Invisible darkness : the strange case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka

by Williams, Stephen, 1949-

  He started raping women in earnest.

  seven

  short evening drive into the sunset, the road to St. Catharines from Scarborough took Paul west along the contours of Lake Ontario to Hamilton, M^here the Queen Elizabeth highway curved south and then east toward Niagara Falls. Twelve miles from the American border, there are three or four exits for the small city. Thus began the ritual. Many a Wednesday night, and every weekend, Paul would drive to St. Catharines to see Karla.

  66 STEPHEN wiiilams

  If Paul left Scarborough around 6:00 p.m., depending on traffic and weather, he would arrive in St. Catharines less than two hours later. For the first couple of weekends, Paul went back and forth three and four times between Friday evening and Sunday night.

  Despite the Homolkas’ imprecations to call them Dorothy and Karel, Paul would only refer to Karla’s parents as Mr. and Mrs. H. This boy was polite. Soon Mrs. Homolka saw the foolishness in all that driving back and forth. Dorothy was as enthralled as her daughter with this pohte, slighdy older, well-to-do, educated, beautiful young man with a good job.

  Paul was older—twenty-three to Karla’s seventeen—^but he did not act or look it. His round, open face and baby blue eyes gave him a boyish, innocent aura. Very quickly, Paul Bernardo became the Homolkas’ “weekend son.”

  When Paul was not at the Homolka house at 61 Dundonald, Karla was writing him cards and letters. The barrage began with a three-page letter on October 27, ten days after they met, and continued unabated for nearly six years. Even after they moved in together and married, Karla would write him little “pillow notes” almost daily.

  On November 6, 1987 she presented him with a card featuring three little pigs, inviting him to “call me any time.” It revealed something about the lovers’ early banter: “To my prince, Love, from your princess.”

  Paul responded with flowers. She persisted with more and more cards. One, on November 13, featured two cartoon characters in bed and two other characters peering at them through a window: “Roses are red, violets are blue. There’s nothing more fun than a pervert like you.”

  A week later, on the afternoon of November 19, 1987, Jennifer Galligan accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Bernardo to Paul’s graduation at the downtown campus of the University of Toronto. Jennifer wore her purple coat. She was really curious to see Lenore Marcos: even though she had seen her blood, she had never laid eyes on her.

  INVISIBLE dc^rkne’-,^ 67

  After the ceremony and the cheek-kissing congratulations, she and Paul rendezvoused at the Raniada Renaissance Hotel. They had a few black russians. Paul was testy, accusing her of going with other boys. People were looking at them because he was almost yelling at her about how she wandered around letting other men stick their “salamis” in her. Jennifer was dumbfounded. She tried to ignore it and gave him his graduation present—a Brookdale sweater. She told him that she thought it looked “very professional.”

  “Is this all you got me?” he exclaimed. “I fucking graduate for you and this is all you got me?” Then he stood up and proclaimed, “This one’s a real slut …“to the entire lounge.

  At closing time, Paul walked off, stranding her. When she went looking for the telephone to call her father, she saw him out in the parking lot wildly driving in circles, “doing doughnuts” in his white Capri. She walked over to the car and he seemed to calm down. He agreed that their relationship was over but insisted he should do the honorable thing and drive her home.

  After locking the doors and making sure Jennifer had her seatbelt fastened, Paul started grabbing her hair and hitting her at every stoplight. Days later, she still carried an imprint of his fist on her back.

  Instead of driving Jennifer home, Paul went to the deserted factory parking lot where they used to park all the time. By then her head ached and her face was a mess. He pulled out his knife, held it to her throat and told her he was going to kill her. Jennifer bolted, but the black russians caught up with her and she tripped on a curb. She finally got away, but only because he dropped his knife between the seats and could not find it. She ran into the ravine and got lost in the woods.

  The following evening Paul was in St. Catharines. When he left, Karla gave him another greeting card—this one featuring a cartoon sex maniac with a woman on her hands and knees. “I like that in a man …” it read. “Thanks for making me so happy. Love Karla,” wrote Karla.

