KARLA HOMOLKA: The epitome of evil                                          

Evil actions are qualitatively distinct from merely wrongful actions. People who are sadistic and commit sadistic crimes against other human beings are not merely wrongdoers; they are evil wrongdoers. That is why I haven’t hesitated to state that Karla Homolka was an evil woman during the kidnapping, rape and murder of two innocent girls that took place in Ontario between the years 1991 and 1992. She was 23 years of age at that time.

She was married to Paul Bernardo who was 27 years of age when he raped, tortured and murdered the two girls. Incidentally, when he previously lived in Toronto, he raped sixteen young women.

By 1990, Bernardo was spending long periods of time with the Homolka family and they liked him. Although he was engaged to the oldest daughter, Karla, he flirted with the youngest daughter. Tammy.  Bernardo had not told them that he had lost his job as an accountant and was smuggling cigarettes across the nearby Canada–United States border. He had become obsessed with Tammy, peering into her window and entering her room to masturbate while she slept. Karla Homolka helped Bernardo by breaking the windows in her sisters' room, allowing him access. In July, he took Tammy across the border to get beer for a party; Bernardo later told his fiancée, Karla that "they got drunk and began making out".

I should point out that this particular article is more about Karla Homolka than Paul Bernardo but I have to include the character and wrongdoings of Paul Homolka in order to show how Karla Holmolka played a role in the crimes committed by Paul Homolka.

On 24 December 1990, less than two weeks before Tammy's 16^th birthday, Holmoka and her then fiancé Bernardo plied Tammy with alcoholic drinks laced with the sedative, Halcion. It can put someone asleep for one to two hours. When she became unconscious, the two criminals sexually abused her. Tammy subsequently became sick while sedated and choked to death. After failed attempts to revive her, Karla covered up the evidence of the assault by hiding the remaining Halcion drugs and placing the vomit-stained blanket in the washing machine. She also called an ambulance.

Two police officers also arrived at the home. Unfortunately, a slow witted cop who was on the scene with his younger partner chose to  overrule his partner who was rightly suspicious that something was wrong when he saw a red burn on Tammy’s face and no vomit on the bed. Nevertheless, Tammy’s death was classed by the slow witted cop as an accidental death.

A few weeks later, Holmoka got dressed in her sister’ clothing and with a photo of her dead sister being held by her over her face, she and Bernardo pretended that she (Holmoka) was her dead sister. That gives you some idea as to how consumed with grief and guilt this psychotic woman was over the death of her younger sister which she had personally caused.

While Holmok was still working at a pet shop she befriended a 15-year-old girl. On June 7, 1991 she invited the girl, known as "Jane Doe" during the trials, for a "girls' night out". After an evening of shopping and dining, Homolka plied "Jane Doe" with alcohol laced with Halcion. You would think that this evil woman would be wary of using Halcion a second time but apparently, the death of her sister didn’t deter her. 

When Jane Doe lost consciousness, Holmoka called Bernardo to tell him that his surprise wedding gift was ready. They both undressed "Jane Doe", and Bernardo videotaped Homolka sexually abusing the girl before he penetrated her vaginally and anally. The next morning, "Jane Doe" was nauseated.  She thought that her vomiting was from drinking alcohol for the first time, and did not realize that she had been sexually assaulted by those two psychotic evil sex fiends.

"Jane Doe" was invited back to Port Dalhousie in August to spend the night there. In a replay of what happened to Karla's sister, Tammy Homolka, "Jane Doe" (whose identity is protected by law) stopped breathing after she was drugged and Bernardo began to rape her. Homolka called 911 for help, but called back a few minutes later to say that "everything is all right". The ambulance was recalled back to its station. Fortunately, the girl didn’t die.

