[iverglas]

12. read my post above yours re the Airborne

And: "Tacit approval of officers"?

This man was the commanding officer of Canada's largest military airbase, CFB Trenton. Colonel Williams.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/10/07/ottawa-williams-reaction.html

Retired, Lt.-Gen. Angus Watt used to be the commander of Canada's air force, and Williams was a rising star below him.

"<He was> a very promising officer at the time, we all thought," Watt said.

... "I'm satisfied in some ways that justice has been done, and he will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars," Watts said. "I'm also a little mystified, to be honest, that we will never understand what drove him to do this."

In spite of having known Williams well, and having many questions he'd like to ask him, Watt said he had no intention of ever visiting him in prison.

He also said he doubts that Williams would ever want to see him or anyone else associated with the military.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11568074

A biography on the Canadian Air Force website said Williams had enrolled in the Canadian Air Force in 1987 and gained his wings in 1990.

The air force commander oversaw logistical support for missions to Haiti and Afghanistan.

"He was able to lead an elaborate double life and was able to keep it successfully concealed," said a senior officer who once promoted Williams, retired Lt-Gen Angus Watt.

[arbusto_baboso]

13. Thanks, that answers many of my questions.

[Posteritatis]

16. He was air force, not army. (nt)

[sabrina 1]

14. Maybe the stress of war, the permission that war gives to

soldiers to do things that in real society would be unthinkable, led to his crimes. Or maybe he has done some of this in the past and was not caught, and was the type of personality that is attracted to the military and to the power it provides weak individuals to assume.

War is evil and I hope Canadians will resist the temptation to keep following the U.S. into their various criminal wars. Or they will not be shocked after a while, as Americans are no longer shocked, by what it does to those who win as well as those who lose.

[CHIMO]

15. Some of his background

Life and times of Col. Russell Williams

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.

http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/764948--life-and-times-of-col-russell-williams