  On November 27, Paul sent Karla a rare card featuring the stylized face of a geisha. It said, “Fantasies can come true, even for you and me.” Karla was his shelter from the gathering storm.

  Karla sent him pictures of herself at age seven, one with a parrot and another with a puppy. Over the next two weeks, the cards and letters kept coming: “Paul—I love you. Please don’t stop loving me … Tomorrow … and forever, I love you… . Don’t rip off all my clothes and ravish me like a beast for a solid hour. Do it all night. Now, I love you.” And “Take it … don’t break it. Don’t you forget it. I love you (I’m running out of original things to say)… . Please remember always—I love you. Hugs and kisses.”

  On December 12, Karla took the train to Toronto and went to the Price Waterhouse Christmas party with Paul. It was held at the same Howard Johnson’s where they had met less than two months earlier. For old times’ sake, they had sex in a stairwell. There were many pictures taken that evening. Karla and Paul looked hke a debutante and her date at the ball. Paul and Karla looked so young that one of the senior partners wondered out loud who had brought their children?

  In a letter dated December 8, Karla told him she had bought him some gloves but could not find black leather Isotoners anywhere.

  And then, on December 15, Paul received a strange, undecipherable message: “All men are not alike… . You are so special you mean so much to me … , Amo Nunguamo-bliviscar,” which he interpreted as her wholehearted blessing.

  On Wednesday, December 16, around 10:30 p.m., Paul attacked Libby Ketchum after she left a bus a few blocks from Sir Raymond Drive at Guildwood Parkway and Livingston Road. Libby was five feet four and weighed 105 pounds. She had long brown hair. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Paul blitzed her from behind. Putting his gloved hand over her mouth, he pulled her between two houses and showed her his knife.

  “Now if you’re smart, you’ll shut up. Don’t say a word. I’m

  INVISIBLE darkness 69

  not gonna hurt ya,” he told her. “I just wanna talk. If you want to see Christmas, just shut up. What’s your name?”

  She lied and told him her name was Libby Tauton.

  “How old are you?” Fifteen, she said.

  “What grade are you in?” She told him. Paul pulled her pants off and forced his hand between her legs. She tried to resist. He put a coaxial cable around her neck and tightened it.

  “Just let me have my fun,” he said. Then for an hour and a half he forced vaginal and anal sex on her, all the while asking questions about her boyfriend.

  “How old is he?” he wanted to know when he inserted his penis in her anus for the second time. “Do you do this with him? No. Oh, so we’re pretty special, then.”

  He took it out and forced it back in her vagina. “Does this feel good?” She lied and said yes.

  “Do you really mean that? You’re a sweetie because you’re cooperating with me. What’s your name?” Paul asked again.

  Looking through Libby’s wallet, he found her ID, includmg her birth certificate with her real name. “Oh, oh, you Hed. You’re a liar—you said your name was Libby Tauton before.”

  “I guess I have one or two choices, Libby Tauton or Libby Ketchum. Now, close your eyes. Close your eyes and make sure they’re closed tight. Well, just keep them closed. Put my dick in your mouth. Hold it in your hands. Don’t bite, because I can’t live with that pain… .”

  Then he stopped to take off her coat, putting it on top of the trailer in her neighbors’ driveway. Libby could not fathom what was happening to her. She was only a
few doors from her own door, and here they were between two of her neighbors’ houses. It was early—well before eleven. Everybody in the neighborhood was probably still awake. “We’re not stopping until it happens,” he said.

  He made her tell him she loved him and told her to call herself a “slut.” Then he asked for Christmas greetings.

  “Now, tell it you love it. Wish it a Merry Christmas.” And Paul flashed the knife, so she looked right at it and wished it a Merry Christmas.

  Because she was gagging on his penis, he asked her if she was

  okay. And then he came in her mouth. “Oh, you’re such a sweetie. I’m not gonna hurt you because you cooperated so well and you were a sweetie.”

  “I don’t care if you do tell the police,” Paul said.

  “I don’t care, ‘cause I’m not gonna get caught. It’ll just humiliate and embarrass you, and your boyfriend won’t like it too much. Your friends’ll all make fun of you.” She said she would tell them anyway.