Leslie Erin Mahaffy was born July 5, 1976. When she turned fourteen, she began to rebel and run away from home. However, she always phoned home during her absences. She missed the funeral of a friend the day after she missed a Friday night curfew (her mother locked her out of the house. That was a decision she later regretted.)  That night, she was picked up by Bernardo and Homolka at a small plaza in Burlington where she had been using a public telephone. Her mother became gravely concerned and contacted the police. When. Leslie failed to phone home on her own birthday about two weeks later, her family was certain that she had not called them because she could not. Her mother didn’t know then that her daughter was dead. On June 18, Debbie Mahaffy filed the official paperwork to have her daughter sought and arrested as a runaway.

Paul Bernardo later admitted he had been on Keller Court, where the Mahaffy home was located, to steal license plates. He saw Leslie Mahaffy alone. He claims he told her he was breaking into the house next door and then offered her a cigarette, which he said was back at his car. When she was close enough to the car, he wrapped his sweatshirt quickly around her head, forced her into his vehicle, and took her to the home he shared with Karla. She was not present during the kidnapping.

After 24 hours of rape and abuse by both of the killers, Mahaffy was murdered sometime later. Saturday night. According to Holmoka, her husband strangled Leslie with an electrical cord a second time when the first attempt left her unconscious for a few minutes.

Bernardo stated that he was out of the room, preparing the car to transport Leslie to a location where she would be left, when the heavily-drugged girl died. He has claimed he did not even know she was dead until, after putting gas in the car and taking a shower, he tried to pick her up to carry her away. He said he and Holmoka panicked, and that he tried to give Leslie artificial respiration. Both killers agree that they gave her a teddy bear to hold during breaks between assaults. I don’t believe that at all.

Quite frankly, I don’t believe their statements at all and neither the trial judge.  They knew that if they had released their victim alive, she would either go directly to the police or phone her mother and tell them what happened to her and where it happened.

On Sunday, June 16, 1991, it was Father's Day. Bernardo and Holmoka moved Leslie’s body from an upstairs bedroom to the basement. They then entertained the Homolka family on the main floor of the house—without Holmoka's sister, Tammy, whom they had killed on December 24, 1990 with Karla making a special effort to keep her mother from going to the basement. When the family left, Bernardo and Karla used his grandfather's circular saw to dismember Leslie's body into pieces small enough to be covered with concrete. Later, in a confession to her aunt before revealing details to the police, Holmoka claimed that Bernardo did this while she was at work on Monday. Bernardo's version asserts that she did not help him rinse and bag the body parts.

Leslie's body was found dismembered and encased in concrete on June 29, 1991 in Lake Gibson near St. Catharines, Ontario. The concrete block containing the torso weighed over 200 pounds. Her braces and dental records confirmed her identity.

Investigators immediately believed she had been raped and tortured. This was confirmed when videotapes were later discovered above the ceiling in the home of Bernardo and Karla. The tapes show that Leslie was held hostage for approximately 24 hours and repeatedly assaulted and sodomized. After Bernardo's final bid for an appeal before the Supreme Court was rejected, the tapes of their victims being sexually abused were all destroyed by order of the Ontario government.

On the 16^th of April 1992, as Kristen French walked home from Holy Cross Secondary School, a Catholic school in St. Catharines, she was approached at the entrance of the Grace Lutheran Church parking lot by serial killers Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo under the pretense of needing directions. While Kristen assisted Holmoka with directions, Bernardo attacked her from behind and forced her into the car at knife point. The kidnapping  was seen by several eyewitnesses, Unfortunately that didn’t result in in the girl being rescued before she was killed.

She was held in captivity for three days, during which Bernardo and Homolka videotaped themselves torturing and subjecting the 15-year-old to sexual humiliation and degradation while forcing her to drink large amounts of alcohol. They murdered her on April 19, 1992. Her naked body was found in a ditch along No. 1 Sideroad in north Burlington on 30 April 1992.

That was the last time these two evil killers brought death to anymore victims. How did they get caught? Well, this will surprise you when you read the next paragraph.

Bernardo would often physically abuse his wife and when she had enough, instead of moving out of their house and moving back to her own family, she chose to go to the police (she had two black eyes then) and file a complaint against her husband. In order to make her complaint seem genuine, she began telling the police about the two girls that her husband had murdered. WOW. How stupid can anyone be?  That invariably resulted in her role of the murders pf the two girls being discovered.

