GUILTY Canada - Marie-France Comeau, 37, & Jessica Lloyd, 27, slain, Ont, 2009 & 2010 - #6

[Summersolstice]

Today’s letters: Two reasons for no death penalty​

Paul Russell October 29, 2010 – 7:00 am ​

Among the many comments for and against imposing the death penalty on Russell Williams for one important fact has been overlooked: The death penalty makes obtaining convictions more difficult.​

As a courtroom illustrator for BCTV news, I had the dubious opportunity to observe Clifford Olson in the prisoner’s box more than 25 years ago. It is mostly forgotten now, but it was Olson himself who provided the evidence that would have convicted him, if he hadn’t changed his plea at trial. Just as Russell Williams led police to the body of Jessica Lloyd, it was Olson who led police to the bodies of his young victims.

Outside the courtroom I asked the chief investigating officer on Olson’s case if he thought Olson would have confessed if he’d known he would die for it. The officer reluctantly admitted that he most likely would not.​

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com...o-reasons-for-no-death-penalty/#ixzz13lmZj7mc​

IIRC, DNA testing would have been in its infancy around the time CO was arrested. (At one time, all investigators had to go on was blood type. There are a lot of type Os out there.) I believe that the same could be said for criminal profiling, compared to what it is now. Even geographic profiling came later. CPIC was around, but ViCLAS came later. The computer era, the internet (with email) and advances in DNA technology have changed the landscape a great deal. Heck, were fax machines even in common use back then?

And another IIRC, didn't CO's wife get $100,000 ($10,000 per head for each victim named by CO) from the government?

Quite different from the case with RW, where LE had DNA evidence from the B&Es, and the tire tracks, etc. They already had enough to convict him, and were already searching intensively for JL, as Det-Sgt. Smyth said. His confession was more a matter of him being over a barrel, and wanting to make things better for his wife, IMO.

 

[margaret_diane]

It kills me that he was that stupid to wear the same boots to the police station.

We assume it was stupidity on his part, but I am not so sure it was! Rather, I believe that to a degree, he may have WANTED to get caught! He may have HOPED they would notice the boots, and tie him to the crime, and ensure an end to his killing spree.

Alternatively, perhaps he was FLAUNTING the boots -- thumbing his nose a little more at police, thinking that he could gloat that he was untouchable, and police were stupid -- fortunately, they were NOT stupid, and DID get him!

 

[Sillybilly]

We assume it was stupidity on his part, but I am not so sure it was! Rather, I believe that to a degree, he may have WANTED to get caught! He may have HOPED they would notice the boots, and tie him to the crime, and ensure an end to his killing spree.

Alternatively, perhaps he was FLAUNTING the boots -- thumbing his nose a little more at police, thinking that he could gloat that he was untouchable, and police were stupid -- fortunately, they were NOT stupid, and DID get him!

ITA it was not "stupidity" MD, and if criminals want to get caught, they can simply saunter in to LE and give themselves up. He didn't spill the beans until the interrogation was well under way and he had no way out. IMO when he walked into the detachment, his arrogance, whether consciously or sub-consciously, simply made him believe he was above suspicion.

 

[Summersolstice]

Here's another link to the story mentioned earlier by posters here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ent-of-fallen-soldiers-family/article1777344/

When I read about the withholding of personal belongings, losing the will, considering an ex-girlfriend as next-of-kin (they gave her the flag covering his coffin) and not consulting his parents about the funeral arrangments, it struck me as odd. Add to that failing to let the parents (who were his next-of-kin) know about the suicide note. Somehow, I think this sort of thing would set off alarm bells with any life insurance companies that had settled a claim for this individual. I'd bet that if there were any life insurance policies settled for Stuart Langridge since 2008, they're under investigation since this story broke.

Asking myself why RW would take photos of MFC's life insurance policy? Very odd.

 

[Tricia]

ALERT!!!!!! SOMEGIRLONTHENET IS VERIFIED​

I have verified SomeGirlOnTheNet.

There is no reason for me to doubt SomeGirlOnTheNet is not who she says she is but I want to stress, as I do with all of our verifications, unless I hire a private detective I can never be 100 percent sure of anything.

However, I do feel very confident that SomeGirlOnTheNet is being totally and completely honest with me.

Thanks everyone. Keep on posting

 

[SomeGirlOnTheNet]

ITA it was not "stupidity" MD, and if criminals want to get caught, they can simply saunter in to LE and give themselves up. He didn't spill the beans until the interrogation was well under way and he had no way out. IMO when he walked into the detachment, his arrogance, whether consciously or sub-consciously, simply made him believe he was above suspicion.

I totally agree..

