Col. Russell Williams: Killer in command?

Produced by Joshua Yager and Susan Mallie

[This story originally aired on April 9, 2011. It was updated on June 12, 2012]

ONTARIO, CANADA - On Feb. 7, 2010, at 3 p.m., Canadian Air Force Colonel Russell Williams has agreed to come in for a chat with police after being stopped at a roadblock.

Talking with the cops may turn out to be the most fateful decision of the respected colonel's entire life, but you'd never know it.

Cop: Do you have your own lawyer?
Colonel: A realty lawyer but no, I don't have a lawyer! (laughs)

The police aren't interested in real estate. They're focused on an ongoing crime spree near the sleepy little town of Tweed, Ontario, several hours from Toronto.

Cop: We're looking at first-degree murder, kidnapping, sexual assault, forcible confinement.
Colonel: Uh huh...

It began in 2007, with break-ins where the main thing stolen was women's lingerie. Few people reported the thefts, and by 2009, local police had more pressing concerns - two women had been sexually assaulted. Speaking for the first time on television, one of them, Laurie Massicotte, says she was fast asleep when the intruder struck.

"He just said, 'Trust me, you don't want to see me,'" Massicotte tells "48 Hours."

The intruder blindfolded Massicotte and beat her. Her ordeal went on for three-and-a-half hours.

"I could hear him. And he - he's putting the blinds down," she continues. "And I kept thinking, 'before he leaves here, this guy is going to kill me.'"

Two months later, 38-year-old Corporal Marie-France Comeau was killed in the nearby town of Brighton. Two months after that, another local woman, 27-year-old Jessica Lloyd, went missing.

Crime reporter Tim Appleby has spent a year chasing down leads to write a book about the crimes thought to be the work of an unknown sexual predator, nicknamed the "Tweed Creeper."

"There was really fear," Appleby explains. "There was different schools of thought as to whether it was a local matter or - somebody who'd come into Tweed from the outside. But really, nobody knew, and that really put Tweed on edge."

Until Jessica Lloyd went missing, there were no solid suspects. Certainly not Col. Williams - a prominent military man and a rising star in the air force.

"He could handle a lot of pressure, a very busy calendar...a lot of different conflicting priorities," says Ret. Gen. Angus Watt. "He was quite an impressive guy."

General Watt says Williams was the obvious choice to head the command at Trenton, Canada's largest air base. Troops headed for Afghanistan leave from here and the fallen return here for a hero's welcome.

The colonel was far more than a figurehead. A crack pilot, he regularly ferried dignitaries around the world, including Queen Elizabeth II in 2005. He even helped plan security for the 2010 economic summit President Barack Obama attended.

"He was the wing commander. He was in charge," says Appleby.

While police searched for the "Tweed Creeper," Col. Williams was carrying on his normal, high flying life. Hours before the first sexual assault, he joined in a fun filled air force publicity stunt. Days later, he met with Canada's defense minister. And the day after the Comeau murder, he stopped by a charity event on the base.

Any link between the colonel and the crimes seemed unthinkable... until now.

Cop: Essentially, there's a connection between you and, uh, and all four of those cases, would you agree? Geographically?
Colonel: I drive past, uh, yes... I would say there's, uh, a connection, yes.

Detective Sgt. Jim Smyth, of the Ontario Provincial Police, believes there's much more connection than geography. As improbable as it seems, he thinks Col. Williams may be a killer.

They will talk for nine hours. "48 Hours" edited and visually enhanced the videotaped session - a rare inside look at perhaps one of the most skillful police interrogations ever: a face-off between the colonel and the cop:

Video: Watch an excerpt of the interrogation
Photos: Colonel's secret life

Det. Sgt. Smyth begins almost gently, never addressing Williams by his title.

Veteran investigator and "48 Hours" consultant Paul Ciolino says there's a reason for that. Ciolino explains that everything Smyth will say is carefully planned. "He's letting him know psychologically, 'We're equals in here.'"