Their trial was a world-wide newsworthy event. Karla was convicted of manslaughter with respect to the death of her sister. Bernardo was convicted of two counts of first degree murder with respect to each of the two young girls he murdered. He was sentenced to prison for a minimum of 25 years. The two murders took place before the law was changed that made the sentences for multiple first degree murder consecutive.

By now, Bernardo would be eligible to apply for parole. Previously, he didn’t make the application. However, it is academic. I will tell you two reasons why. The first reason is just because a person is eligible to apply for parole after serving 25 years in prison; the government can argue that the person if released will still be a dangerous offender and thereby keeping a criminal in prison for many years beyond the 25 years.  One serial killer in Canada served his 25 years and was kept in prison many years after that until he died.

And now the second reason. Canada has a law that permits the government to seek a dangerous offender classification against the convicted criminal if the government believes that the criminal will still be a danger to society. While the government was making the application before the court, Bernardo chose to not contest the application; hence, he will not be released from prison after he has fully served his 25 year sentence. He is serving his sentence in a protective custody unit in Millhaven Penitentiary in Ontario. It is Canada’s most secure prison. There is no doubt in my mind that he will in all likelihood, die in prison. Listen carefully. What you have just heard is the sound of one of my crocodile tears hitting the floor. (splash)

Now, a very strange event took place during and after the trial of these two evil killers.  It will blow your mind.

In May 1993, just before the trial of Bernardo began, after following Bernardo's instructions, his lawyer, Ken Murray and his assistants removed six hidden videotapes from Bernardo's St. Catharines home. They were hidden above the ceiling. Bernardo also forbid Murray from viewing the tapes.

During that same month, a deal was signed between the prosecutor and Karla Homolka in which she would plead guilty to manslaughter and serve 12 years in prison in exchange for her testimony against Bernardo.

In August 1094, Bernardo authorized his new lawyer, John Rosen to view contents of file but made no mention of the video tapes. Bernardo told Murray not to disclose the tapes to Rosen.

In September of that year, Murray and Cooper attempted to surrender the tapes to the court. Rosen was worried about the consequences for Bernardo if he did so he intervened and agreed to handle the tapes in what he believed was ethically.

During that same month, Rosen surrendered the tapes to the prosecutor. That was the ethical thing to do.

The tapes depicted Bernardo and his ex-wife Karla Homolka raping and torturing the two murdered teens; Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. By all accounts, the tapes was evidence that Homolka was a gleeful and willing participant in the sexual attacks and not a battered victim of a brutal, psychotic husband as she portrayed herself in court.

The question that comes to the fore is; if the court had viewed the tapes before Homolka had signed the deal, would she have had to serve more than twelve years in prison?  The answer is yes. In March 1996, a judicial review concluded d that deal with Homolka would have been unnecessary had the authorities seen the videos. In my opinion, she would have been convicted of two counts of first degree murder and as such, she would still be in prison today.

The six infamous videotapes depicting the vicious rapes and torture of schoolgirls Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy were incinerated upon the order of the attorney general of Ontario. "It was a very emotional moment," said Kristen's mother, Donna, describing how she felt when she watched the tapes being destroyed at a facility in the Niagara region the day before.

In February 2003, a book about schoolgirl killer Karla Homolka was selling briskly in the Niagara area where Homolka and her husband, Paul Bernardo, committed their horrific crimes. The English-language version of Karla: A Pact with the Devil by Stephen Williams has been selling well since going on sale according to Tracy Nesdoly, spokeswoman for the Indigo bookstore chain, at a store in St. Catharines, Ontario. 

Where other inmates might apply for parole at the first opportunity, Homolka refrained from doing so. Further, because she was deemed a risk to reoffend, she was denied statutory release two-thirds of the way through her sentence. Now you may be wondering, what happened to Karla Homolka after she served her twelve years in prison?