 

[antiquegirl]

I saw both. He seemed to have a BMW fairly often too, because I remember thinking it was a really nice car. The W Comds spot is right in front of the HQ front doorsteps, so you can't miss it. He rarely drove a staff car. Or, if he did, it wasn't parked in his spot.

Ewww about the pics. I hadn't thought of that

He wouldn't eyeball me...I'm too old and chubby..LOL

(BBM)

I beg to differ. I've seen your pictures (in uniform and in civilian clothes) and you're not chubby, just cuddly.

 

[dotr]

Makes me wonder if something happened to rw's head,besides rotting from the inside. If
we are to believe that RW was completely normal until...he wasn't,would he be checked
out for brain injuries/tumours that could cause him to suddenly snap in his mid forties?

This guy was described as a young boy much in the way as RW.
http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/a...harming-but-had-nasty-temper-ex-relative-says
Accused serial killer Peter Dale MacDonald was charming and friendly, but he had a vicious temper and would disappear for months on end, says a former common-law relation.

Oliver Bertin, 62, a freelance journalist who lived in Toronto with one of MacDonald's sisters, Jewel for 10 years, said some of the killer’s family believed his personality deteriorated after he was struck on the head as a boy.

“With blue eyes, smiling, he was very sweet, a very charming guy, very pleasant and then he would disappear and you wouldn’t see him again for six months and it would turn out that he had been charged with assault,” Bertin said.

 

[Wondergirl]

A New Kind of Monster

Even the experts who have spent their lives studying serial killers are at a loss to explain how a man with such credentials and such respect could turn out to be such a monster. “What’s interesting about Williams is, he’s utterly unique,” says Peter Hoaken, associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Western Ontario. “He doesn’t correspond to any of the models that forensic psychologists have developed over the years.”

Simply put, most serial killers live on the fringes of society. They are typically people who have trouble holding jobs or keeping friends—not high-ranking officers who mingle with dignitaries. “Not many homicide offenders have met the Queen,” says Elliott Leyton, author of Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer. “That’s everything that every other serial killer is not.”

“Serial killers are masters of impression management,” adds Jack Levin, a professor of sociology and criminology at Boston’s Northeastern University. “They usually look more innocent than an innocent man. That’s part of the secret of their success.”
Brad Booth, director of the sexual behaviours unit at the St. Lawrence Valley Correctional and Treatment Centre in Brockville, Ont., believes Williams may have suffered from sexual sadism: feeling aroused at the pain or humiliation of others. As more details emerge in court, “it’s becoming increasingly apparent he was an individual with a very high number of paraphilias,” or abnormal, recurrent sexual urges and fantasies, Booth says. Paraphilias can be anything from voyeurism (peeping in neighbours’ windows) to fetishism (feeling aroused by undergarments). These types of urges are actually “fairly common in the population,” Booth notes. The question is whether the individual is willing to act on them, and to what extent.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/10/28/a-new-kind-of-monster/3/

 

[Wondergirl]

Silence After Meeting

Local victims of Russ Williams break-in spree had a private meeting Wednesday night with police investigators, but neither side would discuss what was said.

At least 30 people, including police, attended the closed meeting in Tweed.

Media were invited by police but at the request of victims were barred from the meeting. Police also told reporters not to approach victims after the meeting, which was held in a community centre next to the arena.

http://www.intelligencer.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2820030

 

[Summersolstice]

Makes me wonder if something happened to rw's head,besides rotting from the inside. If
we are to believe that RW was completely normal until...he wasn't,would he be checked
out for brain injuries/tumours that could cause him to suddenly snap in his mid forties?

This guy was described as a young boy much in the way as RW.
http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/a...harming-but-had-nasty-temper-ex-relative-says
Accused serial killer Peter Dale MacDonald was charming and friendly, but he had a vicious temper and would disappear for months on end, says a former common-law relation.

Oliver Bertin, 62, a freelance journalist who lived in Toronto with one of MacDonald's sisters, Jewel for 10 years, said some of the killer’s family believed his personality deteriorated after he was struck on the head as a boy.

“With blue eyes, smiling, he was very sweet, a very charming guy, very pleasant and then he would disappear and you wouldn’t see him again for six months and it would turn out that he had been charged with assault,” Bertin said.

Similar sudden personality changes can be induced from medications, prescription, non-prescription, and combinations of the two. That would include misuse of drugs legitimately prescribed.

 

[flipflop]

Similar sudden personality changes can be induced from medications, prescription, non-prescription, and combinations of the two. That would include misuse of drugs legitimately prescribed.

I remember reading that he was on meds for arthritic pain.

 

[SomeGirlOnTheNet]

Similar sudden personality changes can be induced from medications, prescription, non-prescription, and combinations of the two. That would include misuse of drugs legitimately prescribed.