  “Now, put it back,” he commanded, referring to his penis. She started to put it back in his pants.

  “Not in my pants, silly, in your mouth. You’re funny, oh, you’re really funny. Now lick it!”

  Before Paul left, he told her to get under the trailer.

  “You should stay there for at least twenty seconds. Okay. Don’t start yet. Count slowly.”

  When Libby looked out from under the trailer he had vanished.

  The next day Detective Constable Steve Irwin paid a visit to Inspector Joe Wolfe at 43 Division. There are a dozen MetropoHtan Police stations throughout Toronto, and Wolfe was head of 43 Division in Scarborough. Wolfe was a middleweight who resembled Jake LaMotta the way DeNiro played him in Raging Bull, in his middle years, after Jake retired from the ring, moved to Miami and opened a nightclub.

  Wolfe had known Steve’s father. Mike Irwin had been gunned down in 1972. He and his partner had answered a domestic in the Toronto suburb of Don Mills one night in February. When they got there, the guy came out with a shotgun and blasted both of them. Mike held on for a couple of days before he died. Steve was only eleven at the time. The fact that he still carried his father’s badge—number 4413—told Wolfe all he needed to know about the kid. He was sentimental and obsessive.

  Irwin had been assigned to assist homicide with the Margaret McWilliam murder in Warden Woods on August 15. McWilliam had been jogging in Warden Woods, a park halfway be—

  INVISIBLE darkness 7I

  tween Guildwood Village and the Scarborough campus of the University of Toronto, when she was pulled into the bushes, raped and killed.

  It didn’t appear that she had been meant to die, that her murder was part of the sex crime. The investigators had concluded she was probably killed accidentally during the struggle.

  The violence and intensity of Libby Ketchum’s rape gave Constable Irwin pause. He thought there might be some connection between McWilliam, Libby Ketchum and three assaults that had occurred in May and July in the same general area.

  Wolfe agreed there could be a connection between the three in the summer and Libby Ketchum, but not with the Mc William murder. Serial rapists are rare and usually much more sophisticated than the causal or opportunistic rapist—they are invariably acting out some kind of strange, private fantasy, so the details of their crimes are distinctive.

  The earlier assaults—on May 4, May 14 and July 27—were naive but violent. The women had all just left buses, they were accosted from behind, the guy had been rough but he did not really “rape” them. He had fondled them sexually, penetrating the last one with his fmgers.

  The recent attack on Libby Ketchum was one of the most obsessive and extensive outdoor rapes in Wolfe’s long career. Nevertheless, it had a lot in common with the previous three— the descriptions of a well-groomed young man who had good teeth and did not smell bad. The rapist talked all the time he was assaulting his victims, and he wanted to hear certain, specific things. All of the attacks had occurred within a short radius of Scarborough’s Guildwood Village.

  Location was one of the big differences between the attacks and the murder. The attacks occurred in heavily populated areas, usually on the streets where the women lived. In the esoter-ica of serial sexual crime, location was everything. It had significance for the rapist, particularly if it increased the chances he would be caught.

  Irwin was not persuaded. As the years went by, his skepticism about Wolfe’s assessment would deepen. Unfortunately it would not help him solve any of the crimes, only cause him to

  become more cynical. Steve would have been about twenty-seven when he first went to see Wolfe. It was ironic. The guy they were looking for was probably a guy who looked much Hke Constable Irwin—clean-cut—and just about the same age.

  That same day, Karla sent Paul two cards, because it was their “second anniversary.” One said, “Happy 2 month Anniversary, Love Karla,” and the other, “It’s been the best 2 months ever. You’re my prince. I love you. Karla.”

  Two days before Christmas, Mary Booth got off the bus at Lawrence and Bathgate at 12:50 a.m.

  Tall—five foot eight, with long blond hair, Mary gave Wolfe pause because she was considerably larger than the last four victims—she weighed around 150 pounds. The hterature said location came first, and then the serial rapist haunted his preferred locations and waited for the right woman. The other victims had all been short and shght, with long, dark hair.

  Paul scripted Mary exactly the way he had Libby. The sequence of events was the same: vaginal penetration, then anal penetration, back and forth a couple of times; then he performed cunmlingus and made her fellate him.

