Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka: The Ken and Barbie Killers (Crimes Canada: True Crimes That Shocked The Nation Book 3)

by Peter Vronsky

  Karla’s kid sister, Tammy

  Homolka testified that she at first refused to entertain the idea, but as with Bernardo’s demands for anal sex, her refusal strained their relationship. Homolka became afraid that the June wedding might not take place despite the $4,500 engagement ring Bernardo had given her. Finally, Homolka gave in toward December of 1990—she agreed to give Tammy’s virginity to Bernardo as a “Christmas wedding present” as compensation for not being a virgin herself.

  Karla stole some halothane, an ether-like inhalational anesthetic, from the veterinarian clinic where she worked. Then, telling a pharmacist she was ordering sedatives for the animal clinic, she also ordered some Halcion, a powerful triazolam benzodiazepine class sleeping sedative.

  Sex, death, and videotape

  On Christmas Eve of 1990, Bernardo and his video camera showed up at the Homolka’s house to spend the holidays. Years later, television audiences would be horrified by the home videos of 15-year-old Tammy drinking down eggnog spiked with Halcion while Bernardo and Karla hovered over her, encouraging her off camera to drink up. She had less than a few hours left to live. At the end of the evening, the parents retired to bed and told Tammy she should turn in as well. Little Tammy protested: Karla and Paul had invited her to stay up with them and watch a movie on the VCR and spend some time together. The parents went to bed while Paul and Karla slid a cassette into the VCR.

  The movie was Lisa, about a teenage girl’s infatuation with a stranger that, unknown to her, is a serial killer. By the time the movie ended, Tammy had passed out from all the Halcion she had consumed. Karla quickly ran to her room and got the halothane. She poured it onto a cloth and held it around Tammy’s face to make sure she was now deeply sedated into unconsciousness.

  Bernardo meanwhile unbuttoned Tammy’s blouse and fondled her breasts. Karla stripped naked while Bernardo pulled off Tammy’s track pants and underwear. He then switched on the video camera. This part of the videotape was never broadcast on television, but it was shown to the jury in the courtroom five years later at Bernardo’s trial for murder. The prosecution transcripts of the tapes presented in court reveal what took place as recorded by Bernardo’s video camera:

  (Video recording starts.)

  HOMOLKA: Put on a condom.

  (Bernardo vaginally penetrates Tammy Homolka.)

  HOMOLKA: Paul, hurry up.

  BERNARDO: Shut up!

  HOMOLKA: Please, hurry up, before someone comes down.

  BERNARDO: Shut up. Keep her down.

  (Homolka pours more halothane onto the cloth pressed against Tammy’s face. Bernardo again enters Tammy. Homolka urges Bernardo to put on a condom.)

  HOMOLKA: Put something on.

  BERNARDO: Shut up, Karla.

  HOMOLKA: Put something on. Do it.

  BERNARDO: You’re getting all worked up.

  HOMOLKA: Fucking do it. Just do it.

  (Bernardo penetrates Tammy anally. He continues for about a minute.)

  BERNARDO: Do you love me?

  HOMOLKA: Yes.

  BERNARDO: Will you blow me?

  HOMOLKA: Yes.

  BERNARDO: Suck on her breasts.

  HOMOLKA: I can’t.

  BERNARDO: Suck on her breasts. Suck. Suck. Suck.

  (Homolka sucks Tammy’s breasts.)

  HOMOLKA: Hurry up, please.

  BERNARDO: Lick her cunt.

  (Bernardo pushes Homolka’s head between Tammy’s legs.)

  BERNARDO: Lick. You’re not doing it.

  HOMOLKA: I am so.

  BERNARDO: Do it. Lick her cunt. Lick it. Lick it up clean. Now put your finger inside. HOMOLKA: I don’t want to.

  BERNARDO: Do it now. Quick, right now. Put three fingers right inside.

  HOMOLKA: No.

  BERNARDO: Put it inside. Inside! Inside!

  (Homolka inserts her finger into Tammy’s vagina. When she withdraws her finger it is glistening with dark menstrual blood.)

  BERNARDO: Okay, taste it. Taste it. Inside…inside.

  HOMOLKA: I did, I…did!

  BERNARDO: Now do it again, deeper. Inside. Deeper. Right inside. Okay, taste good? Taste good?

  HOMOLKA: Fucking disgusting!

  (The video recording stops.)

  Homolka later testified that at this point Bernardo struck her and told her to be more cooperative before the camera. Bernardo then switched the camera back on and had Karla hold it while he again had vaginal and anal sex with Tammy. He had not climaxed when the video recorded him suddenly stopping and withdrawing. Homolka put the camera down and switched it off.

  Karla testified that Bernardo said that something seemed wrong—it appeared like Tammy wasn’t breathing. Tammy was dead. She had vomited and choked to death during the rape. They attempted artificial respiration but Tammy remained unresponsive. They hurriedly dressed Tammy and carried her into a bedroom and then Karla flushed the remaining Halothane down the toilet and hid the Halothane bottle, the cloth, and the Halcion container in the basement shelves near the laundry room. Then they called 911.

