Panty Thefts missed - Fetishist label wrongly used.

“It’s very Silence of the Lambs, all this fuss about the cross-dressing. We’re somehow equating cross-dressing with rape even though there’s no direct relationship between a fetish that’s common to a lot of people and a criminal act." - Rosie DiManno Toronto Star

For some reason the police in Tweed and in Ottawa missed a disturbing number of break-ins in one area of Ottawa and in sleepy Tweed.  The break-ins involved the stealing of underwear that belonged to girls and women.  How did they miss the connections is a good question.  You might agree that connecting the Ottawa break-ins with Tweed would have been a stretch, but missing them within their own jurisdictions seems strange to me.

Did the Police look at these break-ins of underwear as a pranks, or minor because they did not involve something of significance like a big screen TV or a wallet full of cash?

What the person did in the break-ins was intimidate and humiliate the women and girls whose privacy and space he invaded.  He made these girls and women feel very vulnerable and I expect scared.  Some did not report the break-ins because they felt so humiliated.

The Fifth Estate has looked at the break-ins and have provided a map.  Here is the map...

Many of the break-ins happened to be in or near the nieghbourhood of Col Russell Williams.  Now at the time they wouldn't know it was Williams but they could have seen the close proximity of the break-ins and 1) watched the area, 2) warned the community and 3) maybe set up a sting.

The Fifth Estate created a similar map for Orleans.  Again, Russell Williams' home is spack dab in the middle of the break-ins.

You will find much more at The Fifth Estate on this aspect of the investigation.

Today Antonia Zerbisias also goes at this pointing out that established investigative work states that these break-ins are anything but petty.  They point police to someone who may well end up being a serial killer.  These are photos of page 53in the book:  Killing for Sport: Inside the Minds of Serial Killers,

Antonia goes on to point out that the connection to the significance of the underwear theft break-ins was not made until The Chief of Police in Bellville started investigating the sexual assault and murder of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau.

What most of us should know by now is that this is not a case of a fetish taking over someone.  Here is part of a post I pointed many too in an earlier post on the differences beteen a Fetishist and a Predator...

A fetishist isn't generally interested in controlling a person; s/he is content to play with an object or collection of objects, and obtains sexual gratification that way. This activity usually doesn't escalate. 

A predator collects human victims as trophies, rendering them into objects to be controlled. When he grows tired of taking easy, inanimate trophies--stolen jewelry, underwear or other personal effects--he begins to entertain the notion of taking humans themselves as his trophies. He escalates his violations over time, in both frequency and intensity, as an addict will increase his dose of drugs when he becomes habituated.

Fetishists are rarely violent. Many are quite odd, but this is beside the point; their oddity generally harms no one. They tend to respect the dignity of others.
Predators are increasingly violent. Often they do not stand out as odd on first glance; their cultivated façade of normality IS the point. It enables them to escalate their crimes until they die or are caught, whichever comes first.

So, we can see that a fetishist ≠ a predator. If anything, they are diametrically opposed. - Sabina Becker - News of the Restless

 I would like to add its even disturbing that we would need to point this stuff out and I fear some will feel at liberty to continue to equate the Russell Williams horrific crimes as those of a fetishist gone mad.  If they do we will continue to see vulnerable people and women the subject of more gruesome crimes.  In Ontario a woman is raped every 17 minutes.  That's more than seventy in the course of a day.

We are safe from Russell Williams.  He will never be released.  Next time you hear about a woman's home being broken in, think about this case.