Cop: An investigation like this, I mean I'm sure you can appreciate it's been big news...
Colonel: Yeah.
Cop: And that's why we're here on a Sunday afternoon, so again, I appreciate it...

Pleasantries out of the way, Det. Sgt. Smyth focuses on the most urgent case: the missing Jessica Lloyd.

Cop: Did you know Jessica Lloyd even in passing? For any reason?
Colonel: (Shakes head no)

Jessica was last heard from when she texted a friend at 10:30 p.m., on Jan 28, 2010 - 10 days earlier. Her older brother, Andy, got a panicked call from their mother the next morning.

"So immediately I run right over and... it was weird," he explains. "Her car was there, her BlackBerry was there. Her purse was there. You know things that young, adult women don't leave home without!"

He says Jess was outgoing and popular - not the sort to just up and disappear.

"Very down to earth. Very funny...very witty, very social...could talk to anybody," Andy tells Spencer. "You know, young life... just got a career, just bought her first house...just bought a new car - like she had so much, everything was just like that, and then..."

As police scoured the area, the distraught Lloyds mobilized their own small army of friends. "We had her picture all over the Internet," Andy explains.

The only real clues were in Jessica's own backyard: a boot print in the frozen ground and tire tracks in a nearby field.

Cop: Do you get much chance to, uh, to watch television shows, "CSI," things like that?

Police at the roadblock grew suspicious of the colonel when they realized his tires seemed to match those tracks. Now, almost casually, Smyth makes a critical request.

Cop: What would you be willing to give me today to help me, uh, move past you in this investigation?
Colonel: What, uh, what do you need?

Colonel Williams readily agrees to supply DNA, fingerprints, blood samples and even lets them examine his boots. What he may not know is that a team is waiting outside that room to rush the samples for testing.

When Det. Sgt. Smyth returns, the colonel shows the first trace of concern - but only for his reputation.

Colonel: Can I assume you're going to be discreet?
Cop: As possible, yeah.
Colonel: ...'cause, uh, you know, this would have a very significant impact on the base if they thought you thought I did this.

Ciolino says the colonel's body language during the interrogation - arms crossed against his chest, rocking forward in his chair - shows he's worried about a lot more than that.

"...all these nonverbal clues are just fallin' off of him," Ciolino points out as he and Spencer watch the taped interview. "Now, remember, this is a colonel in the air force. He don't sit like this. I mean, that's like a 7-year-old sitting there, almost, you know? He's crossin' his legs [like] he's gotta go to the bathroom."

Cop: What kind of tires do you have on your Pathfinder? ...Would it surprise you to know that, uh, when the CSI officers were looking around her property that they identified a set of tire tracks?

"And, [Williams is] looking at the ground, and he folds up his body, and when you're foldin' up your body, you're concealing, you're hiding. And so, Smyth knows this," Ciolino continues.

Cop: They identified those tires as the same tires on your Pathfinder...
Colonel: Really?
Cop: Yeah. Do you have any recollection at all of being off that road?
Colonel: No I was not off the road, no.

But the tires match and the tests on the colonel's boots are about to come in.

Cop: I'm just going to step out and see how things are going, OK?
Colonel: OK.
Cop: I mean, it is a Sunday, but there's probably 60 or 70 people working on this file so there's a lot of things happening.
Colonel: Sure.

"He's never been under pressure like this," Ciolino says. "Let me compare this to he's got the prime minister in his plane and the whole cabinet and it looks like this thing is gonna crash into the side of a mountain in about 10 seconds!"

Russell Williams may be a colonel now, but his college roommate, Jeff Farquhar, says back then, his buddies just called him "Sarge."

"We had the cleanest residence around," Farquhar tells Susan Spencer, describing him as a "take charge" kind of guy.

A control freak who loved the movies. Farquar says after a painful breakup, Williams started going to the movies a lot. "He had been seeing the movie 'Top Gun,'" he says.

