Russell Williams Victims

Case background and investigation

Russell Williams was a colonel in the Canadian Forces and the commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton in eastern Ontario, described by the CBC as Canada's largest military air base. According to a CBC biography, he was born in England on March 7, 1963, and moved to Canada as a child. In October 2010 he pleaded guilty to 88 criminal charges, including two counts of first-degree murder.

The offences he admitted began with break-ins. He pleaded guilty to 82 counts of breaking and entering and attempted breaking and entering at homes in Ottawa, Belleville and Tweed, which the CBC reported involved thefts of a fetishistic nature. In September 2009 two women in Tweed, where Williams had a cottage, were confined and sexually assaulted in their homes in separate incidents on September 17 and September 30, according to the CBC's timeline of the case.

Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, a member of the military who lived in Brighton, Ontario, was found dead in her home on November 25, 2009, and her death was ruled a homicide. The CBC gave her age as 38. Jessica Lloyd, 27, of Belleville sent a text message to a friend late on January 28, 2010, and did not arrive at work the next day. Police appealed for help and searched the area for more than a week.

Williams was arrested in Ottawa on February 7, 2010, and charged with both murders and the two Tweed sexual assaults. Lloyd's body was found the next day off a road in Tweed, and sources told the CBC that Williams had led police to it. According to Wikipedia's account, police had stopped Williams during a roadside canvass a few days earlier and matched the tires on his vehicle to tracks found near Lloyd's home, and he confessed during a long interview on February 7 conducted by Detective Sergeant Jim Smyth of the Ontario Provincial Police. On April 29, 2010, he was charged with 82 further offences relating to the break-ins.

Williams pleaded guilty to all charges in Ontario Superior Court in Belleville on October 18, 2010. After the Crown presented an agreed statement of facts over two days, he was formally convicted. On October 21, Justice Robert F. Scott sentenced him to two terms of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, 10 years for each of the sexual assault and forcible confinement counts, and one year for each of the 82 other charges. Williams told the court he was deeply ashamed and apologized to the families of the two women. The Crown did not seek a dangerous offender designation.

On October 22, 2010, Governor General David Johnston agreed to revoke Williams's commission, stripping him of his rank. The chief of the defence staff said the military would also remove his medals, recover his pay from the date of his arrest and release him for service misconduct, while noting that there were no legal grounds to revoke his pension. In November 2010 the Canadian Forces burned his uniforms at CFB Trenton. He began his sentence at Kingston Penitentiary.