A New Kind of Monster (7 page)

A
t age seven, Russ Williams was on the move again. He and five-year-old Harvey had been uprooted once before in their lives and now they were in Toronto, a new city, with a stepfather in place of their father and a new family name, Sovka. Their mother had even changed her first name, from Christine to Nonie, her middle name.

The marriage arrangements between the two divorced couples were unusual, in that they comprised a direct exchange between the four partners: while Jerry and Nonie Sovka were raising Russell and Harvey in Scarborough, a Toronto suburb, Jerry's three children were being looked after in Deep River by their mother, Marilynn.

How much distress the upheaval caused the brothers is only a guess, because Williams rarely discussed his family history with anyone, and friends learned not to raise the topic. “It was clear to me when I met him that his parents were divorced and that it wasn't a happy thing to delve into,” says Jeff Farquhar,
a former University of Toronto roommate who was to become a longtime close friend.

All through his adult life, Williams would remain closer to his father than to his mother. They stayed in constant touch, often visited each other, and several times Dave Williams stayed at his son's lakeside cottage in Tweed. Back in 1970, however, it's possible that on the heels of the tumultuous breakup in Deep River the move to Toronto came as a relief to young Russell. Jerry Sovka in his thirties is remembered as being more easygoing than David Williams. Two former friends, a retired married couple in Toronto who knew the Sovkas when they lived in Scarborough, recall Jerry as funny, energetic and tolerant of his new stepsons, although, as with so many of the ambitious alumni of Chalk River, his job always came first.

The Sovkas moved several times over the next few years, migrating from North York, another of Toronto's suburbs, to Scarborough, where the brothers attended one of the Montessori elementary schools. The family rented a house, and then another one, before buying a home of their own and reselling it soon afterward. Then, in May 1975, came the purchase of a small but splendidly located bungalow, perched on the Scarborough Bluffs overlooking Lake Ontario. For $89,900, the Sovkas got a rundown property on a huge, elongated 50-by-550-foot lot. It was at 15 Lakehurst Crescent, a quiet, T-shaped cul-de-sac south of Kingston Road, in one of Scarborough's old, established neighborhoods, tucked between two pieces of wooded parkland where wildlife was often seen.

Russell and Harvey Sovka lived there for almost four years, the longest time the young brothers had lived anywhere in their lives, and the house is remembered as a cheerful place. What it lacked in size it compensated for with a big, sloping back lawn and a million-dollar view across the lake, where Jerry and Nonie
Sovka would sail, a continuing interest. The back lawn was a great venue for parties. “It was a gorgeous lot,” a former family friend recalls. “I remember one party in particular that Jerry and Nonie had out on the back lawn. I could always remember it because Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg were playing tennis on TV, and a lot of us played tennis at the time.”

On the tidy, laid-back street, the Sovka family seemed to make a good fit. “She was sophisticated, he was nice,” says longtime resident Eileen Azar, who has lived on Lakehurst Crescent for thirty years and once attended a small party at the Sovkas' home. “I don't know why they invited us, we hardly knew them. They were just friendly.”

Some found them less so. Living directly across from the Sovkas was Mark Brousseau, a few years older than the two brothers and today a civil servant in Toronto. He remembers the Sovka parents as aloof and distant. “They were both kind of cool to me. They never spoke to me, ever. My impression was that the mother was very controlling, not what you'd call a loving family. Everything seemed very icy cold, a very strict household. Nothing ever seemed spontaneous.

“But Russell and Harvey were nice guys. They seemed to be close, always doing things together. Russell was always polite, he would wave at me. Everything seemed kind of planned for them, and it was obvious they had money. I never went in their house, but whenever I saw them outside they always looked neat.”

The interior of the old Sovka home on Lakehurst Crescent doesn't feel as cramped as it probably did back then. Retired IBM instructor Bill White and his wife Margaret live there now, and they've knocked down walls and added a kitchen skylight through which light pours in. Big poplar and black locust trees have filled up much of the big backyard, along with a gazebo-style child's playhouse. When Williams was arrested, the couple
were astonished to learn that their house (worth close to $1 million these days) is his former home. “I was hoping to find some evidence, maybe some bones or a diary,” Bill White quips. “We looked everywhere. We still haven't gone through the attic.”

