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‘ gave Leslie some of my sleeping pills and Bunky to hold.” Karia held up the teddy bear. “1 didn’t want her to have any pain.” It was March 10, 1993, and Karla was “spilling.” She and Dr. Arndt were in an interview room on the psychiatric ward of Northwestern General Hospital.
Dr. Arndt is the kind of man who hugs people whom he perceives to be in pain, but even though he perceived Karla to be in pain he found nothing huggable about her. With Karla, he
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actually thought a hug could be misinterpreted. It was just a feeling he had, to stay away from her; something was not right.
“Holding on to Bunky, LesHe just went to sleep,” Karla continued matter-of-facdy. “But I knew she’d get killed. I was there when he strangled her. But I didn’t watch. I couldn’t stand it. I saw so many animals killed at work, but with a person it’s different. I saw discoloration, and I had to help him carry her down to the root cellar, because it was Father’s Day and my parents were coming over for dinner.”
Father’s Day? The fifty-year-old father’s naivete had already impressed Dr. Arndt that first afternoon, seven days eariier, in George Walker’s office.
Karla pressed on: so then she helped Paul put LesHe’s body in the root cellar. The root cellar was a dark closet with a dirt floor and a single exposed Hght bulb. The room was approximately six by ten feet, off in a corner of the basement. Otherwise the basement was roughly finished, whitewashed with a painted cement floor. Their story-and-a-half pink clapboard corner house at 57 Bayview in Port Dalhousie was fully renovated, with sky-hghts and hght beige walls. It was a great house. It had a big cedar deck out back. The root cellar was cooler than any place else and they used it to store Paul’s botded water, tinned goods and things. There were five rough-hewn pine shelves along one side. Leslie’s body was wrapped in a blanket and placed on the floor under the first shelf, beside one of those big baskets of potatoes.
Then she called her mother and asked her to bring over some chicken, because with her wedding only two weeks off and everything else that was happening, she had forgotten to thaw something for dinner. It was Father’s Day, Sunday, June 17, 1991.
Karla and Paul’s parents visited for sLx or seven hours. Karla said her only moment of panic came when she was preparing dinner and her mother offered to fetch potatoes. “No, no, I’ll get them—don’t be silly—sit down.” But it just “grossed me out,” going down and getting the potatoes right beside LesUe’s body. The Homolkas left around 9 p.m. and were home ten
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minutes later. Dorothy Homolka told Dr. Arndt she hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.
In contrast to the way Dr. Arndt viewed Karla’s father, he saw Dorothy Homolka as a nice person—Mother Earth, he called her. Full-bodied at forty-six, she reminded him of a farm girl or “somebody you see rolling up the sleeves, going to the washboard.”
Dorothy Homolka had been born Dorothy Christine Seger in Toronto on September 26, 1946. She told Dr. Arndt that her home life was just like “All in the Family,” a popular television show from the late seventies and eighties. She said her mother and father were Edith and Archie Bunker types, which the doctor interpreted to mean they were ignorant, racist and funny. It would fit that Dorothy also saw herself as their burbling, miniskirted, blond daughter Gloria, and Karel as the bumpkin, immigrant son-in-law, Meathead.
Dorothy said her parents—who were both still ahve and in their eighties—had a very good marriage. Her father had been in the construction business. Her mother had had an extended illness, which meant Dorothy had spent part of her adolescence running the household. She had two brothers and a sister, all living in Ontario. The youngest, Calvin, had been born shortly after Dorothy and Karel got married.
Twenty years is a significant age gap between siblings. Calvin was a “mistake.” When Karla was born, Dorothy’s youngest brother was barely four. Dorothy said something about how Calvin competed with Karla for the extended family’s affection. There was definitely some resentment there.
Dorothy met her ftiture husband in a trailer park on the outskirts of Mississauga, Ontario. It was a rather desolate setting for young love in the early sixties.
The Homolkas, Vaclav andjosefa, immigrated to Canada in 1950, and settled around Woodstock, Ontario. Dorothy’s future husband, Karel, who was seven years old at the time, had been born in Stokov, Czechoslovakia, on January 25, 1943.
