Paul Bernardo & Karla Homolka

by Marilyn Bardsley

All For Love

It was all too good to be true.  In 1990, Karla was engaged to a handsome, sophisticated professional accountant with money.  It was going to be an incredible wedding.  One that her family and friends would never forget. 

She loved Paul very much.  He was so unique and so very wild in bed.  She would do absolutely anything to keep his love  -- anything at all.

What made this situation a little different than most engagements is that for several years Paul made utrageous demands on Karla -- and Karla, just as outrageously, agreed to them.

Paul was very annoyed that Karla was not a virgin when he met her.  It was, therefore, from his point of view, her responsibility to make it possible for Paul to take the virginity of Karla's pretty younger sister Tammy without her knowledge or consent.  Some people call it rape.  Once Karla accepted that logic, the rest was easy, even the idea of videotaping the whole thing seemed to make sense to her. After all, videotaping was a way to remember important events.

Karla worked in a veterinary clinic so she had a rudimentary knowledge of sedatives used for animals.  The trick was figuring out what and how much to use to knock out Tammy so that Paul could rape her.  Eventually, she decided on using halothane, an anesthetic which animals inhale before surgery.

Stephen Williams in his book Invisible Darkness describes Karla's idea:   "She had really thought this thing with Tammy through.  After all, she did not want to kill her own sister; she just wanted to knock her out and give her to Paul for Christmas.  They sedated animals before they put them to sleep for surgery, so it should be all right to do it to her sister. 

There was some risk without the proper equipment -- she would have to put the halothane on a cloth and hold it over Tammy's face -- but she would make sure Tammy had plenty of air and check her breathing regularly."   A truly organized rape, as only a thoughtful sister could plan.  Maybe even the most thought out and organized rape ever.

December 23, 1990, was the big day -- Tammy's deflowering.  Paul used his new video camcorder to take videos of Mr. and Mrs. Homolka, their daughters, Karla, Tammy and Lori and the Christmas decorations in the house.

Paul plied Tammy with drinks, laced with the sedative Halcion.  The effects of the drugs and alcohol were swift and Tammy was out cold on the couch in no time.  When the other members of the household went up to bed, Karla and Paul started to work on Tammy.  Paul held the camera on Tammy while he raped her, leaving Karla to keep the halothane-laden rag over her sister's face.  Then he ordered Karla to make sexual advances to her sleeping sister.

Suddenly Tammy threw up.  Karla wished her sister hadn't eaten before this event, but Karla knew what to do.  She did what they did in the veterinary clinic.  She held her sister upside down to try to clear her throat.

Only problem was that Tammy choked to death.  Their amateur attempts to revive her failed so they dressed her, hid their drugs and camera and called an ambulance.   The first that Tammy and Karla's parents knew of this tragedy was when they heard the ambulance pull up to the house.  Everybody was led to believe that Tammy had died from accidentally choking on her vomit.

With Tammy no good to him anymore, Paul needed a replacement.

Scarborough Rapist

Paul Bernardo was born into an unusual family.  His mother, Marilyn, had been adopted early in life by the well-to-do Toronto lawyer Gerald Eastman and his wife Elizabeth.  Marilyn was raised in a happy, genteel household.  Her husband, Kenneth Bernardo was the son of an Italian immigrant and a woman of English heritage.   Kenneth's father made a very successful life for himself in the marble and tile business, but was abusive to his wife and children.  Kenneth did not go into the family business but became an accountant instead. 

He and Marilyn married in 1960 after her father disapproved of her other suitor who did not have the education that Eastman demanded in a son-in-law. Eventually,  Kenneth and Marilyn settled in a nice middle-class neighborhood in Scarborough area of Toronto.

The marriage did not go well and Kenneth, like his father, was physically abusive to his wife.  After giving birth to a son and daughter, Marilyn found refuge in the arms of her previous suitor -- the man without the education her father had required for his daughter.  Thus, was Paul Bernardo conceived illegitimately.   

Kenneth was very open minded about this indiscretion and, in August of 1964, the baby's birth certificate gave him the name of Paul Bernardo.  Kenneth had his difficulties as well.  He fondled a young girl and went to court for it.   He started hanging around the neighborhood at night, peeping into the windows of young women.  But worst of all, he started to sexually abuse his young daughter.

Marilyn put on more and more weight.  She became grotesquely obese. Signs of severe depression were very noticeable.  She stopped taking care of the home and the children and withdrew into her own world in the basement of the house.

