A New Kind of Monster (14 page)

After Williams was arrested, many former neighbors would say that the colonel's relationship with Harriman had seemed stiff and formal, a marriage of convenience perhaps. But possibly this particular husband and wife put Williams and Harriman at ease, because the wife later spoke of a couple who seemed genuinely devoted to each other, and sometimes could be seen strolling, holding hands. And if the parents liked Williams, so did their teenage son and younger daughter. Williams sometimes took the children tubing, pulling them around Stoco Lake in his outboard-powered boat. The boy had an interest in guitar, which Williams encouraged, and in the summer of 2009 the daughter
would be given a key to Williams and Harriman's cottage so she could look after the couple's new cat, Rosebud.

Now, in September 2007, at the age of twelve, the girl became the first target of the family's trusted friend.

Williams broke into the family's home twice, and possibly three times, that month, always while they were away. And like virtually everyone else in Tweed whose homes he invaded over the next two years, they never noticed anything missing and had no idea they had been robbed. Not until several weeks after Williams was arrested in February 2010 did they learn to their horror what their neighbor had been doing.

That first break-in took place in the late hours of September 8 and early hours of September 9, a Saturday/Sunday. Twenty-five time-stamped photographs Williams took and stored on his computer hard drive in Ottawa show that after entering the family's house through an unlocked door, he was there for more than two and a half hours, all of that time spent in the girl's bedroom. While he was there, he established a pattern that he would often replicate during his scores of subsequent break-ins in Tweed and Ottawa: he rooted through the girl's underwear drawer, stripped naked and posed for his carefully positioned camera, draping her clothing around his erect penis and ejaculating on it. On leaving this, his first victim's house, he took with him six pieces of underwear.

He came back three weeks later, either once or twice, again arriving late at night. The first twenty photos—all similar to the ones he took the first time—were made before and after midnight on September 28. Then, shortly after eight o'clock the next morning, he took twenty-two more, suggesting he either returned or had spent the night in the girl's bedroom. Many more pictures were taken that day, both inside the girl's bedroom and outside in some nearby woodland, where Williams photographed himself naked wearing her underwear.

The template was set, and in several ways these first two (or three) break-ins are illustrative. They took place on weekends under cover of darkness while the homeowners were away, a modus operandi over the next two years that goes some way toward explaining how he was able to lead his double life. In all, Williams ultimately pleaded guilty to 82 burglaries, encompassing many return trips to the same houses, plus two sexual assaults and two murders, these last four also starting as break-ins. (Two counts of forcible confinement raised the total number of charges to 88.) Of those 86 intrusions in Tweed, Ottawa, Belleville and Brighton, more than half took place on a Saturday or a Friday—28 and 18 respectively—and a further 18 occurred on a Thursday. Seven were on a Tuesday, 7 others on a Wednesday, 5 on a Sunday and just 3 on a Monday.

Eight months later, in May 2008, Williams returned and broke into those same neighbors' house yet again.

Williams entered the dozens of homes he robbed by the path of least resistance. Often he walked through unlocked doors, especially in Tweed, where serious crime was almost unknown. Sometimes he forced a window sash or a screen, usually at the back of the house. If he had to, he could usually—not always—pick the lock, a skill that dated back to his university days. And he did his homework ahead of time, too, often scouting out targets while he was jogging. In and around Cosy Cove Lane, which is a long walk from the center of the village, with no bus service, an empty driveway was a giveaway.

And this first clutch of burglaries also sheds light on Williams's obsessive sexual interests, which drove his law-breaking from beginning to end, and which in large part focused on victims who were young. He told police that the preferred age of the women he targeted after doing his reconnaissance was late teens to early thirties. But of the 48 different homes he invaded, in 13 instances
females aged under eighteen were either his sole or the joint target. And child pornography would be found on his computer.

