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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Episode 129. And I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Roseland Weyborg Thun. Welcome back to the third part of this ongoing series on the Killer Colonel.
We're still not out of the woods regarding the many troubles that ails our various nations, and I am so happy that I have this hobby and job that allows me to escape from contemporary worries and travel instead to the dark underbelly of society, as it stood on the maps of old, to the place where on the map it simply stood, here there be monsters.
and I am happy. I get to spend virtual time in Canada. It is such a pleasant place, and reminds me of my home country of Norway, in many ways. Some housekeeping. For those of you that don't know, I have a vibrant fan page on Facebook, at facebook.com slash groups slash TSK podcast, or simply type in
T-S-K podcast in the search bar. Here I recommend everyone stay civil with each other and stay on topic. Namely, the serial killer phenomena. Last episode I left you with the first known crime of Russell Williams. His breaking and entering into his neighbor's cabin and rummaging around in the 12-year-old daughter's bedroom.
photographing himself dressed in her underwear in various explicit poses. Tonight we go further into Williams's downward spiral into depraved and murderous activities. Enjoy.
Before we start the show proper, I want to, as always, publicly thank my elite TSK Producers Club. I'm very happy to see that the very exclusive club of TSK Producers have grown since last time. This club now includes 25 dignified members of Exquisite Taste, and their names are...
Andrea, Anne, Anthony, Captain Waters, Cassandra, Christy, Corbyn, Evan, Fawn, James, Jennifer, Jessie, Kathy, Kelly, Lisa, Lisbeth, Mark, Mickey, Monica, Russell, Samira, Skortnia, Trent, Vanessa, William, and Zosia.
You are the backbone of the Serial Killer Podcast, and without you, there would be no show. You have my deepest gratitude. Thank you. As always, if you want to donate to the show, you can easily do so at patreon.com slash theserialkillerpodcast. You can choose from many different tiers, ranging from one dollar to as much as you would like.
Bonus episode access starts at $10, while the TSK Producers Club starts at $15. A new bonus episode is in the works, so don't miss out and join now. Imagine if you will, dear listener, a lean military-looking man jogging. He's jogging in a well-to-do neighborhood in Tweed, Canada.
he appears the absolute image of normalcy hipsters to-day might even have called it normcore he has a focused look on his face as he is running along the suburban streets although he does seem to look at the houses more than what one might think was normal usually when jogging one tends to focus on the road ahead
Many don the famous thousand-mile stare, as jogging serves a nearly meditative activity. But this man—of course, I am referring to Colonel Russell Williams—seems very much present. The public would learn why, and it was not pretty. As well as keeping his body fit, Williams's jogging served as his homework in preparation for depraved criminality.
his main hunting-ground in tweed was cosy cove lane it is a long walk from the village centre and has no bus service so williams knew that if the driveway in front of a house was empty he could easily enter unnoticed
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. So many times I have heard on the news from such areas, when serious crime occurs, oh, it is impossible to have imagined something like this happening here. No one locks their doors around here, end quote.
"'I will never understand how someone can leave their house unlocked. Criminals are mobile, and even though your neighbors might be law-abiding, and I stress might, there are millions of people traveling around that aren't. Even I lock my front door when I am in my own home. Sometimes Williams, if the front door was locked, resorted to forcing open a window sash or a screen, usually at the back of the house.'
If he had to, he could usually, although not always, pick the lock, a skill that dated back to his university days. And this first clutch of burglaries also sheds light on Williams's obsessive sexual interests, which drove his law-breaking from beginning to end. In large part, his crimes 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 here we see yet another trait of the typical psychopath. They lie.
Of the 48 different homes he invaded, in 13 instances, females aged under 18 were either his sole or the joint targets. And if you, dear listener, were ever in doubt about what kind of man Russell Williams truly was, child pornography was found on his computer after his arrest. There is a debate going on, and it is polarizing.
regarding what constitutes a criminal to be deemed a pedophile. Well, targeting the bedrooms of prepubescent girls in order to masturbate into their underwear, and at the same time building a personal collection of child pornography, certainly makes me think that Williams was indeed a pedophile.
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 victim's 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. These were usually photos of framed photos hanging on bedroom walls. These show 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 his first break-in, he photographed a news clipping showing the twelve-year-old girl 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 William's perversity. If I were to speculate, something I am loathe to do too much—
it would seem as if williams found pleasure in desecrating and contaminating innocents another potent example is found after he later began expanding his raids to target houses near his home in ottawa
There he photographed himself masturbating in the bedroom of a girl aged about eleven, with her underwear spread out on the bed. But from the same place, he also took photos of four framed photos that he found elsewhere in the house. These showed three different young girls, none aged over the age of twelve. The fact that Williams returned at least twice to that first house on Cozy 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. Williams was not content with simply rummaging around underwear drawers and photographing himself. He stole as well—
His total haul almost defies belief. In all, he admitted to stealing and cataloguing around 1,400 pieces of clothing, nearly all of it women's lingerie, and in one raid alone he took 186 items. What I think is strange is how none of these homeowners that he burglarized
took notice of their stuff missing. Perhaps Williams' story can serve as a gentle comment on modern materialism. If you have so much clothes that you don't miss 186 separate pieces of clothing going missing, maybe consider not buying new stuff for a while. Some of Williams' 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, where 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 offence, and other details. After his first repeat trip to his neighbour's home on Cozy Cove Lane, Williams waited a few weeks before striking again.
