A New Kind of Monster by Timothy Appleby

women.
    Tracked down in Japan by
Globe and Mail
reporter Greg McArthur almost a quarter century later, Misa knew that her long-ago companion had been arrested and charged with murder and sexual assault, but she declined comment, saying she had nothing to add. “All I can say is, whatever my experience was, I don’t think it will be of any use [to you],” she told McArthur. It’s nonetheless clear that this was Williams’s first serious romance, and probably his last until he met his future wife, Mary Elizabeth Harriman, whom he would marry in 1991.
    Along with other residents of unit C8, Jeff Farquhar didn’t much care for Misa, who he says seemed to have an oddly intimidating effect on the normally controlling, assertive Williams. “She ran him like a whipped horse,” he says. “It was always her way or the highway, and he was always trying to acquiesce—what she wanted to do or not want to do. She always wanted to hit the books harder and didn’t have a lot of time left over for Russ, so there was always an argument about finding time to do things together.”
    Another ex-roommate describes an incident when he needed to speak to Williams and stopped by the home of Misa, also in residence. “I knocked on the door and I was told by the other women that Russ and [Misa] were up in her room. So jokingly I said, ‘Russ, put your clothes on and come down.’ Well, he didn’t come down and then I found out a few days later that he and his girlfriend were very upset that I had made a comment like that,which quite surprised me. I made a point of apologizing to him and to her.”
    The breakup with Misa sent Williams into a depression, according to Farquhar, and he struggled to achieve a reconciliation. He sent her a dozen long-stemmed roses, and would hover around places on campus where he knew she would be. But she sent the roses back, and even entreated Farquhar—by no means a friend of hers—to persuade Williams to back off. “She was getting really pissed,” Farquhar says.
    When it became evident to Williams that the separation was permanent, he was inconsolable. “I don’t know of him dating anybody after Misa, not at all,” says Farquhar. “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t well liked—God, I mean a lot of women liked him because he was a great guy. The only time I ever pushed him was if there was an event or an upcoming dinner at the university and you were expected to have a date. And Russ would say, ‘No, not going.’ ”
    Williams was not the only student on the Scarborough campus with some serious issues involving women. One year behind him, also pursuing an economics-related course, was a blond, fresh-faced student destined to become the most notorious sex killer of his generation. His name was Paul Bernardo, and he was convicted in 1995 on two counts of first-degree murder and multiple other charges, including two of aggravated sexual assault, in which he used a knife. So heinous were his crimes, and so numerous, that he was designated a dangerous offender, a classification that reduces parole possibilities to almost nothing.
    Bernardo committed at least eleven extremely violent rapes—probably many more—and most of them occurred in the large Toronto suburb of Scarborough, generating widespread local terror and earning him his pre-arrest nickname, the Scarborough Rapist. Trial testimony from his wife and accomplice KarlaHomolka (convicted of manslaughter and released after serving out a full twelve-year prison term) strongly suggests Bernardo was responsible for a long-term pattern of sex attacks that were never solved. The first two attacks for which he was convicted took place in Scarborough on May 4 and 14, 1987, a few weeks before he graduated from U of T with a degree in commerce and economics. After Williams was arrested in February 2010, an imaginative newspaper story that garnered