White's sleuthing instincts are not wholly far-fetched. The twisted psychology that drives sex killers and predators can often be traced back to dark, unhappy childhoods, manifested in youthful aggression, brooding frustration with the world and—a surprisingly common phenomenon—cruelty to animals. Williams, however, told detectives during his confessions that he thought his sexual—and ultimately murderous—obsessions started relatively late in life, beginning in his twenties and thirties. True or not, nothing unusual emerges from a careful examination of his early life. As a boy, Williams was well behaved, shy and polite. As a teen, some thought him a snob, but mostly he is remembered as intelligent and self-effacing, reluctant to talk about himself or to make a big fuss about anything.

Also visible in his early teen years were signs of the rigorous self-discipline and dependability that would help shape his military future. He had an early morning newspaper route, he was always punctual, and he had no interest in drugs or booze. He was well organized, never happier than when organizing others, and he was a quick learner, provided the topic interested him. He was fastidiously hygienic and invariably well dressed, even in casual clothes, two lifelong traits.

Whatever the task, Russ Sovka would apply himself hard, mocking slackers. And that energy also shaped his twin passions, sports and music. He excelled at both, especially music, first as a pianist (an interest shared with Harvey) and then as an impressively powerful trumpet player. Jerry Sovka would sometimes join his stepsons for jam sessions. When Williams began attending Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute on Danforth Avenue
in 1978, he soon distinguished himself as a jazz trumpeter, quickly rising to become a member of the senior band. Yearbook photos from that year show a serene-looking youth with a helmet of neatly coiffed hair swept across his forehead, gazing confidently at the camera. The band later made a trip to Germany. Later, at university, his love of playing and listening to music—he had an impressive knowledge of jazz—would seem to vanish overnight. From that point on, these activities would be of no interest to him.

His other great enthusiasm, however, sports and fitness, would never leave him. A diet-conscious regimen of hard jogging and other self-punishment kept him in exceptionally good shape.

At Birchmount, not everybody was enamored of the new arrival. “I know he kind of thought of himself as being better than other people,” band percussionist Tony Callahan would later say. “There was an air about him, the way he talked … the way he would roll his eyes at you if you said something. He was condescending.” Former Birchmount schoolmate Sandy Zarb, who these days lives in Pickering, east of Toronto, remembers Williams as a polite loner. “He was in my music class in grade ten or eleven. I played the flute. He was a quiet guy. He wasn't outrageous the way teenage boys can be, he was kind of serious, and he only hung around with one or two people. Russell was not an outspoken guy, or a jokester. He would talk when you talked to him. He seemed kind of shy, very aloof and very focused—to me a serious type. I didn't pay much attention to him.”

In short, Russ Sovka blended in. His mother, Nonie, however, was not enthralled with Birchmount Collegiate, which had a reputation for having a tough edge and, at the time, a high dropout rate, reflective of a north–south divide at the school: the rich kids, who mostly lived south of Danforth Avenue, nearer the lake, tended to do well in school; the lower-income
ones from the north side, less so. So extracurricular activities were organized for the two Williams boys by their mother, tennis lessons in particular.

Tall, slender and possessed of a beauty that would last into her old age, Nonie Sovka's aristocratic demeanor drew a mixed response. “I think she was very socially conscious, that was my impression of her,” a former neighbor remembers. “Very cool—a product of the English system, very correct. They were involved in all sorts of activities, as I remember. Nice people, but cool and distant. You know—go to the right schools. She once made some crack about French, about wanting to learn French properly, and she didn't want to learn it in Quebec.”

