As good pilots always do, Russell Williams stuck to a strict plan that Sunday afternoon: smile, don’t ask for a lawyer, and answer every last question (honestly or not, depending on the tactical benefit). In his mind, twisted as it is, he truly believed he could talk his way out of that tiny interrogation room.
When Det.-Sgt. Jim Smyth explained exactly what police were investigating—two home-invasion sexual assaults, the slaying of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, and the recent disappearance of Jessica Lloyd—Williams didn’t alter his strategy. He even agreed, without hesitation, to provide fingerprints, a DNA sample, and the brown leather boots on his feet. Anything to appear innocent.
Finally, after 2½ hours spent sitting across the same table, Smyth found the colonel’s weak spot: the gold wedding ring on his finger. “Another thing that can often happen in cases like this is that people become concerned about things like extramarital affairs,” he said. “Is there any contact you may have had with any of those four women that you may not want your wife to be aware of?”
For the first time, Williams looked insulted. He took a deep breath and shifted in his chair. “Absolutely not.”
He didn’t know it, but his wife of 18 years—Mary Elizabeth Harriman, a senior executive at the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada—was already staring at the truth: a team of officers inside her home, searching for signs of a serial predator. They arrived on Feb. 7, 2010 at 5:36 p.m., the exact moment Williams was scoffing at the notion he might be an unfaithful husband.
As the interview wore on, Williams would mention his wife again and again. When Smyth asked about the tires on his Nissan Pathfinder, he said “we” put them on because “our” dealership recommended them. When asked about his whereabouts on the night of Nov. 24, 2009 (Comeau was murdered early that morning), Williams recalled how he and Harriman dined at a restaurant in Ottawa’s Westboro district, where their new townhouse—the one now swarming with cops—was under construction. “I kissed my wife goodbye and headed back to Tweed,” he said.
The couple had been living a temporary commuter marriage, connecting mostly on weekends, since Williams took charge of CFB Trenton seven months earlier, in July 2009. He spent Monday to Friday at their Tweed, Ont., cottage, a 45-minute drive from the base, while she remained in Ottawa, 200 km away. Their cat, Rosebud, stayed with her.
As the clock approached 6 p.m., Smyth went for the jugular. He told his suspect the tires on his SUV matched a set of tracks left in the snow near Lloyd’s house. He then pulled out a sheet of paper depicting two footprints: one from Lloyd’s backyard, the other from the bottom of Williams’s boot. “These are identical,” Smyth said.
The commander of Canada’s largest and most important air force base stared at the paper, his brain spinning. When he finally did open his mouth—”Well, I don’t know what to say”—Smyth played the one card that would bring Williams to his knees. “Right now, there’s a search warrant being executed at your residence in Ottawa, okay. So your wife now knows what’s going on.”
