A New Kind of Monster

by Timothy Appleby

  Despite the blitz, however, a week after Lloyd had disappeared without a trace, there had been no breakthrough, nor any sign of one. And the sense of foreboding that built with the passing days soared on Wednesday, February 3, when Belleville police issued a stark warning to the city’s women, especially those living alone: keep your doors locked; vary your daily routine; try to be with friends; report anything or anyone suspicious.

  There was good reason for the police alert because, sinister as Lloyd’s disappearance was, the larger picture police were by now looking at was becoming more threatening as they joined up dots from the past four and a half months: the two bizarre sex attacks in Tweed, the murder in Brighton of Corporal Marie-France Comeau, and now what looked to be the abduction of Lloyd in Belleville—different types of crimes, in different places, under scrutiny by different police. Still absent from the mix was any connection to the dozens of lingerie break-ins in either Tweed (all but one of which had gone unreported) or Ottawa, more than 125 miles away. Nonetheless, the ingredients were in place for what could have been a reprise of the cross-jurisdictional chaos that hampered the big Paul Bernardo murder investigation in the early 1990s, which was badly marred by interdepartmental police rivalry in Toronto and Niagara Region.

  But this time, it didn’t turn out like that. Jessica Lloyd was a Belleville resident and her disappearance was a Belleville case. Because it was so entirely out of character, however, the city’s new police chief, Cory McMullan, had approached the OPP shortly after Lloyd vanished to see if there might be a connection to any other unsolved crimes.

  Indeed there might, she was soon told. One of the most useful tools in the OPP’s inventory at its headquarters in Orillia is what is termed the VICLAS computer system, acronym for Violent Crime Linkage System, part of a national network that’s mostly run by the RCMP. VICLAS grew out of a still-earlier investigation, in the 1980s, involving British Columbia serial killer Clifford Olson, and its broad function is to track and analyze common threads in seemingly disparate investigations. Scrutiny of these four recent incidents showed several possible links: all took place within an hour’s drive of each other, all involved home invasions and all took place late at night. As well, the Comeau murder and the Tweed sex attacks a few weeks earlier showed similarities in the way the predator had tied up his victims. Could that same assailant now be responsible for the disappearance of Jessica Lloyd? Quite possibly, the police had concluded—hence the warning to Belleville’s women.

  But where Lloyd might be, no one had a clue.

  Jessica Elizabeth Lloyd was born in Ottawa, where her father, Warren Lloyd, spent more than twenty-five years at CFB Ottawa in the Canadian navy’s communications section. On retiring in 1990, when Jessica was eight, Warren Lloyd and his small family relocated to Belleville. Home was the red-brick bungalow on Highway 37, which was built for her parents and which later became Jessica’s property after her father died of cancer and her mother moved into a smaller place in Belleville. At the time of her death, Jessica had owned the house for less than nine months.

  After graduating from Quinte Secondary School in 2000, she attended Belleville’s Loyalist College, graduating after three years with a diploma in business administration and human resources. After a couple of interim jobs, she was hired by Tri-Board Student Transportation Services in Napanee, where she worked as a transit planner. She was famously reliable, which was the reason the alarm was sounded so early when she didn’t show up for work that Friday morning.

  The search for Lloyd went full tilt. “It felt like the world rallied,” one friend said. Some of the Missing posters went beyond listing the facts of her disappearance, and included details about a possible suspect (these posters were soon taken down). And there was so much activity and speculation on Facebook that while lauding the collective effort, Paul Vandegraaf, Belleville’s deputy police chief, urged caution in sifting fact from fiction. “It’s wonderful how quickly this information got out, the picture and the description,” he said. “It’s amazing how fast that got around the province. The other angle, though, is that it’s gotten so big that nobody is validating the information … so we’re cautioning people about what they read, what they believe and what they post.”

