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Russell Williams charged in 2 x murders, confinement, sexual assault.

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What does happen to ones property when they are sentence to such a long sentence?

Edit: I forgot he is married. I guess the property will go to her, not that she would want to live their.
 
krustyrl said:
Seen on CTVNewsnet the locals on Cosy Cove Lane in Tweed would like to see his house torn down to close their chapter.  Not sure how THAT would work.?

Probably the same way it worked when they tore down Bernardo's house in St Chatherines.
 
Oh No a Canadian said:
What does happen to ones property when they are sentence to such a long sentence?

Edit: I forgot he is married. I guess the property will go to her, not that she would want to live their.

Actually, they had some sort of legal agreement to split their property and other assets while in jail; I suspect she has renounced all claims to the Tweed house, and he all claims to the Ottawa house.
 
No answers forthcoming for families of William's victims
Adrian Humphreys, National Post · Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/answers+forthcoming+families+William+victims/3708353/story.html

Belleville, Ont. • Colonel Russell Williams left court under the scrutiny of an Ontario Provincial Police tactical squad yesterday afternoon for the 82-kilometre drive to Kingston Penitentiary, where he will not only settle into a protected cell to serve his life sentence but also take his place as “one of the worst offenders in Canadian history.”

The dramatic end to one of the most perplexing and troubling criminal cases — in which a decorated and respected military officer commanding Canada’s largest air force base transformed himself into a degenerate killer and sexual predator — came in profound words that explained why the case has left a mark but offered no answer as to how it could have happened.

“Because of Russell Williams we are a community where women now feel unsafe in their homes and where their spouses, their families and friends feel unsafe at leaving them alone. One might think the capture of the perpetrator might start to alleviate that fear, but for many people it has not,” said Crown Attorney Lee Burgess in the prosecution’s closing address.

“Rather, many people look at what this man’s station and stature was in society and ask: ‘How can I ever feel safe in my home?’ ”

There was no doubt about the sentence Williams, 47, would receive — his guilty plea to two first-degree murders required a life sentence without chance of parole for 25 years — but what answers and explanations might be offered was the haunting question for all lining up for yesterday’s highly anticipated appearance.

And while some of Williams’ many victims were grateful to see him humiliated, vilified and punished, they left court without satisfaction, even after a dramatic statement delivered by Williams himself, who stood and sobbed his way through a message that lasted precisely four minutes, his first since his shocking double life was revealed.

“I stand before you, Your Honour, indescribably ashamed,” he began.

Williams then acknowledged the pain his crimes have caused, mentioning by name four women: Marie-France Comeau, 37, and Jessica Lloyd, 27, whom he raped, tortured and murdered; and two women he forcibly confined and sexually assaulted.

“The understandable hatred that was expressed yesterday and that has been palpable throughout the week has me recognize that most will find it impossible to accept, but the fact is, I very deeply regret what I have done and the harm I know I have caused to many.

“I have committed despicable crimes, Your Honour, and in the process betraying my family, my friends and colleagues and the Canadian Forces.”

The theme of betrayal, as well as brutality, resonated throughout a moving submission from Mr. Burgess that was, uncharacteristically for Canadian courts, greeted by rousing applause.

“What makes it more despicable is this was a man who was above reproach. That a man with this nature could commit such monstrosities really makes you feel that the world is no longer a safe place, no matter where you are,” he said.

“In addition to the fear he instilled, he transformed this community because he betrayed this community, and he betrayed the military and he betrayed the men and women who honourably serve the military.

“The armed forces appointed him a colonel and the head of the country’s largest air force base. He would be seen as a leader on that base and in this community.

“He exploited that to help divert suspicion from himself and, no doubt, he laughed at us as he lived the life of great community leader by day and that of a serial criminal by night.”

Court heard how Williams photographed his sexual assault of a woman on Sept. 17, 2009, invaded another home on Sept. 18 in one of his 84 fetish burglaries in which women’s and girls’ underwear were befouled and stolen, and then, on Sept. 19, dropped the ceremonial face-off puck at a Belleville, Ont., hockey game.