Although he many times posed for himself cross-dressing in women's stolen underwear, he seems to have displayed no sexual interest whatever in boys or young men. The wearing of the underwear, often while he masturbated, looks to be an extension of his need to invade his victims' privacy in the most intimate way. His huge collection of photos included not only the pornographic ones, by far the majority, but also a much smaller number of shots—usually photos of photos hanging on bedroom walls—showing the victim in ordinary, everyday poses, as if the intruder wanted to have a trophy of that too, perhaps to enhance his pleasure when he got home.

In the case of this first break-in, he photographed a news clipping showing the twelve-year-old at a Tweed Legion function, together with two classmates, holding what appears to be a certificate or plaque. Capturing innocent images of his unsuspecting victims, especially if they were young, was a hallmark of Williams's perversity. After he later began expanding his raids to target houses near his home in Ottawa, he photographed himself masturbating in the bedroom of a girl aged about eleven, for instance, with her underwear spread out on her bed. But he also snapped four framed photos that he found in the house, showing three different young girls, none of whom appeared to be over the age of twelve. In another break-in, he photographed a young woman's university degree hanging on her bedroom wall.

The fact that Williams returned at least twice to that first house on Cosy Cove Lane also underscores the repetitive nature of his obsession. He hit numerous houses two or three times, and one, also near Cosy Cove Lane, he burgled on nine different occasions. There too, the homeowners knew nothing about it until he was arrested.

His total haul almost defies belief. In all, he admitted to stealing and cataloging around 1,400 pieces of clothing, nearly all of it women's lingerie, and in one raid alone he took 186 items. Some of his loot he destroyed, when the collection became too large to manage, but hundreds more pieces—barely hidden—were found at his Ottawa townhouse and Tweed cottage when they were searched by police. And along with the underwear were many of the thousands of photos he took, artfully concealed inside folders and subfolders within his computer system, together with a near-complete log of all his admitted crimes, recording the dates, the places, the nature of the offense and other details.

After his first repeat trip to his neighbors' home on Cosy Cove Lane, Williams waited a few weeks before striking again. Once more it was on a weekend in Tweed, close to his home, and once more he broke into the same residence twice, stealing thirteen undergarments and a bathing suit. But this pair of early burglaries stands out from the others.

The burglary at the second house is the only known time that Williams came close to being caught in the act, inside someone's house. The home belonged to a couple with twin eleven-year-old daughters, and nobody was home at the time, as the family was attending an evening after-dark barbecue at a neighbor's house. But when the parents briefly returned to pick up a couple of items, they noticed a tall intruder inside, wearing a hoodie, shorts and running shoes. He ran into the woods and they chased him, without result. They noticed nothing missing, and only reported the burglary ten days later when they heard of another break-in, which proved to be unrelated.

That house belonged to the adult daughter of Williams's Cosy Cove Lane neighbor Larry Jones. Two years later, as we have
seen, Jones would become a suspect in the two sex assaults Williams went on to commit. This abortive break-in, however, which Williams would later describe to police as “a close call,” appears to have had no bearing on Jones's future troubles, and looks to have been no more than coincidence, one in a rash of burglaries Williams carried out in the immediate area.

As with the multiple break-ins he would later commit in Ottawa, the proximity to his own home provided Williams with an excellent fallback card in the event he was spotted on or near someone's property. He would simply have been able to say: “I was passing by and saw something suspicious, so I thought I should check.” And who would have doubted him? He was, after all, the colonel in charge of the most important air base in Canada. As Jones put it, with regard to the break-in at his daughter's house: “If I would have seen Russ Williams walking on the trail back there [near the house], I'd have said, ‘Russ, did you see a kid running through here?' ”

Perhaps the close call gave Williams a fright, because after committing one more break-in on November 1, he abruptly ceased for more than four months before resuming on March 15, 2008, the longest gap in his two and a half years of home invasions. When he did start again, the pattern was the same. All ten of the first Tweed burglaries occurred within a short walk of Williams's cottage, and all showed the same grotesque behavior: intrusions into homes while the owners were out, protracted masturbation sessions where he cavorted and posed for the camera with his underwear trophies, and then the theft of those items, often a dozen or more stuffed into bags he had brought with him, before he slunk off into the night. Almost all the first Tweed burglaries took place around the weekend; during the week, while he
continued to work at DAR, he lived at his home on Wilkie Drive in the Orleans area of Ottawa.

