Reduxx has learned that a sadistic killer who is serving a life sentence for brutally raping and torturing a 13 year-old girl was transferred in to a women’s prison in Canada before being removed to an unknown detention center. While incarcerated at Grand Valley Institution (GVI) in Ontario, Michael Williams, who identifies as transgender and calls himself Bunny Autumn Colasimone, immediately began threatening female inmates and had to be removed within days as a result.
Heather Mason, an advocate for the rights of incarcerated women, learned about the situation after she was contacted by female inmates currently housed at GVI. Mason is a founding member of Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights, a non-partisan coalition of women working to advocate for single-sex spaces and sex-based rights. She also sits on the board of directors for Strength in Sisterhood (SIS), a group of women who have survived prison and are working to end female incarceration. Mason has been a vocal advocate against the transfer of men to women’s institutions.
Female inmates at GVI told Mason that Williams arrived at the women’s facility on March 6, having been transferred from maximum-security Millhaven Penitentiary for male offenders.
Grand Valley Institution for Women (GVI), located in Kitchener, is organized into a campus-style setting with several buildings, or “houses,” where inmates live together. The correctional facility contains minimum, medium, and maximum security units. The compound is designed to resemble a residential community, with the aim of assisting the reintegration of federally-sentenced women into society.
“I am told that he arrived Thursday from Millhaven and was forcibly transferred out on Monday after a tense standoff with CSC negotiation teams and tactical units. Apparently, he had a weapon and was threatening to use it against a correctional officer,” Mason told Reduxx.
“So, he lasted on Pod 1 for 30 minutes on Thursday. He put his hair up, was posturing, cracking his knuckles, and threatening to fight the women. They all got locked down and two women called me just hours after it happened,” she added.
In 2005, Williams was a participant in the horrific abduction, gang rape and murder of 13 year-old Nina Courtepatte. Williams, who was 17 at the time, was among a group of three adults and two teens who picked Courtepatte out of a crowd at Edmonton Mall in a deliberate plot to rape her. His accomplices: Michael Briscoe, Joseph Laboucan, Stephanie Rosa Bird, and Williams’ girlfriend, an underage teen known only as “Buffy.”
On April 3, 2005, the group lured Courtepatte away from the mall by promising to take her to a rave. Instead, they drove her to a golf course where Buffy testified that ringleader Laboucan had told the two girls, “You get a choice: whichever of you kills the other gets to live.”
Laboucan then proceeded to rape the young girl, after which Briscoe held her down as Williams raped her. Williams, who was nicknamed “Pyro,” then attempted to light the girl’s body on fire.
Stephanie Bird, formerly Briscoe’s girlfriend, testified that she was made to hold Courtepatte down while Williams beat the girl’s genitals with a sledgehammer. Laboucan then joined in on brutalizing Courtepatte, choking her with a wrench and stabbing her. She succumbed to her injuries, and her body was found the next day on a fairway.
Williams, who was 17 at the time, was tried as an adult and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison and reportedly showed no remorse for his actions.
Legal defense for Williams attempted to argue that he should be sent to a medium security prison, rather than a high security facility. However, the young killer had been diagnosed as “highly psychopathic” during a psychological assessment, and the judge denied the request.
While incarcerated in a men’s prison, Williams became engaged to an inmate named Frank Colasimone, sentenced in 2016 to a minimum of seven and a half years for drug offenses and armed robbery. Around this time, he renamed himself Michelle Autumn Colasimone.
In 2020, The Toronto Sun reported that sources inside the Kent Institution in BC said Williams was “having the time of his life” and that he had begun identifying as transgender.
“He is now sitting in segregation at Kent awaiting transfer to FVI (Fraser Valley Institute, a women’s prison),” one source said. “He was at FVI before but got transferred back to Kent because he got caught having sexual relations with female inmates.”
The source also said that Williams remained “fully intact” and “only takes hormone replacement therapy drugs two weeks a month so he can maintain an erection.”
Over the past decade, the sadistic sex offender has been transferred repeatedly in and out of women’s and men’s prisons due to his “maladaptive behaviour.”
One inmate told The Sun that Williams was “determined to be at high risk to offend violently,” and added: “I fear for the women that will soon be exposed to him. We need to stop this.”
Meanwhile, Williams’ lover, Frank Colasimone, had also begun identifying as transgender and claiming to be a woman. When Williams was first transferred to women’s prison FVI in 2018, Colasimone joined him shortly afterwards.
In the fall 2018 Women’s Prison Network newsletter, for which Williams designed the front cover, the child rapist complained that corrections officers had separated him from his fiancé, “who is another inmate in the same prison.” He also described himself as a “major problem who causes serious institutional adjustment.”
“CSC (Correctional Services Canada) does not like me since I helped to change a law that tells them what to do!” Williams boasted. “I am a transgender inmate who played a major role in the amendment of the Canadian Human Rights Act in regards to gender identity / expression (Bill C-16).”
According to an anonymous whistleblower, in one of the institutions where Williams has been placed, Saskatchewan Penitentiary for men, he was allegedly teaching male inmates how to claim to be transgender in order to secure a transfer to the female estate.
In 2021, Mason submitted a brief to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on the current situation in federal prisons in relation to reports of sexual coercion and violence.
In her report, Mason told lawmakers that Williams was “reported to have been giving groups of men lessons on how to self-identify as transgender and request transfer to a women’s prison.”
She also noted that William’s partner, Colasimone, was “rumored to have impregnated a female prisoner” during his time at FVI women’s prison.
On March 3, Colasimone was released on parole. The decision was made despite the Parole Board’s acknowledgement that he had amassed over 73 convictions, “thus showcasing deeply entrenched criminal values.”
However, the board pointed out that Colasimone had been involved in treatment programs for women: “You have been engaged in your Correctional plan, and since your return to custody in 2022, you completed the Women Offender Self Management Program in October of 2023, and the program
report indicates that you participated actively and set realistic goals.”
The Parole Board of Canada ordered Colasimone to be released to a Community Residential Facility, which it said would “provide… the support, supervision and structure that will allow you
to reduce your risk of reoffending.” Though the details remain unspecified, it is likely Colasimone will be sent to a residential facility for women.
There have been numerous instances of violent male sex offenders being transferred in to women’s prisons in Canada. Last month, Reduxx revealed that trans-identified male Frederick Radcliffe, who is serving an indefinite prison sentence for sexual offenses, including the rape of a 13 year-old girl, began sexually assaulting multiple female inmates after he was transferred into a women’s prison.
Last September, violent transgender inmate Cassidy Honsinger was released on parole after serving his sentence in a women’s federal prison. Honsinger stabbed a 17 year-old girl repeatedly in a park in Cornwall, Ontario, but was housed at the Grand Valley Institution for Women for a portion of his sentence.
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