General

Russell Williams: the man no one knew

Family remembers him as quiet, disciplined

Colonel Russell Williams, charged with murdering two women, was a serious student and excelled at playing the trumpet, the Globe and Mail reports: in his last year at Upper Canada College in Toronto, in 1982, he was elected one of two prefects in his boarding house. Born in the Midlands region of England in 1963, Williams moved to Chalk River, Ont., where his father David Williams, a metallurgist, was hired at Canada’s best nuclear research facility. After his parents divorced, Williams mother remarried to Jerry Sovka, a nuclear engineer who now lives in France. The couple moved to Toronto, but Sovka got a job offer in South Korea and the family moved there in 1979. For Russell’s last two years of high school, he boarded at UCC, going by the name Russ Sovka. He played trumpet in the school band. In the mid-1980s, he went to the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus, studying politics and economics, dabbling with flying through lessons at Toronto’s Buttonville airport. He joined the armed force after graduating university. Father David Williams is thought to be in the U.S.; his mother, who split up with Sovka, is a physiotherapist in Toronto. Brother Harvey Williams is a medical doctor in Bowmanville, Ont.

Globe and Mail

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