From the beginning, the Homolkas were farm laborers, first
on their sponsor’s farm and then as itinerant workers. The whole area around Woodstock and along Lake Erie down toward Windsor produced tens of thousands of tons of tobacco a year. Then there were the fruit growers in the Niagara Peninsula.
The Niagara Region’s proHfic orchards and market gardens have become a multibillion-dollar industry. There has always been a lot of work for pickers. The entire Homolka family, which included seven brothers and three sisters, got their first exposure to St. Catharines picking fruit in nearby orchards in the early fifties.
The patriarch of the Homolka family evolved into a self-employed salesman along the way. Vaclav uprooted his entire family and dragged them all over western Canada until he died of cancer in 1957. Always on the move, and given his father’s untimely death, Karel Homolka never completed grade six.
When he returned to Ontario, Karel was smart enough to find a girl with an education and a job. At age nineteen, Dorothy had completed grade twelve and secured a secretarial job at the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital. Karel and Dorothy said “I do” on December 11, 1965, in Cooksville, Ontario, a quiet village about an hour’s drive north of Toronto.
Dr. Arndt could see how Dorothy, at nineteen, would have been very attractive: open, broad face, fine skin, curvaceous. And Karel still possessed a kind of raw animal magnetism. His body was trim and he had good teeth.
The newlyweds moved to Port Credit, a suburb on the west side of Toronto, close to the hospital where Dorothy was working. Karel and his brothers did whatever they could to get by. He struggled, Dorothy persevered.
By the time Karla was born by Caesarean section at Mississauga General Hospital on May 4, 1970, things were going better for Karel. He and his brothers were trading in trinkets and trash—filmed Elvises and mulatto girls on black-velvet backgrounds—from sidewalks in shopping malls. After Karla
was born, Dorothy became a housewife. She would not return to work for twelve years.
Karla’s first sister, Lori Priscilla, was born fourteen months later on June 22, 1971. The Homolka’s third and last child. Tammy Lyn, came along two and a half years later on New Year’s Day, 1975. Having constantly moved around Ontario since they were married, in March 1975, the Homolkas settled in a St. Catharines trailer park. Although they would move a couple of times again within the small city, they would never leave.
Like his father before him, Karel Homblka became a self-employed travehng salesman, selling lamps and lighting fixtures to furniture stores around the province. While he rnoved from town to town, Karla gasped for breath.
As a child, her father’s namesake was severely asthmatic and frequently hospitalized. The attacks generally occurred around holidays, birthdays and the start of school; whenever Karla became excited or frightened. “Mother,” as Dr. Arndt had taken to referring to Dorothy Homolka, said Karla was “cute as a button,” and if the snapshots Dr. Arndt saw were any indication, it was true. Blond, wide-eyed, here she is in her little. Pioneer Girls’ outfit, sweetly smiling, a portrait of innocence. Karla was precocious. She talked early, walked early, and from the time she could walk and talk, she read. When tested in grade school she scored a high intelligence quotient at 131. Karla Leanne Homolka was a very bright little girl.
Throughout grade school, Karla averaged marks in the mid-eighties. Her teachers routinely described her as “eager and enthusiastic, a good student.” Early on, Karla established what would become a lifelo
ng academic pattern—poor performance in maths and sciences, against her proclivity for EngHsh, languages and related subjects.
In 1978, the Homolkas moved into the house they still occupy today, at 61 Dundonald Street. It was in a new working-class subdivision known as Merritton, directly, behind the Victoria Lawn Cemetery. Semidetached, the house seemed much larger than its tiny eight hundred square feet because it was split on four levels.
To a family of five who had lived in trailer parks and tiny apartments it felt like the mansion on the hiU. There was a deck and an in-ground pool in the small backyard. Because there was a hydro right-of-way directly behind the house, they could hold on to an illusion of grandeur and more spacious circumstances. The Homolkas set a precedent that year on the fourth of May, when they celebrated Karla’s eighth birthday around the pool. The pool became the focal point of their family Hfe.
From Karla and her sister Lori, Dr. Arndt only heard about noncombative “wonderful” parents, who were always supportive and understanding.