Court heard how he had beaten, raped and murdered Ms. Comeau, a corporal stationed at CFB Trenton, on Sept. 24, 2009, and a few weeks later, was cheered through town as he carried the Olympic Torch on behalf of the men and women stationed at the base.

Court heard how he had attended the swearing-in ceremony of the city’s deputy chief of police, chatting with the senior police command and other dignitaries on Jan. 5, already a killer and predator, and then, just 24 days later, kidnapped, raped and murdered Ms. Lloyd.

“That the victims suffered trauma at the hands of Mr. Williams is an understatement,” said Mr. Burgess.

“They were violated not only by this man’s hands but by his lens. Their lives were ended for no more reason than the sexual gratification of this man.

“Russell Williams is simply one of the worst offenders, ever, in Canadian history. He is one of the handful of despicable, heinous, self-centred individuals who terrorized and traumatized victims and killed some of his victims without a shred of remorse.”

Even Williams’ defence lawyer, Michael Edelson, could find little good to say about his client.

“As defence counsel for Mr. Williams, we acknowledge that the Crown’s presentation of the evidence against him with its graphic descriptions, disturbing photographs and chilling narratives of his sinister crimes has left a deep and indelible mark on everyone associated with this case,” he told Justice Robert Scott.

When passing judgment on Williams, Judge Scott was also left with the mystery of how the elite pilot who had flown the Queen, Prime Minister and other dignitaries during their official travels could suddenly embark on such a dark path.

“The depths of the depravity demonstrated by Russell Williams have no equal,” the judge said.

“One suspects that he has contained for most of his adult life sexual desires and fetishes. However, in 2007, these inner thoughts began to control his private actions, pushing him deeper and deeper into criminal behaviour, which culminated in the brutal and senseless murders of two innocents.

“Russell Williams lived a charmed life — the best of education, a leader of men and women, a respected rising star in our beloved armed forces. His double life fooled most people.

“Russell Williams’ fall from grace has been swift and sure.”

Outside court, a large contingent of Ms. Lloyd’s family and friends, some of whom had made emotional victim impact statements in court on Wednesday, were as satisfied as could be in such circumstances.

“As long as he dies in jail, I’m happy,” said Andy Lloyd, Ms. Lloyd’s brother. “This is the best thing that’s happened to our family since this stuff has happened…. We just want to be normal again.”

At CFB Trenton yesterday, the base where Williams once commanded 3,000 men and women, it was announced that he will face a military court martial to strip him of his rank and his decorations and force him to pay back salary he has continued to collect since his arrest on Feb. 7.

It will strip him of the four yellow stripes on the cuffs of the blue air force uniform he was so often pictured in during his ceremonial duties.

The image of the crisp uniform and smart salutes Williams once embraced has been replaced by the haunting and preposterous photographs released in court, self-portraits he took of himself masturbating in little girls’ underwear and women’s lacy bras.

“I shall spend the rest of my life regretting above all that I have ended two vibrant, innocent and cherished lives,” he told Judge Scott.
 
Killer colonel in isolation unit at jail
By ROB TRIPP, QMI Agency
21 Oct 2010
http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/canada/2010/10/21/15784131.html
KINGSTON, Ont. - Killer Russell Williams was moved Thursday into a segregation cell equipped with a camera in an isolation unit inside Kingston Penitentiary.

QMI Agency has learned that the former Trenton airbase commander was placed in a cell in what is known as the prison's dissociation unit, a segregation facility usually reserved for convicts who are being punished or who have been involved in prison violence.

Williams is being watched closely for signs of suicidal behaviour, conduct that would not be considered unusual for a man who has just been sentenced to life behind bars, but also because Williams staged an elaborate suicide attempt while he was imprisoned at Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee awaiting the outcome of his legal case.

Williams is now a cellmate of another once-respected man in uniform turned killer, Richard Wills. Wills, a former Toronto police officer, was convicted in 2007 of murdering his mistress, a 40-year-old woman whose body was found sealed in a large plastic garbage container in the basement of Wills's home four months after she disappeared. Wills is also housed in the Kingston Pen dissociation unit.