The children keenly felt the effects of the mental and emotional turmoil in the household.  For a while, it looked as though Paul might have escaped the unhappiness that the older two children had experienced.  Nick Pron in Lethal Marriage describes Paul as a friendly little boy:  "He was always happy.  A young boy who smiled a lot.  And he was so cute, with his dimpled good looks and sweet smile, that many of the mothers just wanted to pinch him on the cheek whenever they saw him.  He was the perfect child they all wanted:  polite, well mannered, doing well in school, so sweet in his Boy Scout uniform"

Later, as he grew up, he became more involved in scouting.   He worked summers as a counselor and he was the most popular one with the children.  The kids loved him and he seemed to enjoy being with them.

The teenage girls also adored him.  He had angelic looks and a shy, pleasing demeanor.  The girls who dated him in high school considered him a thoughtful and considerate lover.

Paul was out to make something of himself.  He was intelligent, worked hard in school and held a series of responsible after-school jobs.  He had a good head for figures and the makings of a good future businessman.

When Paul was sixteen, he got into an argument with his mother and she told him that he was a bastard.  Then, she showed him a photo of his real father.  The effect on Paul was devastating.  After that, he openly mocked and taunted his mother, calling her a "slob" and a "whore."  Considering his mother's infidelity and his father's sick sexual perversions, Paul began to hate his parents.

Then, he started hanging around with some neighborhood boys that had a very negative impact on his behavior.  They were tough, swaggering macho types and petty thieves.   Paul's attitude in general and towards women in particular changed dramatically for the worse.

In the early 1980s, Paul and his friend were recruited into the Amway business.   Scott Burnside and Alan Cairns in Deadly Innocence describe how deeply Paul was influenced by the things he learned from a few of the people who recruited him.   "Paul used Amway techniques in many facets of his life, not only in sales and business but also in personal relationships.  He bought the books and tapes of famous motivational get-rich-and-famous experts.... Although Paul didn't make much money from Amway, the philosophy he embraced from it and other motivational mavericks justified his own crude and selfish longings."  Then his interests moved on to the style of television evangelist Jim Bakker, which he emulated perfectly.

As he and his friends cruised the bars every night, they spun fantastic stories about who they were to any pretty girl that was naive enough to believe their lies.  It seem to pay off and many willing girls spread their legs.

By the time Paul went to college at the University of Toronto, his sexual fantasies had developed a dark side.  Forceful anal sex was his preferred means of  pleasure.   Submissive women were what he sought.  He had a terrible temper and enjoyed humiliating women publicly.  He began beating up the women he dated.

He and his friend Van Smirnis started trafficking in stolen goods while Paul was still in college.  Paul's appetite for toys, clothes and money could not be supported by any normal job.  Paul was always looking for the ultimate scam that would pay him enormous sums of money.

When Paul graduated from college, he got a job as a junior accountant at Price Waterhouse.  His girlfriends, sick of being tied up and beaten, were ready to dump him.  Then in October of 1987, he met the girl of his dreams -- pretty, blond Karla Homolka.

They became sexually obsessed with each other almost immediately.  Unlike the other girls he knew, she encouraged his sadistic sexual behavior.  "Karla, handcuffed, on her knees and begging for him, was scratching an itch.  Paul asked her what she would think if he was a rapist.  She would think it was cool.  Their love deepened.  He started raping women in earnest." (Stephen Williams)

His pattern was usually the same.  When his victim  got off a bus, he would  grab her from behind and pull her to the ground.  After he forced anal sex and fellatio on her, talking to her all the time, he let her go.  Two years later, the number of his sexual assaults had climbed to eleven.  Then there was a several month hiatus and several more rapes in 1988. 

The police were striking out, although they had collected from the women a lot of physical evidence that would help them determine if they had the right suspect.  They also had, what they considered, a good composite drawing of the man who had assaulted the thirteen women.  While the police decided to share that drawing with other policemen in the region, it was not shown to the public for a long time.

All this time, Karla knew exactly what Paul was doing and encouraged him.  One victim even remembered seeing a woman with the rapist with what appeared to be a video camera in her hand.  The police discounted this memory and chalked it up to hysteria on the part of the woman who was raped.  

Murder

Karla was obsessed with Paul’s happiness. Her greatest fear was that she would not be able to hold onto this wild and thrilling man who was to become her husband. When he would become bored or distracted, she would either do something to excite him or find another person for him to get excited about. 