  Investigators, too, were pulling out all the stops. Close to three hundred homes up and down Highway 37 and within a half mile of Lloyd’s home were canvassed. So too were four convicted sex offenders who lived in the area. In addition, a highly specific vehicle canvass was undertaken. Along with the tire tracks discovered on the far northern edge of Lloyd’s property, there had been two separate sightings of what looked like an SUV parked there on the night she vanished. Its make was unknown, but using the tire tracks, identification specialists were able to measure the width between its wheels. Those two bits of information were fed through a provincial government database, and roughly 450 vehicles that might be the suspect one showed up. They included but were not limited to: Toyota 4Runners, 1996–2002; Jeep Cherokees 1999–2004; and Nissan Pathfinders, 1998–1999.

  Of those 450 SUVs, police had traced 178 and were still in the process of interviewing the owners when the roadblock was set up on Highway 37 on that chilly February 4 evening. So Constable Alexander and his partners were carrying a tape measure and photos of the tire-tread marks. OPP forensic specialists had photographed the tread, magnified the image and pasted it onto a sheet of cardboard, along with an estimate of the wheel width.

  And now came what proved to be the moment of truth. The roadblock was set up shortly before seven o’clock, and one of the very first vehicles to pull up, within a minute or two, was a 2001 silver-colored Nissan Pathfinder piloted by the air force colonel who commanded the 8 Wing military base in Trenton. Still in his crisp blue uniform, he was heading toward his home in Tweed and was in a hurry, he explained.

  Much later, Williams suggested that the way he handled the situation was his undoing. After he’d pleaded guilty but before he was shipped to Kingston Penitentiary, he confided to a jail guard at the Quinte Detention Centre that he reckoned he’d made a big mistake at the roadblock by being too assertive and trying to bluster his way through by pulling rank. In particular, Williams blundered by telling Constable Alexander that he was in a big hurry because he was rushing home to take care of a sick child. Certainly when he was summoned for police questioning in Ottawa three days later, that lie by the childless colonel would have stirred deep suspicion, even though it was never raised during the interrogation.

  In the end, however, whatever Williams said at the roadblock would have made no difference. The timing of his arrival was undoubtedly fortuitous, because had he left 8 Wing even ten minutes earlier, he would have escaped scrutiny that night. But once he had been stopped, there was nothing he could do, because the cops’ instructions were twofold: If any vehicle matched the description of the suspect SUV, the owner was to be questioned in detail, and the particulars of the vehicle recorded. Then—and this was a direct order from OPP Detective Inspector Chris Nicholas, who was in charge of the mushrooming investigation—the driver was immediately to be placed under surveillance.

  When Williams pulled up at the roadblock, he was politely quizzed by Constable Russ Alexander, who had with him the detailed questionnaire. When Williams was interrogated in Ottawa soon afterward, he remarked approvingly on how extensive the questioning had been, noting casually that the constable had the same first name as him.

  Alexander looked at Williams’s Pathfinder, measured the width between its wheels and concluded that there wasn’t an exact match with the mysterious SUV. But the Pathfinder’s Toyo Open Country H/T tires were a different story. Particularly notable was the front left tire, which appeared to closely resemble one of the telltale tracks. Alexander said nothing, filled out his questionnaire, and with a nod and a wave the colonel was soon on his way up Highway 37, heading toward his lakeside hideaway on Cosy Cove Lane.

  But back at the roadblock, an animated discussion was taking place about whether
to pull the alarm cord and place surveillance on the colonel. Alexander knew who Williams was—he was a distinguished guy, the boss of 8 Wing—and he made the case that even though his tires seemed to match the tracks, it was probably a coincidence. If anyone would be above suspicion, it surely must be Colonel Williams. One of the Belleville officers vigorously disagreed, and after an argument Alexander relented. So as Williams drove up the highway, Alexander was speaking into his cell phone, his tone urgent and insistent.

  “Surveillance,” he was saying. “Now. Right now.”

  13

  THE HOUSE ON HIGHWAY 37

  It must have been a bad moment for Russ Williams when the phone rang at his new Westboro house in the early afternoon of Sunday, February 7. On the line was Detective Sergeant Jim Smyth of the OPP, asking politely whether Williams would mind stopping in at the main Ottawa Police Service building on downtown Elgin Street. Further to the questions he’d been asked at the roadblock three days earlier, there were some loose ends to be tied up, he was told. No problem, Williams replied, he’d be happy to drop by in an hour or so.