Williams memorized the dialogue and seemed to model his life on "Top Gun."

"He said, 'You know, I think I want to get into the air force..." Farquhar recalls. "But, as I found out later on, his career climbed and climbed."

Russell Williams spoke at Farquhar's 1995 wedding. Williams' wife of 4 years, Mary Elizabeth Harriman, was there too.

"Oh, she was great. I thought she was a very good fit," Farquhar says. "She was very well educated. I believe she had an MBA."

"Did he seem just head over heels in love?" Spencer asks. "Or was this something, you know..."

"Yeah, it did sound like that...it did sound like that," he replies. "And, I was happy for him, absolutely."

In 2004, they bought a lakefront cottage on Cosy Cove Lane in Tweed, several hours from Ottawa. It was convenient to the base, so when Williams because base commander, he lived there fulltime, with Mary Elizabeth joining him on weekends.

"I could tell they were very much in love, yeah. He would do anything for her," says next door neighbor, Monique.

The Williams, who had no kids of their own, became good friends with Monique and her family.

Monique, who asked that "48 Hours" not use her last name, says, "We hit it off right away."

"He paid a lot of attention to your kids?" Spencer asks Monique.

"He acted like a big kid himself," she replies.

When Monique's then-12-year-old daughter, Miranda, got a school assignment to profile someone with a successful career, she picked her pal, Col. Williams.

"He took a lotta interest in how I did in school," Miranda says. "So I went over one day and just me and him sat in his living room."

"You looked up to him?" Spencer asks.

"Yes, for sure."

And her mother trusted him, never dreaming that one day police investigating a series of violent crimes would call him in for questioning, which is growing more tense by the minute.

Cop: Right now, there's a search warrant being executed...and your vehicles have been seized, OK.You and I both know they're going to find evidence that links you to these situations.

It was the second of those "situations," that involved Laurie Massicotte, whose terrifying experience took place on Sept. 30, 2009.

"Ate my dinner in front of the TV...and the last thing I remember," she says, "I fell asleep watching 'Law & Order.'"

At about 1 a.m., Massicotte says she woke up with a blanket over her head. "I couldn't breathe...something was choking me around my neck...something was very heavy on my chest," she says.

Someone was punching her in the face; she saw stars. Her attacker told her to cooperate, be quiet. Massicotte had no idea who he was.

"I was panicking," she continues. "And I just said, 'Please...please...I don't want to die.' I was begging on the lives of my children. It was just like a bad dream."

Telling her to look away, the intruder replaced the blanket with a blindfold and tied her hands behind her back.

"I'm sweating. My wrists are killing me, my head is pounding...you name it," she recalls. "I got this sick feeling in my stomach... I think I'm gonna be sick."

She said so, and his reaction shocked her.

"He got me Tylenols. He fixed my blindfold. He patted me on the head and apologized for hitting me so hard," she says. "I felt that this person had a conscience."

If so, it wasn't conscience enough to make him stop.

"I felt a knife...and he kept telling me to hold still."

He next slipped something over her head - a kind of homemade harness.

"...and all of a sudden I hear this, this, his breathing changed. ...like short breaths, just like breathing really heavy...and he said to me, 'I need to take some pictures of you.'"

The camera's red light flashed through the blindfold... and the picture taking began.

"The next thing I feel, all of a sudden with one slice, just like that...he sliced my clothes off," Massicotte continues. "Now I'm asking him, 'You're going to rape me.' 'No, I'm not going to rape you, Laurie.'"

And indeed, he didn't, degrading her instead in other ways and documenting every single act.

"He made me pose...like different angles...and he was circling all around me all the time taking these pictures. I just figured I know what's going to happen now..."

Then - suddenly - it stopped. Having terrorized Massicotte for more than three hours, the man simply left. It was about 4:30 a.m.

"I waited half an hour before I made the 911 call. I was in shock that I was even still alive," she says.

