tonight on the Fifth Estate an unprecedented moment

in Canadian crime and justice as it took place it is seen by people who know what
happens in the mind of a killer

it started with the police interrogators version of small

talk

it and I'm quite sure at that point it's in

everybody's mind he's not walking out that door Free man for a while there was
denial

now what he's

doing is trying to figure out an explanation to give this guy because he knows me and I
am screwed I am so
screwed

it would come down to the two men in the room the commanding officer and the
detective

he was taught to be a
commander he was taught to be a leader he was taught to segment take the emotion
away put there but Colonel
Russell Williams was about to learn that he was no longer the one in charge

I'm sure he's looking at him

he knows he's just dropped the first ball this is the beginning of the end on this special
commercial-free edition
of the Fifth Estate inside the interrogation

we got you not pony up buddy now it's

time the man up on this thing quit acting like a little girl tell me what happened
[Music]
What happening here Russell?
call me russ
okay. what are we doing here Russ?

good evening I'm Bob

McEwan welcome to the fifth estate the picture is not high-def the camera angles are a
bit off the leading man
sometimes wanders off screen but what takes place in the interrogation and confession
is more gripping and real
than anything ever seen on CSI or Law & Order when he walks into that room
Colonel Russell Williams is commanding officer of CFB Trenton Canada's largest most
important airbase a top pilot who
prides himself on discipline and self-control ten hours later he's a confessed murderer
and sexual predator
how he goes from one to the other is a fascinating view of police tactics the
power of persuasion and sheer evil we haven't seen anything like it and we
think you likely haven't either.

the interrogation would take place here at

police headquarters in Ottawa and was Sunday February 7 2010 Russell Williams
was spending the weekend at the new home in Ottawa's West End that he and his wife
had recently moved into in the
early afternoon he got a phone call asking him to the police building to answer a few
questions he reportedly
said he'd be back for dinner we don't know what went through his mind as he drove
downtown but there certainly was a
lot for him to think about

it had been 10 days earlier January 28 that a 27 year old woman named Jessica
law had returned from an evening out to her house on highway 37 a 20-minute drive
from Russell Williams cottage in
tweed Ontario she sent a final text message to a friend before calling it a night
according to her brother Andy

it was said night night I believe it was it was just kind of saying that was it and
assumed she was on her way to bed because it was 10:30 and she had to work it you
know 8 o'clock in the morning
yeah so that was the last anybody heard from her

a few hours later about

3:00 a.m. two local men drove along that same stretch of highway 37 they noticed
an SUV parked in a field next to an isolated house they kept driving it
would be a while before they understood exactly what that scene
[Music] later that day Andy Lloyd got a phone
call from his mother his sister Jessica had never arrived at work and he went right to her
house

and that's what was

so weird is because everything was there you know it's why we couldn't figure out
what had happened because all of her identification and I mean her cellphone and her
purse and things people don't
leave home without were there

the whole town was looking for Jessica family

friends members of the public police forces even search and rescue from CFB
Trenton word spread across Ontario and that's when the men who'd seen the SUV
noticed emergency vehicles around a house on highway 37 it was Jessica
Lloyd's house the same one that was next to the field where the SUV had been parked
that's when the man went to the
police officers found tire tracks in the field and boot prints near the house

the Ontario provincial police set up roadblocks checking the tires of cars at highway 37
looking for a match on
Thursday February 4 one of those they stopped was Colonel Russell Williams driving
his SUV they checked his tires
then let him go unbeknownst to Williams he was under police surveillance from then on

at the
same time as the OPP was investigating the disappearance of Jessica Lloyd they had
three other unsolved cases in
the same vicinity a murder and two sexual assaults all had possible links to Colonel
Williams the assaults took
place in his tweed neighborhood the murder victim was marie-france coma a corporal at
CFB Trenton in fact a
military flight attendant who'd once flown with him but it's likely that investigators never
put it all together
until they stopped Williams at that roadblock and matched his SUVs tires to
the track found in the field
it is just before 3:00 p.m. on Sunday February 7th
when Russell Williams arrives at Ottawa Police Headquarters inside he's assured into
an interrogation room the OPP is
borrowed for the day it's sparsely furnished two chairs a desk nothing mounted on the
walls but two
digital cameras one pointed at the investigator Detective Sergeant Jim Smith the other
at Colonel Williams
veteran US homicide interrogator Paul Ciolino knows how it all works