Then, in May 2008, eight months after the first break-in in Tweed, his focus abruptly widened. The predator grew bolder, and began targeting houses in Orleans. As with almost all the Tweed burglaries, they were close to his own home, and once again he used his regular jogging routine for reconnaissance missions.

But the Orleans neighborhood of Fallingbrook where Wilkie Drive is located is an urban subdivision of neat, curving streets, in contrast to the houses on and around rural Cosy Cove Lane in Tweed, which typically could be approached from several sides. Most of the 34 thefts and attempted thefts in Orleans, involving 25 different homes, required Williams to make his approach from the front of the house, walking up the side driveway and then usually gaining entry from the back; in only a couple of instances was he able to approach from the rear, through parkland. He was no less stealthy, because he was never caught in the act, although at least once he had to flee when he was spotted trying to force a window at a house on Apollo Way, close to his own home.

Another difference between the two locales where the break-ins were carried out is that the Orleans homeowners were much more rigorous about keeping their houses locked up, meaning that in a number of instances Williams had to force his way inside. As well, his quest for trophies was gathering pace and he started stealing more items, in one case raiding a house that was home to a mother and two daughters and grabbing every piece of underwear they owned. As a result of such wanton theft, almost two-thirds of the Orleans break-ins did get reported to Ottawa police. Of the 25 homes Williams raided in Orleans over the next fourteen months, about 15 of the owners filed a report, although often not right away. In many instances, however, the owners were unable to say whether anything had been stolen.

While the Ottawa police had no idea who might be responsible, it was plain that a prowler was on the loose, and in October 2008 an investigation was launched, deploying undercover cops who watched the street from unmarked cars and posed as residents out for a late night stroll.

Among the homes broken into in Orleans was that of retired couple Patty and Milt Mitchelmore, who live on Caminiti Crescent, a couple of blocks from Williams's home on Wilkie Drive. It was in August 2008, and they had just returned from their cottage when they noticed that a screen was missing from one of the dining room windows, and that there was dirt from the garden on the hardwood floor below the window. As well, a side door was unlocked, marking the burglar's departure.

The Mitchelmores looked through the house and found nothing missing (Williams had left empty-handed) but reported the incident to police anyway. “The police constable did a tour of the house inside, and then he found the screen hidden in some shrubs in the backyard,” Patty Mitchelmore says. “We have patio furniture on the deck in the backyard, and apparently one of the patio chairs had been put in the garden so the intruder could use it to get in, because the constable could see the markings of the four feet of the chair, though the chair had been returned to its place.”

Two years later, she could joke about the incident. “Maybe he didn't find anything he wanted.” She was, nonetheless, extremely unnerved when, a few weeks after Williams was arrested on charges of murder and sexual assault, she was told he had been in her home. “If we'd noticed anything missing, if I'd seen my underwear spread out on the bed, that would have had much more of an impact than seeing some dirt on a hardwood floor. So we were grateful, thinking that maybe we'd arrived home at just the right time.”

On the last day of October 2008, Ottawa police issued a warning urging the public to be vigilant, after two break-ins that month that they described as unusual. “It should be noted that the only items taken in the two Break & Enters were women's undergarments,” the statement read. “Due to the peculiar nature of these incidents, the Ottawa Police wishes to remind the public to be vigilant and ensure that they secure their home at all times.”

As part of their investigation, Ottawa police also revisited some older, possibly related cases, including a January 2005 double break-in at a high-rise building on the west side of Ottawa, where dozens of women's undergarments were stolen by someone described as a tall, clean-cut man in his thirties. No connection to Williams was ever established with that or any other break-ins beyond his tightly circumscribed comfort zone of Fallingbrook.