Massicotte was even more shocked when police admitted there'd been a similar crime right down the street 11 days earlier. Ontario Provincial Police didn't make an effort to publicize it.

"I couldn't believe it," she says. "It could have been prevented."

Ontario Provincial Police refused "48 Hours"' request for an interview, leaving unanswered the question of why they only warned the neighbors after Laurie Massicotte was attacked.

"We knew about the Tweed incidents, about the bad incidents in Tweed. We knew there was something really wrong there," says Anne Marsand Cook.

Two months later, when Cook found some sex toys missing from her home in nearby Belleville, she just thought someone was playing a joke.

She fetched a neighbor to talk things over and they decided not to call police - sex toys were just too embarrassing. So they locked up and left for the night.

Cook says she came back the next morning, hurrying to get ready for work. That's when she noticed an ominous message on her computer, which says: "Go ahead...phone the police...I'll tell the judge your really big dildoes..."

"I just screamed," Cook says. "I felt this, this wave of fear."

That fear grew dramatically when she realized the intruder had overheard the discussion about calling the cops. He had been there, somewhere, hiding in the house.

"You just hope it doesn't happen to you or somebody close to you..." Cook says in tears. She tells Spencer in a whisper, "I feel very lucky."

Especially since the "Tweed Creeper" was about to strike yet again... this time, with deadly results.

After the murder of Marie-France Comeau, what seemed a thoughtful gesture - a condolence letter to the corporal's family from her commanding officer, none other than Col. Russell Williams. He wrote that she'd be remembered as compassionate, he offered to help during "this difficult time" and he added "she will be sorely missed." On that, he was surely right.

"Marie, I think she's in love with life in general. She wanted to discover the world. She wanted to taste every meal that was available on the planet," says ex-boyfriend Alain Plante.

Plante says Comeau, who worked on an air force flight crew, had just returned from a trip with Canada's prime minister.

"It's not every day that you have the chance to go around the world, and actually she did that," Plante says. "Her dream was coming true."

But on Nov. 25, 2009, Comeau's body was found in her home in Brighton, a small town 50 miles from Tweed. It was a bloody crime scene, the room in chaos. Kitchen knives were used to pin a sheet over the window, ensuring that there were no witnesses to her final struggle. Police fear the missing Jessica Lloyd has suffered the same fate.

Back in the interrogation room, the evidence is mounting.

Cop: The problem is, Russell, is every time I walk out of this room, there's another issue that comes up, OK. And, it's not issues that point away from you. It's issues that point at you, OK.

Test results on the colonel's boots are back.

Cop: This is the footwear impression of the person who approached the rear of Jessica Lloyd's house.
Colonel:Mm hmm.
Cop: This is a photocopy of the boot that, uh, you took off your foot...
Colonel: Yeah.
Cop: ...just a little while ago, OK.

After about three hours, the mild-mannered Det. Sgt. Jim Smyth slowly begins to lower the boom.

Cop: These are identical. Your vehicle drove up the side of Jessica Lloyd's house. Your boots walked to the back of Jessica Lloyd's house ...

"[Smyth] says, 'Your boots went up to her back door,'" says veteran investigator Paul Ciolino.

Ciolino says consider how an innocent man would react. "'Hey, they might look like my boots, but they're not my boots. Them boots didn't (laughs) go up to that door.' But, [Williams is] agreeing with him. His body is agreeing with him. "Yeah, yeah my boots were up to that back door.'"

"Why doesn't he just deny it?" Spencer asks.

"He's on such sensory overload right now," Ciolino explains. "He's, like, up in the top of the room watchin' his life go right down the toilet right now."

Cop: But you and I both know you were at Jessica Lloyd's house and I need to know why!

From Russell Williams, there was only silence. Det. Sgt. Smyth spells it out.

Cop: Listen to me for a second, OK. When that evidence comes in your credibility is gone, OK?