everything is
controlled from the minute you bring him in that room okay the where you're sitting
where he sitting you never want
to put a desk between you and anybody okay never you never interview from across a
desk you always want to get close you start out kind of far but as the interrogation goes
on you move in closer
because you want that physical you want that intimate touch with somebody

but even mention of his top-secret clearance will have no effect

today before it's over this interview will be the most important conversation
Russell Williams will ever have it is
about 3 p.m. on February 7th when Colonel Russell Williams enters the police interview
room in Ottawa

whatever he's told himself about why

he's here today he appears relaxed about the invitation to answer questions he clearly
knows
it's about the disappearance of Jessica Lloyd

the interviewer is Detective Sergeant Jim Smith of the Ontario Provincial

Police he's been preparing for this moment for days
Marc Mendelsohn is a former Toronto homicide detective and the man who interrogated
Karla Homolka

the
investigator comes from the Behavioral Sciences unit of the OPP he's a trained
polygraph technician so he's obviously
an excellent interviewer to begin with but they sat down with their body of evidence and
with the psychiatrists from
the behavioral sciences unit sort of developing a profile of what Williams is
and what he's most likely to do when certain questions are put to him so that if he
answers a they follow this path of
the answers be they'll follow this path so there's no surprises they it was all laid out long
before he walked in that
room

Smith reminds Williams he's not under arrest and is free to go at any time

Marc Mendelsohn :he could have called him

Colonel Williams he could have called him sir anybody that and you'll notice during the
course of the interview he
never calls him colonel because what that does and I would have done I think any other
homicide wanted and the same
thing is it puts him on a different level in a different plateau he's got to be Russell from
tweed he's got to be the
guy that lives in tweed and you don't give him that respect and don't give him that power
of being called Colonel

Williams jokes that the only kind of lawyer he needs is for real estate transactions

once Smith has Williams in the right mindset the conversation returns to Jessica Lloyd

but Williams must know the questions will also touch on other recent crimes around
his lakefront cottage and cozy Cove Lane and tweed Ontario because he knows what
the police don't that beginning in 2007 when he was at the cottage usually alone
a multitude of crimes would follow dozens of bizarre break-ins women's
lingerie and underwear stolen almost all in his neighborhood and on his streets
including
two sexual assaults

notice he used the pronoun we

referring to his marriage and he reminds Smith he's cooperated with police

seems unlikely
that Russell Williams knew much if anything but the soft-spoken man sitting
opposite him Detective Sergeant Jim Smith is a veteran in the OPP Behavioral
Sciences unit which applies
such techniques as criminal profiling and forensic psychiatry to crime investigation it
was Smith acting on a
hunch who found the body of the missing eight-year-old Tori Stafford in Woodstock
Ontario a year ago there are
few better at interrogation as Colonel Williams was about to find out

having
set the scene with broad strokes Smith now gets to specifics like where Williams was
the day Jessica Lloyd never
made it to work

discussion turns to corporal

marie-france Gomel found murdered in her home three months before

in fact the 38 year old

como was an adventuresome military flight attendant at Trenton she'd recently been a
member of the crew
flying Prime Minister Stephen Harper on a state visit to the Far East her friend Alan plan
spoke with her when
she got back

three days later Maui France Como's body was discovered inside her house in
Brighton Ontario the cause of death was asphyxiation Colonel Williams tells detective
Smith
he learned about it from the military police
it's
unclear what thoughts go through Williams mind but he seems to be grasping for
something to say

