Invisible darkness : the strange case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka
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description of the attacker and any comments made about the rapist. “Cunnmg” and “very intelhgent” were his favorites.
On the same notepad—a long one that Karla had picked up at a bridal shower—Karla noted the date of each occurrence and the main intersection closest to the site. On the same piece of paper, she also wrote out a shopping Hst. That particular week she required Sun-In to hghten Paul’s hair and Freeze-hair spray for herself and she made herself a reminder to order “confetti” favor cards for her wedding.
Over the following weekend Paul and Karla had more intense discussions about his interview and Tammy Lyn. Karla knew that their love was so powerful that it would conquer all. On Monday, November 26, she sent Paul a note: “Please accept my apology even though actions speak louder than words and my actions haven’t been great. I swear things will change. Just remember how much we love each other. Paul, I know we can get through this. …” Three days later Paul was formally discharged from bankruptcy. That was a step in the right direction.
On December 5, Karla picked up her confetti cards—one hundred of them. She wrote Debbie Purdie yet another wedding-talk letter. There were two absolutely wonderful events in her immediate future, she said “—marriage and a dog.”
To celebrate their wedding anniversary, Karel and Dorothy Homolka always went and stayed in a hotel in Niagara Falls, New York, for a weekend: this year, they chose the weekend of December 8. Paul and Karla had high hopes for a Taimiiy opportunit^’ on that weekend, but for the first time in months Lori decided to stay at home and not go out over the weekend. Paul threw up his hands. Videotaping all the way, Paul took the three sisters, frolicking like palominos in the riot of Christmas lights, across the border for a brief Saturday evening visit with their parents.
“Take good care of my girls, Mr. Bernardo,” Karel said to the camera, as they galloped away into the bright Christmas night.
Karla sent Paul two more cards, one for the anniversary of
their engagement on December 11: “Just for fun I made a list of the top hundred things I like to do with you … kiss and hug and stuff: ‘y^^^^ know what stuff]’,” signed “W-U-V, Karly Curls.” She covered the card with sticky hearts. A week later Karla sent Paul flowers.
By December 23, calm had been restored. Perhaps tonight would be the night, except Tammy was scheduled for a sleepover at her girlfriend Patricia Coyle’s. Paul and Karla despaired. Instead, they went cross-border shopping. They left Karla’s house about 2:30 p.m. and crossed into the US at 3:00 p.m.
After they came back across the border at 6:30 p.m., the weather turned and a severe winter storm settled in. Mrs. Coyle called and canceled Tanmiy’s visit. Paul and Karla sat in front of Meatland, a butcher shop in a strip mall near Karla’s house for an hour. They finished pulverizing the Halcion. Paul had been pounding the pills into powder with a hammer in the Homolkas’ basement earlier in the day, when Karla’s mother asked about the noise. They got back to the house laden with Christmas gifts and finely ground Halcion around 7:15 p.m.
As far as Paul was concerned, this was going to be the best Christmas ever. He had a new Sony video camcorder and he would get it all on tape. Before they went shopping he had videotaped Mrs. Homolka in the kitchen, the Christmas tree and all the presents downstairs in the recreation room.
The new toy was ftin: everyone was captured in the lens, including a prone, shirtless Mr. Homolka, as he lay on the couch watching “60 Minutes” and Mrs. Homolka, in her bathrobe, as she descended the stairs at eight o’clock to watch “Murder She Wrote.” Karla sat cross-legged on the floor, putting Shadow the cat through his paces.
Karla and Lori lampooned the “Saturday Night Live” television skit, Wayne’s World, with its extreme close-up antics— Paul laughed as the sisters shoved their faces right in the camera lens and yelled “extreme close-up.”
It was the Sunday before Christmas, so everybody was drinking, and it was not hard to lace Tammy’s drinks. Tammy
was sitting in the big stuffed chair with her legs pulled up under her, drinking a special daiquiri Paul and Karla had prepared just for her. Tammy was getting stoned. She wondered why Paul had two cameras.