Paul harped continually that Tammy was no longer available to him for his sexual pleasure and blamed Karla for causing her death. Karla searched for a replacement for Tammy – someone very young and virginal. Karla knew just the right person, a teenager named Jane, who looked very much like Karla’s dead sister Tammy. Jane would be Karla’s wedding gift to Paul.

Jane idolized Karla as a beautiful, sophisticated role model and gratefully accepted Karla’s invitation to the Bernardos’ new home they rented at 57 Bayview. The first evening, Karla took Jane to dinner and spent hours talking to her and plying her with sweet alcoholic drinks. Jane passed out and slept deeply.

After Jane had passed out from the Halcion tablets that Karla had put in her drinks, Karla called Paul over for his surprise gift. He was thrilled when he saw how much Jane resembled Tammy and she was a virgin as well. He was a bit concerned that Karla was using the same halothane that killed Tammy to subdue Jane, but Karla convinced him that she was in control of the situation this time around.

Once they undressed Jane, Paul videotaped Karla as she made love to the sleeping girl. Then Paul took her virginity. With that accomplished and memorialized in the videotape, he moved on to his favorite fun – a brutal kind of anal sex.  Jane was so drugged that she did not wake up during the whole ordeal.

Karla was left to clean the blood off the fifteen-year-old girl and put her to bed for the night. The next morning, Jane, who was very sick to her stomach and understandably sore, met Paul, -- she thought for the first time.  Jane had no idea what had really happened to her.

While Paul seemed very grateful for the gift of Jane's virginity and was continually amazed at the things Karla would do for him, he was having second thoughts about marrying her. She was, after all, getting old, having already passed her twenty-first birthday and she was a far cry from being the virgin for which he lusted.

Despite his concerns, he went through with it and married Karla in a huge, lavish wedding. "Their wedding was going to be perfect. The historic church in Niagara-on-the-Lake with the white horses and the carriage, champagne, a sit-down dinner for one hundred and fifty guests with veal-stuffed pheasant at Queen’s Landing, no expense spared." (Stephen Williams)

Paul had carefully controlled every detail of the wedding from Karla’s $US 2,000 wedding dress to her hairstyle to the menu and to the inclusion of "love, honor and obey" in Karla’s wedding vow. He would not allow the minister to pronounce them "husband and wife." It had to be "man and wife."

"If it was to be a grand wedding, then people could be expected to donate money and gifts on a similarly grand scale. Paul viewed the entire process as a great business opportunity.  'If I spend fifty dollars a plate, I expect to get a hundred dollars a person,' the junior accountant proclaimed.  He told them he’d set a goal of realizing $50,000 from the wedding." (Burnside and Cairns)

Leslie Mahaffy was a troubled youngster. Her strong, independent personality seemed to be at the root of the problem, which manifested itself in ignoring her curfews, engaging in promiscuous sex, skipping school and even shoplifting. Her parents responded by getting tough on Leslie when she broke the rules.

On Friday, June 14, 1991, Leslie went out for the evening with her friends and stayed out well past her curfew. At 2 A.M., she found herself locked out of her house. She called her girlfriend to ask her if she could spend the night with her, but the girlfriend didn’t think that her mother would allow it at that hour. Leslie told her girlfriend that she was going back home to wake up her parents.

Her friends and family never saw her alive again.

Leslie had actually gone back to her home to see if there was any way to get in without waking her parents. With the worst possible luck imaginable, she encountered Paul Bernardo who was prowling around the neighborhood looking for license plates to steal. Paul had begun augmenting his income by smuggling cigarettes across the border and needed the stolen license plates to disguise his frequent visits across the American-Canadian line. He pulled a knife on Leslie Mahaffy and forced her to go in his car.

Paul took his catch home. While Karla slept, he began to videotape the fourteen-year-old Leslie naked and blindfolded. When Karla woke up, she was very angry that Paul had used their best champagne glasses to entertain his new toy. Finally, Karla came around and started being the obedient wife that Paul demanded.

Paul gave Karla elaborate instructions on how to make love to Leslie. It was the voice of a director in an important film. Every moment had to be just perfect for the videotape he was making. After the prelude with Karla, Paul went in for the rough stuff, while his wife held the camera. The brute force of his anal penetration caused Leslie to scream in pain.