Lori, twenty-one, had taken courses to become a medical secretary, but now worked as a full-time checkout clerk at Zehrs. Like her sisters she had blond hair which she often pulled into an austere ponytail. She told Dr. Arndt that she looked a lot like her dead sister, Tammy Lyn, who was by far the most bubbly and attractive of the three sisters. From the pictures the psychiatrist had seen of Tammy Lyn, Lori was deceiving herself Her tense litde face was unfortunately dominated by her father’s nose. Although she still lived at home, Lori claimed to be very independent minded. Dr. Arndt noticed that all her nails were bitten down to the quick. She said she had always bitten them.
Both sisters agreed that their mother was the dominant parent, but that their father had a deceptive inner strength. Lori thought her father needed help more than anyone, but he would never talk.
Karla did confess to Dr. Arndt that she had always had it in her mind that she would never marry a man hke her father. Personahty had nothing to do with it. He was always away and never had a steady paycheck.
Karla was so fixated on her perception of her father’s shortcomings that she latched onto Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman for a grade ten English project. With two girlfriends, she made a rather innovative video that focused on the gormless qualities of Willy Loman. Karla’s portrayal of Willy was a star-INVISIBLE darkness 2^
tling caricature of her father. She played him as if he were a Steve Martin character, a “wild and crazy guy.”
From Mother, Dr. Arndt only heard about a Karla that was smart, sweet, active, fun loving, outgoing, a leader, an instigator, always surrounded by friends, academically and socially successful.
She was a daughter who liked her “quiet time”—to read and think—and she loved animals. Karla actually trained their house cat to do tricks. Shadow, their big gray tabby, would sit up and beg or roll over on command. They always had a house full of kids, too. All Karla’s friends kept coming around.
“Mind you, something did change when Karla got to high school,” Mrs. Homolka told the doctor, thoughtfully. Although the kids still came to the side door in droves, Karla and her friends were no longer quite as open as they had once been.
Dr. Arndt thought ruefully that Mother might be having him on—maybe she had learned a few tricks during that stint at Lakeshore Psychiatric so many years ago. Teenagers are always less open than children—that was hardly a revelation—but also it could be that Mother just wasn’t that bright.
Inappropriately, in his view, she was participating in therapy sessions set up for the employees of the Shaver Clinic, a chronic-care hospital where she now worked. These sessions were designed to help her co-workers cope with the trauma that rocked all of St. Catharines in the wake of the crimes. Given Karla’s predicament, not to mention her involvement, Dorothy Homolka’s participation seemed woefully ill advised, even dim. Or perhaps vainglorious.
Dorothy Homolka went on to tell Dr. Arndt how, as a teenager, Karla and her friends had hung around the pool a lot, listening to music and talking. Karla had also worked part-time as a telephone sohcitor for a local photography company— briefly. Otherwise, she was employed in the summers as a nanny for a neighbor with two young boys.
There was another, darker side to Karla that Dr. Arndt did not hear about. About to enter grade seven, with an average of 86
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percent, Karla did something she would do over and over again. She inscribed a book and gave it to a friend.
In and of itself, this w^as innocent enough, except the books were always of a certain type. In this instance it was Brainchild, a B.F. Skinner-inspired horror story about behavioral psychologists who program human beings for their own nefarious purposes. The recipient of Karla’s largess was an impressionable, pordy girl named Amanda Whathng.
Karla graduated from grade eight with an 84 percent average. There is a snapshot of Karla and two girlfriends taken in the school gymnasium just prior to graduation ceremonies. Karla is in the middle and has an arm around each girl’s shoulders. One girl looks decidedly unhappy, the other quite radiant. They are all wearing glossy, pastel polyester party dresses. Karla is the only one wearing a corsage.
On the back of the photograph Karla inscribed: “Oh-me & my bestest buddies, Vicky and Lisa. Poor Lisa’s been crying over Tom. What am I plannmg? (There’s that devilish gHnt in my eye!) June 21st, 1984.”
When Karla started grade nine, her ongoing struggle with math and science dragged her down a bit. Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School was the largest in St. Catharines, and she was no longer the only pretty blonde in the corridors. Her grades remained average, but her attention began to wander. Not atypicaUy, Karla rebelled and challenged parental authority—such as it was. There were few rules in the Homolka household.
