THE HUSBAND AND WIFE  KILLERS 

                                                        

As far as I know, there were only twenty husband and wife serial killers known in the last century. As time moves on, I will describe these killers in articles I will be writing for you in the near future.

Being a serial killer involves searching for victims and plotting their deaths and finally murdering them after the killers have abused them in one way or another. Many of these killers are loners however they're bound to crave some real human companionship so they look  for a lover with some similar interests and team up to become a killer couple.  

It you look into the backgrounds of these killer couples, they have similarities. Most of them were fleeing broken homes where violence, drinking, and sexual abuse were the norm. Most of the duos (but not all) found each other you and quickly began killing together. There's usually a dominant member of the couple, while the other was submissive and compliant, doing whatever they were told.

Not all psychopaths are serial killers, but all serial killers are psychopaths.” According to Dr. Sue Stone, a psychologist at the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, that’s something of an adage in the field of psychology. But is it true? According to the FBI’s statement on serial killers and psychopathy, the link is there, but not necessarily absolute. All psychopaths do not become serial murderers. However serial murderers may possess some or many of the traits consistent with psychopathy. Psychopaths are   indifferent to the feelings of others lacking remorse, being impulsive, just to name a few characteristics.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that some many of them turned on each other when they were caught and blaming the other one and saying they were the innocent one. Usually juries didn't buy it, and virtually all of these killers are either on death row or serving long prison terms. So brace yourself for some creepy stuff and read through this list of horrifying killer couples I will tell you about in future articles that I will write about. In this article, I will tell you about a Canadian couple who killed three girls.

Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka                             

Paul Bernardo's father, Kenneth, fondled a girl and was charged with child molestation in 1975. This creep sexually abused his daughter. Bernardo's mother, depressed about her husband's abuse, withdrew from family life and lived in the basement of their home in Scarborough, in eastern Metropolitan Toronto.. This raises an interesting question. Since Paul’s father was a pedophile, was  it also in his son’s genes to be a pedophile? 

In his book, Lethal Marriage, Nick Pron describes the young Bernardo: "He was always happy and as a young boy, he 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."^3] Beneath the charming facade, Bernardo had developed dark sexual fantasies and enjoyed humiliating women in public and beating women he dated. When Bernardo was 16, his mother told him that he was conceived illegitimately during an extramarital affair. Disgusted, he began openly insulting her.

Paul Bernardo and I differ in this aspect because I was also conceived during an extramarital affair when my father date-raped my mother. I always loved my mother to her dying day in 2003.

Bernardo went to University of Toronto  in 1982, and worked for Amway, whose sales culture deeply affected him: "He bought the books and tapes of famous motivational get-rich-and-famous experts. Bernardo and his friends practiced pickup techniques on young women they met in bars, and were fairly successful. In  ^. October 1987 he met Karla Homolka and they were sexually attracted to each other almost immediately. Unlike the other women he knew, she encouraged his sadistic sexual behavior. Bernardo was keenly interested in the 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel, American Psycho, and "read it as his Bible."

Karla Leanne Homolka was born on May 4, 1970 to Karel Homolka and Dorothy Seger of Ontario. Karel made a living as a traveling salesman, selling black velvet paintings and lighting fixtures from the sidewalks of shopping centers and malls.

Karla Homolka was asthmatic which resulted in frequent hospitalization during her childhood. Her attacks seemed to be triggered by any type of situation where she felt excited or frightened, such as birthdays, holidays or the first day of school.

As she got to know her better, Karla’s new friend started to see that she was a bit bossy and wanted things to be done her way. She wanted to be pushed on the swings, she wanted to go down the slide first, and she demanded that her new friend come spend time with her at her home on Linwell Road. The friend couldn’t help wondering how much the two girls really had in common.

Karla decided it would be fun to make a pillowcase parachute and toss her friend’s hamster out of an upper story bedroom window. The parachute malfunctioned and the hamster hit the ground hard and died two weeks later. After the hamster had been buried for a while, Karla decided it would be fun to dig up the little pet’s corpse and see what the decomposed body looked like. She stared at it for a long time. By now, she began showing signs of being weird.

