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

by Peter Vronsky

  Karla with their dog Buddy

  It would be pointless and cruel to dwell here in these pages on the detailed transcripts of the torture and rape inflicted on Leslie Mahaffy. From the other video transcripts already quoted here, one can easily imagine what Karla and Bernardo put the girl through and what was said. If any reader should need the exact details of what was on the videotapes of Leslie Mahaffy’s rape and torture, they can refer to Toronto crime reporter Nick Pron’s book, Lethal Marriage. Pron made the difficult decision to publish the transcripts in their entirety, and one such source should be enough.

  Leslie Mahaffy suffered for nearly twenty-four hours. Sometime in the middle of the night, while Leslie lay handcuffed in the bedroom upstairs, Bernardo and Homolka went down to the kitchen and had a conference. There was a problem: It was Father’s Day and Karla’s parents were expected for dinner later in the day, their first visit to the house Karla and Paul had recently rented.

  According to Karla, Bernardo decided that he had to kill Leslie because she would identify him if he let her go. Homolka says that she insisted on going upstairs and feeding Leslie sleeping pills so she would not feel anything when she died. Karla gave Leslie a teddy bear named Bunky that Bernardo had given her, to comfort the girl as she curled up in a fetal position and went to sleep. Then, Homolka says, Bernardo entered the room with a black electric cord, wrapped it around Leslie’s throat, and attempted to strangle her. It was not easy. After the first attempt, Leslie gasped for life. Bernardo redoubled his effort until a pool of urine formed under Leslie as she died on the carpeted floor of their bedroom. Bernardo ordered Homolka to destroy the pillowcases and blanket stained with Leslie’s blood. Homolka argued that they were her favorite set of bedding. She would carefully wash them instead.

  Bernardo took Leslie’s body down to the basement and hid it in a cool corner. Then the couple went to bed to sleep as Leslie’s urine dried on their floor. Bernardo let Karla sleep in the bed that night. They got up toward noon and Karla bustled about preparing dinner for her parents. When the Homolkas arrived, Bernardo took them for a tour of the house, carefully avoiding the basement where Leslie’s body still lay.

  On Monday morning, while Homolka went back to work at the clinic, Bernardo set up a clear plastic sheet in the form of a tent in the basement. He lined the bottom of it with sheets of newspaper. He then dragged Leslie’s body into the tent and carved it into ten pieces with a circular power saw. The entire interior of the tent was splattered from top to bottom with blood, tissue, and body fluid which spilled out from the corpse. The electric saw was caked in flesh and bone. Bernardo attempted to wash it clean in the sink, but only succeeded in clogging up the drain with fatty body matter. Bernardo then went out and bought some quick-dry cement. Returning home, he encased the ten body parts into blocks of cement, and then stacked them in the basement.

  Leaving the bloodied tent still standing, Bernardo went to the animal clinic and picked up Karla. He took her down to the basement and had her put away the tent and clean out the body tissue and hair from the drain. Homolka testified that she used lemon-scented Lysol cleaner to clean up the basement. The couple then went upstairs and had dinner. Bernardo asked Homolka not to serve any meat for a while but laughed and joked how “light” Leslie’s head was when he had cut it off.

  The next evening, when Bernardo picked up Homolka from work, he told her that the concrete blocks were in the trunk of the car. The couple drove out to Lake Gibson, where they used to have sex when they were first dating, and threw the blocks into the water.

  Police photo of Leslie Mahaffey’s dismembered

  body part encased in concrete.

  The remainder of the two weeks was busy for Homolka as she prepared the last details of her wedding. When she was being fitted for her wedding dress, several of her friends noticed the bruises on her arms, but Homolka explained that she got them from handling dogs at the clinic.

  On Saturday, June 29, 1991, the lavish wedding took place at the exclusive tourist town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. While Niagara Falls is a trashy and carnival-like town, full of cheap motels, casinos, and souvenir stands on the site of the famous waterfalls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, twenty minutes away, is an upscale elegant, Loyalist colonial settlement with an important theater center.

