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Depraved colonel stuns Canada in sex killings

Col Williams in drag;

Col Williams standing to attention

Marie-France Comeau

Jessica Lloyd

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He had reached the rank of colonel in Canada's armed forces, received numerous military honours, commanded the Canadian Air Force base in Trenton, Ontario and flown Queen Elizabeth on a visit to his homeland in 2005. But underneath his pristine military uniform Russell Williams wore lingerie he had stolen, and dreamt of torturing and murdering women.

In November 2009, and again in January this year, he brought his fantasies to fruition with the savage sex killings of Corporal Marie-France Comeau (37), a military flight attendant he worked with and then Jessica Lloyd (28), a woman who lived near the weekend cottage he shared with his wife in Tweed, Ottawa.

This weekend, Williams (47) was beginning two life sentences for murder, two ten year sentences for sexual assault and 82 one-year sentences for burglaries of women's homes where he took lingerie that he wore and stored in colour coded closet drawers. He also photographed himself in the womens' underwear.

In a court case that has shocked Canada, details emerged of how Williams logged his progression from break-ins to sexual assaults and finally to murder. He pleaded guilty to all charges after a 10-hour confession to police. He has no previous convictions and apparently only began his fetish burglaries in 2007, at the age of 44.

He was caught by chance in February this year in a police roadblock when the tyres of his Nissan Pathfinder vehicle matched tyre marks found near the home from which Jessica Lloyd was abducted. He was an unlikely suspect and he stunned police when he made a confession to the crimes.

In it he calmly recounted gruesome details of how he broke into Lloyd's home, abducted, sexually assaulted and strangled her after hitting her over the head with a torch. He brought her to his home where he videotaped himself raping her and her pleading for mercy.

In shocking video evidence at one point, she begged him: "If I die, will you make sure my mom knows that I love her?" He tortured her for at least a day before killing her and dumping her body in a field.

Williams, who expressed concern for his wife during police interviews but no remorse, also chronicled how he hit Comeau over the head with the same flashlight and suffocated her. He admitted that he deliberately hunted down the women, who both lived alone. He stole underwear from girls as young as nine in 82 fetish burglaries and took thousands of pictures of his crimes and of himself masturbating.

In the case of Comeau, who Williams had flown with from the Ontario air base he commanded, he recounted how he hid in the basement of her home and attacked her when she came down to find her cat. He then videotaped his rape and murder of her. "She was on the bed. I raped her over a period of time," he told police. "As I described, I suffocated her using duct tape."

In a statement to court in Belleville, Ontario last Thursday, Williams offered no explanation for his actions but said: "I shall spend the rest of my life regretting, above all, that I've ended two vibrant, innocent and cherished lives. My very sincere hope is that my detailed confession on the night of 7 February, my full co-operation with investigators since, and ultimately my guilty pleas earlier this week have, in some way, served to temper the very serious harm I caused my victims, and their families and friends."