Paul asked her what it was she was drinking and she slurred the word ice and that really inspired Paul because “Ice, ice, baby, to go …” was a line from a song by the white rapper Vanilla Ice, who was one of his role models. He said “Ice, ice, baby, to go …” and Tammy looked right into the camera, laughed coquettishly, and defiantly said, “No.”
Then Tammy said, right out of the blue, “These guys are trying to poison me.” Everyone was in the room when she said it, but nobody seemed to hear her. Karla almost freaked out. Then Tammy went upstairs to get something to eat. She was just getting over mononucleosis and she had been complammg about feeling a bubble right around her ribs. Paul and Mrs. Homolka felt it in the kitchen and they agreed it felt weird.
Tammy started drinking Paul’s rusty nail, a tortured concoction of scotch and Drambuie. She downed the whole drink. Then she went upstairs to her bedroom again and called her friend Norma. While she was upstairs, Paul shot more video footage of Mr. and Mrs. Homolka, Karla and Lori around the Christmas tree. Much later, Karla would bitch at Paul, because ever since they were “Httle, Httle, Httle,” the three sisters— Karla, Lori and Tammy—had always had their picture taken in front of the tree together. This was the first time they had not, and look what happened.
Paul and Karla had given Tammy ten or twelve 5mg pills, but they did not seem to be having the desired effect. Tammy just seemed a Httle drunk. Lori told Paul and Karla to stop feeding Tammy drinks but nobody paid her any attention either, so she just went to her room and never came out again.
Finally, Tammy came back downstairs. When Mr. and Mrs. Homolka went to bed they told Tanmiy to go to bed as well, but she said, “No, I want to watch the movie with Paul and Kar.”
Paul had rented Lisa and the Demi, an old horror movie about
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this woman—Elke Sommer—who discovers a mannequin of herself. There’s a warped family with a sadistic husband and a nynipho wife, a necro son and a butler, played by Telly Savalas. Robert Alda played a priest and Elke Sommer spewed bile and frog chunks all over him. This was the first time Telly Savalas had ever sucked a lollipop on camera.
Paul and Karla were on the one couch: Tammy was on the other. Finally, Tammy fell asleep. Karla went over and poked her. She was out cold. Karla got the halothane. Paul got the video camera. Karla poured halothane on a cloth and held it over Tammy’s mouth and nose.
Paul pulled down her green track pants and Karla pushed her shirt up. Paul started videotaping his fingers lubricating her vagina and then put his penis in her. The camera was zoomed in on his penis going in and out of Tammy’s vagina.
Karla told him to hurry up and Paul told her to shut up.
Tammy’s right hand was casually relaxed across her belly.
“Please hurry up before somebody comes down. …” Karla whispered. He told her to shut up again. It was hard to maintain an erection when somebody was telling you to hurry up all the time.
“Okay,” he said. “Keep her down, here we go.”
Then Karla told him to put on a condom. They had discussed it—Karla did not want Tammy to get pregnant. But Paul did not have a condom. He never had any intention of using a condom. “Keep her down and keep quiet,” he whispered.
Karla said it more forcibly: “Put something on… .”
“Don’t get all worked up. Shut up …” he said.
She told him to put on a condom three or four more times. Finally an exasperated Karla said, “Fucking do it. Just do it.” By this time Paul had pushed his penis in and out of Tammy, slowly, a half a dozen times. He was having real trouble holding the camera still.
“Yeah, you love me,” he declared out of the blue, because he knew that would get to her and maybe settle her down.
“Quiet,” she said. Karla had been holding the halothane-soaked cloth over her sister’s mouth and nose. Periodically she
poured more halothane on the cloth and checked Tamniy’s breathing.
“Will you blow me?” Paul asked, just as a joke.
“Yes.”
“Suck on her breasts,” he said. The multicolored sweater Tammy was wearing had been pulled right up around her neck. Karla started to mouth her breasts. “Now, suck,” Paul be-seeched. Karla’s hair fell over her face and the gold chain Paul had bought her on their first Christmas shpped between her hps.
Paul had pulled his penis out and changed shots. Karla was kneeUng between her sister’s legs. Paul pushed on her head and Karla started to perform cunnilingus on her sister.