Her behavior was of course, somewhat reminiscent of Jeffrey Dahmer and his well-known obsession with dead and decomposing bodies. The killing of the hamster could be termed an accidental homicide, or perhaps an involuntary manslaughter. In any event, it appears to be the first time Karla killed a living creature and is an early example of her rapidly-evolving penchant for cruelty against human beings.

Karla once told her friend Tracy Collins, “You know what I’d like to do?  I’d like to put dots all over somebody’s body and take a knife and then connect the dots and then pour vinegar all over them.” Tracy dutifully reported that to her parents who, wisely enough, would no longer let her associate with Karla. 

When you mix gasoline with a flaming match, an explosion will invariably happen. That is what happened when this weird teenager began going out with Paul Bernardo. Based on her domineering personality and penchant for darkness, it should not seem at all surprising that she was drawn to Bernardo who appears to have shared many of these same weird qualities that she had.

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Bernardo meanwhile committed multiple sexual assaults that escalated in viciousness, in and around the Toronto district of Scarborough. Most of the assaults were on young women whom he had stalked after they got off buses late in the evening hours. On December 23, 1987, he raped a 17-year-old girl with a knife that he always used to threaten his victims. At this point, he began to be known as the Scarborough Rapist. From May 4^th 1987, to May 26, 1990, he had raped and otherwise sexually abused as many as eighteen women and girls. 

By 1990, Bernardo was spending long periods of time with Homolka's family, who liked him. Although he was engaged to Karla, he flirted with her younger sister 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. 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 that "they got drunk and began making out".

According to Bernardo's testimony at his July 24, 1990 trial, Homolka laced spaghetti sauce with crushed Valium she had stolen from her employer at Martindale Animal Clinic. She served it to her sister, who soon lost consciousness. Bernardo began to rape Tammy, while Karla watched. Over the summer, he supplied Tammy and her friends with gifts, food and soft drinks.   

Six months before their 1991 wedding, Homolka stole the anaesthetic agent Halothane from the clinic. On December 23, 1990, Homolka and Bernardo administered sleeping pills to the 15-year-old in a rum-and-eggnog cocktail. When Tammy lost consciousness, Homolka and Bernardo undressed her and Karla applied a Halothane-soaked cloth to her sister's nose and mouth. Homolka wanted to "give Tammy's virginity to Bernardo for Christmas"; according to her, Bernardo was disappointed that he was not Karla's first sex partner. With Tammy's parents sleeping upstairs, they videotaped themselves raping her in the basement. Tammy began to vomit; they tried to revive her and called 911 after hiding evidence, dressing Tammy and moving her into her bedroom. A few hours later, Tammy was pronounced dead at St. Catharines General Hospital without regaining consciousness.

Despite their behaviour (vacuuming and washing laundry in the middle of the night) and despite a chemical burn on Tammy's face, the Regional Municipality of Niagara coroner and the Homolka family accepted Bernardo and Homolka's version of events.^10] The official cause of Tammy's death was accidental resulting of Tammy choking on vomit after consumption of alcohol. Bernardo and Homolka subsequently videotaped themselves, with Karla wearing Tammy's clothing and pretending to be her. They moved out of the Homolka house to a rented Port Dalhousie bungalow to allow Homolka's parents to grieve alone.

On June 7, 1991, when Karla Homolka was working at a pet shop two years earlier, she befriended a 15-year-old girl. Homolka invited the girl, known as "Jane Doe" in the trials, for a "girls' night out". After an evening of shopping and dining, Homolka plied "Jane Doe" with alcohol laced with Halcion. When the girl lost consciousness, Homolka called Bernardo to tell him that his surprise wedding gift was ready. They 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.

Jane Doe" was then invited back to Port Dalhousie in August to "spend the night". 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 without follow-up. Jane Doe had survived.

