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

by Williams, Stephen, 1949-

  Just after noon there was thunder and hghtning. One bolt struck the CN Tower and it rained Uke hell.

  “I live for the weekend. It’s Hke I’m dead during the week,” Karla told a fi-iend.

  During her final year of high school she had applied for and been accepted at both the University of Toronto and York University, but she decided not to pursue a higher education and continued working at the Number One Pet Center.

  According to her school yearbook, Karla’s “wildest dream” was “to marry Paul and see him more than twice a week.” When asked to provide a one-line philosophy of life, Karla came up with her own Gekkoism: “People who make excuses never make any money.”

  With a pocketful of little liquor botdes, Paul escorted Karla to the Sir Winston Churchill senior prom at the legion hall in St. Catharines that fall. Karla’s ex-boyfnend was back from Kansas. Paul decided that he was paying too much attention to Karla and said so. That did not sit well with the boys from Winston Churchill.

  Karla, no shrinking violet, felt compelled to sucker-punch a male classmate. She hit Greg square in the head with her purse. It was Karla, malingering with Doug, her ex-boyfriend, then decking Greg, that really started the melee. Greg was typical of a certain kind of St. Catharines youth—hockey playing, hard drinking, semiliterate with a penchant for pugilism. When Greg decided to hit Karla back, Paul stepped in, which inspired a few others, including the Hill brothers to a mass attack. They beat the living shit out of Paul and his little dark-haired friend, Mike Donald, who had once been Lori Homolka’s boyfriend.

  The police were called. They broke up the fight and the prom. Although Paul knew that several of his assailants were the sons of Niagara Regional Pohce officers, he went to the police station and tried to lay charges. He had not started the fight. He felt aggrieved. He took Mike Donald as an eyewitness.

  The cop in charge was a guy named Murphy—his son was one of Paul Bernardo’s alleged attackers. Murphy suggested that perhaps they should charge Karla for sucker-punching her pugilistically inclined classmate instead.

  Months later, when one of the guys who punched out Paul became a paraplegic in a car accident, Bernardo reminded Mike Donald about how he had said he would take his revenge—in ways no one would expect, when they were least expecting it. As Gordon Gekko put it in Wall Street: “Life all comes dovv^n to moments. This is one of them.”

  By September 1989, Steve Irwin was working full-time on the Scarborough rape cases. Part of the job was going around to various stations briefing other cops on the status of the investigation. Irwin had been going through old files and running down dozens of suspects. Late in the fall, he had been partnered with Sergeant John Munro.

  Munro’s hair was prematurely gray, making him look considerably older than Irwin, who, at twenty-nine, was actiially Munro’s senior by two years. The pair reviewed files of previous offenders. The literature on this type of offense told them it was unlikely the Scarborough rapist was a repeat offender, but what else did they have to do?

  Karla enclosed an amputated puppy tail with her October 19, 1989, letter to her firiend Debbie Purdie.

  “Just cut right off with nail scissors—NEAT, EH?” she wrote.

  Debbie was up north taking animal husbandry at a community college. Karla told Debbie that she had seen two doctors, Linkenheil and Lang, in Toronto for dysplasia of the cervix and Pap smears. Paul helped arrange the appointments. Karla had to go into the hospital for minor surgery. She had no fear of medical procedures, but she was required to abstain from sex for a month. That really disturbed her.

  Karla also told Debbie about her new job at a veterinary chnic not far firom St. Catharines, where she cleaned kennels, answered phones and held the animals while they were prepared for surgery. Karla was outraged that her boss. Dr. Ker, practically accused her of stealing Ketamine, a sedative used on cats, which affects humans like Angel Dust.

  On Tuesday, November 21, 1989, Detective Constable Irwin got another early morning phone call. It was 3:45 a.m. By the time he got to the location on Sheppard Avenue East, Wolfe was already there.

  There were footprints in the snow. At 5:40 a.m., Irwin went

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  to visit the victim’s boyfriend, who Hved nearby. There were more footprints between his yard and the neighbor’s, and still others leading from the boyfriend’s basement window through the backyard. The neighbor had gone to bed around midnight and had neither seen nor heard anything.