Ensuring Williams's safety is now a priority job for the prison's managers, including new warden, Jay Pyke, who officially took charge of Canada's oldest penitentiary Monday in a ceremony held inside the limestone fortress on the shore of Lake Ontario.

Earlier this month, former warden Tom Epp told QMI Agency that Corrections Canada bosses would have developed a plan to ensure Williams' safety.

They are professionals, he said, who know that there is outrage over his crimes and a community thirst for retribution, as there has been with other notorious killers.

"The worst thing you can do I think in a prison is believe that somehow you're the agent of the punishment that's been meted out by the courts, or more importantly, you're the agent for the meting out of the punishment that the society wants you to mete out," Epp said.

He said he heard a familiar refrain while he was in charge of Kingston Pen, which then housed child sex killer Clifford Olson.

"There's people meeting me in the street and saying, 'Just put him on the yard for a few minutes and let nature take its course.'

"Well, nice visceral, sort of atavistic response to crime ... but of course I didn't have that mandate; I had the opposite mandate, keep him alive."

Epp said even the most vile offenders can circulate among some other prisoners in a place such as Kingston Pen, where there are many similar deviants.

While convicts who commit sex crimes are considered the lowest in the social pecking order in Canada's penitentiaries, they co-exist in some prisons where there are large numbers of them, like Kingston Pen and in medium-security Warkworth Institution in Campbellford.

Kingston Pen has been home to infamous sex slayer Paul Bernardo for 15 years. He is held in a super-secure segregation unit along with other notorious killers like Michael Briere, who raped and dismembered 10-year-old Holly Jones in Toronto in 2003. Bernardo does not have any contact with the other 400 convicts at Kingston Penitentiary. Whenever Bernardo leaves his isolated cellblock, all other movement in the prison is halted.

Depending on assessments by prison staff, Williams could end up in Bernardo's cellblock.

He'll be subject to psychological screening and assessments of his escape risk and the danger he might pose to others inside the prison, particularly female staff. Female correctional officers work in all sections of the 175-year-old prison.

Kingston Pen held a private, staff-only ceremony Thursday, to mark the prison's anniversary, on the same day that Williams arrived.

"I would like to extend my sincere congratulations to Kingston Penitentiary for reaching such a significant milestone," CSC commissioner Don Head said, in an internal message to prison staff this week.
 
Neighbours want Russell Williams' cottage torn down
The Canadian Press
21 Oct 2010
Several neighbours -- some whose homes were burglarized by Col. Russell Williams -- want the sex killer's cottage in Tweed, Ont., knocked to the ground just as Paul Bernardo's house of horrors was in Port Dalhousie, Ont.

The cottage is where Jessica Lloyd, 27, spent her last moments alive being raped and tortured by Williams.

The man who once flew the Governor General broke into Lloyd's Belleville, Ont., home in January, sexually attacking her before abducting her to his cottage where he kept her for a day as his sex slave before murdering her.

His next-door neighbour on eastern Ontario's Cosy Cove Lane, Monique Murdoch, is among those who think the cottage that Williams and his wife bought in 2004 should be razed.

The former commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton broke into Murdoch's home three times. The first time was in September 2007 in what was the first of the colonel's 82 fetish break-and-enters. .............

continues at link
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20101021/russell-williams-cottage-101021/
 
What about his wife? Me and my wife/ family were talking about this today. Is it possiable she didnt have a clue? If I was hiding harddrives and womens underwear all around my house, my wife would know. However I'm sure the police have looked into her role as well, it just doesnt make sense to me or my wife how he could get away with the erratic behaviour needed to "dissapear" and break into houses etc while in ottawa. And again the stuff hidden in the house.
 
old medic said:
Killer colonel in isolation unit at jail
By ROB TRIPP, QMI Agency
21 Oct 2010
http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/canada/2010/10/21/15784131.html

Other than the title (which the writer may not have had control over) it's nice to see an article that doesn't refer to him by rank.  Just killer. 
 
