'In the company of the devil': Victim
By MIKE STROBEL, QMI Agency
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Col. Russ Williams.
Soldier has had high-profile career
Hope turns to grief as woman's body found
Victim's pals shocked
Family of slain N.S. teen wait and watch
Williams called 'quiet and professional'
Photos of the suspect and the victims
Map: Body found in Tweed, Ontario
Twitter: CFB Trenton commander arrested
TRENTON, Ont. -- “I was in the company of the devil himself.
“And I was sure he was going to kill me.”
She has titanic courage, this Tweed single mom.
For 21/2 hours in the deepest dark of last Sept. 30, she fought, begged, cajoled and prayed for her life.
And now the horror of that sexual assault returns in a stunning flash.
Her accused attacker is CFB Trenton’s commander, Col. Russ Williams — also charged Monday in another Tweed sexual attack, and for the murders of Jessica Lloyd and Marie-France Comeau.
A top soldier. A neighbour. A leading citizen of Tweed.
“I’m still in shock,” the mom tells me. “Just sick to my stomach. He was so close.”
The detectives gave her the news first thing Monday morning. “It’s over,” they assured her.
Well, not by a long shot. Not for her. Hours of counselling lie behind and ahead.
And she will live that night again and again.
She fell asleep alone in her house, in a back room, and awoke around 2 a.m. She was choking. Her comforter was pressed to her face. “I thought maybe there was a fire,” she says.
But it was a man. A strong man. She struggled. He beat her about the head. She broke free enough to breathe.
“You DON’T want to look at me,” he said. His voice was deep and muffled.
“I won’t,” she whispered. But he blindfolded her and she never laid eyes on him, not once.
Even when he bound her hands behind her back.
Even when he trussed her up in a sort of makeshift harness, fashioned from a pillowcase, twist ties and wire he found in her room.
Even when he cut off her clothes with a knife and said, “I’ll be careful not to cut you.”
Even when he assaulted her.
Even when he took photographs, letting her touch the camera so she’d know.
Even when he told her: “You seem like a nice lady.”
“It was so bizarre,” she says. “He was playing a game with me. I had conversations with him the whole time, almost like I was negotiating with him.”
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” she asked him, early on.
“No need for that,” he replied.
He convinced her he had accomplices burglarizing her home, though she heard nothing.
At 4:30 a.m, in that bleakest time before dawn, he ordered her onto her knees, head down, on a couch. “He has a gun,” she thought. “Now, I die.”
But he left, warning her he’d come back in 10 minutes. She waited, but he did not return. And she called for help.
The next four months are a blur. DNA tests, therapy, bewilderment, fear. She bought a German shepherd. She could not sleep. Always the question: Who could do this? In Tweed!?
She saw no connection to the Lloyd and Comeau cases, until cops announced last week there might be a link.
Then came Monday’s shocking news. The other sexual assault. Two women murdered. One suspect. The police vowing to probe the colonel’s past.
“Why am I alive?” the Tweed mom asks me.
I wish I had an answer. She will seek it for years to come.
“I guess I’m blessed,” she says. “He let me live. I can’t explain it.
“Now I just want to sleep. I’m so exhausted.”
She knew Col. Williams only to say hello. She did not even know he was CFB Trenton’s commander.
Shortly after Christmas, she drove past his front yard on Cosy Cove Lane.
She waved. He waved back.
Mike Strobel’s column runs
Wednesday to Friday, and Sunday.
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