“Put your tongue out,” he ordered. “Probe. You’re not doing it.” Tammy had her period, and Karla was very unhappy.
“I am so,” Karla whimpered.
“Do it. Lick her cunt. Lick it up … Lick it clean. Lick it clean …“he instructed her.
“I am …” Karla repHed.
“Put your fingers inside …“he cajoled.
Karla said no. He told her to do it again. Karla was becoming increasingly unhappy and distraught.
“Do it now, quick, quick, quick. Right now. Right inside …”
Karla started to do it, pushing her right index finger in and out of her sister.
“Three fingers. Right inside.” Then he told her to do ex-acdy the thing she most deplored. “Taste it.” Karla refused.
“Taste it. Put it in. Taste it. Put it inside and taste it.”
“I did.”
“Taste it. Inside. Inside. Inside and taste it. Quick.”
“No,” she whined, and continued to finger Tammy.
“Inside. Deep. Deep.”
“1 did,” Karla said. Paul repeated himself. “I did,” Karla said again. Karla reluctantly Hcked her now bloodstained fingers.
“Taste good? Not bad, eh?” he inquired.
She said no. He asked again. “Taste good?”
Karla looked right into the camera, daubed her Hps on the cufF of her white turtleneck and said, “Fucking disgusting …”
Ignoring her, he asked again, “Does it taste good?” Paul knew what was wrong and thought it was funny.
Karla had been holding the halothane-soaked cloth over her sister’s face. Now she went back up to check her breathing and Paul inserted his penis in Tammy’s anus.
“Up her cunt, up her ass. How’s that?” he said happily.
Suddenly Paul just stopped and pulled out, as though he knew something was not right. Then Tammy vomited. Something was terribly wrong. It must have been the drinks and all the food she had eaten before. Karla knew animals were not fed before they were anesthetized. Karla knew what to do. She grabbed her sister and held her upside down, because that was what you were supposed to do with an animal who aspirated its stomach contents while under.
Paul started trying to clear Tammy’s throat. It was not fun anymore and they were both terrified. Karla was hysterical. In a split second they decided to drag her across the floor to Karla’s bedroom.
Struggling with her lifeless body, they dropped her. The lighting in the recreation room was on a dimmer switch. They could have just turned it up, but they did not want anybody suddenly coming down and finding Tammy unconscious with her shirt around her head and her pants around her ankles.
Once they got into Karla’s bedroom, they dressed Tammy. Karla sent Paul upstairs to get the mirror from the front hallway to see if she was breathing. Paul started mouth-to-mouth. Karla called 911. She dumped the halothane down the drain and hid the pills and the empty halothane botde behind some shelves in the laundry room.
The sirens and the lights woke up Karla’s mother and father. Lori stumbled to the top of the stairs. Paul told Mr. and Mrs. Homolka that Tammy had just stopped breathing. Karla watched while the paramedics worked on Tammy. She was buoyed by the fact that Tammy’s color seemed to be coming
back and it appeared they had a heartbeat. As they took Tammy out with tubes m her mouth, Karla told her parents that Tammy was looking much better.
The pohce came. It had been tough to get through the snowstorm that had blanketed the city. The two senior officers on the scene went with Tammy. Mr. and Mrs. Homolka followed the ambulance to the hospital. They left Constable David Weeks, a tall, gangly rookie who had only been on the job seven weeks, with Paul, Karla and Lori. Constable Weeks found the situation suspicious.
He sat Paul, Karla and Lori on the couch. He suggested to them that they might have been firee-basing cocaine, even though Paul had told him outright, before Weeks said anything, that there were no drugs involved. What else could have caused that unholy burn on Tammy’s face. Constable Weeks wondered?
Then the telephone rang and Constable Weeks answered. He went, “Uh-huh,” and hung up. “Your sister’s dead,” he said. Although Tammy had not been pronounced dead until they got her to the hospital, she had actually died around 1:00 a.m. in the Homolkas’ basement. Lori ran upstairs and called Mike Donald, her ex-boyfiriend.
