Canadian AF chief scandal | Victims pleaded for lives before being murdered

At his sentencing hearing on Monday, Col. Russell Williams, who once flew prime ministers and served as a pilot to Queen Elizabeth II, pleaded guilty to two first-degree murder charges, two sexual assaults and 82 breaking-and-entering charges - during which he stole lingerie belonging to teen girls and young women.

The 47-year-old faces an automatic sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years. During the sentencing hearing, lawyers revealed details of the crimes.

The court was warned by prosecutors that details of the killings were horrific as they explained how Williams bound, beat, raped, photographed, and asphyxiated Marie Comeau, a 37-year-old corporal, and Jessica Lloyd, 27 – while videotaping the entire time.

Comeau made one final plea for her life, begging "Have a heart, please, I've been really good. I want to live," before Williams suffocated her, prosecutor David Thompson said.

Thompson told the court that Williams met Comeau while she was working as a flight attendant on a military flight and discovered she lived alone.

As a colonel, Williams had access to her work schedule and broke into her home on November 16 while she was away. The court learned how he repeated the same pattern  – undertaking during dozens of other break-ins to steal her lingerie and photograph the bedroom – while also modelling in her undergarments.

A week later, prosecutors said he returned when he knew Comeau would be home, carrying a kit filled with duct tape and zip ties. They added that Williams was masked for most of the attack.

Thompson said Williams entered the home, hid in the basement and waited for Comeau to fall asleep before attacking her. His plan was foiled when Comeau headed to the basement in search of her cat. Williams, in an attempt to subdue an alarmed Comeau, struck her numerous times with a flashlight to the point where she was bleeding from the head.

Williams tied her up to a basement post and covered her mouth and eyes with duct tape, Thompson said. Williams later took her upstairs where he repeatedly sexually assaulted her for more than two hours, taking video images and still photographs.

Thompson said Williams ordered the woman into positions for better video footage and at one point removed his mask to smile for the camera. As he forced himself on her, Comeau's lips quivered as she pleaded for him to stop. Thompson said Williams placed duct tape on her nose to suffocate her and continued taking photos as she struggled for breath and died.

After he placed her dead body on her bed, Williams left with Comeau's lingerie and drove to Ottawa for a meeting.

Prosecutors said how two months later, Williams then noticed Jessica Lloyd while driving by her home on a rural stretch of highway where he had a cottage.

Williams went to her home on January 28, and waited in her backyard for her to go to sleep before entering her bedroom. Once inside, he bound her with rope and placed duct tape on her face. He took photos of the repeated rapes and sexual assaults.

Prosecutor Lee Burgess said that after three hours of abuse, Williams drove the blindfolded Lloyd to his home in Tweed where he let her sleep for a few hours - until she began to seizure - when she began pleading for her life and asking to be taken to  hospital.

"I don't want to die. If I die, will you make sure my mom knows that I love her?" Lloyd said on a videotape that Williams kept rolling despite her convulsions and intense struggling, according to prosecutors. A day and a half after the ordeal began, Williams strangled Lloyd with a rope.

Prosecutors said Williams then drove back to his base in Trenton but returned from the West Coast the next day, and drove to Tweed the following day to remove her body from his cottage.

Besides details of the murder charges, the court learned earlier how Williams targeted girls and women in their 20s during his underwear fetish break-ins, stealing their lingerie and photographing himself modeling the underwear in their homes. Burgess said Williams carefully catalogued the photos with time and date stamps on hard drives in his Ottawa home, as well as the hundreds of items of lingerie he stole.

The prosecution said Williams confessed to all of the charges, admitting to killing both women because he feared investigators would determine a link between the sordid crimes and to minimize the traumatic impact on his wife. He also led investigators to Lloyd's body.