Colonel Russell Williams, good, and evil.

There’s a whole lot about the Russell Williams case that’s just wrong. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go here. It’s kind of big news around these here parts right now.)  It’s wrong that a decorated Colonel in the Canadian military, a base commander committed theft, rape, murder. It’s wrong that women were assaulted, robbed, killed. It’s wrong that the entire Canadian Military and several Ontario neighbourhoods have been shaken to their core. And it’s also wrong that this detail was the one that got the biggest reaction, it seems, in the courtroom today:

“In the public gallery, there were audible gasps, murmurs and heads shook in disgust as the court was shown photos of Williams naked in a girl’s bed, masturbating with girl’s clothing as he took photos of himself.”

(Note added hours later: This was early testimony. The details revealed later in the day became far more lurid and graphic and disturbing.)

I cannot reconcile the two men in my mind - the accomplished military officer and the murderer. His crimes were heinous, evil.  He took lives and destroyed countless others. But I cannot be black and white. I cannot reconcile myself to believe that he is nothing more than a beast.

Is it possible that all people, no matter how evil or how good, have more than one dimension? It’s a troubling thought. All of the world’s great devils are now viewed only as evil. But, as they say, even Hitler liked puppies. And Hitler got thousands of Germans to believe him, to follow him. We want to believe that we can know evil when we see it. But in the case of Hitler, and of Russell Williams, it’s clear we couldn’t. Which means it could be anyone. We want to categorize Russell Williams, to demonize him wholly. But we can’t. We just can’t.

He might have always had this demon lurking within him. Or there’s the other possibility, disturbing because it means it could happen to any of us: That he wasn’t always evil. That something, somewhere in his life caused him to snap, caused him to break some kind of connection in the morality centers of his brain. His lifetime career in the military leads me to think that maybe it was the things he did, the things he saw in his service, something was too much, something pushed him over the edge. It’s weak, because obviously every soldier who sees active duty sees awful things, and they don’t start breaking and entering and raping and killing. So, unlikely. But a possibility, and one that really deserves investigation. 

But ultimately, as I sit less than 500 m away from the house where Russell Williams hid his trophies in the ceiling of his basement, I am struck most by one thing. This was not, not in any aspect of his life, a stupid man. And yet, one search of his home revealed meticulous, detailed evidence on every crime he committed, including those that hadn’t even been reported.  He must have known that one wrong move would - and did - sink him.  So what strikes me, based on my amateur armchair profiling capabilities honed by one too many episodes of Criminal Minds,  is that this is a man who wanted to be caught.

I have no insight, no knowledge in to this case, no more than anyone else who reads the newspapers. But my mind needs to make sense of it. And here’s what my mind is telling me: This is a man who fought his demons for his entire life. A man who knew that what he was tempted to do, what he tried to prevent himself from doing for many years, what he eventually did, was wrong.  He kept records, and trophies, and evidence of his guilt very intentionally. And in the end, he pleaded guilty because he knew he was guilty. I think Russell Williams all along wanted someone to save him from himself.

In the end, it was just far too late.

Tagged as: Colonel Russell Williams, Military, Murder