by Suruthi Bala
Love at First Pet Convention
Within hours of meeting, Karla and Paul had ditched their friends and were in a hotel room having sex. As described by Nick Pron in his 1995 book, Lethal Marriage, after this encounter their relationship moved at breakneck speed. Paul, who by this point had graduated from college and landed a job with PwC, would drive from Toronto to Ontario every weekend to be with Karla. At first, Paul spoiled his teenage lover; he would shower her with affection, attention, and gifts. And Karla was smitten—Paul was everything she’d ever dreamed of.
But of course, it wouldn’t last, and those of you who have been in a similar situation (we both definitely have) probably know what we’re about to say next. Paul was using the narcissist’s favorite power play: love bombing.
A favorite of the pickup artists we had the displeasure of meeting in chapter 4 and our ex-boyfriends, love bombing is a manipulation method used in particular by people with narcissistic traits. It’s a way to gain and maintain control over another person. There are usually two phases to love bombing: the idealization phase and the devaluation phase. During the first phase, the target gets all the love, praise, and promises of a beautiful future together that they could hope for. But soon they find themselves in the devaluation phase, where the put-downs and the criticisms come thick and fast.
When Paul started to tell Karla that she was ugly and stupid, she was shocked. But now, being “addicted” to Paul and his love, Karla would do anything to please him and get back to that idealization phase. So the more Paul devalued her, the more dependent Karla grew on him and the more desperate she became.
Paul began to introduce Karla to more of his extreme fantasies, and the pair began to engage in some pretty hardcore BDSM—with Karla assuming the role of slave to Paul’s master. Of course, an interest in BDSM doesn’t make you dangerous; consensual BDSM—just like consensual missionary—is totally fine and brilliant. Go nuts! But what Paul was doing was testing the waters.
Unlike the other women he’d dated who had upped and run when they sensed danger, Karla stayed. She absorbed all his kinks, easily submitted to his violent and degrading sexual desires, obeyed his every order, and accepted his constant criticism. Karla also went along with Paul controlling everything about her, from where she went, to what she ate, to what she thought, to how she dressed. She even started to write down all the ways in which she could improve herself for Paul.
Karla gave over total control and authority, and this is exactly what Paul wanted. Above all, Paul Bernardo was motivated by being able to dominate another person completely, while Karla was so submissive that she was driven by a need to be completely controlled. Do not, however, confuse her submissiveness with stupidity or fragility. Karla, as we’ll see, was neither…
But none of this controlling behavior was obvious to others at first. Paul even moved in with the Homolkas and no one noticed anything odd (even though Paul was such a giant asshole that he referred to the novel American Psycho as his bible, which is only slightly worse than when salespeople read The Art of War and talk about it at every opportunity, for the rest of their lives.)
From the outside they seemed like the perfect pair. Karla loved that she had this older, sexy man because she felt that it gave her a boost in status. And Paul loved that he had a younger, beautiful girlfriend who followed his every order. But soon it wasn’t enough for him, and by December 1988 Paul had gone back to committing his violent rapes of strangers.
According to her later confessions, Karla knew what Paul was up to at this time, but it seems that she didn’t really mind. For Paul, this would have set his “mur-dar” ringing—a term used by behavioral criminologist Gregg McCrary. What are we talking about? Let us explain: McCrary, who is a former FBI agent and actually worked on the Homolka/Bernardo case, said in a 2014 interview with Psychology Today that predators like Paul “often have a highly acute ability to detect potential co-conspirators, and just like there’s radar [and] gaydar, maybe they have mur-dar.”
We agree. Paul had sensed something in Karla; he saw her as someone who wouldn’t be horrified by what he was. And he had been right, because now she was OK-ing the fact that he was a rapist. This was likely the first stage of Paul recognizing that, with his help, Karla could maybe go from a normal girl to an accomplice.
The Scarborough Rapist
Between 1987 and 1990, Paul Bernardo raped at least 19 women and girls in Scarborough, Ontario. These attacks usually involved a young victim being blitz-attacked in the street at night. He would threaten them with a knife and choke them with a garotte before raping them vaginally, anally, and orally. He would then force his victims to call themselves “sluts,” give him their names, and all sorts of other personal information before he rubbed mud into their hair and threatened to kill them if they told the police.
The public was terrified and the police were stuck. None of the victims had been able to give a clear description of their attacker, until finally, on May 26, 1990, one of the Scarborough Rapist’s victims was able to work with police and create a composite sketch. The image was rapidly circulated around the Greater Toronto Area and it was a dead ringer for Paul Bernardo. In fact, the sketch looked so much like Paul that multiple people he knew came forward independently to report him, and Paul was interviewed by the police in November 1990. But in classic Bernardo fashion he didn’t let this get him down. Paul spent the entire time joking around with the officers about how funny it was that he looked so similar to the composite sketch. He even willingly gave a sample of his DNA before walking out of the police station that day a free man.
Luckily for Paul, at the time DNA testing was still in its infancy, and on top of this, due to a series of clerical issues and oversights, his swab sat untested for two whole years alongside fifty thousand other samples. But Paul didn’t know that this was the case. You’d think that after a brush with the law and his DNA now on record he might have laid low for a while, but that just wasn’t Paul’s style.