Detective Sergeant Smith takes the bungled answer as an opportunity to set

out in another direction challenging Williams to prove he's innocent

Smith now gets to the point he needs more than words

from Williams

watch what
happens next at the mention of Footwear
Williams looks at his feet
he's wearing boots

detective Smith leaves the room to find

the necessary personnel

it's here that Russell Williams faces a crucial

juncture he can give Smith what he wants and risk the consequences or he can change
his mind and ask for a lawyer
blame it on hubris or being a good soldier but Williams doesn't flinch he provides his
fingerprints blood and DNA
and he lets them take prints of the boots he's wearing afterwards the
colonel is apprehensive about whom I learn about it

can I assume you're gonna be discreet

it's possible yeah because this would
have a very significant impact on the base if they thought you thought I did this well
bottom line Russell that's one
of the reasons we're here on a Sunday afternoon

see how his arms are folded up now this tells the interrogator he's in trouble
and he's nervous because when you fold your arms off your clothes and yourself up
psychologically okay and look at he's
looking down the whole time it's not making great eye contact and and the interrogators
when a great line
in there he goes well that's why we're here on a Sunday because we wanted to be
discreet that's ridiculous
okay because we they don't care about being discreet at this point they care about
getting on but that's a great comeback if you're an interrogator right
now you're thinking this is a guilty guy this guy is guilty and I'm gonna get
them

there's certainly one of the things I went into our decision to to give you a call at home
day and see if we could deal with this today so okay

it appears that even after giving police

all that evidence he still thinks he might somehow be able to walk away reputation intact
but the commanding
officer is not the one in charge here and his body language appears to show that he
knows it

notice the quick smile

I have mention of DNA left

behind at his crime scene when Smith asks about anything he may not want his wife to
know he shifts in his seat and
frequently sighs

is there any contact that you may have had with any of those
four women that you may not want your wife to be aware of anything like that
that we should know about to try and explain why if if your DNA is found that
the helped us understand why it may be there

methodically Smith
goes over at all one more time cementing Williams categorical denial

have you ever visited

marie-france komal at her residence no okay all right so you're quite positive
there'll be no reason why your DNA will be in use those three locations okay did you
know Jessica Lloyd even in
passing for any reason. no I didn't hurt hear her name so it was on the news
what
brought Colonel Russell Williams to the attention of the police in the first place was the
SUV spotted from highway
37 tonight Jessica Lloyd disappeared and the tire tracks police discovered in
the field when they stopped Williams in his SUV the tires were a match now detective
Smith reveals to Williams that he knows.

the colonel sees it coming

Smith gets Williams

to deny he'd ever parked the SUV with the Toyo tires in the field adjacent to
Jessica Lloyd's house

bad move okay what he sued us said was

impossible couldn't happen but see you could see what's happening here he's got
his arms folded and he's nodding his body language is saying yes I was there
what's coming out of his mouth isn't that convincing as well because he so he
is so tore up inside right now because he's thinking where did I cry what did I
do that night where was I was I north of he's trying to think five steps ahead of this guy
it's just not going to happen
but his whole body is indicating man am I in trouble I have a serious problem

now and his

firm but quiet way Jim Smith is about to make the transition from good cop too
bad

detective Smith now knows as the

colonel does too that the prints belong to boots owned by Russell Williams

the boots Williams wore on january 28th the very same boots he put
on to come to Ottawa police headquarters today

Paul Ciolino is a former US homicide

investigator and interrogation expert this is what we call a confrontation and
what's the kernel doing dearness he's not he's going on his dad's not nothing down
that's an involuntary reaction we
call but that's indicator of what's going on internally and what he's not into his holy [ __ ]
it's my boot got my
boot print he's thought Matt might have wear the same boots to the police station today

William seems frozen unwilling or unable to speak

[Music] he grabs the paperwork and he's got it
right now what he's doing is trying to figure out an explanation to give this guy because
he knows me and I am screwed
I am so screwed he's buying time and we and we call this buy-in time now what the
detective does
though is is great because a lot of detectives they'll keep talking but silence is
great okay because now it becomes very uncomfortable

Smith tells Williams his

window for explanation is about to slam shut

Smith not only wants Williams to confess but perhaps

even more pressing to direct them to the body of Jessica Lloyd the silence continues for
half a minute then a
glimmer of hope
for three and a half hours Detective Sergeant Jim Smith has maneuvered Russell
Williams into one very tight
corner

it's late Sunday afternoon and something dramatic is happening

house Marc Mendelsohn is a

former Toronto homicide detective now a private investigator for a moment oh
yeah great well done Surgical and the way you
did it if you want to talk yourself out of the tire tracks go ahead talk yourself out of the
boot ID area we
gonna do blame it on the gardener who stole my truck and stole my boots it's not gonna
happen and you can see there's
no response other than he's he's actually acknowledging yeah you're right it is identical
there's no way out

