Russell Williams began 2010 as a decorated colonel and ended it as a confessed rapist and murderer, expelled from the Canadian Forces. (Canadian Press)

Russell Williams entered 2010 as a decorated colonel, a rising star in the ranks of the air force who ran Canada's largest military airfield and even ferried the prime minister on VIP flights.

He ended the year as a pariah — a confessed rapist and murderer languishing behind bars in one of the country's most notorious prisons, his uniform seized and burned by a shaken military anxious to erase all traces of him.

The story of Williams's dark and twisted fall from grace — told in court in unrelenting and excruciating detail — shocked the country, dominated headlines and rocked the Canadian Forces to its very foundations.

So massive was his betrayal, the sex killer and disgraced former commander of CFB Trenton has emerged as Canada's Newsmaker of the Year in an annual survey of the nation's newsrooms by The Canadian Press.

Some may recoil at the thought of Williams as 2010's top newsmaker, but it's an "act of news judgment," not an award, said April Lindgren, a veteran reporter who now teaches journalism at Toronto's Ryerson University.

"People have to understand, he wasn't selected Newsmaker of the Year because he's a great guy," Lindgren said. "He was selected Newsmaker of the Year because of the magnitude of his evil, and because of the news his deeds generated."

In the long history of The Canadian Press year-end survey, criminals rarely draw many votes from those who produce the country's newspapers, newscasts and news websites. Despite their notoriety, killers like Clifford Olson, Paul Bernardo and Robert Pickton were never selected.

"It is a dark choice, and maybe counterintuitive, but it is hard to deny the impact of the story on Canadians," said Jennifer McGuire, general manager and editor-in-chief of CBC News.

"It made us all look at the world a little differently. And we reacted to it viscerally and emotionally."

Williams was picked by 29 per cent of the newsrooms in the newsmaker survey. The Canadian with the second highest total — 15 per cent — was hockey superstar Sidney Crosby, whose overtime goal in the gold medal game at the Vancouver Olympics set off a wave of national delirium.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the newsmaker for 2008 and 2009, was next with nine per cent.

And for the first time, The Canadian Press conducted a parallel survey in conjunction with Yahoo! Canada to allow the public to make its own choices for Newsmaker of the Year.

The public results were the inverse of the top two newsroom choices: Yahoo! Canada readers picked Crosby as the top newsmaker with 21 per cent of the votes, with Williams tied for second with pop superstar Justin Bieber, both with 14 per cent. Bieber came in sixth in the newsroom survey.

Still, it was clear from both surveys that for news people and the public alike, the colonel's shocking double life set the story apart from other horrific trials Canadians have been exposed to over recent years.

4 days of lurid details

The lurid details of that abuse of privilege were laid bare over four gripping October days in an eastern Ontario courtroom after Williams pleaded guilty to all 88 charges against him.

Few could tune out the sickening details of his depraved crimes, which began with fetish break-ins to steal the underwear of women and girls as young as 11.

It eventually escalated to the brutal sex slayings of 38-year-old Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, who served under his command, and 27-year-old Jessica Lloyd, whose disappearance triggered a police search that eventually led to Williams's capture and confession.

His "rise to infamy" was also fuelled by the vast amount of information that emerged in court, from instantaneous tweets to photos of the high-ranking officer in girls' underwear that were splashed across the front pages from coast to coast, Lindgren said.

"Those two photographs, to me, told the story of Russell Williams's sickness and evilness of his act … in a way that I don't think even stories could convey," she said.