  Kerry Grey was fifteen years old. The boyfriend, who was considerably older, had known Kerry for about three years. They had started to have sex regularly over the past six months. About twice a month, Kerry would sneak in through his basement window around midnight and they would go at it.

  The boyfriend told Munro and Irwin he was a locksmith. He and Kerry had made love twice in less than an hour that night. He told them, with a little too much bravado, that afterward she had tried fellating him, but to no avail—he had shot his bolt. The pun was not lost on the detectives. The way the locksmith figured it, at least Kerry was not maimed or dead, so why sweat the details. Irwin was singularly without a sense of humor about all this. The locksmith looked down at his feet.

  He and Kerry were not into rough sex—no biting, spanking, not even hickies. She had scratched his back though, so she might have his skin under her nails. As far as he knew, she was on the pill. They did not use condoms. Or lubricants. Because his mother did not approve of Kerry, that’s why she snuck in and out. She had left the same way she came in, about one that morning.

  At three o’clock Kerry had called him and told him she had been raped beside the Northern Telecom building. The rapist tied her hands, but the knots were no good, so Kerry got loose about thirty seconds after he left. She wanted a shower real bad, Kerry said. When she first called she was still terrified, but she calmed down during the half hour they talked. Kerry went to Scarborough Grace Hospital on her own in a cab.

  They suspected the locksmith, but he was too cooperative and cavalier. After a few tests, they quickly determined it was not him.

  Meanwhile, the other cops had been interrogating another suspect. By 2:30 that afternoon, Irwin and Munro were at the forensic center submitting the samples. They had a meeting

  with the scientists. Up until this point, even though they were now on their twelfth or thirteenth serial rape, it had been catch-as-catch-can. They all agreed they should devise some sort of coordinated procedure for handling all Scarborough rape samples.

  It was a Wednesday afternoon in early December when Irwin and Munro sat down with Wolfe to discuss the composite drawing that had been developed from Kerry’s detailed description of her assailant. They compared this one with the other two that had been prepared in 1988. The composites were very similar.

  Developing a composite is a kind of Mr. Potato Head game. Facial features and head shapes are fmite and lend themselves to a classification. In the 1880s, Alphonse Bertillon, widely considered the father of scientific detection, developed an identification system called Portrait Parle. The Portrait Parle was a kind of smorgasbord of distinctive facial features lifted from photographs, with accompanying sets of written captions.

  It was the basis for all modern systems. Even with computers, a similar coding to Bertillon’s is applied to imaging. It is the combinations that made the number of compositions almost infinite.

  Most law-enforcement agencies, including the Metro Toronto Police, use the FBI’s facial-identification catalog. Noses are average or concave or hooked, the nostrils flared or not and the eyes—close … far apart? Is the face oval, round, triangular, long or rectangular? What is the hair color and st>de, and what about the chin and the shape of the head? Within the system there are many choices, but they are finite.

  A face does not have a semantic meaning, but it may trigger important associations to a friend or celebrity. Victims and witnesses often talk in terms of likeabihty, honesty, homeliness, o
penness or attractiveness.

  Previous victims of the Scarborough rapist had picked out suspects from photo lineups, and the detectives discussed their resemblance to those of the composites. They decided to circu—

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  late a bulletin that would include the latest composite internally—there were approximately eight thousand Metropolitan Toronto PoHce personnel. Again, the decision was taken not to go public.

  In December, Karla left her job at the Thorold Veterinary Clinic in the midst of the Ketamine controversy and immediately got another at the Martindale Animal Clinic—this time as a health technician. The Clinic was in a little strip mall on Welland Avenue in St. Catharines. Her duties included assisting the vets with surgery, preparing animals for surgery, administering medication and controlling the drug registry. The hours were 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and her take-home pay was approximately $215 per week.