Smith keeps
hammering home the message if Williams wants any say whatsoever he's got to
show his hand now

the awful reality his victims had known is now sinking in for Russell Williams
himself

we've compressed
Williams many pauses some almost a minute long

by now detective Smith my sense he's getting close

and finally his determination pays

watch how Jim Smith now is in lockstep with Williams each mirroring the others
gestures

what
follows is another half minute of silence

then a most remarkable

moment

four hours 40 minutes and 10 seconds after they sat down

getting Williams to view a

map of the location of Lloyd's body is the turning point says interrogation expert Paul
Ciolino every detective
assigned in this case is watching this thing on tape or a live feed and I don't
see any mirrors in there but there's a camera in there clearly so they're watching it and
you want to know if
they're doing yes yes yes go get I mean that's what's going on outside that room
but right now there's a big celebration going on because they know they own this guy
right now as we said before
Canadians have never seen anything like it a police investigator at the peak of his
powers interrogating someone so
accomplished in their career let alone a top ranking military man especially someone
responsible for a criminal trail
of such willful cruelty so far it's been almost five hours of quiet intense
intellectual combat

forensic psychiatrist Duncan Scott of Queen's

University has met with Russell Williams weekly since his arrest
watching him on
tape in the confession once he's said
get the map I'll show you where Jessica Loyd is is dumped he becomes very calm
it seems mm-hmm and he's got an almost matter-of-fact way of describing these
terrible things just as if he would have to get up in front of tell whole bunch
of people about the people that have just died under his under his command and how
long he would have to write a
letter and how he would go and talk to the individuals and keep his emotions at bay that
was something that he had
learned to do quite well

for detective Smith the priority now is find

Jessica Lloyd

with the search

for Jessica ongoing Smith is equipped with maps of the area around tweed

he knows too this

guy other than his military career his wife is everything what he's thinking I got six
hundred pairs of people's
underwear in my house and my wife is gonna be out of her mind how do I want
the TV's out in front of our house for the next two years though I want to destroy him
and ripping up the house
what can I do to make this better

it's a horrific bargain belated

consideration for his wife in exchange for information about where he dumped the body
of a young woman he brutalized
and killed almost matter-of-factly he then reveals where police can find the
digital memory cards in which he keeps the photographs he takes of his victims while he
tortures sexually assaults and
kills them

detective
Smith comes back to the question of where to find Jessica Williams says she's exactly
0.7 kilometers from a
certain intersection

how far off the road is she forty feet she bare if she covered with
anything she's wrapped up in was on the
surface just agree
very the obvious question I'm gonna have for you is when they go there and
they'll be there shortly they're gonna find her well

early the next morning the brewery eight police

recovered Jessica Lloyd point seven kilometers from the intersection exactly where
Russell Williams said she would be
for detective Jim Smith the hard part is over but now the really hard part begins
the terrible litany of all that Williams has done

[Music]
[Music] it is Sunday evening February 7 in the
interview room at Ottawa Police Headquarters the tension has broken Russell Williams
now ready to confess
what you're about to hear is sexual violent and could very well be disturbing

well do you want to work

forwards or backwards why don't we start
with Jessica how does that start for you

it happened ten days earlier whenever Colonel Williams went from CFB Trenton
to his cottage in tweed he drove right by the house where Jessica Lloyd lived
it recently caught sight of her working out as he passed by

while he assaulted Lloyd his SUV sat in the field next to her house his biggest
mistake afterwards he drove her to his cottage in Tweed to continue the attack