  He’d been under surveillance since Thursday night, and his house on Edison Avenue was being watched now, by undercover police parked up the street. That morning he’d been tailed by the OPP surveillance unit to an Ottawa car wash, where he’d vacuumed and cleaned his Pathfinder. After he departed, police seized the contents of the vacuum canister. Search warrants were meanwhile being sought and granted for his two homes in Ottawa and Tweed and for his Pathfinder. Later, the scope of the warrants would be widened to encompass his office at 8 Wing Trenton and his medical records there, a Bank of Montreal safety deposit box Williams shared with his wife, along with his bank records, his cell phone/BlackBerry records and a DNA sample.

  No one expected Williams to make a run for it. Where could he go? Of greater concern was the possibility that he might try to hide or destroy evidence—which is exactly what he did. After getting off the phone with Detective Sergeant Smyth, he grabbed two 500 gigabyte Lacie hard drives from the computer in his upstairs office and went to the basement, where he concealed them in the ceiling above the electrical panel. The contents of those two hard drives were identical: video clips and close to 3,000 photographs, many of them depicting the tortures inflicted on Comeau and Lloyd, along with screen grabs from police and news websites. In addition, the hard drives contained a complete and detailed inventory of all the scores of burglaries he’d committed over the past two years, buried so skillfully in computer file folders that he later had to help police locate them.

  Also in Williams and Harriman’s house was a wealth of incriminating evidence he had planned to take to Tweed that same evening and destroy. By the bed in the master bedroom was Williams’s blue duffel bag containing the black skull cap that formed part of his disguise. In the basement spare room was an Epson printer box containing more than fifty lingerie items, lubricant and photos of Lloyd, including her student ID card. A second box had more underwear, vibrators and commercial sex videos. In a corner of the garage was a pillowcase that held more vibrators and more underwear, including children’s panties. And when police later searched the house on Edison Avenue they also found a book entitled LSI Guide to Lock Picking.

  It was too late to do anything about that now; he would have been acutely aware that he was very likely under surveillance already. After hiding the hard drives in the basement ceiling, he had about an hour to compose his thoughts. Yet he doesn’t seem to have been reaching for the panic button, because on his feet were the same incriminating leather boots he had been wearing when he kidnapped Lloyd nine days earlier. Williams had made a career out of wearing his confidence on his sleeve, and of putting people at ease with his low-key, self-effacing worldliness. Maybe it would work this time. Either way, there was no dodging what was ahead. Shortly before three that afternoon, he drove to Elgin Street for his rendezvous with Detective Sergeant Smyth.

  When he’d been questioned by Constable Alexander at the roadblock three days earlier, Williams had said he had never seen or spoken to Lloyd, adding that, of course, like everyone else in the area, he’d been aware of her disappearance. How could you not be? The Missing posters were everywhere and the story was all over the airwaves. And he stuck to this fiction during the first phase of his interview with Smyth. Then, in his confession several hours later, he told Smyth he had targeted Lloyd after driving past her home on Highway 37 on January 27, the evening before he invaded her home and kidnapped her. He’d glimpsed her through a window, he said, working out on a treadmill, and decided then and there that she would be his next target.

  As with his account of having met Corporal Marie-France Comeau just once, there is no reason to believe there’s much truth to this astonishingly casual cause-and-effect explanation. And certainly the post-arrest rumor mill offered numerous alternatives: the two had been dating; they’d met at Belleville’s Trillium Wood Golf Club; there was even a scenario that had Williams lurking at another property just up the road, wearing a wig and dressed as a woman while watching Lloyd’s house.

  There’s no evidence any of that speculation is true. But equally improbable is Williams’s claim that he just noticed Lloyd and attacked her on an impulse. Lloyd’s house is set back from the road by at least fifty yards, and the aboveground basement window through which he said he’d spotted her exercising is small. Much more likely is that he had seen her several times and had stalked her. He drove past her home twice a day on most days, as he went back and forth between Trenton and Tweed, and the hours of her daytime schedule as she commuted between Belleville and Napanee roughly matched his.