  At about the same time that Bernardo and Homolka were getting married, a fisherman was pulling out of Lake Gibson one of the concrete blocks Bernardo and Homolka had tossed in—the one they had not tossed far enough away from shore. That night, unaware that the police were piecing together Leslie Mahaffy’s body, Bernardo and Homolka counted the money they had collected during the wedding. They had nine thousand dollars to spend on their honeymoon in Hawaii.

  Karla would later complain in a police interview that Bernardo “ruined” her wedding night by confessing to her he was the infamous Scarborough Rapist. It was not the kind of wedding night a girl dreams of, she whined in the police videotape. Bernardo might have chosen the wedding night to confess in the mistaken belief that now married, his wife could not testify against him.

  The Murder of Kristen French

  After the murder of Leslie Mahaffy, Bernardo spent the next ten months routinely beating Homolka and stalking and raping other victims. On the Thursday afternoon before the Easter weekend of April 1992, Bernardo decided he needed another “virgin.” He told Homolka to put her hair into a nonthreatening ponytail and the two drove over to the Holy Cross Catholic high school, near where Terri Anderson disappeared. Bernardo had already staked out the school. He was aroused by the school uniforms the girls wore: short plaid skirt, white blouse, and knee socks—a fairly common theme in erotic and pornographic media.

  As students poured out of the school, Bernardo scanned the girls looking for one that suited his desire. He picked out 15-year-old Kristen French, a serious and studious young woman in grade 12. Bernardo followed her in his car. When he saw that she was walking alone, he passed her and pulled into a church parking lot just ahead. As Kristen came up toward the car, Karla called her over asking for directions. Standing in the open door of the auto, Karla had spread a map on the car’s roof and asked Kristen to show her where they were. Kristen felt no fear in approaching the handsome young couple. As she began to scan the map, Bernardo circled behind her and pushed her into the vehicle. While Homolka held Kristen down in the backseat, Bernardo drove their captive to their home. For the next three days as Bernardo and Homolka both sexually assaulted Kristen, they videotaped everything. During the nights, they kept her drugged on sleeping pills, restrained and locked in the closet.

  In the video, Bernardo urinated on and attempted to defecate on Kristen and had her chant, “I’m your 15-year-old Holy Cross sex slave,” and “You’re the most powerful man in the world. You deserve anything you want…You’re so nice, powerful, sexy. So much in control of everything. Nobody can overpower you. Nobody…you’re the king. The master. The king of all kings. The best man in the whole world. It’s good that I’m getting punished.”

  Bernardo had Karla put on Tammy’s similar schoolgirl uniform–type outfit and climb into bed with Kristen. He then ordered them to perform oral sex and masturbate each other. Bernardo barked out commands from behind the camera like a psycho film director: “Start licking at the bottom and work your way up to the top…Come on, let’s hear some love stuff.”

  Karla told police in her interview: “So we dressed in almost identical uniforms and we put on makeup and we were giggling and laughing and it seemed like we’re just friends getting ready to go out, kind of thing, we were doing what Paul had told us to do. I had all little perfume samples and she wanted to try some.”

  One is immediately incredulous—the raped and beaten, captive victim wanted to try perfume samples! Ridiculous!

  But there it was in the videotapes, which surfaced later. As Homolka and Kristen stood in front of the bathroom mirror with cosmetics lined up on the counter, Bernardo switched on his video camera.

  (Video reco
rding starts.)

  HOMOLKA: So what kind of perfume do you like?

  KRISTEN: Eternity or Giorgio.

  HOMOLKA: Yeah, I like Giorgio as well. I have some of that new perfume, Halston. I haven’t worn it yet, but maybe I will today.

  BERNARDO: Okay, girls, you know what I want you to do. Each one of you pull up your skirts at the same time. Okay, now bend over. Give me a nice ass shot. (Kristen does what she is told.)