Smyth presents Williams with an impossible choice.

Cop: You know there's only one option, what other option is there?
Colonel: What's the option?
Cop: Well I don't think you want the cold blooded psychopath option, don't get me wrong. I've met guys who actually kind of enjoyed the notoriety got off on it.

Whether it's the fear of being called a psychopath, or just the weight of the evidence, the colonel now tries a bit of manipulation.

Cop: Russell, what are we going to do?
Colonel: Call me Russ, please.
Cop: OK. What are we going to do, Russ?

"'Call me Russ,'" Ciolino tells Spencer. "'We're pals now. I'm gonna allow you to call me Russ, young sergeant, OK?' And Sergeant Smyth is goin' well, 'I've got this guy - it's so easy, I can't stand it!'"

And Smyth is using an old interrogation trick to get inside the colonel's head, mirroring Williams' every move.

"You're showin' this guy, 'I'm on your team, we're a lot alike,'" Ciolino says of Smyth mimicking the colonel's body language.

Photos: Colonel's secret life exposed

Now, with a masterful use of silence, the cop gives the colonel time to think.

"Almost every interrogator's inclination would be to say something. But silence builds pressure. He's lettin' him stew," Ciolino explains.

Cop: What's the issue you're struggling with?
Colonel: (sniffs) It's hard to believe this is happening.

After almost five hours of questioning, suddenly it's over. The tipping point?

Colonel: I want to, um, minimize the impact on my wife.
Cop: So do I.

Of all things, the colonel's concern is for his wife.

Colonel: So how do we do that?
Cop: Well, you start by telling the truth.

Smyth wants to know the truth about Jessica Lloyd.

Colonel: OK.
Cop: So where is she?
Colonel: Got a map?

A map to show police exactly where he left her body.

"'Got a map?'" repeats Ciolino. "That should go on this guy's headstone because that's the line that buried him!"

"Got a map?" That question is a huge turning point in the intense cat-and-mouse game between the colonel and the cop, as Russell Williams confesses to the murder of Jessica Lloyd.

Video: Williams confesses to Jessica's murder
Photos: Colonel's victims and secret photos

Cop: Which town is she near? Why don't we start there.
Colonel: If you give me a map of, um, that covers over to Tweed and south I'll show you.

Williams agrees to lead police to her body. But first, says "48 Hours" investigator Paul Ciolino, "Smyth is gonna get more details because that's his job."

Cop: Why don't we start with Jessica.
Colonel: I saw her in her house on her treadmill...

A few days later, Williams came back, broke in and woke Jessica up. Terrified, she begged for her life and he promised to spare her if she cooperated.

Colonel: Well, so I raped her in, uh, in her house and then I took her to the car and took her to Tweed...

At his cottage on Cosy Cove Lane, he raped her again.

Colonel: I hit her on the back of the head... Well, I was surprised it, uh, her skull gave way, she was there immediately unconscious and I strangled her.

The colonel would later take her body to the woods. But first, he put her in the garage and then went off to work.

Colonel: And then I went in to the base.
Cop: Why did you go to the base?
Colonel: Because I was flying early the next morning, OK.

"The guy could be reading a grocery list," Spencer says. "It's unbelievable."

"Let me tell you what Smyth wants to do," Ciolino explains. "What he'd like to do is shoot this guy and drop him, but he's gonna play the game some more."

The game, Ciolino says, is to keep Russell Williams talking - to get more evidence linking him to the two sexual assaults and to the murder of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau.

Cop: Marie-France Comeau...
Colonel: She... actually discovered me in the basement...

Video: Williams confesses to Marie-France's murder

Williams says he was wearing a ski mask, hiding behind the furnace.

Colonel: The cat was staring at me and she was wondering why the cat was staring, so when she spotted me...I uh...I subdued her...

"Literally, this is the bogeyman talking right now," Ciolino continues. "This is a demon sitting across from you!"