Once more it was on a weekend in Tweed, close to his own cottage, and once more he broke into the same residence twice, stealing thirteen undergarments and the 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 at 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 cozy cove lane neighbor larry jones
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 had an excellent line ready if caught, and I quote, "'I was passing by and saw something suspicious, so I thought I should check,' end quote. It is doubtful anyone would have doubted him."
He was, after all, the colonel in charge of the most important air base in Canada. Jones himself put it well, and I quote, 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? End quote.
Perhaps the close call gave Williams a fright, because after committing one more break-in on the 1st of November 2007, he abruptly ceased for more than four months before resuming on the 15th of March 2008, the longest gap in his two-and-a-half years of home invasions.
"'It is interesting reading those dates, because they are so close to our contemporary decade. In late 2007, early 2008, your humble host was living in Scotland, studying for my master's degree. I had no idea a rabid budding serial killer was roaming free in Canada, but at the time I was heavily invested in the study of serial killers.'
Can you, dear listener, remember where you were at the time Russell Williams broke into all those homes, back in the late noughties? When Williams did start again, the pattern was the same. This time he broke into no less than ten residences in Tweed. These 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 of the Tweed burglaries took place around the weekend. During the week, while he continued his daytime job, 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 falling brook where wilkie drive is located is an urban subdivision of neat curving streets quite different than the houses on and around rural cosycove lane in tweed which typically could be approached from several sides
Most of the thirty-four thefts and attempted thefts in Orleans, involving twenty-five 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. Luckily for him, it was not recognized due to his hooded sweater. Another difference between the two places 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.
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Williams, too, showed signs of escalation. 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 New Orleans over the next 14 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 up streets 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 Mitchellmore, who live on Caminity Crescent.
a couple of blocks from Williams' 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 couple contacted the police, and they arrived to investigate.
The burglar, Williams, had not taken any trophies with him, and nothing in the house seemed out of place. Considering these were elderly people, I suspect that Williams might have seen the couple's grandchildren playing outside while visiting and thinking they lived there. It simply seems out of character for Williams to enter a house and not take any photos, not steal anything, and then simply leave.
Police were now getting concerned at how many of these burglaries there were. On the 31st of October, they publicly warned of an active serial burglar who seemed to only steal undergarments and emphasized all residents to be alert.
As part of their investigation, some additional expertise was called in. Detective Sergeant Jim Van Allen, a seasoned criminal profiler attached to the Aurelia-based Behavioral Sciences and Analysis Services, was called in to consult on the case. His task was to assess the information about the many break-ins and make an educated guess as to the type of person responsible.
Van Allen did not like what he saw at all. The intruder, he noticed, was becoming more aggressive, even as he stealthily evaded detection. In one Orlean's home, he left a message on their home computer, taunting the occupants by telling them he had been there. In another, he left a trail of leaves leading into the house.
In a third, he placed on the floor a photograph of the woman whose underwear he had stolen, and he masturbated on it so that his semen covered the garment in plain view. In Van Allen's view, the intruder was clearly escalating. He was moving psychologically from inanimate objects toward living human flesh. The danger of hands-on sexual assault was ramping up,
and Van Allen would not be proven wrong. For all their efforts, the Ottawa police came no closer to revealing who the mystery intruder was.
For a while, suspicion in Ottawa centered on a local man who had been charged with possessing child pornography. When police spoke to him, he reacted very cagily, and shortly afterward, a pile of burned lingerie was found in a nearby field, marking one of two occasions when Williams disposed of some of his loot.
Van Allen noted later that it was very coincidental and it didn't do much to help eliminate the local man as a suspect. But when a further break-in occurred while the suspect was under police surveillance, it became clear he was not responsible. If Williams was worried about the 31st of October police alert, it didn't show.
Although he had by now began monitoring the Ottawa Police website, as it tracked and publicized the mounting number of occurrences. On the 4th of November he raided another house in Tweed, and then, on the 12th, he struck in Orleans again, with another break-in, following on the 20th. Then came three more in December, and three more in January 2009.
all while the area was under close police scrutiny. Meanwhile, Williams had no intention of slowing down. Photos Williams took at the time of a November 2008 burglary in Ottawa, and carefully stored and concealed on his computer, show his perversity reaching new levels. The dwelling he broke into was the home of two children, including a 15-year-old girl.