  Paul decided to quit his job at Price Waterhouse and propose to Karla. He had worked there since September, 1987, a little over two years, and he did not feel that he had made enough progress or could fully realize his potential with that particular firm. Within hours of quitting, he was on a cigarette run into the United States. On December 8, he crossed the bridge at Lewiston at 4:11 p.m.

  On Saturday, December 9, 1989, Paul proposed marriage to Karla at Victoria Village in Niagara Falls. She had always wanted to be a bride. When a Toronto newspaper columnist encouraged his readers to describe about the most romantic moment in their lives, Karla wrote:

  “The most romantic moment of my life occurred on December 9th… . My wonderful boyfriend of five years— Paul—took me on a romantic walk to the romance capital of the world, Niagara Falls. We walked hand-in-hand alongside the majestic falls. It was a lover’s paradise that evening, with red and green Christmas Hghts all along the falls. Softly falling snow, and other romantic couples strolling in the soft moonlight.

  “As we approached the elf-sized Christmas village, Paul told me he had a gift for me. I turned my back at his request. He pulled out a box containing a glass unicorn music box. Perched

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  across the unicorn’s horn was a perfect diamond ring. As we waited for some noisy children to leave, he whispered words of love in my ear and hugged me tightly in an effort to keep us warm—it was very cold and windy. Finally the children left and we were alone outside of the elves’ church… .” She enclosed a photograph of Paul Bernardo in a camel-hair coat.

  Paul also gave her a wedding planner. From that day forward Karla Homolka began making plans in earnest.

  In Toronto, the Christmas windows were decorated, and the giant Santa Claus parade down University Avenue had come and gone. Christmas was a very special time for the Scarborough rapist. There had been two rapes right around Christmas in 1987 and two more in 1988. There was no reason to expect this year would be any different.

  Detective Irwin could almost “feel” his mounting excitement. The time for a proactive approach was nigh. Why not run a decoy around the areas in Scarborough where the rapist had previously struck, and see if they might not provoke an attack? It was better than sitting on their hands.

  On Thursday, December 21, Detective Irwin came back to work around 10 p.m. He went out on patrol with his partner and an attractive female officer named Smith, whom they had enlisted to be the lure.

  After about five fruitless hours, Irwin got a call from Staff Sergeant Doug Diplock. A young woman had been attacked in the underground-parking garage of an apartment building at 1580 Sandhurst Circle, about ten miles from Irwin and Munro.

  The victim’s name was Deneen Chenier. She remembered everything her assailant had said, as if she had a tape-recorder in her head, and she kept repeating it: “Shut up, sit down, undo your pants. Undo them, bitch. Is this your first time? I’m going to teach you a lesson, bitch. Shut the fuck up. Drop the keys. Take it off. I’m gonna be back late in a couple of days. Wait three minutes. I’m gonna watch you, and if you come up by then I’m gonna come back and start stabbing away.”

  Deneen was sure there was someone else with him, possibly

  a woman, with something in her hand Hke a video camera, but her assertions were discounted because she had been badly beaten. Her left knee was injured, she had lacerations on her face, neck and back, and her rectum and vagina were torn. She was on the verge of hysteria.

  There were dozens of cops on the scene by the time Irwin and Munro arrived. They had brought in the dogs. They brought m the I-dent guys. At 9:30 a.m., Irwm went back to the squad room and took a sample from a new suspect to the lab.

  In the middle of the night, he was back in Four Division District in Scarborough, because Deneen had picked out a suspect named Sylvester from a photo lineup. She was wrong. It was not Sylvester. On the night of the twenty-third, Irwin went home for Christmas.

  Faul and Karla rented the movie Criminal Law for Christmas. She just knew Paul would love it. Criminal Law was made in 1987 and starred Gary Oldman and Kevin Bacon. It was one of Karla’s favorite movies. She had done her big English project on it the previous year.

  Criminal Law was about a young, good-looking, wealthy serial rapist and killer named Martin Thiel (pronounced Teale) played by Kevin Bacon. Like Paul, he sexually assaulted young women. Unlike Paul, he then killed them.