  Police photo of the scene of Tammy’s rape and death.

  The emergency crews had arrived at the house at about 1:25 a.m. that night, but there was nothing they could do. She arrived at the local hospital at 1:45 a.m. and was pronounced dead at 2:03 a.m.

  A police officer, who responded to the call, remembered seeing strange, huge, burn-like cherry red marks around Tammy’s mouth, nose and face. He noted that Tammy had been moved from the living room to a bedroom. Bernardo said they had moved Tammy because the light was better in the bedroom—they could see better there. The police officer checked the lights in both rooms and saw that they were equally bright, but then thought that people under stress can react in all manner of inexplicable ways.

  When asked about the red marks on Tammy’s face, Bernardo replied that they probably were caused by the rug when they dragged Tammy to the other room. They would have had to drag her face down to produce those marks, the police officer thought, which was odd. But the officer’s duties were to merely file the response report and not to investigate the accident. Moreover, he was a rookie who had just come on the job. He kept his suspicions to himself and left it to the senior detectives and coroner to investigate.

  Halothane anesthetic burns on Tammy’s face

  Karla later claimed that Bernardo took the tape out of the camera and hid it behind a jar of pickles in the basement before the police arrived. Bernardo claims that the tape remained in the camera and, after they returned from the police station, that Karla took the tape out of the camera and hid it in her bedroom between the bed and the wall. It would be a “he said-she said” kind of thing throughout the whole case.

  After the police interviewed the parents and were told that Paul Bernardo was a fine, upstanding young chartered accountant, who was scheduled to marry Karla in June and who was loved by the family like a son, the police developed no strong suspicion of him.

  Forensic pathology is as much an interpretive art as it is a science. The extent to which a pathologist will explore a death in an autopsy depends upon the external circumstances presented to him by the police. Had Tammy’s body been found abandoned by a roadside, perhaps the autopsy would have been more extensive, but Tammy’s body was found by her concerned, loving sister and future brother-in-law. Tests were made for illicit drugs, but the recreational kind—not for veterinary sedatives and anesthetics. The dramatic burn stains around her mouth and face, the pathologist concluded, were the result of acidity in her vomit.

  Her rectum and vagina were inspected, but not carefully enough to detect indications of rape. Bernardo had not had time to ejaculate or couldn’t. (Many serial killers are unable to ejaculate during their crime and are capable of reaching a climax only later, when masturbating and reliving their murder, often touching or rubbing totems and trophies like their victim’s clothing, hair, sometimes body parts, or photos and videos of the victim.) Again, even if no seminal fluids were found, Tammy’s
vagina and anus should have been dilated enough to signal the pathologists that something was wrong, had they been looking for such signals. But they were not. The official autopsy result was death by aspiration of vomit. An accident.

  During Bernardo’s trial five years later, Homolka was cross-examined about her role in the death of her little sister:

  Q: The first time he mentioned having sex with your sister I would have thought you’d spring out of bed and say, ‘There’s no way I’m going to let you touch my baby sister.’ Wouldn’t that be the right reaction?

  A: Yes.

  Q: But you didn’t do that?

  A: No, I didn’t.

  Q: You thought, ‘Knock her out and have some sex with her. What’s the harm’?

  A: I didn’t know her safety would be in danger. I was afraid he would do it regardless. I was afraid he would just grab her off the street and rape her. This was the best way. I had no choice…I thought it would happen once and it would be over.

  "I loved it when you fucked my little sister"

  Homolka claimed that because of Tammy, Bernardo now had something to hold over her head. She insisted that because she feared Bernardo would expose her role in Tammy’s death to her parents, she became his unwilling slave. Homolka claimed that after the death of her sister, she “was numb.” Obviously not numb enough to complain that her parents spent too much money on Tammy’s funeral in a letter to a friend:

  My wedding plans are great, except for my parents being such assholes. They pulled out half of the money from the wedding saying they couldn’t afford it. Bullshit!!! Now Paul and I have to pay for seven or eight thousand dollars of the wedding. We’ve been compromising like crazy; a cash bar, no flowers on the table, etc. Finally Paul and I said fuck it! No paying for the bar. Cocktails. Everything!!!

  Fucking parents. They are being so stupid. Only thinking of themselves. My father doesn’t even want us to have a wedding. He thinks we should just go to the hall. Screw that! If he wants to sit at home and be miserable, he’s welcome to it. He hasn’t worked, except for one day, since Tammy died. He’s wallowing in his own misery, and fucking me. It sounds awful on paper, but I know you really see what I’m saying.