When Weeks came back down after checking on her, he found Karla loading the blankets on which her sister had vomited into the w^ashing machine. The water w^as already running before he stopped her and pulled the wet parts out. When Lori came down again, the two sisters hugged each other and started quietly crying. Paul rocked back and forth madly, whacking his own head, screaming.
The senior detective came back to Dundonald and drove Paul, Karla and Lori to the police station on Church Street. Paul and Karla were left sitting on a bench together for almost an hour, waiting to be interviewed. Finally they w^ere questioned, separately.
The pohce noted that their stories were remarkably similar. Neither Paul nor Karla said anything about halothane, Halcion, or videotape. They both said the marks on Tammy Lyn’s face were caused when they dragged her across the carpet to Karla’s
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room. Although the coroner was sure the marks were not rug burns, the police never questioned Paul and Karla about it agam.
They were finished by 6:00 a.m. When they got home, Paul and Karla panicked. They could not find the videotape. Paul had left it in the camera. But someone had moved the camera into Karla’s bedroom. One of the cassettes was even sitting out on Karla’s night table in plain view. Obviously, nobody had bothered to check either the camera or the cassettes.
Dorothy Homolka called her neighbor, friend and co-worker, Lynn McCann, and asked her to come over to the house. Lynn and Dorothy were approximately the same age, and they both worked as secretaries at the Shaver Clinic. It was early on the morning of December 24. Dorothy said that they had just come back from the hospital and their daughter was dead. At first Lynn thought it must be Lori, the middle girl, because she was the one who had really bad asthma.
But it was Tammy Lyn, the most athletic, the healthiest and the bubbliest of the three blond sisters. Tammy would have turned sixteen on New Year’s Day.
Lynn had been at 61 Dundonald for a couple of hours when Karla and Paul came home. They were in a grand funk because they said the police had treated them like criminals, interrogating them all night. Then the bastards had not even driven them home, as they had promised they would.
To Lynn, it was all too weird. Apparendy Paul and Karla had been watching television with Tammy in the basement when Tammy suddenly stopped breathing. Dorothy told Lynn that Tammy had choked on her own vomit and that Paul had really worked hard giving her mouth-to-mouth, trying to save her hfe.
Dorothy said she and Karel had been asleep when Dorothy was awakened by something: she thought it was music or the television. She was on her way downstairs to tell them to turn it down, when she saw the flashing lights. The paramedics were
already in the house when Dorothy got to the top of the basement stairs.
At noon Dorothy asked Lynn to go with her and Karel and help them pick out a casket. Karel a
sked Karla to go, too, but Karla told him to “flick off.”
Lynn had lost an infant child and found the whole casket thing very’ difficult. It was all the more unsettling that Dorothy and Karel didn’t cry-or show any emotion at all throughout the three-hour ordeal.
When they were done, Lynn was exhausted and went home for a w^hile. She suggested that Dorothy lie down, too, and try to get some rest. Later, when Lynn came back, Dorothy told her they laid down, but instead of resting she and Karel “screwed.”
Lynn was flabbergasted when Dorothy told her that somebody had come by and dropped off a death certificate. Tammy Lyn’s body was barely cold and they had already concluded her death was accidental?
Tammy Lyn was buried December 27, 1990.
Karla was acting ver- strangely at Tanmiy’s funeral. It was an open coffin. She would not leave Tammy’s hair alone. She kept straightening the corpse’s clothes.
Everyone was suspicious. The paramedics had said the washing machine was going when they arrived at the house—at two o’clock in the morning? It was said that Paul and Karla had washed all of Tammy’s clothes. There were rumors about Paul and Karla free-basing cocaine. Everyone beHeved that Tammy’s death was rushed through the emergency room because it was Christmas. Maybe the coroner had been drinking?
And then there was the huge, bright raspberry-colored burn that extended from the left side of Tammy’s mouth all the way down her chin onto her neck, for which no one had a plausible explanation.
Dorothy had given Lynn three different explanations, at three different times: first she had said it was because Tammy had bad acne, an allergic reaction to a particular kind of make—
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up; then she said it was the result of excessive mouth-to-mouth resuscitation; and thirdly, because the paramedics had dragged Tammy across the carpet.