I am disappointed that the sentence was concurrent and not consecutive.  He should be doing one and then the other 25 yr stretch.  That would keep him out of it for 50.  I don't trust the system not to let him off his leash one day down the road.
 
Canada doesn't do consecutive terms.

Lets not forget he will be in his seventies if he gets out in 25 yrs. In all likelihood he'll be a broken and lost soul, bound to a wheelchair (if this joint pain thing is for real), hopefully unable to harm anyone else.
 
Let's be clear about a couple of things - he could apply for parole in 25 years but that does not mean he gets out.  He would have to show substantial remorse and rehabilitation or society could change so significantly that his crimes are no longer seen as horrific.  It could happen...people like Carla Homolka walk free on the beach in the Carribean.

As for his pension I will wager that he, in the end, receives a return of contributions rather than a full pension.  IMHO, the precedent that this will set may have lead to undue hardhip for non-serial murdering scumbags.  We have to remember that which we wish for and are granted today, may come back to bite us in the future.  As for capital punishment, it has often been said that it is better to let 9 guilty men rot in prison cells than to execute 1 innocent man.

Some events on the Bernardo/Homolka Timeline to consider:

June 16, 2010
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said an agreement has been reached between all federal parties to pass a bill that would prevent notorious offenders like Karla Homolka from applying for a pardon.

June 25, 2008
Anthony Hanemaayer, convicted in connection with an attack more than 20 years previous, is acquitted by Ontario's top court. According to court documents, Bernardo admitted to Toronto police in 2006 that he carried out the knifepoint assault.

Dec. 17, 2007
Reports indicate that Homolka left Canada for the Caribbean with the man she remarried, Thierry Bordelais, and her young son. Tim Danson, a lawyer for the victims' families, says he'd be "delighted" if Homolka was gone for good because "she's dangerous."

Nov. 30, 2005
A Montreal judge overturns the 14 conditions imposed on Karla Homolka when she was released from prison on July 4, 2005. The restrictions were ordered under provisions of the Criminal Code after a judge ruled she still posed a risk to the community.

Tim Danson, the lawyer for the families of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, urges Quebec's attorney general to appeal the decision. He says his clients felt "like they were kicked in the stomach."


http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/16/f-bernardo-homolka-timeline.html

 
Simian Turner said:
Nov. 30, 2005
A Montreal judge overturns the 14 conditions imposed on Karla Homolka when she was released from prison on July 4, 2005. The restrictions were ordered under provisions of the Criminal Code after a judge ruled she still posed a risk to the community.
I suggest this is why some of us have no great faith that the system will keep Williams locked away forever.
 
dogger1936 said:
What about his wife? Me and my wife/ family were talking about this today. Is it possiable she didnt have a clue? If I was hiding harddrives and womens underwear all around my house, my wife would know. However I'm sure the police have looked into her role as well, it just doesnt make sense to me or my wife how he could get away with the erratic behaviour needed to "dissapear" and break into houses etc while in ottawa. And again the stuff hidden in the house.

How many spouses have conducted affairs without the other half knowing about it?? Heck, there have been cases where a spouse have been convicted of bigamy with two separate families without either family knowing about the other?

Have you ever told your wife, "Honey, I'm going out with the boys. I'll be back at 10." Or, "I'll be in the workshop for a couple of hours." Does your wife come and check on what you are doing?? Or your wife says, "Honey, I'm going to a Tupperware party. Back in three hours." Do you go and check to see if she actually went to the party or was actually there for three hours?

 
Simian Turner said:
Let's be clear about a couple of things - he could apply for parole in 25 years but that does not mean he gets out.  He would have to show substantial remorse and rehabilitation or society could change so significantly that his crimes are no longer seen as horrific.  It could happen...people like Carla Homolka walk free on the beach in the Carribean.