  Tammy always said she wanted a Porsche on her sixteenth birthday. Now my dad keeps saying, “I should have bought it.” Bull! If he really felt like that he’d be paying for my wedding because I could die tomorrow, or next year. He’s such a liar. And for the real reason we moved out. My parents told Paul and I that they wanted him to stay at the house until the wedding. Then they said they wanted him to go after Tammy died because they needed their privacy. First they took away half the wedding money, and then they kicked us out. They knew how much we needed to be together, but they didn’t care. What assholes!!!

  A week after Tammy’s death, Karla wrote Paul in January 1991.

  I loved it when you fucked my little sister. I loved it when you fucked Tammy. I loved it when you took her virginity. You're the King. I love licking your ass, Paul. I bet Tammy would have loved to lick your ass. I loved it when you put Snuffles up her ass. I felt proud. I felt happy. I felt horny. It's my mission in life to make you feel good. I'm glad you made me lick her cunt. You know I liked it. We like little girls. If you're going to fuck them, then I'm gonna lick them. All the little girls. The girls should be thirteen. I think you should fuck them and take their virginity. Break their hymens with Snuffles. They're all our children, and I think you should make them ours even more. I’m your cunt-licking slut, the keeper of your virgins. And I love you. I want to marry you. You fucked my little sister. And I let you do that.

  Karla and Paul posing in front of Tammy’s portrait on the anniversary of her rape and death.

  About three weeks after the funeral, Karla’s parents went away for a week to recuperate after Tammy’s death while Karla’s other sister went to stay with friends. Karla and Paul were alone in the house. Bernardo spent a lot of time masturbating to the videotape they had made of Tammy’s rape. He and Karla went into Tammy’s room, which had remained untouched since her death. Bernardo set the video camera up on a tripod facing Tammy’s bed. While Homolka put on Tammy’s clothes, Bernardo warned her, “Remember, don’t say anything stupid that will ruin the tape.” He was still mad at Karla for saying she was not enjoying performing oral sex on her sister the night she died. Paul told her, “It’s my only tape of Tammy and you fucked it up.”

  (Video recording starts.)

  (Bernardo is lying naked on Tammy’s bed. Homolka is with him, with her hair brushed forward over her face. Bernardo is holding a picture of Tammy. Homolka is performing fellatio on him.)

  BERNARDO: Here’s my little virgin Tammy. Fucked by me. I broke the hymen. HOMOLKA: Tammy was a virgin.

  (Bernardo turns over onto his hands and knees while Homolka performs analingus while rubbing his penis at the same time.)

  HOMOLKA: I love licking your ass. I love sucking your cock. I love you. I love to be fucking you so much. (Bernardo rolls over on his back and adjusts Homolka’s hair so it covers her face. She is fellating him.)

  HOMOLKA: I love you so much.

  BERNARDO: I love you too, Tammy.

  HOMOLKA: I want your cock in me. I’ll give you the best orgasm of all. Together we’re perfect. I want to lose my virginity to you.

  BERNARDO: You didn’t know I was filming you, Tammy, when you were in your room, undressing. But I was watching you through the window.

  HOMOLKA: Can you ever stop thinking of me? Can you ever stop coming in my face? Take my virginity, Paul. Take it.

  BERNARDO: I will, Tammy. I love you, Tammy. (Bernardo positions Homolka on her hands and knees and enters her anally. He is still holding Tammy’s photograph in his hand.)

  HOMOLKA: Oh, I’m losing my virginity. I love you, Paul. I love you so much. (Bernardo repositions the video camera at the side of the bed. He motions to Homolka to enter the frame while he looks directly into the camera.)

  BERNARDO: Hi, Tam.

  HOMOLKA: Hi, Paul.

  BERNARDO: Gonna make me happy?

  HOMOLKA: I love sucking you.

  BERNARDO: You’re better than Karla, that’s for sure.

  HOMOLKA: I love you. Will you fuck me, Paul?

  (While Homolka performs oral sex, Bernardo holds the picture of Tammy.)

  HOMOLKA: I’m a virgin.

  BERNARDO: Oh, Tammy. Oh, I love you. Yes. Yes. Yes, my little virgin. Yes. HOMOLKA: I love you, Paul. I’m your virgin.

  (Homolka performs fellatio on Bernardo for twenty minutes until he climaxes.) (Video recording stops.)

  The next night Bernardo went out driving. Before leaving, he told Homolka that if he came back with a girl, she was to hide or pretend to be his sister. He returned with a young woman about 16 years old and the two had sex while Homolka hid behind the drapes. The next night, Bernardo made another tape. This one was made by a roaring fireplace in the same room where Tammy had died. Bernardo was stretched out on his back with a glass of wine in his hand as Homolka performed fellatio. In between, she would stop and talk:

  (Video recording starts.)

  HOMOLKA: I loved it when you fucked my little sister. I loved it when you fucked Tammy. I loved it when you took her virginity. You’re the king. I love licking your ass, Paul. I’ll bet Tammy would have loved to lick your ass. I loved it when you put Snuffles up her ass.