 

 

Murder of Leslie Mahaffy

Early in the morning on June 15, 1991, Bernardo detoured through Burlington (halfway between Toronto and St. Catharines) to steal licence plates and saw Leslie Mahaffy. The 14-year-old had missed her curfew after attending a friend's wake and was locked out of her house. Bernardo left his car and approached Mahaffy, saying that he wanted to break into a neighbour's house. Unfazed, she asked if he had any cigarettes. When Bernardo led her to his car he blindfolded her, forced her into the car, drove her to Port Dalhousie and informed Homolka that they had a victim.

Bernardo and Homolka videotaped themselves torturing and sexually abusing Mahaffy while they listened to Bob Marley and David Bowie. At one point Bernardo said, "You're doing a good job, Leslie, a damned good job", adding: "The next two hours are going to determine what I do to you. Right now, you're scoring perfect." On another segment of tape played at Bernardo's trial, the assault escalated. Mahaffy cried out in pain, and begged Bernardo to stop. In the Crown description of the scene, he was sodomizing her while her hands were bound with twine.

Mahaffy later told Bernardo that her blindfold seemed to be slipping, which signaled the possibility that she could identify her attackers if she lived. The following day, Bernardo claimed, Homolka fed her a lethal dose of Halcion; Homolka claimed that Bernardo strangled her. They put Mahaffy's body in their basement, and the day after that the Homolka family had dinner at the house. After the Homolkas and their remaining daughter Lori left, Bernardo and Homolka decided that the best way to dispose of the evidence would be to dismember and encase each part of her remains in cement. Bernardo bought a dozen bags of cement at a hardware store the following day. He stupidly kept the receipts, which were damaging evidence at his trial. Bernardo used his grandfather's circular saw to dismember Leslie Mahaffy. Bernardo and Homolka made a number of trips to dump the cement blocks in Lake Gibson, 18 kilometres (11 miles ) south of Port Dalhousie. At least one of the blocks weighed 90 kg (200 pounds) and was beyond their ability to sink. It lay near the shore, where it was found by Michael Doucette and his son Michael Jr^[11] while on a fishing expedition on June 29, 1991. Mahaffy's orthodontic appliance was instrumental in identifying her.

Homolka was previously temporarily released from prison on July 4, 2005. Several days before, Bernardo was interviewed by police and his lawyer Tony Bryant. According to Bryant, Bernardo said that he had always intended to free the girls he and Homolka kidnapped. However, when Mahaffy's blindfold fell off thereby allowing her to see Bernardo's face. Homolka was concerned that Mahaffy would identify Bernardo and report them to the police. Bernardo claimed that Homolka planned to murder Mahaffy by injecting an air bubble into her bloodstream thereby triggering an embolism.

Imagine if you will Leslie Mahaffy Leslie Mahaffy’s parent’s feelings of guilt they suffer from when they realized that by locking their daughter out of their home, she died at the hands of her two killers.

The Murder of Kristen French

During the after-school hours of April 16^th, 1992,  Bernardo and Homolka drove through St. Catharines to look for potential victims. Although students were still going home, the streets were generally empty. As they passed Holy Cross Secondary School, a Catholic high school in the city's north end, they spotted 15-year-old Kristen French walking briskly to her nearby home. They pulled into the parking lot of nearby Grace Lutheran Church and Homolka got out of the car, map in hand, pretending to need assistance. When French looked at the map Bernardo attacked Kristen from behind, brandishing a knife and forcing her into the front seat of their car. From the back seat, Homolka controlled the girl by pulling her hair.

French took the same route home every day, taking about 15 minutes to get home and care for her dog. Soon after she should have arrived, her parents became convinced that she met with foul play and notified police. Within 24 hours the Niagara Regional Police Service assembled a team, searched French's route and found several witnesses who had seen the abduction from different locations. French's shoe, recovered from the parking lot, which then underscored the seriousness of the abduction.