Tammy Homolka
Apart from all his constant criticisms about her appearance, her weight, and her intelligence, something else that Paul berated Karla about was her virginity, or lack thereof. As his “virgin farm” dream hints at, Paul was obsessed with female virginity. Karla’s having lost hers before she and Paul had even met was to him akin to being unfaithful, and it was something he would never let her forget.
As this topic began to rear its head on a regular basis, Karla could feel Paul start to pull away. He was doing what he always did when she didn’t give him what he wanted immediately. But this time—seeing as how she couldn’t very well regain her virginity and give it to Paul on a silver platter—she was terrified that she would lose him for good. So it’s theorized that Karla resolved to give him the next best thing: for his Christmas present that year, Karla decided to “gift” Paul her 15-year-old sister Tammy’s virginity.
On the night of December 23, 1990, Karla and Paul spent a delightfully Christmassy evening with the Homolkas. After everyone else had stumbled up to bed (pissed on eggnog or whatever other strange, festive cocktails North Americans seem to drink), the couple turned their sights on Tammy. They plied her with liquor laced with triazolam—a powerful tranquilizer that Karla had stolen from the veterinary clinic—and then they took the 15-year-old down to the basement.
Once Tammy was unconscious, Paul filmed Karla sexually assaulting her own sister. Then Karla used a rag soaked in halothane (a type of general anesthetic, that she had again stolen from the veterinary clinic) to keep Tammy unconscious while Paul proceeded to rape her. They filmed the entire ordeal, right up until the moment that Tammy choked on her own vomit and died.
Paul and Karla quickly put Tammy back in her bed and cleaned up the crime scene before calling 911. When they were questioned by police, they both claimed that Tammy had stayed up with them and just had too much to drink. Tammy’s death was ruled accidental and no further questions were asked, even though she had a huge red burn on her face an
d lips. It was theorized that maybe it was just a burn from laying in her own vomit until the ambulance had arrived, but this burn had been caused by the halothane-soaked rag that Karla had used to keep Tammy knocked out.
After getting away with Tammy’s murder, Karla and Paul’s relationship was stronger than ever. They even stepped up their sex lives (and by “stepped up,” we mean took a major turn into perverse depravity), because they would sneak into Tammy’s bedroom to reenact the crime over and over again. Karla would even wear her sister’s clothes and dress up like a schoolgirl while Paul had sex with her on Tammy’s bed.
We think this ability to “relive” the crime is a vital part of the motivation behind couples killing together. Serial killers tend to take trophies from their victims, which they do to relive the crime again and again. It reminds them of the kill, and much like any of us picking up a souvenir magnet while on vacation, it takes them back to a “happy” memory. We often see killers take jewelry so that they can have their unwitting wives, girlfriends, or children wear it. Every time the killer sees the trophy around the neck of a loved one, they are right back in the moment. With killer couples, however, they can become each other’s trophies, and they now have a living, breathing reminder with whom they can relive the moment endlessly. The pair bonds over a secret that no one else knows. This could be a powerful motivator for a killer couple.
However, even this didn’t hold Paul’s attention for long and, although by now he and Karla were engaged, he started to sleep with other women. This isn’t at all surprising; we think it’s safe to say that Paul displays many of the signs of psychopathy, including being easily bored. And just like with solo serial killers, once the thrill of a kill wears off, they are right back to being dissatisfied, seeking excitement and more stimulation.
Desperate to up her game and get her man’s attention back, on June 6, 1991, Karla invited a friend of hers—who we’ll call Jane Doe—over to the house that she now shared with Paul. Once they were settled in, Karla handed Jane a drink spiked with the same tranquilizer she had used on Tammy, and then she called her fiancé to tell him to come home because she had a “wedding present” for him. That night, Paul and Karla sexually assaulted an unconscious Jane while filming the entire thing. When Jane finally woke up, she had absolutely no memory of the savagery she had just endured; she left the house sore and disoriented but alive.
After this disgusting “bonding experience,” Paul was ready to commit to Karla. He cut all ties with the other women he had been sleeping with and just weeks later the couple got married. As you can see, Paul’s response to Karla’s participation in and enthusiasm for the rapes always delivered her desired results (e.g., he commits more). So it’s possible that in her mind, no matter what lines she had to cross, her actions were always totally validated. This is because by this stage in the relationship, any moral compass that Karla ever had was completely broken. Keeping Paul interested and maintaining their relationship now had greater emotional significance to her than any qualms she may have had about the horrific things they were doing.
Leslie Mahaffy
On the very day Karla and Paul got married in their fairy-tale wedding—complete with horse and carriage—30 miles away in Burlington, a couple of canoers had come across eight blocks of cement with human body parts sticking out. The dismembered remains were determined to belong to a missing 14-year-old local girl named Leslie Mahaffy.
Karla had secured the couple’s first two victims, but this time it had been Paul who had found and abducted Leslie. He had spotted her one night when she had been locked out of her house and he tricked her into his car with the promise of a cigarette. This speaks volumes as to Paul’s charm and charisma; often male serial killers who lack confidence don’t stand a chance of luring a female victim into their vehicles. This is actually often one of the key reasons that a male killer will pair up with a woman, because her presence usually puts potential victims at ease.