  BERNARDO: Good girls. Okay back to work.

  HOMOLKA: Let’s see what we have here.

  KRISTEN: Eternity.

  HOMOLKA: Oh, Eternity. I like it. That’s Escape. I hate that one.

  KRISTEN: Really? Can I smell it?

  HOMOLKA: It’s gross.

  KRISTEN: I’ve never used it.

  HOMOLKA: I was at work one day, and I bought one of those magazines, like Mademoiselle, and then the whole place stunk because of that perfume in a page. I’ve got others here to try, like Alfred Sung.

  KRISTEN: Can I try this one?

  HOMOLKA: Sure.

  In explaining the scenes recorded on the videotape, Homolka recounted in court how Bernardo held a contest between her and Kristen. They were instructed to select and put on makeup and perfumes. Bernardo she said, told them, “The one who smells the best is the winner and won’t get fucked by me up the ass.”

  BERNARDO: Tell the camera. Mmm, gorgeous, gorgeous.

  (Bernardo leans forward and smells Kristen. He then smells Homolka.)

  BERNARDO: No way, lady. This is not a nice smell.

  HOMOLKA: (Sniffing Kristen’s neck.) That is a nice smell.

  BERNARDO: (To Kristen.) Even though you smell the best, I’m still going to fuck you up the ass anyways. She’s my wife, after all. And she’s got brownie points on her side.

  The videotape revealed some surreal episodes in Kristen French’s three-day ordeal at the hands of Bernardo and Homolka. There were moments when one would not guess that Kristen was a captive in the hands of homicidal monsters who were raping her and were about to murder her. Some of these horrific episodes are reproduced here because they illuminate the subtle dynamics between a victim and her killers—the razor’s edge between life and death at the hands of a serial killer.

  In the midst of her nightmarish ordeal, Kristen French appears to cleverly and desperately attempt to survive and manipulate her captors. In one video segment, Kristen and Karla are videotaped by Bernardo having sex with each other:

  HOMOLKA: I like you, Kristen.

  KRISTEN: I like you, too.

  HOMOLKA: Do you want to have some fun?

  KRISTEN: Sure, okay. How come your teeth are so straight?

  HOMOLKA: I don’t know. How about yours?

  KRISTEN: (giggling) You’re silly.

  HOMOLKA: (Undressing Kristen.) Don’t be so nervous. It’s okay.

  KRISTEN: Am I shaking?

  HOMOLKA: No. Just try to feel at home. You have nice legs.

  KRISTEN: This one’s kind of short.

  HOMOLKA: That’s okay.

  KRISTEN: Can I ask you a favor? Before I leave, can I see your dog…without it attacking me?

  (Homolka looks up toward Bernardo behind the camera.)

  HOMOLKA: It’s up to him.

  BERNARDO: Yeah, sure. Before you leave.

  KRISTEN: I like dogs.

  BERNARDO: Me, too.

  Some interpreted Kristen French’s easygoing banter with Homolka and Bernardo as symptoms of her succumbing to Stockholm syndrome—where shocked and disorientated captives begin to relate to and associate themselves with their captors. In Kristen’s case, it is unlikely. It is clear from Kristen’s dialogue that she had her wits about her and was cleverly attempting to create a context in her relationship with her captors in which her release would be inevitable. Kristen positively said, “Before I leave, can I see your dog?” It was a courageous and intelligent attempt at survival and one that could have potentially worked had she been in the hands of serial killers with a slightly different profile. Bernardo does not miss Kristen's futile attempt though, when he responds, “Yeah, sure. Before you leave.” He is on to her. It’s heart- breaking. We know as the videotape rolls forward they are going to kill her.

  While Kristen was held captive, Bernardo left the house on two occasions to get takeout food, leaving her alone with Homolka. The moment Bernardo was out the door, Kristen desperately pleaded with Karla to let her escape, but Karla refused.