On the evening June 29, 1991, a man and his wife were canoeing on Lake Gibson when they came across a concrete block with some pieces of animal flesh encased in it. Later, he went back to the spot and, with the help of a fisherman, pulled out the concrete block and looked at it closely. Inside the block was the calf and foot of a young woman.

Soon, the place was alive with cops, who found a total of five concrete blocks that had been dumped there in the shallow water. Police theorized that whoever dumped this body in Lake Gibson was not familiar with the area or he would have dumped the concrete blocks over the bridge where the deep water may have kept them a secret forever.

Not long afterwards, the torso of a young woman was found in the water. The body parts that had been found in the concrete block had been cut from her torso with a power saw. Leslie’s distinctive braces provided the clues to her identification.

Paul deprived of his eccentric entertainment was prone to ill humor. This simply would not do. Karla, the ever-dutiful wife called Jane back into service. But Jane was far from the ideal sex slave. First of all, the girl upset them both by refusing to let Paul have intercourse with her (Jane thought she was still a virgin). Oral sex was all she would agree to. Then she told her riding instructor about Paul and the instructor told Jane’s mother. The result was that Paul and Karla had less opportunity to enjoy themselves with Jane. One night, things got out of hand again with the halothane and Jane stopped breathing for awhile. This scared the daylights out of Paul and Karla.

Not only that, Paul was become annoyed with his new wife. He questioned her competence with the halothane. Karla was frantic. She had to do something to put some new romance back into their relationship.

November 30, 1991, pretty and vivacious fourteen-year-old Terri Anderson disappeared.

For a while, another willing girl satisfied their needs, but eventually she moved back to Youngstown, Ohio, and the Bernardos were bereft once again for entertainment. This always created tensions in their marriage – tensions that were unbearable to Karla.

On April 16, 1992, a very popular and attractive teenager named Kristen French was abducted from a church parking lot. Karla had lured the pretty girl over to their car on the pretense of asking directions. When Kristen stood by the car looking at Karla’s map, Paul forced the girl into the backseat with his knife.

At the outset, both Paul and Karla knew that Kristen would have to die. She had clearly seen them, knew where they lived and had seen their dog. Even so, they didn’t want Kristen to figure this out, particularly since she was bigger than Karla was and fairly strong despite her youth.

Kristen, who was a smart girl, did everything she could to cooperate with this depraved couple and their outrageous and humiliating demands. She believed that cooperation was her only chance for survival. The ordeal became worse and worse. The more she cooperated, the more sadistic Paul became.

"’I’m going to piss on you, okay? Then I’m going to shit on you.’ Paul said in a whisper…Kristen did not move, even when he slapped her face with his semi-erect penis.

"’Don’t make me mad. Don’t make me hurt you,’ he said, urging her to smile when he rubbed his groin into her face.

"’Don’t worry, I won’t piss in your face.’

Finally, he stood over her and urinated. Then he moved. Turning his buttocks into her face, he squatted over her face and tried to defecate on her without success.

"’You’re a fucking piece of shit. But I like you,’ he told her. ‘You look good covered in piss.’" (Stephen Williams)

The indignities went on for a day or two, all meticulously captured on video for the future enjoyment of the newlyweds. Then came the final and worst indignity of all for Kristen French, but her death was not captured on film.

On April 30, 1992, Kristen’s body was found in a ditch. Her naked body had not been dismembered like Leslie’s, leading the investigators to erroneously conclude that the murders of the two teenagers were not connected.

On May 23, 1992, the body of Terri Anderson, who had been missing since the previous November, was found in the water at Port Dalhousie. The medical examiner saw no evidence of foul play, despite the difficulties of determining such factors in a body that had been in the water for six months. The coroner ruled that her death was by drowning, probably as a result of drinking beer and taking LSD.

"Inspector Bevan and the coroner were asking Mr. Anderson to accept that his daughter, who had been an excellent student, cheerleader and a generally well-adjusted child, had, under the influence of a few beers and a hit of blotter acid, gone out and in a stupor neither he nor her friends had perceived, walked into the freezing November waters of Lake Ontario and drowned." (Stephen Williams)

The Investigation

The police first became aware of the handiwork of Paul Bernardo in his incarnation as the Scarborough Rapist. Detective Constable Steve Irwin of Toronto’s Metropolitan Police was deeply involved in that particular serial rape case. There were a lot of similarities in the stories the victims told and police were sure that it was one man.

