Col. Russell Williams: Who is this man?
By Raveena Aulakh, David Bruser and Katie Daubs
The Record
Feb 13, 2010
Williams was born on March 7, 1963, in the Midlands region of England but within a few years was in Chalk River, Ont. His father, David Williams, a metallurgist, was hired by Canada's premier nuclear research laboratory.
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 new 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 in Scarborough for long. Sovka's work took him around the globe and by 1979, the family was in South Korea where the nuclear engineer was overseeing a reactor project.
Williams stayed back for his final two years of high school and became a boarder at Upper Canada College. He was a serious student, hard-working and focused but didn't stand out, say friends and acquaintances from those high school 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 because 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. On the small campus, which then had about 5,000 students, Williams was merely another face in the crowd. When asked about a Russell Sovka or Williams, few professors could recall interacting with him.
After four years, he graduated 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 said.
From the Manitoba community to Halifax in the early 1990s to CFB Trenton, where in July 2009 he took charge of Canada's largest airbase, Williams effortlessly went from one posting to another, notching up perfect reviews, medals and promotions along the way. He also has a master's degree in defence studies from the Royal Military College in Kingston.
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 successful deployment of some 2,000 soldiers and thousands of kilos of emergency supplies to post-earthquake Haiti.
Williams also handled the purchase of two C-17 Globemaster jets critical to Canadian operations in Afghanistan, Haiti and across the country, as well as the acquisition of a fleet of new C-130J Hercules planes. As the base commander, he was highly visible at community events and featured in the 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 his wife lives.
Andy Coxhead, a retired major and resident of Brighton, was a public affairs officer on the Trenton base when Williams took over command of 437 transport squadron, which transports personnel and equipment and flies VIPs around the world. 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, who worked for four different wing commanders over an eight-year period. To everyone, it seems, Williams was the golden boy, the rising star. But if police are correct, there is another, more sinister side to Williams that no one, not even his superiors who praised and promoted him, seemed to see.
According to police reports, the first attack occurred on Sept. 17. A young couple in their 20s had just moved into a small cottage on Charles Road on the outskirts of Tweed. They had just had a baby. He was originally from Tweed, and she was from a big city. The woman had moved to Tweed to escape the city life, said the owner of the local bar.
But terror found her on that 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. “‘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. 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 did things the wrong way, 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. This was a different Williams than the public face put forward in local papers and community events, a man who didn't know how to drop a puck or tie down a boat.
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 Charles Road had moved away.
No one suspected the colonel. Here was a man who when he mowed the lawn, examined his yard 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 home. At the time, police called it an isolated incident.
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, 27-year-old Jessica Lloyd went missing from her home and police launched a massive search for the Belleville woman. CFB Trenton even sent a helicopter to help with the search and rescue efforts. The helicopter wouldn't find anything. The police would. On Thursday, Feb. 4, one week after Lloyd went missing from her home, the Ontario Provincial Police put up a roadblock on Hwy. 37, not far from her red-brick bungalow. The single-lane highway, winding and desolate at night, connects Belleville with Tweed, a small community of retired people and farmers. 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 that people usually saw him drive — was reportedly stopped in that roadside check where 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 aren't talking. 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 is due to appear again on Feb. 18.
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