  As for the timing of this attack, two factors may be relevant. Over the previous two years, the bulk of Williams’s crimes had taken place near the end of the week or on weekends, as this one would. And perhaps much more telling, on the same day he targeted Lloyd, a news story had appeared regarding the unsolved sex slaying of Comeau in November. Under the headline POLICE ANTICIPATE A LENGTHY INVESTIGATION IN MARIE-FRANCE COMEAU MURDER, the Brighton-based Northumberland News reported on its website that afternoon that progress was slow, and that detectives were renewing their appeal for public assistance. “We’re looking for any information at all,” lead investigator Detective Inspector Paul McCrickard said. “If she visited someone, got gas, or went into a Tim Hortons, we want to know. She could have been on foot or in her car, we believe she was in her car. We just want to confirm her whereabouts and who she might have been with. At this point in the investigation, we really have no idea.” McCrickard added that he anticipated the investigation would be lengthy, which conceivably reassured Williams that for now, at least, the heat was off. And he’d been keeping his head down. In the two months since he had raped and murdered Comeau, he had not committed a single break-in anywhere.

  January 28 was a Thursday, and Lloyd spent most of the evening, from roughly seven till ten, with a friend, Dorian O’Brian. And it was while she was out for those three hours that Williams first showed up at her house. He had stayed late at the air base that day, leaving at around nine o’clock, Lieutenant-Colonel Ross Fetterly, the base’s chief administration officer, later told police, and he seemed cheerful when he departed. It had been taco night in the officers’ mess, a Thursday evening ritual of a post-work bite to eat with a beer or two. Someone asked Williams if he would be back at the mess the next day for a luncheon at eleven, and he replied that he would.

  From 8 Wing, Williams headed directly for Lloyd’s house, near the south end of Highway 37, on a reconnaissance trip. He broke in through an unlocked kitchen window, looked around to make sure she lived alone, and quickly exited. He had parked his Pathfinder in the cornfield, about 150 yards away, and had made his way to the house indirectly, walking around the perimeter of the field.

  As he lurked in the cold darkness preparing to leave, what can only be seen as a piece of extraordinarily bad luck took place. At around nine-thirty, a uniformed Belleville policewoman who knew Lloyd
personally was on patrol alone when she drove past Lloyd’s house, spied Williams’s truck out in the field, thought it looked odd and decided to make a check. Hidden at the back, Williams saw the lights and heard the cruiser pull up. He couldn’t see it, didn’t know it was a police car, and initially thought it was Lloyd returning home. The policewoman knocked at the door of the darkened house, but there was no reply. Since everything seemed to be in order, she drove away.

  Given what she knew, there was no reason for her to have done anything else. The house seemed secure, no one was home, there was no sign of anything wrong. Much later, when it emerged that Williams had been there all along, waiting for Lloyd to come home so he could kidnap her, it was suggested the Belleville cop had been negligent for not driving across the cornfield to the truck 150 yards away and running its license plate through the provincial data bank, which would have determined the ownership. If that had happened, so the reasoning went in a series of newspaper stories and columns excoriating the police, Jessica Lloyd’s life might have been saved.

  In theory, that may be true. Certainly if Williams had seen the policewoman drive over to his Pathfinder and examine it, he would likely have been scared away, at least for that night. But in the real world rather than the hindsight world, the cop was not negligent at all. Lloyd had not yet gone missing, no crime had been committed, and there had been no calls for help. Above all, at this stage there was no sense in and around Belleville that a predator was on the loose. None of Williams’s lingerie raids in Tweed had been reported, and the murder of Comeau down the highway in Brighton two months earlier looked to be a self-contained episode. The only local sex crimes that had stirred any public alarm thus far had been the two strange home invasions and photo sessions in Tweed, back in September, and most Belleville residents were entirely unaware of these.