As Stephen Williams points out, serial rapists are fairly rare creatures. "They are invariably acting out some kind of strange, private fantasy, so the details of their crimes are distinctive…In the earlier assaults, the women had all just left buses, they were accosted from behind, the guy had been rough but he did not really ‘rape’ them. He had fondled them sexually, penetrating the last one with his fingers…the descriptions of a well-groomed young man who had good teeth and did not smell bad. The rapist talked all the time he was assaulting his victims, and he wanted to hear certain, specific things. All of the attacks had occurred within a short radius of Scarborough’s Guildwood Village.

Just before Christmas, 1987, one of his victim’s gave a very specific description of her rapist. He was good looking, about six feet tall, clean-shaven and had no tattoos. Her description and the composite picture she helped develop resulted in the exact likeness of Paul Bernardo. But the police did not publish the photo.

One of Paul’s old girlfriends, Jennifer Galligan, had gone to the police several times about Paul regarding his brutal rape, physical abuse of her, and his threats to do her bodily harm. There were coincidences which tied Bernardo to the rapes that were going on at that same time: the rapist drove a white Capri and so did Bernardo; Bernardo lived in the vicinity of where the rapes took place. A report was filed, but nothing came of it.

Finally, in May of 1990, years after the rapes began, the police decided to finally publish the composite picture, which the victims had agreed upon as the likeness of their attacker. That picture, plus the $150,000 reward, initiated a flood of tips.

By this time, Paul had quit his position with Price Waterhouse and was living entirely on his cigarette-smuggling income. But once his former colleagues at the accounting firm saw the newspaper picture, they marveled at how much it resembled Paul. An employee of Paul’s bank contacted the police and reported that Bernardo looked liked the picture. However, at this point in time, the police were inundated with similar calls and did not have the manpower to follow up on all of them.

Detective Steve Irwin centralized all the physical evidence gathered from the rape victims under one individual, Kim Johnston, in the forensic laboratory. From the semen samples, she was able to determine that the rapist was a non-secretor and his blood type factors, which put him in 12.8 percent of the male population.

Eventually, a number of Paul’s acquaintances contacted the police about him and Irwin paid Bernardo a visit. Paul did not strike Irwin as the kind of personality to be a serial rapist, but he took a blood, saliva and hair sample from Paul anyway. The samples, along with 230 samples from other suspects, were handed over to Kim Johnston. Only 5 of the 230 samples fit the blood factors of the attacker. Paul Bernardo was one of those five. His sample was resubmitted for additional testing in April of 1992. By that time, the Scarborough Rapist had mysteriously ended his attacks and the case did not have the urgency and priorities that it had two years earlier when the attacks were in progress.

The Scarborough Rapist samples went onto the back burner.

Now that Paul and Karla were living and murdering in St. Catharine’s, the police investigation was centered in the Niagara Falls area. Superintendent Vince Bevan was in charge once the body of Leslie Mahaffy was found. After the death of Kristen French, the Ontario government formed the Green Ribbon Task Force. Hotlines and a base of operations were set up just outside St. Catherine’s. Forensic experts of the American FBI advised the task force.

Later when Kristen French was abducted, a woman remembered seeing a struggle going on in a car at the scene. While she was not familiar with various makes of cars, she thought it was a Camaro. Vince Bevan focused on tracking the ownership of all the Camaros in the region.

Meanwhile, Bernardo’s name surfaced once again from one of the many tips that police received. Two policemen called on Paul at his 57 Bayview home. Paul was very gracious and polite during the interview and admitted that he had been a suspect in the Scarborough rapes because of his facial similarities to the composite picture. The police noted that Paul was very clean-cut and good looking, that he was intelligent and cooperative and that his home was very clean and orderly. They also noted that he drove a Nissan, which looked nothing like a Camaro.

Nevertheless, the two policemen tried to contact Detective Steve Irwin in Toronto to ask about the results of the inquiry into the Scarborough Rapist. Eight days later, Irwin responded to the message and explained that final testing of Bernardo’s blood and saliva samples had not been done. Thus, technically, Bernardo had not been cleared as a suspect. Irwin sent the task force some information, but neglected to send results of the interviews with friends of Paul who had tipped off the police about him, a woman’s report that Bernardo was stalking her and the police reports filed by his former girlfriend, Jennifer Galligan. Consequently, Bernardo was not pursued as a suspect.

Incredibly enough, in February of 1993, several years after blood samples had been taken from Paul Bernardo, the forensic laboratory in Toronto finally got around to analyzing his blood. The tests proved conclusively that Bernardo had raped the three women victims from whom they had semen samples.