William says the flashlight with which

he hit her did more damage than he expected
William says while
Jessica Lloyd was unconscious he strangled her with a rope and left her body in his
garage while he drove to
Trenton van to Ottawa for a weekend with his wife he returned to the cottage on
Tuesday and took Lloyd to the spot where
she would be found the following week again his tone in describing a beautiful young
woman in her final moments his
stunningly matter-of-fact it's a similar story when he recounts
the last night of Marie Frost Como's life at her home in Brighton Ontario she
was under his command at CFB Trenton and apparently it caught Williams aye her
house was 50 kilometers in the wrong direction from his cottage at tweed but
it visited before when she was gone then came back entering through a basement
window

upstairs Williams also raped and photographed her

though he was Como's commanding officer his head and face were covered and she
didn't recognize he decided to kill her
anyway

detective Jim Smith seems surprised to learn how much of their underwear Williams
took sixty pieces or so Hall
limits yeah sixteen pieces of theirs
and of Hoops of Jessica's and many cows
so you took sixty pieces from between the two of them yeah okay

next the
detective moves on to the two sexual assaults in Williams neighborhood and tweed one
victim lived just a few doors
away from his cottage as she's described it she was asleep at home when she was
surprised by an intruder he blindfolded
tied her up cut off her clothes choked beat sexually assaulted and
photographed for two and a half hours Williams recounts it somewhat
differently

he told much the same story about the other sexual assault like almost
everyone else detective Smith searches for Williams motivation

that may be as
close to truth as we can get that he had no feelings at all for the women he
raped and murdered even Jessica Lloyd whom he held captive for the last day of her life

can you tell me why you killed

her right do you know what you killed it well I think I killed her because I knew
that
her story would be recognized
her story would be recognized how do you mean well the seniors taking pictures

he
says he worried Lloyd's case would be tied to the two assaults in Tweed Williams also
took photographs as for
corporal marie-france Coloma he rationalized he had to kill her because she was
stationed at CFB Trenton

for marie-france
komal perhaps the ultimate of sanity is that after everything else when she took her last
breath Williams recorded it on
video as for Jessica Lloyd Williams bought her cooperation by promising if
she did what he said she would get her freedom

but after
humiliating and raping her and recording it on video Williams murdered her too
it is after midnight now Monday February 8th when the door of interrogation room
216 closes behind Russell Williams for the last time in a few hours police
would locate the body of Jessica Lloyd after that they would make their shocking
announcement

arrested Russell
Williams 46 of tweed for first-degree murder he's a lousy lousy lousy at
murdering people and and setting itself up I think it says this is a horrible
forensic psychiatrist Duncan Scott of Queens University consults with the detention
facility where Williams was
held he's met with him since his arrest and he's not surprised the addiction to sex and
murder led so far so fast

it's
spinning out of control and that's what I'm trying to say about being messy and what he
was doing he wasn't really
planning it was just going on it was if it happened in front of him it was kind of meant to
be and the urges were so
overwhelming and the rush knowing what he's going to be getting from that was again
so overwhelming from that thirst
unquenchable for him

dr. Scott says as a murderer Williams is unique academia is out the

window at this time there's no sample group of these types of individuals there's no FBI
huge base rate that we
can sample and find out whether where this goes back to or whether there was
something in vitro here or in utero and
and something happened doing is upbringing or some horrible trauma that occurred to
him there we are going to be
finding that but he says he does know one thing that if Williams hadn't been stopped he
wouldn't have stopped himself
after watching the confession Russell Williams longtime and loyal friend Jeff Farquhar is
now also convinced of that

it's just shocking is not a word that even comes close he is I've had a tough time
understanding how he might be portrayed as a serial killer and a sexual predator
but now I realized that he's the worst of the bunch and to try and understand
that to try and put that in context with Russ who I've known for close to thirty years just
as I said before it doesn't
add up and not only does it not add up but he's a bigger monster than any buddy
I've heard or read about and it's I say shocking doesn't even begin to cover it
it's disgusting I don't know what to say you know honestly I'm really at a loss for words
and that's what scares me so much is that my gut he really is maybe a
psychopath

chief OPP investigator Chris Nicholas it

was an excellent piece of police work on behalf of Jim Smith who conducted this
interview one of the best interviews
I've ever seen and it's it's a smart man being
outsmarted by a smarter man

it may be even better than that according to us

interrogation expert Paul Ciolino

because let me tell you what's gonna

happen this tape will be played in every interrogation course in the world English
speaking one and probably other
ones as how to do it this guy's doing it this is

classic before it ends one of

detective Jim Smith's final questions to Russell Williams reveals exactly what
was at stake