Over the Easter weekend Bernardo and Homolka videotaped themselves torturing, raping and sodomizing French, forcing her to drink large amounts of alcohol and submit to Bernardo’ sexual abuse.  At his trial, Crown prosecutor Ray Houlahan said that Bernardo always intended to kill her because she was never blindfolded and could identify her captors. The following day, Bernardo and Homolka murdered French before going to the Homolkas' for Easter dinner.

Homolka testified at her trial that Bernardo strangled French for seven minutes while she watched. Bernardo said that Homolka beat French with a rubber mallet because she tried to escape and French was then strangled with a noose around her neck with one end that was secured to a hope chest After the girl was dead, Homolka then went to fix her own hair.

French's nude body was found on April 30^th, 1992, in a ditch in Burlington, about 45 minutes from St. Catharines and a short distance from the cemetery where Mahaffy is buried. She had been washed, and her hair was cut off. Although it was thought that French's hair was removed as a trophy, Homolka testified that it was cut to impede identification

Derek Finkle's 1997 book No Claim to Mercyf presented evidence tying Bernardo to the murder of Elizabeth Bain, who disappeared on June 19, 1990 (three weeks after the last known attack of the Scarborough Rapist). Bain told her mother that she was going to "check the tennis schedule" at the University of Toronto Scarborough; three days later, her car was found with a large bloodstain on the back seat.

Robert Baltovich, who has consistently maintained his innocence, was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of his girlfriend on March 31, 1992. At trial, his lawyers suggested that the then-unidentified Scarborough Rapist was responsible for the crime. Baltovich served eight years of a life sentence before he was released pending appeal. In September 2004 his appeal was processed, with his lawyers alleging that he had been wrongfully convicted and that Bernardo was guilty of the murder.  The Court of Appeal for Ontario set aside Baltovich's conviction on December 2, 2004, but on July 15, 2005, the Attorney General of Ontario announced that he would face a new trial. On April 22, 2008, after a series of pretrial motions (including the presentation of evidence implicating Bernardo in Bain's murder), Crown prosecutor Philip Kotanen told the court that he would call no evidence and asked the jury to find Baltovich not guilty of second-degree murder.      

It was never established that Bernardo actually murdered Elizabeth Bain.

His  jury convicted him of the murders of Mahaffy and French. He was sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison. On September first, 11995, Bernardo was convicted of a number of offences, including being sentenced to life in prison without parole for at least 25 years. He was also designated a dangerous offender, making him unlikely to ever be released since he was convicted of two first-degree murders and two aggravated sexual assaults, and twenty counts of rape and sexual abuse of women.

Homolka was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 12 years in prison as previously arranged. She was sent to a prison in the Province of Quebec.

Technically speaking, Paul and Karla were equally guilty of first-degree murder, but unless Karla slipped up on the stand the “deal with the devil” the plea bargain arrangement was untouchable. Only Paul Bernardo was facing the full weight of all the charges, and the best result that could be realistically hoped for was a guilty verdict on second-degree murder, instead of first degree. It wasn’t much, but understandably, no one wanted to give Paul Bernardo much because with second-degree murder convictions he might have the chance at a life outside of prison someday. Everything came down to whether a jury could be persuaded it was Karla and not Paul who had the intent to kill. The jury believed that it was both who intended to kill the two girls they kidnapped. It was Homolka’s agreement to accept the deal put to her by the prosecutor that spared her from a 25-year prison term.

As part of the Canadian criminal justice system, . it is standard procedure to release inmates at their earliest parole date after serving one-third of their sentence. Karla’s two ten year sentences for the French/Mahaffy murders ran concurrently with the two year sentence she received for Tammy’s death, rendering the strange accounting process by which someone arrived at the tw0 years for Tammy’s death years, meaningless. Even if this weren’t standard procedure written into the plea-bargain agreement. it was a clause stating, in effect that her parole was only four short years away. She could apply for parole after serving two-thirds of her sentence but as it turned out, she serve the full 12-year sentence.