In all, he stole 22 pieces of clothing, panties, bras, a bathing suit, and a nightshirt, and as usual, he took scores of photographs. A total of 70 pictures show him with a pair of panties bearing a menstrual blood stain. In the pictures, Williams is seen wearing, licking, kissing, and finally ejaculating on that pair of panties.
He was also becoming more brazen, even reckless. During a December break-in he committed on his own street in Orleans, Wilkie Drive, he left footprints in the snow leading up to the back patio door, which he damaged, along with several window locks.
shortly thereafter on the first and second days of january two thousand nine he twice hit a house on kara crescent a few minutes walk from wilkie drive this too was the home of a fifteen-year-old girl robbed of dozens of pieces of lingerie
But Williams also stole many of the girl's personal photographs, including headshots done for a modeling agency, together with a piece of paper containing lip-gloss lip-prints. Other items in her bedroom, such as paintings, had been altered and moved. When the Ottawa police examined the room, they also found dried semen in her underwear drawer.
When the physical evidence came to light, one of the many photos Williams had taken inside of her bedroom showed him holding her makeup brush to his penis as he gazes steadily into the camera. He left the makeup brush behind. The double break-ins left the girl so frightened that she began sleeping in the spare room with her dog. Williams, meanwhile, marked the occasion differently.
On the computer records he kept of his intrusions, he labeled this one with the initials HNY, Happy New Year. And as he grew bolder, he was also becoming more vigilant. A file folder containing scores of photos taken during a burglary in April, also in Orleans, contained a 148-page monthly crime report downloaded from the Ottawa Police website.
Together with a screenshot of the police report on the break-in, his pace began to pick up. On a weekend return visit to his cozy cove lane cottage in Tweed, the same month, he hit nearby homes on three consecutive nights, the 17th, 18th, and 19th of April, a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Over the next few weeks, he broke in, or tried to break in, to homes in Tweed and Orleans five times, fleeing with his customary trophies. In mid-June, his behavior took a further strange twist, demonstrating new peculiarities. The event was a burglary on Cara Crescent in Orleans, a few doors down from where Williams had struck in January,
and home to a woman in her twenties and her father, both of whom were out of town at the time. On returning, the woman discovered that her underwear drawer, closet, and laundry room had all been looted in what would be Williams's largest ever single hall, 186 pieces of clothing. Here, dear listener, it is not a matter of someone not noticing many pieces of clothing simply going missing.
She also noticed that some of her I.D. had been laid out on a dresser in the spare room, and her laptop opened. What particularly surprised her, she told the Ottawa police when they arrived, was that there, in plain view, was some valuable jewellery, untouched. Entry had been made through a basement window. Williams's record-keeping was, in this instance, almost unbelievably thorough, even for him.
As usual, he had taken scores of photographs, not only of himself, but of the numerous pieces of lingerie he had stolen, spread out on the woman's bed and on the floor. The photos were subdivided into categories and labeled, showing where he had found them. Bedroom, bedroom laundry, basement laundry, spare room. Once again, his obsessive need to organize his trophies was on display.
When police later seized his computer hard drive and searched it, they also found a saved screenshot of the woman's Facebook page, together with five screenshots of the Ottawa police website recording the break-in. And there was more. Police would later discover a bizarre letter on Willems' computer, addressed to the woman he had just robbed, dotted with misspellings that were clearly deliberate
The letter read as follows, and I quote, "'Beautiful,' name redacted by authorities, "'I'm sorry I took these because I am sentimental, too. "'Don't worry, because I didn't mess with them. "'Also I am sure you know you're beautiful. "'But trust me, your pussy smells fucking awesome. "'I should know, because I have been doing this for a while.'
But I'm going to stop, because my mom will fucking kill me if I get caught. She is pretty sure I can be something. Besides, your place was kinda like a motherlode, and I really like that I have a bunch of undies you put on just after you got fucked. I started this with a chick I knew from high school called dot dot dot, who lives down the road from you.
I thought it would be cool to have some of her undies. It seems right that I finish with a special chick like you. If you decide to call the cops, tell them I'm sorry for the trouble and they won't hear from me again. Now that I know all about you, I think it might be cool to meet you. Maybe younger guys don't turn you on, but I think we could be good together.
To me, teenage chicks are impressed too easy. I guess I would like to be with somebody more experienced. You guys really need to clean out the bath in the basement. It is some gnarly. I hope what I did ain't pissed you off too much, JT. P.S. Since I sort of feel guilty about wasting the cops' time, these are the places I hit so they can close their books.
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So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. Finally, I wish to thank you, dear listener, for listening. If you like this podcast, you can support it by donating on patreon.com slash theserialkillarpodcast, by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, facebook.com slash theskpodcast, or by posting on the subreddit theskpodcast.
Thank you. Good night and good luck.