He beat her and lashed her to a pole in the basement, then took her upstairs to the bedroom and raped her. Hours later, he killed her.

Colonel: I put tape on her mouth and then I put tape on her, uh, nose and held it there so she couldn't breathe...

He made sure he could relive the moment.

Colonel: So, I was running the video and then taking still pictures so the video pretty much covers everything.

"He made movies of himself...raping and murdering these women," crime reporter Tim Appleby says. "He was an actor in it. It was all choreographed."

As the nine-hour interrogation winds down, the colonel tells the police where they can find all those videos. And there's much more.

Police discover a mountain of stolen underwear: underpants, bras and camisoles stuffed into the rafters of his garage and packed in boxes in the basement - trophies from dozens of break-ins. Break-ins, which, at the time, most of his victims never even knew about.

"His collection of underwear, stolen, ran into the thousands," Appleby tells Spencer. "He had so much of it he had to burn some of it in a field outside Ottawa.

"For him, this is normal behavior. This is OK," Ciolino points out. "He's a psychopath."

Remarkably, as hard as they've looked, police found no evidence of any violent or bizarre crimes before the colonel was 44 years old. In his book, "A New Kind of Monster," Appleby argues that's only part of what makes Russell Williams unique.

Read an excerpt of Appleby's book

"He has emotions. He has feelings. He has many attachments. He has a conscience," Appleby says. "He cared very deeply about a lot of things."

Cop: Let me ask you this...did you like or dislike these women.
Colonel: I didn't know any of them.

But did he really not know any of his victims? In the case of Marie-France Comeau, Appleby thinks Williams still may be lying.

"He told police he had only ever flown with her once," Appleby says, "but I think he'd been stalking her."

He also knew his neighbor, Monique, and she thought she knew him.

"So, when you say the colonel's house is next door, it is literally right next door," Spencer notes to Monique as they walk outside of her home.

"Yeah, it's, it's very close," Monique replies.

"And, this is what?" Spencer asks, pointing at a structure.

"The garage. That's where he put Jessica's body," Monique explains.

After the colonel's confession and arrest, Monique was appalled to learn that the first house he'd broken into was hers and he'd been in her daughter's bedroom.

"Oh, that that killed me," she says, "because at the time she was only 12 years old."

"It was somebody I trusted a lot," her daughter, Miranda, says. "I just feel really betrayed. You know?"

But only in court, when the full extent of his crimes is revealed, will the colonel's victims understand what betrayal really means.

No matter how many times he's asked, Russell Williams can't - or won't - answer the fundamental question: Why?

Cop: Why do you think these things happened?
Colonel: (sniffs) I don't know.
Cop: I don't know the answers and I'm pretty sure the answers don't matter.

Video: More of the interrogation

But answers do matter to the wife Williams supposedly wanted to protect. She's now divorcing him. Police believe she knew nothing of his crimes.

"She has not said a word to anybody. And I'm sure she never will," says Tim Appleby.

Answers also matter to friends and his former commanding officer.

"This is a huge betrayal...and we will never forgive him," says retired Gen. Angus Watt.

"It was just totally devastating what he had done," says Monique.

Eight months after his interrogation, confession and arrest, Russell Williams is in court. There are no cameras allowed.

"I've never dealt with a case like this before. We're very fortunate in our community...and fortunate in Canada, we don't have many crimes like this," the prosecutor told reporters standing on the court steps.

Williams pleads guilty to the murders of Marie-France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd, to two sexual assaults and an astonishing 82 counts of breaking and entering - the bizarre underwear thefts that started it all. The sheer volume of evidence takes two days to present and it includes the colonel's damning confession.

Marie-France's loved ones have chosen to grieve privately, but Jessica's supporters came out in force.

The details, and dozens of lurid photos released at trial, leave even an experienced crime reporter and author like Tim Appleby shaking his head.

Photos: Col. Williams' victims and secret photos

"We knew that it was going to be bad," he says. "But I think it still shocked people."

