A Canadian air force colonel with a sexual fetish for female underwear has admitted to 86 lurid sex crimes, including murder
Colonel Russell Williams, 47, a married pilot, photographed and videotaped his four-and-a-half-hour sexual assault of a corporal under his command, Corporal Marie-France Comeau, the prosecutor said.
Bruised, bloodied and limp, Comeau used her last breath to beg for her life, according to an audiotape played in court.
"Have a heart. I've been good all my life. I don't want to die," she pleaded.
"Shut up," Williams responded, before he taped her nostrils and her mouth closed and watched her suffocate.
He was formally convicted of this and another murder, as well as two other sexual assaults and 82 burglaries on Tuesday.
Williams did not know his second murder victim, Jessica Lloyd, whom he also videotaped.
The court heard that he spotted her through a window running on a treadmill and later broke into her home, tied her up, cut off her clothes and raped her repeatedly before taking her to his Tweed, Ontario, cottage and strangling her.
During the more than 24 hours that he kept Lloyd confined, Williams took more than 900 lurid photographs of her.
At one point, she asked to be taken to a hospital for a seizure. "If I die, tell my mom I love her," she said. In an audio recording of the crime Williams is heard whispering back: "Hang in there baby".
Williams sat quietly in the courtroom for the second day of his proceedings but several observers fled in tears as the gruesome evidence in the two murders was presented.
Police arrested Williams in February for the disappearance and death of 27-year-old Lloyd, last heard from the previous month.
He was caught when his vehicle's tyre treads were matched at a police roadside checkpoint to tracks at the crime scene.
Williams was later charged with the November 2009 murder of Comeau, who was under his command at the Trenton military base, as well as in two home invasions in which women were confined and sexually assaulted, and 82 counts of break-and-enter and attempted break-and-enter in Ottawa, Belleville and Tweed.
A stash of women's undergarments taken by police from Williams's Ottawa residence was linked to the burglaries near his home and job.
After killing Lloyd, Williams hid her body in his garage and went to work, flying troops to California for military exercises.
He would later direct police to her body in a nearby wooded area.
Williams had only met Comeau once prior to her death. She was working as a flight attendant on a military flight. But as her boss, he knew her schedule and that she lived alone.
Days before he killed her, he broke into her home and snapped 18 photographs of himself in her underwear and standing next to her pressed air force uniform.
On the night of November 23, 2009, he left his office at the Trenton military base, parked his car outside her home, and listened in the dark to her telephone conversation using a sensitive sound-detecting device.
Williams then broke in through a basement window and attacked her. They struggled. He beat her nearly unconscious with a flashlight, tied her up and covered all of the windows in the house.
She pleaded with him: "I don't want to die. Leave me alone. I don't want to die".
Afterwards, Williams washed her bed sheets and drove directly to Ottawa for a meeting with military brass.
He would later send a signed letter of condolence on behalf of the Canadian Forces to Comeau's father, a 45-year veteran of the military.
Williams commanded Canada's busiest air force base, the 437 Squadron in Trenton, east of Toronto, for more than a year prior to his arrest. Previously he was in charge of Canada's secretive Camp Mirage in Dubai.
This week, he pleaded guilty to his crimes after co-operating with police in their investigation. An agreed statement of facts read out in the Ontario Superior Court traced the escalation of his offences starting in September 2007.
He faces life in prison, with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years.
Cross-dressing Colonel video-taped murders
A Canadian air force colonel with a sexual fetish for female underwear has admitted to 86 lurid sex crimes, including murder
Colonel Russell Williams, 47, a married pilot, photographed and videotaped his four-and-a-half-hour sexual assault of a corporal under his command, Corporal Marie-France Comeau, the prosecutor said.
Bruised, bloodied and limp, Comeau used her last breath to beg for her life, according to an audiotape played in court.
"Have a heart. I've been good all my life. I don't want to die," she pleaded.
"Shut up," Williams responded, before he taped her nostrils and her mouth closed and watched her suffocate.
He was formally convicted of this and another murder, as well as two other sexual assaults and 82 burglaries on Tuesday.
Williams did not know his second murder victim, Jessica Lloyd, whom he also videotaped.
The court heard that he spotted her through a window running on a treadmill and later broke into her home, tied her up, cut off her clothes and raped her repeatedly before taking her to his Tweed, Ontario, cottage and strangling her.
During the more than 24 hours that he kept Lloyd confined, Williams took more than 900 lurid photographs of her.
At one point, she asked to be taken to a hospital for a seizure. "If I die, tell my mom I love her," she said. In an audio recording of the crime Williams is heard whispering back: "Hang in there baby".
Williams sat quietly in the courtroom for the second day of his proceedings but several observers fled in tears as the gruesome evidence in the two murders was presented.
Police arrested Williams in February for the disappearance and death of 27-year-old Lloyd, last heard from the previous month.
He was caught when his vehicle's tyre treads were matched at a police roadside checkpoint to tracks at the crime scene.
Williams was later charged with the November 2009 murder of Comeau, who was under his command at the Trenton military base, as well as in two home invasions in which women were confined and sexually assaulted, and 82 counts of break-and-enter and attempted break-and-enter in Ottawa, Belleville and Tweed.
A stash of women's undergarments taken by police from Williams's Ottawa residence was linked to the burglaries near his home and job.
After killing Lloyd, Williams hid her body in his garage and went to work, flying troops to California for military exercises.
He would later direct police to her body in a nearby wooded area.
Williams had only met Comeau once prior to her death. She was working as a flight attendant on a military flight. But as her boss, he knew her schedule and that she lived alone.
Days before he killed her, he broke into her home and snapped 18 photographs of himself in her underwear and standing next to her pressed air force uniform.
On the night of November 23, 2009, he left his office at the Trenton military base, parked his car outside her home, and listened in the dark to her telephone conversation using a sensitive sound-detecting device.
Williams then broke in through a basement window and attacked her. They struggled. He beat her nearly unconscious with a flashlight, tied her up and covered all of the windows in the house.
She pleaded with him: "I don't want to die. Leave me alone. I don't want to die".
Afterwards, Williams washed her bed sheets and drove directly to Ottawa for a meeting with military brass.
He would later send a signed letter of condolence on behalf of the Canadian Forces to Comeau's father, a 45-year veteran of the military.
Williams commanded Canada's busiest air force base, the 437 Squadron in Trenton, east of Toronto, for more than a year prior to his arrest. Previously he was in charge of Canada's secretive Camp Mirage in Dubai.
This week, he pleaded guilty to his crimes after co-operating with police in their investigation. An agreed statement of facts read out in the Ontario Superior Court traced the escalation of his offences starting in September 2007.
He faces life in prison, with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years.
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