True - however, RW was aircrew. And active aircrew at that.... If he were to be put on a medication, he would be grounded for a while until they find out how he copes on that medication.

He would not be permitted to be on mind altering medications and pilot an aircraft.

 

[SomeGirlOnTheNet]

I wonder if he'll work with psychiatrists? Will he answer their questions?

I don't think he's mentally ill whatsoever. I think he knew everything he was risking, but his sexual (or whatever) urges overruled everything else.

Blah.

 

[Summersolstice]

True - however, RW was aircrew. And active aircrew at that.... If he were to be put on a medication, he would be grounded for a while until they find out how he copes on that medication.

He would not be permitted to be on mind altering medications and pilot an aircraft.

It is my understanding that pilots in Canada can fly legally while using certain antidepressants. Then there are those pesky go-nogo drugs that military pilots in some countries use. They use such drugs in combination, even though an infamous "friendly fire" incident seemed to indicate this is not a good idea.

http://www.bclocalnews.com/okanagan_similkameen/kelownacapitalnews/opinion/97120389.html
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jan2003/pilo-j18.shtml

 

[SomeGirlOnTheNet]

For sure that's true.

However, Canadian military pilots fall under stricter guidelines. For instance, they cannot undergo LASIK surgery....civilian airline pilots can.

If a pilot (air force) had a depressive episode, he/she is grounded..for quite a while. I'd be very surprised if he was depressed.

 

[JayFriend]

(2) In the transcript of the confession, RW told Det. Sgt. Smyth about the two hard drives that contained a lot of evidence. He said that he had erased those drives, but that LE would probably be able to retrieve the info again. I definitely got the impression that RW did not know how to get that info back himself. So, why did he keep them when they were useless to him? And if they were blank, why hide them? He left stolen lingerie almost out in the open, but he conceals blank hard drives? Is this part of his obsessive/compulsive disorder, or did I miss something?

I thought this thread had died, since my notifications stopped, but I guess the forum has problems. Sorry for replying late.

Anyway, maybe RW did know how to recover erased data and erased the drives as an extra layer of security in case someone else less knowledgeable (his wife?) found them. I recall where he hid his notes in an elaborate maze of directories on his computer.

 

[Summersolstice]

For sure that's true.

However, Canadian military pilots fall under stricter guidelines. For instance, they cannot undergo LASIK surgery....civilian airline pilots can.

If a pilot (air force) had a depressive episode, he/she is grounded..for quite a while. I'd be very surprised if he was depressed.

So, how do we explain that Russ Sovka got rid of his eyeglasses when he became Russ Williams and took up being a pilot? Non-Lasik surgery? Contact lenses?

Unless there is regular drug testing for military pilots before all flights, and the Canadian Forces can show that RW did not have drugs in his system, I would say there is reasonable doubt. I would also want to know which drugs they would be looking for if this were the case, because only the drugs they would be testing for would show up on the tests.

Antidepressants have off-label uses for chronic pain management. RW's friend stated that he was in constant pain.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...istressed-by-death-of-his-cat/article1760854/

If you've been watching the number of break-ins at vet clinics lately in various communities across Canada, it becomes apparent that there's a market for stolen veterinary drugs on the streets.

Then there's the possibility that an athlete attending a marathon out of town might need to visit a walk-in clinic for medications for an injury. And such things could be very difficult to track, especially if that individual used a different last name, or visit a clinic outside Canada. It's even harder to track if those meds were sold on a non-prescription basis, such as the underground market for temazepam and other muscle relaxants. In some communities, gyms have played a role in this trade.

The use of go-nogo drugs in Canada by military pilots is an outstanding question that has not been satisfactority answered. Way back in one of the threads, I posted a link to a study of such drugs conducted by the Canadian military. If they're studying it, they would have had to have conducted experiments. On who, exactly?

 

[Summersolstice]

True - however, RW was aircrew. And active aircrew at that.... If he were to be put on a medication, he would be grounded for a while until they find out how he copes on that medication.

He would not be permitted to be on mind altering medications and pilot an aircraft.

SSRIs are mind-altering drugs.

http://www.outlookcities.com/psych/
http://www.whale.to/drugs/haldol2.html

Strangely, some of the drugs used to manage chronic pain belong to the same family as date rape drugs:

http://www.benzo.org.uk/ads.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_rape_drug

 

[JayFriend]

So, how do we explain that Russ Sovka got rid of his eyeglasses when he became Russ Williams and took up being a pilot? Non-Lasik surgery? Contact lenses?

From personal experience, people who are a little near-sighted in their youth and wear glasses except for reading, will gain distance vision as they age (and lose close vision).