  The way he does it: first he rapes them and then he stuffs disposable diapers in their mouths. Then he strangles them and lights their genitals on fire to destroy any forensic evidence.

  The story is about the interaction between Martin Thiel’s young attorney, played by Oldman, and Thiel. The attorney knows his client is guilty, but the two are so wily that Thiel keeps getting off. The attorney is ultimately conscience stricken and betrays solicitor-client privilege.

  Like Paul, Martin Thiel came from a “good” family. Like Paul, Thiel hated his mother. Like Paul, he was irrevocably

  damaged by an incident precipitated by his mother. Like Paul, he was young and good-looking and otherwise functional. Like Paul, he resolved his psychological dissonance by raping women.

  For Paul, the kUhng would come later.

  nine

  oldfarb Shulman Patel and Company, a small, prestigious accounting firm in Toronto, was very impressed by Paul Bernardo. He had had a good track record at Price Waterhouse. He was only one exam away from becoming a chartered accountant. They gave him $34,000 a year to start on January 4, 1990.

  Otherwise, Paul’s life was chaotic. Things were not going well at home. He could no longer stand the sight of his mother and father. He felt as if the walls in his room, where he had

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  posted all those cliches, had become cHches themselves. He was overextended fmancially.

  On the other hand, things in St. Catharines had never been better. He and Karla had scheduled their wedding for June 29, 1991, organized the church, historic St. Mark’s AngUcan in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and booked the hall—the very upscale Macleod Room in the Queen’s Landmg Hotel, an exquisite establishment just a horse-drawn-carriage ride away. They were making plans for a sit-down dinner writh over one hundred guests. Thirty-four thousand a year—taxed at source—did not cut it. The wedding alone would cost that much. One day, two months after he started his new job; he stopped. He did not give notice, he just never went back to Goldfarb Shulman.

  Paul and his old Price Waterhouse pal Joe Falzone started a worm-picking business. Paul was the brams, Joe was the bank. They bought an old gray, full-sized GMC van from the Auto Trader magazine. It had those big wmdows on both sides and in the back. Two weeks later, the engine blew and they had to replace it. Already Joe was in for more than two thousand dollars and starting to regret it.

  Paul had been very convincing. He told Joe w^orms were big business. A good worm picker could pick ten thousand worms a night. They wore flashlights on their heads and put the worms in womens’ nylon stockings. One stocking held five hundred wor
ms. Working two, three nights a week, a good picker could make a few thousand dollars a month. Crew bosses, hke Paul and Joe, running two dozen pickers, stood to make considerably more—^for considerably less work.

  But that spring it rained almost every night, and you cannot pick worms when it rains. They spent most of their time sitting in McDonald’s. One day Paul sold the truck, gave Joe a little of his monev back and that was that.

  Kerry’ Grey, the girl who had been raped after she crawled out the locksmith’s basement window in November, 1989, called the police after spotting the guy who attacked her; he was in the McDonald’s in the Shops on Steeles mall in the Toronto borough of North York. She had seen him on Friday. She knew it was him.

  Irwin figured, why not? Why not go on a couple of wild-goose chases? After women were raped, they started seeing their rapists everywhere. Kerry sounded so sure. The police had already submitted over one hundred samples—hair, saliva, even blood in some cases—to the Center for Forensic Science, with no results. They were no further ahead than they had been when Inspector Wolfe had suggested there was a serial rapist at work in Scarborough in 1987.

  On Wednesday, April 4, Detective Irwin picked up Kerry Grey at 8:00 a.m. On the way to the mall, she told him she had seen the guy who raped her get into the passenger side of an old gray van. It was flill size, with windows all around, and had been parked outside the McDonald’s.

  The Hcense plate was white with black letters, and one of the letters might have been Z. Irwin wondered why Kerry had not got the number, surely she knew enough to do that, but she hadn’t and Irwin kept his own counsel. Kerry was only sixteen. They staked out the mall all day long. Other detectives went back with Kerry, but she never saw the guy or the van again.