Before her imprisonment, Homolka had been evaluated by numerous psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health and court officials. Despite her ability to present herself very well, there is a moral vacuity (lack of thought or intelligence; empty-headedness.) in her which is difficult, if not impossible, to explain.  That is probably why she had to serve the full twelve years in prison.

After serving her full 12-year sentence, Homolka was released from St. Anne des Plaines prison in Quebec. .

 Homolka took courses through nearby Queen’s University and eventually graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. A number of restrictions were placed on her upon her release, including being required to notify the police of her home and work addresses and being forbidden to be around people under the age of 16, but these restrictions were lifted by November of the same year. During a 2005 interview with Radio Canada, Homolka says she planned to live in Quebec.  

After her release, Homolka married her lawyer’s brother Thierry Bordelais, gave birth to three children—two boys and a girl—and relocated to Guadaloupe so her kids could lead “a more normal life.” She also legally changed her name to Leanne Teale.

It was during the 2014 first degree murder trial of Luka Magnotta that it was revealed that Karla Homolka was living in Quebec again. In 2010, The Vancouver Sun reported that Homolka would be eligible to seek pardon for her crimes. Later that year, an agreement was reached between all federal parties to pass a bill that would prevent notorious offenders like Karla Homolka from obtaining a pardon. Her horrendous crime will remain on the list of murderers who are no longer given a pardon. This means that she can never enter the United States or even fly in a passenger plane that is flying over the United States. I really feel sorry for her children having a mother who is known as the woman who tortured two young girls who were later murdered by her first husband with her approval.  

Bernardo applied for parole after serving his mandatory 25 year prison sentence. Seated at a table in a small room, the dark-haired Bernardo appeared heavier and far older than what we remember from the 1990s when society was rocked by the handsome blond accountant’s vicious crimes. The rest of this article will be about Paul Bernardo.

Despite becoming eligible for day parole in February 2018,  Bernardo has never been out of prison. He has spent almost all his time in protective custody or solitary confinement. For years, he has been held in the Millhaven Penitentiary which is Canada’s most maximum security prison. It is in the eastern part of the Province of Ontario

Notices from Correctional Service Canada went out to at least one of his victims, advising her that Bernardo had applied for day parole in the Toronto area.

 “We have to relive Leslie’s pain and horror. The pain, despair and anguish is crushing and debilitating,” said Debbie Mahaffy, mother of Leslie Mahaffy, whom Bernardo tortured and murdered in 1991. “There still exists the incredible void in my heart and soul that time will never heal.”

The French family made the same kind of statement to the Board members.

The 54-year-old killer told the hearing that he did dreadful things in the past and which he cries over frequently, and stated he has improved himself. He also cried at the Parole Bboard hearing.  He probably thought that his tears were as weighty as his words. As it turned out, his words had no weight at all.

He was denied parole. Of course like all lifers, he had apply again a couple of years later.

Correctional Service Canada notes. “Not all lifers will be granted parole. Some may never be released because they continue to represent too great a risk to reoffend.” 

The two members of the National Parole Board panel at the Millhaven Institution only took 30 minutes to deliberate after hearing his case on . 

Suzanne Poirier a member of the parole board present at Bernardo’s hearing held on October 17^th 2018 said to Bernardo, “The Board denies day and full parole as you are a dangerous offender. The board feels that your sentence has been tailored to your circumstances, ”

I think the circumstances she was referring to was the two murders he committed and the 20 rapes he was convicted of.

Paul Bernardo was denied his application for day parole on after the Parole Board heard harrowing victim impact statements describing the “emotional hell” the convicted killer and rapist continues to inflict on his victims and their loved ones.

Criminal lawyer Daniel Brown said that Bernardo’s chances of release from jail, now or in the future however, are virtually nil. He said, “I can’t think of any murderer designated  a ‘dangerous offender’ who has been granted parole. 

If Bernardo serves another 25 years in prison, he will have served at least 50 years in prison. In 2043, he will be 79 years of age by then. Will he be paroled again? I will never know since I will be long gone by then.