A two-day hearing was held before Judge Jean R. Beaulieu in June 2005. He ruled that Homolka, upon her release on July 4, 2005, would still pose a risk to the public-at-large. As a result, using section 810.2 of the Criminal Code, certain restrictions were placed on Homolka as a condition of her release. They were:

1.   She was to tell police her home address, work address and with whom she lives.

2.  She was required to notify police as soon as any of the above changed.

3.  She was likewise required to notify police of any change to her name.

4.  If she planned to be away from her home for more than 48 hours, she had to give 72 hours' notice.

5.  She could not contact Paul Bernardo, the families of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French or that of the woman known as Jane or any violent criminals.

6.  She was forbidden to be with people under the age of 16.

7.  She was forbidden from consuming drugs other than prescription medicine.

8. She was required to continue therapy and counselling.

9.  She was required to provide police with a DNA sample.

There was a penalty of a maximum two-year prison term for violating any of those restrictions. While this reassured the public that Homolka would find it difficult to offend again, it was felt by the court that it might be detrimental to her as well, because public hostility and her high profile might endanger her upon release.

On November 30, 2005, Quebec Superior Court Judge James Brunton  subsequently lifted  all of the restrictions imposed on Holmoka  saying there was not enough evidence against her to justify them being enforced.

Homolka married her lawyer’s brother, Thierry Bordelais.  Why does anyone marry a convicted serial killer? Homolka had moved back to Quebec with her husband, and she gave birth to a baby boy. However, several nurses had refused to care for Homolka before she gave birth. The Quebec Children's Aid said that despite Homolka's past, the new mother would not automatically be scrutinized.

She moved to the French Caribbean island of Antilles in December 2007 to escape public scrutiny so that her one-year-old boy could lead a normal life. Later, tanned, slimmer but still wary of strangers, Karla Homolka who had two more children lived with her three children in Guadeloupe under the name Leanne Bordelais.  She later still returned to Canada with her three children and her husband.

News reports as of April 20, 2016, placed Homolka as living with her children and her husband in Châteauguay, which is an off-island suburb of the City of Montreal. News of her whereabouts had generated headlines several times, most recently in 2016 when some residents of Chateauguay, south of Montreal, expressed concern over a report that she was living in their town.

She occasionally volunteered her services at a school, including supervising a field trip and bringing her dog into the school to interact with the children. The day-to-day activities of  this woman was causing a stir in Montreal after a media report said the convicted killer has been allowed to volunteer her services at an elementary school.

A spokesperson for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which runs the school, told the station that Homolka was not a regular volunteer and was not allowed to be alone with the children, which would have required a criminal-background check.

The school, which is operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, said it won’t allow anyone with a criminal record to volunteer in any capacity on school grounds. They should have done a criminal check before letting this serial killer onto their grounds. The church issued a brief statement saying that it has “heard and listened to the concerns of parents and members of the community that are uncomfortable with recent reports in the media about this woman being in their school as a volunteer. She is no longer a volunteer at that school anymore.

On June 16^th, 2010, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said an agreement had been reached between all federal parties to pass a bill that would prevent notorious offenders like Karla Homolka from ever obtaining a pardon.

Rosie DiManno, a columnist with the Toronto Star wrote in her column in May 2017 that Karla Homolka should be hounded for the rest of her life for what she did to those two young girls that whom she sexually abused and who were killed in her presence by her former husband and her own responsibility of causing the rape and death of her younger sister.  I am in total agreement with that columnist’s view.  

However, I do feel very sorry for her children. Imagine if you will what your life would be like if your mother was a convicted killer who had tortured two girls before they were killed by her former husband and was personally responsible for the rape and death of her younger sister. Her kids will suffer the sting of her crimes with the occasional surfacings in the press for the rest of their lives. If they are really smart when they are old enough, they should change their last names.  This is so that no-one will make a connection between them and their psychotic mother every time there is something published time and time again about her role in the wrongful death of her younger sister and her participation in the rape and death of two innocent girls.