Most shocking: the colonel's own candid self-portraits showing him modeling the underwear. As for his videotapes of the actual murders, prosecutors decide they are just too horrific to be seen in public. Instead, they describe them for the record.

"They involved extreme sexual violence ...in the first one, he walks into the room...he's naked except for a ski mask," Appleby explains. "He's videoing himself taking pictures of his genitals at very, very close quarters. So he's filming himself filming."

The judge gave Williams the maximum sentence: life behind bars. He's serving it at the penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario. Parole is possible, though highly unlikely, in 20 years.

Shortly after his arrest, he tried to kill himself.

"He took a cardboard tube used in a toilet roll and he put it down his throat," says Appleby.

Now, months later in court, "His words were, 'I stand before you, Your Honor, indescribably ashamed,'" Appleby says. "And the judge, even as he sent him off to penitentiary, said that he believed his remorse was sincere.

"You know, you see some kind of killers and they're dead, these little lizard-like eyes. They don't care. He's not like that at all," Appleby continues. "He knew what he had done. ...I mean he knew he'd done unspeakably wicked things."

Williams wrote a note to assault victim Laurie Massicotte, still playing the authority figure, telling her she could "do better in life."

Video: Williams on Massicotte attack

"Some day, I hope to be able to put this behind me," she says. "It defines your life..."

He sent apologies to the families of Marie-France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd, but, despite this apparent remorse, Tim Appleby says Williams still refuses to acknowledge one of his crimes.

"They discovered child pornography on his computer and it was the one offense to which he would not confess," he says.

The discovery wasn't revealed in court, and though there's no evidence Williams did anything except own the pornography, Appleby says the guilty plea almost fell apart over this.

"He was willing to admit to murder, to rape, to these dozens of strange break-ins, but not that," Appleby points out. "And, this goes to the heart of who Williams is, because he was deeply ashamed of this."

"This is the worst crime in Canadian history. We've never seen anything like this," says Andy Lloyd.

Canada has no death penalty. Asked if it should, Lloyd tells Susan Spencer, "I don't know. ...honestly, I would almost rather almost him be in segregation for 23 hours by himself...for the rest of his life until the day he dies."

In a stunning example of bureaucracy run amok, the same government that's keeping him in prison is also keeping him on the payroll. "His pension is really is untouchable," Appleby tells Spencer.

"So, he will get a pension for the next 30, 40 years, however long he lives?" she asks.

"Yes, he will... I think it's somewhere in the range of about $60,000 a year."

But in every other way it can, an appalled Canada has tried to erase the memory of Col. Williams. They've stripped him of his rank, burned his uniform and even crushed his car. But the astonishing record of his crimes and confession lives on.

"I would take this tape and I would teach it at every advanced interrogation course in the world," says Ciolino.

The man who cracked the case - the soft-spoken Det. Sgt. Smyth - won't discuss it, refusing all interviews as if getting murder confessions out of decorated air force colonels were all in a day's work.

Tweed hasn't moved on so easily.

"Trust is definitely different," Miranda says. "You never really know like how people are, and who they really are."

"Nobody knew. Not even his wife, his friends, his family, his colleagues...over 23 years of watching him, nothing came out that would have given us a clue," says Gen. Watt.

"Why somebody in that position would do things like this...it's crazy," says Andy Lloyd.

"So, when you ask yourself, 'Why her,' how do you answer it?" Spencer asks.

"I can't," he replies. "It's a question one person knows...and I don't think he'll ever tell."

CASE UPDATE: Jessica Lloyd's family, Laurie Massicotte and the first assault victim are all suing Russell Williams for damages totaling more than $13 million.

Laurie Massicotte is also suing the Ontario Provincial Police Department for failing to protect her after Williams assaulted a woman in her neighborhood.

Excerpt of " A New Kind of Monster," by Tim Appleby, reprinted by permission. Published by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.