Had the laboratory been speedier, Paul Bernardo would have been in jail instead of raping more women and murdering several school girls!

Despite this irony, Detective Irwin excitedly put Bernardo under surveillance.

What he learned was that Bernardo had just been charged with assault in St. Catharine’s.

The assault charges had been filed by his wife Karla.

Karla

When Paul started using Karla as a punching bag in the summer of 1992, he really compromised his future. Regardless of the insane things that Karla put up with from Paul, physically abusing her pushed her to the limit. But even with two black eyes and serious bruises, she didn’t leave him. In early January 1993, her parents intervened and persuaded Karla to take refuge in the home of one of her sister Lori’s friends, whose husband was a Toronto cop. The Niagara police were brought into the situation and took Karla to the hospital. All of this was before the Toronto police had the forensic evidence to convict Paul as the Scarborough Rapist.

In early February, when the police investigation of Paul intensified, both the Toronto police and the Ontario Green Ribbon Task Force wanted to interview Karla. They also wanted to fingerprint her and question her about a Mickey Mouse watch that was very similar to Kristen French’s watch.

Initially, several Toronto detectives interviewed Karla for almost five hours. By the kinds of questions they asked, Karla understood that the police had tied together the Scarborough rapes with the murders in St. Catharine’s. Karla was understandably nervous and told her uncle that Paul was the serial rapist and that he killed Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy.

Karla got herself a real good lawyer. As a veterinary assistant, Karla had taken special care with the cancer-stricken Dalmation of lawyer George Walker. Over a period of many interviews with Karla, George Walker realized that she was not necessarily the innocent victim of Paul Bernardo that she painted herself to be. Yet, he did not really understand at that point just what exactly her role had been in these crimes. Some kind of immunity would have been desirable for his client, but he really wasn’t sure what could be negotiated on her behalf in exchange for complete cooperation.

In mid-February, Bernardo was arrested in conjunction with both the Scarborough rapes and the murders of Mahaffy and French. Karla was shocked and afraid. She assuaged her anxieties with large amounts of painkillers and alcohol.

On February 19, police executed the search warrants for Paul and Karla’s house and found an amazing amount of evidence. Paul had a written description of every one of the Scarborough rapes plus an extensive library of books and videos on sexual deviation, pornography and serial killers.

The police also found one brief home video that indicated that there had been more than one lascivious person in the Bernardo household. Quite explicitly, the short video showed Karla as an enthusiastic lesbian in sexual acts with two other women. A week later, George Walker and Murray Segal, a plea-bargain specialist for the attorney general, discussed the deal for Karla. Karla would get twelve years in prison for each of the two victims, but the sentences would be served concurrently. She would be eligible for parole in a little over three years with good behavior. The government even agreed to contact the parole board on Karla’s behalf, pointing out to them the importance of her testimony against Paul. Segal would do what he could to arrange for Karla to serve out her sentence in a psychiatric hospital instead of prison. The trial would be very brief and she would waive her right to a preliminary hearing.

In exchange for this leniency, Karla would agree to tell the absolute truth about her involvement in the crimes and everything she knew about them. Karla agreed unconditionally.

In early March, Karla was checked into a psychiatric hospital for assessment. She was given heavy doses of drugs and insisted on being given even larger doses. Eventually, Karla got up the nerve to write an important letter to her parents:

Dear Mom, Dad and Lori,

This is the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write and you’ll probably all hate me once you read it. I’ve kept this inside myself for so long and I just can’t lie to you any more. Both Paul and I are responsible for Tammy’s death. Paul was "in love" with her and wanted to have sex with her. He wanted me to help him. He wanted me to get sleeping pills from work to drug her with. He threatened me and physically and emotionally abused me when I refused. No words I can say can make you understand what he put me through. So stupidly I agreed to do as he said. But something – maybe the combination of drugs and the food she ate that night – caused her to vomit. I tried so hard to save her. I am so sorry. But no words I can say can bring her back…I would gladly give my life for hers. I don’t expect you to ever forgive me, for I will never forgive myself.

