OTTAWA – As police began searching the Ottawa home of a high-ranking air force officer charged with first-degree murder, concern was being raised that the charges against Col. Russell Williams could provoke a backlash against the military.
In the town of Trenton, Ont., where Williams commanded Canada’s busiest air force base, there was talk Thursday of soldiers being harassed and spat upon by angry townsfolk.
At the aptly titled Rumours bar, a military hangout, owner and former military pilot Pierre Bouchard said he’s heard of soldiers being yelled at or spit on in public.
While he, like most others in and around Trenton said he was shocked and dismayed by the allegations against Williams, Bouchard said he hoped it wouldn’t affect military morale.
"This town survives because of the base," said Bouchard. "I hate to see people become ashamed of their uniform."
Williams, 46, is charged with in the deaths of Belleville, Ont., resident Jessica Lloyd, 27, and Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, 37, who was posted to Canadian Forces Base Trenton. He is also charged with the forcible confinement and sexual assault of two other women in nearby Tweed, Ont., where he has a cottage. The victims in the latter two cases were bound naked to chairs and photographed by their attacker.
A dozen forensic officers with the Ontario Provincial Police arrived just after noon Thursday at the three-storey Ottawa home where Williams lives with his wife, Mary Elizabeth Harriman.
The detectives covered all the windows at the front of the house and filed inside through the garage, carrying hard-yellow cases, black brief cases, file folders and flattened boxes. They were looking for digital storage devices, video and camera gear, computer equipment, pornographic images and DNA in their investigation of the murders and sexual assaults.
Meanwhile, Williams, who is being held at the Quinte Detention Centre, near Napanee in eastern Ontario, spoke with the prison chaplain Thursday, an official said, but the chaplain declined a chance to speak to a reporter.
"He’s not interested in an interview," said Larry Shorts, the deputy superintendent of the barbed-wire complex.
The remand centre houses a wide range of offenders, in minimum-security dorms to maximum-security cells shared by two or three inmates.
Williams graduated with a degree in economics and political science from the University of Toronto in 1987, and in the early 1980s attended Upper Canada College, the sprawling private Toronto boys school whose graduates include Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, Loblaw executive chairman Galen Weston, billionaire David Thomson and author Robertson Davies.
At the time he was known as Russ Sovka. Cristina Coraggio, a spokeswoman for the college, said the school only realized that Sovka was Williams late Wednesday.
"We’re shocked by the allegations, but keep in mind it was 28 years ago," she said.
Williams went to the school from 1980-82. He boarded there and was a prefect, whose job was to mentor younger boys.
"From what I understand, he was a fine, upstanding student. He kept a lower profile. He was a very good musician," Coraggio said.
Williams played trumpet, and his interest in music was obvious from his entry in the 1982 College Times: a quote by Louis Armstrong – "If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know." He also wrote: "Thank you all to those who made these two years possible, enjoyable."
The current vice-principal of the school, Innes van Nostrand, said "most people from our time at the school would remember him as a diligent, responsible, serious hard-working guy who was really good at the trumpet as well."
Van Nostrand who also graduated in 1982, but did not board at the school, said "the stories and the allegations in general have been pretty shocking for everyone in the broader community, and I think any time anyone would find a situation where someone they went to school with was being implicated, and with those kinds of allegations, the shock is compounded, and certainly that would be the case for the people who were at school here at that time."
Little is known of Williams’ personal life. He has been alternately described as pleasant, professional, standoffish, quiet and, in one case, brilliant, by acquaintances
Lawrence Ramsey, owner of the Tweedsmuir Bar and Grill, where Lloyd would frequently watch live country music bands, summed it up late Wednesday night when he said: "I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never seen the guy."
Authorities were mum on Williams’ incarceration.
"We don’t discuss any information about the conditions of his custody," said Stuart McGetrick, spokesman for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services.
But former Quinte inmates warned Williams faces a rough time.
"Somebody’s going to pound him," said one. "You don’t want to say anything to the guards, or they’ll pound you even harder."
Another said Williams would most likely be placed in protective custody.
Across the country, police forces are looking to their cold cases for similarities to the murders of the two Ontario women.
In Halifax, police said there is no evidence to suggest any connection with their cold cases.
"That is exactly correct," said Halifax Regional Police Const. Brian Palmeter.
Palmeter told Canwest News Service his force received a number of calls asking whether there was any connection with any cold cases in the area because Williams had served at CFB Shearwater, near Halifax. But Palmeter said the Halifax and Ontario officers have not discussed any evidence in the specific cases.
"We reached out and contacted the investigators from the OPP. That was specifically as a result of various calls we were receiving from various media outlets across Canada after the story broke out of Trenton. That’s why we called them. Our investigators reached out and contacted those investigators and had a very brief conversation."
Palmeter said three cold cases in Halifax involved the deaths of young women, including one in January 1992 and another in late November 1994. But Palmeter said there is no evidence Williams was even in the area during those times
"We were getting a lot of calls trying to connect him to these files and I said we had no information. We don’t even know that this guy was here when these happened."
Media inquiries about unsolved homicides have been made in other cities where Williams was also stationed with the Canadian Forces, including Ontario and Manitoba.
Williams has not been ruled out as a suspect in the unsolved 2001 death at CFB Trenton of Kathleen MacVicar, 19.
Ontario Provincial Police said the focus of their investigation is on the current cases before the courts involving Williams as a suspect. They have not yet begun any detailed investigations on cold cases, said Sgt. Kristine Rae.
And Toronto cold-case investigators are probing whether Williams may be connected to two unsolved murders, according to one of the murder victims’ brothers. In 1983, Erin Gilmour and Susan Tice, were sexually assaulted and murdered within four months of each another in downtown Toronto. DNA evidence revealed that both women had been killed by the same man.
Gilmour’s brother, Sean McCowan, told Global News he called Det.-Sgt. Steve Ryan of the Toronto Police Cold Case Squad on Tuesday. "(Ryan) just mentioned that the colonel is a person of interest and they’re going to take a look at it," McCowan said.
Ottawa police are also probing unsolved cases, including the violent 2007 sexual assault of a Carleton University student.
"We’re pulling cases right now, but don’t have enough info from OPP," said Ottawa police Chief Vern White. "We’re examining our cases from the modus operandi."
Comeau had been working as a flight attendant based at CFB Trenton for six months when she was killed.
Her body was found in her home in Brighton, Ont., a small town about 15 kilometres west of Trenton, on Nov. 25.
Lloyd went missing Jan. 28, after texting a friend that she’d arrived safe at her Belleville home.
Police found her body after arresting Williams.
An autopsy on Lloyd’s body was completed Wednesday, but police would not release the cause of death.
Police said it was a roadside canvass on a nearby highway that made Williams a person of interest in the case. Reports suggest the special type of tire treads on Williams’ vehicle tipped off police to his possible involvement in the murders.
Rae would not comment on the treads nor whether Williams confessed to police.
"I can’t speak about anything evidentiary," said Rae.
Williams’ next court appearance is set for Feb. 18 in Belleville.
With files from Linda Nguyen and Mike Barber
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