That's what all the BS crocodile tears and ingenuous statement in court were about.  He's already laying the ground work to be a candidate for early parole.  When the time comes, and it will, the public may bray and howl.  But the bottom line is, if he meets the criteria HE WILL BE OUT.  Anyone doubt that he will stay in shape and be perfectly viable in his 70's?  I don't see "broken" in his future, and he doesn't appear to have a soul to lose. 

http://www.whatsonxiamen.com/news8985.html
100-yr-old paedophile, Theodore Sypnier freed from New York jail, 'still a threat' 
A 100-year-old convicted child sex offender recently released from prison in upstate New York said he had no intention of following the rules of society, according to local news station WIVB.
Theodore Sypnier is currently in a halfway house and will soon be allowed to live on his own, but many are concerned that the elderly convict remains an active threat to children in the community.
Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita said: "I want him away from society as long as possible. It doesn't matter to me that he's 100 years old. He's evil. He's a paedophile. Paedophiles are the worst."
One district attorney said "paedophiles are vampires, they never stop until you drive a stake through their hearts", while Mr Sedita wanted to see Sypnier spend the rest of his time in prison.
Sypnier was charged in 1999 with raping and sodomising two sisters, aged four and seven at the time.  He pleaded guilty to the crimes in 2002, but the verdict was reversed on a technicality. He was later jailed on a lesser offence.
He is currently under post release supervision, a stricter version of parole, but will be free of all restrictions in 2012.
The minister in charge of the halfway house where Sypnier is staying said he would not leave him alone with children and that he seems "bent on not following the rules of society and authority".
Sypnier reportedly said: "I'm 100 and I'm not gonna change."

Serial sex offenders do not change.  If Williams gets out, he will change his name (again) and reoffend.  I bet Bernardo (Teal) is watching all this and thinking "WTF? This guy makes me look like amature hour?! Why am I stuck with dangerous offender?"
 
Journeyman said:
I suggest this is why some of us have no great faith that the system will keep Williams locked away forever.

Guys, this is NOT a system any more. It's an industry. Lawyers and those who build the jails, contracts for food etc are all making big bucks.

The Corrections staff are not.
 
zipperhead_cop said:
But the bottom line is, if he meets the criteria HE WILL BE OUT.
A friend of mine is a Corrections Officer in Kingston. She became a Parole Officer, but after about six months she went back to being a guard; she was "obligated to let the scumbags go, knowing they were going to re-offend," and she didn't want to live with that.

Great system  ::)
 
Journeyman said:
I suggest this is why some of us have no great faith that the system will keep Williams locked away forever.

Guys, this is NOT a system any more. It's an industry. Lawyers and those who build the jails, contracts for food etc are all making big bucks.

The Corrections staff are not.
 
Something that Corrections is going to have to come to terms with, and it will take some legislative backing, is that the concept of "punishment" has to be actually introduced back into the jail system.  Other than inconvenience and occasional boredom, there is nothing particularly negative about being in jail once you get the hang of it.  For non-criminals it seems bad, for the actual criminals... not so much. 
The carrot and the stick.  There are a gawd-aweful lot of bushels of carrots out there, and the stick is actually a McDonald's straw. 
 
Regarding the chances of R. Williams early release from confinement.
"Under the controversial faint hope clause of the Criminal Code, Williams would be able to apply for parole after 15 years.":
http://www2.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=3685863



Z-C, now that I am retired, I have lots of time to remember the old days, and nights. Here is one for example:
http://www.pao.ca/public_interface_1.php?ref=honour_roll&record_id=138

I wonder whatever happened to his killer? "confined indefinitely"? I guess it's confidential. He ( the killer ) was in his 20's at the time.

( This was back when they used the old flap style holsters. )


 
Simian Turner said:
Let's be clear about a couple of things - he could apply for parole in 25 years but that does not mean he gets out. 

No, it does not I agree.  However it does make the family have to revisit their loss each and every time he will have a hearing.  Why should they be  re-victimized?  If he had received a consecutive sentence this would not be an issue.  I realize Canada does not "do" consecutive, but perhaps it is time it does for multiple charges like this.

And he still could get out.  Do we really want him walking or rolling the streets?  Would you want him as a neighbour?  I sure as hell would not and I cannot think of anyone of sane mind that would.
 
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