Karla -XOXO

Karla’s trial had a media circus atmosphere about it when it began on June 28, 1993. Burnside and Cairns described the defendant: "Karla sat impassively, wearing a green jacket over a one piece green dress that seemed oversized and somehow too broad for her slender shoulders. On her feet were black shoes with a slight heel. Unlike her court appearance a month earlier, when she wore a schoolgirl’s tartan kilt and blazer, Karla now looked somewhat matronly. Yet her clothes were out of place with the false eyelashes, deep-red lipstick, and heavily caked foundation on her face. If she was matronly, then she was a matronly Lolita."

Her psychiatric report helped set the stage for the plea-bargain deal. Dr. Malcolm, the psychologist, concluded that Karla "knew what was happening but she felt totally helpless and unable to act in her own defense or in anyone else’s defense. She was in my opinion paralyzed with fear and in that state became obedient and self-serving.

At the end of the trial, the media people left, allowed only to report a few of the details so that the jury pool that would be selected in the future for Paul’s trial would not be tainted by information they heard or read before the trial.

Expecting a public outcry over the plea bargain, Murray Segal chose to make a statement: "Why not a greater penalty in light of the horrendous facts? Without her, the true state of affairs might never be known. A guilty plea is the traditional hallmark of remorse. Her age, her lack of criminal record, the abuse and the influence of her husband, and her somewhat secondary role were factors. She's unlikely to re-offend."

Karla left the trial after receiving the agreed sentence and prepared herself for what was sure to be an ordeal – the trial of her husband Paul Bernardo.

Paul

The trial of Paul Bernardo was delayed for two years after his arrest. One of the reasons for the delay was that Bernardo had placed his first lawyer, Ken Murray, in a very difficult ethical situation. Bernardo had given Murray the videotapes that he and Karla had made of their adventures, believing that by doing so, they would never get into the hands of prosecutors.

However, the prosecutors knew of the videotapes from Karla and had wiretapped Murray's conversations with Bernardo. Eventually, the pressure increased and Murray had to do something about the videotapes in his possession. The videotapes were turned over to the prosecutors and Murray withdrew from the case. Veteran defense lawyer John Rosen took his place as Bernardo's lawyer. This series of activities alone caused a delay of one year in the start of the trial.

In May of 1995, Bernardo's trial began in Judge Patrick LeSage's courtroom with the videotapes as critical pieces of evidence. Bernardo faced two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated sexual assault, two counts of forcible confinement, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of performing an indignity on a human body.

"For a public who had been denied access to information revealed at Karla Homolka's trial almost two years earlier, the day-long opening address of lead prosecutor Ray Houlahan was a relentless avalanche of sexual degradation, brutality and murder. In painstaking detail, Houlahan …described the Crown's belief that Paul had first dominated Karla, reducing her to a compliant victim through systematic physical and mental abuse, then used her to exploit his sexual fantasies in the rape of Tammy Homolka, a rape in which Karla participated. Unable to shake free of Paul's violent control and scared he would reveal her role in Tammy's death to her parents, Karla then took part in the rapes and murders of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy."

Crown prosecutor Ray Houlahan began with a segment showing Karla naked, masturbating, with the camera focused on her vagina.

Nick Pron in Lethal Marriage describes the electrifying effect the video had on the courtroom: "Gasps of surprise and disgust, perhaps even shock, along with plenty of embarrassed giggles, could be heard throughout the courtroom as the camera lingered on Homolka's exposed body for several minutes as she stimulated herself... For the previous two years, ever since her arrest, Homolka's face had been almost as well known as the prime minister's. She had been seen on television in footage taken at her wedding, with her friends, and at her trial…But few people in the courtroom that day were expecting to see a triple X-rated tape, a close study of the country's most infamous woman in a variety of sexually explicit positions."

It seemed like an odd way for the prosecutor to treat his star witness, however Houlahan explained that the dialog in the videos had been scripted by Bernardo and was a good example of how he forced his will on Karla.

The tape was clearly geared to sexually excite Bernardo as Karla talked of procuring thirteen-year-old virgins for him to rape. The whole dialog was an articulation of Bernardo's sexual fantasies with the goal of bringing him to a climax. Karla played the role of the sex slave and Bernardo was "the king."

As more of these videotapes of Leslie, Kristen and Jane were shown, the jury was provided with indisputable and powerful evidence of Paul Bernardo's sexual depravity. As if that were not enough, Karla was called to the stand to elaborate on what the jurors had just seen and heard.

