I've always been fascinated by the case of Karla Homolka. Not so much her husband Paul Bernardo's role in their crimes because he is just a garden variety psychopath with a video camera and a little extra imagination.
Karla is the one who fascinates me.
How did I become so transfixed on this case? Well, at the time, I was married to a guy from outside Buffalo, New York. There was a publication ban in Canada regarding the case during the trial and we were stopped at the border and my newspaper from Buffalo was confiscated. We could have had automatic weapons and a pound of cocaine in the back of the SUV but they only wanted my paper.
(NOTE: I am a news junkie. If I am traveling anywhere, I love to read the local paper to find out what's going on. I may not know Gladys Finkelstein, who died at 84 after a long illness, but I will read her obituary and imagine her life. Local news is the most compelling and the best way to get a feel for a town.)
A bit of background history on the case.
Karla was raised in the blue-collar GM town of St. Catherine's in Ontario. She was a headstrong 17 year old, trying to figure out where she fit into the world. By a chance encounter, she meets Paul Bernardo, a native of Scarborough, a Toronto suburb. Paul is 23. It's instant bed at first sight.
They begin dating and Paul, well he likes his loving rough. Has a history of it as a matter of fact. He starts easy with Karla, just handcuffs her. They quickly progress to some serious kink. Right around this time, there is a serial rapist active in Scarborough who is getting progressively more violent.
A composite sketch is drawn of the rapist and it's a dead ringer for Paul. Several people who know him tip the police and he is called in to give forensic samples. He is freaked about this and talks to Karla about it. At one point, he asks her, "What if I was the Scarborough rapist?" Karla says, "Cool." This is the roadmap to any insight to their relationship. Take note.
To give you the Reader's Digest Condensed Version, Paul and Karla eventually kill three girls, including Karla's younger sister, Tammy. Tammy is the first and it's more of an accident than a premeditated murder. Paul is hot for Tammy, so Karla, being the battered girlfriend she is and fearful of losing her man, agrees to help. As you do. They spike Tammy's drinks and then use Halothane, an animal tranquilizer which Karla has stolen from the vetrinarian clinic she works at, to knock her out. Paul then rapes her both vaginally and anally while Karla videotapes. He then makes Karla perform oral sex on her menstruating sister. Tammy dies after choking on her own vomit. Although the police are suspicious, there are strange burn marks on Tammy's face, there is really nothing to go on. Accidental death.
Weeks or months go by. Paul and Karly Kurls talk about the sex slaves while Karla pretends she is Tammy while she is servicing Paul orally. As you do.
Paul then kidnaps Leslie Mahaffy and brings her home to use as a sex toy. After being subjected to unspeakable sexual torture and humiliation from both Karla and Paul, Leslie also dies. Of course, Karla, being the sympathetic girl she is, gives Leslie Bunky, a Gund Teddy Bear Paul gave Karla as a gift in their courtship, to hold. Like Bunky is going to be a salve on the horror they have visited upon Leslie.
Paul and Karla, in the meantime, get married in a lavish fairytale ceremony. While on their honeymoon in Hawaii, Leslie's body parts, encased in several different parts of concrete, wash up on the shore of a place Paul and Karly Kurls used to park and fuck.
Their next victim is Kristin French, whom they kidnap out of a church parking lot while she is walking home from school. She too is subjected to terrible things and ends up dead.
Much of the rapes and abuse of Leslie and Kristin are videotaped by Karla. Paul, being the classic serial killer he is, can't resist keeping these little mementos so he hides them in a lighting fixture. Although forensic teams pore over the house after his arrest, they don't find the tapes. Instead, Paul directs his defense attorney to their location. The defense attorney sits on them for a long time and this causes additional lawsuits that are too boring and full of legalese to go into. Suffice it to say, much of these horrifying crimes were videotaped although none of the actual deaths were.
Paul stepped up his physical abuse of Karla to the point that someone anonymously called her mother and tells her that her daughter is in grave danger. When Karla's mother shows up to Karla's workplace, she is dumbstruck. Paul had beaten Karla on the head with a Mag flashlight and stabbed her in the leg with a screwdriver, among other injuries. She's a mess and can barely walk.
Not to make light of the crimes or the victims whatsoever, but to keep this from reading like War & Peace and to get to the point, Karla gets Paul charged with spousal abuse and after much fumbling, the cops finally pin the Scarborough rapes on him and the murders of Kristen and Leslie.
Karla is sent to the Ha Ha Hotel where she is given prodigious amounts of drugs and questionable therapy. The battered wife syndrome defense is presented as an option for Karla's behavior.
She also finally confesses the role she played in Tammy's death in a letter to her parents. Although her original deal is for ten years with the expectancy that she will be paroled in 6, an additional 2 years are tacked onto her sentence for her participation in the death of Tammy.
Her trial is conducted with secrecy and the Canadian journalists covering it cannot publish anything at the time in fear of prejudicing Paul's trial. American journalists don't have this ban and therefore, Canadians are driving to border towns in the States to grab the papers. Hence, the confiscation of my paper.
Karla is not exactly the model prisoner. She has a lesbian affair with a convicted bank robber who comes from one of Canada's founding families. She has an affair with a fellow convicted murderer, male this time. She refuses to participate in any sort of therapy. Her parole is denied every time she applies since she is still deemed to be a danger to society.
Even though I think I've read just about everything published both in print and on the web about this case, I am not convinced Karla was a compliant victim. I think she enjoyed her power in these situations, since she had so little power with Paul. I think she relished the authority and the "chain of pain" she was able to pass on. Roy Hazlewood, the famed FBI profiler, would disagree with this, as outlined in his book, The Evil That Men Do. He interviewed her at length and portrays her as the compliant victim.
Upon my first reading about this case, I bought that story hook, line and sinker. Then, the more I read, the more I realized, Karla just didn't fit that type. She had a supportive family who were close by, she had more than one opportunity to go to police and although she always cited her fear of Paul revealing her role in Tammy's death and her fear he would kill her family, he never acted upon any of it at any time. He cultivated his relationship with her family. It was all talk on his part.
I think they both enjoyed the path of death and destruction they created. It was a joint effort.
Karla's twelve years are up this June. Since she will be released and not paroled, she is headed right back into mainstream society with no restrictions whatsoever. She has made noises about moving to the States. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you?
Some interesting reading on the case:
Deadly Innocence by Scott Burnside and Alan Cairns. Journalists for the Toronto Sun who followed the case from the beginning. This is the PG13 book on the case.
Lethal Marriage by Nick Pron. Also a reporter for the Toronto Star. This one is pretty graphic, the R rated version.
Invisible Darkness by Stephen Williams. By far the most grisly and graphic of the books. Not for the faint of heart. I'm rarely grossed out by anything and upon first reading this, I had to put it down several times and walk away. Stephen Williams also wrote Karla: A Pact With The Devil which covers some correspondence Mr. Williams has had with Karla during her incarceration and it bears reading just for the insight you glean from Karla's brainworks.
Edited to add: Here is an update on this case and the players.