  She was forced to repeat, over and over again: “I’m a bitch, I’m a cunt, Merry Christmas, I love you. Merry Christmas. This is my present to you. I’m doing this because I hate my boyfriend.”

  He had a knife and he talked the talk: “If you open your mouth, I’m gonna slit your throat. If you scream, I’ll slit your throat. Shut up. Shut up or I’ll kill you. Bitch. Slut. If you scream, I’U put a scar on your face. What’s your name. What school do you go to?”

  “If I read about this in the newspaper or if I hear rumors about it, even if it’s in the air, I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna rape you and kill you, cuz I know where you live, cuz I have all your ID.”

  They were in a backyard, two blocks fi-om Sir Raymond

  INVISIBLE darkness 73

  Drive. Mary Booth gave the pohce an excellent description— white, six foot, 180 pounds, light brown, blondish, collar-length hair, clean shaven with a small mole under a slightly crooked nose, smelled good, no accent, no scars or tattoos. She even noticed he was circumcised.

  He was wearing a gold ring with three diamonds on his right hand and possibly a school ring on his other—it had a red stone. He drove a white Capri, and carried a stiletto knife in a dark leather case.

  The composite they developed from Mary’s description in early January was a dead ringer for Paul Bernardo.

  The powers that be decided not to publish it. Composites published in the newspapers can be more hindrance than help. First of all, they signal the press and the public that their law-enforcement professionals are stumped.

  Every mother, sister, wife and girlfriend comes out of the woodwork and proclaims her son, brother, husband or lover a rapist. The police quickly fall into a psychological maelstrom of collective innuendo, vendetta and resentment from whence they begin to spin out in ever-widening circles.

  All the police really had at this point were two serious sexual assaults, very close together, in a specific confined area. The perpetrator was distinctive—how many boys next door were serial rapists? There was a little pressure—naturally the press was on them—but Wolfe had seen much worse. The press had not made any connection between the assaults and McWilliam’s murder. The guy would make a mistake. They would catch him.

  For Christmas, Paul gave Ka
rla a $300 dress, a gold necklace and an expensive Gund teddy bear she called Bunky.

  Paul got a hand-printed gift certificate: “Upon presentation of this coupon, Karla Leanne Homolka will perform sick, perverted acts upon Paul Kenneth Bernardo. These acts may be chosen by the recipient of the coupon. This coupon expires January 2, 1988. Love, Karla.”

  Once Jennifer Galligan started talking, her words quickly became a torrent. Sergeant Kevin McNifFs daughter had asked him to talk to her friend. McNiff worked on the Toronto Island, out of 52 Division. He was a decade off pension, biding his time with righteous, consistent service to his community. Sergeant McNiff met Jennifer in a McDonald’s just after New Year’s, 1988.

  “I was crying and he said, ‘Fuckin’ stop cryin, you flickin’ bitch. You’re givin’ me a headache,’ and then he’d hit me again, and then he took me to a place where he used to take me to do it behind this factory building, and I could show you the place … I mean, I know exactly where it is. And he took me there and he was gomg to kill me, and at one point he pushed me back and he tried to rape me. He tried to, like, do it again with me, and I’m saying, ‘No, I want to get away, I wanna leave,’ and he goes, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll make you leave,’ and he grabbed me by my hair. He pulled my hair and ripped my pantyhose and he, like, was saying ‘I’m going to fuckin’ rape you, you fuckin’ cunt—now!’ And then he was hke, hitting me and hitting me again, and he would just hit hit hit and and oh, God, all 1 remember was he started looking for his knife. ‘I’m fuckin’ going to kill you,’ and he was looking for his knife, and he couldn’t fmd it! …”

  Jennifer spewed huge chunks of monologue. Sergeant McNiff could barely look at her. All he had been told was that Jennifer had a problem with her ex-boyfriend. They were sitting in a McDonald’s. McNiff was trying to sip his coffee, but the furious pace necessary for taking notes mitigated even a sip. The weirdest thing was that when Jennifer spoke her face contorted and it was as if she were playing two roles—hers and this Paul Bernardo person’s.