What she described in her relationship with Paul was an escalating theme of sexual degradation similar to what Paul had begun with other girlfriends before he met Karla. In Karla, the willing victim, the degradation knew no boundaries. He made her wear a dog's "choke" collar; he inserted a wire bottle into her vagina; and he almost strangled her with a wire cord to satisfy his sadistic fantasies. Paul told her that his choke fantasy was "important to him and it wouldn't hurt anybody." He told her that she was nothing without him and he would call her names, like slut, bitch, and cunt.

When the defense had its turn in the courtroom, John Rosen attacked Karla's credibility. His goal was to show that she was not the victim she portrayed herself to be, but a willing participant in the couple's rape and murder spree.

He was, at least, successful in showing Karla to be a morally vacuous woman with no remorse for her part in these crimes. In particular, Kristen's murder had to be committed at a particular time so that Karla and Paul could spend Easter dinner with Karla's parents. Immediately after Kristen was strangled, Karla left to blow dry her hair. If it was not immediately clear at the trial, it became clear shortly after, that Karla had cleverly manipulated the circumstances of her cooperation with the government to engineer one of the worst deals that the Canadian government had ever made with a criminal witness.

Regardless of Karla's degree of guilt or innocence and the deal she had made with the authorities, it did not save Bernardo from the outrage that he kindled in the minds of the jurors. On September 1, 1995, Bernardo was convicted on all the charges against him regarding the kidnappings, rapes and murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. He also faced trials in the death of Tammy Homolka and the serial rapes in Scarborough. Under Canadian law, Bernardo can apply for parole after twenty-five years in prison, although it is unlikely that he would be successful in any parole bid.

Latest Update February 2001

by Patrick Bellamy

Karla Homolka's safety became a growing concern for her lawyer after he was made aware of an Internet death pool that allegedly took bets on when Homolka would be killed.

At the time, Homolka was housed at the Pinel Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Montreal after being transferred there in early February for a treatment program after she spent more than two months under psychiatric evaluation in Saskatoon.

According to her lawyer, Homolka has discovered at least two or three Web sites that contain threats against her, including the betting pool.  One site is called "Karla Homolka Death Pool: When the Game is Over, We All Win."  While the site states clearly it does not condone violence against Homolka, it solicits bets on the exact day she will die.  The strongest bets are for June and July 2001.  The rules state players are not allowed to fix the bet by killing her themselves or having someone else do it.  Homolka, who is using the alias Karla Teale while in prison, is taking the threats seriously.

The threats came at a time when two out of three psychiatrists had recommended that Homolka is still too dangerous to be released forcing corrections officials to make recommendations to the National Parole Board to keep her in prison until her sentence expires in 2005.  Homolka's lawyer said that Homolka still wants to return to Joliette prison and stay there for the rest of her term.  Labelle said Homolka feels it's the only place in Canada where she won't be murdered.  He said she also intends to waive opposition to her detention hearing.

Prior to Homolka's transfer to Pinel, corrections officials had told Labelle that his client would go to St. Anne-des-Plaines maximum-security prison, one of the most notorious federal institutions in Quebec.  Labelle suggested that Homolka will almost certainly launch a federal court challenge if she is sent anywhere but Joliette.

On March 8, 2001, Karla Homolka was officially denied early statutory release.  The National Parole Board released its ruling after a review of the case, ordering that Homolka remain detained past her July release eligibility date.  ''The board is satisfied that, if released, you are likely to commit an offence causing the death of or serious harm to another person before the expiration of the sentence you are now serving,'' said the order.  The families of her schoolgirl victims are delighted with the result, according to Tim Danson, their lawyer. 

According to the board report, the gravity of her crimes is part of the reason she was detained.  ''The judge described those acts as monstrous and depraved,'' said the report. ''All these crimes are extremely grave ... the fact that you continued your crimes after the death of your sister, which occurred during your sexual abuse of her, demonstrates clearly your difficulty in controlling your violent sexual impulses to the point of putting in danger the safety of others.  Your modus operandi demonstrates a high degree of indifference to the consequences of your acts.''

The report added that Corrections didn't know of any surveillance program Homolka could participate in outside prison that would sufficiently protect the public. It also noted that Homolka had expressed worry about her own safety in the community.

Canadian law requires that when the Correctional Service of Canada feels a case requires detention beyond the two-thirds point, it be referred to the board at least six months before the statutory release date.  The law also requires that the board review the case every year after the statutory release date until the expiry of her sentence, which is in July 2005. 

At the time of the board’s announcement, Homolka said that she wouldn’t contest the ruling and indicated that she may leave Canada after she has served her full sentence.