The two young brothers remained close to each other. They were well behaved and considerate, both good students, definitely not part of Scarborough's rowdy crowd. Russell would sometimes go to parties but was often a wallflower, sitting quietly to one side, perhaps chatting to a girl. No one ever saw him smoking cigarettes or pot, nor did he get drunk, which earned him a lasting reputation for sobriety. “He was always a very correct, nice young man—I always felt a bit too correct,” Brousseau, the onetime neighbor, says. “A friend of mine had a big New Year's Eve party, a few blocks over. Russ was there, we were chatting a bit, and I remember how he was very kind of reserved, not a loudmouth at all. There was a young girl there that Russ liked, her name was Sara. I saw them holding hands once. I guess it was kind of a puppy romance.”

The brief relationship, if it was that, stands out because Williams had so few girlfriends before he married in 1991 at age twenty-eight. Handsome and smart, he always drew attention from young women, particularly after he joined the air force. But he reciprocated almost none of it, often telling male friends that he was wary of being snared by a gold digger.

Any romance at this particular time of his life would likely have been doomed to failure anyway, because big changes were on the horizon again. At that New Year's Eve party at the end of 1978, where Russ Williams unbent his already lanky frame and danced to
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
's “The Time Warp,” a brief announcement was made by one of Russ's contemporaries, bidding Russ and his family farewell. Jerry Sovka had just accepted a new job: he was to oversee construction of a nuclear plant in South Korea.

And so, early in 1979, the Sovkas packed up again, and headed this time for the city of Pusan, located at the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula. Also known as Busan, Pusan is South Korea's largest port and second-biggest city, and Russell and Harvey lived there for about a year, attending a school for expatriates. The ever-athletic teen took advantage of his stay to learn some martial arts and play baseball, which he quickly came to love (he was a pitcher). But it was not necessarily the happiest of times for Williams: often mistaken for an American, he told of being jeered at, and of seeing Caucasian women spat at. “Once he got spat in the face by a Korean kid who called him a Yankee, and he never got over that,” Jeff Farquhar, Russ's university chum, recalls. “He learned a lot about Far East culture, he could use chopsticks, and for sure he was no Archie Bunker. Russ was definitely cosmopolitan in his approach to the world—he liked people from all walks of life. But for some reason that [incident] just did him in for Koreans generally.”

Williams's year in South Korea marked the last time he and Harvey ever lived with their mother and stepfather. While the parents stayed on in Pusan, Russell and Harvey were sent back to Toronto in 1980, Russell first, with Harvey following close behind. There, they were enrolled as boarders at Upper Canada College, the elite midtown boys' school.

Since its founding in 1829, UCC has been a crucible for Canada's ruling class and high achievers. Its alumni comprise numerous lieutenant-governors, judges, premiers, Olympic athletes and Rhodes scholars, and at least forty have been inducted into the Order of Canada. Famous old boys include Michael Ignatieff, leader of the federal Liberal Party when Williams was arrested, author Robertson Davies and disgraced media baron Conrad Black, expelled from UCC for stealing and selling exam papers.

At university, Williams would speak fondly about his two years at UCC, lauding the school's structure and discipline. Then as now, UCC was two schools in one, encompassing a prep school and an upper school, grades nine to thirteen, with a total of roughly six hundred students. And while UCC ties often stretch from generation to generation, the Williams brothers went there because of its sterling reputation and because their parents could afford the fees, which were around $6,000 per year for boarders.

There were two boarding houses at UCC, Seaton's and Wedd's, where Williams lived. Both had an entrenched sports culture—volleyball, soccer, tennis, softball and squash, which Williams would play relentlessly for hours in the courts on the west side of the building, smashing ball after ball against the back wall. He was also a member of the jazz ensemble, which sometimes interacted with the drama club, providing a musical accompaniment to the well-attended plays the club put on.

Along with its success stories, UCC has had its share of scandal. In 2007 it dispatched a mass letter to all UCC graduates, staff and former staff, apologizing for a series of notorious, headline-grabbing incidents involving sexual and physical abuse that had rocked the school for years, first surfacing in the late 1990s. Five UCC staff members were charged with sex offenses, including possession of child pornography, and three were
convicted. Later came a big lawsuit on behalf of eighteen former students. The school said in its letter that the crimes were the most difficult issue it had ever had to deal with, and some took place while the Williams brothers were there. There seems to be no evidence, however, that they were in any way affected, or that they even knew of the abuse.