Although her parents allowed Karla to drink, she was not allowed to “car date”—go out with boys in cars. Hardly Czechoslovakia under Alexander Dubcek, but it was enough to set off an increasingly independent-minded Karla. Karla’s friends remember regular arguments, particularly with her father, whom they perceived to be as strong willed as Karla.
Others, who were closer to the family, such as the Andersons next door, saw a different kind of tyranny, one more in keeping with Dr. Arndt’s impression of Mr. Homolka. This version portrays Karel as a man subjugated by the collective will of a household completely dominated by women.
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Karla and her sister Lori regularly told their father to “flick off,” and called him a “dumb Czech.” When the beleaguered man could not stand the heat, he would flee the kitchen for refuge in the basement.
On the other, hand, Karel Homolka had a reputation for a wandering eye. When Lynda Wollis, one of Dorothy’s friends and a colleague from the Shaver Clinic, was in the process of a divorce, Karel came on to her. He started hanging around her apartment building. Once, he managed to get past the security system and pounded on her door, all the while professing his affection. When Lynda finally agreed to meet him at a bar to sort things out, Karel announced that he was “in lovink” with her and planned to leave Dorothy and move in with her.
Karel’s nickname among the women at the clinic was “the pervert.” Lynda said he earned it, because “he always wanted to take you to bed.” Dorothy told Lynda that she was relieved when Karel went away on business, because he always wanted sex. Lynda had only tolerated the man for Dorothy’s sake; she certainly never encouraged him. It always struck her as odd that the man could hardly speak English after spending more than three decades in Canada. The “I’m in lovink with you” thing put it way over the top.
“I told him, ‘Hey, like I’m in the middle of a divorce—the last thing I want is another man in my life, especially my friend’s husband,’ ” Lynda recalled. She sent Karel home and told him to keep his mouth shut.
The next day, Dorothy approached Lynda at work. Karel had told her everything and now she and Ly
nda had to talk. At Lynda’s apartment that evening, Dorothy said she did not think Karel was in love with Lynda, but there was an infatuation. To Dorothy this meant there was trouble in her marriage and her marriage was all-important to her.
“You could save my marriage if you’d sleep with both of us,” Dorothy suggested to a startled Lynda, who pohtely but firmly decHned. Lynda’s relationship with Dorothy was never the same.
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In the meantime, Karla was developing an interest in the occult. Her friend Amanda remembers that they used to Hght candles and burn incense all the time. Karla advertised in newspapers for Ouija boards. There was talk about spirits and the “screaming tunnels” that were located somewhere down near the railway tracks outside of town. Karla took to wearing black, dying her hair different colors every other day and changing its style as often. She wore heavy, dark eye makeup.
“When we were in high school she was a httle rebel, you know,” her close friend Debbie Purdie recalled. “Wore black nail polish, wore the longjohns and boxer shorts. Nobody ever told Karla what to do. She was her own person and her own boss.”
Another classmate, lona Brindle, noticed strange carved marks, like scarification, on Karla’s arm. It appeared that circles had been carved into her skin and then filled in with nail polish.
Karla also inscribed a book called Michelle Remembers to lona. Published in 1980, it was one of the first “true” stories about recovered memory, satanism and graphic sexual abuse, co-authored by the “victim-patient” Michelle Smith and her therapist. Karla’s inscription simply read: “There is always something more left to say.”
Karla admitted to Dr. Arndt that she smoked a Httle dope and had once popped an upper called a White Cross—probably contraband Ritalin—in grade ten. She told him that it really made her feel good, but then she “crashed” and had to call in sick for work at the Number One Pet Center in the Pen Center Mall, where she was working part-time. Her mother was not aware of any illicit drug use, just drinking at home with friends. In grade eleven, Karla was accelerated to grade twelve En-^ish. But the Pythagorean theorem and the golden mean remained elusive. Even though she liked to dissect frogs, she only got 65 percent in biology. Barely passing in history, she managed high marks in English and scored 80 percent in her law
Invisible darkness : the strange case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka Page 3