  “What Do You Know About Dying?”

  On the third day of her captivity, Kristen French began to openly resist Bernardo, refusing to obey his commands—not the behavioral path a Stockholm syndrome victim takes. Bernardo then showed her the videotape of Leslie Mahaffy being raped and tortured, saying to Kristen, “You know who that is, don’t you? What happened to her will happen to you if you don’t do what I tell you.”

  Kristen must have been horrified to recognize the face of the girl who had been reported missing and had been found dismembered at Lake Gibson. Despite the horror, the courageous 15-year-old Kristen French refused to comply further with Bernardo’s perverted demands and defiantly countered, “There are some things worth dying for.” Bernardo responded with a sustained cycle of vicious punches and kicks to her body.

  Homolka and Bernardo raped her again several more times before Bernardo commenced beating her yet again. One of the last images on the video was of Kristen lying tied up and battered almost into unconsciousness. On the video, she spits out at Bernardo: “I don’t know how your wife can stand being around you.”

  “Just shut up, okay. Just shut up,” Bernardo is heard saying on the video, just before turning the camera off.

  Shortly afterward, Bernardo took an electrical cord and wrapped it around Kristen’s throat. He carefully timed himself for seven minutes as he held his grip. Karla stated she heard Bernardo mutter in Kristen’s ear as he killed her: “What do you know about dying?”

  If in Dante’s Inferno there was a “He-Said-She-Said Psycho Newlyweds Game Show,” then Bernardo and Homolka would have been star contestants. While Homolka testified that Bernardo killed the girls, Bernardo stated that Homolka killed both of the girls when he left them alone with her. Bernardo said he wanted to keep Kristen French as a sex slave and not kill her. Homolka became jealous, he asserts, and killed Kristen. This is conceivable, for along with American Psycho, the other book that Bernardo had on hand at the time was Perfect Victim, by Christine McGuire and Carla Norton. The book was a true-crime account of a 20-year-old woman who was kidnapped in California and kept as a sex slave for seven years by a married couple. Furthermore, the autopsy report on Leslie Mahaffy showed bruising on her back consistent with a pair of knees pressed there the size and shape of Karla’s. It should also be noted that the only time Bernardo’s many female victims died, was when Karla was present. Alone, Bernardo had not killed any of his rape victims.

  Karla insisted that Bernardo had killed Kristen because the couple was due at her parents’ house for Easter dinner. She stated that Bernardo then forced her to clean up the evidence. Because there might be carpet fibers in Kristen’s hair from Bernardo’s rug, rather than destroying her precious rug, Karla stupidly hacked off Kristen’s hair and collected it in a bag.

  She and Bernardo then carried her body into the bathroom and submerged it in the tub. Her corpse was scrubbed clean, because Bernardo told Karla that the police were able to lift fingerprints from flesh. He ordered Karla to douche Kristen’s vagina and anus clean of Bernardo’s seminal fluids. Bernardo burned her clothes, hair, and the sports bag she was carrying when she was taken captive, in the fireplace downstairs and then carefully collected the ashes for disposal. He meticulously wiped clean the glass face of Kristen’s watch, and then shattered it.

  To make it seem like the killers lived in Burlington, where Mahaffy had been kidnapped, Homolka and Bernardo planned to dump Kristen’s body on Leslie Mahaffy’s grave, but they couldn’t find it. In the end, they tossed Kristen out by the side
of the road leading to the cemetery. She was found naked and shorn of her hair fourteen days after she had gone missing.

  “It didn’t sound logical that he would be out abducting her and cutting her up and then getting married...”

  By now the multi-million dollar Green Ribbon Taskforce (GRT) had been formed in the Niagara Region to look into several disappearances and murders of young women including Leslie Mahaffey and Kristen French. When witnesses reported sighting an older model unkempt Camaro in the vicinity of Kristen French’s abduction, billboards with the sinister-looking car went up all over the province.