But Paul didn’t need Karla to help him catch his prey; he could just turn on some of that classic Patrick Bateman charm. So it’s clear that Karla served another purpose to him and his fantasy. What’s also interesting to note is how different his MO was when he was working with Karla. When he operated solo, he blitz-attacked women in the street, but when he was with Karla he lured the victim back to their house. Although Paul was the dominant one, changing Karla, she was also influencing his behavior.
Once he had Leslie in the car, Paul drove straight home where he and Karla blindfolded her, raped her, and yet again videotaped the entire thing. Thanks to these tapes we know that 14-year-old Leslie’s harrowing ordeal lasted for at least 24 hours. During this nightmare, her blindfold slipped off and she saw the faces of her attackers; tragically this probably sealed Leslie’s fate. Karla gave Leslie a lethal dose of triazolam and then the young girl was strangled to death.
We can’t know for sure if Leslie might have survived like Jane Doe had the blindfold not fallen off; we also can’t definitively say exactly who did the strangling. Paul has always maintained that it was Karla who murdered Leslie, and she has always said it was him. It is interesting to note, however, that outside of his affiliation with Karla, Paul had never killed the women he had raped. Even when a woman he attacked had seen his face so clearly that she had been able to help police create that nearly perfect composite sketch. It wasn’t until Paul started working with Karla that the murders began.
Could it be that this was Karla and Paul’s MOs uniting? Like we mentioned, with killer couples there tends to be a multiplying of motives where both partners imprint their own motivations and desires on the crime. Paul, being a domineering sex offender, raped his victims, and Karla joined in to please him and to have that sick shared experience and connection. But could it be that it was Karla who wanted the girls killed afterward? Did she feel some sort of warped jealousy toward these victims who had been raped by her fiancé?
It’s hard to say, but what lends credence to this theory is that even after the couple killed their first victim, Tammy, when Paul went back to attacking alone as the Scarborough Rapist, he didn’t kill.
Kristen French
After the horrific discovery of Leslie Mahaffy, police didn’t have long to take stock. The very next day, 15-year-old Kristen French’s naked body was found in a ditch by the side of the road in northern Burlington. Kristen’s battered body was covered in wounds consistent with brutal sexual and physical torture. Kristen had last been seen on April 16, 1992 in the parking lot of the Grace Lutheran Church in St. Catharines, Ontario; this is where Karla and Paul had spotted her. In a brazen move, they had grabbed Kristen and forced her into their car at knifepoint—all in broad daylight.
They took Kristen home and after three days of hell, Karla and Paul killed her. Again, just like with Leslie, it’s not clear who actually did the strangulation, but the tapes would later clearly show a very enthusiastically participating Karla. By this point in their killing careers, Karla and Paul were also trying to take forensic countermeasures more seriously; they had thoroughly washed Kristen’s body and even shaved off all her hair. But despite their best attempts, DNA was recovered by investigators and it was a match to the Scarborough Rapist. Now the police knew they were looking for one man in connection to all these crimes.
Breakups
Eventually, Ken and Barbie’s murderous relationship came to a violent end. Paul had always been abusive toward Karla, but in January 1993 he beat her so badly that her eye partially dislodged from its socket, and she ended up in the emergency room. Karla’s family had had enough; they begged her to leave Paul. She finally agreed. Karla even reluctantly gave in to their demands that she report Paul for what he’d done.
This trip by Karla to the police station is an interesting one to say the least. She turned up with two black eyes and told authorities about her abusive husband; that was all pretty horrifically ordinary. But she was wearing something that stood out. Officers noticed she wore a very distinctive Mic
key Mouse watch that looked exactly like the one that 15-year-old Kristen French had been wearing when she disappeared.
A couple of weeks after this domestic abuse report—finally, after two years—Paul Bernardo’s DNA was matched to the Scarborough Rapist’s. The police and the Green Ribbon Task Force (set up to investigate the murders of Leslie and Kristen) connected the dots and realized that not only was Paul Bernardo their man, but also that his wife had already been in to see them.
On February 9, Toronto Metro police arrived at Karla’s house to question her. They told her that Paul was a suspect in a series of rapes; at first she played dumb and acted shocked, but Karla’s tone changed when they asked her about the Mickey Mouse watch. Karla, now realizing that this was serious, kept her mouth shut. When the police finally left—after five hours of questioning her—Karla confessed to her family that Paul was indeed the Scarborough Rapist and that she needed a lawyer ASAP.
Karla told her lawyer everything, and she made it clear that she was willing to cooperate in exchange for a plea bargain. The prosecutors were desperate for Karla’s testimony against Paul; sure, they had the DNA match, but if Karla took the stand their case would be rock solid. It seems odd for our modern crime brains to take this in—if anything, juries these days only want to see DNA evidence. But in the early nineties, DNA testing wasn’t something that was in the public consciousness like it is today. After all, DNA had only become admissible in court approximately four years prior, in 1988.