BELLEVILLE, Ont. - Even veteran reporters were appalled by what they saw in court on Monday in Belleville, Ont., as a former air force base commander's secret life was made painfully public.
Col. Russell Williams, former commander of CFB Trenton, pleaded guilty to two counts or murder, two counts of sexual assault, and 82 counts of break-and-enter and theft.
His meticulous photographic documentation of the acts meant the prosecution had dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of pictures of Williams committing his crimes, often naked or clad in nothing more than women's underwear.
One anchor, who has been on the job for a decade, turned away and kept her head down, choosing to take notes from the Crown's description of the images being shown, rather than look at them herself.
There were audible gasps among reporters in the courtroom, particularly early in the morning when the images seemed to have the most jarring impact.
But as the day progressed, the shock and awe seemed to settle into more of a quiet, numb disgust. By the afternoon, most reporters were looking anywhere other than at the graphic images of Williams, and the courtroom was mostly quiet as the list of crimes and the endless array of photographs went on and on.
"Maybe we're desensitized already," suggested one TV reporter.
Another member of the media, a local radio host, was visibly disgusted at times by the pornographic images flashing across the screens. Not only was he upset by what he was seeing, but by a feeling of betrayal some members of the local media seem to share.
"He was the face of CFB Trenton," he said. "And local media always has a great relationship with the base commander."
He first met Williams at a base athletic event right around the time Williams was taking over in 2009. Williams struck him, as he did most who knew him professionally, as competent and engaging.
This was the same man, he pointed out, who was co-ordinating relief efforts for Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake. He was considered an all-round upstanding citizen.
Monday's court proceedings ended with a renewed sense of disgust for many members of the media. After reading in chronological order through the agreed statement of facts for dozens and dozens of break-and-enter and theft charges, prosecutors eventually got to what they called the "escalation" point, where Williams' crimes began to take on a new sense of danger.
First there was the incident where Williams watched a woman undress, hidden in the backyard spying through her window. When he knew she had gotten into the shower, he took off his own clothes, left them in the backyard, and stole into her house naked and took a pair of her underwear, one of his favourite souvenirs.
And soon after that, he moved onto his first sexual assault, attacking a woman in her sleep, tying her up, then undressing and photographing her over the period of about two hours.
If all of that wasn't enough to shake up the court room late in the day, reporters were given the opportunity to view the evidence exhibits up close and personal -- seven thick binders full of appalling images and descriptions of Williams's crimes.
There was a sense of duty among those who chose to view the evidence, and to see once again those hundreds, if not thousands, of images of Williams in various stages of nudity, performing sexual acts with underwear, pyjamas, shirts, even stuffed animals and makeup applicators taken from the homes he broke into.
When reporters are gathered together in a large group to cover a big story, there's usually a sense of victory and celebration and a collegiality at the end of the day, with competitors from different news organizations making plans to go for beers.
But today that wasn't there. It was more a sense of tired defeat, brought about by one man's dark secrets.
