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 to bear, Colonel Williams wrote detailed accounts of his crime and meticulously photographed the evidence, compiling the data in what prosecutors called “a deeply nested and complex series of subfolders” on two computer hard drives.
Five thick catalogs of photographs, only a sampling of the evidence, sat in front of Justice Robert F. Scott during Monday's hearing.
Colonel Williams broke into houses primarily in the two neighborhoods where he had homes. He broke into many of them repeatedly, nine times in one case. The break-ins were deft. Most of the victims were unaware that their homes had been entered or that anything had been stolen until they or their families were contacted by the police after Colonel Williams was arrested in February.
Colonel Williams came under suspicion when the body of the second murder victim was found near his cottage in the village of Tweed, about 40 miles from the Canadian Forces Base in Trenton. After stopping him at a roadblock, the police noticed that the unusual tread patterns on the tires of his sport utility vehicle matched those found at the murder scene. A subsequent search of his home in Ottawa turned up hundreds of pieces of girls' and women's underwear and his meticulous photographic record.
It took a court clerk 40 minutes to simply read the list of 88 charges before a room that included family members of the victims. Looking pale and with his voice barely audible, Colonel Williams offered his plea.
Prosecutors reviewed how Colonel Williams began each break-in by photographing the victim's room and underwear drawer. In most of the early break-ins, the photographs show the rooms of girls, including 11-year-old twins, that are decorated with stuffed animals and animal photographs.
He then photographed himself — often sexually aroused or masturbating — modeling their underwear.
Once back home, he photographed his total haul of the underwear, and then each individual item. Occasionally, he added captions. One of those read, “Merci beaucoup.”
He stole 87 pairs of underwear belonging to an Ottawa high school student in a single break-in. Twice, he took loads of the stolen garments to the outskirts of Ottawa and burned them.
Robert Morrison, one of five prosecutors, told the court that Colonel Williams's “peculiar sexuality” first led him to break into a neighbor's home to masturbate on the daughter's bed with her underwear. That break-in, in Tweed, escalated into break-ins of 47 other homes near Tweed as well as in Ottawa, where he spent weekends with his wife.
But the crimes escalated. He broke into the homes of two women near his air base last September, forced them to strip and then blindfolded and photographed them. But he was not recognized by the victims.
Last October, he broke into the home of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, an air force flight attendant based at Trenton who had flown with Colonel Williams. The police said she died after being beaten and having her mouth and nose sealed with tape.
In late January, the second woman, Jessica Lloyd, 27, was reported missing. Her body was found Feb. 8.
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